Disclaimer: Wesley and Lilah do not belong to me. They belong to Mutant Enemy and 20th Century Fox. :grumble, grumble:
Chapter Six: Debris
The glass from the shattered window had not even struck the carpeted floor before Wesley was on her, pushing her down behind the bed where they'd have some cover. It took a moment for Lilah to realize his incentive for doing this. After all, it was only one bullet, and it had missed her. Shouldn't they be running out the door?
Then, in a split second, Lilah realized exactly why they needed some cover. It wasn't just one bullet after all. No sooner had they landed on the floor with a painful thump than the room was filled with the sound of hundreds of bullets striking the wall, the pictures, the television….
A submachine gun, thought Lilah. Someone's firing at us with a damn submachine gun.
Her ribs were aching from Wesley's weight. He was on top of her, covering her protectively. But Lilah could still feel glass falling into her hair.
There was glass in Lilah's hair. Under her nails. On her eyelashes. She put her hands to her face, in hopes of protecting herself from the tiny shards that were tumbling all around her. But there were billions, glistening like all the stars in the night sky.
Within moments, she was standing in glass fragments up to her ankles. Then up to her knees. Her waist. Lilah couldn't move. The pile of broken bits grew higher and higher, all around her. The torrent was endless. So much glass, and yet Lilah remained uncut.
She tried to keep her mouth shut as the pile of glass covered her face. But minutes without air forced her lips open in a gasping reaction. The shards flooded into her mouth and down her throat. She was suffocating on bits of broken glass….
Lilah awoke as suddenly as if she had been stabbed in the gut. She took a few shuddering breaths to make sure her lungs still worked properly. And to make sure they weren't filled with specks of glass. Wesley was still asleep beside her. It was the first time he had come to her apartment.
Lilah only had one recurring dream. It always began the same. She would be standing in the middle of a huge room composed almost entirely of frosted windows. Lilah could never see what was outside. Then, something would happen to make the windows shatter. Sometimes a loud, piercing noise broke the panes. Or perhaps birds would fly into them. More often than not, however, the windows were broken by a large, rock hand.
Whatever way the windows broke, the end of the dream was always the same. A fierce wind would sweep through the damaged house, lifting the glass shards into the air like a cyclone and setting them down in a pile around Lilah. She would awake just before she actually died from the suffocation.
Lilah very rarely felt any regrets about joining Wolfram and Hart. They had given her money and a job she loved. Her mother was ensured of comfort in her twilight years because of the great law firm. But for some unknown reason, after awakening from the dreams of broken glass, Lilah would always feel an uneasy twinge of remorse about her employment. It was as if a part of her suspected that, somehow, Wolfram and Hart had wrecked her life, and would only continue to destroy her.
The last time Lilah ever had the dream was the night before Cordelia killed her. Instead of the birds or the sound or the large rock hand, the windows were broken by a vicious-looking dagger made of stone. The glass swirled around her, as usual. For the first time, however, she felt the glass cut her. Her hands and her face remained unharmed, but there were bits of blood flying from her neck. Why her neck?
And as the glass shards flood into her mouth and coated her throat, she was finally able to look out of the broken windows. She saw Wesley standing outside, holding a large axe in front of a table. He looked as if he'd given up everything that had meant anything to him.
"I'm sorry, Lilah," he said to the table. And as he swung the axe up over his head, Lilah's world went black. For the first time in any of her dreams, she suffocated before awakening.
Whoever was shooting at them must have realized they had taken cover behind the bed, for the bullets were now hitting the mattress and wall just above them. If the torrent kept up for much longer, Wesley and Lilah were bound to get hit eventually.
Crap, thought Lilah. This wasn't part of the plan at all.
Suddenly, Wesley pushed himself off of Lilah and rushed across the room, taking cover behind the wardrobe. How he failed to have his head blown off, Lilah didn't have a clue. But he seemed unharmed. He was… opening one of her suitcases.
Lilah was baffled. "What the hell are you doing!" she shouted over the unending cacophony. "You're unpacking now!"
Wesley flung her clothes aside. "The guns! You said one of the suitcases had guns!"
Lilah felt stupid for a moment. She had completely forgotten about her safety net. "The other one!" she yelled. "Over by the sink!"
Wesley glanced over to where she pointed. Lilah knew it was useless, however. There was absolutely no cover to be had by the sink. Wesley wouldn't get two feet before taking half a dozen bullets in his back. It would be suicide.
But this was Wesley. Which was why Lilah wasn't a bit surprised when he bolted from behind the wardrobe and sprinted, hunched over with his hands over his head, towards the sink. Amazingly, he made it to the suitcase unscathed. He grabbed it, turned, and dived for the bathroom.
That was when his incredible luck ran out. A bullet sang through the air and caught him in the side of his right arm. He gave a cry of pain before landing on the bathroom floor and out of Lilah's line-of-sight.
"Wesley!" Lilah shouted. Fear tore at her heart. Unthinkingly, she started to rise from behind the bed. But Wesley called out to her from the bathroom.
"Stay there!" he yelled. "I'm fine. Just stay under cover."
Lilah breathed a very small sigh of relief. Injured, but alive. The gunfire wasn't stopping, however. Sheesh, thought Lilah, don't they have to run out of bullets sometime?
After half a minute, Wesley emerged from the bathroom cradling an automatic shotgun. Lilah tried very hard not to get aroused at the sight. And failed. Wesley took careful aim towards the window and began firing rounds. Whoever had been shooting at them immediately stopped. Apparently he or she hadn't expected return gunfire. Wesley fired several more shots before peering through the window.
All was silent, except for Lilah's ears, which were ringing annoyingly. Bits of fluff from the mattress and pillows were floating in the air like so many snowflakes. Sparks were coming from some damaged wires in the broken television. A picture swung crookedly on the wall. Lilah couldn't even tell what the picture had portrayed.
Wesley kept his eyes trained outside through the window. "I think they've gone," he said softly. "Are you all right?"
"I think my four-hundred-dollar suit is ruined. But other than that, yes," responded Lilah.
"Good. We have to get out of here," he said, backing away from the window, though his eyes and his shotgun barrel never left it.
"What? I thought you said they were gone."
"I don't see them where I think they were. But they could very easily be waiting out-of-sight. Let's get into the hallway."
He held a hand out to her to help her up. Lilah was about to take it when she saw the blood dripping from his fingertips.
"Your arm--" she said, concerned.
"It's fine. Come on," Wesley said firmly.
He helped her up, and they made their way quickly to the door. They had just stepped out into the hallway when Lilah realized she had forgotten her purse. All her papers, her credit card…. She turned to go back into the hotel room, but Wesley snatched her arm before she could cross the threshold.
"What are you doing? You can't go back in there!"
Lilah raised an eyebrow. "I've got news for you, John Wayne. We're not going to be able to get a hotel room without some money. So, the way I see it, we have three options. One: We can sleep out in the gutters. And whoever just tried to kill us can walk right up and blow our brains out. Two: You can strip dance at a bar for money. But somehow, I doubt you happen to have a G-string. Three: You can let me run in and get my purse. Personally, I pick option number two."
Wesley took his hand off of her arm. "Fine," he sighed. "Make it quick."
Lilah gave him a fleeting wink before she cautiously reentered the room. She hadn't seen such a mess since the Beast had wrecked Wolfram and Hart. The housekeeper was going to be in for quite a shock.
Lilah spotted her purse on the floor beside an overturned table. Much to her chagrin, it had been on the receiving end of quite a few bullets. She picked it up and anxiously flipped through it, praying that her credit card was unharmed. She breathed a sigh of relief. Miraculously, it remained bullet-hole free.
And it wasn't the only thing…. Lilah frowned as her fingers found an unfamiliar note folded neatly in half. She opened it and read:
Ms. Morgan,
I hope this letter finds you well and refreshed from your visit to France. I am writing to request your presence at the CEO office room at the San Francisco branch of Wolfram and Hart this Tuesday at noon. It pertains to matters regarding the disembodied soul (or lack thereof) of Mr. Wyndam-Pryce. Please do not be late.
Most sincerely,
Master Ecnel'ovelam
Lord of Discord and Vengeance
Senior Partner to Wolfram and Hart
King of the Eighth Circle
P.S. Come alone.
Another check-up. Lilah figured Ecnel'ovelam would want to know if she'd found anything in France. No big deal, really. She'd just lie and say she'd found nothing. She could even blame it on the psychics. It certainly wouldn't be the first time they'd provided faulty information.
But for some reason, the letter sent a cold shiver up her spine. Something about it was wrong. Something about the wording was making Lilah uneasy….
She had no time to analyze the feeling, however. She'd been in the room too long already; Wesley would probably burst through the door at any minute if she didn't join him in the hallway. Sure enough, when Lilah exited the room, Wesley was tapping his foot impatiently.
"About time. How long can it take to grab a purse?" he asked, frowning.
Lilah rolled her eyes. "I couldn't find it in all the debris, all right?"
Wesley gestured down the hallway. "Let's go. I want to investigate that building across the street from which the gunshots originated. Whoever was shooting at us may still be there." He pulled her after him down the hallway and into the elevator. When they got to the atrium, he turned back to her. "Stay here," he said commandingly before running out the front doors.
People were giving Lilah strange looks. Perhaps it was because she had glass in her hair and bits of plaster covering her suit. Her hair couldn't look much better, either. She ignored the looks and walked lazily to the front desk, where the clerk was flipping through a magazine.
"I'm checking out early," she told the clerk.
He sighed in a long-suffering sort of way and pushed aside his magazine. "Name and room number?" he asked monotonously.
"Lilah Morgan. 237.
"Key, please."
Lilah slid the room key across the desk. The clerk hit a few keys on the computer, and the printer spit out a receipt. "By the way," she added nonchalantly, "there may be a few slight damages to the room. Nothing too serious, really, my friends and I just partied a little too hard--"
The clerk took out a form and started writing. "Extent of damages?"
Lilah shrugged. "Oh, just little things, really. A smidge of ketchup on the bedspread. A crack in the mirror. Hundredsofbulletsinthewalls," she said very quickly.
The clerk wasn't paying attention. "Sign here. Your credit card will be charged for any and all repair costs. Have a nice day."
Lilah took her receipt and sat in one of the couches facing the front doors. She took out the letter from Ecnel'ovelam again. Something about it kept bothering her. She reread it a couple of times, though she couldn't find anything out of the ordinary. She was probably just jumpy….
But her eyes kept passing over the last two words: Come alone. Somehow, it seemed out of place. The more she thought about it, the more she realized what a strange request it was. Who did Ecnel'ovelam think she might bring to such a meeting?
Then something clicked in Lilah's head. Come alone. Disembodied soul (or lack thereof). Come alone. Lilah cursed and tore the letter in two.
The Senior Partners knew Wesley was alive.
-----More to Come-----
Don't you wanna leave a review? Don't you wanna make my day a little bit brighter? Many thanks to Kelly (thanks!), kittyge (I, too, am an awful Minesweeper player), WesLess (Ooo, I better not say anything about the person's gender), Ruth Quist (thanks!), gopie (my times for easy mode are all really terrible, so I stick to expert; by the way, I will definitely give you my cat for your pink marker), irish6red (sorry, I don't think Angel's going to make an appearance), kiwilass (thanks for reviewing!), -J (I don't plan on addressing Fred very much, sorry), greensleeves8 (thank you!), Rissa Rose (thanks!), torontokid2003 (thanks!), Luckysparkle (sorry, it's not Cordy), cursedgirl (thanks!), Beer Good (actually, Wesley doesn't have a clue, either), jords (glad to see another "Lost" fan), and redmoon (thanks!) for the reviews thus far. Group hug!
In celebration of pushing this fic over 10,000 words, making it my longest fic so far ("Diary of a Mad, Blue Woman" finished at about 9,000), I'm gonna knock three people out of the running: It's not Angel, Spike, or Illyria. They're all off doing their own thing, and were nowhere near France at the time Wesley was resurrected.