AN: Oy vey. I've rewritten this three times and it still feels a little sloppy, but here goes. On the other hand I am having fun imagining how Angel Investigations would look to an outsider.
Chapter 7
Rachel woke up feeling rested and comfortable. For a moment she wondered why that feeling should seem so strange. But memories from the last few days quickly came flooding back, and she opened her eyes to find herself still in the lobby of the Hyperion, stretched out on the sofa. A pillow had been tucked under her head at some point, and she was buried under a soft plaid blanket. She could hear hushed voices (bickering over donuts, it sounded like) and through the glass doors she could see a courtyard washed pale gray with early morning sunlight.
Morning. Rachel sat bolt upright. Angel must be back by now. She was halfway off the sofa when Cordelia appeared, carrying her duffel bag.
"Oh, good. You're awake," Cordelia said.
"Is Angel back?"
"He just got in a few minutes ago. Your uncle is still alive. And as soon as you get cleaned up and eat something, you can start helping us think of a way to MacGyver him out."
"I'm fine. I don't need to--"
"Oh, yeah you do," Cordelia interrupted. "The grunge look is out in LA."
"If I could just talk to him for a minute first--"
"No," Cordelia said in a no-nonsense tone of voice. "First, shower and clean clothes. Then breakfast and recon. Come on. Get up. Let's go." And somehow Rachel found herself allowing the younger woman to chivvy her up one of the hotel's carpeted staircases.
Rachel rubbed the sleep out of her eyes. "I really didn't mean to drift off last night," she said ruefully.
"Yeah. Because running yourself into the ground is always a better option than taking a break. Hero types." Cordelia shook her head. "Anyway, thank Wesley for that. He slipped you some sort of herbal Mickey Finn."
Rachel stopped dead. "He did what?"
"Mudmint. Greyroot. Something like that. When Gunn and I got back you were imitating a sawmill."
Rachel knew she should feel betrayed. Hoodwinked. Indignant. Angry. But it was way too early in the morning. "Huh. He's sneakier than he looks," she said, continuing up the stairs.
She followed Cordelia into one of the hotel rooms. "So, all of you live here?" Rachel asked. "That's…" Nice and cult-like. "Convenient."
"Only Angel actually lives here. But the rest of us keep rooms so we'll have a place to crash," Cordelia replied. She opened the door to a blue-tiled bathroom. "I set out everything you'll need. There's plenty of hot water. Don't skimp on the soap. And later on we'll see about burning those clothes," she added on her way out the door.
Rachel looked down at herself, then turned to check out the view in the mirror. Well, yes. All right. Cordelia did have a point. Her clothes were filthy from the fight in the alley. Her face was streaked with dirt (and her jaw was turning a nice shade of purple). And her hair looked like a bird's nest. Rachel reached over and turned on the tap. Fifteen minutes wasn't going to make any difference in what the vampire had to tell her.
While Cordelia took Rachel upstairs, Angel sat at the desk, simultaneously sketching out a rough floor plan of the Saavin's lair and trying to massage a painful kink out of his shoulder. Gunn leaned over the desk, counting the number of X's that were drawn at strategic points in and around the building.
"Please don't tell me each one of those is a demon," Gunn said.
"They practically have an army garrisoned there," Angel replied. "I nearly ran into a clump of them on my way out and had to hide out in a crate waiting for them to leave." And it hadn't been a terribly roomy crate. Angel didn't think he'd ever be able to turn his head all the way to the right again.
"Saavin demons do tend to cluster in large groups," Wesley said, consulting the pages of information he had compiled. "Their main assets lie in size, brute strength, and the ability to outnumber and overwhelm their enemies."
"They definitely have all of that." Angel marked the entrances, and wrote a "J" in red marker over a remote third floor room. "Rachel's uncle is here," he said, tapping it. "No lock on the door, but they have him chained to the wall. We'll need bolt-cutters. And something to use as a stretcher. They've worked him over pretty good."
"And the four of us are going to storm this place?" Gunn asked dubiously.
"Five, technically," Cordelia said, rejoining them. She helped herself to a bagel from one of the bags she and Gunn had run out to pick up earlier. "I mean, if we're counting Glinda."
"Oh, I'm not so sure that's a good idea," Angel said.
"Why not?" Cordelia asked, taking a bite.
"I'd be willing to lay odds that she'll insist on going along," Wesley said.
"Guys, she's the person we're trying to help. We don't throw a person we're helping into the middle of a fight," said Angel.
"Yeah, but you've got to admit that this isn't exactly a regular one," Gunn replied. "I mean, she didn't just walk in off the street all shaken up from her first run-in with the big scary. Unless you just don't trust her behind your back, which I get, but--"
Angel shook his head. "No. Her motive for killing me was to get her uncle released. That's no longer an issue. I just don't think she's up for it. She's already taken one beating--"
"Well, two if you count yours," Gunn interjected.
Angel made a face at him. "And," he continued, "she was desperate enough to go to Wolfram & Hart for help. Desperate people and battles are not a good combination. They put everyone in danger."
"She obviously knows how to fight," Wesley said. "I think she could be of help to us."
"Yeah. And she can….you know." Cordelia wiggled her fingers at Angel a la cheesy magician. "Could come in handy."
"Besides," Wesley added, "she indicated that her uncle is the only father she's had for some time. He's someone that she cares very deeply about. Unless you're prepared to lock her up, I don't think you're going to have a choice."
Angel looked partly amused, partly perplexed. "Did I miss the part where she bewitched you all into being her advocates?"
"Family, man," Gunn said. "It's a great motivator. We all know what that's like."
Rachel came back downstairs feeling more human than she had in days. Her side seemed to be healing cleanly and a quick inventory of her magic showed it to be building itself back, steady and strong.
She found the four members of Angel Investigations gathered around a hand drawn floor plan and an assortment of take-out breakfast foods. They all turned to look at her, and Rachel suddenly felt like a kid who had just walked in on the grown-ups' conversation. She got the distinct impression that she was being discussed.
"What?" she asked.
"Nothing," Angel said. "Have a seat."
There was a place open by the vampire. Rachel elected to sit between Cordelia and Gunn. They automatically moved to make room, and Gunn handed her a paper plate.
"Dig in. We don't stand on ceremony much around here. Are you a coffee or a tea drinker?" he asked, heading behind the hotel counter.
"I think I'll stick with coffee from now on, thanks," she replied, with a rather pointed look at Wesley.
The Englishman looked thoroughly unrepentant. "Sleep well?" he asked.
"Very," she admitted.
Angel was sitting with a mug of blood in one hand and a half-eaten donut in the other. Firmly quashing an urge to gag, Rachel said, "Cordelia said you found my uncle."
Angel nodded. "He's not in great shape," he cautioned, "but he's alive. I want to move fast on this, though."
"So we go tonight?" Gunn said.
"I don't even want to wait that long," Angel replied. "We'll go this morning. The building is pretty well closed up, so I'll be fine to fight once we're inside. My guess is that they'll have to scale way back on their number of sentries during the day, otherwise they'd attract too much attention. We're going to need everyone on board on this one."
Rachel watched as the others nodded in ready assent. "You too," Angel said. He set down his mug and picked up her dagger. He handed it across to her, hilt first. "If you're up to it, some magical back-up couldn't hurt."
"Try and stop me," she replied.
"Good. Now, here's what I think we should do….."
At nine o'clock in the morning, the lair of the Saavin was as dead as it ever got. Most of the demons were gathered in a large, open room on the ground floor that had once been used as a warehouse. Some of them napped while others sparred or played gin rummy. They were biding their time until nightfall when they could go out and, if they were lucky, score some trespassing teenagers.
Only a few of them looked up at the sound of tires squealing outside. They paid much more notice a second later when a battered pick-up truck plowed through the old wooden doors at the far end of the room. A black car followed right on its back bumper. The vehicles screeched to a halt in the middle of the room, and the Angel Investigations team, plus one, scrambled out.
The fight was faster than it had any right to be, given how firmly they were outnumbered. Angel, Gunn, and Wesley hacked their way through the demons, while Cordelia kept everyone's back coved with a crossbow. Rachel proved that her Kindred dagger wasn't just for show.
She had also prepared a number of spells as part of their collective arsenal. Her magical footing was still a bit shaky, but she had enough juice to disorient and slow down some of the demons so long as she kept her magic tightly channeled. Three of them she managed to freeze outright as they started to surround Cordy. A particularly large demon (this one wearing a red sash) jumped at Wesley's back, preparing to sink all eight claws into him. Rachel lashed out with her magic, and it dropped to the ground, resembling nothing so much as a pile of steaming green sludge.
Wesley looked a little green himself when he saw what was left of the demon. But all he said was, "Thanks."
Most of the demons had scrambled to the warehouse at the first alarm. Once that area was secured, they only had to fight their way through a few demons on their way up to the third floor.
"Down this way," Angel said as they ran down the hallway. "Get ready." A smallish Saavin jumped out of a dark doorway; Angel dropped him with a round house punch. Gunn helped Cordelia with the roll of heavy canvas they'd brought to carry the wizard on. "We get him, get back to the cars, and take him straight to St. Matthew's Hospital. It's only about five miles from here."
But when they reached James Harper's cell, it was empty. The chains that had held him lay in a heap on the bloodstained floor.
"Oh God," Cordelia said.
"Are we…." Wesley trailed off, glancing at the others. They were all thinking the same thing. Too late.
Rachel backed slowly out of the room and ran off up the hall.
"Rachel!" Angel called, going after her.
But she hadn't gone far. By the time the others caught up with her, she had the small Saavin suspended in midair, screaming as if he was being eaten alive by Lek'tet scarabs. He broke off abruptly, gulping in air as Rachel, her face set in fury, said, "I said start talking."
"We didn't kill him, I swear," the demon insisted.
"Then where is he?"
"I don't know!"
Rachel raised her hand to administer another dose of persuasion when Angel grabbed her arm. "You're not going to get anything out of him like this," he said. "Bring him down. We'll find out what happened."
She jerked her arm away angrily, but did as he said.
The demon, clearly not used to facing multiple opponents alone, crouched against the wall as the five gathered around him.
"Some humans came and took the wizard," the demon said. "The boss sold him to them."
"Sold him?" Cordelia asked incredulously.
"Who were they?" Rachel demanded.
"Those lawyers from Wolfram & Hart. A man with a fake hand and a woman. They came and took him last night."
Rachel closed her eyes, muttering under her breath. It sound like, "Stupid, stupid, stupid."
"Where did they take him?" Angel asked.
The demon cringed away from the vampire. "They said something about a safe house near Steverson Park. That's all I know."
Angel looked up at Rachel. "How are you at locator spells?" he asked.
"Good enough," she replied.
"Good. Let's go."