Author's Note: I jump back and forth a bit in time in this part. The Angel/Lynette Vaughn sequences are still in mid-afternoon on April 10, 2001. The other parts are set later in the day.
Disclaimer: Daria, Buffy and original characters belong to Glenn Eichler, Joss Whedon, and me, respectively.
X X X X X
Mrs. Krueger told her husband, "You're on your own tonight," later that evening, while the children were busy doing their homework.
"Another assignment?"
"Yes." He knew what she did for a living; he didn't know the details. Partly, he didn't like to think about that part of her life; partly, it was practical, so if anyone caught him he couldn't spill secrets.
"How long will you be gone?"
"It should be a one-night job. The target's right here in Los Angeles."
"Got it." After a second, "So what do we tell the kids this time?"
"Tell them Great-Aunt Rachel is sick again and I needed to sit up with her," she said. Mrs. Krueger didn't actually have a great-aunt Rachel; whenever the kids asked about her, she told them that "Aunt Rachel is too sick to handle visitors." It had worked so far.
"Okay. Just one thing."
"Yes?" she asked, knowing exactly what he was going to say.
"When are you going to have enough? You've been doing this for twenty years now. Isn't it time to retire?"
"And do what? Be a full-time housewife and soccer mom? I love you, I love the kids, but most of the rest of that bores the hell out of me, and you know it."
"I know," he sighed.
"Okay. I'll be back by tomorrow morning. If I'm not --"
"Don't say it," he said.
"If I'm not, you know where to find the account information. You and the kids will be well taken care of." She leaned over and kissed him. "See you tomorrow."
X X X X X
"Well?" Lynette Vaughn said.
Angel laughed. "I've heard this done so many times, you'd think I'd be able to do it myself by now. But I'm not really built for scholarly lectures like Giles is. So I'm going to try a different tactic."
"Okay . . ." Lynette said, unsure where Angel was going with this.
"I'm going to ask you to do something very simple now. You may wonder why. Save the questions until you do it, okay?"
"Okay."
"Come take my pulse."
How would that tell her what Faith's secret was? She almost asked, but bit her tongue. Angel must have some reason for making the bizarre request, even though Lynette couldn't figure out why.
She noticed that his skin was cool to the touch when she reached for his left wrist. Vaguely, she recalled thinking the same thing when she'd shaken his hand back in Carla Fisk's office. At the time she'd been preoccupied with other things. Now . . .
Hmmm. Odd. After thirty seconds, she couldn't find a pulse. Reaching for his right wrist, she quickly came to the same conclusion. Then she felt Angel's temples, first the right, then the left. She still couldn't find one.
"Would you lift your shirt?" she asked clinically.
With an amused tone in his voice, Angel said, "I thought you'd never ask," and proceeded to do just that. Lynette placed her hand over his heart, changed its position several times, and still couldn't find a heartbeat. She stepped back and looked at Angel's chest. Her first inclination was that he simply had a very weak heartbeat -- but no one with a heartrate that weak could have the muscles that Angel did. Not that he was a bodybuilder, but he wasn't flabby and completely undefined, either.
"Maybe if I had a stethoscope --" she began.
"May I?" he said, pointing to his shirt. When Lynette told him to go ahead, he put it back on. As his head came through the collar he said, "A stethoscope wouldn't help you. Neither would the most expensive and well-designed heart-rate monitor on the planet."
Lynette reached the obvious conclusion. "Because your heart's not beating," she said.
"Exactly."
"By the standards of medical science," she said, "This is impossible." When Angel began to say something, she held up a hand. "No. Therefore, you are not subject to the standards of medical science. So, then. What, or who, are you?"
Angel was a bit taken aback. "I'm a bit surprised by your attitude," he said.
"What, you were expecting me to run away, screaming for help at the top of my lungs?"
"Something like that," Angel finally conceded.
It was Lynette's turn to laugh. "When the impossible has been eliminated, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth. If it was good enough for Sherlock Holmes, it's good enough for me. And if someone looks like a man, but has skin that's roughly room temperature and no measurable pulse, then they must not be a man. And you're sure as hell no robot or cyborg, unless that technology is much further along than anything I've seen in the news. I doubt the Terminator would be that advanced. So you're alive by some standard, just not the standards of medical science, which apply to humans/"
"And animals."
"I'm not a veterinarian, Angel," Lynette said, "And you're hardly a Pomeranian. So, what are you? And how does this relate to Faith's secret?"
X X X X X
Cameron Kim scouted the LA County Women's Jail as best she could, without risking being hassled by the guards. She drove up to the front gate in a rented car -- now with blonde hair and green eyes instead of her natural black and brown -- and looked around for a few minutes, When a guard came up to tell her to move along, she apologized, saying she'd gotten bad directions and had been looking for the men's prisonThe guard gave her a new set of directions, which she promptly ignored.
Cameron drove to the nearest convenient shopping center, parked, and walked away from the car. When she was sure no one was looking, she changed into a medium-sized dog and ran back towards the jail. When she got there, she ran around the outside for a while, until the inmates started pointing out the mutt. Some of them called to Cameron; not knowing whether they were going to throw rocks at her or act friendly, she ran off, made it back to the shopping center, and went to the Long John Silver in the parking lot.
As she ate her fried fish, he thought of the ways she could get in. The mesh of the fence was too narrow for her to go anaconda. Flying in could be done once it got dark, unless of course some trigger-happy guard looked up and saw the thing flying overhead with the wingspan of a 737. Not unless she had no other alternative.
Disguise herself as an inmate and get "recaptured?" They'd never recognize her, and that would make them suspicious. Go in as a guard? That might require going through some kind of security check. She'd have to do it once she got inside -- neither inmates nor wolves typically roamed the halls of a prison -- but until she got inside, probably not a good idea.
She could probably scale the fence, if she waited for the right moment -- prisons were built for people to be hard to break out of. No one anticipated animals breaking in.
For good reason, Cameron thought. It was crazy.
Which is what made it fun.
As she threw out her trash and walked out of the restaurant, she looked up at the sky. A couple more hours to kill.
Then she had to hope no one noticed the orangutan.
X X X X X
"Do you promise not to run and scream?" Angel asked.
"Unless you threaten to throw me out the window, sure," Dr. Vaughn said.
Angel said, "Okay then," and put his game face on.
Dr. Vaughn took a half step backwards and let out a small gasp. But, true to her word, she didn't run and she didn't scream. "Are those . . . fangs?" she asked after a few seconds.
"They are," Angel said.
"I hate to ask, but may I touch your face? I want to be sure I'm not hallucinating."
"Sure," Angel said. He was amazed how well Dr. Vaughn was taking this.
She walked over and ran her hands over his face, then touched both of his fangs. "Are they hollow?" she asked finally.
"No. They're used for . . . tearing the flesh." After a pause, he asked, "So you've figured out what I am?"
"Fangs, cold skin, no pulse -- you're either a vampire or an excellent facsimile of one."
"Vampire," Angel said. "And the first thing I need to say is: If you see anyone else who can change their face like this, run. I'm trustworthy. None of the rest of my kind are. I'd explain why but it's a long story."
"Got it," Dr. Vaughn said.
"Now can I ask you a question?"
"Go ahead."
"Again, why are you taking this so well? I'm fairly sure you didn't believe in vampires when you came in here, and almost everyone else I've ever seen who's been exposed this world has either freaked out or gone to extreme lengths to deny what they've obviously seen. Down in Sunnydale, the police still think there's a serial killer going around attacking people with barbecue forks."
"For all that medicine is an art and not a science -- especially psychiatry, which some people think is pure quackery -- I've always thought of myself as a scientist. And what kind of scientist would I be if I denied what was right in front of me?"
"And you're not worried I'm going to attack you and drink your blood?"
"Why should I be? You've had plenty of chances. If you were going to do that, you would have done it already." After a second, "But just in case I run into any more of your kind --"
"Run," Angel reiterated. "Walk. Fly. Swim. Get the hell away. Don't fight us."
"I can take care of myself," Dr. Vaughn insisted.
"Against humans, sure. But against those like me?" Angel rushed across the room. Dr. Vaughn kicked his kneecap, hard; Angel winced -- it was a solid blow -- but kept coming. She ducked, but Angel grabbed her as she tried to get past him. Then he picked her up and held her against the wall. "It's not that easy."
He placed her gently down on the floor. "I think I get it," she said. "And Faith -- Daria -- she's like you?"
"No," Angel said. "She kills those like me."
X X X X X
The rest of Daria's day was as smooth as it could have been, under the circumstances. It seemed like it had been a month since she'd woken herself up from her "training" with Buffy and began reading April 10, 1997 by the dim light coming in through her cell door.
Her aunt was right that Faith was gone forever either way. Still, some show of resistance was in order. That Aunt Amy had cooperated on a scheme to have her declared incompetent was monstrous -- particularly because Aunt Amy had made it clear that she in no way actually thought Daria was incompetent.
ADA Fisk, she wasn't quite as mad at. It's not like she'd shake hands with the woman or anything, but she wouldn't shove her in front of a speeding bus the next time she saw her. Maybe a moped.
After all, the ADA could legitimately use the argument that she was trying to do right by the greatest number of people. That didn't make it any more right, or any less cynical of a maneuver; but the ADA, by her lights, was bending over backwards to help Daria. There were politicians who would have shoved her and Faith into a back room somewhere and then bricked over the door.
Aunt Amy shouldn't have been thinking about anyone else. She should have been doing what Daria wanted. Not what she thought was best for Daria.
Daria loathed other people doing what they thought was best for her without any regard for her own wishes. She'd put up with it from her parents, some of the time. She put up with jail now because she had no choice. Beyond that? No.
Besides, those people usually got it wrong.
So eventually she'd grit her teeth, let the psychiatrist poke and prod her, and get out of jail.
But for now, she was going to be a bitch about it.
"Lights out!" the call came.
Daria closed her eyes and tried to go to sleep.
X X X X X
Angel went on, "Faith's what they call The Slayer. The Slayer is a long line of girls given superhuman strength to kill vampires, demons, and other supernatural beings."
"Werewolves? Zombies?"
"And other things you've never heard of unless you're an occult scholar who's spent the last fifty years buried inside a library. Faith, though -- Faith came into this with a whole host of mental problems. Even more than I thought at the time. Eventually those problems led to her killing the Deputy Mayor and going to work for Wilkins -- who was more than a garden-variety corrupt politician. I'll tell you the whole story when you have a spare two weeks. Let's just settle for now for saying that he was as supernatural as Faith and I are, in his own way. And the reason this is a problem for Daria is, Daria never knew she was supposed to be a vampire Slayer. So I'm betting that to her, she isn't. And that's the kind of thing that can get her killed."
"Killed?" Lynette asked.
"Faith's old enemies. Other things who might want the glory of killing a vampire slayer. The Watcher's Council itself -- who are supposed to be the people watching out for Faith and Daria -- but who might decide that the idea of Daria being in control of a Slayer body that she's not planning on using for the next sixty years or so is a bad one. The Slayer line passes through Daria now, and until she dies another one isn't going to be called. So they might simply decide to kill her instead."
What had she gotten Daria into? "Oh, my God."
"Don't blame yourself, Doctor," Angel said. "You were doing the best you could with the information you had available at the time. I would have made the same decision even knowing what I know now."
"You would have?"
"Yes. Daria would have been in danger either way. This way she has a chance to eventually be out of jail -- and Faith has the chance to come out with her, able to protect her. And there's nothing saying Daria can't be trained. With her intellect and Faith's experience, they'll be hard to kill." He looked at her. "You wanted to know the secret. Now that you know, what are you planning to do with it?"
"Keep it," came her automatic answer. First off, Angel was still keeping her secret; secondly, no one would believe her even if she was inclined to talk. The first was more important, to Lynette.
"Good. Now, what else are you planning to do with it?"
"What else can I do? I'm already set on this course for Daria and Faith. I can't break it now," Lynette said. "Given that, I suppose you'd better tell me as much about this world I seem to have gotten myself into as you can."
Angel nodded. "Okay, then. But we might want to get Cordelia and Wesley in on this part. They know a lot about it, too -- and they can spell me when I get tired."
Lynette nodded, and they left the room and went down to the lobby.