Disclaimer: Never owned them, never will.

Chapter 2

The ale had likely addled his wits a bit, but Liam knew without a doubt that the lady was the finest creature that he had ever laid eyes on. There was precious little light in the alley, but it was enough to bring a glow to her fine, creamy skin and to make her hair shine like spun gold. He wondered how much more glorious she might be in full sun. If he didn't approach her now, he might never know. He found the thought intolerable and quickly closed the distance between them.

Perversely grateful that he hadn't had the coin for enough drink to thicken his tongue or dull his wits, he engaged her in small talk. When she didn't rebuff him outright, he began to wonder just how far she would allow him to take her. As he considered the possibilities, she grandly offered to show him the world. He would've been happy with a kiss, but there was something so sure and so confident in her manner that he knew that she meant exactly what she said. And what did he have to lose?

"I'm not afraid," he told her. "Show me. Show me your world."

The pain was nothing compared to the weakness, to the horrible draining sensation as his life ebbed so quickly that he could do nothing but gasp as he fell to his knees. Then she grabbed his head and pulled it to her bosom, to the blood welling up between her breasts. The droplets of blood on her chest looked like black pearls, and he experienced a strong sense of deja vu. This had happened before, he knew it had. He knew exactly what would happen if he drank, but this body was failing and he wasn't ready to die.

The blood was cold and bitter, but he sucked at it all the same. His thirst was raging now, and blood was the only thing that would satisfy it. His heart, which had been hammering in his chest, skipped first one beat and then another. It finally stopped altogether and was replaced by a faint buzzing noise in his head. He tried to ignore the sound, but as he fed it grew louder and louder still until it drowned out all his other senses. He tried to clap his hands over his ears, but his arms refused to budge from his sides. In a full-blown panic, he thrashed wildly and the alley's cobblestones and stone walls gradually faded from view and were replaced with thick sheets of steel and plexiglass.

He realized with a start that he was no longer Liam, but Angel, and the weight of his identity came crashing back down upon him with all the force of the far-distant breakers on Point Dume. If his circumstances were any less dire, he might have found some amusement in the fact that Darla had imprisoned him in this body much the same way that their son had imprisoned him in this watery tomb. The incessant buzzing that had brought him back to consciousness gradually faded as the speedboat far above him moved away from the area.

As Angel tried to clear the residual cobwebs from his mind, he became aware of a new sound: the low grunting of a pod of gray whales. They were moving in his direction, and, after a few more minutes, he could hear the slow, steady pumping of their giant hearts. Beating hearts meant blood, and knowing that they were so close and yet totally out of his reach was maddening.

How much blood was in a whale, anyway? Fred would know. There had to be enough to satisfy his thirst and bathe in the rest. enough to help his body heal, enough to stave off the hallucinations. Just one whale wasn't too much to ask, was it? He pulled at the cables that pinned his wrists to the back of the submerged steel box one more time. After thousands of previous attempts, there was still no slack, no give, and no way out.

Still, he had to believe that he would find a way out eventually, and, when he did, he and Fred would have lots of things to talk about. She was the only one of the others that might have some idea of what he was going through now. She'd been completely alone in Pylea, too. And she'd lived by herself in a cold, dark place. At least she'd managed to find food, although not much of it from the look of her.

Yeah, he'd have to remember to ask her about the whales. He could imagine how the conversation would go. She'd probably giggle at first and then go all serious and say, "Oh, Angel, everyone knows that the average gray whale's got about 63 gallons of blood. The average human's only got about one and a half, which means I've probably got about one, but it's all yours if you want it. You do want it, don't you?"

Of course he did, and he wept with relief at the gift she was offering him. "You don't know what this means to me, Fred."

"Hey, you saved me in Pylea, remember?" she murmured into his ear. "I'm just returning the favor."

He tried to be gentle, but she still flinched a little as he buried his fangs in her throat. Her blood hit his belly about the same time that something hit the back of his neck hard and drove him to his knees. Fred slumped to the floor as Angel looked up to see Connor standing above him, holding a crowbar.

"I don't think so," Connor said softly. "My father was right about you. You kill everything you touch. Not any more, though. I put you down, deep down, and I'm going to make sure you stay there." He swung the crowbar in a vicious arc that caught Angel under the chin and snapped his head back against—

The box. Oh, the damned box.

He grunted and winced at the pain spreading across the back of his skull. The hallucinations were getting increasingly hard to separate from reality, and a growing number of them featured his son. He didn't know if he was angrier with Connor for believing that he'd killed Holtz, or for keeping him from Cordelia just when they seemed on the verge of...of... something.

Connor couldn't know how stubborn Cordelia was, or how persistent. Just how worried was she by now, and what danger was she putting herself in by trying to find him? If Connor hadn't hurt her in some way, she was surely still looking for Angel, visions or no. And if he had, blood be damned, there was going to be a reckoning when Angel got loose.

Gunn and Fred would help, of course, but if anyone could find him, it would be Cordy. Even she had to have her limits, though. If she didn't have a vision, if they couldn't find any other clues to go on, when would she finally decide to cut her losses and go back to acting or modeling?

Never, a voice in the back of his mind insisted.

He wished he could believe that, but each passing day made it more difficult. He'd kept track of time as well as he could. He couldn't see the sun, but his body knew when it rose and set. He finally lost count somewhere around day 26 and guessed that about two or three more weeks had passed since then. There were simply too many other distractions at this point: the hunger, the hallucinations, the maddening itch of the never-quite-healing knife wound in his side, the occasional frustrating sounds of whales and fishing boats, and, oh yeah, the hunger.

Even when he had been living a hand to mouth existence in a dreary alley in New York, there were always plenty of rats for the taking. When he was desperate, he had taken an occasional cat or two as well. They weren't exactly good, but they were still mammals, and their blood warmed his belly on cold winter nights when his shoes were full of icy slush.

Those days of relative plenty were gone now, and his higher brain functions were starting to go. It was just a matter of time now before he totally lost his already tenuous grip on reality. He searched his mind for something to focus on. Maybe poetry. Poetry was good, right? He knew lots of it from memory, too. Frost? Too cheerful. Dylan Thomas? Too depressing. Poe? Too macabre. Yeats, then.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed,

The blood-dimmed tide…

The blood…

…was everywhere: splashed on the walls, dripping from the ceiling, pooled on the floor in huge, slippery patches.

Angel closed Gunn's sightless eyes and tried to avoid getting his feet tangled in the dead man's entrails. Fred had fallen nearby, and he tried to brush her long, brown hair out of her face before realizing with a start that her head was facing the wrong way around.

There was a crunching, splintering sound under his foot and he lifted it to find what was left of Wesley's glasses. Wes himself was a few feet away, sitting with his back to a wall. He looked puzzled, as though he was having a hard time understanding why there was a crossbow bolt sticking out of his chest.

What was left of the Groosalugg was scattered throughout the room in pieces no bigger than a phone book.

So much death, so much destruction, and over it all, the rich, heavy scent of blood. It made Angel giddy, nauseous, and hungry all at once. He himself hadn't been hurt too badly in the assault: a deep puncture in his calf and a gash across the top of his wrist. The wounds burned a little, but they would close soon enough. He'd live, if you could call it that, to fight another day.

When he finally found Cordelia, he knew instantly that he'd be the only one. Unlike the others, she was still breathing when he found her, but she'd been badly bitten. The huge wound in her neck was oozing sluggishly as he dropped to his knees beside her.

"Angel." She was extraordinarily pale, and her hands trembled as she reached for him.

"I'm here, Cordy." His chest tightened painfully as he saw that her eyes were losing focus. She had another minute left, maybe two.

"Any chance you can...kiss it...and make it...better?" she gasped.

He gathered her into his arms and kissed her gently, thoroughly, in a last-ditch effort to convey the feelings he couldn't bring himself to show her while she still lived. Tears ran down his face and mixed with her blood, and when he lifted his head and licked his lips, the taste was bittersweet. "Is that better?"

"Lots." She used the last of her strength to bring his hand to her mouth. She brushed his knuckles with her lips, and then, without warning, clamped her mouth over the still-open cut on his wrist. Oh, no, no, no. He realized what she was doing and tried to pull his hand away, but it was too late. She was dying, and she'd fed from him and his shoulders shook with the force of his grief.

Her eyes glazed over as she released her grip on his hand and mumbled her last words before she became a monster. "S'okay, Angel. Now we can be together forever…"

...forever…

"...You get to live—forever." And then Connor smiled and closed the lid on—

The box.

Angel roared and thrashed violently against the cables. Oh, hell, that one had fooled him badly. He could still taste Cordelia's blood in his mouth and he tried to muster up enough saliva to spit and rid himself of the lingering illusion before taking in a deep, shuddering lungful of air that stank of steel and sweat and fear. He didn't need the oxygen, but the human body was conditioned to breathe deeply in response to physical effort, and old habits died hard.

He let his head loll forward and tried to ignore the raw, burning pain in his wrists and the cool, slippery wetness that he felt in the palm and fingers of his hands. He'd lost a lot of muscle over his chest and thighs, but they were still hopelessly pinned. The cable across his belly and his forearms felt a little looser now, and he pulled against it again and again until the muscles of his upper arm and shoulder felt rubbery and weak from the effort.

He took another breath as he prepared himself to try yet again and, as he did so, he caught another scent: the coppery tang of fresh blood. It didn't matter that it was his own; his stomach lurched in response and a thread of saliva spilled from the corner of his mouth and ran over his chin.

God, he was worse than one of Pavlov's damn dogs.

He pulled at his arm again, focusing on the pain in an attempt to ignore the rumblings from his empty belly. Six times, ten, fifteen, and then he felt a mist of cool droplets against his face as his hand flew upward so violently that it nearly struck his own nose.

Hell, yes. "Free at last, free at last..." he croaked with a voice roughened by thirst and misery. After struggling for a few more minutes, he had the other hand free too. He licked the blood from his hands and wrists greedily, thoroughly disgusted with himself but totally unable to stop until long after the wounds had reluctantly stopped bleeding. He could feel twilight approaching. If he could break loose of the other cables quickly, he might be able to reach the shore by this time tomorrow.

He wrapped his hands firmly around the cable strapping his shoulders down and pulled experimentally. It didn't budge. He pulled harder. Still nothing. He felt his face change as he let out a primal roar of rage and strained against his bonds. Minutes passed and he flayed the skin from his palms as he fought futilely, but his body finally called it quits as a massive head-to-toe cramp seized him. He'd been without food and exercise for too long, and his reserves were shot.

He sagged helplessly against the restraints as the white-hot pain wracked his body for most of forever before gradually ebbing away. He had given everything he had, and it hadn't been nearly enough. Angel let his human face come back as he caressed the glass face of his crypt longingly. Even wire-reinforced plexiglass had to be weaker than steel. He wanted to lash out and smash it with his fists just to have the satisfaction of seeing it break, but what good would it do him now? How ironic was it that by the time he lost enough mass to squirm free of one of the cables, he no longer had the strength to break the others?

He began to laugh at the absurdity of it—a hearty, full-bellied laugh that, after several minutes, turned into a half-hearted chuckle and then, much later, an increasingly shrill whine. He shoved his forearm into his mouth and buried his teeth in the leather of his jacket sleeve in an effort to stop the scream that was building in his gut. Another cramp ripped through him, and his body responded instinctively to the pain. Sharp fangs sank through his jacket and his shirtsleeve and into the flesh of his arm. He whimpered with frustration, but it was a long time before he lifted his head again.

End of Chapter 2