Chapter 9

Reno Raines had crawled off into a really dark part of his head to get away from what was happening to him. He hurt. Pain was not a stranger, but this was beyond anything he had ever felt. He had been beaten, stabbed, had bones broken, been shot, wrecked his motorcycle and landed badly when jumping off and over things. He'd suffered an occasional roadrash, sunburn, well, the list wasn't endless, but he thought he'd felt about as much pain as your average mortal could handle and survive.

Maybe that was the catch. He wasn't your average mortal any more. He tried to categorize the pain. Maybe that would help. Acid flowing though his veins. Fire, molten lead, lava - every centimeter of him felt like he was burning and being eaten alive simultaneously. When he couldn't scream any more, he became unconscious. Only, he wasn't, exactly. He was locked inside his head with a demon. A demon that looked like Reno Raines. It was the most terrifying thing he could recall having happen to him. He was crazy. That was it. This was all some psychologically screwed up fantasy.

Only he knew better. He remembered the feeling of having his throat torn open, of his blood flooding out to feed another demon. He remembered waking up. He remembered enjoying the fear he struck into the hearts of his victims, as few of them as there had been. He remembered enjoying the killing, the blood. He felt a revulsion for himself that few people ever get to feel. The demon laughed at him.

"Shut up."

The demon grinned. "I didn't say anything."

Reno looked away and looked back. The demon was a disfigured version of himself, a heavy ridge of bone and skin diving between it's cold eyes. He took a really good look at it. Was that how he looked to others? Was this what he had become? Was this a reflection of his soul?

The demon grinned. This was wonderful. They would survive whatever that blasted woman had done to them and they would continue. Reno would accept the demon, become the demon. Lightning struck the demon and it writhed in agony. What was going on?

Reno watched curiously as blue tongues of energy lapped around the demon. Another bolt struck, this one wrapping itself around Reno. It startled him, but it didn't hurt. Why wasn't he in pain the way the other part of him was? Evil. The other part was evil. Whatever the lightning was, it did not like the demon. Curious, Reno reached out toward the demon. Energy played between them like the strikes in a tesla ball. The demon writhed in its bonds. Tentatively, Reno considered consciousness.

Pain. Nerve endings writhing in change, alteration. Nope. Not a good idea yet. So, the options were talking to himself, watching the demon being tortured and - there wasn't another option.

"There's always another option, buddy."

"Bobby?"

Reno slammed to his feet and whirled looking for his friend. Wait a minute. Reno thought about this. "I'm inside my own head. Bobby's not here." But that wasn't exactly completely true. His memories of Bobby were here. Memories could be hard to deal with, but there were some good memories in here, too; memories the demon could not access. He could stay there while his body sorted itself out. Reno hated to walk away from anything, but he sensed that whatever was happening to him, there was no way for him to control or guide it. He would deal with what happened when he could. For now, memory lane was looking really good.

The demon screamed in anger as Reno vanished from its sight. No! Reno was his! This body was his! The demon tried to fight the invading force that was slowly trying to push it out. Pain. It howled. It screamed. It turned and twisted, contorting into unhuman shapes as it lost the battle between the physical form of vampirism Cheri carried in her blood and the demonic possession. The DNA altering semi-viral blood component did not like the damage the demon did. Souls meant nothing to it, but it liked its host to be as perfect as possible. And that included some intriguing alterations to blood serum, digestion and other autonomic systems. The demon did not need a circulatory system that functioned. The virus did. Reno's heart pumped, once. The surge of blood through his system was a shock to the demon. Distracted, the demon lost his grip on the body. With a final scream, it left.

Angel, sharing the watch with Tanya, realized that the other vampire had stopped twitching. He was tired and stood over the body for a moment longer before deciding he could probably get some sleep himself now. He turned away, then turned back. Quite distinctly, he had heard a heartbeat. He listened. Nothing. He shook his head and turned away again.

Tanya looked up from where she sat brooding over Cheri's body. The youthful looking vampire looked dead on his feet. She smiled. Of course, he did. He *was* dead, after all. "Get some sleep," she said quietly.

"He's quit twitching."

"Good. Maybe he's dead."

Cheri's eyes slammed open. She took a huge gasping breath, choked, coughed and gasped again, filling lungs that had been silent for several hours. Tanya's hand on his arm kept Angel from going to her, holding her. He tried to decipher the cold look on that faintly tanned face. Disdain, hate, too hot. Feeling his scrutiny, she looked at him. A cold smile curved her lips.

"It's not the first time. Nor the last," she said flatly. "She doesn't need coddling."

Cheri rolled onto her side and glared at Tanya. But it was a knowing glare with a tinge of humor. "Need, no. Appreciate, yes. You are a piece of work, aren't you?"

It was just a phrase, nothing more. Angel watched as Tanya's face went white. She trembled with the force of some emotion he didn't quite understand.

"How dare you." The words were hard with suppressed - what? He had never seen anyone as hard, as cold, as terribly hurt.

Cheri looked up at the other woman in consternation, then dismay. She scrambled to her feet. "Tanya - you know I didn't mean it that way. You *know* I didn't."

"Didn't you?"

Angel shied away from the venom in that low voice. He backed away from both of them. He had a feeling that his sanctuary was about to become very unsettled.

"No." The answer was flat, no nonsense.

Cheri met her sister's gaze solidly, unflinching. Tanya wanted to deny what she saw there, to believe that Cheri would deliberately hurt her with her words. But she knew better. Her own gaze dropped away and she relaxed. She turned away, walking the length of the room away from Cheri. Her emotions were shrouded again.

Angel looked back at Cheri. Remorse. A touch of sadness. He felt that she wanted to reach out to the other woman, but something prevented it. He was tired. He closed his eyes, running a hand over his face and rubbing his temples. His senses were on automatic. He heard their heartbeats. Odd. They were slower than normal. Odder. They were synchronous. His eyes snapped open and he looked from one to the other. He closed his eyes again. Absolutely synchronous. Two hearts literally beating to the exact same rhythm. He had never heard anything so eerie.

Angel shook his head. He needed sleep. He went to bed leaving the two women to their own devices.

Cheri checked on Reno. He was lying there so still, so pale. She touched his cheek. Cold. No breath. No heartbeat. Well, at one every ten minutes or so, it would be difficult to detect. He seemed less uncomfortable than he had the last time she had seen him. He wasn't struggling against his bonds. Well. If he woke up at nightfall, they'd see. Blood. They needed blood. She looked around for a phone. She took a really good look around. A church?

"Well?"

She looked up at Tanya. "I'm starving."

"Shall we?"

Cheri looked from one sleeping vampire to the other. She nodded. "Yeah. I think we can. Besides, I need to make a couple of calls."

Giles was not as startled to see Cheri as he probably should have been. "Good morning."

"Hi." She smiled at him then leaned forward impulsively and laid a light kiss on his mouth. "Well. You didn't immediately back off. I guess that's good."

"Sorry. You startled me. Do come in." He backed up and let them in.

"Phone."

"Uh - there." He pointed. Cheri pounced on it and started dialing.

Tanya sauntered in after her. She looked Giles up and down again. Interesting bones. Very. She smiled. The warmth managed to reach those astonishing eyes. "Could we possibly get some breakfast?" she asked sweetly. At his nod of assent, she maneuvered him out to his kitchen, leaving Cheri alone to make some odd arrangements.

Tanya and Giles wandered back into the living room with their cobbled together breakfast - an amazingly good smelling and looking cobbled together breakfast - just as Cheri finished her calls. She looked up, sniffed and smiled.

"That smells wonderful!"

There was relative silence as the three ate. Giles had to admit, the food was good. His surreptitious glances at Cheri did not go unnoticed. Finally, she laughed. "Ask."

"I - beg your pardon?"

"You have questions. Ask."

"Er - yes." He frowned. What *did* he ask? "You were - er - dead."

"Yes. Technically."

"Technically," he repeated. "That would be the problem, wouldn't it?"

"If I was normal, yeah. I'm not."

"How - I mean - if you -" Giles was beginning to lose himself in a morass of half finished thoughts.

"It's OK. Tanya doesn't care for the logic, but it works. Genetically speaking, I am *technically* *virtually* immortal. Why all the hedging? Well, there is, theoretically, an amount of damage from which I will not regenerate. My immortality is owed strictly to my genetic code. Because of it, I am literally more alive on a cellular level than your average human. My oxygen usage is different - more functional, I think. Anyway, I try to avoid ground zero for explosions, fires, burning roofs are not something I care for very much."

"So, being drained of most of your blood would not do more than - cause a shut down?" Giles analyzed thoughtfully.

"Right. Apparently the brain is the *most* important item. Everything else can go - well, not all at once, but most of it's been damaged at least once. I've got some very trustworthy friends who did some research on me at one point. I won't bore you with the details, but they figure I'm optimally survivable to at least 72 hours of not being visibly, or measurably alive. Brain function remains stable with no life support, nothing else functioning. It's pretty scary, but it gives one a lot of confidence to keep going."

"And if a demon possessed you?"

"You *do* come up with them, don't you? Well, two things in my favor. One, the basic system is not going to give up. Demon probably wouldn't be in control - well, not very often, anyway. Two, in my personal case, I've been the other kind of vampire."

"What?"

"Remember what I said earlier? Last night? Maybe it wasn't you. There seem to be more than one kind of vampire. The ones I know, the ones I've had some interesting run ins with, are not demons. I carry the seeds, so to speak, of that kind of vampirism within me. I get shagged by one of them and it takes about 20 minutes to go from normal to vamp. Definitely set some kind of record with that. I have only suffered what *they* call First Hunger, once. Intense, but liveable. And the regeneration is part of why my friends settled on 72 hours. I get about that long at full vamp status and the itch sets in. Yuck."

"So, your theory is that this *substance* in your bloodstream will - what?"

"Give Reno a handle on the demon."

"And if it doesn't?"

"Then I'll release him to whatever lies beyond. It's the least I can do."

"Not necessarily," Tanya stepped into the silence following Cheri's pronouncement.

"What?" The word came from Giles and Cheri in unison.

Tanya looked from one to the other and back. She laughed. "He is attractive. I do not see that his destruction is necessary, even if the demon is not exorcised - that is the correct term, yes?"

"You want a demon running loose?"

"No. But, he can do very little to me, and I might just find him useful. If he is not - what, "goody little two shoes"? when he awakens, I will take him."

Cheri looked astounded, then thoughtful. No matter how she looked at it, she could find little fault with Tanya's plan. But then, she knew what Tanya did for a living. Giles didn't. She checked her watch and left Giles and Tanya arguing the merits of her taking on the vampire Reno Raines *might* be.

Cheri went back to Angel's place to check on Reno. She walked quietly across the empty floor. Angel was still out. She turned and looked down into Reno's eyes. They glowed softly golden, fangs protruding slightly from beneath his upper lip. There was a knock at the door. Leaving Reno where he was, Cheri went to the door. Ah, yes. Special delivery. She signed for the crate of long necked green bottles and had the delivery man leave the crate just inside the door. She handed him a generous tip and closed the door firmly on the man's curiosity.

She took one of the bottles out and popped the cork. The pungent smell of blood filled Reno's senses. He strained against the tape holding him captive. He was starving. Cheri knelt down beside him, put one surprisingly strong arm around his shoulders and carefully helped him sit up. She held the bottle as he drank - guzzled was a better word.

When he was about two thirds through, she pulled the bottle away. His upper lip pulled back from his teeth, but his eyes were on her. He did not struggle.

"How do you feel?"

"Hungry."

"Normal. I'm going to cut your wrists free. Hold still."

He did so. It was good to have his arms unpinioned. He took the bottle in his hands and drained the rest of it off while Cheri got a second one. She handed it to him. He downed about half of the bottle and stopped on his own. There was still a tinge of hunger around the edges, but his raging need was gone. He looked up at her, into those ageless green eyes.

"What did you do to me?"

"Gave you a chance to be yourself again."

"Right. I'm drinking blood out of a bottle. I'm remembering memories that aren't mine. I've got fangs. I haven't got a heartbeat," he started carefully enumerating the oddities of his current condition. "I'm - I'm -" He found that saying "I'm a vampire." was a lot like Bruce Wayne trying to tell Vickie Vail he's Batman. Picture but no sound.

"You're a vampire."

"That makes me evil - doesn't it?"

"It gives you the physical prowess to pretty much do what you want to do - within the limitations of the existence. Power corrupts."

"Absolute power corrupts absolutely," he ended the quote thoughtfully. "So why don't you kill me and get it over with?"

"Power also begets responsibility. I guess what I need to know is how responsible Reno Raines can be. Can he handle being a vampire and all that entails, or is he going to let it go to his head?"

"Knock! Knock! Knock!" There was a raucously British? Australian? Cockney? voice at the door.

Cheri looked at the door. Angel was piling out of bed. He knew that voice. What the hell was Spike doing at his door in the middle of the morning - er - afternoon - whatever. He slammed open the door. Spike, under a heavy smoking blanket, with his arm wrapped around a diminutive dark haired female in somewhat old-fashioned garb, snarled a hello at Angel and demanded entrance. Angel invited him in.

They entered, disposed of the blanket and looked around. Drusilla, for it was she of the slightly cracked outlook on life and ability to see possibilities, bee lined for Cheri. Cheri dropped into a martial stance. Reno, sensing danger, smashed the empty bottle and slashed at the tape still binding his ankles with the sharp shard in his hand.

"Well, look who's here," Spike snarled. He was staring at Cheri. "The one what got away."

"Hello. Spike, isn't it?"

Drusilla looked from Spike to Cheri and back. She drew back. "Trouble. I can smell it. Trouble." She finally saw Reno who had managed to cut through the tape but was having a hard time getting it to let go of his boots. "And more trouble," she added in that disturbingly fey tone she could get.

Angel made a disgusted noise. He and Spike discovered the crate simultaneously. Both grabbed a bottle.

"One," Cheri told them. "There's more on the way, but that has to last for the next two days."

Spike snarled around the mouth of the bottle as he took a drink and handed it to Drusilla. Reno got to his feet beside Cheri, his very golden eyes roaming from one vampire to the next. The scent of the demons churned his stomach. Cheri laid a hand on his arm and shook her head.

Angel took in the reaction. "It worked," he said softly. For a moment, he longed to do the same. But his demon was old and crafty and Angel was laboring under an odd gypsy curse. He didn't dare take a chance on losing his soul again. Not around Buffy.

"He's wrong. He's not one of us," Drusilla intoned oddly. "But he is one of us. Spike."

"Yes, love?"

"I don't like her. And I don't like him." She turned her wide gaze on Angel. "And Angel's an old fuddy duddy." She seemed to like the sound of that. She repeated the words several times. Then she got an idea. "Giles. I want to see the Watcher. Spike, find the Watcher."

"Yes, love. After dark."

"Oh. Yes. There is that. Who's he?"

"I don't know."

"I don't think I like him."

"Shall I throw him out?"

"Oh, yes! bubble and burn," Drusilla burbled happily.

"I don't think so," Reno objected, shaking his hair back out of his face.

On mass, Reno might have been the larger. On sheer mean, Spike had him beat by several miles. On survival knowledge, they were about equal. Cheri stepped between them.

"Gentlemen - and I use that word in the loosest possible context - give it up."

Spike stopped, looked her up and down, leered and assured her that he'd give it up for her any time, presuming she'd return the favor. Cheri looked exasperated, sighed and then laughed.

"Not today, dear. Not today. Fledgling on hand."