Author's Note: Greetings, humans! Big thanks to everyone who reviewed the previous chapter - Bernice-Summerfield, mericat, 3LW00D, Heartwing, Jiwa, xxTeam-Masterxx, SawManiac211, Catelly, Aietradaea, helenwhogirl, Theta'sWorstNightmare, Riley Erin, chickens and egaara.

Special thanks to Theta'sWorstNightmare - reading her excellent crossover fic inspired me to get out of my rut and write some more of my own. If you like Dr Who/LoM crossovers, check out her story called, "Take a Look at the Lawman", it's very good!

And, since my latest chapter of "The Master's Rose" had a substantial drop in reviews, I think I might take a break from it and stay over here for a while, because you guys are terrific :)

CHAPTER NINE

Keeping her eyes fixed unblinkingly on the Angel, Amy heard Sam heaving the fire door open. But it was too late – much, much too late. The lights flicked off and did not flash on again and she knew they were both dead. Dust streamed from her eye and there was a rush of hot, foetid wind as she felt the Angel approaching on a wave of terror. An involuntary scream tore from her throat, ratcheting higher and higher as it echoed through the choking darkness.

All at once, a brilliant blaze of illumination flooded the narrow corridor. Transfixed in the searing light stood the Angel, its clawed hands just inches from Amy's throat, its vicious, twisted face solidified in an expression of unrelenting cruelty.

Nearby, Amy heard Sam swear incredulously at the horrifying sight. Not daring to take her gaze off the looming Angel, she heard him step closer and saw out of the corner of her eye that he was holding a high-powered torch. It wasn't until she felt his warm arm slide supportively around her waist that she realised just how much she was trembling. That had been just too close.

"Are you all right?" he asked in a tight voice.

She exhaled slowly, trying to steady her panicked breathing. "Yeah."

"We keep these torches beside every fire door, ever since the black-outs last year," he explained, keeping the beam firmly trained on the Angel, as they backed slowly towards the open fire door together. "Lucky for us, as it turns out."

But even as he spoke, the bright light of the torch began to flicker and fade.

"We have to hurry, Sam," Amy croaked, her throat still dry from fear. "It can drain the power from any artificial light source. The batteries in that torch won't last long."

Still holding the glowing light before him like a weapon, Sam pushed her protectively behind him into the cement stairwell on the other side of the fire door.

"Get ready to run," he ordered.

Then, in one lithe movement, he jumped back through the door himself and slammed it shut, instantly jamming down the bar-lock. Without waiting to see what the Angel would do next, he seized Amy's hand and they sprinted up the stairs to the next landing as fast as they could.

Down below, Amy could hear a regular thumping noise. Remembering the unnatural strength the creatures had displayed when breaking into the reinforced airlocks on board The Byzantium, she knew beyond all doubt the Angel was busy forcing its way through the steel fire door.

"That door isn't going to hold it," she gasped. "It's much too strong."

"Through here," Sam replied, wrenching open another fire door and leading the way into the darkness beyond. "RCS. Regional Crime Squad offices. This place is a rabbit warren. We can lose ourselves in here for a bit. Then you're going to tell me everything you know about these things and we're going to come up with a workable plan."

Amy followed him, watching the dimming torchlight bobbing ahead, playing over the empty desks and short, squat filing cabinets as they jogged through a series of silent offices. She had only just met Sam, but already she could tell he was the sort of man who was much more comfortable if he was working to a plan. It was an extreme contrast to the Doctor's haphazard, fly-by-his-pants way of approaching things. Then again, she thought wryly to herself, the Doctor was the Doctor, and there was no-one in the Universe like him. No-one else could ever possibly get away with half the things he did. That was just the way it was. Even more importantly, the Doctor wasn't here and Sam's quick-thinking had just saved both their lives, despite his initial skepticism. She couldn't help admiring the calm, confident way the Detective Inspector had taken charge of a situation that must seem utterly surreal to him.

"The first thing we have to do is to get some sort of reliable light source," Sam continued, obviously thinking out loud. "It's pretty clear we're totally helpless if it manages to get us in the dark." Then he stopped short, causing Amy to nearly cannon into him. "Torches!" he exclaimed triumphantly.

Amy scowled, wondering anxiously if maybe Sam didn't have such a great grasp on things after all. "I told you, torches are no good, the Angel will just drain the batteries."

"Not that sort of torch," he said.

Moving quickly, he raced out into the adjoining passageway. Not wanting to be left behind in the dark, Amy made sure she stayed close behind him, even though she had no idea what he was doing.

"If this floor is laid out anything like CID, there should be a cleaning cupboard along here somewhere."

"So?"

Without bothering to answer, he located the door he was looking for and pulled it open, shining the torch inside to reveal a small, narrow room crowded with brooms, mops and buckets. Reaching for one of the mops, he tore the head free and discarded it, before breaking the wooden handle into two halves over his knee. Then he seized some cotton rags from a shelf and threw them over his shoulder towards Amy.

"Here, wrap these around the ends of the handles," he told her briefly, before sticking his head back into the cupboard and beginning to pull out container after container of cleaning fluid, holding the torch high to scan the labels. "Naptha," he muttered abstractedly to himself. "One of these solvents has to contain naptha."

Amy's eyes brightened as she finally realised what he was up to. Naptha, she knew, was another name for paraffin oil. "Flaming torches!" she cried excitedly, hurriedly starting to wind the cleaning rags around the pieces of broken mop handle, just as he had directed. "Oh, that's brilliant – the Angel won't be able to affect a natural light source!"

"That's the idea," he agreed, finally selecting a large container of fluorescent pink industrial cleaning fluid and pouring a substantial quantity into a handy bucket.

"Soak them in here," he instructed. "We want the rags to absorb as much paraffin oil as possible before we have to use them. They'll burn longer then."

Amy did as he said, dipping the cloth-wound heads of the makeshift torches into the bucket.

"What are we going to use to light them with?" she asked.

Sam merely grinned, his brown eyes dancing. "This is 1974, Amy. Show me a desk drawer that doesn't have a cigarette lighter in it and I'll be surprised!"

Sitting back on his heels, he glanced uneasily back up the shadowy passageway, the grin fading from his face as he flicked the torch beam back the way they had come. There was no sign of the Angel.

"Wonder where it is?" he said tensely. "And what it's doing?"

"It's still playing with us, like a cat plays with a mouse," Amy surmised, her eyes also nervously searching the dark. "It gets off on the game."

"Not all that different to a human serial killer then." He gave a short, harsh laugh. "Just so long as it doesn't get the chance to sneak up on us."

Amy shook her head. "It can't do that. I'll know if it's coming."

"Oh yeah? How's that?"

"It's kind of a long story," she sighed, wondering if he would believe her this time. "The sand starts to fall from my eye when it's nearby. I don't really understand why. Except that once I made the mistake of staring too long at some video footage of our friend Angel Bob. I looked into its eyes. And apparently the image of an Angel eventually somehow becomes an Angel, so it managed to infect the visual centres of my brain."

Sam stared at her, trying to follow her explanation but obviously not knowing what to say. "You had one of those in your head?"

"It's gone now. The Doctor managed to erase all the Angels from time, so the one in my head theoretically never actually existed. Only, it seems that there is enough of it left to recognise when an Angel is near and that's when my eye starts to sift sand all over again."

He was silent for a long moment and Amy guessed his logical mind was once again struggling to accept what she had told him. Even with the incontrovertible evidence of Angel Bob's existence, she still half expected him to jeer at her and to call her insane, just as Gene Hunt had earlier that day.

But Sam Tyler was not Gene Hunt. "Wow, travelling with this Doctor bloke must have been pretty tough for you," he said eventually, surprising her with the gentle understanding in his voice. "It sounds like you've been through a lot together. Are you and he...well, you know...a couple or something?"

"No!" she replied quickly, brushing aside the memory of the one time she had tried to kiss the Doctor and he had pushed her away. "Oh no, nothing like that. We're just friends. There's...there's never really been anyone like that for me."

Oddly enough, even as she said it, it felt wrong, as if she was not telling Sam the whole truth. But the Doctor had made it more than clear that there would never be anything romantic between them. And there was no-one else. There had never been anyone else.

She smiled at Sam, trying to summon up some of the flirtatiousness that usually came so naturally to her. "So, how about you, Detective Inspector? Do you have a significant other lurking in the wings?"

"Not exactly lurking, but yes," he smiled back. "Her name's Annie Cartwright. We're engaged. She usually works here – she's a WPC attached to CID. But right now, she's on holiday in the Lake District with her sister."

"Ah ha! The 2006 boy has found a 1970s girl – you have made yourself at home in this time!" Amy teased lightly, trying to ignore a slight twinge of disappointment that the handsome detective was already involved with someone.

A shadow passed over his face. "I found my way back once, you know, to 2006. But it wasn't the same any more. A barman once told me that you know when you're alive, because you can feel. And you know when you're not. Because you can't feel anything. And I realised that, in 2006, I couldn't feel anything. So I chose to come back here. Because this is where I belong. With Annie. And Gene. And all the others. This is where I'm truly alive."

Before Amy could reply to this, the radio in Sam's pocket crackled back into life, snapping them both back to the harsh reality of their situation.

"Miss Pond? Excuse me, are you there, Miss Pond?"

Sam whipped the hand-set out and Amy took it from him. "What do you want now, Angel Bob?" she demanded.

"I just thought I'd let you know that I've fused the locks on all the exits leading from this building, Miss Pond," the creature responded calmly. "You and Detective Inspector Tyler are trapped. Oh, and I've disabled all communication devices apart from this one, so there will be no other humans coming to your assistance."

"You're not scaring me, so stop wasting your time!" Amy retorted, refusing to give the Angel any more pleasure by showing her fear.

"Forgive me, but you really should be scared, Miss Pond," it answered politely. "You're trapped and you're going to die. And this time, you don't have the Doctor to save you."

Sam snatched the radio from Amy. "She mightn't have the Doctor, but she still has me!" he snarled.

Again, the awful grating sound of the Angel's laughter echoed through the hand-set. "Of course, Detective Inspector Tyler. But if Miss Pond has you, Sir...then who does Detective Chief Inspector Hunt have?"

The radio clicked off and Sam went deathly pale as he understood exactly what the Angel meant.

"It's going after Gene!"