Biiiiiiig thanks to Sockmonkeyhere for being my beta. Love ya!
Blah blah, I don't own any of the characters. ('Cept for Simon, Karen, Shannon, and Rob.)
-Clocky
The makeshift barricade wouldn't last for long, Fred knew this. She'd slammed the heavy desk against the bookcase, and was hunched beneath it, trapped. She began pulling books off the bottom shelf, knowing that there might be safety on the other side of the wall.
Okay, hoping. Hoping was a better phrase. What if they were on the other side too?
Too late, no time. She pumped the shotgun and blew a hole in the wall, then pulled the shortsword, and began hacking away, widening the hole. She'd learned how to be resourceful in Pylea, and if there had ever been a time she was grateful for that, it was now. The desk was getting nudged away, pulled away from her, then...
Made it; she squeezed through the hole as black-clad hands, groping and unnaturally strong, reached for her.
Zombies. Why did it have to be zombies?
Twelve Hours Previously
Lorne was aware that something was amiss.
In the week and a half since Angel received the letter from Wolfram and Hart, the Hyperion had gotten... quiet.
Well, not exactly quiet, because Angel still showed up most days with monster heads dripping viscous fluid onto the floor for Fred to analyze. She'd set up a miniature lab in the library, with two big revolving chalkboards and instruments that Lorne had had to refer to as 'thingamabobs' and 'death rays'. Sure, Charles and Angel still hung around in the lobby and patrolled the streets, and Spike still bickered with Angel before slinking off to the bottom of a whiskey bottle, and Fred still played Sudoku and came in with bags of takeout for the lot of them.
But something was definitely amiss, and it hadn't taken Ana-gogic powers to figure out what.
Spike and Fred had gone and had a talk, he figured, and now she was freaking out like a conflicted teenager, and he was brooding to near Angel extremes.
Gods, but did Lorne love emotions, sometimes they made him feel the way Fred must feel with all her equations. Though, rather than her mathematical problem-solving, he enjoyed problem-solving of the heart.
And he had a feeling that this would end well.
Angel hated lawyers. He'd decided this long ago, but on the day they were scheduled to go to Wolfram and Hart, he felt he had to reiterate that fact.
"I hate lawyers."
"Fifth time, big guy, we know you do." Gunn sighed, closing the file on several supposed Manticore attacks just outside LA.
They had been forced to wait a week and a half before their meeting with Silas Vail, as he was apparently a very busy man. During the wait, Angel either prowled the streets or paced in his office, thinking.
Frankly, Fred felt as if he was OVER-thinking the whole ordeal. She had no love for Wolfram and Hart, quite the opposite, really, but they were a law firm, first and foremost. They were the epitome of bureaucracy, albeit a demonic one. She figured that if they knew where Angel Investigations was stationed, why didn't they just sneak attack and slaughter them? Wolfram and Hart had the resources to do that, so why formally request all of them to go to the offices?
Though, Angel couldn't seem to let it be what everyone else felt it was, though, so Fred decided, the afternoon before the scheduled meeting, to cheer her dear friend up a bit.
She warmed up some blood in his favorite mug, snatched 'The Princess Bride' from her movie collection, made a pitstop in the kitchen for a bowl of popcorn, and balancing all this made her way to Angel's room. He answered after a few knocks, and Fred held up her booty.
"Fred?"
"Movie night, Angel. We just plain haven't bonded since I came back, and I know a big ol' vampire who secretly has a mancrush on Cary Elwes!" She wagged the movie case in front of him and, after a beat, Angel's face cracked into a sheepish smile.
"I donna suppose you could speed things up?"
"If you're in such a hurry, you could lower a rope or a tree branch, or find something useful to do!"
"I could do that. I have some rope up here, but I do not think you would accept my help, since I am only waiting around to kill you."
"That does put a damper on our relationship."
"So, you're worried it'll be a trap, or we'll walk in and we'll all suddenly implode in on ourselves?"
"In more words, but... yeah. Just a bad feeling, you know?"
Fred nodded, and peered onscreen as Inigo Montoya and Westley made friends, and then tried to kill each other. She and Angel were splayed on the floor in front of Angel's television, vaguely watching the film and chatting simultaneously.
"Well... If it were me, I'd try and relax, you know? Do some problem solving in my head, maybe write a few theorems to clear out my brain a little bit. I don't think there's one of us who actually trusts Wolfram and Hart, but it's not like we're going in unarmed." Fred tossed a few kernels of popcorn into her mouth, chewing thoughtfully.
"Yeah... Thanks for coming up here with the movie, by the way. I'm feeling less worried about it. We'll go in armed, you know, inconspicuously, and just be really careful."
"And read the fine print."
"And read the fine print, right."
They sat in companionable silence, though at one point Fred sat up straighter and shouted 'INCONCEIVABLE!' so loud that it made Angel jump, and she was consumed by giggled throughout the entire wedding scene. Even Angel snorted into his hand then.
By movie's end, both felt considerably better about their respective situations.
"So... How do I look? Fetching? Inconspicuous and all that?"
"Can't see a thing, Rambo, open your coat."
Spike did so, and Lorne whistled. Various daggers, stakes, and other small weaponry were strapped to the inside of Spike's duster. Lorne had no doubt that there were also stakes hidden up his sleeves.
They had all somehow found a way to conceal some form of weaponry on their persons. Spike and Angel were the most heavily armed, being the two that often wore concealing clothing. Gunn had managed to strap in a pair of stakes under his sleeves, and a dagger into the lining of his coat. Lorne did a similar feat, but it had been Fred who shocked them all when, after bounding down the stairs in nothing but a flowery little blouse and lavender skirt that reached below her knees, appeared to have no defense at all.
"That's what you'd think, but see, this is why we ladies have an easier time of weapon concealment." She grinned and lifted her skirt to reveal a pair of shorts underneath, a shortsword and short-barreled shotgun strapped to her thighs. It took the others several moments to realise that the decorative leather piece that held her hair up was clasped with a wooden pin. The pin was decorated with flowers on one end, but was unusually sharp on the other end.
"Y'think they'll check us?" Gunn peered at Fred's skirt as she smoothed it down.
"Most likely, but even if they take all the semi-obvious stuff, we've all still got a stake or dagger hidden pretty well. Worst case scenario, if it's trouble, we've got each other."
"Touching sentiment, peaches."
The corners of Angel's lips twitched in a smirk. Armed and ready, the group made their way out of the Hyperion, and into the Los Angeles dusk.
The first steps into Wolfram and Hart ellicited nothing but a bored look from the secretary, and a little hat-tip from a few security guards. A singular man in a tweed coat and glasses walked briskly past them, and scratched the back of his head. When they stepped farther into the lobby, however, everything went to hell.
Or, at least they did. The secretary and security guards didn't notice when the tweed-wearing man turned towards them, smiled, and turned blue.
Then red fiery runes burned into the floor, and the lobby dematerialised, and Spike found himself in the basement.
Always the fucking basement of this place. He grunted, climbing to his feet. The Wolfram and Hart basement often reeked of death and decay, mothballs, and, more often than not, fresh blood. But today the reek of death was new.
Well no, not quite 'new'; it was more 'I've been rotting in a grave for several months', than 'new'. But that particular scent was new for the W&H basement. Usually the death smell had that pungency of being in the open air.
This was a graveyard smell.
He jogged down the corridor, past where he'd met the glass-woman and the bloke chopping his fingers off, seemingly so long ago. They were long gone, now, and Spike turned down the hall and hurried past several storage spaces. The reek, however, grew stronger as he progressed.
"Bloody maze. Elevator, stairs... Where'd they put those things again?" Really, he'd been here how many times before? Grumbling, he turned a corner, and balked.
The people before him wore black bodysuits, gloves and boots. Their heads were covered by black cloth hoods, but to Spike the smell became suddenly unmistakable. These men were dead, long dead.
And it was in that moment that Spike realised several things about this new CEO of Wolfram and Hart.
Silas Vail was not pleased with their murder of his father. He was also, more probably than not, a necromancer.
There was a female scream from somewhere in the building.
He had split them up.