Buffy walked through the forest, making as little noise as possible and hoping very much that she would be able to find a non-Oz culprit to be responsible for the death of Jeff Orkin. She could remember the hell she had gone through the previous December, when she thought she had actually killed a human being (though that had been before she found out that Ted was a robot). It was definitely not something she wanted Oz to have to deal with, even if the part of him that was possibly responsible was beyond his conscious control. And Willow was so scared for him too. No, Buffy wouldn't let her friends go through that if she could help it.
As determined as she was, however, her patrol of the woods yielded nothing. Feeling both disheartened and exhausted, therefore, Buffy headed home.
[o]
Meanwhile, at Council headquarters in London, Oliver Smith was thinking wistfully of elevators as he walked down flight after flight of stone steps in his brand new shoes, going far beneath the part of the building that the everyday Londoner saw. Of course, the place had been constructed long before elevators were invented, and it was just his luck that they'd only been added to the upper floors.
Wincing slightly upon reaching the bottom of the final flight of stairs as the blisters forming on the soles of his feet throbbed painfully, and now thinking irritably about how they hadn't even had electricity put in down here yet, Smith lifted his lantern a little higher. The yellowish light fell on an ancient wooden icebox and a small cart. Walking forward gingerly on his sore feet, he set the lantern on the cart and opened the icebox. Inside, apart from the mostly melted chunk of ice—which, Smith noted with further annoyance, meant that he'd have to replace it soon—, were twenty or so packets of dark red liquid. He pulled out six of them, wrinkling his nose in distaste, then remembered that Weatherby and the others had brought in a new addition recently. He grabbed a seventh bag and placed it with its fellows beside the lantern on the cart, then wheeled the cart squeakily around towards a short hallway ending in a thick iron door.
On pulling this door open, the light from his lamp glanced off a number of ornate crosses protruding from its inner surface. He pushed the cart down a second corridor, which contained eight more doors identical to the first. He opened the first door on the left and moved inside cautiously.
"It's about time," said a low, growling voice. Smith flinched, then, angry with himself for betraying a sign of weakness, seized one of the bags from the cart and threw it at the vampire chained in the corner of the room. It hit him on his ridged forehead and bounced off, landing just farther than the chains would allow him to reach. With a cold smirk, Smith made to leave the room with his cart, and the vampire swore angrily at him, straining against his chains. "Push it closer, you git!"
"What's the magic word, Ambrose?" asked Smith in a smug, obnoxious voice.
Ambrose growled at him furiously. There was a brief internal struggle between his hunger and his ego. Hunger won by a very small margin. "Please," he said through tightly clenched fangs. Smith walked over and kicked the bag of blood in Ambrose's direction. The vampire lunged for it and tore it eagerly open with his teeth before the Watcher had left the room.
Smith moved on to the next five doors. Only two of the other occupants tried to cause trouble—Sophia and Demetri, both of whom had been caught less than a fortnight before and hadn't given up trying to escape. Finally, he arrived at the door of the Council's newest undead prisoner, Angelus, who was still an unknown quantity for the sore-footed Watcher.
[o]
He could hear noises coming from outside the dark room in which he had been confined. There had been footsteps, roars, growls, more footsteps, a quiet squeaking sound he couldn't identify, and a rhythmic thumping that seemed tantalizingly familiar. No screams of agony or wails of anguish, though. And still, nothing had come to hurt him, and, compared to what he was usually forced to endure, getting kicked twice in the head hardly counted. Ever since that blinding white light, nothing had tortured him at all, or really even paid attention to him, except to lock him in this room and attach heavy chains to his wrists and ankles—though that must have happened while he was unconscious.
He didn't trust this conspicuous lack of torment. They were trying to lull him into a false sense of security, and then they'd hurt him worse than they ever had before. Why else would they have put him in this place where he couldn't move more than a few feet in any direction?
The thumping sound, footsteps, and squeaking drew closer, and then the door opened with a loud, grating groan. He backed as far away as he could, his eyes locked warily on the intruder. The man in the doorway began to make sounds with his mouth that he was sure used to have meaning to him, far in the distant past when pain wasn't the only thing in his existence that had meaning, but it seemed that his ability to discern anything of it eluded him, and he felt frustrated. The man made the same sounds again, more loudly, his expression becoming angrier, and he waved a small, clear packet of red liquid.
The movement caused the stagnant air to stir, and he caught a whiff of what was in that packet—of what was pumping warm and alive through the man's body. Hunger roared up within him, overpowering his fear and telling him firmly that this time, he was not the prey. No. This time, he was the predator.
With a roar far louder than the one he'd heard earlier, he sprang forward. The angry man had taken a step towards him split second before, but was still inches farther than the chains would permit him to move. The man leapt back with a cry of shock, then shouted furiously and kicked him hard in the gut. He doubled over in pain, but the man kicked him again and again until he crumpled to the ground, then threw the packet down next to him and left, violently slamming the door as he went.
His stomach hurt terribly, but the aches left over from a century of torment still hurt so badly that this new pain quickly blended in and became unnoticeable. He was more interested in what the man had left behind, anyway. He grabbed it and bit into it eagerly. It burst open, flooding his mouth and drenching his chin with the cold, metallic liquid. It was gone all too soon, and, far from satisfying his appetite, only made him hungrier.
[o]
Buffy sat bolt upright in her bed. It was four in the morning. The image of a chained, bruised, and dirty Angel was still burned into her eyes. Ten minutes later, she was dressed and on her way to the mansion, but in the next five minutes, she had changed her mind, unable to reopen that wound. Instead, she went to the school.
Why was this happening? She was trying to put it all behind her, and now she was having dreams like this? And what did it mean? She'd never had a dream like that about Angel. He was always the way she remembered: kind and loving and holding her close to him—at least at first. Something always happened to turn those dreams into nightmares. But this was different. Much more real, somehow. Angel had seemed almost animalistic, and all of her attempts to communicate with him were in vain, not as though he was ignoring her, but as if she was a phantom who could be neither seen nor heard by him. Her best hope for now was that Giles might have a book with some answers.
She had no sooner arrived at the library, under the convenient pretense that she would take over the Oz-watch for the rest of the night, than she was hit very hard in the face by her sister Slayer. Faith apologized in a "well, it was an accident anyway and pretty much your fault for sneaking up behind me like that, so I really don't need to feel sorry about turning half of your face purple" sort of way, then left to patrol. Rubbing her jaw, Buffy glanced over at Oz (who was prowling restlessly around the book cage and growling occasionally), then pulled open the card index and began flipping rapidly through it.
[o]
"How close are we to having everything ready for the tournament?" asked Quentin.
Blair looked down at his clipboard. "We're still short two vampires, sir," he said, before frowning. "Although, according to this, Angelus has been moved to holding cell number seven in the dungeon. Does that mean he'll be a competitor as well?"
"Yes," said Quentin. "Normally, the tournament is merely an opportunity for the graduating class of the Academy to see what vampires are capable of before they come up against one in their training. However, this year, none of the vampires in the holding cells so far is younger than a century old. At almost two hundred and fifty, and considering his notoriety, Angelus makes quite an addition to the event. What with his present mental condition, however, I'm not sure he's quite what we had in mind, but as we'll need a particularly strong vampire for the current Slayer's Cruciamentum, the last one standing in this year's tournament should be perfect."
"But, sir," said Blair, "aren't you concerned that Angelus's presence in this dimension contradicts what was in the report?"
"Not at all. According to Mr. Wyndam-Pryce, there were scorch marks on the floor where you and the others found Angelus. Given his proximity to Acathla and the rather bestial state of mind he seems to be in, which is far from congruous with records of his past behavior, I believe that he was indeed in Hell. I had feared that there would be adverse consequences to allowing Acathla to remain so near the Hellmouth for so long, but we are fortunate that the return of Angelus is the only thing to have come of it, and that you retrieved him before he could wreak any fresh havoc. As such, I see no reason that he should not participate."
"Very well, sir. Is that all?"
"Yes, Blair, you may go."
The length of these chapters makes me happy. This one is basically the alternate version of the first half of "Beauty and the Beasts". Also, Ambrose was one of the vampires I used in "Season 8". Three of his dungeonmates (so far unnamed here) were as well, and Sophia and Demetri (who I'm imagining as being played by Morena Baccarin and Alan Tudyk) are going to be reused as well, and done much better justice to. I'm only recycling personalities here, not backstories. Also, the occasional whimsy of this chapter can probably be attributed to the fact that I've watched six episodes of Pushing Daisies in the past four days (anyone with a fondness for British humor should definitely watch that show).