I walked up the steps to the hotel, slinging the bag over my left shoulder. It's been a few weeks since I left. I needed to get away. Time to think. To think about my future...the spirits...my life...Lorne...I walked into the hotel's lobby and I was instantly picked up by Gunn who embraced me into a bear hug.
"The spirit holder returns!" He exclaimed.
"Can't...breath..." I gasped.
"Sorry." He quickly set me back down on the ground.
"No." Angel's voice sounded from the top of the staircase.
"Why?" Lorne whined. I looked up to see Lorne chasing Angel down the steps.
"Evee!"
"Hey, Angel, did I miss something?" I asked.
"Cordy got her memory back." Gunn whispered into my ear.
"Really?"
"Lorne used a spell. Didn't turn out like we expected but she got her memory back in the end."
"That's great! Where's she now?"
"With Connor."
"Are you serious?"
"As a heart attack."
"Which is why we should go over there and talk to her." Lorne insisted to Angel.
"No." Angel declared.
"Why?"
"I said no."
"And I said why." Angel sighed and glared at Lorne. "Let's meet in the middle with a why no?"
"It's too soon."
"But she got her memory back. Aren't you a weensy curious...if Cordy remembers anything about her little stint as, uh, Miss Higher Power? Oh, say, maybe something about the thingama-bad...that Wolfram and Hart sucked out of my noggin?" I cleared my throat and hung my head, heading deeper into the lobby not wanting to think about how I failed to protect Lorne that night.
"We need to give her time to adjust before we start comin' at her with a million questions."
"How about one? One's good."
"In a couple of days when she's more herself."
"Chime in anytime, Evahart." I turned my back to him and smiled. I loved it when he called me Evahart.
"I'm sure Evee would love to, really but we got a case and we could use Evee's help." Gunn said.
"Need some backup?" Angel asked.
"Nah. Woman out in Aardvark Park's hearin spookies in her pipes. I don't know whether to bring my ax or a plunger."
"Why do you need me?" I asked.
"Because I bet you you're rusty. We got to ease you back in."
"Fine." I started to follow Gunn and Wesley out the hotel.
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"The noises are horribe-the thumping, the groaning." Aurora said to us as she led us down the hallway to the bathroom, that had the door closed. "It's impossible to sleep at night."
"How long has this been going on?" Gunn asked.
"Ah, a week, maybe."
"Good. If it's a haunting the longer a specter inhabits the area, the harder it is to convince them to leave." Fred assured Aurora.
"Yep." Gunn agreed. "Casper's dealin with the big boys now. We're very persuasive."
"Anything you can do about that terrible room." Aurora said. "I'll be in the kitchen."
"You ready?" I questioned Gunn and Fred.
"Is no an acceptable answer?" Gunn answered.
"In this business?" Fred asked him. "Always." We walked down the hallway and Gunn slowly reached for the doorknob of the bathroom door. He slowly opened the door and revealed a very clean, fancy, elegant, victorian bathroom. Gunn let out an impressed whistle.
"Man, look at this place."
"A family of four could live in here."
"With a room for Uncle Woof."
"Man, marble countertops, whirlpool tub, bidet." I whispered, awing the view of the bathroom."
"It's the kind of place I imagine us movin into one day."
"Yeah." Fred muttered and I noticed the fake smile on her face but decided not to say anything.
"Well, I'm not sayin tomorrow."
"Oh, I know. I-"
"Just be nice one day. That's all."
"Charles-"
"Save it." I said. "I didn't not come along to watch you two swoon over each other. Come on. We got work to do." A low rumbling noise sounded through the walls.
"Ok, that's not the bidet."
"Where's it coming from?" Gunn asked.
"Um, everywhere." I said. Gunn walked over to one of the sinks and looked down into the drain. The rumbling continued and started to give me the chills. "Maybe we should have brought a priest."
"Or some consecrated Drano." It went silent through out the bathroom. "I think it stopped." Suddenly, the mirrors exploded and exposed hundred of rats on the shelves. Gunn dropped back in shock and screamed and Fred and I screamed with him. Rats started to come out of the drains, out of the toliet. Hundreds appears beside the bathtub and in the bathtub. One started to crawl on me and I screamed and shook it off.
"These aren't ghosts!" Fred yelled. "These definitely aren't ghosts!"
"Well, they're gonna be!" A rat dropped from the light above onto my shoulder and I shrieked and started jumping up and down in fear. Fred ran to the bathroom door and tried to open it.
"It won't open! Aah!" Rats swarmed our feet as Gunn tried to open the door and he busted it open. I ran through the bathroom door first, yelling.
"Get them off me!" I cried. "Get them off me!"
"You're okay! You're ok!" I stopped and shivered and turned to see Aurora standing there staring at us in shock. "Um, you might want to look into an exterminator."
"Or just burn the place down."
"Either way."
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"Nasty, pink nosed bastards. I can still feel 'em crawlin' on me." Gunn said as we walked up the steps of the hotel.
"I'm gonna take a long bath and scrub till my skin stops twitching." Fred said.
"Can we have bubbles?" I groaned and skipped up the steps.
"I was kind of looking forward to a quiet soak alone."
"Oooo, she told you." I muttered.
"Oh, yeah, ok." Gunn mumbled.
"I-it's just, the tub's not that big, and-" Fred tried to explain but Gunn hung his head. "Heh! Forget it. We'll squeeze."
"Don't lie, Fred." I said. "Just tell him that you don't love him anymore."
"That's not true!"
"Bite my head off. Sing for Lorne. He'll probrably tell you the same thing." I walked into the hotel and jumped the four small steps into the lobby.
"No. No, that certainly doesn't sound normal for a boy his age." Lorne said to someone on the phone. Angel was over by the weapons cabinet scanning his axes. "Look, we'll send someone out as soon as we can. Just, um-just don't poke him." Gunn came in behind me.
"Hey." Angel greeted him as I walked over to the counter that Lorne was sitting at answering phones. "How'd it go?" I leaned on the counter, placing my chin in my palm. Two phones rang and Lorne and I both grabbed one.
"Angel Investigations." I answered.
"I got this ghost roaming inside my house. And it keeps moaning and groaning and knocking stuff over." A frantic woman said on the other line.
"Uh huh. And what is you nature of your manifestation?" The door to the hotel opened and I looked to the right to see Connor walking down the steps. "Yeah, Ma'am, we'll send someone out as soon as we can." I hung up without waiting for a response.
"Hey." Angel greeted his son.
"Hey." Connor casually returned the greeting.
"It's ok. The spell wore off."
"What spell?" I whispered to Gunn.
"The spell that Lorne used to get Cordy's memory back." He whispered back to me. "It kinda turned Angel evil."
"Angelus evil?"
"No, just Angel evil."
"Angel isn't evil."
"He was then."
"Lorne!"
"Don't yell at me!" He cried. I turned my attention back to Connor and Angel.
"Thanks for not letting me hurt Cordy." Angel said.
"Well, I don't know." Connor shrugged his shoulders. "She probably would have staked you. She's pretty tough."
"Yeah, she is."
"She's staying with me now. You know that, right?"
"Yeah, that's good. She needs a place she can feel safe. Give her a chance to work things out. Couple of days, everything'll be back the way it was."
"You should talk to her."
"Oh!" Lorne cried out. "Hallelujah." Angel turned to glare at Lorne before turning back around to Connor.
"Now's not a good time." Angel said. "Connor, after everything she's been through, the last thing she needs is-"
"Dad." Connor stopped Angel. "Please?"
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"I know but we're pretty swamped right now." Gunn insisted the man on the other line as Lorne answered another phone. I sat on the counter, my back pressed up against a pillar, twirling a baseball in my hands. "Well, if Snowball hasn't tried to eat your spine yet, hit her with the catnip till we get there." He hung up and slammed the phone back down and wrote down the case. "You know, Evee, you could be answering some phones." I started tossing the ball up in the air and catching it, nonchalantly.
"Yeah, I could but am going to? No." I said. Gunn sighed and answered another phone.
"No, I-I don't think that much mucus is ever a good sign." Lorne said to the other end of the line." Uh-huh. Uh, please, please. Yeah, describe it in detail." Lorne held the phone to his chest and turned to me. "Hey, uh, this isn't letting up. How about, uh, rustling up some adorable reinforcements?"
"Fred? Uh-uh. That's Gunn's department." Gunn held his phone to his chest and jumped into the conversation.
"I don't know where she is." Gunn said.
"Well, uh, that's where the rustling comes in." Lorne reminded him.
"Well, if Fred wanted to be here, she would." Gunn returned to his phone so Lorne retreated back to his phone.
"Yeah, yeah that sounds horrible. Hold please." Lorne set the phone down and looked at Gunn as he finished his conversation. "You two ok?"
"Ask her that. Maybe she'll talk to you."
"Better yet maybe she'll sing to you." I muttered as I picked up and ringing phone and answered it.
"Angel Investigations." I answered. "This is Evee speaking. How may I help you?"
"Hi, my name is Ricki Colt and my pit bull, Thosaleba, she keeps on trying to attack me." The woman said.
"Well, you know, pit bulls are known to do that, Ma'am."
"Hey, I don't know what's goin' on between, uh, cupcake and her icing, but, well, you know how she feels about you." Lorne said.
"No, she's growling at everything and she has this evil look in her eyes." Ricki continued. "Like something's possessing her. I locked myself in my bedroom." The woman on the line continued.
"Well, Ma'am, we're a bit busy at the moment so just give Thor-whatever her name is a bone until we can send someone over there." I said. "Thank you for calling Angel Investigations and I hope you have a wonderful day." I hung up and began to toss the baseball again.
"And it doesn't take horns and a beautiful singing voice to be able to read that." Lorne continued.
"It's just-it's been hard since the thing with her professor." Gunn said.
"Yeah, well, being stuck in Pylea's pretty crappy." I muttered. "No offense, Lorne."
"None taken, Evahart." Lorn agreed with me before turning back to Gunn. "Evee's right but being sent there on purpose by someone you trust? Hey, at least Dr. Ego got a taste on his own portal."
"Yeah." Gunn mumbled, thinking about it. "He got what he deserved, didn't he?" A thudding sound came from the hotel door and I looked over at it, forgetting about my baseball which came tumbling down and onto my head.
"Ow!" I groaned, rubbing my head as I hopped off the counter and followed Gunn to the door as Lorne stayed where he was. Gunn opened the door and looked down at the ground to see a bird lying on its back.
"It's a sparrow. It slammed right into the glass." I knelt down beside Gunn and examined it with him.
"Close the door." Lorne ordered.
"It might not be dead."
"Close it!" I looked up into the sky at the sound of fluttering wings and saw a whole flock of sparrows heading straight for us. I pushed Gunn back and slammed the door shut as the first bird slammed into the glass. I covered my mouth with my hands and gasped as the blood splattered over the door. Loads of sparrows followed after the first, painting the doors red. It was done as soon as it started.
"I'm guessing this isn't a good sign." Gunn said.
"You think?" I shrieked.
"Yeah, as harbingers go, not so much." Lorne said.
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"If you see Fred, could you have her call me?" Gunn asked the man on the other line. "Charles Gunn, two N's. Yes, that's my real name. Just please have her call me." He hung up.
"Sir, you are like the millonth person who called about the pit bull, doberman, rottweiler situation." I said. "I swear, we'll get someone over there as soon as possible. Just give little Sean a bone to chew on. Have wonderful night and thank you for calling Angel Investigations."
"Yeah, well, it might take a couple of days. You're the fifth person on the bleeding walls list." Lorne said as Gunn began to punch in another number. "Spritz it with a little 409. We'll get back to you." He hung up and turned back to Gunn. "Hey, no word yet?"
"Nobody's seen her." Gunn said.
"Well, maybe she ducked and covered...when our feathered friends went kamikaze."
"You good here?" Gunn asked as he hung up the phone. "I'm gonna drive around see if I can-" He grabbed his jacket and sighed. "I'm just gonna drive." Lorne grabbed his jacket too and followed Gunn.
"Eh, let the machine work its mechanical magic. Come on. You good here, Evahart?"
"Yeah, I'll stay here and see if I can get anything out of the spirits." I said as I hopped onto the counter. Just as I got settled down and about to enter a trance, a voice sounded from the front door.
"It is a bit ripe in here." Wesley said and we all looked to see him pushed a sparrow out the door with his foot before closing it and turning to us. "I'd suggest opening a window but-"
"Fred's not here." Gunn snapped at him.
"Didn't ask."
"Didn't have to."
"Since you brought it up, where is she?"
"Not your business."
"Hey, call me kooky-pants, but maybe we could save the three rounds...until after the Chuck Heston plague-athon cools off." Lorne said.
"You've noticed the increase in paranormal activity." Wesley said.
"Yeah, you stepped in some on your way in-birds, rats, blood. The Ghostbuster lines have been ringin' off the hook."
"I've been tracking similar reports." Wesley sighed. "Maybe if we pool our data."
"Go pool yourself." Gunn said. "I'm gonna find my girlfriend." Gunn turned to head out the back door but stopped when he saw Angel standing there holding a folder full of papers.
"No, you're not." Angel said. "If we don't stop what's comin', it won't matter where Fred is or any of us."
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We sat down at the chairs and looked at the piles of paper work with funky drawings and symbols and random numbers and letters that Angel got from Wolfram and Hart.
"That's everything Wolfram and Hart could decipher from what they took out of Lorne." Angel said.
"They just handed these over?" Wesley asked.
"Lilah. She can be very giving."
"You trust her on this?" Gunn asked.
"No, but she's got an interest in stopping the end of the world...before it ruins Wolfram and Hart's end of the world, so-"
"Ok, what's the plan?" I asked.
"You're holding it. We figure out what all this means, then do somethin' large and violent."
"I see you've given it considerable thought." Wesley said.
"So all this came out of my head?" Lorne muttered. "No wonder it made me greener."
"Yeah, if Wolfram and Hart hadn't extracted it, you'd be a paler shade of dead." Angel said.
"Yeah, well, remind me to send 'em a fruit basket." The phone rang behind us at the desk. "Mm, saved by the continuous bell." Lorne got up to go to the phone but Angel stopped him.
"You been logging the calls?"
"Every last squishy one."
"Grab a map, start markin' locations. See if they're concentrated in any one area. Whatever's happening, whatever Cordy's seeing, the answers are in these pages. We need to figure this out."
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
"We're never gonna figure this out." Gunn sighed after hours of looking at codes and numbers and pictures on the files.
"We have to keep trying." Angel said.
"Normally I'd agree, but this is a waste of time." Wesley said.
"It's all we have."
"Then we must be missing something. This is gibberish. Bits and pieces of glyphs, archaic languages, symbols, all jumbled together."
"Do you recognized any of them?"
"Uh, heat, fallen, shrine, flesh. None of it makes any sense."
"Nah, we gotta keep at it till it does."
"You know maybe we should just take a step back." I suggested.
"No, we don't have time. Cordy said whatever's happening, it's going down right now."
"Perhaps you should have addressed this earlier. We could sift through this muddle from now till doomsday, whether that's tomorrow or a thousand years from now." Wesley said as he shuffled through papers with Gunn standing over him.
"Wait." Gunn ordered. "Go back. The last sheet. Flip it back." Angel and I got to our feet and walked over to Wesley to see him holding another normal sheet of paper with writing all over it.
"What is it?" Angel asked.
"I don't see anything." Wesley said.
"That's because you're looking too close." Gunn said as he grabbed another paper from his pile and held it up next to the one that Wesley had and found it fitting together like a puzzle. The words from one paper was running onto the next page. Gunn snatched the papers from Wesley and kicked the coffee table aside so he had room to work on the floor, putting together a puzzle, paper by paper. Once he was done, he stood up to reveal the words making a large box with a X in the middle. "Okay. What the hell is it?"
"The Eye of Fire." Angel said.
"Ancient alchemical symbol for fire."
"And destruction."
"You had me at fire." I said.
"Um, boys and girl." Lorne called from the desk. "I hate to be the little demon that cried "Apocalypse Nowish" but, uh-" Lorne held up a map where her marked all the calls and it formed a red square, half of the Eye of Fire.
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Angel drew an X in the middle of the square on the map and pointed to the center.
"That's it." He declared when he was finished.
"What?" Lorne asked.
"The focal point of the disturbances." Wesley answered. The hotel began to shake and I gribbed the counter edge to steady myself. Dust and pebbles fell from the ceiling as we all looked around for the source of the shaking.
"Whatever's comin', that's where we'll find it." Angel said as the rumbling stopped.
"I know that area." Gunn informed us. "The old Kimball Building's down there. They did a retro on it. Put a club up on the roof. The, uh, Sky Temple or something."
"Yeah, yeah, I've heard of it." Lorne agreed with him. "A watering hole for the tragically hip-um, actors, models. All the hot mamas and yamas."
"A shrine of the flesh." "A shrine of the flesh." Wesley mumbled.
"So, who's thirsty?" I asked.
"Let's do it." Gunn said as he followed Angel to the weapon cabinet.
"Hey, I know location's everything, but... maybe we should hold off on the down payment till we know what we're dealin' with... or how to stop it." Lorne said.
"If it's alive, we kill it." I smiled at him. "If it's not, we bury it."
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We headed to the center of attention, weapons at ready. Running to the top of the building, we entered the roof to see a large, scaly looking demon standing in the center. He looked like he was built out of rock with red cracks running deep within his skin and horns that curled over his head. He looked over at us and gave a low growl and dropped the dead man he was holding into the pile that was building all around him.
"Ooh." Lorne groaned behind me. "Uh, I'm gonna need a bigger arrow. Wesley and Lorne moved to the left of the demon while Gunn went right. Angel and I stood in the center before I took off charging at the demon. I gave a jump with a battle cry and the demon swatted me aside like a was just a leaf in the wind. I crumbled back down on the roof, feeling like I had broken several ribs but I could already feel one of the spirits taking control.
Let me handle this. Alisha smirked within my mind. My bones cracked and groaned as they morphed into the structure of a canine. Alisha let out a growl as I saw the demon smack Angel back. Gunn threw his axe at the demon, but he sidestepped it and caught the axe and crumpled the metal like it was nothing before throwing it back at Gunn who had to drop to the ground before it could take his head off. Alisha propelled forward and leapt onto the demon. I could feel the claws scratching at the rock skin but it wasn't making any damage. Alisha yelped as the demon's right fist connected with her stomach and she fell to the ground. Angel jumped in and slammed his two axes into the demon but they just bounced off like they were rubber. Wesley and Lorne fired two arrows at him but demon saw them coming and stepped aside, the arrows running into Angel's shoulder and side. The demon glared in their direction.
Lorne! I snapped at Alisha.
I know what I'm doing! She charged at the demon and he grabbed her by the throat and tossed her like a baseball at Lorne and Wesley, knocking them to the ground. Wesley pushed out from underneath us and scrambled to his feet, pulling two pistols from his coat. He fired them simutainously at the demon but they had no effect on him. The bullets just bounced off his chest with no dent, leaving behind only sparks. The demon gave a soft chuckle when Wesley ran out of bullets. Wesley pulled out a shotgun and cocked, aiming it at the demon's stomach. Bullet after bullet fired at the demon and still had no effect. The demon grabbed Wesley's gun and tossed him aside, chuckling while he did it.
"Might wanna hold the gloat, chuckles." Angel said and the demon turned around to face him. "We're just getting started." Punch after punch, the demon blocked every move. Until he grabbed a piece of glass off the rooftop and stuck it into Angel's neck.
Angel! I yelled from my solitude within me.
"Do you really think she's safe with him?" The demon questioned Angel in a rough, deep voice. The demon grabbed Angel and tossed him over the rooftop with the whoosing of wind following him.
Angel! Alisha raced forward to the edge of the rooftop and stared down into nothing but darkness. She turned to see the demon slam his fist down in the center of the dead bodies, erupting into flames and disappearing. Gunn and Wesley got knocked back and the force of the flames knocked Lorne back into glass, making him fall to the floor below us. Lorne! At that moment I had the strongest feeling ever. I pushed Alisha aside and returned to my original state and ran across the rooftop and slide into the glass behind him and fall to the ground beside him.