Chapter Five

Angel's grip on Judith's neck looked deathly tight, but though she acted the lack of oxygen, she did not act the sense of terror that she felt—not at what he was going to do to her, but at what was going to happen to them when he opened that door.

"Pathetic!" Angel cried as he deflected Jack's weak curse with some sort of shield of his own, both of which crashed into the glass doors of a bookshelf against the side wall. The glass shattered and fell like sharp winter rain. "All of you! What do you do at these meetings of yours? Pat each other's backs? Perfect your secret handshake? Toast with glasses of warm milk?"

"Angel," Judith pleaded.

"Shut up," he snarled against her face. Somehow, his breath smelled evil. Is that what happens when vampires change faces?

Judith's friends were sobbing hysterically—except for Claire, whose expression was stunned on the surface, but there was also something like understanding coming to light underneath. Alejandro simply watched with numb horror and the others - husbands, Laurie, and staff - were utterly lost, looking at each other with helpless panic. Judith pointedly did not look at Sam. She wasn't sure she ever would be able to again, after this.

Viggo stepped forward bravely as Angel backed them toward the door.

"Angel," Viggo said cautiously. "Let her go, or by God, I will—"

"What?" Angel sneered. "Kill me? You saw what I once did to the others, and I was a child then. Do you really think you can touch me? When I'm done with her, I'll come back for the rest of you." Out of the corner of her eye, she saw his tongue flick across his lips. "And I can't wait…" The growl rumbled through his chest against her back.

Judith couldn't see Angel's face, but she saw Alejandro's stiff nod of acknowledgement, and she suddenly shivered with an odd sensation of something falling away behind her. Angel opened the door behind them and Judith craned her head back to look. The wall of fog pressed placidly against the doorway, thick and stomach-turning as scummy pond water.

"You wouldn't!" Claire pushed her way to the front of the group defiantly. "Angel, you would never hurt her: I know you wouldn't." Her mouth twitched knowingly and she gave them a look that said, Go. Get us out of here.

"Wouldn't I?" Angel sneered. "You never did fully understand what I am, Claire. Here, let me show you." And without any other warning, Angel bit into Judith's neck. She gasped in pain. Like stepping on a shard of glass, it was frightening and sharp, and the rest of the room shrieked as he pulled her closer into him, the warm blood trickling down her front. When Angel finally looked up, Judith felt her own blood drip from his mouth back on her shoulder. "And also: The name's Angelus," he growled, and pulled her backward into the fog.

There was a sound of people rushing forward, though Judith couldn't see anything in the choking mist. Angel backed them away further from the general chaos of Judith's friends wondering what they could—should—do. For a long moment, the fog pressed in on them, thick as cotton and nearly as suffocating. Judith couldn't see a thing except for dark swirling grayness, and her friends' voices faded into ringing silence.

And then a breeze stirred, playing gently at her hair and dress, and wafted the fog away except for a thin, dense layer around the door; no one could know that on the other side there was no fog at all.

Angel spun them around, looking for the source of the breeze. All around them, an invisible, light applause sounded.

"Welcome, Vampire," several voices echoed. "Welcome to our home."

"Thanks," Angel said. "But uh…who the hell are you?"

The atmosphere changed in the house, and Judith could easily imagine that the invisible entities were smiling. "We live here," they said. Some of the voices were smooth as oil, others thick as honey, and one was as raspy as sandpaper. Several shadows flickered in the corners of the hall and at the top of the stairs to their right.

One of them stayed.

"We hail from everywhere, but this is our home," the shadow said, gathering form like a cloud and becoming solid in front of their eyes. It was short and had translucent, white skin. Its eyes glinted purple and its miniature teeth looked sharp as broken glass, perpetually displayed in a permanent Cheshire Cat smile. "Or, more accurately, our prison. We all owe you a thank you, Angelus, and we offer it humbly."

"You're welcome," Angel said. "What'd I do?"

"You freed us," the creature said. Several other beings around them began to gather form, and they murmured in agreement. "The curse…it was so enticing…"

"Mm…" several voices said. "So pretty…"

"How could we refuse such a lovely mansion of evil?"

"Lovely, lovely," a serpent repeated as it slithered past.

"We gathered for over 450 years, not being able to warn the new ones that once you enter you cannot leave…and are silenced forever."

There were several distant wails.

"Until now," the creature's smile seemed to widen. "You arrived and the curse started to crack like a melting glacier. We pushed. And it is breaking. Now all that remains is the outermost barrier, and we can truly be free again." There was a crash and a scream upstairs. "It's a bit crowded." It pointed at Judith. "Were you going to eat that?"

Angel glanced down at her. "Not yet," he growled, and let Judith go slowly. "Stay close," he warned, "or I might get hungry sooner than you expect."

Judith swallowed and nodded. She pressed a hand to her neck wound tenderly. Angel had not cut deep and the bleeding had almost stopped.

Angel looked at the pale creature. "No one is to touch her," he ordered. "She's mine."

The creature's smile widened still. "Of course, sir. Now, what would you like to do first? Would you like to get down to this unpleasant business about the vengeance spirits or go straight for the massacre? We're quite eager for your help in getting out of here, but who can say no to a good massacre, especially when it's been so long?" It paused. "You are going to help, yes? That was the proposal."

Angel inclined his head toward the creature. "We all want out of here. I'll break the curse, you'll leave me alone. Fair deal."

"Wonderful," the creature nodded. "Glad we can be civilized about this. Of course, if you can't break the curse, we will have to kill you, since that will work as well. We think. We'll need your partner, too-I assume she will come looking for you?"

Angel didn't even skip a beat. "I assume so, too. But you know...women."

"Right," the creature chuckled. "Women. So! Business first or massacre?"

Several more beings of various shapes and sizes manifested around them, some out of thin air and others peering around the corners at them. Many of them whispered, "Massacre! Massacre!"

Angel glared at them all. "Business first," he said. "After is bad for digestion."

The creature inclined its head. "Quite right. Shall we walk? I would suggest finding seats in the parlor, but I believe the Spirit of Stench had already claimed the recliner..."

"Actually," Angel said, "take me to the cellar. I want to see the books Mr. Gaudet was fond of collecting. Tell me what you know on the way."

It turned out that the tiny creature was one of the first ensnared and, after 450 years under its oppression, knew quite a bit about the curse. How it began was all rumor, but he knew the most important facts: That the vengeance curse was what locked them all there, and would only be broken when its intended were dead-unless, of course, an appropriate counter curse was performed. The curse did indeed repeat horrors done to the victims, which, the creature commented, was particularly appropriate applied to a vampire, who couldn't die from just one victim's wounds.

"But it's missed," Angel pointed out. "I haven't even been targeted."

"Yes, curious, isn't it?" the creature said. "I have no idea what that's about. Perhaps the sorcerer died before finishing?"

"If that's the case," Angel said, "the curse might not be directed at me at all-or Darla," he quickly added. "Killing us might not break it."

"True…" the creature said uncertainly. "But your presence activated it. It's worth a try, killing you, anyway."

"Maybe it's you," Angel suggested, ducking his head a bit as they started down the stairs into the dark cellar. "Too much supernatural activity can throw things out of whack."

"Quite possible," the creature agreed. "We've never counted, but there are thousands of us by now…"

The cellar was dank and murky. Judith stumbled on the uneven steps she couldn't see and Angel caught her, muttering something about the clumsiness of humans as he guided her the rest of the way down. A large, slimy, glowing creature oozed along the ceiling of the cellar, giving off just enough light for her to see by when they reached the bottom. Behind them, curious demons packed the stairs, nudging (or occasionally killing) each other out of the way for a better view of them. Their way out was completely blocked. Judith swallowed nervously.

The cellar was full of wine shelves. How would they ever know which one hid the secret room? Angel ran his finger across the dusty bottles along one wall, stopped, and picked up one of the merlots, inspecting it with sharp yellow eyes.

"Is it just me," Angel asked, "or was André slacking in his duties? In my day, butlers were in charge of keeping the wine cellars clean and in top order."

Judith's stomach turned over and she glared at Angel. She knew he was acting the part (that conversation about acting flashed through her mind again), but did he have to do it so well?

"André didn't like the cellar," their guide said gleefully. "It gave him the creeps."

Angel grunted and put the bottle back. He turned on his heel. "So where is this secret room?"

There was a click on the other side of the room and one of the wine shelves rolled forward on hidden wheels. Angel moved toward it, but stopped and looked back at Judith with a raised eyebrow. He snapped his fingers and jerked his head, and she took the hint. Once (safely) by his side again, they moved toward the opening in the wall.

"I'm going to need some light…" Angel said quietly. Three torches on each of the walls of the room sprung to life. Angel sighed. "Torches… That's so clichéd…"

Angel and Judith entered the room, and Angel went straight to the bookcase in the far right corner. Judith edged further in, away from the demons now pressing into the doorway, snarling and grunting against each other for the best view. There were several more crashes and screams from upstairs and Judith prayed that they were not from her friends.

Judith looked around. There were several small wood desks against the walls that were interspersed with other shelves and tall chests of tiny drawers. Judith fingered the brass handle of one of the drawers nearest her and pulled delicately. A small puff of white powder rose up and she coughed. Judith jumped when the drawer snapped shut from her fingers and Angel growled beside her. "Don't do that," he said. "I like my food unpoisoned."

Judith swallowed and nodded. She caught Angel's golden eye and they shared a brief look that strangely helped her relax just a bit. She turned at a thud behind them: one of the larger demons had been stabbed in the back by another and lay dead in the doorway. She looked away.

Angel found the book he was looking for and let it drop onto an old wood podium near the cauldron in the center of the room (yes, a real cauldron). He leafed through it carelessly—so unlike how he treated his own books at home.

"You could help, you know," he said to Judith without looking at her. "If you want to stay alive a little longer."

"Help?" she asked.

Angel pointed to the second shelf from the top. "Far left. The first five are all Pierre Gaudet's."

Judith went over and picked out the one with a blue cover, then sat at one of the desks with it, hardly sure what she was looking for but nevertheless glad for the distraction. The snarling and grunting behind them intensified and several wine bottles smashed somewhere in the cellar.

"Could you tell them to be quiet?" Angel snarled.

"Apologies," the creature said. "We've been frozen under the curse for so long, it's hard to resist manifesting, despite the terrible crowding. I suppose we're used to it."

Judith looked at the creatures pressed against the doorframe. "Yet none of you are coming in here…the room may be small, but it's empty."

"Don't give them ideas," Angel said.

"It seems we can't," the creature replied, pressing its hand against an invisible wall.

Judith nodded to the dead monster on the floor, half in the room. "That one did."

"Death changes the rules." It glanced at Angel. "Just look at him."

Judith let that sink in a moment before turning back to her book.

The creature spoke again, this time to Angel, "So if I may ask, where did you get the idea about the fingers, because that was just-"

"Unholy inspiration," Angel growled deeply. "I'm concentrating."

"Yes, yes, how about I close the door? That should help. We'll be waiting… But just so you know, there are other living dead here beside yourself, and we are not patient."

Angel looked up incredulously. "We had a deal."

The creature's permanent grin widened. "Not all of us can be so civilized. I am only a spokesdemon, not a leader. The stipulation that we could kill you if you failed was in the agreement, if you recall, besides. Just do your best and I'm sure it will all work out. Only...do it quickly."

As soon as the door slid shut behind the demon (hindered slightly because they had to haul the dead one out of the way), Angel and Judith looked at each other. He was wearing his human face again, but her blood was still drying on his mouth and chin.

"Are you alright?" he asked quietly.

She stared at him a moment, but then turned back to her book. "Ask me after we get out of this mess."

Neither of them spoke again for what seemed like a long while. Angel finished searching his book and was well into the next one by the time Judith found something toward the back of hers.

"The Everlasting Curse of Vengeance," she read (she couldn't help it: in a slightly melodramatic tone, because the title practically begged for it), and Angel instantly peered over her shoulder.

"Let me see that…" He took the book from her carefully and held it up in the torchlight. "This is it," he said after a moment. "It has to be… Look how complex this is: This is a guy who knew what he was doing."

"I'm so pleased," Judith said dryly.

Angel ignored her and began muttering to himself as he read. "Holds the essences of the victims to the place they died...releases them to exact vengeance if the perpetrator ever returns…curse breaks upon death of perpetrators…"

Judith took a deep breath to calm herself. "So they're like ghosts."

"No, ghosts are stuck souls. The souls of the people that died here are long gone. This is worse: it's just the memory of how they died manifested into the victim's form…and all the anger that goes with it." He paused. "It is perfect for vampires. We didn't cut off any heads, and I'm pretty sure we left the hearts intact. If it hadn't gone wrong, I could have taken all of it and still survived." He glanced at her briefly and she caught a hint of regret so deep she almost felt for him. "Of course, we'd all still be stuck here, but surely one of those guys could figure out how to lift the curse if they had these books..."

Judith wrapped her arms around herself. "So what do we do?"

"Break the curse," Angel said, turning away and setting the book on the podium on top of the one he'd been looking at. "It's pretty easy."

"And unleash thousands of demons upon Avignon?"

Angel froze.

"Forgot about that, did you?"

Angel cleared his throat awkwardly and did not respond.

After a moment of silence, Judith sighed. "Aren't you glad you came tonight? We're trapped in a tiny underground room in a house no one can escape with two enemies out to kill us, and the only way we have of getting rid of one is releasing the other upon an entire city."

Angel still didn't respond, instead leafing through the book in front of him without seeming to see it. Outside the door, several more wine bottles smashed amidst furious snarls. If they waited long enough, the demons might just kill each other and save them the trouble of finding a solution…

We are not patient.

"Does your Palm work down here?" Angel asked.

"Why?"

"We might be able to communicate with Claire."

Judith frowned at him dubiously, but lifted her wrist and tapped her Palm bracelet on to check. "Why would you need to talk to her?" Not that Judith wasn't glad to realize that she might have a way of knowing if the rest of them were alright, but she seriously doubted that that was Angel's intent.

"I might have an idea…"

"It works," Judith told him, noting the faint connection. "What's your idea? More, 'Yes, I'm dangerous, but really, it works out in your favor'?"

Angel looked at her with something like incredulity, but in a less self-righteous way. Like he knew he deserved it but didn't want to deal with it. "None of this should be new, Judith," he said coolly. "When you first realized what I was, you threatened to kill me. You wouldn't have been wrong. But you also wouldn't have been right. We all live with the consequences of our choices. You're dealing with the consequences of yours, and I'm dealing with the consequences of mine."

Judith glanced away, a bit chastened. "The curse missed you," she pointed out.

"That wasn't what I meant," he said softly.

Silence fell for a moment as that settled in-he was talking about how he was beginning to lose her. And Judith couldn't say that he was wrong.

She couldn't also say that he was right.

She sighed. "What was your idea?"

Angel hesitated, and then strode back over to the bookshelf. After a second of searching, he pulled off a large black tome; the first one he'd looked through. "We open a portal and suck all the demons in it. They're hard to escape if you get one with a good pull."

Judith raised an eyebrow in his direction. "How is that ever going to work? Even logistically-speaking… You can't possibly open it wide enough to get all the demons in the entire mansion without pulling us in with it!"

"No," Angel agreed, "but it'll give us a chance out there. Look, do you have any better ideas?"

Judith frowned and crossed her arms.

Angel sighed and went back to his book. "The demon Srynka inhabits an entire dimension by himself and feeds from the sacrifices his followers send him. That would be a good one to open…"

"That's quite a large sacrifice," Judith commented, sitting back down in her chair. "What kind of reward will you get for it?"

"Nothing," Angel replied, not looking up. "Sacrifices are always human. These demons will just be a nice snack."

Judith pursed her lips. Normally she could have let the thought of human sacrifices slide by her in a detached way, but it was all adding up to be a little too much right now.

"Here it is…" Angel muttered. "We'll need to triangulate; inconvenient but no surprise there…" Angel looked up. "Last chance for any better ideas."

Judith sighed and shook her head since she had none.

"Alright. Text Claire; see what's happening with them."

Judith sent the message. In the minute it took for Claire to reply with an update on their situation, the door to the room banged impatiently.

Angel cracked the door open and exchanged a few angry words with the tiny pale demon. After Angel snapped the door shut again, Judith said quietly,

"Claire says that the demons have broken through Alejandro's block and they're materializing everywhere. They're backed in a corner, but Alejandro is keeping some sort of 'weird bubble thing' around them."

Angel quirked an eyebrow. "That's more than I gave him credit for…"

Judith glared at him, but said nothing about it. Instead, she said, "She says he's getting very tired."

Angel nodded once. "Tell her I'm going to send Julian directions for this spell. He's not to start until I say so and he's not to stop for any reason."

"Why Julian?" Judith asked as she drafted the message. "He was less trustful of you than Viggo."

"Exactly," Angel said. "I liked him."

Judith let out a deep breath, resolving to ponder that sentiment later if they got out of this whole thing. Angel took a picture of the page in the book for the spell they would be using and asked for Julian's number, which Judith gave him.

"Alright," Angel said after he'd sent it. "Come here, I need to show you how to do this."

"Me?" Judith said, surprised.

"Yes, I told you: we need to triangulate. We'll have to work with all three dimensions, since you and Julian are on different floors, but it shouldn't affect the spell. Actually, it might help…"

"What are you going to do?"

"I'll do the spell from the second floor. I can tell the demons out there that I'm going to break the curse, but it must be done from where it originated."

"How do you know where that is?"

"I don't," he replied. "But neither do they. Come here…"

Judith stood up nervously and approached the podium. Angel walked her through the steps, which were considerably simpler than the last time she'd had to do something like this on her own. Angel then found a lighter in one of the drawers and lit the half-burned candle that sat on the stand of Judith's podium, and went to the shelves to get a candle for himself. He slipped the taper in his pocket, muttering something about how he was mostly sure that it was okay that Julian didn't have a candle.

Angel turned around. "Okay… I'm going to go. Barricade the door after I leave… Dead things can still come in. And wait for my signal to start."

Judith nodded nervously. Angel stepped forward to stand in front of her and they caught eyes.

"I'll come back for you."

"I know."

He hesitated.

His skin was pale, even in the warm yellow torchlight, though his cheeks glowed with a faint yet vibrant pink tinge from the little bit of her blood flowing through his body. There was still a tiny dark red drop at the corner of his mouth. When Judith looked into his eyes, she saw a cold expanse of knowledge so deep it could kill a person. She saw a sadness so sharp it could shred a soul. She saw a fierceness so jaded it could slash through a psyche.

Judith wasn't sure what made her do it. Her stomach turned sickeningly to look at him and know what he'd done. The term vampire was no longer abstract; it was concrete and terrifying, and in the face of it-of him-she felt like a child cowering from shadows and being told to stand up straight and be a big girl.

She was tired of it. She was tired of being reminded that being a vampire meant an esophagus dangling by a few fleshy threads, empty finger sockets, and the eyes of someone she once knew rolling on the floor like marbles. She was tired of deceiving herself into believing that it could be anything different.

She was tired of thinking about how she felt and tired of trying to stop feeling before it got much worse.

Perhaps that was what made her do it: in that split second of hesitation before he left, Judith kissed him. Passionately.

Angel recovered from the surprise quickly and kissed her back with equal fervor. The tang of her own blood still lingered in his mouth; its sharpness bit her tongue and her stomach churned with mild nausea, but she did not release him; she pulled him in deeper.

He tried to say her name against her lips-maybe in protest, since it certainly wasn't the right time for this-but his hands pressed her hips harder against his and her name turned into a moan. She broke the kiss just enough to let herself breathe; their lips still brushed each other unintentionally and Angel's breath panted into her mouth the way he only ever breathed when they were about to take each other.

There was a brief moment of sensible panic when Judith realized that she should turn away; that they were all teetering on the crumbling edge of death and any second's delay could push them all over. Her friends' faces flashed through her mind; their looks of horror and terror as Angel bit into her neck; she remembered how the blood tickled her chest…

Judith unworked the front of Angel's trousers, furious in both speed and anger at herself. Angel tried to say her name again against her lips, and she wanted to gently reply, I know, like this might be their last time together and this was actually a deeply romantic moment: the moment that, if they survived, they might look back on as the first time they both realized they'd fallen madly in love. The kind of moment they could make into a movie.

Judith opened her mouth against his and realized that what would come out would be something more like, I don't care. Urgent and more accurate, but could still hold similar meaning. Instead what she said was, with her hand between his legs,

"Just fuck me."

She felt Angel tense against her-even Judith couldn't remember the last time she'd used that word-and for a brief moment, Judith thought he wouldn't. Judith thought that maybe, he was in a better place and knew that they had people to save, themselves to save. Maybe, he still had that self-control that she so admired him for. But then, he was pushing her back against the table, already working the long skirt of her dress upward.

After all, since when had their arrangement been about stopping?

The table was splintery and narrow, and the sandstone against her back where her dress dipped low was rough and crumbled against her with each hard thrust. Neither of them tried to be quiet: any demons outside that might hear would think Angel was just having his way with her, when really-Judith knew it even then-it was more the other way around.

Judith shifted the angle of her hips so that each impact hurt a little, as such selfishness should. Later, she would ignore the fact that the angle took Angel's pelvis away from the sweet spot he was hitting, prolonging the whole encounter. Harder, she told him, and then bit her lip painfully when he did.

Judith expected it to be familiar; a comfort she could hold onto when everything else was crumbling around her: her life, her relationships with her friends, with Sam… Who she thought Angel was. The vampire that was beneath was now on top. Judith ran her fingers along the line on his scalp that always made him shudder, but he purred instead. Judith slid a hand between their heaving chests, found his hard nipple under his shirt, and pinched it, expecting his moan in her ear. Instead, his entire body-including the part that was inside her-trembled with a pleasurable growl, and she cried out as excitement flared unexpectedly in her pelvic region. The slight pain of their angle abated briefly.

She pulled in close to his neck, lingering so that her breaths brushed his skin in time with their rhythm, she felt a familiar primal shiver rush up Angel's spine and she wondered, as she always unconsciously did when this happened, if his self-control would slip and he would bite her. For a moment, for the first time, she believed he would.

He did not. Judith let her hips rotate back where they were and arched into him in the way she had learned over the past few months that their bodies fit best together. Finally, that felt right, even if nothing else did.

There was another crash and a scream somewhere above them. Judith screamed, too, as she finished, and it was nearly too much. After she could breathe again, her head spun with out-of-control dizziness (maybe she was hyperventilating, but she needed the air), and her stomach swam with renewed nausea. Her way back down was less of a pleasant glide and more of a heart-stopping fall. Instead of a familiar fullness to carry her blissfully back to earth, she found a void, and the void was somewhere in the region of her heart. She closed her eyes and gripped Angel's shoulders to steady herself and leaned her head back against the sandstone, her breath shuddering, while Angel finished, which was not long after.

He paused to catch his breath, too, though he didn't even need it. Perhaps his head was spinning in the same kind of vortex that hers was. Perhaps his heart was just as empty.

After a moment, she felt his tongue, wet and uncharacteristically warm, on the drying trail of blood from the bite on her neck. He followed the path over her collarbone and lingered over her pounding heart. Then she felt his hands move the fabric of her dress aside and cup her breast for a better angle as he followed the trail down her cleavage as far as he could. A vampire's way of cleaning up. Judith kept her eyes closed. Her breaths still gasped under his tongue.

When he was done, Angel pulled out and Judith heard the brief rustle of clothing. She could feel him staring at her for a moment, and then turned (on his heel, she knew) when the sound of another crash outside roused him.

The door slid open, then closed, and in the silence that followed, Judith cried.