Eyes squeezed shut and sorrow filling his soul, Angel prepared for the worst. That's when he felt Charlie's embrace rather than her deadly claws. She swooped him up, her long, flowing black hair wrapping around them both, and pushed with her feet hard, lifting them into the air. Charlie bounded over the large fence separating the warehouse from the cement factory next door. Landing with cloven hooves clicking on hard concrete, bare from her missing canvas shoes, lost at some point inside the warehouse, Charlie jumped again to land up on a walkway between two of the concrete mixing towers at the side of the lot. She pushed Angel against one of them, hiding him from the growing FBI presence at the warehouse, and scurried up the side of the round mixing tower to take position upside down. Her demon eyes, throbbing in the dark, looked at him and then over the fence next door.
Angel saw her sway in a predatory dance, and despite the fact he was still alive, fear still cautioned him to choose his tone carefully. "Charlie?"
Red eyes and glowing yellow pupils looked back at him, but this time there were tears wetting her demon face. She didn't move, but he saw her shoulders shake. Concern stepped in front of his fear: "Are you okay?"
She stopped him with a shake of her head; her demon voice came out soft and sad: "You saved my life by taking a life."
"Yes." Angel agreed as his fear disappeared. Charlie's rage wasn't at him, but at herself.
"I forced you."
Angel shook his head hard, emphasizing his words, "No, you did not. The situation did. I was not going to let him kill you."
"You didn't tranquilize him, though?" Charlie's question had an unspoken 'why?' attached.
Angel pulled out his trank gun, showing that the barrel was busted, and gave a humorless smirk. "I didn't really have a choice."
Charlie sniffled a few times, trying to stall an outburst of crying. Angel reached up with his free hand, stretching as far as he could. Charlie reached down and placed her claws gently against his palm. Angel whispered encouragingly, "The girls are safe—all of them, Charlie. You did good."
Shaking her head, Charlie gazed back to the warehouse. "Not all of them, Angel. I found one girl dead. Her throat was cut, and her body was burned as if she'd been lit on fire."
"Jesus," Angel whispered. They parted hands as he shared her look at the warehouse. "How?"
"One of the girls mentioned a monster, and that was before anyone saw me. There's someone we didn't get. Someone who has power. Power like Cassie's. To witchcraft."
"There's nothing we can about that, right now. The kids are safe, and we can't be discovered." Angel turned his head up to Charlie. "Let's go. We can figure that out after we're safely away from here."
Nodding in agreement, Charlie wiped her eyes to clear her vision and let go of the tower. Angel watched her come down upon him again, but there was no fear in his heart this time. He opened his arms for her to wrap her own around him, and with all her strength, she pushed and launched them some forty yards from the tower. Landing between two parked semi-trucks, they worked their way through the darkness back to Cassie's car, parked four blocks away. They saved lives tonight, but now they faced something larger than anything they'd ever faced before, and Angel knew that if Charlie existed and had this kind of power, what else was out there waiting for them?