"Angel..." she said thoughtfully, pausing in her dance and opening her dark eyes, gazing down the street at him. The demon howled, and she glanced back over her shoulder at it, smiling. "Isn't she lovely? I raised her all by myself, Angel, aren't you proud?"
"Banish it, Dru," he said, throat raw and sore from the smoke in the air and choking back sobs. Bodies were scattered up and down the street, tossed aside by the demon as she followed her mistress from the coast to central L.A. Some of the bodies had names, names he knew. He'd cry for them later. "And all its friends."
"Don't call my pretty pet an it, Angel-beast. She's a proper lady, and she's a mummy." She was smiling now, the cracked innocent smile he'd seen when Darla rose. "They're not her friends, they're her babies."
"They're killing everyone." The little demons had wings, and as they flew over the city they breathed fire and spit acid down below them. There were thousands of them, soaring over Los Angeles in flocks that blocked out the sun. "Get rid of them, and I'll kill you quickly, Dru."
She shrugged, graceful and unhurried, and lifted her skirts clear of the ashy street again. She'd returned to the elaborate dresses of her own time; Dru's jaunt into modernity had been short-lived. She'd probably abandoned it the same time she went back to raising demons. "Oh, but Angel, they sing such lovely songs."
"I can't believe you actually got a raising to work." He stared at the giant monster, bigger than a city bus, now leaning up against the burned-out shell of a building and huffing softly, waiting for her mistress to speak. "You always were a miserable excuse for a witch, Dru."
"No need to be insulting, Angel-beast." She frowned at him, but it faded and her eyes went wide again. "Oh. Oh, lovely." She smiled. "We're to be a family again, you know. Daddy's on his way home."
"Daddy's never coming back again, Drusilla." He pointed the sword at her, trying to summon up again the feelings of triumph and exultation he'd had only that morning, when Wesley's scrolls had suddenly gone from nonsense to sense. "This is it. This is the final showdown, the one particular apocalypse Wolfram & Hart set up eons ago. You were stupid enough to walk right into their plan. And I'm on the right side, and my cause is just, so I'm walking out of this one a human again." He choked back something- longing, a sob. "Wesley said so. He read it."
Her white brow furrowed slightly. "Wesley?"
"You know. The nasty little man with the big gun?" The hand holding the sword trembled with rage, and he lowered it. "Your pet ripped his face off."
"Ah!" She wagged her finger at him. "He was naughty. He said terrible things to Princess."
"Why do you keep coming back here, Dru?" he asked, suddenly weary. He rested the tip of the sword on the ground and closed his eyes, just for a moment. "Why won't you just leave me alone?"
"I want to be a family again," she said stubbornly. "I want it to be like it was. It's awful being alone."
"Well, that can't happen, Drusilla, because Darla is dust and your pet cut Spike's head off." He deliberately kept his eyes closed so they wouldn't move to the patch of dust, lost among the ashes, that had been the last of his soldiers to fall.
She shrugged. "When a girl's husband dies, she goes back home to her daddy. And they take care of each other...he needs a woman to care for him if mummy's gone..."
"It's not going to happen, Dru!" he shouted, opening his eyes and lifting the sword again. He glared at her, standing there in her stained white lace in front of the burning ruins of Los Angeles, and started running.
She jumped back lightly, laughing and clapping her hands, but he raced past her across the blood-slick pavement to where the demon rested, growling to itself as it chewed on one of its own injured young. He saw the illustration in Wesley's book in his mind, the careful "X" drawn by some ancient cleric exactly where the sword had to fall. He aimed, he struck, the monster screamed. It crumbled into chalky gray dust, and more fell from the sky as the baby demons died with it.
White light exploded in his eyes, and he fell to his knees. The sword clattered away unnoticed as he gasped in agony. It felt like he was being set on fire from the inside out, like he was burning away to nothing and coming back together again in an instant, and then it went from very bright to very dark and all the sounds of the world faded away to a dull roar.
Someone was laughing.
He could hear that distinctly, over the dull roar that he realized was blood pumping in his ears. The pain in his chest was a heartbeat, the horrible taste in his throat from breathing in the fouled air. Elation and disgust warred for a moment before elation won- it had worked. Wesley was right at the last. Shanshu.
He was human.
The laughter continued.
He opened his eyes and tried to stand, but he was too weak, muscles and bones not yet used to their new state. He looked over his shoulder.
Drusilla was the one laughing, dancing lightly around the charred patches on the pavement as she walked towards him. She reached down and gently cupped his face in her hands.
"Liam," she said, smiling down at him like a painting of a saint. He stared up into her huge dark eyes, stunned and bewildered, the fragile mortality of his body suddenly becoming a danger instead of a blessing as the meaning of Dru's vision became clear.
"We've gone back to the beginning," she told him, still smiling broadly as her face shifted from human to demon. "Just as I saw it. I told the silly Angel how it would happen." She bent down and sank her fangs into his neck as he struggled feebly, gasping "No" and willing weakened muscles to run, to fight, to resist.
"I told him that Daddy was going to come back." She straightened and ran her knife-sharp nails across her forearm. "And I shall be the mummy..." She pressed the slowly-dripping flesh to his mouth. "Mummy and daughter both, and then perhaps Daddy and I shall find a baby..."
His vision went black and gray. The roaring in his ears rose to a peak that drowned out everything but her whisper.
"...and it will be so lovely, to be a family again..."
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