within an inch of his pathetic life. The only thing that stopped her
was Angel. He needed him alive and coherent for their plan to work.
Buffy dragged Linwood into the now arrived elevator and drug him to
the parking lot where Angel was waiting in the car.
Once Buffy was in, phase one of their plan was completed. Now it was
on to phase two.
Buffy was tying Linwood up in Angel's burnt apartment as Angel was
gone to get things. Lorne had decided that while he didn't know what
was going on, he was going to try to talk Angel out of whatever he
was planning to do.
"Angel, I know this isn't easy for you, but you have to hear it.
Even if you somehow managed to get inside, finding Connor would be
like looking for a needle in a haystack the size of China!"
"Needles. I should have thought of that." He said to himself as if
he blocked out the rest of Lorne's speech.
"We just don't have the resources to conjure up that much power." He
said as he entered Angel's room and saw Buffy's work on Linwood.
"Oh, I think we do." Angel calmly argued as he approached Buffy and
set the spindle down on the table.
"Angel? Who is that?" Lorne asked wearily.
"Linwood Murrow. Division President of Special Projects at Wolfram
and Hart. And you are?" he asked Lorne.
"Deeply troubled." Lorne replied dryly.
"Once the firm finds out what you've done-" he directed the threat
toward Angel who actually hasn't touched him yet.
"They'll kill you before they kill me." He said as he still was
looking for potential torture objects.
"Angel, this isn't some slimy demon you've got here, he's a human."
Lorne tried to reason that he shouldn't be doing this. He looked at
Linwood and finished, "Marginally anyway. But still, this isn't
going to bring Connor back."
"He better hope it does." Buffy finally said she watched her Angel
rummaged through drawers and pulled out steak knives, barbeque fork,
and a razor blade.
"Do you even know what you're doing?" Lorne asked Buffy who was the
last person on this earth he believed would ever have anything to do
with this sort of way of getting information.
Linwood piped in, "At last count the charges were kidnapping,
assault and battery, attempted murder-" he was cut off by Angel
setting the tray of torture toys in front of Linwood who saw the
assortment of instruments.
"None of which I intend to press. In fact, don't let's "press"
anything, shall we? You want to find your son? I can guarantee the
full force and faith of Wolfram and Hart will be at your disposal."
He stopped speaking as Buffy handed Angel the spindle and he brought
it within centimeters of Linwood's eye.
"How do I get my hands on Sahjhan?" Angel asked carefully.
"If you'll just hit 3 on my speed dial-" he started to say as Buffy
moved in to take the cell phone out of his pocket. Angel didn't move
a muscle as Buffy hit 3 and waited for it to ring.
When it did, she put the phone to Linwood's ear to talk to the
person on the other end.
"Lilah? Linwood. I'm sending over some clients and I want you to
listen very carefully because I have explicit instructions as to how
I want you to deal with them." He paused for a moment and looked up
at Angel and Buffy. "Give them anything they want."
Fred and Gunn were standing in the middle of Holtz's old camp
talking with Justine.
"Y'all livin' here together, sharin' everything. Except takin' out
the trash, I guess. I imagine losin' Holtz was like losin' a father�
or worse." She finished as she looked up at Justine and then thought
suddenly, "The trash!"
Gunn gave his girl a strange look as to what she was talking about
and she said, "I'll explain later."
"Just get the hell out of here!" Justine yelled at them to leave.
Lilah was very reluctant to taking Angel and Little Miss Time Bomb
anywhere, but Linwood had orders for her, and she had to follow them.
Angel made sure that he always had a hand on Buffy. He knew how much
Buffy wanted payback for earlier, but she had to wait, and she hated
to wait.
"Kidnapping Linwood. You're really steppin' up to it. And the White
Room? I mean, they don't just talk about it. God, the White Room."
She was amazed and thrilled. "I was here three years before I even
heard of it. Did he tell you what was in it?" she curiously asked.
"Answers." Buffy filled in.
Angel followed the instructions Linwood had told him and waited for
the big silver button to appear. When it did, he simply touched it
and it was like reality was fading all around them.
When they entered, as it was to be expected, the whole room was
white. All three looked around to see what they would be looking for.
In the middle of the room was a little girl sitting on a chair
wearing a red dress who looked to be about nine or ten years old.
Her whole normality and demeanor was just plain out creepy.
"Hello." She said. She survey's her visitors and recognizes
them. "Angel. Lilah. Buffy."
She looks at Buffy's hands and notices that she's wearing red nail
polish.
"Your fingernails are pretty. I love red." She giggles and then
looks at Angel. "You have a taste for red too. And revenge. It's so
much more fun than forgiveness don't you think? So, what's up?" she
asked nonchalantly.
"A demon named Sahjhan has taken my son." He angrily spat as he had
to repeat the heartbreaking news.
"Ahh, does he want his little baby back?" she mocked.
This time, both Angel and Buffy moved in toward the little girl in
menacing steps.
"Baby's gone. You want Sahjhan. As you know, nowadays you can walk
right through him. In the past, they were something different. They
were all about torture and death. You can relate. Well, they caused
a lot of trouble. Don't get me wrong, I like trouble, but I hate
chaos. So, we changed them." She filled in the blank spaces to the
mystery story.
"You made them immaterial." Buffy put together.
"Smart girl." She replied sarcastically.
"How do you capture them?" Angel asked impatiently, not wanting to
dilly dally any longer.
"There's your special urn� but you don't want him captured. You want
something you can sink your teeth into." She giggled slightly at her
own pun. "You know these things always come with a price. Kill her."
She looked at Lilah and waited for her order to be carried out.
Buffy started to move in as well as Angel. Lilah started to grow
nervous as both of these people with her really did want to see her
dead.
Angel put his hands on her neck, ready to snap it at a moment's
notice but the little girl laughed and said, "That's good for now. I
can see why they respect you. Both of you." Angel let Lilah go and
Buffy took her place next to Angel once again. "Now as for your
demon made flesh� big ritual, it's all here." She said as a piece of
paper entered Angel's hand.
"Can't wait to see how it turns out. You have a website?" she asked
as the three people faded away in the room, just like they'd
arrived.
Gunn and Fred were notebook diving in the trash dumpsters outside of
Wesley's apartment.
"Okay, throw me away." Fred instructed Gunn as he lifted her up and
helped her climb into the disgusting, smelly dumpster. Fred looked
around and saw something to which she muttered to Gunn, "Someone ate
that?"
"You find anything?" Gunn asked.
"Yep." Fred cheered as she lifted one of Wes' notebooks from the
trash and gathered the other findings that he had thrown away.
A couple of hours later, Gunn and Fred were sitting in Wes'
apartment sorting through all the material that was literally laid
right out in front of them.
"He kept separate diaries for all the major players. Darla. Connor.
And Angel. He's frightened." She surveyed as she read a passage from
a page in his diary. "He says, `It can't be coming!' `It can't be
true.' Surely it's got to do with a prophecy, but I don't know where
it's gonna-"
"I do." Gunn's eyebrows raised as he looked at the single sheet of
paper in front of him and read it. He handed it to Fred and she
couldn't believe it either.
"The Father will Kill the Son." She read.
"Wes thought that Angel-" Gunn stopped himself as all the puzzle
pieces came together to make the picture hole again.
"Was going to kill Connor." Fred chimed in. She looked through some
other passages that Wesley had written down and it all came together
in her head. "That's the prophecy. He tried to disprove it, he
checked everything the commentaries, the mystics, and he always came
back to square one. He was trying to protect Connor from Angel. We
have to find him and tell him."
"So Angel can what? Forgive Wesley for taking his son and handing
him to his mortal enemy?" Gunn asked sarcastically.
"Maybe begin to forgive." Fred's calming neutral voice filled the
room.
At the Hotel�
"Angel, think about this!" Lorne tried and tried again to dissuade
his friend and new friend from doing something that they would later
regret. "There has to be some other way."
"There is no other way." Lilah piped in with her usual catty banter.
"Not speaking would look really good on you right now." Buffy
threatened.
"How's that?" he asked Buffy who studied the pentagram and shrugged
her shoulders.
"Looks about right to me."
Angel looked over to Lilah and demanded of her in a very Angelus
like tone, "What's next?"
"Human blood."
All eyes looked to Linwood who was still tied up tightly in his
chair from before. Buffy walked over and grabbed the dagger off of
the counter where Angel had set it and stalked toward the helpless
Linwood. The dagger still balanced neutrally in her hand swayed to
fit her palm and sliced it open.
She walked to the center of the pentagram and squeezed out her
life's essence.
Angel steps back and reads the Latin words on the paper of the spell
and grabs his trusty axe to be ready for Sahjhan when he arrives.
Lights flashed everywhere and a swirl around the pentagram took
form, but when the mystical effects were over, there was no Sahjhan
to be found. Anywhere.
"Where is he?" Angel shouted as he pointed the tip of the axe at his
present enemy.
"They had to find him. If he wasn't where the spell was cast, then
where in the hell was hey and why weren't they informed that this
might happen?" Buffy's mind wandered as she came up with a solution
as to what exactly they should do to their `guest' next.
Across town, Sahjhan had appeared and had already started his old
ways of creating destruction and chaos.
Angel dragged Linwood up the steps one by one as he called for help
from his employee. "Lilah!"
When she didn't answer to his pleas, he tried to reason with Angel
and reminded him of their deal. Maybe then he wouldn't kill him like
he had planned, all thanks to that blonde slayer who kept feeding
Angel's innate sense of torture.
"Angel, we had a deal! I gave you everything you asked for-what more
do you want?"
"I WANT MY SON BACK!" he screamed as he carried on dragging Linwood
up the stairs one by one.
"Hold it! Flag on the play. The firm's tech just registered a sever
bio-plasmic disturbance on Taber and National, same time as the
spell." Lilah informed everyone.
"Sahjhan?" Buffy wondered out loud.
"Whatever it was flipped a two ton truck like a Tonka." Lilah
grimaced.
Angel happily let Linwood go and watched as he fell down the flight
of stairs he'd been carried up.
Fred and Gunn rushed into the hotel as Angel was coming back down.
"Angel!" Fred called, relief flooded her body at seeing him. Now he
could finally be told the truth. "We need to talk."
"Not now!" He yelled but Fred didn't flinch at all. He motioned to
move around her, but she just stood in his way again. "Fred!"
"There's something you need to know before the-"
He ran past her and she yelled, "The father will kill the son!" to
which he stopped dead in his tracks to. Slowly, he turned around to
face his friends and the wide eyes of Buffy.
It took them a few minutes before they explained everything that
they think went down with Wesley and the kidnapping.
"It's a lie. I'd never hurt Connor."
"How can you be sure?" Fred softly asked him.
"I'd never hurt someone I care about. Now move." He quietly ordered
her to move or he might be forced to move her himself.
As he left, he was attacked by a hoard of regular people trying to
fight him but was easily dispatched. He heard an arrow being shot
and was caught by Buffy who had joined his side in fighting.
They left the garden and Angel was hit by the woman with the
crossbow who happen to be Justine.
Buffy hit her a few times, feeling better after having to hit
something, "He's not your boyfriend. Find someone else to smack you
around."
They both walked away, leaving Justine crouched on the street lying
there, like a piece of garbage, and she was. The thought hit her as
she heard more people start to near her and she jumped in Wes'
stolen car and drove off. But not before Gunn and Fred found out her
little secret of having stolen the ex-watcher's vehicle.
"Let's go." Gunn said as they got in his truck and followed Justine
to her lair.
Once the two pair reached Justine and Holtz's old lair, they saw her
sitting on top of a wooden desk with a far off look in her eyes.
"Where's Wes?" Gunn demanded as they busted into the room.
"He's not coming back." She simply said, talking about Holtz, but
sounding like something different to the other two in the room.
"What?" Gunn asked disbelieving.
"It was all lies. All lies. He just wanted that damn kid. To punish
Angel." Justine still off in her own world said.
"I'm talking about Wesley! You stole his car, that's how we found
you. Where is he?" Gunn demanded again, not letting his anger fade
for a moment.
"We just want to hear his side," Fred tried to reason, being the
middleman. Or in her case, middle woman.
"His side? That's kinda funny. He sacrificed everything to make sure
that kid was safe."
"By helping you and your boss take him to hell?" Fred asked not
believing a word of it.
"Your friend's innocent." Justine reassured them.
"Is he still alive? Where is he?" Fred ordered as her own rising
fire inside her started to grow higher.
"Heaven� Hell� I slit his throat." She admitted.
There was a beat of silence and then suddenly, `THWACK'! Justine
clutched her cheek as she stared at her attacker. Fred's hand stung
like hell after smacking the bitch.
After Justine started to attack Gunn and Fred, Gunn held the upper
hand the whole time. "You're takin' us to him. He better still be
alive."
"You call that a fight?" A new voice came from outside the temple
like room. "Let me show you how we used to do it."
Gunn and Fred stared off as they got their first look at Sahjhan.
Sahjhan looked over at Justine and in a mocking sincere voice
greeted, "Hi Justine. I remember you. You tried to cut off my head."
Then he made his move. He took out Justine, throwing her across the
room and said to himself, "God how I missed this. You know what else
I missed? Gravity, friction, smashing things to pieces, and you know
what else?" He asked as he had Gunn by the throat, ready to throw
him away.
"Your brain?" Buffy quipped as she and Angel walked into the ancient
setting.
Sahjhan spotted Angel behind the tiny blonde and ignored her
jab. "Angel. I guess I have you to thank for the whole, mortal coil
thing, huh?"
"You take me to Quor Toth and we'll call it even? How does that
sound?" Angel asked as he circled the demon in front of him.
"Couldn't even if I wanted to." Sahjhan told him honestly. "I'm only
allowed to open that place, exactly once. That's why I chose it."
"You're lying." Buffy called him out.
"No, that I'm telling the truth about. Whole universe could go
kaplooie. Bad for me, bad for our country." Sahjhan said in a
civilized tone.
"So, what are you lying about?" Buffy asked.
"Read any good prophecies lately?" he chuckled at his plan.
"You wrote the prophecy?" Fred couldn't believe this turn of events.
"More of a `re-write' actually. You're not really my enemy. You're
in my home and I'm gonna kick your ass, but you were never the
point."
"It was Connor." Buffy stated the obvious.
"Boy, can't get one past you, can I? Oh, wait, I already did. You
know what it's like to see your name in a true prophecy?" he was
going to continue when Buffy chimed in again.
"Yeah, I do. But prophecies don't always mean what they say. I was
prophesized to die by the hands of the Master, I did, but I was
revived. Thus I fulfilled the prophecy, but am still living."
"But you planted false prophecies to make sure that would happen.
That Angel would kill his son� and Wesley believed them." Fred
surmised.
"Thank God he had some spine. Holtz was useless. He just wanted
revenge, and thought that takin' your kid would be the epitome of
vengeance. If he had just killed the damn thing when it was still in
it's mother we could have avoided all of this-" he was cut off by
Angel vamping out and going for Sahjhan.
Both Angel and Buffy were fighting Sahjhan and equally holding their
own. With both of them there, it was harder for Sahjhan to fight
both of them. He was starting to waver when Buffy lost her focus for
a split second and Sahjhan tossed her away like she was a faulty
credit card offer.