| Title: Blood and Water Author: Ruth Hanna Chapter 14: Unholy Alliance Not all Hawthorne Business Park's units were obviously numbered, and locating lot 318 proved to be more time consuming than Kate had anticipated. Eventually, more out of luck than planning, she stumbled across a door marked 325 and was able to work backwards until by a process of logical deduction she found it. The warehouse appeared just as empty as its neighbors. Kate stopped the car and got out. Opening the trunk, she took out her newly-acquired crossbow and a supply of spare bolts. For good measure, she slipped into her pockets several of what she thought of as her grenades - kids' water bombs filled with Holy Water. Walking around the outside of the warehouse in the evening sun holding the bow and with bulging pockets, she felt foolish, but safer. She walked past a succession of blacked-out windows before finding the warehouse's back entrance. The lock appeared to have been recently forced, and the door stood slightly ajar. She held the crossbow up in a ready-stance, and wished that the damn thing was as small and light as her sidearm. Then she pushed open the door and slipped in. It was hot inside - a whole day of sunshine baking the unit's metal roof had seen to that. There was a faint, unpleasantly fetid smell in the air. Kate swung the bow around in a wide arc, searching for any signs of movement and waiting for her eyes to become accustomed to the dimness. She saw nothing, and after a moment she moved away from the door. She checked several storerooms, finding nothing more incriminating than empty boxes and shreds of packing plastic. She saw nothing to indicate any kind of business being carried on, and she was just beginning to think she was in the wrong place after all when one of the empty boxes she tried to kick aside turned out to be full. Kate stifled an exclamation and bent down to examine the box. She ripped off the tape sealing down the lid and opened it. She lifted out one of the objects inside and squinted at it in the gloom. It was a bottle of mineral water. Still Life Spring Water. Kate blinked, and replaced the bottle in the box. She stood up and began to make a quick but thorough search of the room. A stack of boxes by the far wall contained supermarket own-brand water, and there was a thick sheaf of printed Still Life labels sitting on top of the table by the door, awaiting application. She found an opaque, unmarked bottle which, when she uncorked it and sniffed quickly across the neck, smelt strongly of chemicals. The room was also well-stocked with a number of items whose significance escaped her - chalk, candles, and a large selection of what seemed to be dried herbs. Well, she could worry about those in the morning, when she came back with a search warrant. Kate knew her understanding of magic was limited, but she recognized a scam when she saw one. And, if the bottle she had lifted contained silver nitrate, as she was confident it did, a potentially lethal scam at that. She heard a noise outside the room and flattened herself against the inside wall. The come-back-in-the-morning plan, she reminded herself grimly, depended to a large extent on making it to sunrise alive. The noise resolved itself into two whispering voices, whose owners came to a stop directly outside the storeroom. Kate waited, hoping they would decide to move on. The door began to open. If there were two of them, Kate knew at close quarters she wouldn't have time to fire the crossbow at the first and reload it before the second attacked her. But she didn't need to kill them. She just needed to get outside, into the evening sunlight. She dropped the bow as the first vampire came through the door. Reaching both hands into her jacket pockets simultaneously, she pulled out the water bombs and threw them. Then she dived for the door, pushing the nearest vampire away from her as she went, and running past the other as the water hit him in the face. She was halfway out of the room when the vamp nearest the door grabbed her and pulled her back in. He didn't seem to be in pain. In fact, he didn't seem to be anything more serious than mildly perturbed. "I'm all wet," he said peevishly, in an English accent. Kate stared. "Wesley?" "Detective Lockley?" The other man, an African-American teen, picked himself up off the floor. "'Detective'? Oh, terrific. Supervamps and now the LAPD. Isn't my night improving by leaps." * * * "...So we believe that the Brethren are here in L.A, and that they are intent on wiping out the city's indigenous vampire population, then moving in and taking over." Wesley concluded his explanation by taking off his glasses and polishing them with a small cloth. He was sitting on an empty crate in the storeroom while opposite him Kate kept the only entrance covered with the crossbow. Gunn had gone to scout the route back out of the building, giving Wesley a few minutes to brief Kate. Dryly, she said, "Sounds like a worthwhile endeavor to me. They should have applied for a small business loan." Wesley looked at her, trying to decide if she was being serious. "They're using the human population as a vector to achieve their goals. People are dying. Children are..." She held up a hand. "Relax, Wesley. I'm not gonna weep for any dead vampires, but I'm not advocating poisoning little kids either. We'll shut this down." "Well, good. Because the Brethren are a much more fearsome proposition than the common or garden vampire." "Yay," said Kate faintly. She switched the crossbow from her right hand to her left, and stretched the free arm, wincing. "Well, this just rocks. This morning I had a vampire throwing up in the back of my car, and this evening I'm holed up inside a vampire nest. There was a time when demons didn't feature quite so prominently in my routine." She looked at Wesley and smiled thinly. Wesley said, "Angel is very sick." The smile vanished, and her eyes flicked away from Wesley and back to the door. "Did I ask how he was? I don't think so." "I know you didn't. I'm telling you. Kate, whatever you say, you helped him this morning. That makes me think..." "Well it shouldn't," she interrupted sharply. "I wouldn't leave a dog to die in the street. And I already told you, I'm not going to cry for any dead vampires." The door began to open. Wesley picked up his stake and took up a position in the shadows next to it, while Kate transferred the bow back to her right hand. They both relaxed when Gunn entered. "All clear. I think we managed not disturb anyone's beauty sleep. I found the steps to the basement - that's probably where they are." Wesley checked his watch. Encountering Kate meant that they had spent much longer rewiring the warehouse than they had intended. "It's almost dusk. The nest will be waking up soon. We need to get out of here." "And get back up," said Kate. Gunn grinned. "We got back up. My people." "Your people? You have people?" Kate looked at Wesley, apparently unconvinced. "He has people?" "He has people," said Wesley. "Exceptionally well armed people." As if in confirmation, Gunn's radio crackled. He unclipped it from his belt and raised it. "This is Crossbearer." It was Cloud. "Gunn, are you okay? You've been in there way too long. We're getting worried out here." "It's okay, Cloud, we're on our way out." "There's an LAPD car parked four units down. It wasn't there earlier." "Yeah, I know about it." Gunn glanced towards Kate: "It's cool. Meet me at the back entrance in three minutes. If we're not there, come in." "Check. Dustbuster out." Gunn turned off the radio, then turned to Wesley and Kate. "Let's go get ourselves some safety in numbers." Kate nodded. "Works for me." Quietly, they retraced their route into the warehouse, Gunn leading, Kate following, and Wesley bringing up the rear. The building was perfectly still, the only sound the occasional scrabble of birds landing on the outside of the roof above. It wasn't long before they had reached the main storage area, a large, airy space stacked high with crates and boxes. Wesley could see the door they had forced standing open ahead of them. He began to relax, and checked behind them one last time. The tattooed vampire following them snarled. "Hello," said Wesley. A second vampire, its heavily-ridged face also marked with an intricate tattooed design, stepped out of the shadows. "And you've got a friend. How nice." Wesley took a step backwards so that he formed one side of a tight triangle. To his right, Kate raised her bow. On his left, Gunn said, "How many? I see two." "Two here," said Wesley. "And here." In his peripheral vision, Wesley saw Gunn pull a wooden cross from his pocket and hold it up. The vampire nearest to him growled deeper, but did not retreat or look away. Wesley's earlier suspicion hardened to certainty. Kate swung her crossbow slowly from side to side, trying to achieve the widest possible angle of coverage. "I can take out two of them." "Basic math would suggest that still leaves four," said Wesley. "We'd still be outnumbered." Gunn said, "Not for much longer." There was a crashing sound so loud that for a moment Wesley thought a bomb had gone off somewhere nearby. He looked around to find he wasn't far from the truth. The warehouse's loading bay doors hung off their hinges, and the last of the sun's rays silhouetted the heavily armed truck bursting through them. Wesley saw Cloud leap down from one side and Theo from the other, each followed by a stream of stake-wielding teens. Gunn yelled something that sounded to Wesley suspiciously like 'Wooo-hooo!' and launched himself at the vampire closest to him. Wesley heard a snarl from behind him and turned just in time to see one of the other Brethren vampires bearing down on him. He tried to side-step it, wasn't fast enough, and reeled as it tackled him to the floor. Now it was on top of him, its demonic face exultant. Wesley tried to push it off him and thought he was succeeding, until he realized the vampire was simply raising itself in preparation for the killing bite. There was a whistle, and a thunk. The vampire looked at the crossbow bolt sticking out of its chest with mild surprise, then crumbled, showering Wesley with black ash and revealing Kate running towards him. He scrambled to his feet, coughing vampire out of his lungs. In a second, she stood beside him, reloading. "I think I'm finally getting the hang of this thing," she said. "Over there," said Wesley. On the far side of the warehouse, Gunn, Cloud and Theo were struggling with another vampire. While the two men held it at bay, Wesley saw Cloud take a bottle from her belt and throw the contents over the vamp. He heard the demon hiss and its skin sizzle, but the Holy Water barely slowed it down. It lashed out, knocking Theo to one side and leaving Gunn and Cloud fighting from a weakened position. They were in trouble. Kate raised her bow, and tried without success to aim it across the melee. "I can't get a line. Come on." She pitched into the mayhem, and Wesley followed her, weaving to avoid flying stakes and stray kicks. By the time they reached the other side of the fight, Cloud was lying still on the floor and Gunn was holding his own with increasing desperation. Kate dropped the bow and launched herself at the vampire, taking hold of its arm and slamming it against the wall. "Hold it!" she screamed. "Somebody hold it down!" Gunn grabbed the vampire's other side, and together they succeeded in pinning it in position. The vampire struggled hard against them, and from their faces Wesley knew he had at best a few seconds. Cloud's stake lay on the floor at his feet, where she had dropped it. He picked it up. Kate yelled, "Now! Do it now!" Wesley pushed the stake into the vampire's chest, burying it in the hard flesh. Gunn and Kate, braced against its weight, almost collapsed as the source of the resistance exploded into flaky nothingness. With the immediate threat gone, Wesley looked back across the warehouse floor to assess how the rest of Gunn's gang were faring. What he saw was not heartening. The four remaining Brethren vampires were more than holding their own, despite the gang's supremacy in numbers. Wesley counted at least four bodies, two of which looked more than unconscious. As he watched, a vampire knocked a sixteen or seventeen year old boy backwards into a pile of crates as if he were simply an irritation. The boy slid to the floor and stayed there. "Shit," said Gunn. "This is not..." A flash of movement caught Wesley's attention. He identified it just too late. "Kate - watch out -" The vampire that had broken away from its attackers slammed into Kate, immobilizing her. Gunn reached her first, and grabbed the demon just as it was baring its teeth over her exposed neck. Wesley was beside him in a second, but their joint effort was not enough to pull it off her. With a sudden, sickening sense of dread, Wesley realized the Brethren were winning. He heard a dull pop from behind him, and the temperature dropped suddenly. Kate was screaming, kicking the vampire on top of her and swearing at it in blind fury. The vampire was ready to make the kill. And then it was gone, leaving only the sharp end of a wooden spear hanging in the air where its heart had been. With nothing to counterbalance him, Wesley almost fell backwards. He turned around to see who had come to their rescue. From her position on the floor, Kate had already seen it. "What the *hell* is that-?" The thing holding the spear was half as tall again as a man, and twice as wide. To describe it as holding the weapon was not wholly accurate, because as far as Wesley could see it had no arms, hands or for that matter any other recognizable appendage. Its form consisted of billowing, roiling clouds of oily blackness, shifting and solidifying as the need arose. Only its eyes, shining dully like red coals in the rippling mass positioned approximately where a head should have been, seemed to have any substance. The eyes glared at Wesley with malevolence. He stared, sure of what he saw but hardly able to believe it was real. Someone had summoned the Principalities. As Wesley watched, three more Principalities coalesced into existence and began to attack the Brethren vampires. At first terrified, then confused, Gunn's gang fell back and allowed the duels to play out unimpeded. One by one, the remaining three vampires exploded into showers of dust. As the final vampire shattered and disappeared, so too did the Principalities, each one imploding into a tiny, dense black sphere which hung in the air for a moment, then vanished. There was a silence. Even Gunn appeared phased. Then he shook his head, and raised his voice so that he could be heard across the warehouse. "Hey! What are you standing about for? We've got wounded!" He didn't need to say more. While Gunn went to Cloud's side - Wesley noted with relief that she seemed to be coming round - the rest of the gang began to help the injured towards to truck, still sitting in the wreckage of the warehouse bay doors. Wesley offered Kate his hand and pulled her to her feet. She was still staring at the empty space where the Principality had been as she got up. "What... What in hell was that?" "In hell, that was very powerful indeed." "What was it?" "It was a Principality," said Wesley. "I think. I've read about them, and I know it's possible to summon and bind them for short periods, but I've never heard of it being done. Well, not successfully." Kate stared. "Someone... called those things? To fight for us?" Wesley couldn't think of another explanation. "It appears so." "Was it you?" "God, no, I wouldn't know where to..." He shook his head. "It's dark magic. Very powerful. Not the sort of thing you mess with unless you know exactly what you're doing." "Then who?" "I don't know." Cloud was on her feet, and Gunn supported her as they joined Wesley and Kate. "But they're gone, right? Back to the hot place." "Apparently." Gunn shrugged. "Then they're not our problem any more. Hey, Chain! Help Cloud to the truck." Another boy appeared at Gunn's side and slipped Cloud's arm around his shoulder and his arm around her waist. "She needs hospital treatment," said Kate. Gunn looked at her. "We don't exactly have a medical plan. She'll be looked after. Hey, you're pretty handy with a crossbow." Kate smiled faintly. "You're pretty handy with a stake. Look, in about two minutes I'm going to remember I'm a cop, so..." Gunn held up a hand. "I hear ya." He waved at the remaining members of his gang. "People, we're moving out. Load up and let's roll." Wesley watched Gunn hop into the back of the truck, waving in their direction as the engine started and the vehicle reversed over the debris and back into the night. When the engine noise had faded, he was alone with Kate in the warehouse. After a moment's silence, Kate said, "I'll be back first thing in the morning in my official capacity. This time tomorrow there won't be a bottle of Still Life water left in LA." She frowned. "Okay, here's the part I don't get. These Brethren things were poisoning their own food source as well as everyone else's. How could they be sure of not feeding off people who'd drunk contaminated water?" "They couldn't, but it didn't matter. The annals say that the Brethren built up their strength through 'time and trial'. I wasn't certain until I saw them for myself, but those vampires were old. They may in fact have been the original founders of the sect. They've had a long time to cultivate their immunities." Wesley shrugged, finally acknowledging the dull spreading hopelessness he had been fighting to subdue. "Vampires operate to a different timescale than mortals. The Brethren may have spent most of the past two or three centuries exposing themselves to tiny amounts of the substances they used to create the poison. Which means there's no cure, because they never needed one." Kate exhaled slowly. "We might not be able to do anything more for the kids who are already sick, but at least we know this stops here." Quietly, Wesley said, "Kate. Angel is..." "Not my concern. See you round, Wesley." She picked up her crossbow and walked out into the night, not looking back. When she had gone, Wesley pulled out his cell-phone and switched it back on. He speed-dialed Cordelia's apartment and waited for her to answer. "Hi, this is Cordelia. I'm having way too much fun to talk to you right now, so you'll have to leave a message." *Beep.* "Cordelia, it's me. If you're there, pick up the phone." "Wesley?" He stared at the phone, trying to figure out why her voice was so much clearer than it should have been. "Wesley, over here." She was standing behind him, looking pale and preoccupied. She stepped over a broken crate and surveyed the wreckage of the fight. "Are you okay?" He let the hand holding the phone to fall to his side. "Yes. Cordelia, what are you doing here? Is Angel..." "Angel's going to be okay. He's getting treatment." Wesley looked at her, not understanding. "Treatment? From whom? And where?" Cordelia held up her hands in a slow-down gesture. "He's at a clinic outside the city. We came to get you." "We? Who are you..." The question hung in the air, as Wesley saw the answer step out of the car parked outside and enter the warehouse. Lindsey. Wesley turned to Cordelia, and saw in her guilty expression all the confirmation he needed. "What have you done?" "Saved your ass," said Lindsey, obviously relishing the moment. "I hope you appreciated the Principalities because I gotta tell you, summoning them at short notice is a bitch." Cordelia said, "Wesley, I'll explain on the way. But we need to go now." He hesitated, then turned off the cell-phone and followed Cordelia back to Lindsey's car. Title: Blood and Water Author: Ruth Hanna Chapter 15: Rise Again For a long time there was nothing. No sensation, no self, no dreams, no memory... Nothing. Just the awareness of being, of continuing, suspended and apart. There was a feeling of dislocation, neither pleasant nor unpleasant. Then there was something. At first he thought it was the echo of a memory, and he recoiled from it, because he didn't want to remember. But instead of fading it persisted, and grew. Words which had almost ceased to have meaning suddenly became relevant again: cold, sharp, pain. Soon there were more words, to locate the sensations. Hands, feet, fingers, toes. Next there was consciousness, initially dull and hazy around the edges, but swiftly becoming focused, acute. Impulses became thoughts, and soon he found he could frame thoughts in language. Finally there was self-awareness, and with it came identity. Angel woke up. "I think he's coming round." Wesley, somewhere close by. Angel tried to respond, but although he could feel his mouth forming words, he couldn't force out the sounds. From his other side, he heard Cordelia's voice say, "Angel? Wesley, is he trying to say something?" Breath. He didn't need to breathe to live, but he needed to inhale to speak. Right now, it felt like too much effort. "I believe he is. He's probably still very weak. Just a moment, and I'll..." Wesley's voice trailed off, and Angel heard the sound of chair legs scraping over a hard floor as he got up. Then: "Wesley, what the *hell* are you-" Angel didn't hear the end of Cordelia's exclamation - her words were drowned out by his sudden, spontaneous gasp as something hit his chest, hard. "Jeez, Wesley, wasn't he dead enough for you?" "Don't worry, I've seen it done before. Stimulates the breathing reflex." "You've *seen* it done? On what, crash test dummies?" There was something oddly reassuring about the bickering flying back and forth overhead. If Angel had had the strength, he would have smiled. As it was, he made himself breathe in and out again. "...Worked." Above him, Cordelia broke off in the middle of remonstrating with Wesley. "Angel! Welcome back to the world of the living. Walking undead. Oh, whatever - welcome back." Slowly, he blinked, and opened his eyes. His vision was blurred, and he could make out nothing more than two shadowy forms sitting by his side. He was no longer on the couch in the lounge, but the place he was instead seemed larger somehow than either of the apartment's bedrooms. "...Brethren?" he asked. "We whipped their asses *good,*" said Cordelia with satisfaction. "Wesley totally rocked." Somehow, Wesley managed to sound simultaneously modest and extremely gratified by the praise. "It is true I did a little slaying of my own. Just as well I stopped being a Watcher, really. I feel I'm much more a man of action these days." Angel blinked again; his vision was clearing, and the fuzzy shapes next to him were slowly resolving themselves into the faces of Wesley and Cordelia. The room beyond the bed remained unfamiliar. "How long?" Cordelia said, "You were dead for about eight hours. Dead as in not-responding-to-stimuli dead, as opposed to your more normal walking-around-talking dead." The pins and needles pains in his arms and legs were beginning to recede, and as an experiment Angel attempted to move his arms. His left side responded without difficulty, but something impeded his right arm. He managed to turn his head far enough to focus on the source of the obstruction, and saw two slim tubes snaking out of his flesh and draining into some kind of medical equipment positioned on a table beside the bed. Each tube ran dark with blood. His blood. "...Cure?" "Not exactly," Wesley told him. "From the materials we found at the Brethren nest, it appears that Still Life Spring Water is quite a cocktail. There was silver nitrate, of course: there were also essential oils of garlic, tiny quantities of Holy Water and a rather ingenious curse to bind the whole lot together. There were so many different elements to it, effecting a cure for each one separately would have been nearly impossible." "Then how?" There was a short silence, and Angel got the impression neither of them was eager to answer his question. He still couldn't tell where he was, but he was certain it wasn't Cordelia's apartment. Something wasn't right. At last Cordelia said, "A full blood transfusion." That made no sense. "But it would have to be..." "From an uninfected vampire," finished Wesley. "Yes. It was." "Where..." His sight had almost returned now; Angel saw that the room he was in was large, with plain white walls and a glass-panelled door leading to a brightly lit hallway. "This can't be a hospital." The silence this time was even longer. "You're in John Seward Memorial Clinic, just outside the city," Cordelia told him finally. "Angel, just try to sleep now, okay? I'll explain everything later on." There was a quality in her voice - something unsure, anxious - which was not the Cordelia he knew. "No. Now." The door to the corridor opened, flooding the room with a wide shaft of artificial light. "Oh, good. The patient is awake. I didn't think I was going to get the chance to give you my best wishes in person." Lindsey smiled warmly, and held up the bottle he was holding in his left hand. "The doctors tell me it's important you get re-hydrated, so I brought you water. Evian, not one of those cheap brands. Who knows what they put in those, right?" Angel stared at Lindsey, then at Wesley and Cordelia. "What is this?" Wesley's expression was studiedly neutral. Cordelia wouldn't meet his eye. Lindsey deposited the water on the bedside locker, and tapped one of the suspended bags of dark, oleaginous blood suspended above the bed. "John Seward is the only clinic in L.A that keeps *all* the blood types on hand. Most of Wolfram and Hart's clients come here. They treat staff, too. Those of us who are in the medical scheme, anyway." He held up his hooked right arm, and smiled. "Well, I can see you three have plenty to talk about, so I'll leave you to it. And Angel - I just want you to know what a terrific girl you've got in Cordelia here. Someone with her negotiating skills is a loss to the legal profession." He left, the door swinging shut behind him. Cordelia was still looking at the floor. With a sickening sense of conviction, Angel understood. "You made a deal." "We made a deal," corrected Wesley. "You were, to all intents and purposes, dead and there was..." "Wesley had nothing to do with it," interrupted Cordelia with a measure of her customary defiance, looking up again. "It was me. I saw Favard, Angel. He was cured. You were dead, or dead-er." Which was, thought Angel, exactly how Wolfram and Hart wanted him. He tried to think what Cordelia could have offered in return for his treatment, and didn't like any of the options. "Tell me what you gave them. Exactly what you gave them." "Information." Cordelia spoke quietly. "I figured the Brethren were as big a problem for Wolfram and Hart as everybody else, what with trying to kill off their client base. And religious cults don't generally need a lot of legal services. So I gave Lindsey the chance to earn some merit points by getting rid of the Big Bad. In return, treatment for you and the kids from Glendale." Angel's head hurt. He tried to raise his hand to massage his temple, but he had forgotten the tubes and needles restricting his movement, binding him to the equipment beside the bed and the supply of new blood restoring him. "You don't condemn evil than trade with it to get what you want. That puts us on the same level as Lindsey." Wesley said, "Angel, as much as I am loath to admit it, we weren't doing more than holding our own against the Brethren until Wolfram and Hart's forces joined the fray. Lauren and the other sick children have been moved here from St Matthew's: they're receiving transfusions as well, and they're responding. All in all, perhaps this has worked out for the best." Cordelia swallowed. "There's more. I gave them something else. I gave them the scroll." Wesley was aghast. "Cordelia, what were you thinking?" "What was I thinking? I'll tell you what I was thinking." Cordelia's voice began to rise. "I was thinking Angel was dead and you were somewhere busy getting killed by super-vampires. I was scared and I was alone and I did the only thing I could, so you can both just come down off that moral high ground for long enough to start being grateful." On the last word, her voice cracked. She stood up and left the room, pushing her chair backwards so quickly she knocked it over. It fell, clattering on to the linoleum floor just as the door slammed behind Cordelia. "Oh dear," said Wesley quietly. "Angel, I think I ought to..." Angel shut his eyes. "Yeah. Go." He heard Wesley's footsteps as he crossed the room, then heard the door open. Seconds passed, and he sensed he had not gone. At last Wesley said, "Don't judge her too severely. Her intentions were good." "Would you have done it?" Angel waited for Wesley's response, and waited, and when he eventually opened his eyes, the door was closed and the room empty. Wesley had gone. |