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Angels and Demons by TalesofSpike
 
Chapter 7.24
 
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Note: Thanks to my beta t_geyer for her unending patience, perseverance and support.

SECTION 7 - LAKE OF FIRE

People cry, people moan.
Look for a dry place to call their home.
Try to find some place to rest their bones.
While the Angels and the Devils try to make THEM their own.

(Nirvana, Album - MTV Unplugged with thanks to Zanthinegirl for the suggestion)




Chapter 7.24
Friday, July 19th, 2002


Up until a couple of months ago, Cordelia might have skipped the peace offering and gone straight for the butt-kicking.

Now that they were actually dating, she cut him just a little more slack, not much because if she gave him an inch, then he'd brood for a mile, but enough to let him know that there was always a little bit of concern under her often brusque manner. Having witnessed Angel's courtship of the younger Buffy, Cordelia had made it clear from the start that 'dating' meant she expected Angel to take her out for meals, to bars, clubs, the movies or the theatre and most of the time she expected him to pick up the tab for the privilege, not meet her inside and let her buy her own drinks. A romantic moonlight walk on the beach might constitute a date. A stroll around the local cemeteries did not . She was, after all, Cordelia Chase. Yes, they spent whole evenings together sometimes, armed to the teeth, loitering in the sewers, waiting for some icky demon to show it's face. That was their job she had told him. That was not dating. It in no way constituted any form of courtship... not that she expected everything to be on her terms. She'd even once gone with him to a hockey match. It had been okay, but it wasn't the same when you weren't down on the touchline or whatever the hockey equivalent might be, cheering on the local cuties. Angel had said if she watched more matches then she'd get to know the players, but for now she put up with letting him watch the games on her TV.

She shook her head, banishing thoughts of evenings on the town, popped the door on the microwave almost before it had given its final ding and forcefully stirred the mug to ensure its contents were an even temperature throughout. She felt almost impatient with herself for offering this crumb when she'd had such a hectic, crappy morning while Angel brooded in his room, but she knew it wouldn't be fair to leave Fred on her own for too long and now that the sun was well and truly up, she was going to have to take Lydia shopping. So, mollifying... or mollycoddling had to be done if Angel was going to be persuaded to deal with this lot.

She pushed open the door from the kitchen and was almost immediately hit by another onslaught of questions and complaints.

Two young girls. "We don't have any toilet paper in our room."

"Neither does anyone else. We only normally keep a couple of the rooms set up for visitors. Live with it. You can try the 7-Eleven down the road to the right and then first left or you can wait until I get back from the wholesaler's, which I can't even go to until people stop asking me questions."

"Excuse me, dear. You're Cordelia, I assume. We were wondering if you had a room available that we might be able to use to hold a meeting. Perhaps thirty or so people. Somewhere with tables and chairs would be ideal but as long as we have privacy and space for everyone, anywhere should suffice."

Cordelia had the strangest feeling that she had seen the stranger somewhere before. She eyed the woman's ash blonde bob, and her practical but expensive linen trousers and silk blouse, both of which were smeared with blood. Her shoes were Italian, probably hand made, her watch gold and the row of five diamonds on her engagement ring were large enough to make it clear that it hadn't been bought at your average jeweller, while not so large as to be vulgar. Recognising the air of someone who, however politely she might ask, expected her wishes to be complied with immediately, she decided to save her energy for the upcoming butt kicking and called across to Fred. "Fred, can you get the keys for the pool?" Besides, the woman had asked nicely.

"The pool? W-." The woman hesitated for just a fraction of a second, but it was enough to convince Cordelia that she didn't say what she had originally intended. "We weren't aware the hotel had a pool."

"Neither were we until recently. It's sort of like the one in 'It's a Wonderful Life'. Flick the switch and you have a ballroom. There should be enough space there for your meeting and there are some tables and chairs in there, though you might want to move them around some. Just try to avoid the hole Groo hacked in the floor to find the demon prawn things. Anything else, Mrs...?"

"Mrs Wyndam Pryce..."

Cordelia suddenly remembered where she had seen the woman, or at least her likeness. One night at Wes's apartment, Chinese take-out, all the guys playing video games... laughing... and Wes had let her look through his photo album. A night that seemed a million years ago.

"And no, I don't think we'll require anything else for now. It was nice to meet you, Miss Chase. Wesley used to speak very highly of you."

The slight emphasis on the word was so faint that Cordelia tried to convince herself that she had imagined it and the implied censure. She wanted to demand to know what Wesley said now, but at the same time she really didn't want to know. When it came down to it she wasn't exactly proud of how they had all acted. "In that case, Fred will give you the keys and tell you where the room is. I better take this up to Angel before it cools."






 

She hesitated outside the door for a fraction of a second, realised that he'd have to be even more preoccupied with his melancholy than normal to not hear her footfalls and her breathing and intuit exactly what she was doing and so she threw it open like a hurricane. She walked around the bed, where he was reclining, taking in at a glance the way he was propped up by both sets of pillows, a professional portrait of him with Buffy at her prom in his hands where they rested in his lap. She placed the mug on the bedside cabinet with enough force that some of the liquid slopped over the edges, nudging the half full whiskey tumbler off the coaster to make room for it. Normally, Angel would have been grabbing at the mug to stop the drips before they could form a ring. At the very least he'd probably have given her a pained look at her disrespectful treatment of the old junk that he insisted was period furniture. He'd tried saying it was antique once, but she'd caught him on the hundred year rule.

"Okay, so, what's the big deal here, Angel? Any normal guy would at least try to hide the fact he's staring at pictures of his 'forever love' ex when his current and damn-well-better-really-be-forever girlfriend comes in the room. I guess at least your fly is done up, but, hey-eyyy, small mercy!"

He didn't raise his voice at all. He didn't need to in order to convey his absolute censure and distaste. "Cordy..."

The former cheerleader kept going in the verbal equivalent of running him over like a steam train. "Cordy, what? Cordy, run 'round and look after all these people Buffy sent us to look after while I lie in morbid solitude and mope over her picture? No way! I've done that already. It's old! Way old! You've got as long as it takes you to drink that mug of blood and then your butt had better be down in reception with Fred's, dealing with that invasion your beloved Buffy sent you."

"They didn't tell you, did they?" Angel looked at her with incredulity.

Cordy raised her eyes heavenward. "What part of 'drink that before it's a congealed mess and then get your butt the heck downstairs or I start opening all the drapes' did you miss, Fang Boy? I'm pretty certain that in the three and a half hours you've been marinating in Old Bushmills I've found out more about what's going on than you've read in that letter from The Chosen One of Many." She picked up the bottle that was alongside the whiskey glass, observing that he had probably drunk about a quarter of it and delicately removing its cap from the otherwise empty waste paper bin as she continued with her tongue lashing. "Since you didn't finish your Champion-sized post-tantrum brood in time to take the watcher babe - who, if you'd been in reception you'd know is like dating Giles, as in hot youngish babe getting it on with the librarian, and how weird is that? - shopping at the local Red Cross before sun up, I need to take her now, and then we'll be going to the wholesalers, pick up some food and other vital supplies for the actual breathing types..." She trailed off as she replaced the now resealed bottle back in the sideboard that was its normal home and looked up to realise that Angel was watching her, his jaw just a bit slacker than normal.

"Say that again," he requested, sounding half incredulous and half hopeful.

"What? Giles is getting some from a thirty year old natural blonde?"

"What did you call Buffy?"

"Lots of things." The flippant answer came out before she began to put together the photograph, the even worse than anticipated mood and the last epithet she had used for the slayer.

"There are two new slayers in the hotel," Angel babbled.

"Well, uh, no. Actually there are ten. Two that were too badly injured to fight, and eight that didn't meet the thirteen or over age limit for slayer boot camp... as you'd probably have known if you'd read your instructions."

"So Faith and Buffy...?"

"Who the hell do you think sent all the refugees?"

He pulled the crumpled envelope from the leather jacket he was still wearing. "Instructions?"

"What did you think it was? Some lovesick deathbed epistle of how, even though she'd been about to marry Spike, it was really you that she loved? Were you savouring it until you hit the right stage of maudlin?"

"Th- that would be..." Angel couldn't blush, but Cordy was familiar enough to know when he was embarrassed.

"Pathetic?" she suggested helpfully. "But it does kinda explain why you didn't show to introduce Giles's honey to Larry the Red Cross guy... I thought you were just being petty about being asked to help get the blood for their honeymoon... which would also have been pretty pathetic by the way." There was no need to clarify whose honeymoon she was talking about.

Angel just grinned back at her, bounding from the bed and raising the mug to his lips before he double checked. "So Faith and Buffy are alive?" His eyes watched Cordy over the mug's rim as he began to chug down the blood.

"They were alive and well and about to lead an assault on the gates of hell... Well, not literal gates but kinda. Let's put it this way - we're all supposed to show for the rehearsal dinner tonight."

The vamp suddenly fidgeted with a nervous energy that would have looked more at home on his grandchilde, twirling the now empty mug from one finger. "Okay, I can do the whole gracious host thing... You, go do the shopping thing..." He held open the room door for her to leave ahead of him, his mood almost euphoric.

"Oh, by the way..." She spoke in as casual a tone as she could manage as she strolled past him, hoping that the almost tangible relief that was radiating from the vampire would buoy him through the next bit of news. "I know you do that freaky smell thing. Don't spaz out again if you run into Wes's mom... or his dad or any of his other relatives that might be here," she added as a sudden afterthought. "You're kinda meant to be this Champion guy... I mean no more visions, not since the whole exorcism deal, so I guess they were like part of the whole con, so not Champion to the Powers as such, but you're still meant to be fighting the good fight and the drama queen deal really doesn't cut it."

Angel gritted his teeth. "I'm not a drama queen. Spike's the drama queen," he hissed under his breath.

"So prove it!" Cordelia replied with a satisfied smile, knowing that she had the vampire right where she wanted him. "I might even make it worth your while."






 

Quentin scanned the faces in the slightly foxed ballroom with suspicion. Penelope Wyndam Pryce and a brace of younger watchers, both of whom he seemed to remember from the minibus journey south, sat at a round table off to one side. Apart from these three, everyone else in the room was a member of the council's executive committee. Though they sat at several round tables, the way the tables had been arranged in a line, with everyone facing the solitary empty chair that seemed almost marooned on the other side of the line, had a courtroom air about it.

"What's this all about, Henderson?" he demanded of the watcher in the centremost seat, the place that should have been his. "Surely we can wait until we are restored to the privacy and security of our own buildings again before we return to the day to day business of the council, especially as these walls may very well have vampire ears."

"We are not dealing with the day to day business of the council. We have matters to discuss that cannot wait. Mrs Wyndam Pryce was kind enough to deliver a taped message from my nephew. You might remember him? He was the young man who was stabbed and badly injured while you were trying to make bargains with a madman the other night.

Having heard my nephew's testimony, and having received corroboration in part from the testimony of these witnesses, the committee in an emergency meeting has recorded a unanimous vote of no confidence in you as Senior Executive Officer. Due to the nature of the charges we must ask you to vacate the apartment within headquarters that is linked to that position immediately upon resumption of operations at the London base. Your company car, should you continue in our employment, will obviously also be downgraded."

"That is preposterous... That rule hasn't been used in over a century."

"And yet it is not unprecedented and, even if it were, our current situation is so far removed from that to which we have become accustomed that in light of the charges against you we would have no other option. We stand at the brink of a new era. We need a leader who can adapt to that. Sit down, Quentin. As Junior Executive Officer I am now in over all charge of the council until such time as the next Senior Executive is elected.

You no longer have any special privileges to fall back on and, in light of the evidence that we have received, you are hereby charged with malfeasance. You stand accused of using your position to pursue several personal vendettas and of endangering the council by acting on its behalf in a manner contrary to the law and with premeditation without obtaining the consent of a majority of the committee. It is an accepted fact that the council must sometimes act in a manner that is less than legal. It is also a fact that field operatives often have to make on the spot decisions about such matters. However, on an executive level such decisions are never the prerogative of any one individual."

"I do not have to stand for this," Travers protested.

"No, you do not. That is why we provided you with a chair. You may also elect to stand trial in absentia, but may I remind you that should you be found guilty you forfeit all benefits, including accrued retirement benefits and health insurance."

"I have a feeling, that whether I stay or go, the verdict will remain the same," Travers answered, turning for the door.

"The evidence is rather damning." Any further remarks on the part of the interim council head were muffled as the ballroom door swung closed, leaving Quentin Travers on the outside in more than just the physical sense.






 

"Hey!" Angel had at least had the tact to wait until Cordy had left on her shopping spree before he called through to Faith's cell.

The vampire could hear the squeal of abused tyres and the background mutterings of several people.

"Angel?"

"I-em-well, I just wanted to check that you're okay."

"How about I give you a call when we're done playing dodge the sinkhole? I'm okay, Buffy's okay and for some reason best known to himself, Spike's even okay despite every other vamp in the place going kaboom, but they're on a different bus and until we get to the rendezvous point I can't tell you about anybody else you know."

"Dodge the sinkhole?"

"Yeah, you know the mall? It looks like it relocated to the bottom of a quarry and the quarry's spreading outward. Now would you get off the line so I can try calling my b-... someone?"

Angel didn't even bother to reply, he just smiled to himself and hit the button to end the call. 'Faith with a boyfriend...' That was something he'd have to see.

His train of thought was rudely interrupted by even more slayers, a group of three girls, younger even than Buffy when she was called. "Our toilet's busted. Shanice flushed a tampon down it and now it's all backing up. It's nearly up to the top of the bowl. One more flush and it's going to get nasty."

Angel sighed. Give him demons to fight any day.
 
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