Half and half


Chapter 7


A short while later Buffy, William, Spike and the Slayer cautiously re-emerged from the closet. Silence reigned. A sickly yellow glow permeated the fog outside the window in a pale imitation of daylight. The floor was wiped clean of last night's bloodshed and a couple of plastic yellow signs marked two freshly mopped areas. ‘Caution Wet Floor!’ they proclaimed, with a little symbol of a man falling in midair.

"Guess they didn't have a sign for 'Danger - Slippery Entrails.’"

Buffy screwed up her mouth at Spike's gallows' humour and they moved swiftly towards the staircase. Their mission, to find Angel.

Before setting off the group had made a hit list of all the places where Angelus might set up his new power base; based on his predilection for torture, and his massive ego, they knew he wouldn't be holed up in some random office. In the end William had come up with the best suggestion.

"We could try the control room. Security can see every inch of this building, well, the new bits of it anyway. We can look through the cameras, find out where all the action is and take it from there."

At the next bend they paused as they heard a metallic scraping and a wet squishing sound. Rounding the corner cautiously they were confronted by a small group of ragged figures. Their shoulders were hunched as they applied wet mops to the floor in perfectly synchronized, semi-circular sweeps. They didn't even look up. As one they nudged their buckets with one foot and moved to the next splattering of red. The water lurched, pink and frothy. There were three females, each wearing a faded floral print dress, and a tall skinny male clad in a pair of tatty overalls. Dyed black hair escaped a bun, a wedding ring spun loosely on one hand, damp shoes and boots, wrinkled stockings in unflattering tan. Grey skin and dead eyes. They weren't human. Not any more.

Spike spoke quietly. "Zombies, pet, they won't bother us"

With a pang of sympathy for the Wolfram and Hart staff who would spend eternity cleaning up after their evil masters, Buffy brushed past the sorry assortment of once-people and caught up with the others.


***

The control room was a shambles and completely deserted. A bank of screens showed a fuzzy snow, those that weren't smashed up. A tangled spaghetti of wires overlaid everything. A listing table displayed an assortment of broken coffee mugs, an overflowing ashtray, and a pair of metal framed glasses twisted into a little bow. Damn.

"Yes! In here, Buffy."

William's grinning face appeared from the far side of a tall filing cabinet. Curious, she followed him into a tiny room. One desk, one chair and one state of the art 21" monitor. In perfect condition.

"Angelus doesn't know everything, he just thinks he does, and we are going to nail the bastard."

Sinking into the chair he gave a little flourish of his wrists, like a concert pianist ready to play, and pressed the mouse. The first picture to come up on the screen was the bathroom in Buffy's suite. Spike gave a low growl and Buffy completely agreed with him, she suddenly didn't much care what had happened to the security man who'd been spying on her. With a quick flick William ran through an array of tiny pictures, dismissing some and clicking on others to enlarge them; some of the images were too horrible to linger over and he swiftly moved onto the next. When he clicked on one that showed the large, state of the art gym, they could see a sizeable group of humans huddled together.

Wesley and Gunn were with them, moving purposely among them, talking and issuing orders. A medical station had been set up and a few people lay in a row on white judo mats; some were asleep, others were clearly in pain and being consoled by their workmates. Several black clad men were facing the door. They were armed to the teeth and looked grim.

Moving on for now, William at last found Angel. He was in the main boardroom looking completely disheveled, with hair sticking out every which way and shirt unbuttoned at the neck and cuffs. He was seated on the biggest chair in the room, at one end of an enormous highly polished table. In one hand he clutched a bottle of very expensive whisky and, in the other, one of Harmony's ample tits. She sat on his lap with her arms around his neck, wearing a coy expression and not much else. A couple of bored looking vamps were sitting at the other end of the room playing cards.

Spike started to cough and moved out of the room, Buffy could hear his raucous laughter from the other side of the door. William struggled to keep a straight face.

"Er… still think he needs rescuing then?"

"I'm not jealous, even if she is a man stealing slut of the highest order. Besides, what has she got that I haven't, apart from big breasts and the morals of an alley cat?" Buffy scowled and her own firm bosom heaved prettily against her folded arms. Something struck her then.

"Has Angel lost his soul?"

"Don't know, Buffy. Why don't we ask him when we get there?"

Further exploration failed to turn up Angelus. There were a series of lock and key symbols on three of the picture boxes that William couldn't open. He suspected that one of them would show the 'interview rooms'; they were warded by magic to keep demons in and curious employees out. He had never ventured there but suspected that they would closely resemble the Initiative set up and, for that reason, he had left the area well alone. The two other places he couldn't penetrate were the science labs - which was a bit of a puzzle - and the mysterious area in the building known as the White Room. By process of elimination Angelus had to be in one of these three places and he had a pretty good idea which one he'd go for; Angelus always did like a bit of interrogation, especially when he didn't require any answers.

They took the decision to go to the boardroom while Angel was so lightly guarded. They considered going to the Gym first but Wesley and Gunn were obviously needed where they were, and they didn't entirely trust the soldier types who were milling about in the room.

It was still very quiet and Spike speculated that most of the demons had inbuilt body clocks that compelled them to sleep during daylight hours. Both Spike and the Slayer were well used to being active during the day, although Spike knew he would get a bit grumpy if his sleep pattern was disrupted for too long. William could also feel the presence of the sun outside as it pressed on his senses, willing him to seek a dark corner and find oblivion until the moon rose pulling him, and all her other children, back up into the night. The Slayer didn't seem to be affected, one way or the other, and darted ahead of them with little snarls, ears pricked for trouble.

After a fairly uneventful journey the group reached the boardroom. Heavy double doors in fine patterned walnut barred their way, without windows to spy through to see what was going on inside. Spike smashed a booted foot against the lock and the doors flew open, the others flowing in to confront the two guards. With a bloodcurdling cry the Slayer leapt on the two terrified vamps that had risen from the table. A stake flew into the chest of the furthest one before the Slayer tore the head off of the closest one with her bare hands. She grinned as the dust settled.

"Could of left me one, Slayer," grumbled Spike.

Angel looked at them blearily, his arms still full of a now wide eyed Harmony. His bloodshot eyes settled on Buffy and he gave her a toothy smile. It wasn't pleasant.

"What have we here, another golden haired doxy? Come to join old Liam fer a drink and a cuddle have you? Not much meat on your bones but I'd wager that pretty mouth of yours knows its way around a man." He waved his arm out expansively, sloshing whisky across the carpet as he did so.

Harmony gave a squeak and tried frantically to remove herself from his lap.

"Now, now, my wanton little wench, there's plenty of me to go around, so don't you be going anywhere." Liam clamped a big meaty hand around the wriggling girl to keep her still. He leered at Buffy without a trace of recognition, then his eyes settled on the Slayer.

"Ah, and you have a twin too. This is a rare treat, and she looks like a wild one." He narrowed his eyes and looked at William. "I'll not pay more than a shilling apiece for your screws, and that's generous, but I seem to have an itch that needs scratching and a raging horn for a warm pussy to plunder."

Spike strode up to glare right in his face. "Don't say another word or you'll find your 'horn' shoved up your arse!"

Buffy stood there with her mouth open. This thing with the puffy face and the piggy red eyes was Liam. She'd heard that as a human he'd been a drunken womanizer - hell, Spike had told her enough times - but she'd clung on to the idea that if Angelus was the monster then somehow Angel must be the man inside. After all, Spike hadn't actually known him before he'd been turned. All her beliefs were crashing down on her head.

"Um, I know I'm missing something here but if you’re Liam, and Angelus is your demon, then where the hell is Angel?”

A light mist seemed to slowly appear at the wall behind Liam and a pale, very unhappy figure, walked through it into the room. He was half transparent and wore a familiar woeful expression. A thin line of light ran from his body to Liam's.

"Hello, Buffy,"

"Christ, it's bleedin' Jacob Marley!" Spike snorted, and for the second time that morning he tossed his head back and laughed uproariously.

***

Authors note: Many thanks to Limerickgirl for casting her clever Irish eyes over Liam's speech patterns. Common 18th Century slang has been used and if the meanings aren't clear then just mention in your review and I'll happily explain.