There
was a rule about sharp, pointy, wooden things. They hurt more coming
back out than they did going in. And considering what the stake had
felt like slamming into his throat, Angel wasn't looking forward to yanking
it back out.
Then again,
he hurt everywhere, so what was a little more pain? The damned lava
beast or whatever it was had beaten the living hell out of him, and being
tossed off the building hadn't helped. He still wasn't sure how he'd
managed to land without breaking every bone he owned. As it was, the
pain in his throat was just part of the overall mass of agony.
So buck up and
yank the damned thing out. He clenched his fist around the stake and
just pulled. Then for a moment he couldn't do much besides spit blood
and whimper, and wait for the weird orange flashes to clear out of his vision.
But the
orange streaks didn't go away. And as the worst edges of the pain began
to dull, he realized there were huge streaks of fire in the sky.
Slowly,
painfully, he pushed himself to a sitting position. Pain shot down
his spine, harshly through his throat. Even his eyeballs hurt.
The too-bright streaks of orange light make his vision ache. What was
it? What were they? Meteors, flaming rocks, burning pigeons?
The sky of Los Angeles had broken open and was vomiting fire.
And suddenly
it hit him. Connor. Cordy. The two people closest to his
heart, and he didn't know where they were, if they were okay. Wes and
Gunn, Lorne-somehow he knew they would be all right, that even now they were
heading back to the hotel. He wasn't sure how he knew-something he
had heard, he thought, something vague and faint, trembling on the edges
of his amplified hearing. He'd heard their voices, perhaps.
But Cordy.
There had been a time when he'd been able to sense her no matter where she
was, had been able to tell if she was all right, or if she needed him.
It had been like the bond he'd shared with Buffy, but not as strong, not
as deep. But ever since she'd come back, it had been tenuous at best,
and lately he seemed to have lost all sense of her.
It scared
him. Enough to make him force himself shakily to his feet. Enough
to send him out into the fire-streaked sky, toward the warehouse where Connor
had set up housekeeping.
He went
as fast as he could. Normally he would have taken the rooftop route,
leaping from building to building, but with the fire in the sky it was just
too exposed. He wouldn't be able to help anyone if he got careless
and let himself get dusted by a stray fireball. So he took a more circuitous
route, from sheltered rooftop to alleyway to street to another rooftop and
back to the street again.
The city
was going to hell. He could hear it around him, screaming and sirens,
the crackling of fires moving from building to building. This was going
to get worse before it got better, and he had no idea what he was going to
be able to do to fix it.
Finally
he made it to the building next to Connor's. Just another leap, and
he could shimmy down the brick to the window--
But he
stopped, there on the rooftop opposite Connor's building. Because he
could smell them now, strong and ripe.
God, was
that what he thought it was? It was an unmistakable odor. Cordelia's
arousal, thick and sweet. He'd smelled it before, when she'd been with
Groo, and more importantly when she'd been with him, and he'd slid her dress
down from her shoulders and buried his face in her breasts and walked his
lips soft down the curve of her belly . . .
And he
smelled Connor, too, and suddenly he wished he could smell only what a human
could smell, because this was making him physically ill.
He edged
along the rooftop, unable to force himself away. From his vantage point
here he could see down into the next building. There was a tall window
there that opened right into the room Connor had claimed for himself.
There'd been a blanket or something hung over it the last time Angel had
been by.
There
was no blanket now. Angel could see straight down into Connor's room.
Connor's bed.
Connor.
Cordelia.
For a
moment he couldn't see at all, his vision blacked out by the image of himself
leaping down, through the tall window, bursting through it, landing in the
blue bed and ripping both their throats out. He could almost taste
the thick, hot blood, and for a split second he even felt fangs prick the
back of his lip. But he fought it off, conquered the rising demon.
How could
she do this to him? He couldn't blame Connor for this--Connor was an
eighteen-year-old boy who couldn't possibly work through all the ramifications
of his actions, particularly if offered sex. No, this had to fall on
Cordelia.
So how
could she do this? Just hours ago she had touched his face and told
him she loved him. He could still feel the warm imprint of her fingers
if he summoned it.
She loved
him but she couldn't be with him. So she did this.
He had
become a morass of pain, physical and emotional merging so he could no longer
tell one agony from the other.
How many
times had he imagined himself just there? Between her legs, buried
deep inside her heat? How many times had he tormented himself with
the thought of what he knew he could never have? It wasn't her fault
she had to withhold it from him--but to give it to Connor?
Only a
few months ago, she and Angel had lain in bed with Connor between them arguing
over the benefits of a ski condo in Aspen. He'd gotten a glimpse, in
those moments, of what it might feel like to have a family. He'd thought
some part of it had been real.
And now
this.
With fire
hissing from the sky all around him, his heart bleeding as profusely as his
throat had been, he made himself turn away.
He simply
couldn't bear it anymore
#
Angel
trudged up the stairs of the hotel, still not sure how he managed to put
one foot in front of the other. He grunted replies to the others' questions.
The only one he really heard was Fred asking after Connor and Cordy.
And the only reason he heard that was because it hurt so much.
"They're
fine," he mumbled, and Gunn said something that Angel didn't really register.
He kept moving, up the stairs, afraid that if he stopped, he wouldn't be
able to get started again.
He made
it to his room, barely, shrugged out of his coat and let it fall to the floor.
Only a few steps to the bed, and he let himself collapse onto it.
For the
first time in a very long time, he felt like the corpse he was. He
just lay there, face smashed into the pillow, and waited for the pain to
go away.
Which,
of course, it didn't.
Some things
were mending--he could feel broken bits inside him stitching themselves back
together--but the healing hurt as much as the wounding had. He'd broken
a few bones in his hands smashing through the doors of the building on his
way down the stairs, and the mending of the bones made a weird, itchy ache
in his fingers.
And nothing
was ever going to make that picture go away, the one flashing over and over
again in his head.
Connor.
Cordelia. He closed his eyes and that just made him see it more clearly.
Connor
and Cordelia. Shit, the kid didn't even know what he was doing.
And suddenly Angel's mind flashed to all the things he'd wanted to do to
her. All of them. From the gentle, sweet lovemaking he'd often
fantasized about, to the other things he more often than not tried to keep
hidden in the back of his mind. Like sinking his teeth into the fold
of her groin, finding the artery there, letting the blood flood his throat.
It didn't
matter anymore if they were man-lusts or demon-lusts. They were all
forbidden. He felt that now, so deeply he couldn't deny it to himself
anymore.
Slowly,
painfully, he rolled over. His hands ached, the dull, throbbing itch
deep in the bones enough to make him want to scream. He swallowed instead,
tasting his own blood in his mouth. Cold. Hot blood was better.
Hot and thick, musky with the smell of a woman.
He never
should have let himself think about her that way. He'd known going
in that he could never have her. Nothing had changed since he'd left
Sunnydale. He still had nothing to offer a woman, especially one he
loved.
But he'd
let himself indulge in the fantasy. It helped sometimes, to imagine
he did it all for her. It was that crazy courtly love thing from all
the medieval romances. Slay the demons for the girl, admire her from
afar, but never touch her. He'd liked to imagine it gave him a purpose,
but now, looking back, it was just stupid.
He sat
up in the bed. Most of his insides felt realigned now. That was
good. It was never a good idea to leap back into the fray with your
spleen hanging out or your liver hacked into three or five pieces.
Something still felt askew in the intestinal area, but that would probably
sort itself out over the next hour or two. If only the bones in his
hands would quit itching. That was going to make him insane if it didn't
stop.
Slowly,
cautiously, he eased his way to his feet. A sharp pain shot through
the right side of his abdomen, like something tearing open. He grimaced.
Either he'd ripped himself a new internal injury, or something had healed
wrong and he'd reopened it so it could correct itself. Either way,
it hurt like hell. He stretched, ever so slowly, to see if anything
else popped, but nothing did.
He gritted
his teeth and frowned at nothing, his gaze falling on his closet door.
A few slow, shuffling steps, and he stood in front of it. He pushed
it open.
She had
smelled so good that night, the soft, flowery perfume mingling with the natural
odors of her body to make an indescribably exquisite bouquet. A human
man would have missed out on the deeper, better layers that made the smell
uniquely Cordelia. She had a tanginess to her. Her blood, Angel
had often thought, would probably taste a little like oranges.
Of course,
he would never know. He would never again taste her mouth, or her throat,
or the soft skin just under her navel. Never. Because she didn't
belong to him. She never had.
He found
the jacket. Somehow it had survived the gas fire a few months ago-had
it only been a few months? Six, maybe. Connor had still been
a baby then. Sweet and tiny, with that soft, powdery baby smell.
He didn't smell like that anymore. He smelled like a man now, but different.
Feral.
Angel
closed his hand over the shoulder of the black tuxedo jacket, grasping the
hanger, and pulled it out of the closet. He looked at it a moment,
then lifted it to his nose.
The smell
of her perfume was gone.
END.
