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Friday Morning
Clearing out the demon infestation from the cave on the beach with Buffy had felt good. Meaningful. It showed Angel a glimpse of the light at the end of the tunnel Whistler had sent him down. He found he couldn’t be content anymore to lurk in shadows and wait for whispers and hints of a demonic threat to reach him; for the first time since he was strung up in a hotel lobby, he wanted to continue helping in a more active way.
Every night of the last week, he’d spent the final hours before dawn picking two or three of Sunnydale’s twelve cemeteries to check for fledgelings rising from their graves. He wasn’t trying to run into Buffy at one of them (for that, he could go between dusk and midnight); no, he wanted to prove to himself that this wasn’t some fluke before he saw her again. Maybe then he’d feel a tiny bit closer to deserving it the next time she kissed him.
The early morning air felt different tonight, pressing down heavier. Angel’s pace slowed, and the graveyard ahead of him stretched on well past where he remembered it ending. He frowned and turned back. It went just as far in that direction too. His shoe touched stone and he looked down at the flat grave marker. Beneath a layer of moss far thicker than was typical of headstones in California was the crumbling inscription:
Here Lyeth
Sean O’Flannery
1698-1753
Taken from his family before his time.
Angel jerked back. He wanted to flee the cemetery but his feet instead took one step to the right as his eyes were drawn as if by magnets to the stone after Sean’s.
Saoirse Murray
1732-1753
Beloved Daughter
He already knew what the next one would say and he didn’t think he could bear it. His feet moved along like automatons.
Kathy Corcoran
1739-1753
No epitaph at all, but who would have written one? Anyone who could have done so had shared her fate that same night. “Taken too soon from a world that will be forever darker without her,” Angel thought. The row of graves ahead was long.
Fíona Corcoran
1707-1753
“Devoted mother to a loving daughter and an ungrateful son.”
Connor Corcoran
1697-1753
“He provided what he could for his family in worsening times. For all his faults, he didn’t deserve the end he was given.”
A dozen more gravestones from Galway, and his feet carried him on, row by row, through the many years of his victims. Welsh names, English names, names and languages spanning the globe, from everywhere he had traveled. The edge of the sky was only just beginning to lighten when the death dates reached the 1890s.
At the end of a row of Romanian graves, he came to the one that had changed everything.
Liliana Kalderash
1879-1898
May her joy in the next life be as boundless as the suffering of the monster who stole her from those who knew and cherished her in this one.
It wasn’t the last. There were still as many left, holes dug in preparation for coffins and headstones waiting to be carved.
With the first light of dawn minutes from breaking, Angel was finally able to control the direction of his feet again. He ran, not stopping until he was back at his apartment. Once inside, he slid down the door, bracing his hands against his knees. He didn’t understand. The whole thing had been so surreal that he wondered if it was all in his imagination. The mud in the treads of his shoes suggested at least some of it was real. He kicked them off and went to scrub his face in the sink.
†
Sunday Night
Buffy took a deep breath (even two days later, it was such a relief that she actually needed to again) and raised her hand to knock.
Right at that moment, the door opened.
“Angel!”
“Buffy.”
Two seconds late, she retracted her hand. She could feel herself blushing (that part was less of a relief). On the way back from the beach cave a week and a half ago, she’d pressed the issue of how to get in touch with him in case they ever needed to team up on short notice. He’d only given her half an answer, but he could’ve dodged the question entirely if he didn’t want her to find his place on her own.
He gave her a funny look. “How many basement apartments near the Bronze did you have to check before you found this one?”
“Only three,” said Buffy, blushing much harder. This wasn’t fair at all; they’d kissed multiple times, on multiple nights! The L-word had even been dropped, even if only by his jealous, gun-slinging ex. Why should she still be able to be embarrassed around him? “You have interesting neighbors. One of them even recognized a description of you.”
“I’m not really the type to bring plates of cookies around and introduce myself,” he said.
She stifled a snort at that mental image. “I’m surprised you know about that. Did they even have cookies when you were alive?”
He shrugged. “Sometimes we could get shortbread biscuits.” He stepped aside so she could come in. “What brings you here? I haven’t heard anything new about the Master or demon infestations that need clearing out.”
“I guess it’s nice to have a little break after the nightmares,” she said, looking around the studio apartment, trying to take it in quickly enough not to seem nosy. There were a lot of old-looking things. It matched what she knew of him.
“I’m sorry I don’t have anything to offer you. You’re my first human guest.” Then he frowned. “Nightmares? What do you mean?”
“The nightmares that came to life all over town on Friday,” said Buffy. “Giant wasps, spiders crawling out of books, Cordelia getting kidnapped by the chess team. It didn’t take long before everything was going crazy. I thought you might’ve missed it since it mostly happened during the day.”
Comprehension dawned on Angel’s face. “Do you know what caused it?” he asked.
“Yeah. There was this little boy whose kiddie league coach beat him into a coma. He was trying so hard to escape his nightmares that he accidentally pulled them into the real world, along with everyone else’s. Gotta love living on a Hellmouth. We helped him face his fears just in time to prevent the total collapse of reality.”
She looked at Angel for a reaction, but what she saw made her heart sink. Considering how pale he always was, it would be easy to miss the grayish tinge to his skin, and apparently vampires could get bags under their eyes. He was staring at a spot near the center of the apartment in a frozen, unfocused sort of way. “Hey, are you okay?” she said.
“I thought I was losing my mind,” said Angel. His voice was rough. “It was just a nightmare?”
“I don’t know about just,” she said, wrapping her arms around herself. She’d come looking for his place because she’d spent the whole weekend trying not to dwell on what it was like to be a vampire, but it hadn’t occurred to her that he would’ve dealt with his own nightmares. “You don’t know what it’s like to have done the things I’ve done…and to care.” Her stomach twisted, and she regretted leaving immediately with her dad on Friday. “I guess you had it pretty hard.”
“It was nothing I didn’t deserve. But what about you?” He looked her over intently as if checking for injuries. “Is everything okay?”
“It is now,” said Buffy.
“What were your nightmares?”
“Oh, you know. The usual. Sudden test I hadn’t studied for. Dad telling me the divorce was my fault.” Her eyes burned and her throat grew tight. The weekend had been great, so she could push past it—right into a sickly pit of fear. “The Master burying me alive.” She swallowed and forced the last one out. “Coming back as a vampire.”
Angel moved to her so fast she barely saw it, his expression wild. His hands went to her wrist and the side of her throat.
“It’s okay. It only lasted an hour. As soon as Billy woke up, I was back to regular human Buffy. Xander and Willow were back in their regular outfits. Giles could read again. Everything was normal. No side effects.” She covered his hands with hers. His were shaking.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t there to help,” he said.
“How could you? It was the middle of the afternoon.” She decided not to mention the pop-up cemetery, complete with premature nighttime. It would be easy to chicken out and not broach the subject she’d wanted to talk to him about all weekend. She started talking before she could lose her nerve. “Sunlight didn’t affect me and I’m pretty sure my soul stayed put for the whole experience, but the hunger…it was like a black hole that was going to pull me into it piece by piece if I didn’t get blood. Is that what you feel like all the time?”
He nodded. “You get better at pushing it to the back of your mind eventually, but it never goes away.”
She remembered how he had looked when she came home and found him holding her unconscious and bleeding mom in his arms. She had a much better idea now what it had taken for him to stay in control, but it had clearly been a close call. “How do you stop from going insane? Or just giving in?”
“I’m not always sure I can.” He looked at her. “It’s easier when I have a purpose.”
“Then it’s a good thing we met,” she said, smiling. “I’m drowning in purpose. Happy to share some purpose.” She was hoping to see even a tiny hint of a smile from him, but his eyes were back on that spot in the middle of the room.
†
Friday Afternoon
Angel spent what felt like hours staring up at his ceiling while his mind conjured bloody memories to go with each of those gravestones, but he must have slipped into unconsciousness at some point, because a sudden sound had him jerking awake. It wasn’t quite dark outside yet; the tightly-drawn blinds above the kitchen glowed orange-gold with late afternoon sun. He slid out of bed, eyes darting for the source of the sound.
“Look who’s finally awake,” said the derisive voice of a teenage girl. “Not much of a host, are you?”
Angel could see her well enough but reached for the lightswitch anyway, because she couldn’t possibly have that face and that voice. She wore a pastel shirt that matched the ribbon in her hair, jeans embroidered with flowers, and purple sneakers. To anyone else, she would’ve blended in perfectly at a middle school. To Angel, looking at her features was the closest thing he’d had to a reflection since 1753.
The air had taken on that same weight as in the cemetery of his victims. “You’re not real,” he said.
“I’m as real as I’ve always been, dear Brother,” said the thing that looked like his dead sister, her mouth twisted into a cold smirk that didn’t suit her at all. She walked to the fridge. He watched with narrowed eyes, searching for the seam in the illusion, the flaw that would show her for a fake. Her sneakers squeaked faintly against the floor. She opened the door and pulled out the last blood bag Greg had passed him at the hospital. “I suppose I’ll have to make do with your leftovers. Wouldn’t be the first time.” She locked eyes with him and her face transformed. She raised the bag to her mouth and bit straight through the plastic, drinking greedily.
The sight made him feel like he was falling through the floor. He didn’t believe it. He wouldn’t. “I killed my sister,” he said through gritted teeth. “I didn’t turn her.”
“Are you so certain of that?” she asked, tossing the empty bag aside and wiping her mouth on the back of her hand. “It was your first night. That’s always a bit of a blur. It was for me. I had to walk about nine miles before I found a house where they weren’t too afraid to open the door after the terror you left in your wake. I thought I’d taste sunlight without getting so much as a drop of fresh blood.”
“No,” said Angel. He tried to cling to his fading certainty. “I killed my sister. I didn’t turn her.”
She wrinkled her nose. “What’s that Yank accent, Liam? It wasn’t bad enough to become a vampire? Or were you just too good for home? Are you going to befriend that Sassenach Watcher next? What would Father say to that?”
“How long have you been following me?” said Angel. He moved towards her, but slowly, from the side. She copied him, tracing out the opposite half of a circle around the apartment.
“You really never spotted me before now?”
Only in every other brown-haired lass he saw for the last hundred years. Before that, he hadn’t cared. “If it was really Kathy, I would’ve noticed.” He was just a few steps from the desk now, and there was a stake in the top left drawer.
She laughed. “Now I know you weren’t just letting me win at hide and seek to stop me tagging along behind you!” She gestured around at the apartment. “I like the place. Quite the upgrade from last year.”
“Yeah? Where do you live?”
“Anywhere I like. When I come to a new town, I make friends in a park in the evening. I can usually find another girl about my size. I get invited for dinner, and I have my fill.”
Not an uncommon strategy for a vampire turned young. With her big doe eyes, Kathy would be a natural at it. He shook his head. This was a shapeshifter or maybe a poltergeist, sent by someone with an axe to grind. It wasn’t her.
“You still don’t believe me, do you?” she said, her face changing back. “Fine, keep spinning those fierce notions. Run off to your Slayer and try to become some kind of force for good. You weren’t this much of a clod when we were human. Did you even stop to wonder why a demon would want to help the Slayer? If that’s really what he wanted, he’d have found better cavalry than a pathetic wretch of a vampire. He chose you because you’ll destroy her in ways even the Master couldn’t imagine.”
He yanked the drawer open, caught up the stake, and vaulted over the chair directly at her. She dodged nimbly and before he could shift his weight and come back around, she landed a kick squarely to the center of his chest and sent him crashing against the wardrobe.
“Mama always hated when we quarreled,” she said.
“You’re not Kathy!” he snarled, picking himself up off the floor. “Even if you used to be, everything that made her who she was is gone.”
“And good riddance!” she said, curling her fists. “Kathy was an idiot, looking up to her useless swine of a brother. You couldn’t just listen to Da for once? It wasn’t a demon that killed us all, it was you!”
“You think I don’t know that?” he said, closing in on her again. “I can’t change what happened back then, only what I do now.”
“And that’ll make a difference?” she asked. “You built an eternal legacy of blood and death. It lives on without you. Have you even tried to go after the others? Penn, Drusilla, Spike, and Lawson are all out there in the world.” She cocked her head to the side. “Would you care to guess how many vampires I’ve made?”
“Why did you come here?” he roared, brandishing the stake. “Why show yourself now? Two hundred and forty-four years, Kathy!”
The heaviness in the air lifted, and with an abruptness that defied comprehension, Kathy was simply gone. Even the empty blood bag had vanished from the floor. Not so much as a scent remained.
He was alone.
†
Sunday Night
“What were your nightmares like?” Buffy asked.
Angel shook off the image of Kathy and forced what he hoped resembled a smile onto his face. “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “They were just nightmares.”
She wanted him to confide in her. It would be so easy to do it. To tell her about the cemetery, about Kathy. To lay down the weight he’d been carrying for a hundred years at her feet. He no longer feared she would hate him for it. Even now, she was struggling to conceal her disappointment that he hadn’t. But he couldn’t do that to her. He was here to lighten her burdens, not throw his own on the pile.
“I should get going,” she said awkwardly, moving back towards the door. “Lots of patrolling to do.”
“I’ll see what else I can learn about the Master’s plans,” he said.
“Thanks.” She shot him one last look. There was sadness in it, but also more sympathy and patience than most people twice her age were capable of. Then she was gone, the sound of her footsteps fading up the outer stairs.
What was he doing? Inviting Buffy on demon-hunting beach dates, kissing her, giving her enough clues to find his place? Even if Kathy had only been a manifestation of his own fears, he couldn’t allow her prediction to come true. He would keep helping Buffy in whatever ways he could, but that could no longer include direct contact.