by Nancy Holder
Whack! She knocked him flat on his back. Breathing hard, he stared up at her and wheezed, “Good. Let’s move on to the crossbow.”
* * *
Good. Let’s move on to Angel, Buffy thought, as she carried the plastic bag of dinner leftovers upstairs. Her heart was pounding. While she had gone through the paces of her life, he had been waiting in her house all day. At least she hoped he was still there. Between training with Giles, catching a ride home with her mom and being roped into kitchen duty, she hadn’t gotten a chance to sneak upstairs and check on him.
Taking a breath, she opened her bedroom door, slipped in, and shut the door behind herself.
“Angel?”
“Hey,” he said. He stepped from the shadows as if he had blended into them, as if they were some kind of protective coloring.
She held up the plastic bag and said, “Brought you some dinner.” He looked curiously at the bag, then back up at her face. “It’s a little plateless, sorry. So. What’d you do all day?”
“I read a little.” He gestured toward her dresser. “And just thought about a lot of things.” His face was deadly serious. “Buffy, I—”
She was looking in the direction he had pointed. The dresser. Her diary lay on the top of the dresser. As she registered its presence, her mouth dropped open in horror. “My diary?” she squeaked. “You read my diary?”
She marched to the dresser, put the diary in the top drawer, and slammed it shut.
“That is not okay. A diary is a person’s most private place and you don’t even know what I was writing about. Hunk can mean a lot of things, bad things, and where it says your eyes are ‘penetrating’ I meant to write ‘bulgy’—”
“Buffy, I—” he said, stepping toward her.
“And A doesn’t stand for Angel, for that matter. It stands for… Achmed, a charming foreign exchange student, and so that whole fantasy part has nothing to do with you at all—”
Angel cut in. “Your mother moved your diary when she came in to straighten up. I watched her from the closet. I didn’t read it, I swear.”
“Oh.” She took that in. Diary: still private.
Then she realized how she’d babbled on about all the good parts in the diary just like some babbling brook thingie. Damage: worse than if he had read it.
“Ohhhhh.” Where were those trap doors when you needed to be swallowed up?
He didn’t seem to notice her acute humiliation. He was focused on something else. Something more intense to him. “I did a lot of thinking today,” he began. “I can’t really be around you.”
Oh, no. She shrugged to show she wasn’t dying inside. “Hey, no big.”
“Because when I am—”
“Water over … the bridge—” Wait. That wasn’t right…
“All I can think about is how badly I want to kiss you,” he continued, but it didn’t register with her at first.
She pressed on resolutely, determined not to let him see how very much she so did not want him to leave her life: “It’s under the bridge, over the dam…” and then she heard what he had said. “Kiss me?” she echoed, looking up at him.
His face lost none of its seriousness. He was finding no joy in telling her this. “I’m older than you, and this can’t ever . . .” He stopped, then seemed to surrender to something. “I should go.”
She asked softly, “How . . . how much older?”
Again he hesitated. He looked deeply into her eyes. A rush of warmth shot through her; head to toes, she tingled. Her face was hot. Her hands were cold.
“I should…”
“Go, you said.” She moved toward him, knowing that he wasn’t going. Knowing, with a thrill, that he couldn’t make himself leave.
She lifted her chin; he cradled it with his fingers. Then his lips were on hers. It was the softest kiss; tender, unsure.
Angel, Angel, Buffy sang inside. Everything else fell away: being the Slayer and being sixteen and being anything or anywhere but in Angel’s arms, and kissing Angel’s mouth.
They both tensed as the kiss became more passionate. Yes. She gave herself to the moment, held tightly in his arms as she kissed him fiercely and he kissed her back with increasing intensity. His hand gripped her arms, pulling her closer, then . . . She realized he was struggling against her, trying to push himself free.
He backed away and averted his face.
“What?” she asked, panting a little. “Angel, what’s wrong?”
Suddenly, he looked at her. The dark eyes were wild and blank, like an animal’s. His soft mouth was pulled back, revealing sharp, pointed teeth …
Fangs.
She screamed in terror.
Snarling, Angel dove out the window. He rolled down the roof, hit the ground, and raced into the night as Buffy kept screaming.
No. No. No.
The door to her bedroom burst open. Her mother ran in, calling, “Buffy, what happened?”
Buffy fought to catch her breath. She could say nothing. How to explain? Where to begin?
She must deal with this alone. But she was in such shock. Such pain …
“Nothing,” she managed. “I saw a shadow.”
CHAPTER 3
Angel’s a vampire?” Willow’s stunned reaction mirrored Buffy’s own.
The light of day hadn’t diminished the shock as she was sharing Angel’s terrible secret with the Scooby Gang at school the next morning.
Buffy felt sick. “I can’t believe this is happening. One minute we’re kissing, the next minute …” She turned to Giles, almost begging when she asked, “Can a vampire ever be a good person? Couldn’t it happen?”
Though Giles could be the soul of tact, he had never actually lied to her. At least, not that she knew of. This could be the one time and I would be totally cool with that, she thought as he started the words she dreaded hearing.
“A vampire isn’t a person at all. It may have the movements, the memories, even the personality of the person it took over. But it is a demon at the core. There’s no halfway.”
Willow looked at Buffy. “So that’d be a no, huh?”
Buffy couldn’t believe it. “Well, then, what was he doing? Why was he … good to me? Was it all some part of the Master’s plan? It doesn’t make sense.” Besides, it’s too horrible to be true.
Bone weary, soul wounded, Buffy sat with Willow on one of the benches in front of the school. Xander, silent up to now, sat down next to her, grasping his skateboard.
“All right, you have a problem and it’s not a small one,” he began. “Let’s just take a breath and look at this calmly and objectively.”
Buffy half-nodded. He was making sense. She waited, with hope, for the solution to her problem.
And Xander handed it to her: “Angel’s a vampire, you’re a Slayer. I think it’s obvious what you have to do.”
No, she thought desperately. She looked to Giles.
Giles sighed. “It is the Slayer’s duty.”
Xander continued. “I know you have feelings for this guy, but it’s not like you’re in love with him, right?”
Buffy said nothing, but Xander must have read the answer on her face. He blew up. “You’re in love with a vampire?” he said loudly. “What, are you out of your mind?”
“What!”
Standing directly behind him, Cordelia Chase reacted with shock.
Xander looked stricken. “Not vampire.” He said sternly to Buffy, “How can you love an umpire? Everyone hates them!”
Cordelia’s nostrils flared like those of a bull ready to charge. Delicately, however. “Where did you get that dress?” she demanded.
Buffy and the others watched as the cheerleader zeroed in on another girl crossing the quad in the exact same dress as Cordelia’s, black with a colorful pop-art design. Cordelia snapped, “This is a one-of-a-kind Todd Oldham. Do you know how much this dress cost?”
The girl tried to scoot away, but Cordelia was having none of it. She grabbed the back of the girl’s dress and tried to
read the label, hissing, “It’s a knockoff, isn’t it?”
The girl renewed her efforts to escape. The queen of the fashion police gave chase. “It’s a cheesy knockoff! This is what happens when you sign these free trade agreements.”
The two disappeared into the crowd. Flatly, Buffy quipped, “And we think we have problems.”
* * *
Angel walked down the basement corridor that led to his apartment. The door was unlocked; he entered. The soft light cloaked much of the room in shadow; as he turned on another light, he froze, sensing a presence.
“Who’s here?” he demanded, unafraid but alert.
“A friend.” He turned to look. It was Darla. He tensed as she emerged from the shadows, smiling, enjoying his unease.
* * *
“Hi,” she said. “It’s been a while.”
Angel replied evenly, “A lifetime.”
“Or two. But who’s counting?”
He gestured to her clothes. “What’s with the Catholic-schoolgirl look? Last time I saw you it was kimonos.”
“And last time I saw you, it wasn’t high school girls.” She could not realize how much that comment hurt him. The look of horror on Buffy’s face was burned into his brain. “Don’tcha like?” she asked, making a tiny curtsy. “Remember Budapest, turn of the century? You were such a bad boy during that earthquake.” She came toward him, moving slowly, almost as if she were preparing for an attack.
The memory of his own evil actions pained him, as did almost every memory he had of his entire vampiric existence. He replied, “You did some damage yourself.”
Her chuckle was low and breathy. She was beautiful, for the moment. “Is there anything better than a natural disaster? The panic, the people lost in the streets. Like picking fruit off the vine.”
She glided through his apartment, examining his possessions. It was clear she considered him to be a possession of hers.
She looked at his bed. “Nice,” she observed ironically. “You’re living above ground, like one of them. You and your new friend are attacking us, like one of them. But guess what, precious? You’re not one of them—”
Without warning, she yanked a string on a shade and snapped it open. A beam of sunlight hit Angel like an arc of fire. The pain shot deep into his bones as he shouted and fell to the floor.
“Are you?”
He climbed slowly to his feet and set his jaw, unwilling to allow her to witness his agony. “No, but I’m not exactly one of you, either.”
“Is that what you tell yourself these days?” She moved to the fridge and opened the door. Bags of blood hung from the top rack. He knew what she thought of them as she eyed their blood-bank labels contemptuously: this blood was cold, dead, and lifeless. There could not possibly be any sense of rapture or wonder in drinking it.
That was the price he was willing to pay to set himself apart from vampires like Darla. From every other vampire he knew.
“You’re not exactly living off quiche,” she drawled. She walked toward him again. “You and I both know what you hunger for. What you need. Hey, it’s nothing to be ashamed of. It’s who we are. It’s what makes eternal life worth living.”
She touched his chest and began to caress it. He did not react, but he was furious. She looked up at him with a suggestive smile. “You can only suppress your real nature for so long. I can feel it brewing inside of you. I hope I’m around when it explodes.”
“Maybe you don’t want to be,” he said in a low, dangerous voice as he glared at her.
“I’m not afraid of you. I bet she is, though.” She left him and headed for the door. “Or maybe I’m underestimating her. Talk to her. Tell her about the curse. Maybe she’ll come around. And if she still doesn’t trust you, you know where I’ll be.”
She sauntered out the door.
Angel stared straight ahead, hating her. Hating the truths she had forced on him. Hating the look of terror he saw on Buffy’s lovely face when he had revealed his true self. Sometimes lies were better. Such as the lie he had begun to allow himself to believe: that it mattered that he was sorry down to the very core of the soul for all the terrible acts he had committed. That it made what he had done less unforgivable.
That it made him a man again.
He wondered if Buffy would hunt him now. And if she did, what he would do.
* * *
Ah, research. Facts would save this relationship. Of that, Willow was not sure. But she could hope.
In the school library, Willow and Buffy sat at the table while Xander stood to one side. All were looking through books about demons and vampires and all the other ick-factor things Willow had started reading about when Buffy came into her life.
“Here’s something at last,” Giles announced, emerging from the stacks and shattering the silence.
Xander jumped perhaps a foot. “Can you please warn us before you do that?”
Giles was carrying some very old, weathered-looking books. Ignoring Xander, he continued, “There’s nothing about Angel in the texts, but then it occurred to me it’s been ages since I read the diaries of any of the Watchers before me.”
Willow looked brightly at Buffy. “That must have been so embarrassing when you thought he’d read your diary, but then it turned out he felt the same way that—” She caught herself and said to Giles, “I’m listening.”
Giles referred to one of the volumes he was holding and said, “There’s a mention some two hundred years ago in Ireland of Angelus, the one with the angelic face.”
Buffy’s expression was ironic. “They got that right.”
Xander coughed. Everyone looked at him. He put on a innocent expression and said, “I’m not saying anything. I have nothing to say.”
Checking the book, Giles went on, “Does Angel have a tattoo behind his right shoulder?”
Buffy nodded. “Yeah. It’s a bird or something.”
Xander’s eyes widened. He leaned forward slightly and said, “Now I’m saying something. You saw him naked?”
Willow tried to bring the the subject back to safer territory. “So Angel’s been around a while.”
Giles gave his head a little shake. “Not that long for a vampire. Two hundred and forty years or so.”
Buffy gave a little laugh. A gallows laugh. Willow was so sorry for her. “Two hundred and forty. Well, he said he was older.”
Oblivious to Buffy’s distress, Giles sat down and consulted another diary. “Angelus leaves Ireland, wreaks havoc in Europe for several decades. Then, about eighty years ago, a most curious thing happens . . .” He reached for another book. “He comes to America, shuns other vampires, and lives alone. There’s no record of him hunting here.”
Willow perked up. She said, “So he is a good vampire. I mean, on a scale of one to ten, ten being someone who’s killing and maiming every night and one being someone who’s … not…” She flushed at her word choices and the sad expression on Buffy’s face.
“I’m sorry,” Giles said. “There’s no record but, vampires hunt and kill. It’s what they do.”
“Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly,” Xander quipped, but it wasn’t funny.
“He could have fed on me. He didn’t,” Buffy offered.
“Question,” Xander went on. “The hundred years or so before he came to our shores, what was he like then?” Willow didn’t know if the edge in his voice came from being protective toward Buffy or jealous of Angel, but it was there.
Giles said plainly, “Like all of them.” He looked directly at Buffy, making sure she heard his words. “A vicious, violent animal.”
* * *
In the Master’s lair, Darla faced her demon lord and said, “Don’t think I’m not grateful, you letting me kill the Three.”
The Master made a sweeping gesture. “How can my children learn if I do everything for them?” He smiled at Collin, the Anointed One, who sat nearby.
“But you’ve got to let me take care of the Slayer,” Darla added. She would like nothing bett
er than to drain every drop of blood from Angel’s little human.
The Master raised his brow and said, in his singsong voice, “Oh, you’re giving me orders now.”
She walked away, saying over her shoulder, “Okay, then we’ll just do nothing while she takes us out one by one.” Her voice was soft, her words lilting, almost an imitation of the Master.
“Do I sense a plan, Darla?” the Master inquired. She smiled and turned at his invitation. “Share.”
She said, “Angel kills her and comes back to the fold.”
“Angel,” the Master murmured. He looked off into the distance, perhaps seeing the same thing Darla did: Angelus, scourge of Europe, a ravening beast. “He was the most vicious creature I ever met. I miss him.”
“So do I.” That went without saying.
“Why would he kill her if he feels for her?” the Master asked.
Darla smiled. “To keep her from killing him.”
The Master returned her smile and bit his tongue with pleasure. He said to the Anointed One, “You see how we all work together for the common good? That’s how a family is supposed to function.”
* * *
Willow was doing the tutor thing. Buffy was doing the lost-in-thought thing. Call it a study date.
Call Buffy’s life bipolar: death and quizzes.
Willow said slowly. “So Reconstruction began when?” She waited. “Buffy?”
Buffy stirred. “Huh? Oh. Reconstruction. Reconstruction began after ah, the construction, which was shoddy, so they had to reconstruct—”
Willow saved her. “After the destruction of the Civil War.”
Buffy took that in. “Right. The Civil War.” She began to drift away again. “During which, Angel was already like … a hundred and change.”
Willow asked gently, “Are we going to talk about boys or are we going to help you pass history?” She waited a moment, then shut her history book and leaned toward Buffy. They were alone in the library, but she lowered her voice anyway. “Sometimes I have this fantasy that Xander’s just going to grab me and kiss me right on the lips.”
Buffy warmed to the subject. “You want Xander, you gotta speak up, girl.”
Willow looked utterly panicked. “No, no, no! No speaking up. That way leads to madness and sweaty palms.”