chap·ter·two

Wesley stared down at the cell phone in his hand. The call had been disconnected, but the message was clear enough.

"He's got them. (static) I'm on my way home."

The day had started off brilliantly, really. Angel had been kind to him, had gone out of his way to prove that he still trusted him, and furthermore that he trusted him with Connor, after that messy kidnapping near-miss. But then Lorne had been over-the-top optimistic about the spell he'd been crafting to try to bind Angel's soul and modify his curse, and he let it go to his head. Even though he knew it wasn't ready, he let them convince him to go through with it, anyway, and now they had a very, very dangerous psychopathic killer on the loose, who had taken their friends hostage.

Except Wesley knew from extensive research that Angelus didn't take hostages. Charles and Winifred had no idea what Angelus was capable of; he had to get them out of there. It was his fault they were in danger in the first place, and he was going to get them out of it before too much damage had been done. He hoped.

Cordelia narrowed her eyes at him as he set the cell phone back in its holster at his belt. "You're about to do something really stupid, aren't you?"

Wesley nodded, concealing several stakes and other small weapons on his person. "I'm afraid so. I want you and Lorne to take Connor into one of the rooms upstairs. Arm yourselves, and have Lorne cast a protective barrier. Angel should be home shortly, but you shouldn't assume it's truly him. Lorne should read him, of course."

"This isn't just stupid, Wes, it's crazy. You don't even know where he's keeping them." Cordelia frowned. She knew she couldn't dissuade him, but it was her duty as his friend to at least try.

"I will," he replied shortly, hefting a large axe. "Be safe."

~*~

"That's a very interesting bandage, Lilah," Wes said, unable to conceal a smirk at the sight of her with half her head swathed in white gauze. "Haute couture, I presume?"

"I didn't hear you come in," she said glumly, indicating the bandages. "I guess you're here about your fun little magical mix-up, huh?"

"I just want to know where he's taken them."

"If by them you mean Tweedle Dumb and Tweedle Dumber, the lovebird edition, I can probably be of some assistance," she frowned. "I don't care what the firm has to say about it, I'm not protecting him. He cut off my fucking ear."

~*~

It was a nice place, with expensive furnishings and a beautiful view of the city that he wouldn't really be able to enjoy until the sun went down. That was a throwback to his glory days, though, and nothing more. He couldn't care less about what you could see from inside your rooms, but Darla always loved the view. Angelus was more about tactile things than visuals. Sure, he'd taken the time to appreciate the vista of a city burning to the ground, but he was much happier with his hands up to the wrists in someone's entrails, especially if they were still warm and screaming.

Speaking of screaming, wasn't it time for some? The big guy sure had bellowed when he walloped him with the sewer door, but he'd stayed unconscious more or less since then, and the skinny little girl - what was she, twelve? - hadn't done much more than whimper in the last hour or so. More so when he reminded her that if they'd told Wesley where they'd been hiding out on their little romantic getaway, her boyfriend might actually live to see the next morning, and she might even get to keep her skin.

"Okay, Twiggy," Angelus said finally, crossing to the chair Fred was bound to and holding her chin in one large hand. "You've seriously got to quit with the sniveling, honey, because I'm about three minutes from punching your teeth down your throat and watching you choke to death on them, capisce?" He was torn between two game plans for this one. Ideally, she was a worm on a hook. She'd help him land the big fish - the one that would really tear Angel up from the inside out. But she smelled like concentrated terror, and he ached to taste the sweet bouquet of fear again.

"Wesley's going to come for us," she said confidently, despite the tremor of fright that shook her body.

Angelus smiled, straddling her lap and pushing her hair back from her face to lick a gash that ran across the bridge of her nose. "Don't worry. I'm counting on that."

~*~

"What do you mean, he's not here?" Angel's eyes were wide with fear and disbelief. "He just left you guys unprotected?"

"No," Cordy said evenly. "He told us to arm up and lock ourselves in here. Which we did, as evidenced by the hearthstone barrier you can't cross. I thought it was pretty clever, for a stupid guy on a death mission."

Whoa, wait. "Death mission?" Angel blinked. "He's gone after Angelus."

"Go to the head of the class," Lorne smiled darkly. "We're good here, Angelcakes. If you can't get in, he can't get in, so make with the am-scray, already."

"Is he nuts?"

"I'd say that's a given," Cordelia frowned. "He's risking his life for two people who don't even trust him half as far as they could throw him, one of them the woman who scorned him and the other one his best friend who betrayed him. He's either nuts, or he's a hero, and I'm not ruling out the possibility of those two options being mutually inclusive at this point."

Angel managed to look even more gobsmacked. "I thought I was his best friend."

Cordy canted her head to the side, looking like she wanted to pat his arm. "I know you did, sweetie."

~*~

"I'm beggin' you, man, let her go."

Angelus smirked at the young black man, shaking his head. "She's the shiny little lure on the end of my line, Gunn. It would be pretty stupid of me to let her go before I use her to reel in your good buddy Wes."

"What the hell you want with Wes?" Gunn asked, incredulously.

"Oh, come on, gimme a little credit," Angelus grinned. "I wanna play with him, and then I wanna break him. Don't you think it'd be fun to see him broken? All British sensibilities and big fat tears of 'my daddy never loved me'? And then, depending on whether Angel gives enough of a shit to come for him, I'll either snap his fucking neck, or turn him." He ran a cool hand over the smooth, bald head before him. "But you haven't asked anything important yet. You haven't asked what I'm gonna do with you."

How could Angel come for him? Weren't Angel and Angelus the same guy? But then, Angelus was pretty obviously a psycho, and you couldn't trust psychos to have the firmest grasps on reality. "Oh yeah? What are you gonna do with me, then?"

"I'm gonna make you into one big ol' deus ex machina."

"Say what?"

"Okay, not a deus ex machina, more like the dramatis personae in my own personal stage show. See, you're not going to save the day," Angelus said, and he almost sounded apologetic. "Actually, you're gonna help me pee in Angel's oatmeal in a pretty big way, because you're going to help me break Wes. You up for it?"

"No."

Angelus shrugged cheerfully. "Too bad."

~*~

"Just because I can't hear very well doesn't mean I'm completely stupid," Lilah said without even turning around. "Looks like Angelus got all the stealth in the split."

"I was trying to be obvious," Angel said coolly. "Give you the illusion of not being entirely defenseless. Which, actually, you are. Looks like even your receptionist has called it quits."

"Hm. The firm tends to get a little tetchy when you give an armed lunatic the keys to the loft where they're hiding their secret weapon," Lilah shrugged, swiveling in her chair. "I take it that's why you're here? Either to curb your boy-toy's power trip or save him from himself - and yourself - I'd guess. You can tell me if I'm warm."

"Somehow I don't think you've ever been warm a day in your life," Angel commented. "So Wes has the keys. All I need are directions, Lilah. Give them to me and I won't have to kill you."

"What part of 'he cut my fucking ear off,' are you and your pals not catching? I hope you do kill the bastard," she said, scrawling an address onto the back of her business card. "Can't say what it'll do to you, if he gets dusted, but right now there isn't much less caring I could be doing. Do you know how many hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of designer jewelry is going to sit completely useless in my apartment until the stitches heal and the grafting is done?"

Angel snorted. "Has anyone ever mentioned you have an amazingly fucked-up sense of priorities?"

"Are you kidding?" Lilah said, managing to somehow look smug. "It's a point of pride."