The One with the Power (Powerless), a Lindsey story in the Angel universe by Glacis. Rated NC17. No copyright infringement intended. Spoilers for To Shansu in LA

How could a hand that wasn't even there any more itch so damned much? Lindsey had seen, heard, and defended a myriad of strange things during his tenure at Wolfram and Hart. This was too personal to simply accept and ignore. The doctor had warned him about phantom limb pain, but she hadn't told him it would be constant.

Constant, like the rage in his head. Like the mental vision of Angel looking down at him as he lay, screaming through clenched teeth, on the floor of the mausoleum.

Holland could say what he liked about the senior partners appreciating his sacrifice. But it was Lilah who was introducing Darla to her new life, her new mission. He was off doing scut work while she took the glory that was rightfully his. While she took the final steps to destroy Angel. Oh, they said it was because she was a woman, and Darla responded better to her. Who did they think they were kidding? This was Angel's Sire. She'd never responded to a woman in her entire life.

Or after her death, for that matter.

Maybe she didn't like cripples. He glared at the stump at the end of his right arm, and wished for the thousandth time that the damned thing would stop itching. It felt hot, the bandages uncomfortably tight, as if he was wearing a glove that was too small. Only, there was no hand, so the analogy didn't fit.

He growled, a low sound of frustration, and bent his head back to the case work on the table in front of him. He was concentrating fiercely on the petty details when his cell phone rang.

"McDonald," he barked. He made no attempt to hide his displeasure at the interruption. At the work he was doing. At the world in general, and Angel in particular.

"Lindsey," Holland's voice poured over the line like warm honey.

He sat up straight, case forgotten. The only time Holland sounded that sweet was when things were seriously going to hell. Often literally. "What's the matter, sir?" he asked much more respectfully.

"We have ... a situation. Please come down to the secure suite immediately."

"On my way." He was shutting the phone and gathering up the papers to lock them away before the line disconnected. This couldn't be good.

It wasn't.

Darla crouched in one corner, Lilah lay crumpled in the other. The vampire had a wild look in her eyes and blood smeared along her chin. Lilah wasn't breathing. Holland was standing by the door with two Mitrwas demons in full spiked-out body armor, wooden stakes at the ready. Hm. It didn't look like the bonding between the women was going well.

"Sir?" Lindsey asked politely. Darla's head raised and she peered up at him through a mat of tangled blonde hair.

"It would appear that the customary controls placed on a Risen One weren't, in this case, applied. Perhaps you missed a phrase in the spell?"

"It's a possibility," he said as calmly as he could, considering that Darla was now inching toward him. She looked hungry. He glanced over at the guard demons. Neither one left Holland's side. He looked back over at Darla. "Things were hurried, at the end. On the other hand it could be something simpler." Holland looked on with interest as Darla got within six feet of Lindsey. Lindsey didn't move. "Control is tied to the Voka demon. It was slaughtered prematurely." By Angel, went unsaid. "Stop!" he suddenly yelled as he wheeled and instinctively held out his maimed arm.

To his surprise, she actually did. She tensed, staring at his stump, sniffing the air like a dog scenting game.

"Return to the cage!" He put as much force as he could behind the command. She whined, but scuttled backward, and with an unhappy whine did exactly as he'd told her. He waited until she was inside then darted forward himself, slamming the door shut with a clang and shooting the lock home.

"Impressive," Holland nodded. He gestured toward Lilah's body. "Take her to the infirmary and see if there's any way we can revive her." He smiled benignly at Lindsey. "If nothing else, there's always the need for highly-trained zombies."

Lindsey smiled slightly, as was expected of him, then looked back at Darla, who was staring at him with a weird mixture of hatred, lust, and hunger.

"What about her, sir?" he asked patiently. Inside, anticipation was welling up. He was going to be in at the kill. He deserved this. Missing fingers clenched into an invisible fist. He'd earned this.

"Oh, I think it's time we put our little plan into action, don't you think?"

He'd think better if he knew what the plan was, but Lindsey nodded obediently. Whatever it might be, he'd be there when they put an end to Angel, and that was all that mattered.

It hit shortly after she got home that night, and nearly scared her to death. Cordelia wasn't used to visions happening outside office hours. True, once one had hit during an audition, but technically, that was office hours, she'd just been taking time off in an attempt to resuscitate her corpse-like career.

This was something different. Oh, the world exploded like it always did, and there was the usual scratch 'n' sniff aspect of sweat and blood and death, and she needed mega-doses of Excedrin to see again afterward. Same old same old.

What was different was the subject.

Usually, some poor victim was getting beaten, or chewed, or sucked, or otherwise harmed in various disgusting ways that she had to experience second hand in Technicolor and Dolby sound. This time, though, this time made her cry afterward. This time the victim was Angel.

That told her a couple things. One, she couldn't go to the boss with this one, or he'd rush in and get crunched by some dumb blonde with a grudge, bad hair and really sharp teeth. Two, she couldn't tell Wesley, because she didn't trust him not to go drag Angel into it and get him dusted. Third, there was no way on earth she could handle it alone.

So she did what Angel usually did. She followed the vision, and went to find Gunn.

She shivered as she drove into the derelict part of Los Angeles where Gunn and his friends lived. It made her nervous, as it would any ex-rich suburbanite princess, even in the daylight. But if she could find Gunn before she got mugged, or raped, or got her skirt dirty, it would all be okay. Part of her felt very brave for doing what she was doing. The majority of her felt very stupid and more than a little insane.

They appeared from out of nowhere, or so it seemed, weapons raised.

"What, do I smell like a vampire now?" She stopped the car before she hit anyone and hopped out, doing her best impression of a worldly woman completely at ease in her surroundings. She wasn't an actress for nothing!

"It's cool," a voice said from behind the mass of weapons and grim faces, and she let go of the breath she hadn't realized she was holding. "Whassup?"

She smiled nervously, blinking flirtatiously, unconsciously. His grin widened. "I need your help."

The grin disappeared. "Why?"

The guys, and girls, with the guns, stakes and assortment of jet-propelled anti-demon weaponry, melted back to wherever they'd come from, and he moved closer to her. She had to crane her neck to meet his eyes.

It was kind of sexy. He was kind of sexy. She blinked, and put the feeling away to look at when it wasn't quite so time critical that they save Angel's life.

"We have to save Angel's life," she blurted out. He stepped even closer. She shivered again. He was really sexy. She shook her head, more to clear her vision than anything else. "I saw a woman, a vampire, and she's really dangerous somehow, more dangerous than your standard issue vampire, not that those are anything to sneeze at, but she's especially dangerous, to Angel in particular, and if we don't take care of her before she gets her little fangs into him he's a dead man. Well, he's already dead, I know, but Angel will be dead, and Angelus will be back, and I really don't want that to happen, not least because if he's dead then they come after us next --"

His finger touched her lips briefly, cutting off her babbling. She looked up at him gratefully.

"Where?" he asked quietly.

"I have to show you." He started to protest, looking stern, and she rushed on, a little desperately. "I can't tell you! I don't know. I know what it looks like, what it feels like, but it's not like visions come with maps and landmarks! Just smells. Yuck."

The stern look transformed into a grin, and she lost her breath again. God, but he was cute.

"Take me," he told her, pushing her gently toward the car and raising his arm in a signal to his troops.

Any time, she thought, just give me a chance and a moment's privacy. Then the modified Hummer with the grenade-cum-stake-launcher mounted on the back moved into position behind her, and the mini-cavalcade of two vehicles went on a vampire hunt. Through downtown LA, in the middle of the day.

Nobody so much as blinked.

The itching had turned into agony, and Lindsey only realized how bad it had become when Darla reached over and took his stump in her hands, rubbing her mouth over the bandages. She'd been doing well, not attacking, listening to his plans for revenge against Angel, joining enthusiastically in Operation Restore Angelus. He'd felt secure enough to sit with her and one Mitrwas demon, mapping out every move she would make in their campaign, ignoring the ache and the itch, subconsciously using it to sharpen his determination to take out his enemy.

His resolve lasted until she started rubbing her fangs across it. Keening, hungrily. That's when he saw the blood seeping through the end of the bandages, and agony burst across his nerves like flash fire.

He was on the floor, screaming through clenched jaws, but he didn't know how he'd gotten there. The Mitrwas had cornered Darla against the wall, but she wasn't trying to hurt him, or at least he didn't think she was, with the tiny corner of his mind that wasn't crawling with agony. She had vamped out, and she was drooling. It was a little disgusting, but not nearly disgusting enough to distract him from the fact that he knew, just knew, that his arm was on fire.

It took four human guards using all their strength to immobilize him long enough to get him to the infirmary. By the time they arrived and the doctor administered a sedative strong enough to fell the Voka itself, the bandage had fallen away.

Lindsey stared through blurring eyes at the blood and flesh protruding from the end of his sleeve, and screamed again and again until he finally, mercifully, lost consciousness. The last thing he heard under the sound of his own screams was the doctor calling for an exorcist. The last thing he knew before he knew nothing more was that, whatever it was where his hand used to be, it was growing.

Cordelia could feel him sitting beside her as they drove toward the West Side. There was something so attractive about Gunn, and it wasn't just the fact that he had a great body and a cute smile and a nice little butt. It was more the way he moved, quiet but smooth, like a dancer. Or a killer.

Which was just as well, considering what they were on their way to do.

A building stood out like a beacon on the corner, and she turned automatically to the right, following her instincts, trusting whatever it was that the Powers that Be did to her when they took over her brain and turned it into fried mush.

"Close," she muttered, eyes wide open and staring straight ahead, driving on auto-pilot. Gunn twisted in his seat and waved his hand over his head, and the Hummer peeled off to the side. She didn't bother to look in the rear view mirror, she could hear it. His knee was pressed lightly into the side of her thigh. Her heartbeat was in overdrive and she didn't know if it was the threat to Angel, the imminent danger to herself, or the fact that right then she'd like nothing more than to pull into a nice quiet side street, tear his clothes off, and jump on his lap.

She gulped. "Real close." On so many levels.

Then they were there, and she didn't know how she'd found it, she just knew this was it. She pulled the convertible over into the alley between the two tall buildings and stared at the innocuous side door. There were no signs or bells, no indication whatsoever that it was important. So, of course, it was incredibly important. LA, she thought grimly, never show you the real thing even when you're staring it in the face. Shaking off the thought, she pointed at the door.

"They're in there. She's in there. We have to kill her. Now. Totally dead." Her mouth was running, but she wasn't paying any attention to it. Gunn would fix it. Gunn and his gang of vampire dusters. They'd take care of Blondie before she had the chance to do anything permanently bad to Angel. She didn't like the idea of permanently bad Angel. It brought back too many awful memories.

The Hummer rumbled into the alley behind them. Gunn hopped out of the convertible and gathered his troops behind him. She stared at the door a second longer, a fragment of the vision teasing at her memory. Carefully stepping out of the car, she picked her way through the trash until she was at Gunn's side, ignoring the looks the others gave her. She touched his arm, and he looked down at her.

"They don't know we're here. There's a diversion happening. But it's almost over. We have to do it now."

"You trustin' her?" one of the girls protested. Gunn raised his hand.

"We move now," he ordered, and they did. Cordelia stepped back out of the way, shying away from the dirty wall behind her.

"To the left," she called out, remembering her vision. Gunn took her at her word, surprising her yet again. He'd shown a startling amount of trust in her from the beginning. She didn't know why, but when this was over, if they all survived, she planned on asking him.

Over dinner.

At her place.

Somebody had an acetylene torch, and they cut through the door in what was in reality very little time but felt subjectively like a million years. An alarm began to wail and mean-looking demons appeared. The little group of demon hunters whooped with joy and started slaughtering. In moments, blood and goo was everywhere. Cordelia swallowed hard, determined not to throw up out in the open where everyone could see.

She took her skirt in both hands and, stepping high over the butchered remains of dead demons, made her way carefully into the hall. There was a big commotion just out of sight around the corner, and she instinctively reached down and took one of the wooden pikes from the severed hand of an unidentified demon guard.

It was a good thing she did.

Coming around the corner like a literal bat out of hell, the diminutive blonde she'd seen in her vision dodged around three of Gunn's troops and headed straight for the door. Cordelia glanced over her shoulder; the alley wasn't in direct sunlight. The blonde might escape if she made it to the door.

Setting her feet firmly in the goop on the floor and dropping her skirt, muttering a single "Damn!" to herself at the cost of dry-cleaning rayon and wishing for the hundredth time that demon-busting wasn't such a filthy job, Cordelia met the threat. Happily for her limited vampire-fighting skills, the blonde was too busy looking back over her shoulder at the pursuing demon hunters to pay any attention to the single mortal woman standing in front of her.

She ran full on, chest-first, into the stake. Startled blue eyes met equally startled brown ones before the blue eyes dried up and turned to dust, falling at, and on, Cordelia's feet.

"Disgusting," she spat, staring down at the vamp dust now mixing with the blood and slime on her feet and swearing to herself she was never, ever going to wear open toed shoes to work again.

"Good one!" Gunn called out, and she smiled at him. If it was a little wobbly, he didn't call her on it.

"At least now she won't be killing Angel."

"She the one you saw?"

She nodded, and he put two fingers in his mouth, cutting loose with a shrill whistle. The fighting stopped immediately and the hunters retreated back out into the alley. Gunn took her hand and pulled her away from the carnage, propping her in the passenger seat and plucking the keys from her purse. She sat there and let him. She was feeling a little drained.

Not to mention icky, wet with unimaginable fluids, and more than a little stinky. She leaned her head against the back of the seat and stared up into the blue LA sky.

Just another day in La La Land.

Someone had drenched the fire.

The air was humming. Power disturbed the room around him. Lindsey gingerly opened one eye and looked directly at Holland.

His mentor was pale, eyes wide, mouth clamped shut. Even from across the room, Lindsey clearly saw the calculation in his expression.

Words rolled around him, weaving over him like a blanket, pressing into his skin. He smelled incense, impacting his sinuses and making him want to sneeze. He stifled it. The examination table beneath him was hard, and there were straps in place around his arms and legs.

His fingers were clenched into fists. Ten fingers. Two fists.

He strained against the hands on his body, holding him down to the table. The chanting spiraled, layer upon layer of Latin and Aramaic, magick sweeping over and through him. The hands lightened and his head rose a few inches, just far enough to see past the heavy leather cuff around his forearm to the fist clenched at the end of what had been, until he passed out, a stump.

It didn't look like his fist. Didn't look like a part of his body at all. It wasn't the usual light tan, with golden hairs dusting the skin. It was silver, glimmering faintly, like body paint had been ground so deeply into the skin it would never wash away. Even the nails were silver, a darker hue than the surrounding flesh. Along the veins, where the knuckles should show white in the fist, were shadows of gold.

There were symbols there, too, archaic swirls of cobalt blue, alien to him. They appeared to be embedded in his hand, painted in the grain of his skin, as much a part of him as the hand itself.

It didn't itch any more. The fire was gone.

In its place, there was a bone-deep shaking, almost a humming along his nerves. Raw Power, at war with itself, his body as the battleground. He didn't know what was going on, and from the expressions on the faces of the men gathered around him, they weren't too sure either.

At least he wasn't dead. Given his job, that was a bonus.

Perhaps.

He concentrated on relaxing, and his fingers slowly unclenched, hovering a centimeter over the surface of the table before the pads of his fingers and the heels of his palms settled down uneasily against the crisp paper. The chanting paused, then swelled one final time.

As suddenly as if a seal had been broken, Power washed from the room, leaving it cold, leaving him empty. The shivering lessened. Whatever it was that was at war within him reacted to the withdrawal of the external challenge, coming to an uneasy truce that left him weak. He rested his head against the table and looked up again, squinting against the light.

Holland's face broke into his field of vision. "Welcome back, Lindsey."

"Where'd I go?" He tried to make his voice light, uncaring, calm. It came out a rusty squeak.

Holland rested a reassuring hand on his shoulder. Funnily enough, Lindsey wasn't reassured in the slightest. He never was when his mentor got that look on his face. A little too smooth, a little too controlled. It usually appeared right before Lindsey ended up being sent into hell. Sometimes literally.

"It would appear that Angel's connection to the Powers that Be is stronger than we expected. You've been, er, infected by Voka blood that was on the scythe he used to, well, dispatch your hand."

That was one way to put it. Lindsey nodded, keeping his eyes glued to Holland's face. There was more to it than that, he'd bet. He could be patient. Holland would spill eventually. Hopefully.

"And this Voka blood," he croaked. "It caused this ... hand to grow?" It wasn't the weirdest thing that had happened in his law career. Just the weirdest thing to happen to him, personally.

"So it would appear." Holland smiled genially.

Lindsey would have retreated if he could. He really didn't trust that smile. He forced himself to relax again, and attempted a half-smile of his own. It must not have been too convincing, being closer to a snarl than a smile, but it did cause Holland to back off a few inches. Lindsey breathed a little more easily.

"That's not all, however."

Now Holland put on his 'grave' look, and Lindsey bit back a curse. What now? he wondered.

"While you were ... incapacitated, there was a raid on the compound."

Lindsey winced. "Angel?" His voice broke, and he swallowed against the pain in his throat.

"His associates. The guards were distracted by your collapse, and Darla, I fear, attempted to escape."

"God damn it!" The words were almost silent, and Lindsey swallowed hard.

"Yes, quite. It's worse than that."

Lindsey closed his eyes. How much worse could it get? He almost didn't want to know. Only years of using information as his primary weapon allowed him to open his eyes again and quirk a questioning brow at Holland. His boss nodded. Shit.

"She's dead," Lindsey guessed. Correctly. Holland nodded. "Gunn?" He knew he should have done something about the troublesome gang leader, but the man had been useful. Once.

"Cordelia Chase," Holland informed him. Lindsey gaped at him.

"Chase?" he mouthed, his voice giving out completely.

Holland nodded again. Lindsey just stared at him.

"The tool really isn't all that important in the failure of our plan." Holland blithely dismissed the unexpected turn of the girl as vampire killer. "The Raising was doomed from the initial rite, when the Warrior of the Darkness failed to separate Angel from the Powers that Be. Then when the vampire recovered the Scrolls of Obearsain," Holland carefully didn't look at Lindsey's new hand, and Lindsey carefully didn't, either, "and his assistant translated the cure for Ms. Chase's psychosis, the connection was recreated, more strongly than before. So, do you know what we are going to do, as soon as you feel better, Lindsey?"

Unable to force a word out past his tortured throat, he shook his head helplessly. Holland smiled, sharp teeth behind false sweetness.

"We, or more specifically you, are going to remove Angel's connection with the Powers that Be. Permanently." Holland's grip tightened on his shoulder, then released him. "Get well soon, Lindsey."

He nodded. Swallowed. Watched his mentor exit the room, leaving behind two human guards who he didn't think were there solely for his protection. Then he lay back against the unforgiving surface of the table and waited for the doctors to come unstrap him.

His own problems could wait. He flexed his new hand, shivering slightly at the whisper of Power still running loose in his veins. First, he had to deal with Angel. Again. Find a way to shut down Cordelia Chase's connection to the Powers that Be, and do it in such a way that the situation could be turned to Wolfram and Hart's advantage. There had to be a way. He'd find it.

He'd had too many failures lately. Regardless of the cost, he had to find a way to turn this situation to his advantage. He'd saved himself from worse messes than this one, although at the moment he couldn't remember any. It was all Angel's fault.

Wasn't it always?

Wesley looked up with a start as Cordelia breezed into the office, Gunn at her heels. She looked as if she'd been through a fight with a vicious demon, and a viscous one as well, judging by the blood and slime smeared into her dress, along her legs, even a streak in her hair. There was a suspicious dusting of what appeared to be vampire remains on her right hand, along the front of her skirt and crusted in the gore-splashed sandals she wore.

It was a surprisingly good look for her.

Angel came out to stand at his shoulder, carefully in the shadows, looking on with interest. "Have a good time, kids?"

Wesley smirked despite himself. Ever since Cordelia had told Angel he needed to 'lighten up,' he'd been working on his verbal humor skills. This was one of his better attempts.

Gunn looked down at Cordelia. "You gonna tell him, or should I?"

Cordelia squared her shoulders. "There was a threat, Angel. I had a vision, and there was a threat, so I went and got Gunn and his gang and we took care of it!"

Wesley stared slowly between Gunn, who looked as if he was close to laughter, Cordelia, all proud defiance and glowing victory, and Angel, managing to appear both stoic and slightly confused. It was better than television. Well, better than most British television. Since he'd come to the States, he'd been a tad too busy fighting demons to catch much telly.

"And you didn't come get me because ... ?" Angel coaxed Cordelia into explaining further. It took little encouragement. She was fairly bursting with news.

"It was a threat to you! It was those nasty lawyers, and that raising thingy they did, they were going to hurt you, and we took 'em out before they could get to you!"

During her bubbling proclamation of triumph, Angel had gradually been straightening beside him. Wesley looked over in time to catch a thunderous expression on the normally calm features. Not a good sign, not at all.

"You went up against Wolfram and Hart on your own?" His raking glance took in both Gunn and Cordelia. "You let her?"

"Hey, man, we didn't do so bad. Got the baddy, took out the threat, what's your problem?"

Angel growled, a subvocalization so soft the others couldn't have heard it, but Wesley did. Quite distinctly. It made him shudder.

"My problem is that this could very easily have blown up in your faces. Who, or what, did you kill?" Angel asked Gunn, but Cordelia answered.

"Well, Gunn and his guys killed a bunch of icky demons. Do you have any idea how much it's going to cost to dry clean this dress? And I'm just going to have to throw the shoes away. This gunk is never going to come out. I've got vampire dust between my toes. It was a skinny little blonde woman with blue eyes and big boobs. She ran right on to my stake. I think she was trying to escape them, too!"

Angel had frozen beside him, and Wesley could feel his own spine straighten and freeze into position. Taking a deep breath, he asked the question he knew Angel couldn't. "Did she have a name?"

Cordelia looked at him as if he'd lost his mind, but Gunn answered. "Yeah, I heard one of the guards in the back room yelling about Darla gettin' loose. Why?"

Another sound from Angel, this one loud enough that everyone in the room heard it.

"No."

Just the single word, but the pain in it was enough for Wesley. He took another steadying breath, and turned to Angel. Who turned away before he could be touched, disappearing down the stairs into his rooms.

"What was that all about?" Cordelia asked. She sounded disappointed, and somewhat hurt, that her heroics in saving Angel hadn't been rewarded with high praise. Gunn looked confused as well.

"Who was the vamp?" he asked outright. Cordelia looked over her shoulder at him, then peered at Wesley.

"Yeah, why was this one vamp such a threat to Angel? Who was she?"

"His sire," Wesley answered quietly. Cordelia grimaced.

"Well, that sucks."

Wesley couldn't help but agree. Cordelia looked uncertainly at Gunn, then toward the stairwell.

"Think he could, uhm, use some company?"

"No," Wesley told her hastily. "Give him some time alone. He needs to make peace with this on his own."

"Brood, you mean." Cordelia nodded wisely. It sat ill upon her. Twirling in place, she looked up at Gunn, flirtation in every line of her slightly battle-worn person. "If you're not busy, and you can wait until I get the goo scraped off, would you like to have dinner? Together? My place? Tonight?"

Gunn appeared somewhat shell-shocked. Wesley looked on sympathetically. Eventually, Gunn nodded. "Uh, sure."

"Great!" she chirped. "See you at eight! Oh, would you like a ride home? It's a long walk." She was still chattering up at him as she dragged him out into the sunlight.

Wesley walked to the window and watched them drive away. Cordelia's mouth was still moving, and Gunn looked stunned. Not an unusual reaction to being the focus of Cordelia Chase's attentions. He glanced over at the stairwell down which Angel had disappeared. He considered his options carefully, but in the end decided against going downstairs.

Instead, he sat vigil at the desk, stared into space, and waited for Angel to surface from the depths of his grief. He wondered how long they would have the leisure to allow him to mourn, before the next phase of the ongoing battle with Wolfram and Hart would commence.

Again.

Lindsey healed surprisingly well, even better than he usually did. He had a sneaking suspicion it had something to do with the Voka blood he'd absorbed. The skin tone on his new hand didn't alter, though, and the symbols didn't disappear.

Which was just as well, in a way. He'd given a lot of thought to exactly how to remove Cordelia Chase from the picture without causing a jihad from Angel that might be worse than the existing situation. Judging by his past record, Angel was very protective of those he considered family. Simply killing her, besides being unforgivably crude, would be stupid.

No, there had to be another way. Slipping off the thin leather glove that now shielded his unusual markings, he studied his hand closely. The light gleamed off the silver, glinted off the gold highlights, seemed to be caught and held by the cobalt symbols. He traced one particular mark, an arc that began between his thumb and first finger and wove along his palm to end in a hieroglyph's tail between his second and third fingers. It led directly to another splash, along his ring finger, across the back of his knuckle, curling up to the side of his palm before bleeding into his wrist. At the demarcation line where his hand had originally been sliced off, tendrils of silver, gold and blue crept up into the healthy flesh of his forearm. In an abstract way, it was quite beautiful.

In a concrete way, it scared the bejesus out of him.

His eyes focused suddenly on the most clearly defined symbol, spread across the back of his hand. It occurred to him that he recognized it, in the way a man might recognize his own face, distorted by a fun-house mirror. It was ancient Greek.

Tearing his eyes away from his hand and slipping the glove back on, he headed for the closed stacks down in the vault where the most ancient texts were kept. Ignoring the sideways look the guardian demon gave him, he punched in the code for access to the atmosphere controlled reading room and walked over to the Keeper of the Texts.

"I need to look at the Sibylline Books."

"Trojan, Pythian or Cumaean?" it asked, no signs of interest on its face. It had been the librarian in the vault for over three hundred years, and had learned not to ask, regardless of how unusual the request might be. Lawyers didn't like to explain themselves, and even if they did, it didn't want to know. Lindsey knew this, and appreciated the discretion.

"Cumaean, second volume."

Once he had the tube in his hands, he felt his heart rate increase. This had to be it. Carefully spreading the scrolls across the teak surface of the table, he began to read, slowly, looking for familiar symbols.

Three and a half hours later, he found it. "Thank you, Apollo," he murmured, grinning down at the text. Carrying the scrolls back to the Keeper, he requested specific copies.

He leaned against the circulation desk and tapped his finger against the railing thoughtfully, the small sound drowned out by the whirring of the copier. A few minutes later, he had what he needed. Nodding at the Keeper, he stuffed the pages into a manila folder and headed back to his office, hand reaching for his cell phone.

Holland picked up on the first ring.

"I've found a way to separate Angel from his conduit to the Powers that Be, sir. And there's something else, too." He glanced down at his now-gloved hand. "Something that could be quite useful."

"We'll be right there, my boy."

"We, sir?" He didn't need any witnesses. Just somebody to watch him in case the spell went wrong. Somebody to put out the fires.

Empty air answered him. He closed his cell and stuck it in his pocket, then stripped off his coat, loosening his tie and rolling up his sleeves. The old magick was some of the most difficult to work, and he wanted to be comfortable.

Holland rapped once on the door, then walked in. Lilah walked beside him. Lindsey cocked his head and looked her over.

"She didn't turn out too bad," he offered. Holland smiled widely.

"The new preservation spells are working much more efficiently. She's a little slow, but not too far off premium for a zombie."

She smiled vacantly at both of them. Lindsey couldn't see much difference from her living persona. Shrugging, he straightened and handed the folder to Holland.

"A full frontal assault on Angel Investigations failed. Even the Voka couldn't pull it off. Removing Ms. Chase directly would provoke a more aggressive response than would be prudent at this time. Therefore, I propose a secondary intervention. Removing the connection between Ms. Chase and the Powers that Be, while allowing Angel to keep his friend, who will no longer be a threat to us."

Holland rifled through the papers, the smile on his face sharpening. "This is an interesting plan, Lindsey. How did you come up with it?"

He stripped off his glove. Holland shot him a glance, a hint of discomfort appearing behind his smile. Lindsey flexed his fingers, looking down at his hand before smiling back up at his mentor.

"During the course of my investigations into this matter, I made another discovery. The symbols on my, er, new hand." Holland stopped looking through the papers and gave Lindsey his full attention. "They're Sibylline. A combination of archaic Greek, Latin and Etruscan. I reconstructed the activities of the Voka the night of the raising." He paused for effect. Holland was staring at him, unblinking. "The Voka went to the Hall of the Oracles."

"He got in?" It wasn't often he managed to surprise Holland. He enjoyed it, briefly, then continued with business.

"He not only got in, he killed Them." Holland went completely still. "There was more than Voka blood on the blade when Angel cut me. There was Oraclean blood there as well."

Holland's smile could have lit up the entire LA basin. "Oh, that is interesting news."

Lindsey's smile widened into a grin, a wolf's expression on a man's face. "I thought so."

With a small flourish, Holland handed him back the papers. "Work the spell, Lindsey. With the blood of the Voka to empower you and the blood of the Oracles to protect you, you should have no difficulty ridding Ms. Chase of her inconvenient visions."

He took the papers, staring down at the ancient text, and nodded grimly. This was his last chance. It had damned well better work.

Or he might be hiring Angel to protect his own ass, next.

Putting the thought aside, he laid the papers out in a neat semi-circle and prepared to begin the ritual. Punching a button on the telephone, he contacted security.

"Phil, this is Lindsey McDonald. I need you to turn off the fire alarms and sprinklers in my suite."

"All of 'em, sir?" the tinny voice answered.

"Yes. Now."

There was a rustling sound from the speaker, then the security chief told him, "All off, sir."

"Thanks. Have security on stand-by outside. They are not to breach the perimeter unless they're called. Understood?"

"Understood, sir."

Satisfied, he flicked off the 'phone and moved forward to light the incense. As the smoke rose to the ceiling, he jumped lightly onto the desk, folded himself up tailor-style, and lowered his head. As he recited the ancient words, Power gathered in the room, and the smoke traced symbols in the air. The matching markings on his hand began to glow. The wind picked up, and brushed his hair back from his eyes with a lover's touch. He smiled faintly.

His voice gained strength as the spell gathered Power, blending with the wind and the smoke, until it shook the room. His hand began to ache. Tears gathered in his eyes. His throat grew hoarse. Sweat trickled down the center of his back, causing his shirt to stick to his body.

The Power continued to rise.

Cordelia changed clothes nine times before seven thirty. At five minutes to eight, the doorbell rang. She opened the door and beamed at him.

"Hi, Gunn! Uhm, do you have another name? Something a little less, er, formal? Dennis!" she shrieked, as a cold can of soda floated out into the living room and hovered in front of her date. Gunn stared at it. Then he stared at her. She smiled weakly. "Did I mention Dennis? He's, ah, my ghost. But he's really nice. If he likes you. And I think he likes you, because he's trying to be a good host. For a ghost." She glared wildly around. "Dennis!" she hissed.

Gunn grinned at her. "One thing for sure, it's never gonna be dull around you folks." Then he took the can, nodded his head at his invisible host, and said, "Thanks, Den."

A sound like a whistling chuckle filled the room, then the air went still. Cordelia lost her scowl and got a bemused smile on her face. "Hm. He really does like you. A good sign! Usually when Dennis doesn't like somebody it's because they're working for a demon, or they are a demon, or they're a psychotic rogue vampire slayer out to kill us all, or something like that."

Gunn was looking at her strangely again. Her smile turned weak and she bounced in place a little nervously.

"I don't have the best of luck finding dates. It is LA, after all."

He shook his head. "My name's Charles," he said softly.

She stopped bouncing. "Charles," she said just as softly. "That's ... nice." And it was.

Dinner passed in a haze of chatter on her part and a few good questions on his. For two people with absolutely nothing in common, they had a lot to talk about, and very little of it had to do with demons. She piled the dishes in the sink and Dennis gently pushed her out into the living room, putting up invisible bars when she tried to help. She grinned and blushed, took the drinks he floated out to her, and joined Gunn on the sofa.

"So, what are your plans, if the acting thing don't pan out?"

She leaned forward and took the glass from his hand, setting it on the coffee table. "We've been talking about me all night. What about you?"

He shrugged. "You know all the important stuff."

She shook her head. "Oh, I don't know about that." He gave her a sideways look, and she flirted up at him with her eyelashes. He grinned. "Is this the part where you finally kiss me?"

"You want me to kiss you?" he asked, not all of his surprise a put-on. Her face softened.

"Yeah," she admitted. "A lot, actually."

He cupped her chin with one hand and leaned forward to meet her. The only places they touched were his hand on her jaw and their lips together. It was sweet, and soft, and escalated quickly into something much hotter. She followed him when he pulled back, shuffling along the edge of the sofa until she was almost sitting in his lap, curving over him. His hands slipped down and around her waist, and she slid her arms around his neck, angling her head to taste him more deeply. She was drowning in sweetness when the pain hit.

Wrenching away from him, she shrieked as the first spikes of the vision struck her like hammers to the skull. Out in the kitchen, a plate dropped as Dennis reacted to her pain. Dimly, through the colors flashing in her eyes, she could make out the shocked expression on Gunn's face.

"'S okay, Charles," she managed to whisper. "'S just a vision." Then with a sudden concussion, as if her thoughts had been sucked out of her mind, the vision was ripped from her head, sending her crashing down to the sofa. He caught her as she convulsed.

Her last coherent thought before she passed out was that she could really get used to this guy holding on to her.

The ringing of the telephone jolted Angel from his thoughts, although anyone watching him would never know it from his physical reaction. He heard Wesley's voice, light English accent dipping and falling as he spoke. A sharp note of urgency warped the tone, and he looked up as Wesley came down the stairs at a near run.

"That was Gunn. There's been an emergency with Cordelia."

His axe was in his hand and he was halfway up the stairs before Wesley finished speaking. They made it to the apartment in record time, Angel thankful that as usual, the LAPD were busy somewhere else and not giving out speeding tickets to demons in a hurry.

The door flew open as they pounded up the stairs, and he called out an absent, "Hey, Dennis," as he ran into the living room. Cordelia was draped across Gunn's lap on the sofa, and appeared to be just coming around.

"What's up?" Angel asked Gunn but kept his eyes on Cordelia. She wasn't bleeding anywhere, nothing strange seemed to be happening to her limbs, and her eyes were the right color. No outward signs of attack or possession. He relaxed a fraction.

"I dunno, we were kissin' and she just sort of curled up in a ball and grabbed her head."

Wesley interjected, weakly, "Kissing?" sounding much more jealous than he realized. Angel relaxed even further.

"Did she say anything?"

"A vision, she said."

Angel nodded. "Did she give you any details?" Now that he knew it was business, his manner was more brisk, less panicked. Not that he'd admit to panic. Ever. To anybody.

"There weren't any." Cordelia joined the party. Her voice was reedy, but she didn't look any the worse for the wear. Angel dropped down onto the closest chair.

"What do you mean? Was it too blurry to make out, or too short?"

"Neither," she said, waving one hand. She didn't look like she was in any hurry to leave Gunn's lap. Which was okay, since he didn't look like he was in any hurry to let go of her, either. "One minute it was there, the next, swoop! It was gone."

"Gone?" Wesley sounded a little more settled, too.

Angel glanced up at him and had a moment's revelation. It didn't look like Wes was jealous of Gunn. It looked like he was jealous of Cordy. Angel blinked. That would take some thought. Later. Shaking off the distraction, he turned back to Cordelia.

"So, how do you feel?"

She looked up into Gunn's face and smiled. There was a hint of the predator there along with a whole lot of sweetness. "Pretty good, actually. Not even any headache."

Rising from the chair, Angel gathered Wesley up on his way out the door. "Have a good night, kids. Call me if you need me." The door shut with a gentle bang behind them. He grinned at Wesley. Wesley looked confused.

"False alarm?" Wesley didn't look like he bought it. "I need to do some research."

"Do that," Angel told him. "I just wouldn't recommend bothering them with the results until tomorrow. At least."

He ignored Wesley's disgruntled expression and watched the night go by as they drove back home. He had a lot to think about. Darla. Cordelia. His city. His fate. His place in the universe.

His shopping. He turned back to Wesley. "Turn left at Sepulveda, would you? I'm almost out of blood."

Another exciting night in the city of Angels.

Power expanded in the room until the pressure was so high Lindsey was certain his ears would start to bleed. Lilah had crumpled, her newly-bound zombie strength not enough to stand against the force of the wind. Holland was clinging to the wall, eyes narrowed against the smoke, watching Lindsey intently.

With a crescendo that sounded like the wail of a banshee, the spell broke free. Symbols whirled crazily in the air like leaves in a storm, swirling around Lindsey and sliding along his body, wreathing his hair in smoke, caressing his face, sliding around his limbs like snakes. His eyes stung and his mouth fell open as the smoke stole his air. In the space of a heart beat, it dissipated. The wind died, the smoke cleared, and the pages that had held the written text were no more than ashes scattered across his desk.

He was shaking a little as he half-climbed, half-slid off the desk. Dusting off his slacks, he straightened his shirt and reached for his tie.

"That went well, I think," Holland offered as two large security men came in and dragged Lilah out of the room. She still hadn't regained consciousness. It would probably take another binding and preservation spell, or she'd start to lose parts. Once physical cohesion was lost, a zombie was pretty much fodder. Lindsey glanced from her feet, bouncing along the carpet between the two big humans, over to Holland's complacent expression.

"Yes, I think so," he said. Or tried to say. Before the words could get out, the world fell on top his head.

At least, that's what it felt like. His hands went up to clutch at his temples and he gave a strangled cry, a wail trapped behind clenched teeth like an animal in pain. He doubled over, falling to the floor at Holland's feet, completely unaware of it as he wrestled with the madness that had overtaken his brain.

Sounds were screeching in his ears, screams of pain and fright unlike any he'd ever heard. He was feeling the screaming in his skin, bones aching with the intensity of the fear in them. There was a god-awful stench rising up around him, making his gorge rise. Colors flashed in front of his eyes, pictures of people stretched out of frame until they became caricatures of human beings, bleeding and writhing in agony.

Pulsing through the colors and the sounds and the smells, he could see his hand in front of his eyes. The symbols were glowing, the intense deep blue found at the heart of a flame. They danced in front of him, leading him through the vision, through the madness.

As suddenly as it hit, it was over. He was curled up at Holland's feet, and the older man was holding his shoulders. He really, really wanted to throw up. He controlled the urge, with effort.

"What ... what the hell was that?" His voice was raspy again. He wondered, with some embarrassment, if he'd been screaming as loudly as it felt like he'd been screaming.

"I'm not sure, but I think it might have been a vision from the Powers that Be." Holland sounded obscenely cheerful. Lindsey flashed on choking his boss to death, not for the first time, but gave up the idea as a bad one. For now, at least.

"It's disgusting," he spat. "Intrusive. And it damned well hurts." To his horror, there was a whine in his voice. He made an effort to straighten up, then winced as a lance of pain split his skull. "God damn it!" More than a hint of a whine in that one.

Holland patted his head gently. "Can I get you anything?"

"Drugs would be good," he answered automatically, concentrating on dragging himself to his feet. He staggered over to his chair and fell more than sat in it. He dropped his face in his hands and waited for his stomach to settle.

A glass appeared on the desk in front of him, and Holland offered him two tablets. "Take this. It will help."

"Ibuprofen?" he asked.

"Percodan," Holland replied.

He swallowed as fast as he could. If that was a vision, it was a wonder Cordelia survived them. It didn't surprise him that Doyle had committed suicide. He stared dully at his hand, the symbols no longer glowing.

"This could be useful."

Lindsey dropped his head back into his hands. He had an awful feeling Holland was right, and he was more than half afraid he knew how it would be used.

"Perhaps we can use the information instead of Angel?" Then, he continued reasoning silently, since we don't actually go rescue anybody, eventually the damned things will stop, and I'll get my brain back. In one piece.

"Oh, no, of course not," Holland purred.

Lindsey swallowed. The urge to throw up was back. He just didn't want to know. His boss told him anyway.

"We've been looking into a way to get a man inside his organization."

Oh, hell, Lindsey mouthed.

"This is the perfect opportunity. After all, he knows you."

"He hates me."

"That's immaterial."

"It's going to be hard to convince him to trust me since I've already sold him out." Lindsey had a feeling he might as well be talking to his desk for all the good it was doing. Holland's response affirmed the feeling.

"He'll have no choice, because he'll believe you have no choice. After all, you didn't ask for the visions, they just came to you."

"That's the damned truth." But was it? After all, he did have the Oracles' blood in him now, and he had taken steps to steal the gift of Sight from the Chase girl. He groaned softly. Son of a bitch, he mentally cursed himself. Good going, Lindsey. Way to fuck up royally.

"So now, you have to go to him. Return here tomorrow, and make sure he follows you. Go now." That sounded like an order.

"Now?" he asked through his fingers.

"Now," Holland informed him.

He got up and headed for the door, staggering more than a little from the combination of headache and drugs.

"Oh, Lindsey," Holland called after him. "Take a taxi."

On expense, Lindsey decided. If he was going to go through with this fiasco, and it looked like he had no choice, he sure as hell wasn't going to pay for any of it.

The dark wasn't helping. Angel stared out into the room, seeing as clearly in the dark as a human did in the daylight, and wondered why Darla's death wasn't upsetting him more than it did. She'd loved him once, in her own twisted way, and he'd spent decades at her side. True, the memories of those decades drew more guilt than pleasure from him now, but he'd had fun at the time. More recent memories were even more painful.

Before he could sink further into depression, there was a disturbance at the door. He took the stairs two at a time, thinking along the way that he'd been spending too much time with Cordelia. A good brood just didn't do for him what it used to do.

The sight that met him at the top of the stairs stopped him in his tracks. Wesley stood at the threshold, a battle axe in his hand, aggression in every line of his body, muscles quivering. Lindsey McDonald, Born-Again Boy who hadn't been quite so born again, stood in the doorway, chin barely clearing the edge of the axe. He looked like hell.

"Keep partying like that and it's gonna kill you, Linds," he offered.

Bloodshot green eyes rolled at him like a spooked horse, then the strangest thing happened. The tough lawyer who specialized in evil whimpered like a little kid and grabbed his head with both hands, doubling over in pain. Wesley barely got the axe out of the way in time to keep from beheading him. Angel stood there in shock, recognizing but rejecting what he saw.

Two hands.

Holding what looked one hell of a lot like a head in the middle of a vision.

"Oh, shit," he breathed. Wesley gave him a shocked look, although he didn't know if it was from seeing Lindsey have a vision or hearing Angel curse. "Grab the Excedrin and a glass of water. And your note pad."

Wesley had the same horrified expression on his face that Angel was sure he had on his own. Please, please, he begged silently in the closest thing he'd come to a prayer since Doyle died, please don't let Lindsey McDonald be my Messenger.

"Ow, ow, ow, ow," Lindsey whined.

Angel reluctantly came forward and picked up the quivering man, dragging him forward and dropping him none too gently onto the small couch they kept in the lobby for clients. Lindsey curled up into the tightest fetal ball Angel had seen in a long time and continued to whimper quietly. Eventually, he started muttering.

Wesley slammed the glass of water and the headache pills on the desk and took out his notebook.

"Thirty four seventeen ow Maricopa. Kid. Ow. Teenager. Ow. Ow. Danger. Ouch. Fuck. Ow."

Angel leaned closer, lifting the hair out of Lindsey's eyes. They were screwed tightly shut, his entire face crumpled in a scowl of pain. "Can you tell us anything else, Lindsey?" he asked, resigned to his fate but not liking it one little bit.

"Ow!" Lindsey actually nuzzled his hand. Angel looked down at him with disbelief. "Pak'tau. Slime. Yuck! OW! Fuck, fuck, fuck."

"The demon or the headache?" Wesley asked reasonably.

Lindsey unscrewed one eye and glared ineffectually at Wesley. Wesley watched him expectantly, one hand poised over the pad, pencil at the ready, the perfect model of an attentive secretary. Lindsey whimpered.

Angel grinned. Okay, this could be fun, in a cruel sort of way. And he hadn't had any really vicious fun since he'd had sex with Buffy ... his brain shut off, the smile disappeared, and he gulped, hard. "So, it's a Pak'tau demon targeting a teenager on Maricopa street."

"Avenue. Ow," Lindsey corrected him.

"You coming?"

"Fuck you!"

Guessed not. "Get the car," he told Wesley, grabbing a pair of hand cuffs from the side drawer of Cordelia's desk and efficiently cuffing Lindsey to the back of the couch. "Don't go anywhere," he cautioned.

Lindsey just lay there and whimpered. It was really rather entertaining, and he wished he had more time to enjoy it. But he had a kid to save and a demon to slay. Work before pleasure, always. Angel sighed, grabbed his sword and his metal spike, and went out to join Wesley in the convertible.

"I don't like it," Wes said, halfway to the rescue site.

"I'm not wild about it, but we can't deal with it now. We've got work to do."

"And when we get back?"

"We beat the truth out of him."

Wesley looked quite happy with that idea.

Forty five minutes of gut-churning demon bashing later, covered in purple ichor and smelling worse than a hot day in the sewers, they headed back to the office.

"You know," Wesley mused, trying to breathe through his mouth so their stench didn't overpower him, "this is becoming almost routine. Perhaps the Powers that Be changed the Messenger because They feared we might be becoming complacent?"

"Maybe," Angel allowed. Maybe not. He had a gut feeling the Powers weren't behind this. Lindsey'd been meddling again, he'd bet on it. Lindsey was always meddling, and every time he did, something got screwed up. His thoughts led him back to Darla, and a moment's depression, then further on to Lindsey's suddenly reappearing hand, and some serious confusion. "What do you know about limb regeneration?"

Wesley looked at him from the corner of his eye. "Lizards can re-grow tails. It doesn't normally work as well with humans. You're thinking of his hand?"

"Hands." Angel slumped in the seat, shook off the headache from the stink of the goop all over his coat, and sighed deeply. "He had two."

"That is a conundrum," Wesley intoned. Angel glared at him.

"He should only have one."

Wes glanced sharply at him. "I hadn't forgotten."

Angel nodded, and let the silence drag out. By the time they got back home he was in a thoroughly foul mood. Perfect for dealing with Mr. McDonald.

Who was sound asleep on the couch, cuffed hand dangling in the air over his head, drooling slightly onto the cushion under his cheek. He looked like he was four years old. Angel grimaced. Wesley took up a defensive stance, axe once more against Lindsey's neck, gore dripping sloppily onto his two hundred dollar shirt. That lightened Angel's mood considerably.

"You might want to stand back a little, Wes," he suggested. "If he jumps, he could cut his own throat, then we'll never get any answers."

Wesley blushed a little and eased off a few inches. Angel leaned forward and rapped Lindsey sharply on the forehead with his knuckles.

Lindsey curled back up into a ball faster than a bug poked with a stick. He whimpered again. Angel looked over and saw the Excedrin, still sitting next to the water glass, just out of Lindsey's reach.

"Oops." He tapped less sharply atop Lindsey's head, and one eye peeked out over a shielding arm at him, through a fall of brown hair. "Want something for the headache?"

The eye blinked. Appeared to be considering it. Blinked again. The head nodded. Both eyes surfaced as Lindsey unwrapped his arm from around his head. Angel dropped the pills in Lindsey's free hand, watched him as he put them in his mouth, and held the glass while he drank. Lindsey fell back, tentatively, against the cushions.

"Thanks," he rasped.

"All part of the service. What are you doing here, when did the visions start, and where'd you get the new hand?"

Lines of stress and pain smoothed out on Lindsey's face as his eyes opened wide and he grinned up at Angel. "The cross examination begins."

Wesley lowered the axe. Lindsey stopped smiling. Moving very slowly, he raised his left hand to his right, still cuffed to the rail at the back of the couch. Carefully, he pulled the leather glove off his right hand, one finger at a time. Angel stared at it as it was uncovered. Wesley gasped. Lindsey flexed his fingers.

Angel blinked.

It looked familiar. Not the color, necessarily. It was a little too silver. But the flashes of gold, the iridescence, and most especially, the deep blue symbols scrolling across it.

"The Oracles," he whispered.

"Next time," Lindsey growled, "you might want to clean your weapons before you go chopping pieces off of people."

Wesley started to ask something, but the words came out garbled. Angel raised a hand, and Wes fell silent.

"What do you want?" There was no warmth whatsoever in Angel's voice. Lindsey's eyes closed again, and when they opened, they looked directly at Angel, holding a vulnerability he'd never have believed Lindsey capable of feeling.

"You gotta help me." He sounded desperate.

"Again? Why don't you go to your masters? I'm sure they would love to know about the visions."

Lindsey made an odd sound, a cross between a laugh and a snort. "Can't." He waved his strangely marked hand. "They won't let me."

"Who?" Wesley chimed in.

"You call 'em the Powers that Be. I call 'em a pain in the ass." He paused, considered his hand, and sighed. "And in the head."

Angel reached down and ran his fingers along one of the marks. It was warm to his touch and made his skin tingle slightly. He glanced up at Lindsey's face. The green eyes were half-closed, staring at his fingers as they traced along the edge of the symbols. Abruptly, he smelled arousal. Lindsey's.

His own.

"You can stay here," he offered abruptly. Wesley started to protest, and Angel shook his head at him. Wes frowned. Angel ignored him.

"Will you unlock the cuffs? My hand's gone to sleep."

Angel reached back into the desk and pulled out a length of chain. It was amazing what Cordelia kept in her desk drawers. Useful, too. Without another word, he uncuffed Lindsey from the couch and pulled him to his feet.

"Angel ... " Wesley cleared his throat. Angel looked at him over his shoulder.

"It's okay." Whether it was or not, it was what he had to do. Wes nodded, not wanting to agree but having no choice. Angel gave Lindsey a shove toward the stairs and followed him down.

Distantly, he heard Wesley locking up and leaving, but his attention was fixed on Lindsey.

"Strip," he ordered. Startled green eyes stared up at him. "Get into bed."

The scent of arousal spiked. He noticed that Lindsey deliberately kept his back to him. Probably a good idea. He waited while Lindsey stripped down to his boxers, then gestured toward the bed. Lindsey lay down on it like a vestal virgin on an altar. Angel ignored the inquisitive look, and the intriguing bulge in the boxers, and efficiently chained Lindsey's ankle to the bed post.

Then he turned around and headed for the shower.

"Hey!" came the startled protest from behind him. He ignored it. Went into the bathroom and stood under the hot water until every trace of the Pak'tau demon had washed down the drain and there was the semblance of warmth in his cold flesh.

Rubbing a towel over his head, he snagged a pair of black silk boxers from the back of the toilet and wandered back into his bedroom. Lindsey had fallen asleep, half under the covers, chained ankle atop the sheet, his strangely marked hand tucked under his cheek. Angel looked closer. At least he wasn't drooling this time.

Tossing the towel off to the side of the bed, he climbed in under the covers. He lay there for a long time, staring at his unexpected bedmate, wondering what the hell he was going to do with him now that he had him. Angelus piped up deep in his mind with several suggestions; his demon really liked Lindsey. Angel determinedly ignored the enthusiastic voice until it died away to an occasional disgruntled muttering. Whether he wanted to admit to it or not, he liked Lindsey a bit too much, himself.

Parts of him were pretty enthusiastic about the little weasel, actually.

He glared down at his crotch, willing his erection away, remembering the scent of Lindsey's lust earlier that night, knowing he wasn't alone in the fascination. The thought didn't help. Deciding he was too damned tired to think about it any more that night, he curled up on his side, and determinedly went to sleep.

Facing Lindsey. He didn't trust him at all, and he certainly wasn't going to turn his back on him.

Sometime in the very early morning hours, the warmth drew him in, and he wound up wrapped around Lindsey like an octopus. Neither of them moved away.

As assignments went, Lindsey had been given worse. He simply couldn't remember any at the moment. Pushing ineffectively at the ice cold arm wrapped around his waist, pinning him to the bed, he sighed.

"Going somewhere?" Angel sounded wide awake. And amused. Lindsey scowled.

"To work, if you'll unchain me."

"Say that often?" The arm didn't move.

"Only to vampires, oddly enough." He pushed at it again. With his right hand, this time. Behind him, Angel shivered. He felt that shiver all the way to his bones, and craned over the arm to look down at his crotch. Yup. Hard. "Shit."

"D'you sleep with vampires often?" Angel was even closer now, if that was possible, and his nose was buried in Lindsey's neck. It was Lindsey's turn to shiver.

"Only when I'm forced to," he snarled. "Would you please let go of me?"

"I dunno," Angel purred. "You feel pretty good."

"I feel like I'm gonna be pretty fucking late if I don't get out of here and go to work." The cold nose that had been rooting around the curve where his shoulder met his neck stopped dead. Lindsey mentally shrugged at the pun, and wriggled, doing his best to ignore both his body's reaction to Angel and Angel's reaction to him. At least it wasn't one-sided. He didn't know whether to be thankful for that or pissed off.

"You're going back to Wolfram and Hart?" Angel asked with deceptive calm.

Lindsey threw him a wild-eyed look over his shoulder. "Where the hell else would I go? Look, the Powers that Be won't let me go to my bosses with the visions, but if I never show up again they'll come huntin' for me. And I don't know about you, but I really don't wanna know what their huntin' dogs eat for supper." Damnit, the stress was showing. His accent was thick enough to cut with a knife. "What time is it?"

"Just before five."

"Good." The arm finally loosened and he slipped out from under it. "I've got time to get in, take a shower, and get some work done before they realize I've left. Hopefully they won't do any mind scans for awhile. I gotta figure out a way to hide this from -- Ow! Fuck it!"

The last words came out on a pained gasp as he tripped over the chain holding his ankle to the bed post and landed flat on his belly on the floor. Utter silence met his exclamation. Twisting awkwardly, he glared up at Angel.

Who was staring, apparently entranced, at his ass.

"Oh my God!"

His head swiveled toward the stairs so quickly he nearly gave himself whiplash. Cordelia Chase stood on the steps, staring back and forth between himself and Angel as if she was a spectator at a tennis match. If the players were in their underwear. Lindsey could feel himself blushing everywhere. It surprised him. He hadn't realized he still knew how to blush. Happily, she was turning just as red as he was. The only one not blushing was Angel, and that was probably because he'd gone to bed without dinner the night before and didn't have enough blood in his system. Lindsey leaned his forehead against his hand.

"Would you unchain me?" It came out more a howl than the reasoned request he'd intended. Cordelia stepped forward. Angel stirred behind him.

"I'll take care of it, Cordy. Meet me upstairs?"

She nodded, turning on her heel and fleeing back up the stairs. Lindsey heard snatches of babble, something about never coming in early again and disinfecting her chains, before her footsteps and her muttering finally gave way to silence.

A large, cold hand grabbed his foot, and he nearly did himself an injury trying to jump away. He couldn't quite contain the giggle. He buried his face harder against his arm. Was there any further humiliation to which he could be subjected? A single finger traced down the arch of his foot and he ruthlessly smothered the resulting giggle against his forearm. It would appear that Angel had no mercy whatsoever.

"Please!" he finally begged. The cuff around his ankle clicked open, and he moved faster than he ever had in his life. He was dressed and ready to run out the door in less than two minutes, never once looking at Angel the entire time. So he was more than a little surprised when he did look up to see that Angel was even faster at dressing than he was.

Good. He wouldn't have to lure the vampire to follow him after all. Angel's own over-developed boy scout instincts would do it for him. But it never hurt to have a little insurance. He put on his most uncertain look, not difficult given the experiences of the morning. It wasn't often ... in fact, never ... that he woke up on the floor in his underwear with a vampire tickling his chained foot while a sap-headed actress wannabe looked on.

"Uhm, can I use your 'phone? I need to call a cab. Didn't want to drive last night, didn't know how long my eyes would last. Didn't want to be on the road when a vision hit."

"This is LA," Angel pointed out reasonably. "Nobody'd notice."

"The Firm would, if I dented their Lexus."

Angel shrugged. "I'll give you a ride."

Score one for the lawyer. Lindsey very carefully didn't grin. "Thanks." He looked askance at Angel, through his eyelashes. Angel looked uncomfortable. He dropped his gaze. And hard. He swallowed, trying to work some spit into a mouth suddenly gone dry. This was going to be tougher than he'd expected. Not that he thought Holland actually wanted him to seduce Angel. But Lindsey was used to using every weapon in his arsenal, and his instincts were telling him, loudly, that sex was a great way to get inside Angel's defenses.

Or maybe it was his hormones. It was kind of hard to tell sometimes.

Shrugging off the thought, he drew his glove over his silver hand and headed out into the pre-dawn shadows. The ride to the Firm's headquarters was a silent one. He'd look at Angel, Angel would stare straight ahead. Angel would glance over at him, he'd peer determinedly at the passing traffic. Two blocks from the office, Lindsey asked Angel to let him out.

Pulling over to the curb, Angel told him, "Be careful." Lindsey gave him a look that said, plainly, 'no shit,' but didn't dignify it with an answer. He could feel Angel watching him as he headed up the steps. The feeling stayed with him all day. All evening, and all the way home.

It was a good thing. As he punched the button to set the alarms on the car and headed toward his front door, three Fhaukul demons attacked him. They made a good show of it, but he knew right away that Holland had ordered the attack to draw Angel out. Otherwise, he'd have lost his head in the first few moments of combat.

As usual, Angel cut it fine. He'd managed to put one Fhaukul down before the other two dragged him down, punching and clawing at him. He was starting to yell in earnest when the bigger of the two suddenly went flying and the last one got the snot kicked out of him by a grimly determined protective vampire. It was a good thing. Lindsey felt like one big bruise, and couldn't have fought back any more to save his soul.

Perhaps those were the wrong stakes. He was, after all, one of Wolfram and Hart's best. Who knew if he even still had a soul?

He dismissed the thought as irrelevent and staggered along beside Angel as he was propelled by one arm down the street toward the convertible. Lindsey tried to catch his breath. By the time he finally did, they were almost all the way back to Angel Investigations.

"Well, hell," he wheezed.

"Rough day at the office?" Angel deadpanned.

"Fuckin' mind readers." He slumped in the seat in his best projection of 'morose lawyer whose pack has just turned on him.' "Can't go back now."

"You always have a choice." There was a heavy lacing of irony in Angel's voice. Lindsey's glare wasn't faked.

"Yeah. Some choice. Go back, get turned into people kibble or forced to eat my own liver." He ignored Angel's interested look and grumbled on. "Or become one of Angel's Avengers, and risk my ass every night of the week for not a fuckin' thing."

"Angel's Avengers?" It sounded strangled.

"I didn't ask for this, you know."

"Believe me, nobody thought you did. Not for a moment."

Lindsey stared back over at Angel. His face was too expressionless. He had the gut feeling under that calm exterior Angel was silently laughing his ass off. He smirked. He who laughed last laughed best, and he was planning on being the last one laughing. As they were walking back into the building, the smirk disappeared as another vision hit.

"Oh, hell!" he ground out. The world split into two realities.

One consisted of Angel's arm around his back, holding him up and leading him forward. Wesley's voice, asking for details. Cordelia, in the background, saying "And I didn't even have to kiss him! Thank God."

He'd figure that one out when his head wasn't melting into mush. Which was the other reality. A stench so awful his tongue felt as if it was coated in battery acid. His eyes watered, and he coughed out words he couldn't hear. The name of a park. A small clutch of vampires. A woman alone, dressed for a party, blonde, weren't they all?

This time, at least, they didn't handcuff him to the couch. And he recovered much more quickly. To find Cordelia Chase sitting at her desk, staring at him with the same look she'd give a dung beetle if she found it in her underwear drawer.

"Why would you have to kiss me?" The first thought in his brain popped out his mouth. Christ. Must be contagious, and he caught it from her along with the visions. He'd have to watch that.

"Thought that was how Doyle gave them to me." She looked away, sadness sliding over her face like a veil, then slipping away again. "But it was just the Powers that Be. They can have a really weird sense of humor sometimes. I mean, look who they chose for their Messenger."

Lindsey couldn't find a single argument for that one. They sat in silence until she got bored and logged on to the computer to surf the 'net. Half an hour later, Wesley and Angel stomped into the office. Lindsey closed his eyes and tried to breathe through his mouth. Yeah, the reality smelled just as awful as the vision had.

That night found him sleeping on Angel's couch. About four in the morning, his hand started to burn and he sat bolt upright, staring at his skin. The symbols were glowing. An odd noise was coming from the back of his throat, and he couldn't stop it.

Angel was standing next to him, seeming to materialize out of nowhere. He jumped, then stared back at his hand, fascinated and in pain. That seemed to be the recurring theme where the Powers that Be were concerned -- pain.

"What's going on?" Angel's voice blended into the darkness, and Lindsey turned toward him, unconsciously holding out his hand.

"You tell me," he choked. "You've got more experience with this crap than I do. What are They trying to do to me?"

Angel's hands wrapped around his, and the burning eased as the glow from the symbols began to fade. Then he withdrew his hold, and they flared up again, brighter than before. Lindsey couldn't hold back the gasp of pain.

"I wanna hold your hand?" he tried to joke. It sounded more like a plea. Angel gave him a questioning look, then sighed.

"Come on." He grabbed Lindsey's hand again and hauled him over to the bed. "We'll figure it out in the morning. I'm going to sleep." With that, he unceremoniously tossed Lindsey onto the bed and climbed under the covers.

Lindsey stared at him. Looked down at his hand, now showing what passed for its normal muted silver and blue. Stared back at Angel.

He wasn't quite sure where They were heading with this, but wherever it was, it was going to be one hell of a wild ride.

Three days later, it got a little wilder than even he'd expected. Not to say, hoped.

The vision hit late, almost two in the morning. Cordelia and Wesley had gone home already, after another uncomfortable evening of Wesley and Angel going out demon hunting, Cordelia staring at him with morbid fascination, and he himself doing his best to be patient and wait for developments. He shouldn't have been as startled by this one as he was. The Powers were sneaky, and They had a plan. Whether it gelled with Wolfram and Hart's plan remained to be seen.

As visions went, it was pretty standard. Smelly, painful, and colorful. This time, Wesley wasn't there to drive. So Angel took Lindsey.

Literally, as it turned out.

Lindsey was used to fighting his battles in the courtroom, and while it could get pretty bloodthirsty, the blood was usually figurative. The only time he'd fought demons in earnest it was one blind woman who'd kicked his ass all over the room, so to get into hand to hand combat with a Jortow and win was a little exhilarating. At one point, he was back to back with Angel, swinging a spiked mace like he was born to it, ducking, twisting, pounding and weaving like a professional.

It was sort of fun.

Back at what now passed for home, he stripped out of his jeans, tossed yet another ruined button-down shirt into the garbage and headed for the shower. Angel had beaten him to it, and he paced restlessly outside the door for a few minutes. His blood was racing, his hand was tingling, and his mind was giving him all kinds of inappropriate mental images of exactly what Angel would look like standing under the shower with the water running down his nude body.

Three seconds later he was pulling back the curtain and stepping into the tub.

Angel looked at him, dark eyes wide as dinner plates. He didn't look as sanguine as normal with his hair standing up in spikes, stark naked, holding a sponge to his chest, soap bubbles drooling down over his abdomen.

"What's this?" he asked even as Lindsey was taking the sponge from his hand and tracing the soap trail with his fingers.

"Battle lust," Lindsey said matter-of-factly, washing away the soap and dropping to his knees in front of Angel. "Got a problem with that?" He took Angel's cock in one hand and grabbed the bar of soap with the other. As Angel opened his mouth to answer, he sucked the head into his mouth, running the soap up between Angel's thighs and between his buttocks.

The sound Angel made might have been no, or yes, or anything in between. Very soon, there were no discernible words at all in it, just a stream of babble that rose to a cry then cut off abruptly. Lindsey swallowed, licking everything he could reach. Before he could stand up, hands grabbed his shoulders and lifted him, pinning him against the tiles.

Lindsey lifted his face into the stream of water, rinsing out his mouth, as Angel took his erection in hand and proved that a couple centuries of practise could turn a simple hand job into a religious experience. By the time Lindsey came, he couldn't move, could only lean against the wall and twitch.

He didn't remember actually drying off and going to bed, although he suspected Angel had a lot to do with him getting there. Five hours later, as dawn was breaking out of sight above them, Lindsey woke to hands at his shoulders, along his spine, down across his ass, over his thighs. He buried his face in the pillow and tried not to hyperventilate as tongue was followed by fingers, then by a hard cock, opening him up and taking him to heaven. The second orgasm of the night was a mind bender, thrusting into the linens beneath him, Angel's hand wrapped around him, Angel's cock buried deeply within him, Angel's mouth moving over his neck.

When he could get enough air in his lungs to breathe again, he grunted, "Battle lust?"

He could feel Angel's grin against his skin. "Just lust."

They didn't speak about it, and the others didn't know, or he didn't think they knew. But a few things changed. He didn't stay behind with Cordelia; he fought beside Wesley and Angel. He didn't know how Angel had smoothed the situation over with the other two, but while they still watched him with suspicion, they stopped staring at him constantly as if expecting him to steal the silver. Or kill them all while they slept.

Life settled into an uneasy pattern. He'd have a vision, the boys would all go fight while Cordelia manned the office, they'd come home. Wesley would wander out to the book shops while Cordelia went to the clubs and Angel would take him to bed and fuck him senseless. There were moments when he completely forgot that it was all a grand scheme by his real employers to undermine the people he was actually beginning to like. It couldn't last.

His instincts were correct, as usual. The next week was insane, having visions six days out of seven. Making a sick joke to himself about resting on the seventh day, in the early evening he took a walk down to the Starbucks on the corner and used the telephone in the back corridor to call Holland.

"You're doing very well, Lindsey."

What could he say to that? My head's exploding on a regular basis, I'm down to wearing sweats because everything I brought with me is covered with demon goop, I've actually given Wesley tips on places to find rare manuscripts and, god forbid, discovered I like the same fusion jazz Cordy does, and oh, by the way, I'm spending every night in bed with a vampire having incredible sex? "What's next, sir?" That seemed safe enough.

"It's time for the pay-off for all the time you've been investing in this infiltration."

Lindsey went cold. Angel had been right when he's said there was always a choice. He stared down at the fine-grained leather covering his hand, and dredged up every horrible thing he'd ever known the Firm to do to those who opposed them. Halfway through the list, he heard Holland's voice again and took a deep breath. Even half the list was enough. There was no way in hell he was going to go against Wolfram and Hart ever again.

"-- enough experience with the real thing to act quite convincingly, I'm certain. Make sure he comes to Croydon and 82nd just after eleven tonight. Make it compelling, Lindsey. We're counting on you."

Every nightmare he'd ever had about his employers lay under that cheerful voice. He knew precisely what would happen to him if he fucked up again. Eating his own liver would be the least of it.

"Yes, sir." He hung up slowly. Stared at nothing for awhile, then squared his shoulders and walked briskly back to the office.

Cordelia barely glanced at him as he walked in. Wesley didn't look up from his book. Angel watched him all the way across the floor. He sat on the couch and picked up the Times. Casually leafed through the stock reports.

"You okay?"

He looked over at Angel. "Fine. Why?" He could do innocent. Damned well, in fact. Angel shrugged one shoulder.

"You look a little pale."

"Must be the company I'm keepin'."

Cordelia snorted. Even Wesley gave a half smile. Lindsey grinned with perfectly false cheer at the lot of them and settled into reading the paper. He had nothing to do but get through the next few hours without blowing his cover, fake a vision, lead the demon he'd been sleeping with into an ambush, kill him in order to regain his standing at the law firm, and go back to his real life.

Piece of cake.

At twenty eight minutes after ten, he convulsed over the game of chess he was winning from Wesley, scattering pieces all over the floor. Angel caught him as he followed the board down to the carpet. Cordelia went for the aspirin, Wesley grabbed his notebook, and Angel leaned him against his shoulder, supporting him with an arm around his waist. For once, Lindsey could appreciate the closeness without the usual side effects of extreme nausea and splitting headache. Of course, he couldn't let Angel know that.

Gritting his teeth and screwing up his face in his best impression of incredible pain, he spat out directions to the ambush, knowing with traffic they'd get there right in time for Holland's little welcome party. Halfway through an Oscar-worthy performance of a Vision in Full Flight, the Powers that Be played Their trump card, and turned the damned thing into the real thing.

The world compressed, running together in a mess of blood and madness. Screams ripped through his mind, bringing his hands up to his head to try to hold his skull together. Angel, an Angel he didn't recognize, Cordelia's head in his hands, her eyes vacant. Blood on his own hands, on his chest, on his legs ... the symbols pulsed madly on his hand, and he began to chant. He didn't recognize the language, and from the demands for explanation and panicked reply above his head, neither did Angel and Wesley. It didn't matter what they meant. The words were burned into his brain.

As quickly as it hit, it was over, and every muscle in his body spasmed at the same time, jerking him in Angel's arms like a fish on a line. He cried out in agony, then collapsed.

Angel caught him.

"Are you okay?" Leave it to Cordelia to ask the obvious.

"Sure," he lied. There was no way on earth he was going to miss this. Aside from his own machinations to secure his career, there was a compulsion drawing him to the meeting place that had nothing to do with his fear of Wolfram and Hart's wrath.

"Are you certain?" Leave it to Wesley to pound the point home. He satisfied himself with a glare in Wes' general direction and pulled himself painfully to his feet.

"C'mon," he urged. "We have to go. Now."

"What are we fighting?" Angel prodded quietly. Lindsey glanced at him, forcing himself to hold the eye contact.

"I haven't the faintest fucking idea."

Wesley spluttered, but Angel simply nodded and pulled the convertible out into traffic.

They arrived at the specified rendezvous, one of the seedier parts of town east of the airport, exactly on time. Lindsey felt his nerves tightening more and more the closer they got. By the time Angel parked the car, he felt like a time bomb ticking down the last few seconds before Armageddon. As it turned out, he wasn't far wrong.

The Firm's warriors came out of the shadows in a concerted rush, from all four directions at once, surrounding them. They were a mixed bag of vampire foot soldiers, Groun asp demons and Fhaukul assassins. Wesley and Angel swung into battle.

Lindsey stepped back out of the light.

Angel looked around for him, and their eyes met. Lindsey read betrayal, acceptance, a hint of anger, and more resignation than he'd expected in that look. Then the battle was joined, and Angel was too busy fighting for his life to worry about Lindsey going back over to the other side. Again.

From further in the shadows, Lindsey heard a sound, and the hairs along the nape of his neck prickled. The wind picked up, and his hand began to tingle.

"Son of a bitch," he whispered. He recognized Holland's voice, and after a moment's concentration, recognized the language. He listened in silence as Holland chanted the ancient spell to rend a soul from the dead. They weren't going to kill Angel.

They were going to bring back Angelus.

His hand began to weave in front of him, independent of his will. The wind caught, stilled, then followed his motion, swaying in the pattern he was drawing in the air. Holland's voice halted, then began again.

This time there was more than resolve behind it, there was anger.

Lindsey's mouth opened and the words he'd heard in his vision began to pour out. They were archaic, he thought , and it struck him that they might be Etruscan. His voice strengthened, joining the wind, fighting his mentor for his enemy's soul.

But was Angel his enemy?

His mind worried at the question while his vocal chords and his hand went on their way, following the dictates of the Powers that Be, completely bypassing what remained of Lindsey's control. He had a vivid mental image of himself as a marionette, conducting his own magickal concert, words of Power sweeping away resistance. He could almost see the strings as his hand lifted, pointing at Holland. A broken piece of wood as long as a baseball bat and as sharp as a spear whipped up from the ground and flew in a direct line straight through Holland's throat, stopping his chant mid-word and pinning him to the side of the wall. He hung there, staring at Lindsey.

Lindsey stared back, and the ancient words faded away from his lips. The wind dropped. In the background, the sounds of battle faded as Angel and Wesley got the better of the Firm's warriors. Around the wood impaling Holland's throat, thick yellow fluid began to flow. Human-appearing flesh began to wither, and where Holland had stood, the corpse of a Gangor demon, one of the oldest demons on earth, slowly collapsed to the ground.

"I'll be damned," Lindsey breathed.

"Already are," Angel informed him shortly, coming up behind him. Lindsey didn't even flinch.

"Ready to go home?" he asked, still staring at the remains of his mentor.

A hand caught his, lifting it to the weak beam of the sole street light, turning it so the symbols glinted. "Are you sure that's where you want to go?"

"Where else can I go?" Angel opened his mouth. "Rhetorical question," Lindsey informed him, then headed off to the car. Angel followed. Nobody said a word the entire way home.

It was better that way.

Lilah Morgan stood in a room she'd never seen when she was alive. It was just as well zombies didn't suffer from nerves. She folded her hands in front of her and reported on the defeat of Wolfram and Hart's plan to free Angelus and the death of one of their own. A deep rumble of anger welled at the news of Holland's death.

"According to our best analysis, Lindsey is now a combination of Voka, Oracle and Human, Messenger in service to the Powers that Be. He is a protector of Angel and an enemy to the Firm."

A second, deeper rumble greeted her words, but they didn't argue, and they didn't dismember her. If she'd still had the capacity to feel, she would have been relieved. As it was, she merely awaited instruction. It was some time coming.

The sound of their voices in concert echoed in her head. She closed her eyes and absorbed the meaning. It had been decided it was to be war. But not right away. Direct action would be delayed until an effective weapon against the Powers was found. Until then, they would wait, watch and plan for the day when they would destroy the abomination and all those who sided with him.

She opened her eyes, smoothed a wrinkle from her suit, and left the inner sanctum behind her. She had plans to make. Not to mention a new office to move into ... on the top floor.

Angel drew on every ounce of patience he'd gained in the last two hundred and fifty years in order to wait until Wesley and Cordelia had gone home before he cornered Lindsey. The man was simply too damned calm for a guy who'd been possessed by the Powers that Be, fought off a magickal attack and murdered his own mentor.

Even for a lawyer, that was pretty cold.

Lindsey headed down to the kitchen and Angel caught up with him before he could make it to the refrigerator. Grabbing him by the shoulders he swung him around and pushed him up against the wall. Bright, preternaturally still green eyes stared up at him.

"Munchies are going to have to wait, Lindsey." He leaned down until all he could see were those eyes. "What the hell is going on with you?"

One hand, the one with the symbols on it, of course, slid up his shirt front and wrapped around his neck. Strong fingers threaded through his hair and pulled him close. He felt more than heard Lindsey speaking in his ear.

"Somewhere along the way, I thought I had the power, and I lost it. I don't know what the hell's going on, but I'm powerless to stop it. And I'm beside you, whether you want me to be or not, 'cause I've got nowhere else to go."

The words had the unmistakable ring of truth to them. So did the heat in the body straining up against his. The adrenaline from the fight mixed with the anger and confusion he'd felt, first from thinking Lindsey had betrayed him then from seeing the way Lindsey had fought for his soul. The events of the last few weeks crashed in on him and he found himself going with instinct.

Instinct told him to take it while he could get it. So he did.

Pulling Lindsey away from the wall, he shoved him through the doorway and over to the bed. Angel stripped him quickly, efficiently, and Lindsey returned the favor. They were kissing and biting and touching each other hungrily as they landed on the mattress. Their mating was rough, and fast, and grounding for both of them.

Angel knelt over Lindsey's prone body, hands grasping his hips as he plowed into him. Lindsey was pushing back against him, growling and twisting the sheets in his hands. Sweat ran over his skin, and Angel reached down to lap at it, following the line of Lindsey's spine with his tongue, raking the edge of a fang along the curve of his shoulder.

The intensity ran too hot for it to last very long, and Lindsey came first, growls escalating into a scream as he writhed under Angel's hands. Angel rode him through the convulsions, collapsing on top of him at the end, going with instinct one last time and sinking his fangs deeply into the side of Lindsey's throat as he came.

It tasted unlike anyone he'd ever had : the searing sweetness of humanity; the tang of rot that slid through it, the gift of the Voka; the singing Power of the Oracles, Light running parallel to the evil of the Warrior of Darkness. His mouth burned, and his demon was unexpectedly satisfied along with his soul. He stopped drinking while Lindsey's pulse was still strong, and licked at the bite until the puncture wounds began to congeal.

After what felt like a very long time, Lindsey stirred under him, and Angel forced himself to roll off the man's back. He heard a muffled voice, but couldn't make out the words.

"Huh?" It was the closest he could come to speech. His brain was fried.

Lindsey shifted on the pillow just enough to speak clearly. "What the fuck was that?" He sounded as wiped out as Angel felt.

Angel thought about it. Rolled over onto his side and stared down at Lindsey. Enemy. Ally. Messenger. Hybrid. Partner.

"The beginning."

Lindsey just rolled his eyes, then flopped over on his side and fell asleep. Relatively soon, he began to snore lightly. Angel stared at him a little longer before dragging his body closer to the heat source that was Lindsey and closing his own eyes.

"Well," he grumbled, "it sounded good to me."

actually, it's the end.