Okay. This is the rough draft of the prologue of what would have been the sequel to City Without..., if I hadn't written Substitute Teacher instead. It still might be, some day, if it ever bludgeons me about the head enough to finish it.
'"Once upon a time there was a princess, and she was the most beautiful princess in all the land. Her father, being of course a king, was loaded with money. And so the princess, she had everything a girl could want. She lorded over all the other girls for miles around, and every one of them feared and envied her.
"Then one day - disaster! Her father loses all his lands and money to the IRS - 'cause, y'know, it doesn't matter who you are, those bastards can still get you. And suddenly, our princess is left alone in the world. No friends, no money, nothin' left but hope.
"So what does she do? She moves to LA to find her fortune and recover her life. Make a few contacts, take a few auditions, get signed up in a movie deal...
"'Cept that's not the way things turn out, and so this princess is stuck in LA, in a crummy apartment, a couple dollars away from destitite. Until, that is, she almost becomes vampire food, and crosses paths with a messenger from the Powers That Be, and decides to join him in the battle against the forces of evil..."'
The darkness made the back street into something out of a nightmare. It wasn't quiet, and there were a few glimmering neon signs announcing the back entrances of various disreputable businesses and bars. But it was the sort of street where you just knew anything could happen to a stranger walking out alone and nobody would bat an eyelid or lift a finger to help.
Well, I happened to be a stranger walking out alone. And I didn't think much of the situation at all, I can tell you. Apart from being so dark I could only suspect what I was stepping in, the place smelled of... actually you really don’t want to know what it smelled of.
Anyway, it was dark, and smelly, and full of peoples’ trash and loads of really disgusting junk, and not exactly the place I wanted to be spending my evening!
Particularly in view of the company.
The vampire I’d disturbed turned around from the girl who’d been about to become a midnight snack. His face was all twisted and ‘grr’. From his expression, he seemed to welcome my intrusion. Great. He must be peckish. Probably thought I looked like an easy, tasty dessert.
I realised coldly that my stake was in the bottom of my handbag and I couldn’t get to it quickly. The vampire was too close and I knew the minute I tried to reach it he’d be on me. I looked around frantically for help.
Of course, my lousy, drunkard, good for nothing, idiot partner was nowhere to be seen.
The vampire grinned, threw the woman back against the wall where she collapsed bonelessly into a sobbing heap, and took a step towards me. I backed away. I thought, if I didn’t let on I knew what he was, he might get careless and I might have opportunity to get at the stake. "What drugs are you on, mister?" I asked, raising my voice in the faint hope that one of the bundles of rags slouched against the wall was alive and - by far the more unlikely, I know - might choose to lend a hand to a girl in trouble. "What’s wrong with your face? Why are you staring at my neck?"
Thinking I was going to die wearing a cheap, trashy dress and ten dollar shoes.
Thinking, 'Doyle, you shit, you had so better get your scrawny ass here right now.'
And right on cue, his scrawny ass materialised.
He staggered around the end of the alleyway, swaying gracelessly as he walked, and swinging a bottle in one hand.
'Doyle, I am so gonna kill you,' I promised him silently, seething. 'Assuming, that is, we both survive this.'
"Oh, hi there, princess," he said chirpily, in that stupid accent of his, using that stupid nickname of his. The vampire turned around and glared at him, but he seemed oblivious. "Who’s your friend here?"
"This would be the vampire, Doyle," I snapped. To hell with the vamp, I was seriously pissed. "You know? Pointy teeth, face in need of serious cosmetic surgery, aversion to sharp sticks and sunlight? Vampire. Like we’re supposed to be fighting!"
He cast me a weary, disapproving look that was as sober as could be. Darn it. The drunk was an act. He’d wanted me to play along. Well, he should have told me, shouldn’t he?
He didn’t waste any time waiting for the vamp, who seemed fairly dumb even by their standards, to process the information.
He broke the bottle over the bemused vampire’s head in a move he could only have perfected through a significant number of bar fights. That staggered it a bit. He drew a stake from the pocket of his leather jacket and lunged for the vampire.
That jarred me into action. I started rooting through my handbag for my own stake, all too aware Doyle was not yet a hundred percent again after having been shot to bits by that creep Russell Winters, and not really in any condition to be taking on a vampire alone.
The pair of them grappled, overbalanced, and landed on the floor almost on my feet, causing me to stagger back a few steps. The vampire landed on top, Doyle caught awkwardly beneath his weight. Doyle tried a clumsy backwards-stab of an elbow, but the vampire caught hold of his arm and started twisting it around.
This drew a yelp of pain from Doyle. It must have put pressure on the semi-healed bullet wound in his shoulder. I gave up on the stake, and looked around frantically for something - anything - else that might be used as a weapon, feeling useless.
I snatched up a lid off a nearby metal trash can, and slammed it down hard as I could on top of the vamp’s head.
It rang out a long, sweet note.
Doyle, his face contorted in pain and coated in a thin sheen of sweat, whacked the vampire one across the midriff and struggled out from under its weight while it was still reeling. I made another try with the trash can lid but only managed to get it ripped out of my hands.
The vampire threw the lid right back at me with violent force, a deadly frisbee.
I threw myself desperately aside out of its way.
It zinged past my ear, so close I felt the movement of the air on my cheek. It crashed loudly into a wall, hard enough to dislodge crumbly pieces of the brickwork. Shaken, I stared at the evidence of what could have happened to my face, hesitating to return to the fight.
Damn it, I couldn’t risk any more damage to the face - I had an audition in two days time and I’d already flunked two due to a black eye earned saving Doyle’s butt! And if that had hit... you could be talking, like, permanent disfigurement there. And then what would I do?
Worry for my partner snapped me out of it.
There was no need to worry, though. I turned back in time to see Doyle absorb one hell of a crack across the jaw - but at the same instant as he simultaneously drove the stake into the vamp's heart while its guard was down.
The vampire fell to the ground as so many bits of defeated dust.
Doyle staggered and slumped against the wall, breathing heavily. Raised an exploratory hand to his jaw.
That was when I saw the slick glitter of dark liquid on his hand. I hurried to his side, tripping in my heels and sliding in a patch of something the identity of which I didn't want to think too hard about. I knelt down at his side, grasping hold of his arm in concern. "Are you okay?"
"I’m cut," he said, rather curt and breathless. He examined his palm, squinting in the darkness. "Broken bottle. Glass on pavement. Gotta make a note of that for next time." He looked up at me accusingly. "You could’ve backed me up, Cordy."
I felt awful. "I’m sorry! It was the trash can lid - and it just came flying at me - and my face - and I..."
He stopped me, with a grip on my arm and a weary half smile. "It’s okay, princess, I didn’t mean that. You were there when I needed you, right there. I meant the drunk thing."
"Oh." I felt less bad, because that reminded me I was mad at him. "Well, you could’ve told me you were going to do that, you know! You came in late! I was here, and the vamp... I nearly ended up vampire food, Doyle! Next time, tell me the plan, okay?"
He sighed and the edge of his mouth ticked up in a smile, and he ended up laughing. A tired, pained, wrung out laugh, but a laugh nonetheless. "Yeah. Sorry ‘bout that. It’s just... I didn’t think of it ‘til after we split, and then I nipped into this nice little pub for the bottle... But you’re right. Next time, we stick to the plan." He held out his un-bloody hand.
I clasped it in my own hand and pulled him to his feet. He staggered against me, but then found his balance and took his own weight.
After ascertaining the two of us were still okay - although both still as surprised as ever to have survived another encounter battling evil - we turned our attention to the semi-conscious girl whose life we had risked our own to save.
Together we comforted her and fed her the usual story about psychotic drug-users, as well as most of a bottle of brandy Doyle nipped into a bar to fetch, and we saw her back home, where we left her not even knowing the names of the people who'd saved her.
I didn't have the energy to bring up the issue of a rescuer's fee, especially with Doyle shooting warning glares at me over her head.
Besides, considering the cheap dress she was wearing, she wouldn't have been able to pay us anyhow.
I first came to LA full of hopes of becoming a famous actress and putting to shame the losers in the rotten hellmouth-ridden town of Sunnydale I left behind. Not to forget the part of the plan where I get stupidly rich - again - because life without a bank balance is just so not.
I certainly didn’t come here with the intention of forming an illegal PI business with a drunken, psychic, Irish half-demon in order to fight the forces of darkness.
Funny how the world turns out.
Not that I expect it to last long, of course. Some day soon the true depth of my screen potential will be discovered, and then it'll be goodbye monster-fighting, goodbye nights of evil-smiting terror, and goodbye Doyle.
God, that sounded terrible. I didn't mean it like that, I swear.
I like Doyle. I really do. Well, he saved my life, and he got hurt real bad in the process. He could have been killed. It's kind of hard not to like somebody, given an introduction like that. He's braver than he looks, and smarter than he looks - and okay, he's weird, but it's not so bad once you get used to him.
But then there's the drinking, and the half demon thing, and I keep getting this feeling like he's not telling me everything. It really kills me to admit it, but most of the time I just can't figure him out at all.
I know he's special; he's a hero in the fight against evil, and however unlikely that seems sometimes, when he's joking around, or drunk, he's collected this hero aura about him. Like Buffy had sometimes, when she wasn't whinging. That sense of purpose and of being chosen.
It's strange, but I'd swear it wasn't there the first time we met, at that stupid party. All I remember is this little skinny nervous guy trying to hit on me.
Anyway, whatever I think of him, I can't let him delude himself for one minute that I won't be off like a shot the instant I get offered my movie deal, no matter what we've got started here. I mean, I'm not about to lie to him, am I? You've got to be straight with your partner.
Partner...
Business, that is. Totally! Anything else... well, yuck. I mean - short, poor, demon...
It wasn't even supposed to be him, you know.
He told me from the start he was the stand-in, but it wasn't until the other day I actually found out whose place it was Doyle took.
I can't believe it was Angel. God, I knew him....
Soon as I found out, I made Doyle take me back to Angel's apartment to look for him and knock some sense into the guy. I mean, Angel, he's like the super-vampire. Of the cuddly non-biting variety, of course. And when I found out it had been meant to be him... I don't know, the idea just felt right. It felt like fate. As though me and Doyle were wrong, somehow. We couldn't fight evil like Angel could.
But when we got there, Angel's place was all quiet, and empty, and dusty like nobody had been there in at least a couple of weeks.
Doyle said he'd find out what had happened. Ask around. Presumably he meant the endless parade of guys he knows. But Doyle's been awfully tight-mouthed about the results of that query. I don't know, but I think Angel's dead. Hell, who am I kidding? I know it. And he knows I know. He doesn't need to tell me.
Not that Angel ever actually had a pulse, so to speak. But now he's dead and gone. I feel bad about that, worse than I'd have expected. He saved my life quite a few times - I think more times than he actually threatened it when he was evil, though that was really Angelus so I guess he was still well into the plus column with me whichever way you look at it.
I keep wondering if Buffy knows, but I can't bring myself to call and find out. She might not know, and then what would I say? It'd destroy her.
And I feel worse about that, too, than I would ever have expected.
So anyway, it's still me and Doyle. And no backing out, for him at least. He has his vision things to follow and I don't actually think you can resign from working for the Powers That Be once they get their hooks into you.
Also, for some strange reason, I don't think he'd give this up if he had the chance. I don't get that - I know he doesn't like the evil-fighting. But he seems to need it. He says his redemption is in this fight.
Just now, we're in the process of setting up office in Doyle's lousy freebie-lease office building, in between responding to the odd vision. It should be good. It was, at the start. It should feel like an achievement to be doing something. After all, I'd been doing nothing for the last three months before we met except starving myself slowly in a horrid little apartment my family wouldn't have spit on this time last year.
But it's not good! It's like every piece of furniture moved in, every floor board fixed and roach poisoned, every piece of stationery bought is another brick set down in a circle around me to wall me in.
We're building up a world I can't - won't - stay in.
His world just isn't me. I'm no Buffy, no chosen hero. Somebody must have made a mistake somewhere up there. I wasn't meant for this kind of a life. I'm not even a Willow, the witch-who-throws-pencils.
I don't want to leave Doyle to fight all alone, but it doesn't mean I won't.
I'm praying my big break comes along soon. Crossing all my fingers and hoping with everything that's in me for this audition to come through.
'Cause the longer this takes, the harder it's going to be... on the both of us.