Fallen Angel
By Joanne Robitaille

DISCLAIMER: I don't own any of the characters except for Horrocks and the little old shaman. Everything else belongs to Joss Whedon and the cool little "Grrr...Argg!" man.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: I highly suggest that you read my stories "Home at Last" and "No Choice" or else you won't have a clue what's going on. Trust me on this. I wrote them and I'm not even always sure what's going on. I'm really hoping that this will be the end of this little series. It wasn't even supposed to be a series. It was only supposed to be the one story. Oh well. If you're really nice you could send me feedback and let me know what you think.

Part One

Whistler was really starting to regret not taking the Slayer up on her offer to go with him and Angel. It had been two nights since they had left Sunnydale and this was the second time that Angel had disappeared on his own. And Whistler knew exactly where the vampire was heading. To Sunnydale and his Slayer.

There were three major problems that the demon had with Angel’s disappearing tricks. One was that the vampire in question was still rather weak and wouldn’t be able to put up much of a fight if attacked by either the demon after him or others of his kind. Another one was the fact that Angel couldn’t remember much. The final, and most dangerous problem was that Angel kept zoning out for periods of time. It could last for a minute or so or up to several hours like it had white they were driving that morning. In Hell, the ability to distance himself from reality had been a defense mechanism of sorts for the vampire. It helped him to ignore what was being done to him for the time being. Now it was hazardous to his well being. If he happened to zone out when the demon was near it could easily capture him and bring him back into the depth of Hell before he was fully aware of what was going on.

Growling under his breath, Whistler stormed out of the hotel room. The Slayer wouldn’t be happy with him if he let anything happen to her boyfriend. A lot of people wouldn’t be happy. Knowing where Angel was most likely to be, Whistler started in the direction of a nearby cemetery.

Sure enough, Angel was standing in the middle of the cemetery. The vampire didn’t move one inch as Whistler approached even though he was making a great deal of noise. Even when Whistler called his name, Angel remained completely still. As Whistler had suspected, Angel had zoned out again. Thankfully, he was the one to find the vampire.

“Time to wake up, Angel. We have stuff to do tonight,” Whistler said, clapping his hands right beside the vampire’s ear.

Even though he was a demon himself, Whistler still jumped back when Angel turned to him in full game face, growling loudly in the back of his throat. When he realized who it was, Angel’s features shifted slowly back to their more handsome countenance. He didn’t apologize for what had happened- it wasn’t like he was sorry for it -and turned his attention back to where it had been before. What he was seeing, though, was something that no one else could see. As what happened every time his mind shut itself off to reality, Angel senses were aware of only one thing. Buffy. She had been there with him the entire time even if she didn’t know it.

“Come on, kiddo. There’s a gym in the hotel. If you want to beat this thing and go back to your Slayer, you’re gonna have to stop with the brooding and start training your body again. Right now you could last maybe five rounds with that fruit fly that kicked your ass when we first met.”

Angel started to growl again, but no longer in a threatening manner. Now it was purely out of annoyance. He had never liked the little demon and had always wondered what it was that he could have possibly done that was so bad to deserve being stuck with him. Little did he know that Whistler was thinking the exact same thing at the exact same time. Whistler couldn’t wait till they got to sparring. It would probably be a couple of weeks before Angel was at that point, but after countless millennia Whistler had learned to be patient.

=====

Buffy groaned when she heard the phone ringing and glanced over at her alarm clock. The bright red lights shone back at her, marking the time. 4:30 in the morning. Cursing whoever was calling this early, Buffy raised herself on her elbow and reached for the phone, fumbling a few times in the darkness.

“Whoever this is better have a damn good reason for calling or else I’m going to have to kill you,” Buffy growled into the receiver.

“Easy there, Slayer. Haven’t you ever heard the saying, ‘Don’t shoot the messenger.’”

Buffy was awake the instant that she heard the annoying accent of the equally annoying demon. “Is Angel all right? Where is he?”

“Right now he’s in the gym working out. Only time I could call without him finding out,” Whistler told her, glancing through the glass at the vampire in question.

“You didn’t answer my question, Whistler. Is he all right?” Buffy repeated, unable to stop worrying about him.

“He’s annoying the hell out of me, but he’s doing all right all things considered.”

There was a growl in the background as Angel snuck up on the demon. This scared the life out of Whistler who immediately dropped the phone. Before he could pick it back up, Angel swooped down and grabbed the receiver.

“Buffy?” Angel whispered, not sure if he had heard right.

Tears began to prick at the back of her eyes when she heard Angel’s voice. “Hi, baby. How are you feeling?”

“I miss you,” was all that Angel said.

“I miss you, too,” Buffy whispered back. “How are you holding up.”

There was a slight pause before Angel answered. “I’m doing better.”

Buffy knew that he was lying- she could hear it perfectly well in his voice -but didn’t press the subject. She was just happy to hear his voice. “Willow says to-” Buffy was cut off in mid-sentence as the phone disconnected. Checking to make sure that she hadn’t accidentally hit the end button, Buffy was shocked to find that she hadn’t. Someone on Angel’s end of the line had disconnected. She knew that it hadn’t been Angel. Perhaps it had been the annoying demon who had taken him on the field trip.

=====

Buffy’s guess proved accurate, for at that very moment, an extremely pissed off vampire was holding the clashing demon against a nearby wall by his neck. Game face in full view, Angel snarled at Whistler for hanging up on him and Buffy. He wanted to strangle the smaller man, but there was some message in his brain that wouldn’t allow him to. Angel tried shaking his head to clear the thought, but it wasn’t working.

“Why did you do that?” he growled instead, trying to vent his frustration.

“The demon’s nearby. We’ve gotta bail now before he tracks you down,” Whistler informed the angry vampire.

Realizing that Whistler had been right to cut off the conversation (not that he would ever admit it to the demon because he would never hear the end of it), Angel set him back down. Whistler straightened his clothing then started towards the exit of the gym with Angel following right behind him.

Just as the two of them reached the door, there was a loud explosion coming from behind them. They turned around only to see a pile of rubble where the telephone had been moments ago, a tall, leather clad man standing behind it. There was a manical look to his eyes heightened by the fact that one was black and the other was grey. His hair was spiked out like porcupine quills which were an unnatural shade of red. In his right hand he carried a lethal looking sword with a jagged edge. Angel and the demon locked eyes for a moment, but acknowledging who the other was. Hunter and prey.

While their eyes remained locked, Whistler tugged on Angel’s arm sufficiently enough to pull the vampire from the gym. Once eye contact had been broken, Angel reacted as anyone else would in the presence of another being which wished to kill them. He ran like hell towards the car that he and Whistler had been traveling in.

“Come back here, soulboy!” the demon called, his voice fitting perfectly with his appearance. “I just want to play!”

Angel didn’t even pause. He quickly yanked open the passenger door and jumped in even as Whistler was starting the vehicle. Angel just had time to close his door before the demon slammed on the gas and tore out of the parking lot.

The manical demon was not to be stopped. As the car drove past him, he lashed out with his sword cutting straight through the metal and glass, nearly decapitating Angel in the process. Then they were on the road, burning a trail away from the hotel and the demon.

“What the fuck was that!?!” Angel cried.

“That, my friend, is the demon bounty hunter who wants your soul,” Whistler said simply, keeping his eyes both on the road and on the rearview mirror to see if it was following them. He breathed a sigh of relief when he saw that it wasn’t.

“My soul? What does it want with my soul? Demons don’t like souls... Sorry, psychotic sword-wielding demons don’t like souls. Why would it want mine?”

Whistler glanced into the mirror once more before answering. “Money. What else? Word has it that the rulers down below are willing to pay him a good price if he manages to bring your sorry carcass back to them. You’re soul has to be intact, though. If you revert to your homicidal ways, the deals off. That’s why he wants your soul. He has to make sure that you have it when he finally takes you out.”

Angel sat there for a while in silence, trying to digest what Whistler had just revealed. “Just great,” he muttered at last, leaning back against the back of the seat. “Bloody great.”

Part Two

There had been this icy feeling in the pit of Buffy’s stomach since her conversation with Angel had disconnected. She hadn’t slept well at all that night and hadn’t paid attention to any of her classes. About the only thing that she had managed to accomplish was avoiding Scott. It wasn’t until Saturday night that she had remembered about her date with him and she wasn’t entire too sure how to explain to him why she had missed it. “You see, my boyfriend, who just so happens to be a vampire, just came back from Hell. Did I mention that I’m the one who sent him there?” Like that would have worked.

It was a very disheatened and worried Slayer that wandered into the Sunnydale High library at the end of the school day. Dumping her bag on the table, Buffy slumped into the nearest chair.

“I do wish that you would sit up properly,” Giles said as he came out of his office. “You’ll ruin your posture if you keep sitting that way.”

“At this point I don’t really care about my posture. I’m too worried about Angel.”

Giles stopped to clean his glasses before coming to join Buffy at the table. “Speaking of which, I just got off the phone with the Whistler. He says that he’s sorry for hanging up on you last night, but that the demon was nearby. In fact, it nearly decapitated Angel not long after.”

As soon as he said that, Giles regretted it. Never before had he seen Buffy’s face loose colour so quickly.

“Is... Is he all right?” Buffy asked quietly.

The librarian quickly nodded his head. “He’s perfectly fine if a little worn out from the night’s activities. He also says that Angel will call you in a couple days if it’s safe to. Whistler was able to give me a full description of the demon in question so all that’s left is to figure out what its weakness is.”

“I don’t see why I couldn’t have just killed it.”

“According to Whistler, Angel has to kill this demon himself in order to defeat it. If you had tried to kill it, it would have just come back after him,” the Watcher explained, once again cleaning off his glasses.

“Well that just sucks.”

“What does?” Willow asked as she bounced into the library, Oz, as always, by her side.

“The fact that I can’t kill what’s after Angel.”

The musician, who was currently sporting black hair, looked at the assembled group in confusion. “Angel’s back? From Hell?”

“Yes, honey. Remember, I told you about it on Friday,” Willow reminded her boyfriend.

“Right. I think that it came up in your ranting about how you wanted to kill Xander.”

This part of the discussion perked the Watcher’s intrest. He had noticed that absence of the boy only due to the fact that he hadn’t been called G-man yet. “What has Xander done this time?”

“Well let’s see,” Buffy said, perking up instantly. “He didn’t tell me that Willow was going to do the curse again the day I went to kill Acathla. Then he has nerve to show up at the mansion on Friday just after Willow left with a stake saying it was his duty to kill Angel.
Angel came out, they argued for a little bit, then Xander opens his big mouth and says something he really shouldn’t have and Angel freaked out.”

“What exactly did Angel say to him?” Giles asked.

“He tells Angel that he’s ‘no one’ which is exactly what Angel was muttering the night before when he couldn’t remember who he was,” Buffy finished angrily.

“Oh,” was all that Giles could think of to say. After digesting that piece of news, the Watcher went on to the next order of business. “All right now, I’ve been able to assertain from Whistler that the demon after Angel is called Horrocks. He’s a bounty hunter of sorts who collects the souls of whoever is willing to pay for them. The um... rulers of the demon dimension have hired him to bring Angel back to them. Whistler has asked me to find out what I can about this demon. What is known is that Angel is the only one who can end the contract on him by killing the demon and that this demon has yet to fail. What he needs from us is to find a weakness. Any weakness.”

“Well, gang, lets get down to work,” Buffy said as she headed into the stacks in search of books.

They had been researching for about an hour when Cordelia walked into the library. “Has anyone seen Xander around?” the cheerleader asked.

“Last I saw of him it looked like he was heading for food,” Oz volunteered from his perch beside Willow and her computer.

Knowing that Xander was a lost cause, Cordelia figured that she might as well stay and find out why Buffy had missed her date with Scott. She had heard him talking to someone about it in her last period class and had been wondering why Buffy would pass up a date with him.

“Decided against going out with Scott?” the brunette asked as she sat down in the chair across from the Slayer.

Buffy shrugged her shoulders and didn’t look up. “I had a better offer.”

“Ooooohhhhhh. From who?”

“Angel,” Buffy whispered, her voice barely audible.

Cordelia’s brows wrinkled in confusion. But once she realized what she was doing, she imediately stopped. “Isn’t Angel suposed to be in Hell? I thought that you disappeared for the summer cause you had to send him there.”

Buffy nodded. “I did send Angel to Hell. But Giles and Willow brought him back to my Friday.”

“And let me guess, that’s why Xander’s not here.” For all her flaws, Cordelia was very perseptive.

=====

“B’s demon lover is back from Hell and she hasn’t staked him yet?” Faith asked, the disbelief evident on her face. “I thought that he went all psycho and tried to kill her. Far as I’m concerned that’s grounds to break up.”

“You’d think so,” Xander agreed. “But Buffy has a soft spot for this particular demon.”

“She wants to fuck him?”

“Knowing Angel they probably already have,” Xander sneered. “That’s why I need your help. He needs to be staked before he hurts any of us again. If Buffy gives him a happy, it’s goodbye soul, hello homicidal demon.”

Faith leaned back on her bed, contemplating the effects of killing Angel. First and foremost it would be a good thing. Vampires deserved to die. But the more she thought of it, the better it sounded. This wasn’t just any vampire. This was Angelus. The Scourge of Europe. Killing him would definitely make her the better Slayer. As good as little miss goody-two shoes was supposed to be, Buffy hadn’t been able to kill Angelus. Now if she managed to kill Angelus, it would prove to one and all that she was the better Slayer.

“All right then. Let’s do it.”