The Vampire, the Seer and the Protecter

Title: The Vampire, the Seer and the Protector
Author: AddictedtoBuffy
Rating: NC17
Pairing: Eventually Angel/Gunn/Doyle
Disclaimer: I do not own the characters of Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Angel the Series. They belong to Joss. I do not make money from the writing of this, it is purely entertainment. I do not mean any disrespect to the actors who have portrayed these characters. This fic contains explicit Male/Male relationships if you are adverse to this or are under the age of eighteen then please do not read. Thankyou to all the online writers who help keep the Buffyverse alive.
Series: This is part of my Belonging series. First was The Watcher and the Wolf, then The Rocky Road to Belonging, DeSoto Sex and a Canadian Interlude.
Summary: What happens in the lives of Angel and co in LA while Spike and group are escaping initiative soldiers and are out of the picture.
Beta: The wonderful Bubbysbub as always has betaed this.
Feedback: Please, please, please. I crave it
Part: 2/8
Distrubution: Ask and you will receive
A/N: Thankyou to LadyVirgo who came up with this name sometime last year. Sorry its taken me so long to write this.

Chapter Two – Back to Sunnydale

Doyle’s POV

I sit in the passenger seat of Angel’s car as it barrels down the highway heading towards a sleepy little Californian town, or what should be a sleepy town, if it weren’t bang on top of the hellmouth. It’s three days since we lost…

God, I still can’t even think about it. Every time I close my eyes I see her last minute on earth play across my vision. I rub tired eyes. How could anyone sleep having witnessed that? Angel’s in as bad a shape, maybe worse. It’s taken everything I have just to get him to drink a mug of pigs blood. The whole time I had to suppress my gag reflex as the vivid red in the cup was the exact shade of the fluid that had soaked our knees as we knelt in it. As we knelt in my princesses blood, as we watched it drain out of her until there was nothing left.

I glance over at Angel. He is sitting there rigid, staring out to the darkness as he directs the car back to Sunnydale. Where his ex lives. He has been trying since it happened to pick up the phone. Ring them. Tell them about the loss of one of them own. He couldn’t do it. This is his solution. Going back there to tell them in person. I’ve sure that’s going to work out just fine. Yeah and all the nasties are just misunderstood. I sigh. We are so screwed.

*****

Angel’s POV

Doyle follows me as I walk up the path to the building that Giles’ apartment is a part of. It is better to talk to him first before finding anyone else. After I’ve explained he might just want us gone and will tell the others himself. He hates me and that might be an advantage at the moment. Frankly, I don’t care if he decides to stake me. I failed. It’s the mantra that keeps repeating in my head. Over and over. I failed, I failed, I failed.

I am drawn out of my self flagellating thoughts by all the activity in front of us. At Giles’ apartment. I step up, watching a badly beaten Buffy clinging to an equally battered young man. Willow is crying into Giles’ chest a sling around her arm. Giles didn’t look much better than the others. I stand there not knowing what to do. What to say. They don’t seem to notice me, too caught up in their own grief. For a moment I think they know about Cordy but then I notice who’s missing. Xander.

Finally Buffy notices me and she pulls away from the boy. I surprisingly don’t feel jealous, though I know they are seeing each other. I can smell them all over each other.

“Angel. What… What are you doing here?” She looks at me with big vulnerable eyes and I don’t know how to answer her.

“I… um we,” I stammer, now I’m here I just can’t say it.

“Where’s Cordelia?” Giles asks tiredly. I open my mouth to answer but no sound comes out. I can’t do this.

“That’s what we came to talk to you about. Do you mind if we go inside? You all look like you might fall down where you are. I’m Doyle.” Doyle answered for me and I squeeze his arm in gratitude. Giles stares at us for a moment before coming to a decision.

“In you come then. We have some bad news of our own, I’m afraid.” I follow them, ignoring the glares coming from Buffy’s latest beau. Once we’re settled I stare down at my hands.

“Angel, where’s Cordelia?” Willow asks me and I know I can’t let Doyle answer the question.

“She’s dead.” I choke on the words. I hear their gasps and outrage but I just stare at my hands. My heart feels like its breaking and Angelus is close to the surface. It’s funny how similar his thoughts are to mine.

“How?” Buffy demands, her feet are in my line of vision. She is trying to intimidate me, it won’t work. “Angel, How?” she demands again. I look up at her. The first time I’ve really looked at her since we got here. She looks so worn out and there is a smear of dry blood across one cheek.

“She was impregnated by demon spawn.” They gasp again and Giles cleans his glasses. “We stopped them but it was too late, she’d…” I choke and look back down at my fingers not able to tell them of my failure. I should never have let her work for me. She should have been far away and safe. I feel Doyle move up next to me so that our legs are touching. All I want to do is grab him and cry into his chest but I don’t. I don’t deserve that solace.

“Angel, there is something we need to tell you,” it’s Giles who speaks and I force my eyes up to meet his. He looks even more stern than usual and I know it is not good news.

“What’s wrong?” I ask, maybe I can help, it would stop me thinking about my monumental failure, if only for a little while.

“There has been soldier activity in Sunnydale for quite some time.” Giles begins but Doyle cuts him off.

“Soldiers? Have they been conducting experiments and torturing different demons indiscriminately?” Doyle asks sitting up. Maybe this is the source of the visions he has been suffering. That would explain why we couldn’t find any trace of it in LA because it was happening in Sunnydale. It would have been nice if the powers could have told us that. I mean all they needed to do was show Doyle a shot of that sign Spike always knocks down when he’s in town.

“Yes. How did you know?” Giles asks startled.

“Doyle’s my link to the Powers that Be,” I explain. “He gets visions.”

“Wow,” Willow comments, “That must be cool.” Doyle just stares at her.

“Yeah its cool how I get mind splitting headaches and obscure pictures get downloaded into my brain, that half the time I can’t decipher what they are.” I watch as he stands up agitated. “I’ve had these visions of soldiers for about six months but we haven’t been able to find them. Please tell me you took them down.”

“Yeah, we did tonight but…” Buffy starts but she hesitates. I can smell grief coming off her, coming off all of them.

“It’s Xander.” She told me in a hollow voice. “He’s dead.” Willow starts to sob again, but I’m not surprised, I had already figured it out.

“There’s more. When hacking into there system, Willow found something. She brought the disks back but you’re not going to like it.” That sounds ominous, I wonder what Giles means. We sit there in awkward silence until I finally give in and ask.

“What did you find?”

“They experimented on people we know,” Willow explains in a small little girl voice as she brings the laptop over, setting it up.

“Wesley and Oz disappeared six months ago,” Buffy tells us and I stare, seeing where this is going. “We tried to find them but could find no trace.”

“The initiative?” Doyle questions, “but why would they take humans?”

“They weren’t exactly human, they were werewolves,” I explain to Doyle before addressing the whole group. “What happened to them?”

“I found this footage,” Willow starts it up on her laptop before turning away. She used to date Oz, and after the loss of Xander, who she was presently dating, or as far as I know she was, this must be a huge toll on her. I watch appalled as Wesley and Oz are electrocuted over and over, until their wolf form took over. The clip ends and I feel Doyle shiver next to me. He has never met these two, but as a half demon I think it really hits home.

“Have you been able to find out what happened to them?” I ask knowing that they would have gone through everything searching for an answer. Giles is the one to answer this time and I’m surprised at how quite Buffy’s beau is. I can smell the guilt coming off him in waves. I’m sure he was involved in all of this somehow.

“We found an order to have them terminated but it doesn’t give us any more information than that. We’re assuming the worst. If they had managed to get out they would have come to us for help.” I nod, it makes sense. So that means two more champions of the light have died and all the head’s up I got was too cryptic visions that we couldn’t decipher. Damn the powers! What the fuck are they thinking? I’ve had about enough of them.

“There’s more though, you need to see this.” I stare back at the computer and gasp as Faith’s face comes onto the screen. It shows them cutting open her arm while she’s awake and aware and restrained, but obviously crying blue murder.

“Shit,” I swear, this is going way too far. “How’d they end up with her?” Surely someone should have noticed she was missing. However I hadn’t thought of her since I left town and I know in the end the others just wanted rid of her. Maybe nobody checked up on her.

“We don’t know, we only just found this tonight and we haven’t had a chance to talk to the hospital where she was staying.”

“But nobody had checked on her? In the last nine months no one had visited her?” I stand angry, angry at them but also angry at myself I’d told her that I could help her. That I would help her but I left her and didn’t notice that she had been taken. She’s probably dead and I didn’t notice. Angelus growls inside me and I have the urge to just let him out. Let him take over.

“She burned her bridges long ago, so don’t go blaming us Angel. She made it perfectly clear that she didn’t want anything to do with us.” Buffy stands too almost shouting at me and getting into an aggressive pose.

“Faith is obviously out of her coma, and none of us knew. I’d have thought you would have been contacted when that happened?” I can’t just let this rest. I see her big brown doe eyes in front of my face from when I was getting through to her at my mansion before Wesley and his Council goons stormed in. Isn’t it ironic that Wesley and Faith were prisoners in the same building, that they were killed the same way?

“The military has many resources. They could easily have moved her and if anyone asked they would probably been told that she was moved to a secure facility outside the state.” Buffy’s beau speaks up for the first time and now I know that he is military, though I already suspected it. I really need to stop calling him Buffy’s beau too, I wonder what his name is.

“So I take it she’s gone?” I ask, not able to say the word death, not after how much of it has happened in the last little while.

“Yeah, there was a termination order dated the same day as Wesley’s and Oz’s.” Buffy replies as Willow sobs again.

“So I guess the watcher’s council has a new Slayer to train.” Giles takes his glasses off to clean again.

“Yes, we assume so, but we aren’t exactly privy to that sort of information anymore,” he reminds me.

“We also found this,” Willow tells Doyle and I starting another clip. This time I’m staring at another familiar face. A face that I have hit a couple of times. Ethan Rayne. I look up at Giles and for a moment see the unguarded pain in his eyes before he puts his mask back in place.

“There’s something else, something you’re really not going to like.” Giles stares at me and I wonder who he means. I haven’t liked any of what I’ve seen so far. How could anything be worse. Willow obediently puts on the next clip and I stare at the screen in disbelief. What? How? Surely I would’ve known, would have felt it through our bond. I’m staring down at Spike’s face. My favoured childe. How the hell did they get him? How could I have not known? A million questions run through my head. I cannot believe this. Surely I would have felt it when he died.

“How? How did they get him?” I demand standing again. I can feel my hands shaking. I just can’t believe this.

“We don’t know,” it’s Giles who answers the others are just staring at me as if I’ve grown another head. They don’t understand. Giles does though and so does Doyle.

“He’s not some fledge fresh from the grave. He’s a Master Vampire.” I start to shout. The only way they could’ve gotten him is if he was distracted. My boy just wasn’t guarding his perimeter again. I want to go and rip all their throats out. Show the initiative what it means to mess with the Aurelius line. Unfortunately Buffy’s already closed them down. However there is one person I’m sure was involved who’s sitting in this very room. I can’t keep the rage under control and I feel my true face come to the fore.

“Angel?” Willow gasps in shock, I know she thinks of me as a fanged teddy bear so this shocks her. I can feel my beast roaring for blood and for once I let it take over. I let all my frustrations at Spike and myself wash over me. He was always so annoying but that was only after I cast him aside over and over again. I launch myself snarling at Riley. Taking all my frustration out on him, the only one I have access to that I can blame. Buffy however is suddenly between us, stake in her hand.

“Don’t make me do this,” she pleads. I am reluctant to hurt Buffy but I need to get to the boy. He needs to pay for what his friends did to my Childe. Least then I can offer something to Spike’s memory.

“Move, Slayer,” I ground out not able to call her by her name when I’m contemplating throwing her out the window, just so that I can get to her boyfriend. I move towards her but I find another body in front of me. Doyle. I stare down at him panting in rage but he doesn’t seem frightened at all. He just smiles bitterly up at me and uses one hand to trace the ridges on my face.

“C’mon Angel, I think its time we should be leaving.” He tugs on my arm and I just stare at him my demon still demanding blood.

“Doyle,” I warn, but it lacks the growl it had with Buffy. I just can’t be mad at him.

“We’re leaving, Angel,” he tells me with no room in his voice for argument. “I’m not letting you do something you’ll regret later.” I stare down at those piercing eyes and I feel myself fall apart. My game face bleeds away and I feel tears starting to well up in the corners of my eyes. I can’t meet anyone’s eyes. “Shhh, let’s go,” He pulls me along and out of the flat, back to the car. As tears silently fall down my face for my favoured Childe, I wonder what I would do without Doyle.