The Highlander Factor

A man's face appeared at the huge glass door and peered around the lobby of the hotel. No one came out to greet the visitor, in fact to his eyes the place looked abandoned. He entered anyway, partially to investigate further but also because he was being barged out of the way by a blanket-covered figure, which looked suspiciously like it was on fire.

"Move you daft git!" The scrappy blue blanket was thrown to the floor and heavy boots stamped out the odd spot that had started smouldering while their owner muttered in disgust. "Idiots, leaving the underground parking locked." His voice trailed off as he looked around and registered the overwhelmingly empty feeling that surrounded them. "Fucking hell, where is everyone?!"

Giles ran a tentative finger along the reception desk, coming up with at least a month's worth of dust before continuing his silent investigations. The blond figure behind him gave a disgusted huff and slumped onto the central couch. "Told you he wouldn't want to know. He didn't even leave a forwarding address."

The Watcher sighed, Spike with a soul was almost worse than Spike without one. Since the vampire had turned up on his doorstep in England six weeks earlier, there had been numerous occasions when he'd considered letting the vampire greet the sun or possibly just going ahead and staking him himself.

Over the past few weeks Giles had been a reluctant passenger on the emotional roller coaster ride the vampire had been taking, as he veered wildly from voluble depression at his violent and murderous past to remarkable highs as he tried to reclaim his identity as the big bad. There was certainly enough material to write a fascinating paper on William the Bloody, but he reflected somewhat ruefully, it was a pity that Spike hadn't turned out more like his brooding Sire than a cross between Charles Manson and Mickey Mouse on speed.

It was only the memory of what Spike had done to help them during that terrible summer when Buffy was dead that had persuaded him to take the vampire in at all, but there was a limit to what Giles could offer in way of help. Spike needed to speak to someone who understood something of what he was going through, so Giles had reluctantly decided to bring him here to LA, much against his own inclination to never see Angel again. It may have been four years since Angelus had put in an appearance in Sunnydale, but the memories of Jenny's death were still very painful for him and the scars on his body kept them fresh.

However, personal feelings aside, the ideal solution for both of them was for Giles to pass responsibility for Spike over to his Sire, thus leaving the reluctant vampire sitter free to escape on the next plane. Unfortunately, he had not thought to call ahead, after all the Champion for the Powers was unlikely to be out of town on a business trip, and the resultant deserted hotel was simply going to complicate the whole 'transfer of ownership' process.

"Hello? Is there anyone here?"

Giles' voice almost rose to a shout, in that awkward embarrassed way of someone trying to demand an answer without doing anything so crass as draw attention to themselves. Even so, his voice echoed around the huge building, which only served to emphasise the total silence that enveloped them.

Checking the office door and finding it unlocked; he entered, continuing his search for clues as to why the members of Angel Investigations were missing. There was post piled up on the desk, which suggested someone was still around keeping an eye on the place and the red light on the answer machine was flashing. He felt a slight twinge of guilt over violating their privacy, but rewound the tape and played the messages anyway.

A woman's voice, not Cordelia's, and with a southern drawl said, "Sorry, but Angel Investigations has temporarily relocated please leave your message after the tone or, if you need help urgently call...." Giles grabbed a pen and jotted the number down on a notepad, pushed the door closed and called it the moment the tape finished.

"Hello, my name is Rupert Giles. I used to be a...an acquaintance of Angel's...."

Spike could just about hear one side of the conversation through the closed door of the office.

"Yes, well... Quite. Actually I'm at the hotel at the moment. You will? That would be most kind. I'll see you in about ten minutes then. I'll be here. Thank you very much."

The door opened and looking more than a slightly confused Giles came out. "That was a friend of Angel's, co-workers." He indicated over his shoulder at the telephone. "She said they would come and meet us here. It was strange; she sounded a little anxious and yet relieved that I'd called."

Spike shrugged and returned to fiddling with his nails, feigning lack of interest. He didn't think Angel would have helped him anyway, their last meeting hadn't exactly been a friendly family reunion, what with the red-hot pokers and the pliers. He shuffled down in the seat trying not to think about that day, he'd come a long way since then and found the memory painful and sort of embarrassing at the same time. He'd been such a pratt. All that lone wolf shit. Look where it had got him, first muzzled and now leashed.

Turningk tok towards the office, Giles shook his head in despair. He had to get the vampire some help, he wasn't eating properly, and his usually thin frame was gaunter than it had been when he'd first escaped from the Initiative's holding pens. Nightmares plagued him when he tried to sleep, and one afternoon Giles had the disconcerting experience of William the Bloody sobbing on his shoulder when one particularly horrific memory had come flooding back. A quick browse along the bookshelves offered no inspiration, in fact the collection lacked many of the basic texts that every Watcher kept at hand.

He returned to the lobby and the pair sat together in uncomfortable silence, Spike kicking his heels against the polished floor. Giles fought the urge to tell him to stop, knowing how ridiculous it sounded for anyone to tell a one hundred and twenty year old master vampire to sit still.

He couldn't help feeling just a little bit sorry for the forlorn figure, ...who was now trying to unpick the stitching on the seat.

"Spike, please." The blond head came up and blue eyes met Giles', gone was the wicked flash and the quizzically raised brow, instead the eyes had greyed and taken on a haunted, hunted look. Spike slumped lower in his seat and stopped moving completely, doing a passable impression of a corpse.

"Thank god," the front doors opened and a slim, mousy haired, girl burst in, closely followed by a tall, black man. "Someone who might know what's happening, what with Angel disappearing and Cordelia disappearing and Connor, just pfft, gone..."

Giles stood and moved towards the couple waiting for an appropriate break in the monologue, but soon realised the young woman was going to talk all evening unless forcibly restrained. He extended a hand, "Hello, I'm Rupert Giles. We spoke on the phone."

"Hi," his hand was clasped and pumped up and down, "I'm Fred, and this is Gunn, Charles Gunn. My real name's Winifred, but y'know I just don't like it, so everyone just calls me Fred and, oh, I guess you don't need to know all that." She looked behind her for reassurance and gave a quick tight smile.

Twenty minutes later and Giles was fairly sure he had the whole story. There wasn't much to it really, to someone used to living on a Hellmouth. Angel had gone off for a romantic liaison with Cordelia. Then Connor...Angel's son... Angel had a son? Giles' jaw had really dropped at that point. Angel had a son? How? When? Then the whole Darla and Holtz debacle had to be relayed and, anyway, it seemed that Connor had slipped out past his baby sitters a little later. The long and short of the whole sorry saga was that all three of them had disappeared about six weeks ago and there had been no sign of them since.

"Probably shagged the stupid bint and lost his soul again." Fred and Gunn turned toward the voice. Spike had lain on the couch, silent and unobserved until now.

'Ahh,' thought Giles, 'this isn't going to be easy.' Adopting a forced but cheerful demeanour he set about introducing the assembled throng. "Um...let me introduce William, a friend of Angel's from way back."

Fred went to offer her hand, but Gunn held her back and challenged the vampire to declare himself correctly. "William, as in William the Bloody, right? As in Spike, Angelus' Childe?"

"The one and the same." Spike rose from the couch, unfolding in a way that reminded Giles momentarily of a cheetah, and dropped into the overly relaxed posture he had seen many times - Spike was ready to fight.

One unfortunate side effect of the soul Spike had acquired in Africa was that its presence had somehow suppressed the effects of the Initiative's chip, so now there was only the soul stopping the vampire from hurting humans. Giles had discovered this to his cost one night when he had tried to restrain Spike and had been hurled against a wall. The fact that the vampire had immediately apologised had done little to mitigate his glee at discovering he could once again defend himself.

"I think we all need to calm down." Giles offered himself as peacemaker, stepping between the two men who were squaring off. "Spike is here to see Angel because, well... because he has also been gifted with a soul."

"Gift, bollocks, some fucking gift." Spike looked at the floor obviously uncomfortable that Giles had told virtual strangers about his condition.

"So he's not dangerous?" Fred had looked curious rather than afraid, and patted Gunn's arm reassuringly.

"No, not dangerous." Giles confirmed ignoring the low growl behind him as Spike kicked at the couch, sending it flying several feet across the lobby and he raised his eyes heavenward. "Petulant, stroppy, infuriating, yes. Dangerous? No, not really."

"Shit man, how many soul-ed vampires can one city handle?" Gunn snorted in disgust, but backed down from the confrontation.

"This could actually be incredibly good fortune." A sudden thought had occurred to Giles as he considered the situation. "We have a missing Angel and conveniently enough, the means to locate him."

"Huh?" Three faces turned towards him, erstwhile enemies finding a common bond in confusion.

"You, Spike. Since Angelus is your sire you should be able to sense him if you get within a mile or two. Since Fred and Gunn say they know where Angel was heading that night, we can start there and see if you come up with anything."

"Won't work. It's been too long," Spike lied, "I won't be able to sense him, 'cos I haven't tasted his blood since the idiot went and got himself cursed." His mind returned again to their last meeting. It is hard to torture someone with needle nosed pliers without getting blood everywhere, and Spike was never one to look a gift horse in the mouth, however he didn't feel that now was the time to mention it, humans never understood the blood thing.

"Spike! I'm really starting to lose patience with you. Angel is the only one who can help you at the moment and I think you owe it to yourself, if not us, to at least try."

The vampire gave him a filthy look then shrugged, capitulating to the inevitable in the face of Giles' determination. "I could give it a go, I suppose."

"Thank you."

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

The view from Point Dume was spectacular in the twilight; the large houses that dotted the coast were fading as the sun set and stars were just becoming visible in the coruscating glow. Steep cliffs dropped away at their feet toward the sea, and the three of humans stood watching in silent appreciation until the sun dropped below the horizon. A couple of minutes later, Spike joined them from the car.

"Anything?" Giles asked.

Spike looked up toward the west and out into the bay. "Give us a chance, Rupert," his normally acid tones tempered by concentration. For a few moments he stood, letting the gentle evening wind just move around him, savouring the newborn night and the feel of his world coming to life. Then a gentle tug, nothing profound, just a hunch really - out to sea.

"I need to get down there." Spike pointed at the cove below them. A narrow, steep path led down the cliff, and as the human's made their way carefully down, the vampire leapt ahead, dropping from rock to rock until he reached the sandy bay. He could definitely sense something as he descended, and by the time his boots touched the sand he was certain Angel had been there. He inhaled deeply, scenting the air, trying to fix where the trace of his Sire was coming from. It took less than five minutes to find the cell phone wedged between the rocks, broken but not completely smashed.

"He made it this far then." Fred turned the damaged phone over and over in her hands, searching for anything that may give them a clue as to how it had got there. "Can you pick anything else up?" She looked hopefully at Spike.

"Just a general 'out there' feeling." He indicated the ocean stretching out before them.

"Not terribly helpful, Spike." Giles looked out over the bay. "A ship? Why would he go out to sea?" Turning around he realised he was talking to himself, all other eyes were fixed on a figure jogging towards them along the surf line.

"Cordelia?" Fred ran quickly towards her, being the first to believe what she was seeing. Five years in Pylea had given Fred a lot of faith in what her eyes told her, however unlikely it might seem. Cordelia slowed, bending over and putting both hands on her knees, her breathing deep and a little ragged as if she had been jogging for some time.

"Where did you go? What happened? We all thought you must've been sucked through another portal, cos like, there's a lot of that in LA. Then we found the car and it'd been towed." She stopped, Cordelia was glowing, a pale nimbus surrounded her and, as Fred put out a tentative hand, she felt a tingling emanating from the aura.

"No time," Cordy gasped. "Got a message from the Powers, need to tell you, you're doing the right thing, follow Spike's instincts." The shimmering increased and Cordelia's figure slowly dissipated in front of their eyes.

"Follow his instincts," Gunn grunted. They turned and looked at the blond vampire staring out to sea. "Guess we're gonna need a boat then."

*~*~*~*~

"There, there. You did well. That wasn't so hard." Cordy sobbed onto the shoulder, or more accurately the upper arm, of the huge demon that acted as her guide from the Powers That Be. He patted her gently, obviously unsure of what to do.

"You don't understand. You can't possibly understand." She raised her head and looked him in the eye, her face luminous with tears. "I promised him. I gave him my word that I would be the one to do it."

*~*~*~*~

"Here. Right bloody here." Spike jabbed his cigarette at the deck of the boat. "Down there. I can feel him, like he's crawling around under my skin."

An involuntary shudder ran through his body. That was a completely inadequate way of describing what he felt. The last time he had tried to track his Sire had been over a hundred years ago while they hunted, but time in those terms meant nothing to the blood bond, the feeling was still strong. It was strange, he would have thought that the souls would make a difference, but they didn't. To Spike's senses Angel felt exactly the same as Angelus.

"He's at the bottom of the sea?" Giles removed his glasses, rubbing the salt spray off on his jacket. "Why would he be at the bottom of the sea?" He hesitated as the vampire's body language changed his shoulders and back stiffening from the implied insult. "I don't mean to question your word Spike, but what could possibly keep him down there. He'd, he'd have to be completely incapacitated."

"I'm only saying what I feel." Spike looked Giles straight in the eye. "The Powers said to trust my instincts and I say here." He jabbed at the deck again.

Luckily, the only vessel they had been able to get at such short notice belonged to Eddy the Octopus, LA's best-known demon smuggler and a satisfied customer. Its sonar quickly revealed an anomalous reading on the seabed, and its heavy lifting equipment easily raised a large container to the surface.

"But why?" Fred was staring with disbelieving astonishment at the heavy metal coffin they had dragged from the ocean bed. "Why would anyone do something so cruel?"

She studied the unconscious form inside, its eyes closed, and the ghostly pale face still and relaxed.

*~*~*~*~*~*

"Listen to me, human. I know what he needs to heal and it isn't this crap." Spike hurled the bag of pig's blood at the wall, where it burst with a satisfying squish and colourful splash. "The poor bastard hasn't fed for nearly two months and its going to take more than that to bring him round."

Spike knew he was winning, without Giles to back them up the others were backing a losing horse. The Watcher had caught the first plane he could get out of LA, less than twelve hours after they found Angel, leaving Spike to nurse his Sire back to health. As soon as he had left, Spike set about convincing the others that Angel needed human blood. He'd not even bothered to mention it until Giles had gone, well aware of the dangerously ambiguous feelings the man still harboured toward Angel.

When there was no answer, he spun around on the humans, standing defiantly by the reception desk, and changed the habits of several lifetimes. "Please. We can buy it, I'm not suggesting we slit some poor bastard's throat. But Angel needs it; he won't heal properly without."

Eventually, they relented and Gunn purchased several bags from a contact he had at a local blood bank. A few hours later, Spike was in Angel's room armed with human blood and facing the task of getting his unresponsive Sire to feed.

Having tried several methods unsuccessfully including holding Angel on his lap, as you would a baby and slowly dripping the blood into his mouth, Spike gave up. The best way was simply to feed him from his own mouth, and he took a large swig of blood, teased open Angel's teeth with his tongue and allowed the life giving substance to slide down his Sire's throat.

It was strange having such close physical contact with Angel after so many years. When Angelus had been in Sunnydale he'd been much more interested in Dru than him, put off by the injuries Spike had suffered when the church organ had fallen on him. Like all vampires, Angelus was aroused by blood, but had little tolerance for anything that required long term healing. Plus, of course, he'd been as mad as a bloody hatter.

And this situation was a complete reversal of the role they'd had in the past, Angel as the helpless childe and Spike as the strong protective sire. He sort of liked that and, after he had finished, sat in the darkened room just holding Angel, appreciating the feel of the body he hadn't touched for so long, and wondering whether these new found feelings for his Sire would survive him coming round. It was interesting to discover that his soul hadn't changed his attitudes regarding sex, not the consensual kind anyway and he guessed that, soul or no, basic vampiric nature couldn't be denied.

After a couple of days, Spike was happy enough with his Sire's progress to leave him for some much-needed sleep. Although Angel had not yet roused, Spike guessed that what he needed now was peace and quiet while the demon used the blood to heal the body.

When he woke, Spike went down to the office and found Fred and Gunn just leaving for the night. He passed on the good news about Angel's condition and assured the pair that with some decent sleep their boss would be as good as new. They left in a much happier mood, and with Fred promising to bring beer and snacks with her as a reward for all Spike's hard work, when they returned the following afternoon.

He returned to Angel's room and stood contemplating the sleeping form, happy that his nursing over the last few days seemed to have done the trick. Angel had obviously regained consciousness at some point during the day, and had showered and dressed before falling asleep again.

He dug around in his pocket for a cigarette - he'd refrained from smoking around the humans but Angel wasn't going to suffer - then lit one and frowned as he took a long drag. It was weird, when he was asleep you couldn't tell. One look when he was awake and that soul bore straight through you, but asleep? That could so easily be Angelus asleep on the bed. Leather pants, hair washed and gelled just so... "Oh shit!" The cigarette dropped from Spike's hand.

The figure on the bed stretched and opened his eyes. "Hello, William."