Dust Thou Art

by Jeanne Rose

**

Angel stalked the demon relentlessly through the dark alleys of one of Los Angeles' forgotten neighborhoods. He hadn't got a good look at it yet, but he had seen its victim, and he vowed that she would be the last.

The demon's faint, acrid scent led him over a chain link fence and into an abandoned lot between two buildings. A sagging metal shed and a stripped-down station wagon cast faint shadows in the greasy dirt. The scent was strong. It was here.

The demon jumped him without warning. Its claws dug into his arms, drawing blood. He twisted out its grip and shoved an elbow into its face, then spun and kicked it in the stomach. It staggered but turned and swept his legs out from under him with a heavy tail. He went down hard.

As the demon loomed over him he finally caught a glimpse of it in the murky glow of a surviving street lamp – small, vicious eyes, a row of spikes across its head and shoulders, a lot of sharp teeth, and a glowing green amulet hanging around its neck.

He rolled to his feet and kicked sideways at its knee. He felt the joint give. The demon howled in pain and charged him, shoving him into the brick wall of the building with spiked fists that gouged his chest. Ignoring the pain Angel showered it with blows, trying to determine its vulnerable spots. Beheading would probably be effective. He began to look around for a suitable weapon.

Sudden, intense pain shot through the wounds in his chest. He gasped and retreated a pace. The spikes must secrete some kind of poison. The demon growled in triumph and advanced. Angel stumbled dizzily, trying to avoid its grasp, but it shoved him to the ground and pinned him beneath its weight. He struggled fiercely but could not get free.

The demon released its hold just long enough to sink a long spike into his heart. He screamed, and turned to dust.

* * *

Cordelia looked up from the pile of booklets, forms, receipts, and scratch paper scattered across her desk with an end-of-the-world sigh. It was hopeless. There was no way to make the calculator come up with anything remotely resembling a reasonable figure. She hit the "clear" button resentfully and glanced around, looking for someone to commiserate with.

Wesley hadn't come back from supper, and she hadn't heard any stirrings in Angel's office either. Of course, that didn't mean he wasn't there. He could spend hours sitting motionless at his desk, staring at nothing, brooding about whatever dark, deep mystical things vampires with souls brooded about. Perhaps he wouldn't mind a little interruption? She strode across the office and stuck her head through his doorway. "Angel?"

He was asleep at his desk, forehead resting on folded arms. Then his head snapped up and a cascade of emotions flickered across his face. Fear, confusion, relief, shame?

"Sorry," she said. "Is . . . everything OK?"

He made a visible effort to collect himself. "Yeah. It's OK. It was . . . just a bad dream." Tiny warning bells went off inside her head, but he stood, dismissing it. "What did you want?"

He didn't want to talk about it – big surprise. And she wasn't in the mood to pry it out of him just now. She plunked herself into a chair opposite the desk.

"I can't figure out why I owe the government seven hundred dollars of income tax. I mean, I didn't make any real money." Abruptly realizing the tactlessness of this remark, she hurriedly added, "Not that what you pay me isn't real, of course, I just . . . well, it never seems to add up in my money market account, so how can it add up to seven hundred dollars of income tax? No wonder Daddy got into so much trouble."

Angel was staring at her rather bemusedly. So much for commiseration. Had he ever paid taxes? Did he even have a social security number? "I don't suppose you've ever had to worry much about stuff like that."

"No, not really."

"Well, you better watch out. Those IRS guys can be as vicious as any demon." She bristled at the memory of her personal possessions being carted off by blue collar nobodies.

Her eye was suddenly caught by a gaudy-looking green amulet on a gold chain, resting in a small box at the corner of Angel's desk. It had a fancy network of lines and swirls and looked very old.

"Hey, what's that? And if it's not some precious heirloom or demon-fighting talisman, could we, maybe, sell it? Bills, bills, bills! Not to mention my taxes."

Angel followed her gaze. And inhaled sharply. He moved slowly around the desk, staring at the amulet.

Cordelia watched him closely. "It's not yours?" she asked.

"No. Someone must have sent it." She reached to pick it up, but he blocked her hand. "Don't touch it."

"Right." She reached for the entire box instead. Was it a trick of the light, or was the thing actually glowing? And who in their right mind would imagine the monstrosity as a complement to any conceivable outfit?

She heard the front door opening. "Maybe Wesley will know what it is."

* * *

Wesley was reading the paper as he came in, oblivious as usual. He glanced at them over the top of it. "Did you see this story on the second page of The Times?"

She deftly pushed the paper away from him and thrust the box under his nose. "Do you know what this is?"

Wesley kept hold of his paper but looked at the box. "It came in the mail this morning," he replied. "I put it on Angel's desk so that he could have a look at it."

"But what it is?"

"It's clearly an amulet of some kind. It looks familiar, but I can't place it." He reached to pick it up just as Cordelia had.

She jerked the box away from him. "Angel says not to touch it."

Wesley's eyebrows went up. Finally he put down his paper and hooked the chain with a pencil, lifting the amulet out of the box and onto her desk. "The design looks Celtic, but it's a very unusual pattern." He leaned down to look at it more closely. "There are words engraved around the edge, but they have nearly worn off." He rummaged for a magnifying glass. "Welsh, I think. Anysbryd mil gwaith marwolaeth," he said slowly.

Angel, who had been hovering rather anxiously at Cordelia's side, took a sudden step backward. Wesley glanced up at him.

"Oh, sorry. I guess that translates roughly to – May evil die a thousand deaths."

"You mean, it kills demons?" Cordelia asked.

"I'm not sure. But I know I've seen this design before. I'll have to do some reading." He looked downright cheery at the prospect.

Angel stirred uncomfortably beside her. "It . . . might explain the dreams I've been having."

Ah ha, the truth at last. Cordelia eyed him sharply. "What kind of dreams? Not – biting people kind of dreams?"

Angel's mouth twitched. "No. Stake through the heart kind of dreams."

Wesley stirred. "So, you've been experiencing recurring nightmares in which you were impaled with a stake and, um, disintegrated?"

Angel nodded. "Sunlight too. Fire. Beheading. The whole drill."

Upon closer inspection, he did look rather haggard. Cordelia noticed that Wesley had moved surreptitiously away from the amulet. "And when did the nightmares begin?" he asked.

"This morning."

"The same time the box arrived. It would seem to be more than a coincidence."

"So what is it doing here?" Cordelia asked. "And what do we do about it?"

"Well, the first thing to do is get some information." Wesley lifted the amulet again with much more caution than he had before, and was about to put it back into the box when Cordelia suddenly spotted something.

"Oh!" she cried, pointing to the box. Wesley nearly dropped it. "There's a return address. That should tell us something, right?" She snatched the box away from him, leaving the amulet dangling gingerly in the air. "1710 Wilshire Blvd. Here in LA. Shouldn't be too hard to track down." She turned toward the computer.

Suddenly the lights went out. Her heart sank. "Oh dear."

Angel walked to the window. "Sun's down." He opened the blinds, letting in the fading evening light. "Lights are still on across the street."

Might as well get the worst over with. "That's probably because they paid their electric bill."

It took them both a second to clue in. "And we didn't?" they said, more or less in unison.

"Last month we only had enough for the water bill or the electric bill. And since Angel isn't too keen on light . . . " She shrugged.

Angel rubbed his forehead as if it hurt. "Get a map," he said to Wesley. "We'll take the car."

* * *

"Turn left at the next light. It should be Wilshire Blvd."

Angel switched lanes and looked for a street sign. The air was finally beginning to cool, blowing in from the ocean, and it felt good rushing past his face. To his surprise, Wesley was proving to be an adept navigator. At this point Angel was inclined to appreciate any small favors the universe deigned to throw his way. He could not even bring himself to wonder why Cordelia had neglected to inform him that they were behind on utility payments. Didn't they usually give you two or three months before cutting off service? Thank goodness she had begged off this trip to catch some evening audition. A day without sleep had not done wonders for his patience.

Wesley hunted for numbers as they drove. "1546 . . . 1620 . . . 1688 . . . why don't more businesses put their address on the front, for goodness sake? . . . 1760. We've gone too far. It has to be one of those office buildings."

Angel turned the corner and parked out of sight. All of the doors they tried were locked for the evening, but beside the main entrance they found a placard with the street numbers of the businesses within. Together they stared at the listing beside 1710.

"Wolfram and Hart," Wesley read aloud unnecessarily. "Must be a branch office."

Angel abruptly pulled Wesley away from the building. "And they gave us the address. They are probably expecting us."

They hurried back to the car, expecting shots to ring out or demons to attack from the shadows at any moment, but nothing happened. Angel rubbed his eyes, feeling fatigue creeping up in his brain. "It figures. They've had it in for me for a while now. Trust them to come up with something really creative."

Wesley folded up the map, getting all the creases right, and picked up the paper he had brought along. "We may have another problem."

"What?"

"There's been trouble at the waterfront. Demon trouble, I'll wager."

"What does it say?"

"Remains of several persons gone missing who were last seen around San Pedro harbor at night were found washed up on shore this morning."

"And?"

"They look as if they've been snacked on by something with really large teeth."

Angel looked at Wesley incredulously. "They put that in the paper?"

"In point of fact, no, but something about it seemed suspicious, so I did some checking."

"Well, aren't there any, uh, big fish in the bay? Sharks, maybe?"

"Are you kidding? With all that pollution?"

It didn't seem terribly promising, but at least it was something to do besides sit at home and have nightmares. "OK, let's go have a look."

* * *

Lindsey McDonald stepped back from the darkened window, satisfied. The junior assistant beside him was exuberant.

"He's taken the bait," Payton whispered ecstatically. "It's working."

"Did you doubt that it would?" Lindsey asked coolly.

"No, no, of course not. I told you, no demon has survived the amulet's curse for longer than 2 days. It's just nice to have some proof, that's all."

"I'm not sure it was wise to tip him off to our involvement."

"What, are you afraid he'll come after us? What could one vampire do? Don't worry. It'll work."

Lindsey studied the other man just long enough to make him start twitching. "You know the senior partners will have your head if he interferes with their plans," he said. "And I'm not speaking figuratively."

Payton swallowed nervously. "Hey, I was the one stuck doing inventory of cursed swords and moldy scrolls and preserved demon parts in that tomb of a vault. I was the one who found the amulet. If there's any credit to be had here, it should go to me."

"As will the blame if it doesn't work. That is usually the way the game is played," Lindsey reminded him.

"It'll work. You'll see. By the time that amulet is through with him, you won't have to worry about your super vamp interfering with anything ever again."

* * *

Twilight had nearly turned to darkness by the time Angel and Wesley reached San Pedro. Angel led them in a circuitous path along the waterfront, poking his head into warehouses and railcars, occasionally stopping to talk to longshoremen working on the wharves. They didn't look like the type to be easily spooked, but suspicion and dread hung heavily in the air. No one had many words to spare for strangers.

At the far end of the harbor he slipped through a gate and walked out to the edge of a long pier. Wesley followed silently. The ocean lapped rhythmically at the posts below. The lighthouse out at the entrance to the harbor blinked periodically with a bright green light. Angel took a deep breath of the sea air, appreciating the sense of the vast dark ocean spread out before him. Finally he turned to Wesley.

"Something's definitely happening here, but there's not much to go on . . . " he trailed off, thinking he had heard an odd, muffled sound. He looked back along the pier, then out into the water.

"What is it?" Wesley asked.

Angel stared at the surface of the water. "I think there's something out there."

He heard a cry behind him and turned just in time to see Wesley get pulled into the water. Angel shed his coat and shoes in an instant and dove in after him.

He kicked furiously, swimming as fast as he could, and by some miracle his hand latched onto Wesley's ankle. Cold water streamed past him as they were dragged further from shore. He caught hold of Wesley's belt and tried to pry open the huge claws wrapped around his waist, but they wouldn't budge. He hadn't brought a knife. With no alternative, he bared his fangs and sunk them into the rough skin of the creature's forearm.

The blood was thick, far too salty, and overpoweringly rich. He swallowed involuntarily as the strange hot blood poured into his mouth. Then suddenly the claws opened, freeing Wesley, and Angel was violently shaken loose. He reached up to make sure his jaw was still intact, then got an arm around Wesley's chest and kicked to the surface.

Wesley spluttered and coughed but didn't resist as Angel towed him back toward the lights on the pier. By the time they reached it, Wesley was able to climb out on his own.

"You OK?" Angel asked. His stomach churned uneasily, full of the creature's blood.

"Just bruised, I think," Wesley answered, feeling his ribs with probing fingers. He was beginning to shiver, and Angel handed him his coat. "It must have gone for the only good eating in the party," Wesley commented dryly.

Abruptly Angel leaned over the edge of the pier and vomited the contents of his stomach into the water. Immediately he felt much better. Wesley looked at him strangely as he straightened. "Are you all right?" he asked. "I didn't know vampires could – "

"Neither did I," Angel finished. It had been a very long time since his days of puking up his guts under the influence of Irish beer.

His eye was caught by a dark shape hovering just above the surface of the water, barely visible against the faint gray tinge on the western horizon. He stared at it, trying to make out the details. It was hard to tell how far away it was, to get an accurate idea of its size. But he could feel it watching them and had a fleeting impression of a huge, sinuous shape hovering just below the water.

He got up and pulled Wesley to his feet. "It's still out there," he said. "Come on." Together they hurried back up the pier.

*

It was past midnight by the time Angel arrived home. He bathed by candlelight and felt as if he had slipped back into an earlier century. Cordelia must have found enough money for the gas bill though, because the water heater was still working.

Lulled by the warm water, he thought about the giant sea creature winding its way through the deep. It was obviously not a normal inhabitant of the harbor. Were there demons that lived in the ocean? He'd have to check the books.

He carried the candle into the bedroom, towel dried his hair, and slipped into a pair of silk pajama bottoms. He stared at the bed – it looked so very inviting. He usually didn't sleep at this time of night, but the nightmares had kept him awake for most of the day. Wesley had taken the amulet with him to try to locate the reference he remembered. Perhaps in its absence he could finally get some rest.

He blew out the candle and lay back on the pillows. Sleep didn't come as quickly as he expected. He lay in the dark for a long time, listening to the deep silence of the room. Then, very faintly at first, he began to hear water dripping somewhere in the distance. It became a trickle, then a steady stream. Finally he recognized it. It was the fountain in the garden of the mansion. Someone was out there. He got up to investigate.

The garden was bright with the light of an almost full moon. He saw movement in the shadows behind the rambling vines that covered the walls. He tiptoed soundlessly closer, but to his surprise, Xander stepped out to meet him. He was wearing a green amulet and held a stake resolutely in his hand.

"Xander. What are you doing here?" Angel asked, his eye on the stake.

Xander stepped closer. "I've waited a long time for this." He shifted nervously from one foot to the other. "You're not going to argue with me, are you? You killed Miss Calendar. You're a murderer. I have every right to see you dead.

Angel ducked his head. He could not disagree. "What about Buffy?" he asked finally.

"She's over you. She'll be sad at first, but in the end she'll know it's for the best."

The words pierced him more painfully than a stake. Buffy had loved him once, but he wasn't sure if she still did.

Xander shifted the stake from one hand to the other, hesitating. "You know, I've killed my share of vampires, but it's kind of different when you actually know one."

Angel felt a glimmer of hope. Could Xander be talked out of this?

"I saved your life – more than once. Doesn't that count for anything?"

"Thanks for that, but no. It won't bring back Miss Calendar. And it can't undo what you did to Giles when you killed her."

Angel looked away. The horror of that cruelty still haunted him. And apparently it nerved Xander for his task. He raised his fist with the stake clutched tightly. "I know you didn't have a soul, and some people would use that to excuse you. But I can't. With or without a soul, you did it. And now you die for it."

Xander thrust the stake into Angel's heart. He dissolved to dust.

* * *

Angel awoke with a start and rolled out of bed as if it were full of hot coals. He stood unsteadily in the pitch black room, momentarily uncertain where he was. Finally he remembered and sat down again.

He had waited for a long time for someone to sit in judgment on what he had done in Sunnydale when he lost his soul, but no one ever had. But even now if any of them demanded his life, he had no defense to offer.

He fumbled in the dark for matches and lit the candle. Obviously sending the amulet with Wesley had not lessened its influence. He didn't feel much like sleeping any more. Perhaps now would be a good time to look for information about sea demons. He walked carefully with the candle to the study.

Two hours later he found himself nodding. The search was proving more complicated than he had expected. Every civilization that lived along the sea shore apparently had its own tales of monsters rising from the deep, and it was hard to separate fact from myth. Sea-dwelling demons were much more difficult to document than the ones that lived on land.

His eyes burned, and it was becoming hard to concentrate. He leaned his head back on the sofa just to rest for a minute.

When he tried to move he found himself bound. He struggled against the ropes, but they were strong and tight, biting into his wrists and ankles. The ground was bitterly cold beneath him, and a shrill wind pierced his coat.

"What do you think of the accommodations, mate?"

He wrenched himself around to face the speaker. Light from the lantern stabbed his eyes. "Spike. Cut me loose! What is this about?"

"It's about me and Dru, and you keeping out of the way. Can't even trust you to do a simple thing like that, can I?"

"And whose fault is it if she prefers a more seasoned mate?" Angel sneered.

"I can't stake you, see, or she'll get it in her pretty little head somehow and leave me," Spike mused aloud, ignoring him. He fingered the glowing amulet hanging around his neck. "She likes pain, though. Come to think of it, I like pain too, as long as it's not mine." He pulled a pair of needle nose pliers from a pocket of his overcoat and grinned at them. "I'm a pretty inventive chap. I'm sure I can think of something."

Angel changed to vampire form and tried to break the rope. Spike dragged him away from the wall and pinned his head between his knees. He forced Angel's jaw open and grasped one of his fangs with the pliers, then pulled sharply. Pain shot through Angel's head. He choked in horror and struggled frantically to break free.

"There's one," Spike said cheerfully, squeezing harder with his knees. He reached into Angel's mouth again, and soon there were two bloody holes where his vampire teeth had been.

Spike rocked back on his heels and laid the long, pointed teeth carefully in his hand. Angel lay limp with shock. "These will make a nice birthday gift, don't you think?" Spike rambled mockingly. "She can wear them on a little chain and beg me to tell her again how I ripped them out of your skull."

Angel didn't answer. Spike sliced his bonds and rolled him over with a foot. "Be a bit tough for you without ‘em, won't it? But I'm sure you'll manage somehow, a seasoned man like yourself." He sauntered through the door, whistling.

Angel wandered for days in the cold, dark streets, gnawed by hunger. He smelled blood everywhere but could scarcely get a taste. Before long he was too weak to try. Finally he found a broken fence post and impaled himself through the heart.

* * *

Books clattered to the floor as Angel woke with a start. Gingerly he ran his tongue over the unbroken ring of his teeth. Trust Spike to show up with a pair of pliers again.

But dream's semblance of reality went deeper than that. In the beginning, what the gypsies had done to him was not so different. With his soul restored, he could not feed. Ultimately, of course, having a soul meant much more than that, but this twisted version of his past brought back the lifetime of empty years he had spent starving and alone. He had almost forgotten what it was like to live without hope.

The candle was burning dangerously low. He found another in the kitchen and lit it from the first, then went to the bedroom and exchanged his pajama bottoms for pants and a shirt. He was obviously not going to get any sleep until he could figure out how to counteract the amulet's influence.

He went to the study and stared tiredly at the shelves along the wall. There had to be something here that would tell him where the amulet came from, who had made it, and how to put a stop to the disturbing dreams it was causing. He skimmed the titles and gathered an armful of promising volumes.

Sitting upright at the kitchen table did help him to stay awake, but as the candle burned steadily in the stillness he felt as if time had slowed to a crawl. He made himself get up and pace the room whenever he couldn't keep his eyes open any longer. There was nothing at all about the amulet in the first book, or the second. In the third he found a spell for plaguing an enemy with nightmares, but it didn't involve an amulet. Near the end there was a tantalizing reference to a thousand deaths, but it was too vague to be useful, and though he forced his mind to register every word on every page surrounding the reference, there was nothing more.

Finally he closed the book slowly and went upstairs to the office. Dawn had begun to chase darkness from the sky. Perhaps it wouldn't be long before Wesley or Cordelia would arrive. Angel carried a double armload of books up the elevator and sat down at his desk to wait for them.

Dawn passed ever so slowly into morning, but no one came. He searched seven more books from cover to cover but could not find anything about the amulet. He found himself staring at the corner of his desk where he had first seen it lying in the box. Its intricate patterns burned bright in his memory.

Thrusting the image from his mind, he turned back to the sea monster. Here there was plenty to read about, but not much detail to go on. He knew what the creature's blood tasted like, but that was not much help. He tried to remember the shape of its head as he had seen it from the pier and the claws that had curled around Wesley's body, to match them with the fanciful etchings on the pages. One huge beast in particular seemed to stare at him from the book with the same kind of look he had felt at the harbor. Old and cunning and very patient, but deadly when aroused. What was it doing here? What did it want? And how could they stop it?

He stood up and stretched, then reached over and opened the window shades as far as he dared. The sun was shining brightly, heralding another warmer-than-average spring day. Once upon a time he had enjoyed sunlight, the way it glowed through the leaves of the trees and enlivened everything it touched. Now fate had made it his enemy, its touch bringing death rather than life. He closed the shades and sighed, turning back to the books. He supposed that a sea monster living in the depths of the ocean would abhor bright sunlight as well.

Before long he began to nod again, and suddenly he found himself stumbling through the morning light, sunlight searing him through the tiny holes in the fabric of a castoff cloak. But he had found her, and he could not wait. After so long, surely she had missed him. He clung to the shadows cast by the elegant porch and pounded on the door. Finally it opened a crack.

"Who's there?"

"Darla! It's me, Angelus. Let me in!"

"Get away from me! Filthy beast! You're not Angelus anymore." The door slammed shut.

He pounded again and pressed himself against the wall. He could feel his flesh beginning to smolder. "Wait! Please. I'll die in the sun. I'm still like you!"

There was no answer. In desperation he stepped back and threw his shoulder against the door. It splintered and burst open. He staggered inside.

She was standing in the hallway, her face twisted with sorrow. But she moved away as he approached.

"I'm so hungry," he said softly, trying not to frighten her. "I don't want to see their faces any more. You have to help me."
She shook her head. "No one can help you. Angelus is lost, and I mourn him. You are nothing but a monster, an abomination. A vampire with a human soul."

"You made me. You taught me. Can't you undo the spell? Make me like I was before?"

For a moment his pleading gaze was caught by a green amulet suspended between her breasts. She stepped toward him, her hand raised tenderly, and pushed the matted hair from his face. But her words dashed his hopes. "No. There's only one thing left I can do for you."

She tore his cloak away and thrust him out into the sunlight.

* * *

When Wesley entered the office of Angel Investigations, having slept rather late into the morning, he found his employer asleep at his desk, slumped over a pile of open books. The cheery greeting he had been about to utter died on his lips, and he stood for a moment wondering what he should do.

If Angel were having another nightmare, the kindest thing would be to wake him. And yet he wasn't entirely certain that he dared to do so – or that it would be wise, even if he did. Best not to interrupt the amulet's magic – who knew how Angel might react?

As quietly as possible he tiptoed over to glance at the books Angel had been reading. To his disappointment, he couldn't see anything that seemed relevant on any of the pages that were in view. But he did notice that with the sun beating down outside, the office was getting rather warm.

He nearly jumped out of his skin when Angel awoke with a start right under his nose. He stepped back and eyed the vampire sharply. Angel's face was marked with creases from his sleeve and for a moment he looked utterly terrified. Then he began to take in his surroundings, and fear drained slowly from his face.

"Wesley. You're . . . here."

"Yes." Wesley looked again at the pile of books and thought of the time. Angel hadn't been sitting here waiting for him. Had he?

Angel got up and paced the room, clearly having difficulty putting the nightmare behind him. Wesley watched him anxiously. Finally he sat down again.

"God, I hate sunlight."

"Understandable." Wesley pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his nose. "Long night, then."

"You have no idea." Finally his eye fell on the book tucked carefully under Wesley's arm. "Have you got something?"

Eagerly Wesley pulled out his prize. "I was only able to locate one short reference. But I'm certain this is where I've seen the amulet before."

Angel looked at the cover. "Ancient Amulets and Talismans. Why don't I have this one?"

"Because this is the only known copy. If the council ever notices it's missing, I may be in hot water. But I was the one who found it, and I paid a pretty sum for it too, so I kept it." He opened to the bookmark he'd placed and held it out for Angel to read.

Angel's eyes lit on the crude sketch of the amulet. "That's it." He grabbed the book and started reading. Wesley moved to glance over his shoulder. "Unknown origin. Earliest record in a Welsh monastery in 1240." Angel skimmed the brief passage silently. "Lost sometime before 1600. Effective against all known demon species indigenous to the region." He looked up. "Welsh. So where has it been for four hundred years? And how did Wolfram and Hart get hold of it?"

Wesley shook his head and wiped his nose again. He felt a sneeze coming on. "We may never know," he replied. "There's not much detail about how it operates. And unfortunately not a word about how to counteract its effects."

Angel sighed. "I guess that's not usually a priority. Where is it?" Wesley took the amulet from his pocket and carefully peeled away the layers of cloth in which he had wrapped it, laying it on the desk. Angel stared at it for a long moment, then reached out and picked it up. Wesley started, but no harm appeared to come to him from touching it.

Laying it on the facing page of the book, Angel bent to compare it carefully to the drawing. "Same design, same inscription. This is definitely the same amulet. Well, at least now we have something to go on."

Wesley looked at the books scattered across the table. "Any luck on your end?"

Angel shook his head. "Nothing matching its description, no mention of the phrase. And for some reason occult writers never seem to bother with something so mundane as an index."

They both looked up as the door opened to admit Cordelia. "God, it's hot in here. No need to bother with coffee," she said.

"And it looks to be another hot day as well. I wouldn't open the refrigerator," Wesley advised, an instant too late.

"Ewww, whose egg salad sandwich died in here?" she asked, closing the door hastily.

"I detest egg salad and Angel doesn't eat, so I leave you to solve that mystery on your own," he replied.

"So," she said, cheerily dismissing the refrigerator and all of its contents, "isn't anyone going to ask me how the audition went?"

"How'd it go?" Angel said, much more sincerely than Wesley could have managed.

"Really, really well. This may finally be my big break. I went down this morning to see if they'd made a decision, but no word until tomorrow. But the director said I made the first cut!"

"That's great," Angel said encouragingly.

She looked at him more closely. "You know, you really don't look so good."

"You try dying a thousand deaths." Wesley noticed that his flippant tone didn't quite reach his eyes.

Cordelia flipped her hair back in an oh-so-Cordelia fashion. "No thanks. I'll leave that to you self-flagellating types."

The sneeze that Wesley had been trying to hold in finally got the better of him. "Achooo!"

"Bless you." Cordelia grabbed a box of tissues from her desk. He plucked one and blew his nose. "How did you catch cold in the middle of this heat wave?" she asked.

"As a matter of fact, while you were at your ground breaking audition, Angel and I not only scouted up the return address on that box, but also discovered some sort of giant sea creature lurking in the bay."

"You mean that's what's been eating all those people?" she said. Wesley and Angel stared at her. She shrugged. "I watch the news."

"Yes, well, it nearly dragged us both out to sea. Fortunately, vampires don't seem to appeal to its taste buds. Nor it to theirs, I suspect." Angel didn't react, but Wesley decided to take this as confirmation of how Angel had convinced the creature to let him go.

"But you wound up with a head cold," Cordelia observed. "You should take more vitamins. Plus, Echinacea and zinc are good for colds." She glanced at Angel again. "Too bad there aren't any herbal remedies for evil nightmare amulets. Did you figure out who sent it?"

"Oh, yes," Wesley replied. "Wolfram and Hart."

Cordelia grimaced. "Figures." She eyed the books piled on Angel's desk. "Any luck figuring out how to stop it?"

Angel sighed. "No, not yet."

"What about the sea monster? Have you found out what kind of creature it was?"

"We were too busy trying not to get eaten to get a good look at it, but I think I caught a glimpse of its head. One of them, anyway." Angel picked up book he'd apparently fallen asleep on. "This is the most likely candidate so far."

Wesley and Cordelia bent over the book together. "Abyssal drakon," Wesley read. "A deep sea dragon. Are you sure? I thought they were pretty rare."

"And they usually live in the deep ocean," Angel added. "But that's the closest match I can find."

"It says they grow to be . . . oh my goodness," Wesley breathed.

"That's longer than my parent's house," Cordelia exclaimed. "This would make a great cable movie."

"Cinematic potential aside, what is it doing lurking in the harbor, snatching people from piers?" Wesley asked. "And how on earth are we going to kill it?"

"I don't know," Angel said, shaking his head. He rubbed his eyes again. "But we've got to do something about this amulet. These dreams are getting old fast."

Wesley cautiously picked up the offending object. It seemed slightly warm – though perhaps that was just because of the temperature in the room. "A thousand deaths," he said thoughtfully. "Do you suppose the words are literal? Perhaps after a thousand nightmares, it will simply stop."

Angel paled at the prospect. "There's got to be a better way than that."

Cordelia shrugged. "Can't you just destroy it?"

"I'm not sure what that would do to Angel at this point," Wesley said. "He's already under its curse."

Angel blinked at his usage, then stared at the amulet, his expression rather haunted. "It's worth a try," he said finally.

Wesley inspected the amulet more closely. "It looks brittle. Perhaps a really good whack will break it."

He looked around for something solid and finally laid the amulet on the floor. Angel took an axe from the cabinet, and Wesley and Cordelia hastened to get out of his way. Angel set himself, swung, and hit the amulet dead on with astonishing force.

It rang with a clear, high pitched tone, emitting a sharp burst of unearthly green light. Angel screamed and fell to his knees, pressing both hands to his head.

Cordelia crouched at his side, her hand hovering near his shoulder. "Angel?"

Wesley picked up the fallen axe and looked at him closely. "Are you all right?"

Angel sat back on his heels without answering, his face contorted with pain, his breathing labored. Finally he squinted at Cordelia. "No wonder you and Doyle complain so much."

Wesley picked up the amulet. "Not a dent, not a crack. I'd say that pretty much eliminates physical destruction as a possible solution."

"And you can add splitting headache to our current list of problems," Angel added, his voice rather shaky.

Cordelia obligingly ticked them off on her fingers. "Taxes. Sea dragons. Conniving lawyers. Evil amulets. Nasty cold. Splitting headache. And a hot, stuffy office. I think I am the only one who is having any luck today!"

* * *

It took over two hours for the pain to subside, even with the help of Cordelia's vision headache remedy. Angel sat quietly on the couch with an ice pack on the back of his neck, trying to relax without falling asleep. For a while everything was edged with a faint green light.

Cordelia and Wesley scoured the office and his apartment for books with anything about sea dragons or Celtic magic and made several tall stacks on her desk, where they sat reading and eating chocolate milkshakes and pizza. Despite the annoyance of crunching and slurping sounds, Angel would not have traded it for the silence of the previous hours. It reminded him wistfully of nights spent with Buffy and Giles and the Scooby gang camped out at the high school library in Sunnydale.

When the invisible vise that was clamped around his skull finally loosened its grip, Angel pulled up another chair and joined them, claiming one of the stacks of books. Everything was quiet save for the sound of rustling pages. Three candles burned steadily in the middle of the desk. Wesley leafed through book after book with steady determination. Even Cordelia seemed capable for once of concentrating on the task at hand.

But now that the pain wasn't there to keep his attention, Angel found he couldn't get through more than a page or two without his eyes threatening to close. Knowing what awaited him if he surrendered was barely enough to give him strength to fight it. He could hardly keep the page in focus.

He started, realizing he had nearly fallen asleep. Abruptly he pushed back the chair and paced the length of the room. When he turned back Wesley and Cordelia were staring at him. He avoided their gaze as he returned to the desk and sat down again. Didn't humans have drugs they used to stay awake? Why hadn't he thought of it earlier? Maybe he could buy some extra time. Maybe . . .

"I guess there is only one thing to do," Cordelia said.

He turned to her, surprised at the conviction in her voice. "What?"

She ignored him and turned to Wesley. "I quite agree," he replied.

"I promised him once that if he ever turned evil again, I'd kill him dead. I guess it's time to keep that promise."

"What? I haven't turned evil." They ignored his protest. Somehow Wesley had tied him fast to the chair. "Wait a minute. I'm not evil." Then he saw the amulet around Cordelia's neck.

"What are you doing with that – " He stopped, suddenly realizing what was happening. "Oh no."

Cordelia tipped over the candles one by one. The flames licked at the pages of an open book and quickly roared to life, spreading from one book to another. Angel struggled to inch the chair away from the deadly blaze. The rope shouldn't have held him, but it did. He could see Cordelia's face through the flames. She shook her head sadly as his clothing caught fire. Flames enveloped him, and he screamed in agony and turned to dust.

He woke with a gasp and jumped out of his chair, knocking it over sideways. Cordelia and Wesley looked up, startled. He swallowed and found his voice.

"I'm not evil!"

Cordelia sat back, folding her arms. "Right. Instead of getting the world sucked into hell, you're just scaring us to death."

"You said I was evil. You started the books on fire." He heard the edge of panic in his voice and couldn't stop it.

"Angel." Cordelia got up and touched his arm as if to ground him to reality. "It wasn't me. I wouldn't do that."

"But if you thought I'd changed –"

"Look, you are about a million miles from perfect happiness. It wasn't real," she repeated slowly.

He took a deep, shuddering breath and picked up the chair and sat down again. "It felt real. They all do."

"And we're going to find a way to stop it," Wesley said firmly. He scooted his pile of sea dragon books over to Cordelia and took most of Angel's Welsh stack.

"Hey!" she protested.

"Look, even if we find a way to kill this sea dragon, it won't do much good if Angel is in no shape to fight it."

Cordelia nodded. Angel meekly opened one of his two remaining books and tried to focus on the words. Skim the page, turn to the next. Skim the page . . . his eye lit on the word Slayer and he stopped.

Buffy's face flashed through his mind. The passage was just a typical one about the Slayer's mystical powers, but even seeing the word printed on a page opened up the part of him that still belonged to her.

Wesley spied him reading and leaned toward him. "Have you got something?"

"No." Hastily he turned the page. He wondered what if any part of her still belonged to him. His heart ached for her touch, her unswerving compassion, her strength, her wisdom, her forgiveness. But these were things he couldn't have, not if he really loved her. It didn't stop his longing for her head on his shoulder.

Suddenly Cordelia jumped up. "Hey!"

"What is it?" Wesley asked, but in seconds she was writhing in her chair clutching her head and the answer was obvious. Wesley hurried to support her, leaving Angel to grab paper and pen.

"Water . . . eww, it stinks likes dead fish . . . a person, a woman . . . blond, great blouse . . . by a lighthouse . . . it's the sea dragon, in the water, behind her! Watching . . . definitely three heads," she finished.

Wesley opened the bottle of pills already sitting on the desk and poured two caplets into Cordelia's waiting hand while Angel filled a cup with water. She swallowed gratefully. "Well, I guess that one wasn't so bad, as visions go. At least it didn't eat her."

"But it's daylight," Wesley noted. "How could it attack without being seen?"

"There was a lot of fog," Cordelia said. "Of course that may have just been mysterious vision fog."

"We've got to go try and stop it," Angel said.

Cordelia stared at him. "Has that amulet addled your brain? You can't go out in the daylight!"

"I'll stick to the shadows. But the Powers That Be must know I can stop this, or they wouldn't have shown it to you."

Wesley nodded slowly. "I'm inclined to agree." He stood. "Maybe a few sword thrusts or crossbow bolts won't kill it, but they might make it think twice about feeding on the locals."

**

Detective Kate Lockely stood on the landing of Angel's Gate Lighthouse, watching the uniformed officers at work around the remains of the latest victim of whatever was menacing the waters of San Pedro's harbor. The body parts were piling up fast, and so far no one had been able to come up with a workable theory about what had happened to them. None of the forensic biologists had been able to account for the teeth marks. But perhaps they weren't considering all of the possibilities. Kate knew if she voiced her thoughts to anyone, she'd be laughed out of the precinct, but if demons existed, if vampires were real . . . why not sea monsters?

A mist sat on the water, obscuring the horizon. What might be hidden in it? She stared out at the vast ocean, half-expecting a Nessie-like shape to poke out of the waves beyond the breakwater. What a strange, unpredictable place the world had become since that day when Angel had shown his true face.

"Kate, don't go out there."

She jumped. He was standing right behind her in the shadow of the lighthouse that incidentally bore his name. He didn't look well, and she wondered momentarily if vampires got sick. Then again, all the better if they did.

"Why? What don't you think I'm ready to see now?" she asked.

"It's not about that. It's about you not getting killed. Aren't you a little out of your jurisdiction?" he asked suddenly.

"Aren't you a little out of yours?"

"Kate, it's a demon," he said tiredly. "A really big one. There's nothing you can do to stop it."

"I can call out the Coast Guard. The marine biologists from the university. Find a really big harpoon, if I have to."

He looked momentarily taken by this idea, but then he shook his head. "You'll never catch it. It's very old and probably pretty smart."

"But you can handle it all by yourself."

He ducked his head as if hurt by her sarcasm. "I'm working on it."

"Well, while you're working on it, people are dying. Real people. So if you think I'm going to walk away on your say-so, think again."

At least now she knew for sure. She turned to find an officer who could get her a boat.

* * *

"I don't think I convinced her," Angel said. "In fact, maybe just the opposite."

"What are we going to do?" Wesley asked.

Angel looked around. "Steal a boat." Wesley stared at him. "Temporarily, of course."

Wesley nodded dubiously. "Of course."

* * *

Kate stared hard at the water as the officer drove the patrol boat back and forth across the harbor in a search pattern. The fog limited visibility substantially. She had told them that she wanted to look for debris, since the victim found at the lighthouse had been reported missing from a motorboat. But now she felt a little foolish, like a tourist hoping for a glimpse of the Loch Ness monster. Still, if Angel said this was a demon, well, it took one to know one.

She heard the sound of another boat and looked up to see one of Angel's employees coming up behind her with idiotic determination. Hadn't she made it clear to the officers on shore that no one else was to come out here?

Her boat rocked suddenly, and she looked at the officer to see what had happened. He was equally surprised. "What was that?" she asked.

He cut the motor, and they drifted in silence. The other boat stopped several yards behind them. Gripping the railing, Kate stared out across the waves. For a moment she thought she saw a huge ridged shape rise briefly from the water, then disappear again. "Did you see that?" she asked the officer.

Before he could answer the boat rocked violently, nearly overturning. Kate clung to the railing, but heard the officer cry out as he went overboard.

As soon as the boat righted itself she leaned over the edge, looking for him. Angel's employee aimed a crossbow at the water.

"No!" she cried, but he fired anyway. "You idiot! Are you trying to kill him?" She unbuckled her life jacket and prepared to dive in after him.

"Trying to save him, actually," was the response. And suddenly the officer surfaced. She threw him a life preserver, and once he'd grabbed hold she pulled him in and helped him aboard. He was bleeding from a huge gash in his leg. It had obviously not been made by a crossbow bolt.

"There's something down there," he gasped as she ripped open his uniform pant leg to look at the wound. It did not look good. "Something big." His face was gray with shock.

The boat rocked violently again, and she had a sudden horrifying vision of a huge creature bumping it from underneath. The injured officer groaned as they slid together across the deck, leaving it smeared with blood. This was no good. Kate leaped up and turned the key to start the engine.

But no sooner had the boat begun to move than a huge shape arose from the water, blocking her way. Her brain refused to identify it as a head, though it had golden luminescent eyes and dripping streamers hanging from its blunt jaws. Fog curled around it.

Suddenly her view was blocked by the other boat cutting between them. "Kate, get out of here!" Angel called tightly. He had apparently been hidden in the cabin and was now wrapped in a blanket to protect him from the sunlight peeking through the mist. He had a long sword in one hand. His employee stood determinedly behind the wheel, and together they plowed forward into the fog.

Kate lost no time in turning a tight circle and hitting the gas. They hadn't gone far when the air was filled with a moan that sounded like a whale in labor. She looked back but could see nothing. Then the other boat came speeding out of the mist. It followed her until they reached the shore. Her first priority was the injured officer, but as soon as she had called the paramedics, she turned to deal with her erstwhile rescuers.

The other boat was already empty.

* * *

Cordelia was waiting for them when they arrived back at the office. "Well?" she asked.

"You should have been there," Wesley said exuberantly, feeling the need to lighten the mood. "Sir Angel versus the Sea Dragon, our hero charging into the fray with only a trusty broadsword and his faithful squire at his side, defending the innocent maiden and her lackey against the fearsome evil lurking in the deep."

Angel's mouth quirked upward in amusement at this version of events, and Wesley counted it a tiny victory. "Too bad ‘Sir Angel' had to do battle with a blanket over his head," he said ruefully. "Not quite the heroic figure you usually find in the fairy tales. And it's a good thing it didn't turn into a pitched battle, or this might have been one of those stories where the first few knights end up in the dragon's stomach."

"But you won, right?" Cordelia asked. "You saved that blond woman in my vision?"

"Yes," Wesley replied. "It turned out to be the good Detective Lockely, who is on the case and in over her head, I fear. We frightened it off long enough for her to escape, but not before a police officer was wounded.

"I'm not sure it was frightened as much as good and annoyed," Angel said, shaking his head. "We got lucky. We still don't know how to kill it, and until we do, more people are going to die."

"I guess it's back to the books again, then," Cordelia sighed.

* * *

Angel kicked sullenly at the inside of the barn door, knowing he couldn't break the lock. He was in serious trouble this time. When Father waited until his anger had cooled, the strap connected much more consistently.

It wasn't that he didn't deserve it. His carelessness had cost the life of their best milk cow. He squirmed at the memory of his mother's face as she absorbed the news. It had been a dry year. Without the extra milk to sell, it would be a hard winter.

Finally he heard the key turn and the door opened. Father stood framed in the doorway against the bright afternoon sun, a green amulet hanging across his chest. With a quick thrust Angel knew he could push his way past the old man and be gone faster than anyone could follow. But he planted his feet and stood his ground.

"I shouldna be surprised that ye have disappointed me again. Thinking only of yourself and your friends, caring nothing for your own family. We'll all go short come winter, thanks to you."

"I'm sorry, Father." He was mortified that his voice shook. "I didn't mean for –"

"No, you didn't think, did you? You'll see us all dead, and go on your merry way. It was a sin to have sired you."

Angel stared at the blood seeping from his father's neck. Then he remembered his mother and sweet Kathy lying lifeless beside the kitchen door.

"Your own flesh and blood, dead at your hand. What am I to think of that?" His father reached to his belt, but instead of a strap, he held a stake. "Ye have no family. Ye are no son of mine."

With a snarl of hatred, he plunged the stake into Angel's heart.

* * *

Angel woke abruptly. He looked around his office and was relieved to find himself alone.

He almost forgotten about the cow. He had only been eleven years old and hadn't realized how far a cow could wander while he joined the rest of the village lads for a cool dip in the river. She had fallen in a hole and died, and bread had been scarce that winter.

The beating had not hurt nearly as much as the disapproving look that lingered in his father's eyes.

Angel shook his head to dismiss the memory. It had happened over two hundred and fifty years ago. His father would be dead now even if his son had not become a vampire. The cow was just an innocent mistake. The rest was not, but there was nothing he could do about it. He had murdered his family. He accepted it. But that didn't make it any easier to live with.

He paced the length of his office and back, needing something to do, something to fight, or at least enough room to walk off the growing burden of all the memories the amulet was dredging up. But the sun was still up, and there was no reason to think that the sea dragon would be causing anymore trouble just now.

He glanced through the office windows. Wesley was reading. Cordelia was . . . filing, or something. There was not much he could do to help them.

He found himself staring at the plant that Melissa had given him, sitting on the shelf behind his desk. Despite the fact that Cordelia watered it faithfully, it was looking rather stunted. It wasn't supposed to need much light, but the pot it was in looked quite small. If nothing else, he supposed he could relieve its suffering. He went downstairs to find a bigger pot and some potting soil.

* * *

Angel prowled the sewer tunnels in search of home, carefully avoiding the streaks of sunlight that pierced the murky air. He was hungry – hungrier than he usually let himself get, the kind of hungry that made passing strangers seemed horribly tempting. He could feel them moving to and fro in the street above.

The tunnels went on and on. He must have been walking for hours. Had he taken a wrong turn somewhere? Nothing looked familiar anymore.

There was something behind him. Something human. He could smell the blood . . . he turned, and froze with surprise.

"Buffy? What are you doing here?"

Her eyes did not recognize him. "It's pretty simple," she said sarcastically. "You're a vampire. I've come to kill you."

He could hardly hear her over the rush of blood through her arteries. He felt his face change. "No," he heard himself say. "You've come to die."

The battle was brief and vicious. He didn't want to hurt her but he wanted her blood so badly. He remembered what it had tasted like, rushing from her neck and down his throat. But the only blood he got a taste of was his own, when she smashed his face against a grate and split his lip. She was stronger, quicker than he was, just as she had always been. She slammed him against one wall, turned, and threw him into the other. He fell to the ground in a twisted heap.

She knelt beside him, stake in hand. Suddenly her eyes grew warm, and sorrowful.

"I'm sorry. But I have to do this."

The hunger for blood vanished and he remembered the smell of her hair, the weight of her head on his chest. "Why?"

"Because I'm the Slayer."

She kissed his forehead and slid a hand under his shoulders, cradling him. Then she drove the stake through his heart. He collapsed to dust in her arms.

* * *

"Angel, did you want – " Cordelia froze in the act of barging into his office. "Oh my God. I didn't know you could cry."

He sniffed and brushed the tears from his face with the heel of his hand. "I don't do it very often," he admitted. He took a deep, calming breath. "Did I want what?"

"Nothing. What's wrong? Let me guess, another nightmare. And you haven't slept in days. I know I'm a wreck after just one all nighter, and if somebody was killing me in my dreams I'd probably be – "

"Cordelia – " he tried to cut through her spate of concerned babbling. She halted, mouth open, and he realized he would have to continue. "It was Buffy."

"She was the one who . . . ? That's terrible."

"It was strange. At first she didn't know me, and I was so hungry that I – " he broke off abruptly, dreading the guarded look that would come into Cordelia's eyes if he continued. "God, I miss her," he finished lamely.

"I know. But it was just a dream. She wouldn't do that."

"She sent me to hell once."

"I'm sure it was the only way to save the world. You two have the best fairy tale love story I've ever seen."

"So when do we get to the happily ever after?" he asked bleakly.

"OK, maybe more like a Greek tragedy – only without the eye-gouging. The point is, no matter what, Buffy will always love you. And you'll always love her. So don't let some evil magic dream get you down."

She had a point. "Right." He looked at her hopefully. "Are you sure you didn't want something?"

"Oh, um, yeah. I just called the hospital. That police officer is going to be OK. They've stitched up his leg and they don't think there will be any permanent damage. Detective Lockley is there with him. Did you want to try to talk to them, see if they could tell us anything useful?"

"It all happened pretty fast – I doubt they know anything that we don't. Or that Kate would tell me, even if she did. Still," he added thoughtfully, "maybe she'd talk to you."

"You're still in the dog house, even after saving her life? Again?"

He sighed. "Her father was killed by vampires, and I was there but couldn't stop it. She thought I was human, that the world made sense. I doubt if I'll ever be out of the dog house."

"Right. I'll see what I can find out."

* * *

When Cordelia returned a few hours later, Wesley was alone in the office, surrounded by haphazard piles of more books than Cordelia had thought Angel possessed. Sweat stains were beginning to show under his arms. He had opened a single window shade to cast light on the small table in front of the couch, where he was perusing some ponderous tome.

"Great news! No, incredible, wonderful, earthshaking news!" she told him.

"What, you've discovered a way to kill the sea dragon? Or stop Angel's nightmares?"

"No, are you kidding? That would just be business as usual news."

"Oh." He looked deflated. "Then, what?"

"I got the part!"

"The part?"

"The part in the commercial that I auditioned for last night! I went home to change and there was a message on my machine!"

"Oh, very nice," he said with some effort. "What kind of commercial?"

"It's a nationally known, big bucks type company. Once everybody sees my amazing talent, I'll be able to get auditions everywhere! And my stardom will be assured."

Wesley picked up immediately on the tiny detail that she had chosen to omit. "And am I to know the vehicle for your grand debut?"

"OK, so, it's a cat litter commercial. But cats are really great, and everybody knows where you have cats, you've gotta have cat litter. Big bucks, you know? People don't realize how much money there is in common, everyday household products."

"Of course." Wesley's eyes strayed back to his book.

It was so unfair. Her first big break, the first step on her way to her dreams, and everyone had too many problems of their own to appreciate it.

"Anyway, it's tomorrow afternoon." She paused. "Any luck with all these books?"

Wesley shook his head. "It's slow going – my medieval Welsh is pretty rusty. I think I may have a lead on our sea dragon, though."

"What's that?"

"It may not be here voluntarily."

"What do you mean?"

"I'm not sure. But there's something very interesting in this book of spells that are used to conjure demons out of the deep – volcanos, bogs, lakes, and so on. I need to cross check it with . . . that one . . ." He trailed off, pulling another huge, leather bound volume from the piles, threatening to topple the whole structure.

She cleared her throat. "Umm, how's Angel?"

He looked up from the book again. "Not so good, I'm afraid. The nightmares seem to be getting worse."

"Yeah, I noticed. Well, maybe he could use some cheering up." She started toward the elevator.

"Cordelia, I don't think . . ." he trailed off as she ignored him, sliding the elevator gate shut and pushing the button.

Angel's apartment was lit only by a large three-branched candelabra on the desk in the study. In the open space behind the sofa, Angel slashed, parried, and lunged with a small blade, fighting off some monstrous . . . nothing. Cordelia sighed with relief as she realized he was just practicing. His movements were controlled, fluid, almost dance-like. She stood watching until he stopped and leaned against the back of the sofa, winded.

"Wow. That was beautiful," she observed.

He shook his head. "I'm just a novice. A true martial arts master – now that's poetry."

"Oh." She shrugged. "I talked to Kate. Or – tried to. I'm afraid we're all in your dog house. No leads." Angel nodded, unsurprised. "But there is a little bit of good news." It galled her to understate the case so, but Wesley's response had stolen some of her confidence. Angel glanced at her hopefully. "I got the part. In that commercial that I auditioned for."

"Oh." She prepared for a second disappointment, but then he smiled quite genuinely. "That's good. Congratulations."

She smiled back. "Thanks."

"So when do you go and do the, uh, acting thing?"

"Tomorrow afternoon. Two o'clock sharp!"

"That's good," he said again. In spite of his sincerity she felt a bit gypped that he didn't have the energy to muster a little more enthusiasm. Then again, the circles around his eyes were getting quite dark. Being stalked by killer nightmares was a pretty good excuse.

"Well," she said brightly, "I guess I should go home and get some sleep – " She winced, realizing she had inadvertently rubbed his nose it his predicament. "Sorry."

He smiled kindly. "It's OK. Go get some rest. You have big day tomorrow."

For an instant she wanted to hug him, but she lost her nerve and just let herself out the sliding door instead.

**

Doyle set his mug on the counter with a contented sigh. "Ah, that went down proper." He indicated Angel's untouched drink. "What's wrong? Not thirsty? Or were you hankering for something thicker?"

"No." Angel took a token sip. The beer was nearly tasteless, as all human food was to him. He wondered how Doyle had talked him out of a nice quiet evening of sitting alone in the dark.

"You ought to get out more often," Doyle commented, as if reading his mind. "Get a taste of the world, remember why it's worth saving."

Angel looked around at all of the people drowning their sorrows in alcohol, only to wake up with hangovers on top of their troubles the next morning. "And this is supposed to remind me?"

"Folks relaxing after a hard day's work, friends getting together for a round of beer, guys meeting girls." Doyle downed another swallow of scotch, grimacing appreciatively. "It's all in how you look at it, what you know how to see. Take death, for example." Doyle shifted in his chair, and a green amulet slid out from under his jacket. "You've been dead so long you don't know how to see it for what it is. I, on the other hand, am just beginning to appreciate it."

"And how am I supposed to see it?"

Doyle lifted the chain with the amulet over his neck and laid it on the counter between them. "You think you've got a problem, dealt to you by those nasty scheming lawyers. But what you really have here is an opportunity."

"An opportunity for what?"

"Penance. Atonement. Redemption. That's the name of the game for folks like us."

"What do you mean?"

"How many do you think you killed? Over a thousand, right? Well, maybe a thousand deaths will help even the score a little."

Angel froze, stunned by this possibility. "You mean . . . this was sent by the Powers?"

"Everything happens for a reason, don't you know."

Doyle finished his drink, then picked up the stake lying on the counter next to the amulet. His eyes bored into Angel, intense with compassion. "You ready?"

Time stretched. Finally Angel nodded. Without breaking eye contact, Doyle shoved the stake into his heart. The world dissolved around a pair of kind blue eyes.

* * *

"I don't buy it." Wesley stared across the kitchen table at Angel, who looked back at him just as intently. Angel's face was hollow with exhaustion, but a new serenity shone in his eyes.

"It doesn't matter if you buy it," Angel answered. "This is my problem, and now that I understand, I'm not going to fight it."

"You're saying you think that the Powers That Be sent this amulet to be some form of punishment, of expiation? That some good will come of enduring these nightmares?"

"Yes."

"But how can you be sure? What makes this illusion any more reliable than the others?"

"This one was different. It made sense. Doyle was my link to the Powers. He would be the one to explain how this works."

"And what if this thing is just playing games with your mind? Using what you fear, what you love . . . and what you want most."

Angel looked away. "Did you know that death is the punishment for murder in nearly every culture? It makes sense that this is how I should pay for what I did."

"All right," Wesley conceded. "Maybe you do deserve to die. Maybe you even deserve a thousand deaths. But how will that help anyone? It won't bring back the ones you killed."

"No." Angel stared at the table, then finally looked up. "But maybe I can earn forgiveness."

No, no, no. It felt wrong, he knew it was wrong, but in the short time he had known Angel, Wesley had begun to get an inkling of just how deep his hunger for forgiveness ran.

"Angel, the fates didn't do this. Those sniveling lawyers at Wolfram and Hart did, and I find it difficult to believe that the Powers That Be should choose them as a tool." He took a deep breath and played his ace. "But I think I may know why they did it."

* * *

Cordelia picked at Wesley's offering of Chinese take-out. She had opened the windows and pushed back the curtains of every room in her apartment, letting the evening breeze flow through. It was a refreshing change from the confined spaces in which Angel lived.

"Are you saying that it's not really an evil sea dragon, it's just snacking on people because it's trapped here?" she asked.

"Yes. We may not have to kill it. If we can break the spell that's binding it here, set it free, it will probably head back out to the deep Pacific as fast as its fins can take it. Problem solved."

"Won't it attack ships or stir up storms or something?"

"Unlikely. If none of the National Geographic teams have ever found it, it's probably very good at hiding."

"Which begs the question of how Wolfram and Hart found it."

"And what on earth they are planning to do with it." Wesley speared a steamed pork dumpling with his chopsticks and took a bite. "Unfortunately, I'm not sure how much help Angel is going to be. He's become convinced the amulet was sent by the Powers That Be as some sort of punishment, and that going along with it will help him earn forgiveness for his evil vampire days."

She shrugged. "Well, maybe it will. It makes sense in a twisted, Puritan kind of way. In case you haven't noticed, our Angel wrote the book on how to beat yourself up with guilt."

"That's the problem. I'm afraid he's being deceived."

"By who?"

"By the magic of the amulet. By his own desire for redemption."

"Have you found out anything else about it?"

"No. Only the one reference so far."

"Well, then, let him have a few nightmares. Maybe it'll take the edge off that eternal guilt complex, and we'll end up with a boss who's a little easier to live with."

Wesley gave up in exasperation. He ate the last spring roll in two bites, then said, "Tell me about Doyle."

Cordelia sighed. "He was an extremely annoying alcoholic little Irish half-demon that Angel and I cared about very much."

"He was the one who had the visions."

"Yeah. And I much preferred it when he had them rather than me."

"So he was the one who first brought Angel real hope that the Powers That Be were aware of him and willing to use him in their cause."

She nodded. "I guess so. It hit him pretty hard when Doyle died. He felt responsible, though of course there wasn't really anything he could have done. The Oracles said Doyle's sacrifice redeemed him, from what exactly I'm still a little unclear on. But it didn't seem to make Angel feel much better."

Wesley set down his chopsticks. "No wonder he's taken this dream to heart." He began stacking the empty containers. "Still, I think I'm going to stay the night at the office. I have a bad feeling we haven't seen the worst of this yet."

* * *

The office was eerily dark. Wesley looked up from The Collected Writings of the Warlock of Morgraig and stared tiredly at the odd, flickering shadows the candles made on the walls, the filing cabinet, the refrigerator, the coffee maker. One would think that in this line of work he would have long since grown accustomed to the strange magic of the predawn hours, but he still felt it. It sometimes made Angel, who was at home in them, seem quite alien as well.

Then again, perhaps his tired brain was simply playing tricks on him. After all, everything about the present situation felt odd. A deep sea dragon in the harbor, Angel subjecting himself to a merciless magic of dubious origins, even Cordelia's successful audition. What was the world coming to anyway?

Wesley yawned and couldn't help thinking how lovely it would be to lay back and nap for a bit on the couch. Instead he got up and stretched, then checked the time. With any luck the cold suppressant had taken would last through the rest of the night, though he was beginning to wonder if his resolve would. Perhaps he should go and look in on Angel again.

He tiptoed down the stairs, hesitant to intrude where he was not wanted but spurred on by his profound distrust of the amulet. Angel lay curled on the day bed with his back to the stairs, his shape outlined by an unmistakable green glow. This was the first time tonight that Wesley had actually seen him asleep, but it didn't look as if it would last long. Tiny aborted movements shadowed whatever fierce struggle was going on as he dreamed. Finally he awoke with a cry and overbalanced, falling to the floor.

He lay stunned for a moment before slowly sitting up, hugging himself with remembered pain. A small, private sigh of misery escaped him, loud in the silence of the room. At length he looked up and saw Wesley watching quietly from the stairs.

Their eyes met in silence. Finally Angel turned and picked up the amulet. He climbed back onto the bed and lay down on his back. He took a long, deep breath and deliberately closed his eyes.

Wesley bowed his head and walked quietly back up the stairs.

* * *

The sun was coming up over the horizon like a deadly fireball.

Angel could smell the light getting stronger, see the shadows beginning to appear. He cringed at the brightness, trying to shield his eyes with his hand, stumbling desperately in search of shelter. But no matter where he went, Drusilla was always there in her habit with green amulet and a wooden cross, forcing him back into the open. "No, no," she scolded in her sing song voice. "You must do your penance, or God will never, never forgive you."

Finally he found another door and threw himself against it. It was locked. The first rays spilled over the horizon as he forced it open and fell through. Sunlight burned his face, made his clothes tinder-hot. He crawled forward, trying to escape the light. His back was on fire. It burned through him, consuming his undead flesh, turning him into dust.

Then a shadow fell over him. Something beat at the flames and tried to drag him back through the doorway. He struggled incoherently.

"Angel! Hold still! You've got to let me help you!" The desperate words made no sense. But astonishing pain assaulted him, and he was too weak to resist. Through agony he felt himself dragged into welcome darkness. Then pain was eclipsed by nothingness.

* * *

Somehow Wesley maneuvered Angel's limp body through the doorway and heaved the door closed with his shoulder, shutting out the lethal morning sunlight. Angel slipped from his grasp and hit the floor with a thump – a vastly gratifying sound after seeing him so nearly reduced to dust. Wesley slid down to the floor beside him and sat for a moment, waiting for his heart to quit pounding so madly.

He reached instinctively to feel for a pulse at Angel's throat, then checked himself. Angel wasn't breathing either, but since he didn't really have to, that shouldn't be a concern. As long as he was physically intact, he should recover.

But Wesley couldn't help realizing that as a vampire, Angel was technically dead, and while he didn't usually give it a second thought, sitting in a dark hallway with a burned, still body suddenly gave him the willies.

It took him rather longer than he had expected to drag Angel through his apartment and heave him onto the bed. Unfortunately, the odor of scorched vampire wasn't a whole lot more pleasant than that of scorched human. He was sweating, breathless, and slightly nauseous by the time he finished his task. He pulled up a chair and collapsed into it, wishing for a sip of cool water.

The amulet lay on the floor just beyond the bedroom. It glowed eerily in the darkness, the interweaving lines more suggestive of entrapment than beauty. Wesley stared at it, then back at Angel. If this thing was the cause of Angel's nearly fatal encounter with the dawn, there was more to it than any of them had realized. And if it had happened once, it could happen again. He dragged himself out of the chair and began hunting for chains.

* * *

Cordelia arrived nearly twenty minutes late and was surprised to find the office empty. Where was Wesley? Hesitantly she tiptoed down the first few stairs into a darkness that seemed much more bat cave-ish than normal. But at least it was a little cooler, and flickers of light suggested that someone was home.

"Angel?"

Wesley's voice came back. "Down here, Cordelia."

She hurried down the steps but stopped cold when she saw Wesley sitting in a chair by Angel's bed. Candlelight cast odd shadows over a dark, Angel-sized form and gleamed off of the chains holding it eagle-spread across the sheets.

"Oh no. He didn't – "

"No. I don't think he's turned."

She stepped closer. "Then why . . ." She stopped again and stared. Angel was lying face down, unconscious. His back and arms were badly burned, and his hair and remaining clothing looked charred. A horrible odor of burned flesh assailed her nostrils.

"What happened?" she asked, putting her fingertips to her nose.

"I found him lying in the doorway to the street, just after sunrise. Luckily, I managed to smother the flames and get him inside. A few seconds more and there might not have been much left to find."

Cordelia's heart jumped. This was not supposed to be happening. She spied the amulet glowing evilly on the table beside Angel's bed. "Wait a minute. That thing is just supposed to give him nightmares, not make him turn himself into demon barbeque."

"I imagine that whoever made the amulet wasn't satisfied with merely torturing demons with nightmares of death. It must drive them to destroy themselves." His voice was calm, but it suddenly occurred to her that Wesley must have been sitting here in the dark for hours, alone with the knowledge of what had almost happened.

She looked again at the charred form of the vampire she had come to care so much about. "Is he going to be all right?"

"I think so. This may be hard to believe, but he looked much worse a few hours ago. I expect he'll be regaining consciousness soon."

And then they'd know for sure if he still had his marbles, and his soul. She sat down with Wesley to wait.

* * *

Fire. Everywhere. He writhed in it, disintegrating endlessly. He had no voice to scream with, and his tears turned to steam in the flames. His father shook his head with disgust and threw another shovelful of dirt over his grave. Kathy's trusting face crumpled as he drained the life from her. Demons clawed at him, ripping him to shreds. A hundred familiar faces paraded past his view, screaming or fainting or staring with horror as he leaned down to drink their blood. Darla kissed his cheek, then pressed a tiny, ornate cross against his face with a gloved hand, burning it into his skin. His heart beat once, a single, lonely contraction in his chest. An arrow flew from Giles' crossbow and silenced it. He tried to pull it out, but it wouldn't budge. The gypsies' chanting rang in his ears. Drusilla draped herself seductively against him and toyed with the arrow, whispering words into his ear that he couldn't understand. Decades of hunger gnawed at his bones like rats. He fell on his face in the street, gasping as his soul slipped away like water between his fingers. Candlelight flickered off of Buffy‘s face, and she smiled at him before she changed to vampire form and bit his neck. Blood ran in hot drops down his back. The Oracles shook their heads sadly and turned and walked away from him. Then the portal to hell swallowed him whole, and there was nothing but fire and pain and darkness . . . .

* * *

Cordelia switched the notepad she was using as a fan from one tired hand to the other and sighed, realizing she was going to need a bathroom break soon. And it wasn't too many hours now until she was due on set. She could only go over her four lines so many times in her head, imagining every possible inflection a director might ask for. She was about to call to Wesley to take his turn at Angel-watching when the subject of the vigil finally stirred.

She stared for a moment, making sure what she thought she had seen was real, then called to the study in a tone that brought Wesley scurrying to her side, open book in hand, surreptitiously rubbing sleep from his eyes.

"He moved," she said, pointing.

Wesley grabbed a candle and held it closer. Angel twitched again, a jerky movement as if he were fighting his way to consciousness. A shudder ran through him. Then his lungs drew breath for the first time in hours and his eyes popped open, unseeing and tormented. He jerked at the chains binding him hand and foot – Cordelia prayed they would hold. He moaned in pain and tried to get up, thwarted again by the chains. Finally he lay panting until his eyes cleared and focused on Cordelia.

"What happened?" he whispered. It seemed a lucid question, at least.

"You tried to get a suntan," she said, a touch of remembered fear sharpening her voice. "If Wesley hadn't been there, we'd be sweeping what was left of you into a small urn for me to keep on my mantel."

Wesley threw her an odd look, but Angel's eyes slid shut again before he could answer. They stood staring at him in rather anxious suspense until he opened them again a minute later. His back was nearly healed now, bright red like an ordinary sunburn. He shifted, wincing. The chains did not allow him much movement. He looked up at Wesley.

"Let me go."

Wesley shook his head. "I'm afraid I can't do that. There's very little chance Cordelia and I could stop you from harming yourself if something like this should happen again."

Angel stared at the amulet on the table, then looked back at Wesley. "If this is my fate, you can't stop it."

"I can certainly try. Angel, we're obviously dealing with more than just nightmares now. Whatever atonement you think the Powers want from you, you can make it right there."

"The Powers can't want you dead," Cordelia chimed in. "You're on their side!"

Angel stared at her. "Doyle died."

She could not think about that. "Yeah, but Doyle died saving a bunch of half demons, not to mention you and me. If you had died in the street this morning, who would that have helped?"

"I don't know. It doesn't have to make sense. I just have to know it's right."

"And do you?"

"No," he confessed reluctantly. "Not yet. But it'll be a little hard for me to figure it out while I'm chained to this bed."

Wesley held out his book. "We'll help. There are still dozens of sources where we might find more information."

Angel jerked at his bonds with frustration. "Look . . . I'll go crazy like this. We can work something out. You can barricade the doors, get rid of all the stakes. Just let me go."

Wesley swallowed, but stood firm. "No."

"Cordelia?"

"Sorry, Angel, but I think Wesley's right. I like you much better as not a pile of dust."

Exasperation flickered across Angel's face. He turned his head away from them.

Cordelia let out a covert sigh of relief. Holding Angel against his will might be a bit of a tricky proposition. She turned to Wesley to ask him what their next move should be, but suddenly she heard a distinctive clink and looked back. Angel had taken hold of one of the chains. He pulled down on it, muscles shaking, until a link popped open and the chain broke.

Wesley jumped. "So much for shopping sales," he mumbled. Cordelia decided she would definitely have to have a talk with him about what kinds of purchases were suitable for bargain hunting. In no time Angel had freed himself and slowly stood, towering over Wesley with his vampire face on. He held out his wrists.

"Give me the key."

Wesley dropped the book and dug quickly into his pocket.

Cordelia suppressed a smile in spite of her concern. So much for Plan A. Angel's face melted back to its less daunting form and he swayed unsteadily on his feet. She took his arm and pulled him back down to the bed while Wesley produced the key and unlocked the now useless shackles. Angel's hands fell into his lap. His normally pale face was so white Cordelia was sure he was about to faint.

"I need blood," he murmured.

She hurried to the ice chest he had set by the refrigerator and pulled out a bag. "You want a glass?"

The familiar self-consciousness sprang into his eyes. "No." She handed it to him. He avoided looking at either of them as he switched momentarily back to fangs and sank them into the bag, draining it without losing a drop. She and Wesley stared in covert fascination. He looked much better afterwards. Despite the heat he reached for a t-shirt and gingerly pulled it on.

"What about the sea dragon?" he asked.

"There were no deaths last night – at least none that the news services are aware of," Wesley reported. "Maybe we really did harm it."

"Or maybe the lawyer-boys started dumping sides of beef overboard to keep it quiet," Cordelia added.

"Did you figure out how to free it?" Angel asked.

"As a matter of fact, I may be on to something," Wesley said slowly. "The bad news is, we're going to need about thirty pounds of powdered fish eyes."

**

Lindsay stood on the upper deck of the cargo ship and turned a slow circle, scrutinizing every inch of the harbor through night vision binoculars. Payton sat beside him in a deck chair, upending a cold bottle of beer.

"You know, I'm starting to think you're paranoid," he said to Lindsay between swigs.

"Just a healthy sense of caution," Lindsay replied. "Something you'd better develop in a hurry if you expect to survive in this business."

"But there's no sign of him, right? And there won't be. It's a beautiful night. Why don't you pull up a chair, grab a beer, and enjoy it?"

"Because I know better than to quit before the job's done." Finishing a full sweep, Lindsay put down the binoculars to rest his eyes for a minute. It was only an hour past sunset, the world lit by the deceptive light of dusk before true darkness fell. If Payton wasn't taking the job seriously, did he dare trust him to a watch? If not, it was going to be a long night.

He stared out reflectively at the unimaginably vast ocean, imagining the unearthly sea dragon he had glimpsed briefly when this job began, winding its way through the dark water. The earth was full of amazing things, all the more amazing because someone who knew how to play the game could control them, harness that vast power, add it to his own.

His eye was caught by a tiny speck moving slowly across the water. What would a small boat be doing out past the breakwater at this time of night? He searched through the binoculars, curious. Finally he found it, bobbing gently among the waves.

"Oh, shit," he said softly.

"What is it?"

He didn't answer, and finally Payton got out of his chair and joined him at the railing. "What are they doing?" Lindsay wondered aloud.

"What are you talking about?" Payton asked. He sounded gratifyingly worried.

"So much for your sure-fire magic amulet. He's out there with the other two in a boat. It looks like they're performing some kind of spell." He put down the binoculars and strode to the ladder. "Whatever it is, we've got to put a stop to it right now."

* * *

Angel sprinkled the last of the powdered fish eyes into the water as Wesley finished the Latin incantation. His accent seemed to be improving over the last time Cordelia had heard it. They drifted in silence.

"What happens now?" she whispered.

"Now we find out if the spell is going to work," Wesley said.

They waited. The sea was calm, the gray darkness of the sky unrevealing. The only sound was the sloshing of the waves and the hum of a motorboat in the distance.

Then suddenly all around them the sea began to boil. Huge bubbles came belching from the water, rocking the boat and making the air stink of rotten eggs and dead seaweed, which was even more unpleasant than the powdered fish eyes.

"Is this supposed to be happening?" Angel asked Wesley.

"I don't think so . . ." Wesley trailed off. He was staring out at the water. The sound of the motor boat grew loud enough to be heard over the bubbling of the sea. Cordelia looked up and realized it was headed in their direction. "Great," she muttered. "This is going to be a little tough to explain to the harbor patrol."

Suddenly she jumped as a deep, unfamiliar voice arose right beside her. "My gold . . . all my beautiful gold . . . they're taking away my lovely gold . . ." She stared at Wesley, from whose mouth the sounds were coming, but it certainly wasn't him speaking. She shifted instinctively away from him as shivers ran up and down her back.

"Wesley!" Angel said sharply, shaking him. "Snap out of it!" Wesley didn't respond, but slowly the sea stopped boiling. The slight breeze began to take the edge off of the sulfurous odor. Without warning Wesley slumped forward – Angel caught him before he fell into the water.

The motor boat was nearly on top of them. It didn't seem to be slowing down and for a moment Cordelia was afraid it was going to smash right into them. Then it veered around them and shots rang out as it passed by. She dove for the scant safety of the bottom of the boat. Angel joined her, pulling Wesley down beside him.

"Just a guess but I don't think that was the harbor patrol," she said tightly.

"It's got to be Wolfram and Hart," Angel replied. "They must have noticed that we're trying to uncage their pet sea monster." He peeked briefly over the gunwale. "They're coming back. Stay here and keep an eye on Wesley. I'll deal with them."

At any other time Cordelia would have accepted this without question, but all at once she found herself horribly uncertain whether Angel was up to it. But there was no time to argue. As the other boat stopped along side them, Angel leaped up and jumped across the gap.

Cordelia kept her eyes glued to the other boat but it was hard to see what was happening, even silhouetted against the city lights. She heard the sounds of flesh hitting flesh interspersed with grunts of pain and hoped not too many of them were coming from Angel. As long as the sounds of conflict continued, she supposed he must still be all right. She shook Wesley's shoulder, but he didn't respond. She started to reach for the crossbow he had brought, but realized that she didn't dare use it for fear of hitting Angel.

The two boats were beginning to drift apart. She grabbed an oar and tried to narrow the gap, but the boat kept going sideways. She redoubled her effort when she saw two men pin Angel against the side of the boat. Did they mean to stake him?

She nearly dropped the oar when suddenly an enormous shape pushed its way out of the water only a few yards away. It took her a moment to recognize it as a huge coil of sea dragon, just like the picture in Angel's book. She stared as it moved diagonally through the water like an undulating snake until the loop curled around the front end of the motorboat.

The sea dragon's sudden appearance gave Angel the distraction he needed to break free. Shots rang out as the occupants of the boat tried to ward off the monster, but they didn't seem to have much effect. The coil tightened and began to flip the boat sideways. Angel stumbled toward the back of the boat and started to heave himself overboard. Just as it was about to overturn, Cordelia heard a final shot followed by a sharp cry of pain and saw Angel fall backwards into the water. Then the boat flipped, dumping the remaining occupants into the sea. The sea dragon uncoiled itself and disappeared.

"Angel!" Cordelia cried out as loudly as she dared. There was no answer. The sea was dark and terrifyingly deep and wide. A bullet wouldn't kill him and Angel couldn't drown, but if he were too weak to swim, how would they ever find him?

Wesley stirred, finally coming to his senses. It was about time. Cordelia shoved an oar into his hands and started rowing in the direction of the capsized boat. "Come on," she said. "Angel's out there and we have to find him."

With both of them rowing, at least the boat went straight. It was really too dark to see, and she couldn't hear anything over the muted sound of the waves. Then a few yards from the overturned boat her oar hit something solid underwater. Then something nearly yanked it out of her hand. Praying that it was Angel, she tightened her grip and pulled. Finally she saw a white hand reaching out of the deep, clamped to the end of the oar.

Wesley reached out and grabbed Angel's wrist and dragged him over the gunwale. He lay sprawled across the bottom of the boat, coughing up seawater.

"I'm OK," he gasped. He pulled himself up onto one of the slats, then suddenly doubled over in pain and nearly fell overboard again. They both grabbed him. "Well, sort of OK," he amended. They didn't let go, even when he tried to sit up.

Cordelia eyed the hand he held pressed against his side. Blood was leaking through his fingers. "You're shot," she said.

"Yeah. Parting gift." He looked up Wesley. "Are you all right?"

"Yes, I believe so," Wesley answered. "Though it was a unique experience to catch a glimpse into the heart of a sea dragon." He glanced over at the two lawyers clinging to the side of their boat. "But I think we'd better go now, before the port authorities really do show up."

"No argument here," Cordelia said. She and Wesley propped Angel against the side of the boat and took up the oars.

"Just remind me again why spells have to be done out of row boats."

* * *

Angel gritted his teeth and tried not to scream as Wesley probed with a pair of tweezers for the bullet lodged in his side. No doubt Wes was trying to be as gentle as possible, but it felt like being stabbed with hot pincers. He flinched at a particularly sharp spasm of pain.

"I think I've found it," Wesley said finally. "It's buried pretty deep – are you quite certain you want me to try to remove it?"

Angel nodded tightly. "I've tried the alternative. It'd work itself out in a week or so, but that's a long time to wait."

He heard Wesley take a deep breath. "All right then. Brace yourself – and try not to move."

Angel gripped the table more tightly and tucked his head against his arm. "OK."

Pain shot through him like a red hot needle. The edge of the table broke off in his hand, but he managed to hold himself still until he heard Wesley exclaim, "Got it!" Shortly thereafter he felt gauze taped over the wound. Cordelia set down the flashlight and draped a dry towel around his shoulders.

He straightened carefully and looked at Wesley. "What happened out there?"

"I'm not quite sure," he responded slowly. "I think we performed the spell correctly. But it certainly didn't work the way I expected. Perhaps I was mistaken about how Wolfram and Hart brought the sea dragon here."

"Well, what was all that putrid bubbling, then?" Cordelia asked.

"That's what happens when a sea dragon breathes fire underwater," Wesley replied.

"Well, the spell certainly did something," Angel observed. "The sea dragon made some kind of connection with you."

"Yes." Wesley nodded thoughtfully. "For a moment it seemed as if I were in its mind. The deep, dark ocean felt like home. And I felt even older than you are."

"Could you tell what it was thinking?" Cordelia asked.

"Not exactly," Wesley replied. "But I could definitely sense some strong emotions. It's confused and hungry and very angry. I wouldn't want to be around when it finally gives vent to those feelings."

"But it knew which boat to overturn," Angel said. "We've attacked it twice, but it sided with us again Wolfram and Hart."

"We were trying to free it. Perhaps it understood that we were trying to help," Wesley suggested.

"Well, I could go a long time without hearing you talk like that again," Cordelia commented. "What did you say, exactly?"

"Something about gold, I think." Wesley smacked himself on the forehead. "Of course! We've been thinking too much about it just being a sea monster. What do dragons always hoard?"

"Treasure?" Cordelia suggested eagerly.

"Gold in particular. They're taking away my lovely gold, it said. Think of all the ships that have gone down at sea carrying gold. Pirate ships, Spanish galleons, all that those golden artifacts that were stolen from the Aztecs and the Incas! A sea dragon could amass quite a collection."

"And now Wolfram and Hart is trying to steal it back," Angel finished.

"That sounds like them," Cordelia noted. "So why is it just hanging out in the harbor, eating passersby? Why isn't it attacking the evil lawyers?"

"That's the spell!" Wesley cried in triumph. "They haven't conjured it from the deep. They've located its gold, and they are using some spell to keep it at bay so they can snatch its treasure like eggs from a hen."

"How do we stop them?" Angel asked.

"With any luck we can locate an appropriate counterspell. Once we set it free, no doubt it can take care of Wolfram and Hart without our help."

Angel nodded. "OK. Get to work on it."

Cordelia turned to him. "Wait a minute. I don't care how much gold they're snatching – you are not going back out there. We almost lost you. Again."

Angel opened his mouth to protest, then closed it. Maybe Cordelia was right. He had taken quite a beating before the sea dragon had intervened, and it was sheer luck that Cordelia had hit him with her oar as he drifted nearly unconscious beneath the surface of the water.

He stared hard at the amulet, sitting on the table in front of him. He couldn't just leave Wolfram and Hart and their sea dragon to their own devices. But neither could he turn his back on the path the Powers That Be had set in front of him. If only he could be certain that this was their doing . . .

He nodded decisively and looked up at them. "I have to know. I'm going to go talk to the Oracles."

* * *

Gateway for Lost Souls.

Angel stared at the words inscribed across the top of the smooth white marble archway and sighed. They seemed singularly appropriate.

He sprinkled herbs into the ash-filled urn just as Doyle had done days before his death, all the while mumbling warnings about how finicky and unpredictable the Oracles were. Angel wished Doyle were here now.

"I beseech access to the knowing ones." He tossed in a match and flames roared up. Solid light shone through the marble archway. Angel shielded his eyes, gathered up his resolve, and stepped through.

The Oracles stood idly together like a pair of Greek statues, eternally poised and knowing in their ethereal white temple. They stepped toward him, changing from one pose to another. "Come before us."

He stepped closer and held out a delicately sculpted unicorn. "I bring a gift."

The man raised his hand and the sculpture flew to him as if called. "It is acceptable," he said. "Why have you called us forth?"

Angel pulled the amulet from his pocket, but before he could speak the woman took a step closer. "Have you brought us another gift? Such a lovely thing, and old, if age gives value. You are becoming wise."

Angel went cold. How could they not know? He gripped the amulet tightly, lest it fly from his hand. "No." Afraid to offend them, he hastened to add, "Forgive me. But this is the reason I've come to ask for your help."

The woman cocked her head impatiently. "We do not exist to fight your battles for you."

"Do not trouble us with every trifle that disturbs your existence," the man added.

This was not going well. Why couldn't Doyle have shown him some less exasperating channel to the Powers? "Look, I need to know . . ."

They waited expectantly. He struggled to devise a question which would give him an unambiguous answer. "Did the Powers That Be send this? Was I meant to suffer these nightmares?"

"If it has come to you, you are meant to have it," the man said.

Well, that jibed with was Doyle had said, as far as it went. "What about the sea dragon?"

"It must be released. The evil forces that have brought it here must be stopped before they can achieve their plans."

"But how can I do both? Right now I'm no match for this thing, or even the humans that brought it here."

"You must choose your battles wisely."

He nodded wearily. No doubt that was the best answer he was going to get. The bright light was making his head pound, which was making it even more difficult to think. Any minute now he was going to start falling asleep on his feet.

The next thing he knew, he was lying on his back outside the darkened portal.

* * *

"Well?" Cordelia asked as he climbed stiffly out of the sewer tunnel.

"I'm meant to have it," he said, clutching the amulet. "But we've also got to stop Wolfram and Hart." He pulled out a chair from the table and sank into it, feeling weariness settle deep in his bones. He looked tiredly up at Wesley. "See if you can find a counterspell. Then we'll figure out what to do with it."

Wesley nodded. Angel laid the amulet on the table rested his face in his hands.

When he looked up again Wesley and Cordelia were gone, but someone else was standing over him. It was a vampire, dressed all in black, with the amulet hanging across his chest. The eyes smoldered with thinly veiled hatred. Angel pushed himself slowly to his feet.

"Angel." The vampire's smile was terribly condescending. He picked up a small table by the wall and smashed it across the pillar. Casually he scattered the pieces with his foot, then stooped and picked up a broken piece of a leg and hefted it experimentally. Angel backed away.

"Everyone else has had their fun. Now it's my turn."

He knew that voice. He didn't know the face, but he knew that voice. It was his own. Angel slid slowly backwards along the wall, away from the apparition. "Angelus."

"It's about time we met, don't you think?" The mocking, confident voice echoed out of memory.

Angel swallowed the dryness in his throat. "You're not real."

"Not real?" Angelus laughed. "Of course I'm real. I'm inside you every day. At any moment you might lose control, experience a split second of perfect happiness. And then I'm free."

Angel ran out of wall. Angelus tossed the stake into the air and caught it. "We're not really as different as you'd like to think. Except that now I get to kill you."

Angel saw the blow coming and didn't move to block it. The table leg pierced his heart. As he dissolved into dust, he saw Angelus smile.

**

Upstairs in his office, Angel closed the book slowly, blocking the page from view if not from memory. It was one of several books he had about vampires. He'd never bothered to read the entries about himself – after all, he knew the story better than any chronicler, and it didn't take much to bring back the memories he'd been cursed to carry with him.

He tried to remember the lone glimpse he'd had of himself as a human, to match it with the face that stared mockingly at him from the page. He picked up the amulet from where he'd laid it on the bookcase and read the fading inscription again. "May evil die a thousand deaths." He had not suspected that the Powers That Be had such a keen sense of irony.

He went back to his desk and opened Wesley's book to the marked page. The entry beside the sketch still raised more questions than it answered. Who had made it in the first place, and why? If its only purpose was to kill demons, surely there were simpler ways to go about it. It bespoke a lot of personal hatred to conjure a magic that would create such customized nightmares. He wondered if the lawyers at Wolfram and Hart truly understood what they were doing when they sent it.

Suddenly he was aware of someone else in the room. Angelus was leafing through the vampire book, smiling at the memories. "Well, I have to say, I'm impressed. Who would have guessed a bunch of third rate historians could get so much of my story straight?" He smirked. "Still, they seem to have left out a few of the best parts, don't you think?"

Angel sat down behind the desk, grateful for the scant barrier it put between them. "I didn't read it that carefully."

Angelus put the book down and sat on a corner of the desk. "Well of course not. What was I thinking? You remember it all, thanks to those gypsies. Every face, right? Mmmm, so many." He grinned condescendingly. "If only you'd give in and savor the memories, it wouldn't be such torture, you know. You did enjoy it. Part of you still does."

Angel flinched away from Angelus' words. Suddenly a continent didn't seem a safe barrier. "No. I'm still a vampire. But I'm not like you."

Angelus shrugged. "We can't all be perfect." Absently he began rearranging the books on Angel's desk. "Is it really worth it, having a soul? It doesn't look like much fun. All this brooding in the dark, tortured by guilt, trying to atone."

Angel stared at his other self and felt an odd displacement, as if he suddenly saw himself through his victims' eyes. "Better than being a monster."

Angelus laughed. "Why? Everyone's still afraid of you. Every time you show up in Sunnydale, they all think you're evil. Wesley and Cordelia chain you to the bed at the drop of a hat." He chuckled. "It must be such fun for them, never knowing if one night when they show up at the office, instead brooding guilt-stricken Angel they'll be face to face with conscience-free Angel and end up as a midnight snack."

"They can take care of themselves."

"But sooner or later, chains won't be enough. They'll have to kill you. To protect themselves. Like this."

Angelus reached for the cord to the window shade and yanked it hard. A solid block of light fell across Angel. He cried out in pain and tried to get away from the light, but Angelus opened the other shades one after another, and there was nowhere to run. He fell to the floor, writhing in the searing light. He burst into flames that burned him to dust.

* * *

Angel awoke sprawled on the floor of his office. He bit back the scream that was still trying to escape his throat and looked up hastily at the windows. The shades were still tightly closed, but there was sunlight behind them. He stumbled to his feet and fled the office.

In his haste he collided with Cordelia at the head of the stairs and nearly sent them both tumbling down the steps. He grabbed her arm to keep her from falling and steadied himself against the railing. "Sorry."

"What's wrong?" she asked. "I mean, besides nightmare deaths and severe eye bags."

He glanced apprehensively at the all of the office windows glowing with restrained sunlight. "It isn't . . . safe for me up here . . . while there's daylight outside."

"Well, then, get down to the bat cave, for goodness sake." She moved out of his way and he started down, but somehow he lost his footing and ended up on his tail bone half way down the first flight.

"Ow," he complained mildly.

Cordelia hurried down to help him up. "OK. Come on." She put an arm around his waist and walked with him down the rest of the stairs. He sank into the sofa.

She stood staring at him for a moment as if wondering whether it was safe to leave him there. He stared back, remembering what Angelus had said. "Cordelia . . . why are you still here?"

She looked down at herself. "What? I know this is going on two days in the same outfit,

but –"

"No, I mean . . . why are you still . . . I can't pay you very much, and this job is dangerous, not just because of the demons and monsters but . . . any time I could . . ."

"Lose your soul, turn into a class A jerk and eat me and Wesley for breakfast?"

He looked away. "Yeah."

She shrugged. "No job is perfect." He waited, needing more. "Well, there's the whole fighting evil thing. It's good to be on the right team. What other job gives you the chance to rescue people from sea monsters? And then there's . . . well." She stopped, and looked him in the eye. "Angel, I believe in you. Sure, I worry about perfect happiness coming along and turning you into a cruel vicious homicidal psychopath, but . . . he's not you." Her brows inched together. "Which is why we've got to break this spell."

He shook his head. "Cordelia . . . I know this is hard for you and Wesley, too. But you've got to let me go through with it."

Cordelia pursed her lips. "Just because you're meant to have it doesn't mean you're meant to let it do this to you."

He sighed. How could he explain it to her? "Have you ever done something that really hurt somebody? That you couldn't bear to think about afterward?" She nodded slowly. "I live with a thousand memories like that every day. You know what kind of damage I did in just a few months in Sunnydale. Multiply that by a hundred and forty years." He paused. "In a way it's almost a relief to finally be punished for it. It means I might someday be forgiven."

She nodded, though she didn't look at all happy about it. She looked around. "So, um – where is it?"

It was odd, but he knew without thinking that the amulet was still upstairs in his office. He could probably find it with his eyes closed, as if it were bound to him by some mystical tether. And he didn't feel comfortable with it out of his sight. He gestured back up the stairs.

"It's up in the office. Would you bring it to me? I don't want it to get lost." She accepted that and hurried back up the stairs. The sofa cushions were enormously comfortable. If he didn't move, he was going to fall asleep again. His eyelids weighed a hundred pounds . . . .

He jerked awake and found Cordelia standing in front of him with the amulet in her hand, staring at him anxiously. Did she have a stake as well? He watched her uncertainly.

"Hey! I'm not one of your evil dream people. Here." She handed him the amulet.

He took it from her and laid it on the sofa beside him.

"OK, well, Wesley went out to scour rare book shops for . . . rare books. I guess you don't have any sea dragon counterspell books handy. He should be back any minute, but I need to run a few errands before five. Are you going to be all right here for a minute? You're not going to fall down any more stairs or fry yourself in the sun again?"

He nodded with the best smile he could manage. "I'll be OK. Cordelia . . . don't worry. It'll work out, somehow." But it didn't come out sounding very confident, and she didn't look terribly reassured.

* * *

Cordelia held the check from the agency in her hand just a little longer before giving it to the bank teller to deposit. She had dreamed of this moment for so long she supposed it was likely to have been a disappointment in any case, but somehow even the job itself had seemed anticlimactic amidst all the preparations for trying to free the sea dragon. Well, now she had money, at least for a little while. Now she could pay her taxes. And shouldn't it be some consolation to know that if anything happened to Angel, she had a brilliant career ahead of her in the acting business?

Unfortunately all she could think about was how bleak her life would be if Angel Investigations suddenly disappeared from it. How exactly had a vampire with a soul, who she was certainly not in love with, taken such hold of her heart?

She shrugged off the question and considered what to do next. Angel was clearly convinced that this thousand death thing was something he had to do. She liked to tease him now and then about being all brooding and tortured, but obviously the whole guilt thing was very real to him.

But if things started getting out of hand, was there any way to stop him from hurting himself? And if he was determined to suffer, couldn't there at least be air conditioning?

If nothing else, at least money did create certain options.

* * *

When she entered the office all the lights were on, and the air was blessedly cool and fresh.

"We got the power back," Wesley said unnecessarily. He looked at her. "And since the electric company is not usually very cooperative unless the bill is paid . . ."

She shrugged. "So I floated Angel a small loan. At a very reasonable rate of interest," she added, having just thought of it.

"I take it you got the money from your acting job."

"Yeah. Good thing too, because we're not likely to get paid this week."

Wesley shook his head. "This has gone far beyond a job. This is a friend in trouble. Fortunately, I have a little saved," he added.

She nodded. "Look what else I bought." She pulled her prize from the bag. Wesley inspected it dubiously.

"A tranquilizer gun? Certainly you aren't expecting to take down the sea dragon with this."

"No, no," she said impatiently. "Angel."

He stared at her with a baffled expression. Then the light bulb came on.

"We can't chain him to the bed again," she explained. "He really would go crazy. But if he tries to pull another barbeque stunt –"

"– we have some way to stop him," he finished. "Good thinking." He unloaded the cartridges expertly, and her worries about figuring out how to operate it vanished. He peered at the label. "We'll probably need something stronger than this, though . . ."

"Did you find what you wanted at the bookstores?" she asked.

He pointed to a new stack of a dozen volumes. "Some promising leads on the sea dragon. A few possibilities on the amulet. And I put in a call to Giles to see if he can find anything that would help."

Cordelia nodded. She stared at the stack and felt her head spin. "We'd better not leave him alone, but one of us has got to get some sleep."

"Right." Wesley considered. "I'll take the first watch. I think I can last a few more hours."

Cordelia nodded and grabbed her purse. "I'll be back soon," she said.

* * *

Angel sat hunched on the day bed with his elbows on his knees and his forehead resting on the heels of his hands, letting the soaring notes of desperate hope in Mahler's Resurrection wash over him. He heard Wesley make several trips from the elevator to the kitchen table, but didn't look up.

Then the notes were gone and the needle was scratching at the middle of the record. Finally it stopped. He looked up to see Wesley closing the turntable case. Angel waited to see if he was wearing the amulet.

Wesley must have seen fear in his eyes, because he spread his hands to show that they were empty. "No stakes. I'm not here to kill you. This isn't a dream."

Angel let his shoulders slump. "I can't tell any more," he said. "What's real and what's not." He met Wesley's eyes. "You're pretty handy with a cross bow," he said matter-of-factly.

"I'm sorry," Wesley said. It seemed strange for him to apologize for something he hadn't actually done, but perhaps he didn't know what else to say.

Angel looked past him at the table piled with books and the tranquilizer gun sitting within easy reach beside them. Wesley followed his gaze without comment. There was no need to ask what Wesley's intentions were, or what the gun was for. Angel dropped his head back into his hands.

"Put it on again," he said, and Wesley complied.

* * *

"Bless me, Father, for I have sinned." Angel hesitated, trying to recall how long it had been. Days, years . . . centuries? "It's been . . . two hundred years since my last confession," he finished hesitantly.

"Tell me your sins, my son."

He tried to remember. How had he sinned? The answer broke over him like a damn bursting under winter floods. He waded through layer upon layer of memories, helpless to confess so much evil, so much cruelty, so much hatred. Where had it all come from? Where had it all begun? "I wanted to see the world," he said haltingly. "I wanted my father to love me."

No one answered. Suddenly he knew that there was no one listening, no one to hear him, no one to absolve him. The God he had mocked had long since abandoned him. He stumbled blindly from the confessional, pursued by a shadow of his own making. It chased him through the darkened streets, in and out of doorways, barns, and taverns. He staggered, gasping for breath. It cornered him in a dark alley.

The finger knife bit slowly into his cheek, slicing down, then across. Blood welled from the cuts, dripping down his jaw. The hideous face smiled at him. "Too bad your sins will never be forgiven now. You always said, family blood is the sweetest . . . Father." Penn bit deeply into his neck and slowly his life drained away. Discarded like an empty sack, he fell to the earth.

* * *

Angel awoke with a cry and his hand flew to his neck. Such a terrible way to die. Poetically just, certainly . . . but . . . always before he had died as a vampire. What was happening?

He stared down at the amulet, but it gave him no answers. If he cried out to the universe, would anyone hear?

He felt Wesley's eyes on him, but this was not Wesley's burden. He wrapped both hands around the amulet and held it to his chest. It was meant for him, it was bound to him, and it felt more real than anything else in the room. No priest could give him penance, but the fates had given him this. And if it took a thousand deaths to earn the barest breath of grace, it would be worth it.

* * *

Angel sat on a ledge on the roof of the building with the night breeze softly brushing his face. He looked out over the lights of the city, always moving, slowly pulsing like the heartbeat of some giant creature. Beyond the tallest buildings, the ocean rocked in its ceaseless motion, and in it a sea dragon woke hungry. How many other demons prowled the streets where the lights didn't reach? How many vampires fed on the innocent tonight? And how many humans with souls preyed on each other for money and power?

His meditations were interrupted as Wesley burst through the door. "Angel, I've got it!" He hurried across the roof to where Angel sat. "All we have to do is a simple dissipation spell, and the energy of the amulet will be nullified. It will cease to have any power over you." He shook his head with relief. "It was there all the time. I don't know why I didn't see it sooner."

Angel took a deep breath and looked Wesley in the eye. "No."

Wesley back stared at him. "Angel, you can't be serious."

"I am." Finally committed to this Herculean labor of endurance, he felt a curious sense of peace.

Wesley pointed to the city. "But what about all the people who are dying out there? You have to help them."

"I wish I could. But I can't."

"This is absurd. You're not thinking rationally. After everything you've been through, I can hardly blame you, but this is no time for stoicism. We have got to destroy that amulet." He lifted the tranquilizer gun. "I'm sorry."

Angelus appeared behind him. "Let me take care of this temptation for you, brother." Before Wesley could react, Angelus casually snapped his neck.

Angel stared in horror. Peace and certainty vanished. Angelus stepped over the body, brushing off his hands. "There. Can't have him stealing away your precious penance."

Shock robbed Angel of speech. He stared at Wesley's body.

"Hey, don't worry about it. He was just one more you couldn't save." Angelus paused. "But he was right, you know. It is pretty selfish of you to put your own redemption ahead of people's lives."

He was falling down a long, long hole with no bottom. Angelus lifted a loaded crossbow.

"Well, no matter. If you've made up your mind, who am I to argue? After all, I don't have a soul. What do I know about guilt?" He pulled the trigger and the bolt shot straight through Angels' heart. He returned to dust.

* * *

Angel awoke to a sense of quiet despair. The dream was so real it took him a full minute to realize that none of it had actually happened.

The room was silent as a tomb. Angel pushed himself to his feet and went to the kitchen to reassure himself that Wesley was still alive. He was asleep at the table, snoring softly. Angel leaned over to look at the titles of his new books. They looked like sea dragon research for the most part, but there were several Welsh volumes as well.

Angelus' words burned in his heart like acid. Was it selfish to desire redemption? By giving in to the amulet's magic, was he somehow sacrificing other people's lives to save his own soul? If Wesley found some way to free him from this purgatory, could he turn his back on the Powers That Be and give himself up to the darkness as some kind of ultimate sacrifice? But how would he fight evil, how could he save lives without help?

He was empty of answers, shaped like a man but made only of dust. What did the universe want from him? His soul ached worse than his body, struggling with questions that would trouble a saint. Of course, no saint would ever be faced with a dilemma like his. His heart cried out for peace, but he hadn't the faintest idea where to find it.

Finally he went to his bedroom and took a blanket from his bed, then draped it gently over Wesley's sleeping form. He went to the study but found he couldn't sit still lest the confusion of his thoughts overwhelm him. He got up again and walked from the study to the bedroom. Then back again. As long as he kept walking, he didn't have to think.

* * *

Finally hearing the door open in the office upstairs, Wesley put down his book and hurried to intercept Cordelia.

She entered shamefaced. "I'm so sorry," she said. "I set my alarm but I must have turned it off in my sleep." She glanced down the stairs. "Is everything OK? How is he holding up?"

Better than I am popped into Wesley's head, but this was no time for them to start snipping at one another. He decided not to mention his own short lapse. "As well as can be expected, I suppose," he said. "I'm exhausted just from watching him pace. Then about three hours ago he started cleaning."

"Cleaning?"

"Dusting, sweeping, scrubbing, polishing – and not missing the corners, either. I'm tempted to let him loose on my place."

"Then . . . he hasn't been dreaming?"

Wesley shook his head. "No, he still succumbs to exhaustion every now and then. But he never sleeps longer than three or four minutes. At least he hasn't tried to harm himself." He shifted the tranquilizer gun in his hand.

She sighed. "How much longer do you think is this going to last?"

"I don't know. A thousand is a much larger number than one would suspect. And none of the books I bought make even the tiniest mention of the amulet. There's one more bookstore I could try if they're open today."

"What about the sea dragon? Have you found a counter spell yet?"

"Yes. That wasn't too difficult, once I knew what to look for. But I'm afraid we have a problem."

"What?"

"A sea dragon's gold isn't just ordinary treasure. It's cursed. Anyone who touches it will die."

"Oh dear . . . wait. Isn't that good news? Wolfram and Hart could stand to lose a few employees."

"I'm fairly certain they know about the curse – and the way to counteract it. It's a pretty complicated spell, though. It takes six days, and it has to be performed before the gold can be brought onto land."

He watched her count backwards in her head. It took her a minute, but then her eyes widened. "They're almost done."

"Yes. They must have it stored in the hold of a ship somewhere in the harbor."

"And sea dragon is here trying to stop them, but they're using that other spell to keep it at bay."

"So far. I don't know what they'll do once they have the gold – they won't need the sea dragon alive anymore. And it's going to be out of its mind with rage. If they don't kill it, it's going to do a lot more than snatch a few people from piers. And I really hate to think about trying to fight Wolfram and Hart once they have all that gold in their coffers."

"But we can set it free, right? You have the counterspell."

"Yes. But we're out of time."

Cordelia glanced down the stairs.

"He can't do it," Wesley said, shaking his head. "I haven't even told him."

"Wait a minute. You aren't thinking that we could do it? Alone?"

"It may be the only alternative."

Suddenly they heard a crash from the basement, followed by a sploosh of water. Wesley bolted down the stairs with Cordelia at his back and found Angel sitting on the kitchen floor next to an overturned chair in a puddle of soapy water, rubbing his shin.

He looked up as they came rushing toward him. "It's OK. I just tripped."

Wesley nodded with relief and lowered the tranquilizer gun. Cordelia was staring at him, shocked. "Wow, you actually look like a walking undead person. Or, well, a sitting on the floor undead person." He stared back at her miserably. "Which is . . . probably not what you need to hear right now," she added.

Angel retrieved a brush from his half empty bucket and started in on the floor, ignoring the fact that his clothing was soaked. Wesley handed Cordelia the tranquilizer gun, and mouthed her a silent "good luck."

Cordelia righted the chair, then took one look at Wesley's stack of books and sighed. She went to the sink and found another brush, then knelt to join Angel on the floor at the edge of the soapy puddle.

He eyed the brush in her hand. "That one is for dishes," he said raggedly.

"I'll buy you a new one," she promised, and started scrubbing.

**

Angel scrubbed compulsively at what seemed like centuries of grime on the floor beneath the refrigerator, his arms aching. He stopped suddenly. Hadn't he just finished this?

"Pulling out the ice box? Now I know you're desperate."

Angelus. Angel turned away and kept on scrubbing.

"Still determined to stick it out, are you?"

No matter how hard he scrubbed, he couldn't seem to get to the concrete. Layer after layer of black grime clogged the bristles of the brush and splattered his hands with filthy water.

"Makes Doyle's death look easy, doesn't it? Just a moment of fire, and it was all over. But for you, it goes on and on and on."

Still he didn't look up. Angelus finally yanked him back by his hair and tore the brush from his hands. "Do you have any idea how pathetic you are? Do you really think that the ‘Powers That Be' give one fig for a poor vampire who went and got himself cursed?"

Angel waited wordlessly until Angelus released the fistful of his hair.

Angelus crouched beside him, speaking reasonably. "You'll never earn forgiveness. What were you thinking? You can't give back the blood you've drunk from all those poor, helpless creatures."

Anger flared at the truth of Angelus' words. "You did it, not me. You're the one who should die!"

"But I am you, remember? You know you still want them. Where do I end and you begin?"

He pointed suddenly to the bodies of Wesley and Cordelia, lying side by side like brother and sister with bloody wounds in their necks. "Did I do that, or did you?"

"No," Angel whispered.

Angelus curled his right hand around a stake. It felt solid and real. "You do this and you're free. No more pathetic self-hatred. No more living on the outside looking in. No more running around saving a bunch of ungrateful humans, trying to atone. No more fear of harming them. It all stops."

Angel stared at Wesley and Cordelia's bloodless faces and knew he could not live with these two deaths on top of all the rest. He did not resist as Angelus positioned the stake over his heart. It would take such a small effort. He felt Angelus' hand over his own, strong, immovable. Together they shoved the stake into his heart.

* * *

Cordelia hadn't realized she was starting to doze until suddenly the absence of scrubbing sounds brought her awake. She turned quickly to check on Angel. He was asleep again, slumped against the side of the refrigerator, still clutching his scrub brush.

Even in sleep his expression was haunted. She couldn't help wondering what he was dreaming now, who had come to kill him this time. For the millionth time, she wished with all her might that she could dash that horrible amulet into a thousand pieces or hurl it into space. This was not the job she had signed up for. It was wrong, and not Doyle, nor any Oracles, nor Angel himself were going to convince her otherwise.

Angel awoke with a violence that startled her. He looked around wildly and his breath caught in his throat like a sob. He did not seem to see her.

Suddenly he lifted his hand and dashed the brush to the ground with vampire strength, splintering it into two jagged pieces. He picked up the longest one and held it pointed toward his heart, and she realized suddenly that the handle was made of wood.

"Angel!" she screamed and scrambled for the tranquilizer gun. She trained it on him with fierce intensity, her heart pounding. What if he struck before she could fire?

"Angel, put that down!" He looked up and saw her for the first time.

"Cordelia, please," he begged, his voice breaking. "Let me go."

"No way," she said, her voice as inarguable as she could make it. But something in his eyes said he was going to do it.

With an agility she didn't know she possessed, she leaped up and kicked the brush from his hand. It flew across the room. He started after it on hands and knees. "Angel!" she screamed again, her finger tightening on the trigger.

Miraculously he stopped and sat leaning forward on his hands. He was sobbing in earnest now, a heart-breaking sound that made her want to stuff her fingers in her ears and run far away without stopping. Instead she knelt beside him on the spotless floor and held him as best she could without letting go of the gun. He leaned against her but couldn't stop the flood of grief and despair pouring out of him. His whole body shook as he wept.

Just when she thought she might scream, she suddenly noticed the weight of the gun in her hand. Would it help? She wasn't sure, but anything was better than this. She pointed the gun awkwardly at the back of his shoulder and fired. He jerked once and slowly wilted into her arms.

* * *

Angel floated slowly upward through layers of thick white fog. Voices surrounded him, murmurs of hatred, fear, pleading, and rage, but the fog shielded him, and he couldn't understand them. He lay in a sunlit meadow dappled with tall blue and yellow flowers. The sun warmed his bare skin. Hadn't there been a girl here? Any moment now Father would be calling, wanting to know if the work was done, though it was never enough, and never good enough. He heard Kathy laughing, skipping gaily through the flowers, and reached quickly for something to cover himself. But she never came, and the sound of her laughter faded.

Lilting strains of flute and fiddle music reached his ears, together with tapping feet and laughing voices, and he was pulled into the dance, joining hands with the others in the circle, stepping and kicking and hopping in the well-remembered rhythms. When it was over, he threw his hands into the air and huzzahed with the rest. A mug of ale was thrust into his hand and he gulped it down eagerly. A warm wind blew through the trees, fresh with the pungent scent of newly planted earth.

Then the fog grew thicker, blocking out the stars. He heard voices again, but now they were quiet. He listened, trying to make sense of them.

"It'll have to be done after sunset, when the sea dragon is strongest."

"Strongest??"

"We'll need its help to break the spell."

"But what if it hasn't taken the cooperation workshop?"

"We'll have to try to stay out of its reach."

"And what about the lawyer-boys? They weren't too happy the last time we tried to interfere."

"We'll keep watch.

"Are you sure we can do this alone? Maybe this isn't such a good idea."

"I'm open to suggestions. But we have to do something tonight."

The voices ceased.

Finally Angel's eyes blinked open. It took him a long, slow minute to recognize the ceiling. He was lying on his back on the kitchen floor with a cushion under his head. His face was stiff with dried tears. The amulet was up on the counter, out of sight.

He must have made some small sound because Wesley and Cordelia's anxious faces appeared in his field of vision. Cordelia held the tranquilizer gun at the ready. "Are you going to behave now?" she asked.

Angel nodded. He felt too weak to move, let alone misbehave in any way. Memory leaked back slowly. He glanced again at the gun in Cordelia's hand and found his voice.

"What was that?"

"Enough phenol barbital to take out a bull elephant," Wesley answered him.

"How . . . long was I . . .?"

"About three hours," Cordelia said.

The best rest he'd had in days, but it only made him terribly hungry for more. He felt as if he could sleep for at least a week straight. He rolled to his side and got an elbow under him, then made an effort and pushed himself up to a sitting position. Every muscle joined the protest.

"What were you guys talking about?" he asked.

Cordelia and Wesley exchanged a look. "Nothing for you to be concerned with," Wesley answered.

He was far too tired to argue. "OK." Wesley raised an eyebrow, but turned as Cordelia handed him the gun.

"All right, well, I'll go get the, uh, you know," Cordelia said. She headed toward the door, then turned back. "Be careful. Don't let him – "

"I won't," Wesley replied.

* * *

Angelus came up through the trap door and stood leaning against furnace. "What? Still here? You are a real glutton for punishment, did anyone ever tell you that?" He glanced at the table, piled high with Wesley's books. "Or did you let them stop you?"

Angel stared at him wordlessly, feeling the weight of despair settle over him again.

Angelus shrugged. "It doesn't really matter, I suppose. You'll get it right eventually. In the mean time . . ." He glanced around the kitchen; his eyes lit on the stove. He walked over and turned on the gas. Then he picked up one of Wesley's books and held it in the flames until it was burning brightly. He used the book to light the shelves over the sink.

Angel began to feel the heat as the fire spread along the shelves, eventually leaping high enough to catch the ceiling. Soon he was surrounded by angry orange flames and black, choking smoke. He hid his face from death, coughing in the smoke until finally the flames consumed him.

When he awoke he took long, gulping breaths of clean air and glanced around to make sure the walls weren't charred or blackened. Wesley looked up from his book and watched him closely but didn't speak.

Even the dim kitchen light hurt his eyes. He glanced at Wesley, then crawled past him into the comforting darkness of the study. He found a corner where he could just fit and hunched against the wall with his knees pulled up to his chest, waiting for Angelus to return.

* * *

Wesley closed the last dusty leather-bound book with a slow gesture of finality. There was nowhere else to look. There was simply no other mention of the amulet anywhere.

His sense of failure was only exacerbated by the fact that Giles hadn't found anything either. Precious little help he could offer Angel now. Even if this wasn't some form of punishment sent by the Powers That Be, he didn't know how to stop it. And as difficult as it might be, he owed it to Angel to tell him.

He stood up and stretched to ease his cramped and tired muscles, then walked slowly into the darkened study. The lemon fresh scent of the room clashed oddly with the sickly green glow cast by the amulet. Angel hadn't moved since he'd wedged himself into the cramped space between the sofa and the weapons cabinet over an hour ago. Wesley wasn't sure at first if Angel was awake, but he lifted his head slowly at the sound of hesitant footsteps.

Wesley looked around for a chair but there was none handy so he lowered himself awkwardly to the floor. Angel watched him with hooded eyes. "Did you find something?"

Wesley forced himself to look Angel in the eye. "No, I'm afraid not. And I've looked everywhere I can think of. Twice. Giles has been searching as well. If anything else was written about the amulet, it must have been lost in the intervening centuries."

Angel nodded as if in some inexplicable way the news was a burden lifted. "Wesley . . . you don't have to stay."

It was quite useless to insist that he did, so Wesley said nothing. It occurred to him that despite his long life, Angel probably didn't have much experience with friends who stuck by him in a crisis. As it happened, Wesley didn't have much practice at being such a friend, but he was certainly giving it his best shot. Not that he was helping much now.

Angel rubbed his thumb back and forth across the raised lines and swirls on the amulet, a mindless gesture. Finally Wesley worked up the courage to ask, "Do you still believe what Doyle said was true?"

"I don't know." Angel sounded broken, defeated. "Angelus says I'm a fool to think the Powers care at all."

Wesley tried not to look as shocked as he felt. "What – who says that?"

Angel gave no sign that he noticed Wesley's surprise. "Angelus," he repeated. A note of normality crept into his voice, a more subtle sign of despair. "God, I'm an ugly bastard as a vampire."

Wesley blinked, trying to assimilate this most peculiar turn of events. Angelus? He still remembered more vividly than he cared to his own recent encounter with Angel's dark side. He could only imagine the biting truths Angel's soulless self could vent on him. Or . . . twisted truths. He leaned forward.

"Don't you believe a word he says."

"Sometimes the truth is more cruel than a lie. And I was good at cruelty." Angel paused. "Maybe it was all an illusion – Doyle, the Oracles, everything."

"Cordelia's visions are not an illusion. Which means that Doyle's weren't either." Even if he didn't believe it himself, Wesley was afraid to strip away Angel's only source of hope. "If Doyle told you the Powers sent this, then maybe it's true. And if they did, they must mean for you to get through it."

"Or maybe I am meant to die. The world doesn't want me. I don't deserve life. I never have."

Wesley suddenly felt as if he were trying to divert the flood waters of Angel's despair with a single sandbag. Still, he had to try.

"Now you're talking nonsense," he said. "Look at all the people you've helped here. Look at Cordelia and me. Where would we be without you?"

"You'd find your way. And you wouldn't have to live every day with the danger of what I could become."

"It's our choice to take that risk, not yours. Angel, listen to me. If you die now, at your own hand . . . you'll only be adding one more murder to your list."

For that Angel had no answer.

The silence stretched between them as Wesley groped for words to voice his thoughts. Finally he found them, and spoke with quiet intensity. "We all live at the edge of despair, secretly terrified that at any moment our worst fears about ourselves and the world will suddenly prove true. You live closer to that edge than most of us, and I'm sure that it feels desperately lonely. But the truth is . . . the ground you're standing on is well trodden."

The naked anguish on Angel's face was painful to see, but Wesley hoped it meant he'd thrown him a lifeline, however painful to grasp. He glanced at his watch.

"It's nearly dark. Cordelia and I have a plan to free the sea dragon. Then we'll come back and see you through this, no matter what it takes." He stared intently into Angel's ravaged eyes as if to bind him to life by the force of his own will. "Promise me you'll be here."

To his vast relief, Angel met his eyes and slowly nodded.

**

"Hey!" Someone nudged him with a foot.

Angel looked up, trying to focus on the figure standing above him. "Whistler." It was a nice change from Angelus, though Whistler was likely to be just as talkative.

"Well, now, don't you have any words of welcome for your old teacher?"

Weariness made Angel want to weep. "I know why you're here. Just get it over with."

"You think this is a dream?" Whistler opened his jacket. "No amulet. See? You've still got it." Whistler pointed to where it lay on the floor.

Whistler's words slowly penetrated the fog in Angel's brain. He wasn't dreaming. Whistler was really here. Which meant that . . .

"What are you doing here?"

"Well, somebody had to drag you out of the gutter again and I got the short straw."

Whistler stooped and picked up the amulet. His orange shirt was so bright it hurt Angel's eyes. He flicked the amulet with a fingernail – it made a sound like jade.

"It don't take much to beat you, does it? And after you did me so proud that day you sacrificed your humanity – in front of the Oracles, no less. Now, look at you. At least you don't stink yet."

Angel ignored Whistler's trademark insults. "Tell me the truth. Is this meant to be some kind of penance?"

"Penance? Have you been going to church when I wasn't looking? Who's been filling your head with that kind of nonsense?"

"Then . . . it wasn't sent by the Powers?"

"Nope. Just a couple of dirty rotten lawyers."

"But the Oracles said – they said I was meant to have it."

"And so you were. But maybe that means you were meant to destroy it, ever think of that? And maybe meant to learn something," he added as an afterthought.

Angel's breath went out of him like a deflating tire. So. Wesley and Cordelia had been right all along. It had all been an illusion, a trick, something toying ruthlessly with the deepest yearnings of his soul. He felt utterly torn between rage, relief, and renewed despair.

"I'd like to think I taught you better than that," Whistler was saying. "Those gypsies, they cursed you, right? Gave you back your soul. But all they wanted was for you to suffer. They thought that would make things right. But it didn't. Vengeance never does."

"Doyle said a thousand deaths might help even the score."

"And he'd be spinning in his grave – if he was in one – to hear you talk like that." Whistler paused, as if hunting for a new tack. "You suffered a hundred years of torture in the realm of Acathla. Did it ease your conscience any?"

"No." The realization shook him. "Are you saying I can't . . . ever be forgiven?"

"So, what, you think that if you could die as many times as you killed, or save a life for every one you took, you'd be even with the universe? Is that what you've been playing at, here? This ain't about atoning, pal. You can put that right out of your mind. You help people, you save people, you do it because each life is worth saving." Whistler's voice gentled with a rare note of compassion. "Redemption is in what you become."

Angel nodded. It all made sense. How had he let himself be so monstrously deceived? He looked at the amulet, angered beyond words. "Then how do I . . ."

". . . make it stop? You haven't figured it out? Of course not, you've been too busy flogging yourself. Meanwhile, your friends are about to become sea dragon snack food."

Angel jumped. "What?" Wesley said he had a plan. But it didn't come as huge surprise that there was some kind of flaw in it. He started to push himself to his feet and nearly blacked out. It was hell to be so utterly exhausted and still be able to able to panic.

He looked up at Whistler. "Help me!" he demanded.

"All right, calm down. Here, have some dinner." Whistler slipped around the corner, opened the fridge, and tossed him a bag of blood. He drained it obediently and felt a little stronger. He got to his feet carefully, clinging to the amulet. He held it out, sick with the memory of the false hope it had stirred in him.

"What about this? I can't help them if I'm still dying in my dreams."

"You tell me."

Angel nearly strangled the smaller demon from sheer frustration. "I don't know. Wesley said he's looked everywhere – and I believe him on that. There's nothing to tell me how to beat it."

"That's because no demon ever has. But none of them had what you've got – a human soul."

"How does that help me?"

"Think about it. Angelus is the one who keeps coming back. Why? He's the most powerful enemy you have. The one that knows you from the inside. But also the one you fight every day. Most days, you win."

"But in the dreams, he's real. I can't fight him. He wins every time."

"OK, look, I'm gonna cut you some slack, seeing as how you haven't had an hour's sleep in almost a week. But, boy, you try my patience, you really do."

Whistler took the amulet from him and laid it carefully on the floor. "Of course he wins. Because you know he will. He has you licked before it even starts. But that's gonna change right now, because you've got work to do. Close your eyes."

Angel closed his eyes. Sleep took him in an instant.

* * *

"Solvo, divello, expedio," Wesley intoned.

At first, nothing happened. The surface of the ocean remained as calm as before, but there was a strange of tightness to the air.

Then slowly, silently, the sea dragon rose from the water. For a moment it reminded Wesley horribly of when the mayor of Sunnydale turned into a demon, but this one had three heads. Fortunately, all three pairs of moon-sized luminescent eyes were looking past them to the ship moored in the middle of the harbor. Wesley nudged Cordelia, who was frozen, staring at the monstrosity right in front of them, and picked up an oar.

"I think that's done it," he whispered. "Let's get out of here."

Cordelia hurriedly took up an oar. They paddled furiously, realizing that somehow they had ended up right in the sea dragon's path. They both jumped as an unearthly roar split the air above their heads. Wesley looked up and saw three enormous bursts of flame against the dark sky. Suddenly one of the heads swooped down and splashed into the water, narrowly missing their boat.

"Not us, you idiotic sea dragon! We're the ones who set you free!" Wesley shouted, paddling with all his might.

"Told you it didn't take the cooperation seminar," Cordelia gasped.

Suddenly Wesley grabbed her. "Jump!" he cried. They hit the water moments before their boat was smashed to pieces by the sea dragon's middle head. As the huge beast dove it tore Cordelia from Wesley's grip and sent him tumbling head over heels through the water. Darkness swirled before his eyes, but he held his breath and strove for the surface. Finally he drew in a breath of wonderful air, then struggled to keep his head above the enormous swells caused by the movement of the sea dragon.

"Cordelia?" he called out, looking around frantically.

"Wesley!" she answered. He saw her clinging to the broken hull of the boat and made his way toward her. He stretched an arm over the keel and tried to find a stable grip as the water sucked warmth from his body. He sneezed violently.

"Well, I guess we freed it all right," Cordelia said. They both clung to the hull fragment and stared in silence as the undulating body of the sea dragon moved past the lights of the ship. Wesley felt a certain measure of satisfaction as terrified cries arose from the decks.

"Time to pay the piper," he muttered as the ship caught fire. Unfortunately, the tide seemed to be carrying them closer to it. Wesley turned and started kicking away from the ship. Cordelia joined him.

Shots rang out behind them, but Wesley didn't guess bullets could do the creature serious harm. Then there was a splash, followed by a cry that was horribly cut off. Wesley looked over his shoulder just in time to see one set of sea dragon jaws closing around a lawyer who had fallen or jumped overboard. He redoubled his efforts, but his legs were nearing exhaustion. Cordelia moaned beside him. "I can't keep this up much longer," she said.

There was not much need. The tide was carrying them inexorably back toward the ship. They managed to direct their approach away from the sea dragon, but soon they were bumping up against the hull.

Casting nervous glances upward, they pushed away from the ship and tried to work their way around it. If they could just get to the other side, hopefully the tide would carry them to shore. But their hopes were dashed when a dark figure descended a ladder just ahead of them, and they found themselves on the wrong end of a revolver.

* * *

Angelus was rooting around in Angel's fridge. He helped himself to some blood, then grimaced and spat it on the ground. "Uck. Cold? How do you drink this stuff? Even warm rats would be better than this." He tossed the bag into the trash and looked up with a smile.

"You know, I've got to admit – I haven't had this much fun since Buffy was around. Who'd have thought I'd enjoy torturing myself so much? I probably need psychiatric help." He sauntered through the kitchen doors. "Then again, if this is your dream, maybe it's you who needs help."

"So, how shall we do it this time? Sunlight is getting a bit dull, wouldn't you say? And stakes are so blase." He opened the weapons cabinet and took out the wickedest looking axe of the lot. "How about a good beheading?"

Angel snatched the weapon from Angelus' hands. "That's mine." He looked his soulless self in the eye. "I'm through listening to you."

"Oh, you want to fight now?" Angelus' face lit with delight. His eyes swept contemptuously over Angel's stance. "You couldn't go three rounds with a housefly."

A hard jab to the stomach knocked Angel back against the wall. He nearly dropped the axe. The next three blows landed on alternating sides of his jaw. Angelus didn't even bother to knock the axe from his hands. "Who needs a punching bag with you around?"

Angel launched himself from the wall just in time to avoid the next blow and swung the axe toward Angelus' neck. The vampire blocked it easily and rammed a fist into Angel's face. He staggered, feeling blood dripping from his nose, then doubled over as Angelus' heel plowed into his stomach, then his groin. He fell to his knees.

Angelus danced gleefully around him. "Having it out with your evil side – how wonderfully poetic. Too bad your evil side is winning."

Angel got one foot under him and rolled over the axe handle just as he heard Angelus shift to drop him. He turned and swung, slicing into Angelus' shoulder. The vampire cried out, clamping a hand over the wound. Then his face changed, and he pulled his hand away and licked the blood from his fingers.

"Well, still got a little fight left in you? I'll stop pulling punches then." A kick to the head sent Angel spinning to the ground. He managed to push himself back up again, but he had lost the axe. Angelus hooked a toe under it and kicked it up to his hands. Two quick swings, and Angel had matching gashes in his thigh and chest. He felt himself falling again.

Angelus brought the axe blade up under Angel's throat as he knelt on hands and knees, bloody and shaking. "Not much fight left after all. Who knew having a soul could make you such a weakling?"

Rage boiled up inside Angel at the memory of that voice in his own mouth, and all the cruel things it had said that he could never take back, and never forget. Taunting his victims before they died. Laughing at their fear, their pain, their helplessness. Just as it laughed at him now.

As Angelus started to pull the axe back for the death blow, Angel shoved himself up from the floor and grabbed it with both hands. He broke the handle in two against his uninjured thigh and jammed the end into Angelus' chest.

He felt it pierce the vampire's heart and let go, waiting for his alter ego to turn to dust – but nothing happened. Angelus laughed. "You can't get rid of me that easily. This isn't real, remember? You can't kill me. I'm part of you. You're the one who gets to die. And by my count, we've still got a long ways to go."

Angel sagged with despair. He stared at the stake buried in Angelus' heart, unbelieving. Whistler was wrong. He wasn't meant to win.

As if of their own volition, his eyes shifted to the amulet hanging across Angelus' chest. It glowed brightly, painfully, shining with a siren song of redemption. He reached up and took hold of it, yanking down to break the chain. It burned his hand as if it were a cross, but he held onto it long enough to lay it carefully on the floor in the same spot where Whistler had. He picked up the shortened axe.

Angelus smirked. "This should be fun to watch. You think it hurt before when you tried to smash it?"

Angel ignored him, lifting the axe to his shoulder.

Angelus' glib humor faltered. "You destroy that, you destroy you destroy your own redemption."

"There's no redemption here." Angel swung the axe with all of his remaining strength.

The amulet exploded into unbearable green light. It blazed through him like a river of lightning, a thousand deaths all at once. He screamed, but the sound was lost in a torrent of pain, rage, and self-hatred so fierce it shook him to dust. Fleetingly he wondered if in destroying the amulet, he had destroyed himself as well. The light faded, and blackness claimed him.

* * *

Cold water splashed over his face and neck.

"Come on, come on, we're running out of time!"

Angel's eyes blinked open. Whistler was kneeling over him. His head felt like a block of cement and his body ached everywhere, but he responded to Whistler's urgency and pushed himself up stiffly from the floor. Whistler helped him to his feet, but his legs wouldn't hold him. He stared at the floor under his hands in confusion.

Whistler took his arm and hauled him up again with a shoulder under his armpit. "Come on, you slug, get your feet under you." Angel braced himself against the wall and managed to stay upright.

His eyes fell on the charred hole in the floor beside him. The amulet was gone. "I did it. It's over." Relief nearly buckled his knees again.

"Yeah, you did it, and about bloody time. But it's not over." Whistler propelled him toward the door. "There's still a few hours before it gets light. You may be able to save them." He propped Angel in the driver's seat and started the car. "Go. And don't mind the speed limits."

The stiff breeze whistling past his face revived him a bit. The horror of a thousand deaths was beginning to fade. How had he let Wesley and Cordelia go out to face the sea dragon alone? He floored the accelerator, speeding through the empty streets.

Arriving at the harbor, he spotted Wesley's Buick at the water's edge and screeched to a halt. He stumbled out of the car and stood peering into the darkness. Out in the middle of the harbor a ship had caught fire. He could just make out the massive shape of the three headed sea dragon rearing up out of the water beside it, silhouetted against the flames. It looked as if Wesley and Cordelia had been successful in freeing it. But where were they?

He scanned the water for a boat, but couldn't see anything. Impatiently he tore the padlock from a speedboat moored at the pier and started the engine. Skimming over the waves at top speed, he made a wide path around the burning ship and the sea dragon, but all he could see was some scattered wreckage that might have come from a small row boat. One of the sea dragon's heads dove into the water, and he realized that it was picking off anyone trying to escape from the ship. Cold fear knotted his stomach. If Wes and Cordy were still alive, they must be trapped somewhere on that ship.

He approached the burning ship opposite the sea dragon. The frantic people running along the decks didn't look down as he pulled up to the side and grabbed the bottom rung of a ladder. But when he reached the top he hung back, unable to face the blistering heat and thick smoke billowing from the flames. He had burned to death quite a few times in the last few days, but this was not a dream. If the flames consumed him now, he would not wake up.

Frantic pounding coming from inside the hull brought him back to himself. He leapt up onto the deck put his ear to the boards – he fancied he heard voices that could be Wesley and Cordelia's, calling for help. The unnatural pitch of the ship suggested that it wouldn't last long. He tried breaking the boards with his hands and feet, but they were too strong. He tore a metal railing free and began to use it as a crowbar.

He had nearly broken through when he heard footsteps behind him and turned. Lindsey stood staring at him, reeking of smoke and sweat. "You?!"

Lindsey's surprise kindled a cold certainty in Angel's heart. "You sent it."

"Of course we did," Lindsey replied. "But it obviously didn't do its job, or you wouldn't be here. I'm guessing we have you to thank for all of this." A jerk of his head indicated the fire, the attacking sea dragon.

Angel didn't bother to correct him. In an instant it all came flooding back – the pain, the exhaustion, the despair. Anger tinged with shame flared up in response. Something of it must have shown in his eyes, because Lindsey took a step backward, staring at him.

"Must have been some serious nightmares, though – you look like you've been through hell."

"No," Angel replied. "Hell was a lot worse."

There was no time for this. The amulet was gone, and nothing he did or said now would erase what had happened. He seized Lindsay by the shoulders and flung him as hard as he could out into the water and threw a life preserver after him. As soon as he heard the splash he went back to prying up the deck. When he had a large enough hole, he poked his head through.

"Wesley! Cordelia!" he called out.

Wesley's voice came out of the darkness. "Down here!"

It was getting uncomfortably hot, and the ship groaned and rocked perilously to starboard. Angel braced himself and reached into the hole as far as he could. "Come on! Grab my hand!"

A flailing hand caught his and he grasped it tightly and pulled. In a moment Cordelia knelt beside him on the deck. "Angel! What are you doing here?" she gasped.

"A little birdie told me you needed rescuing," he said, reaching into the hole again. Wesley barely fit through the opening, but with a little anxious tugging they managed to pull him free. "Are you OK?" Cordelia asked him as Wesley crawled onto the deck. "What about –"

"I destroyed it," he said distractedly, acutely conscious of how quickly the flames were approaching. "Come on." He led the way back down the ladder.

"How?" Wesley asked as they piled into the speedboat.

An explosion on board the ship cut off Angel's reply. "Later," he said, revving the engine and pulling away from the ship.

Sirens were sounding throughout the harbor, but they were far too late. As the three of them watched, the flames were extinguished as the ship sank ponderously from sight. Angel thought he could just make out the shape of the sea dragon gliding sinuously out toward the deep water beyond the harbor.

The shore was strewn with flashing lights. Fortunately they had parked near the end of the harbor. But when they pulled up to the pier to return the boat, Kate was waiting for them.

"Do you know how many things I could charge you with?" she asked angrily. "What in hell do you think you're doing?"

He ignored her accusations. "It's over, Kate. No one else dies."

She looked at him sharply. "Except the ones on board that ship, you mean."

He glanced at the officers nearby and lowered his voice. "It was a sea dragon. They were trying to steal its gold. We set it free. It won't be back."

She blinked, as if yet another fairy tale had come to life before her eyes. But apparently she had seen enough on the trip beyond the lighthouse to believe him. "And you thought that turning a dangerous creature loose in the harbor would be a good solution?"

"It was the only one we could find." Angel stared at her, defying her to argue with him. She stared back petulantly, reluctantly taking in his appearance and the way Wesley and Cordelia were hovering protectively on either side of him, probably glaring at her.

He turned to go. "There won't be anyone alive down there. Don't let the search teams go down until daylight."

She opened her mouth to protest, then closed it. Finally she turned and stalked away.

* * *

When Angel opened the front door to the office, he knew without looking that Whistler would not be there. Well, it wasn't as if he needed a pat on the back. It was enough that the Powers had sent someone whose answers he could understand and trust before it was too late.

Wesley and Cordelia came in behind him and stood uncertainly near the door, eyeing his pensive expression. "We should probably be going," Wesley ventured.

"I suppose you'd like to be alone now," Cordelia chimed in.

Angel looked from one to the other. They looked tired and rather bedraggled by their adventure with the sea dragon. He should probably send them home. But he couldn't – not yet. And they didn't look as if they really wanted to go.

"No, that's OK," he said finally. "I've been alone in the dark with myself about all I can stand for a while."

"Well, I guess the sea dragon got its gold back," Cordelia observed in the silence that followed.

"And one more shipwreck to add to its collection," Wesley added. "I suppose it's too much to hope that some of the senior Wolfram and Hart people went down with it."

"I'm just happy you two didn't end up at the bottom of the harbor," Angel said. "But it's a good thing you acted when you did. I may have to give you both a raise – after I finish lecturing you about taking on dangerous demons and evil law firms at the same time."

They smiled at each other, annoyingly unrepentant.

"Are you going to tell us how you destroyed the amulet?" Wesley asked.

Angel wasn't sure he could explain what had happened, even to them. "I had a little help," he said finally. "From an old friend."

Cordelia's forehead wrinkled. "You mean . . . Buffy?"

"No. His name is Whistler. He was sent by the Powers That Be."

"Then . . . they didn't send the amulet?" Wesley asked quietly.

"No." Angel tried to find words to elaborate, but they didn't come. Instead he turned and reached into a little hidden space behind the filing cabinets and pulled out a bottle of wine. "How about a little victory celebration?" he asked. "Doyle must have stashed it here," he added at Cordelia's look. "I found it about a week after he died."

They could only find two wine glasses, so Wesley volunteered to use a coffee mug. Angel poured, then held up his glass. "To Doyle."

"We haven't forgotten you," Cordelia called out, as if he were hidden in the walls somewhere, listening. Angel reminded himself that she lived with a ghost.

"I wish I'd known him," Wesley added more sedately.

They clinked glasses and mug and drank silently.

Wesley held Angel's eyes for a long moment. "To redemption," he said.

Angel looked away at the added reminder of a wound still raw. But Wesley was right. He couldn't let the amulet destroy his essential hope. "To redemption," he agreed quietly, and they drank again. "Cordelia?" he prompted.

She pursed her lips. "To the sea dragon." They both stared at her. "Well, it did eat a bunch of lawyers," she replied.

"To the discomfiture of Wolfram and Hart, may all their plots be foiled," Wesley offered. On that, they drained their glasses.

"From a purely historical standpoint, it's rather too bad that you had to destroy the amulet," Wesley said, setting down the mug.

"Yeah, we could have sent it back to Wolfram and Hart with a little note – ‘Sorry boys, but you'll have to do better than that'," Cordelia said.

Angel blinked at her in horror, afraid to imagine what better than that might be. "Just kidding," she said apologetically.

"Still," Wesley continued, "it might have come in handy if we were to run into a particularly nasty demon."

"I'm not sure I'd wish a thousand deaths on even the most evil demons," Angel replied.

"Well, after all, you used to be one of them," Cordelia said. "Still, I think a few nightmare deaths might have been good for the mayor of Sunnydale."

"Yes," Wesley replied, warming to the subject. "And it would have made a great Christmas gift for an Ethros demon."

Angel rolled his eyes and let them go on. The wine was making him dizzy. He sat down on the couch.

"Too bad it doesn't work on humans," Cordelia was saying. "We could have given it to Dr. Removable-Parts."

"Who?"

"Oh yeah, that was before your time."

"I see. But how about that disgusting little empathy demon?"

"Barney? Yeah, I wouldn't have minded seeing him sobbing on the floor, begging me to let him kill himself."

"It might have worked well on the Hacksaw beast – though perhaps not quickly enough."

"Which one was that?"

"The one that wanted you to have its demon babies."

"Oh, right. No, I think turning him into a giant popsicle was better all around."

Silence.

"Angel?"

He didn't realize that he had begun to nod off until he felt a gentle nudge on his shoulder. Sleep was sucking him down like a giant black hole, and he couldn't remember wanting anything so badly in a long, long time. Couldn't they just throw a blanket over him and tiptoe on home?

"Angel, come on. You don't want to sleep here."

With a monumental effort he forced his eyes open and found himself looking into the earnest faces of two mother hens who clearly had their hearts set on tucking him in. Wesley was right – the couch was not very comfortable. And he realized it was the least he could do.

He reached up, and Wesley pulled him to his feet. He allowed himself to be led sleepily to the lift, then waited in the bedroom while Cordelia straightened and turned down the bed clothes and fluffed up the pillow. He sat down on the edge of the bed and looked from one to the other. "I don't know what I ever did to deserve two friends like you."

Cordelia smiled happily.

"Sleep well," Wesley admonished gruffly.

He shucked off his shoes and socks and shirt and slid between the welcoming sheets, his head sinking blissfully into the pillow. Cordelia turned off the light and they drifted toward the door, watching quietly. Under their contented gaze, Angel fell asleep.

(Sigh . . . )

THE END

Any comments, questions, corrections, praise, adulation, or profound thoughts may be directed to Jeanne Rose.

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