SPLINTER

"Farewell, oh home of my youth," Lorne said, looking out over the Pylean countryside as Angel revved up the car's motor. Lorne was Pylean, Fred was sure of that; he had better manners than most of the ones she'd met, and better clothes, but Pylean all the same. Yet he was going with them too. "I may never see you again. Let's hope not, anyway."

"I gotta say, I never thought I'd be homesick for smog," said Gunn -- did they really say Gunn? Or was it Glen? Black guy, no hair, listen for his name, she reminded herself. And what happened to his hair? Don't ask. Might be a bad story. "But all this time in the fresh air has been driving me crazy. The oxygen makes you lightheaded or something."

"Can't wait to see L.A., myself," Wesley said. His name was easy; he looked exactly like somebody who would be called Wesley. "Most particularly, I can't wait to see my bed, which happens to be located there."

"I am going to take a long, hot bath that lasts for five days," declared Cordelia, adjusting the top half of her bikini in a way that made all the men suddenly display a marked interest in the car's seats and dashboard. She bore little resemblance, physically or emotionally, to the frightened, dirty girl Fred had first seen in the stables.

Was it the same person? Fred was pretty sure it would be tactless to ask, but she couldn't help wondering. There could be twins, maybe. Duplicates. Shadows or reflections of the real person -- maybe the real Cordelia was still trapped somewhere, or still a princess. Shouldn't they check to make sure Cordelia was real?

Angel craned his neck over to smile at Fred. "Almost home," he said.

Fred smiled back at him unevenly and forced herself to pay attention to what, for lack of a better term, she was presently considering "reality." Angel had saved her from the monsters, saved her from Pylea. And now he was taking her home.

Home, she thought. That word ought to mean everything to her. But she knew it could mean absolutely anything --

No point in thinking about that right now. Instead she said to Angel, "Are you happy to go home, too?"

He did not seem to hear her. But even as Wesley began reading the incantation Fred had given him, she saw Angel take one hand from the steering wheel and hold it in a flickering beam of sunlight --

Then the world was made of light as the portal exploded, expanded and swallowed them whole. Energy washed over Fred, washed through her, with an electric sensation that was at once bizarre and terrifyingly familiar --

The car crashed out of the portal and off -- a stage? They were all thrown forward; Fred blinked her eyes as she tried to adjust to the sudden darkness. When she could see again, she looked around and found she was in a place that resembled -- she frowned to herself. What were those places called that her friends had always told her she'd like but she never did? She struggled, and after a moment a long disused word floated to the top of her consciousness.

They had arrived in a nightclub.

Nobody else seemed to think this was weird. Or, at least, weirder than usual. "Sorry 'bout your place, man," said Glen-or-Gunn.

"Always meant to redecorate," Lorne said easily, swinging the door open to get out. Then he froze, half in the car, half out. "But it looks like somebody beat me to it."

Fred could see well enough now to make out the details of their surroundings -- turquoise paint, beige carpeting, lamps that looked like cacti and fixtures on the walls that were -- hopefully fake -- cattle skulls. A dark scrawl on the wall would, when lit up, be a neon sign that proclaimed this place to be "The Longhorn." "Is this your nightclub?" Fred asked.

"Well, right now, it looks like Dolly Parton's hairdresser's nightclub," Lorne said, hands on his hips. "But yes, it belongs to me, a fact that my staff apparently decided to ignore in my absence."

"They redecorated?" Wesley said, squinting at the tables, which all appeared to be topped with maps of Texas.

"Unwisely, and not well," Cordelia said, shimmying over the back of the car to explore the place herself. "Oh, my God. This place looks like a Taco Bell, only less subtle and classy."

Taco Bell. The name conjured up all sorts of delightful memories -- late nights at the library, or long afternoons studying, just Fred and her books and a great big bagful of -- "Can we get some tacos?"

"Don't you worry," Glen-or-Gunn said with a smile. "We're gonna set you up with a little run for the border real soon."

"They changed the NAME?" Lorne said, staring at the neon sign. "Oh, when I find out who did this, heads are gonna roll. And in this dimension, that means something."

"This can't be right," Angel said. He was the only one of them who hadn't moved; he remained in the driver's seat of the car, hands on the wheel. "Lorne, your employees wouldn't have done something like that without your permission. And they couldn't have done it this quickly."

"So true," Cordelia said. "We called the repair guys about the Hyperion's sauna back in October. And have they given us a remodeling date yet? No."

"You were going to fix the sauna?" Angel said.

Cordelia looked slightly abashed. "Well, you know, steam is so good for the pores -- and -- and anyway, we're the bosses now, so, let it go."

Angel leaned back in his seat; his expression in the darkness seemed closed off, withdrawn. Although she hadn't known him for very long, anytime something had been wrong, Angel had told her. Even if he was shaking on the ground, even if he had to scream it, he had told her. So why wasn't he telling them now? And why no one else think it was strange that he wasn't telling them? The mood in the room seemed to have changed really fast, for some reason.

"We must have found another hot spot," Wesley said. "This club has the same layout as Caritas, perhaps. But we must have actually landed someplace else."

"No, this is my bar," Lorne insisted. "That dent in the wall? That's from the fracas that broke out when somebody interrupted Mordar the Bentback's Barry White medley. See the tusk marks?"

"How long were you all in Pylea?" Fred asked.

It was a simple enough question, but it froze everyone in their tracks. "Oh, no," Gunn said. "We didn't."

Wesley looked pale. "Cordelia's experience in Pylea before we found her passed only in real time -- I mean, Earth time -- our time --"

"Let's just check to be sure," Angel said. He got out of the car and began searching the room. Everyone else followed suit, and Fred began looking around too, though she wasn't at all certain what they were supposed to be looking for.

After a few moments, Angel opened up a side door that led to an alleyway. "Trash can," he said. Fred felt sure the words should mean something to her, but somehow they had become separated from their definition, so that when she tried to call up a mental picture that went with them, she couldn't. But the others must have known what Angel was talking about, as they all began pushing their way out the door. Fred stayed where she was at first, until the cow skulls on the wall stared back at her. Then she turned and ran after the others.

Angel was fishing about in a large metal box with a hinged lid. Aha, she thought as he tossed various cans and boxes out onto the asphalt: trash can. Finally he grabbed up a newspaper and read the date. "May 23, 2001. That's, what? Six days from when we left?"

"There's a little difference," Wesley said. "But nothing of consequence."

The alleyway was dark; it was nighttime. Not a single sun to be seen, Fred thought as she looked up. Not any stars, either. I could have sworn Earth had stars in the sky --

"Well, the fact that my bar now looks like a discarded set from 'Urban Cowboy' is of consequence," Lorne said.

Fred kept staring upwards.

Wesley began, "So how do we explain --"

Cordelia screamed. The others stared at her, then followed her gaze -- and Fred's -- up into the night. A giant creature, scaly and gray with wings perhaps 100 feet across, swooped menacingly across the sky. It breathed a long arc of fire, then soared toward the horizon.

"Los Angeles has dragons?" Fred said. "Now, see, I didn't remember that."

The others were all staring after the dragon, slack-jawed. "Guys?" Fred said.

Glen was the first to speak. "English," he said slowly, "when you said this incantation thing you and Fred worked out was going to get us home, were you telling me God's own truth? Because right now I am not wanting to hear that you fudged the details."

"Of course not!" Wesley said. "We had all the formulae -- expressed verbally -- Fred said that we -- this was supposed to --"

"Fred?" Cordelia said, her voice a question and a warning all at once.

"Cordelia," Angel said, in much the same tone.

Fred shrugged. "This is home. At least, this is one version of it."

"Beg to differ with you," Lorne said. "Tinseltown's got its share of the bizarre, of which I gladly constitute a small percentage, but Puff over there is NOT part of the scene. Not unless Spielberg's found some truly new applications for CGI."

"What do you mean, one version?" Angel said. His voice was steady, though she could tell he was fighting to keep it that way. "Are we home or aren't we?"

"Yes," Fred said.

The others stared at her for a long time, as though she'd said something very odd. At last, Cordelia said, through teeth clenched in a poor imitation of a smile, "You said your little formula-chanty-thingy was going to open up the portal and take us back. Did that promise come with a money-back guarantee?"

"Cordelia, please," Angel said. "Getting mad isn't going to help."

"Letting Drusilla Lite drive doesn't seem to have helped a lot either."

Angel's eyes flashed at that -- was that anger? Pain? Fred opened her mouth to ask who or what a Drusilla was when Wesley broke in. "Fred, if I pronounced the incantation incorrectly --"

"You didn't," Fred said. "You were really very good." She hesitated, then gave him a little punch on the arm, as she had seen Gunn-or-Glen do. Wasn't that supposed to be encouraging? Wesley looked less encouraged than vaguely ill. She pulled her fist back and hugged it to her chest. "It's just that the portals between dimensions -- they can be unstable, sometimes. If somebody else was traveling through them at the same time, or, or maybe trying to create portals where there weren't any before -- well, the equations would get all muddled up, and you'd have to model some truly horrible sine fluctuations to calculate the iterative resonance feedback and -- " Vaguely aware that she'd lost her audience, she concluded, "Things could get freaky. If you know what I mean."

Wesley nodded slowly. "But who or what would have the power to break down the walls between dimensions?"

"Glory," Angel said. This meant nothing to Fred; she was slightly relieved to see that the others were all looking at him with the same confusion on their faces. "When I went to see Buffy after her mother's funeral, she told me about an enemy she's been facing in Sunnydale. Glory -- a god from another dimension. Maybe she was trying to return there."

"Buffy versus God," Cordelia said. "Now there's a match-up for Pay-Per-View."

"You know, there's nothing I love more than chatting about lost loves," Lorne said. "But I'd like to hurry up and get to the part of the story that involves me. You think this Glory tried to get back to where she once belonged and kept us from doing the same?"

Fred's mind was reeling from all the new names and information -- Buffy, Glory, Sunnydale. And did somebody say something about Angel's lost love? She tried to do what she used to do best: focus. "If something really powerful were influencing the dimensions at the exact same time we were trying to get home, it could have sent us on a little detour."

"A 'little detour' would not take us to Dragon Land," Cordelia said. Her arms were crossed in front of her body, and her tiara was now off-kilter in a way that would have been very funny if she hadn't looked so angry.

"He probably got lost just like we did," Fred said, looking up sadly at the dragon, which was drifting through some whirling spotlights near Grauman's Chinese. "Poor dragon."

Angel stepped closer to her, drawing her attention back to Earth. He put one hand on her shoulder as he asked, "Can we get back again?"

"Depends on what went wrong, and why," Fred said. "I can figure it out. But I need a little while. And I can do the calculations with paper and pencil, but one of those -- things -- would be nice - "

"Things?" asked Cordelia.

This time Fred had the mental picture, but not the word that went with it. She gestured with her hands. "A box that beeps and glows and makes things easier." It was frustrating, because she was sure there had been a time when she'd known what the right word was. When she'd first arrived in Pylea, hadn't she spent weeks and weeks scratching away on the wall of her cave, wishing she had a --

"A computer," said Angel, smiling slightly.

That was the word she'd lost. Fred smiled gratefully back at Angel, and stuck a mental Post-It that read 'computer' on the picture in her head. She leaned closer to him and whispered, "And also -- I need a bath."

"Home base, coming up," said Gunn.

Or Glen.

Something wasn't right about the Hyperion.

Angel was sure of it almost as soon as he brought the packed Plymouth to a halt just shy of the hotel's back gates. Although, judging by the almost palpable sense of relief in the car, he was the only one to have noticed anything amiss.

After the dragon sighting outside Caritas -- or the Longhorn, as he supposed he'd have to think of it while they were here -- the drive across the city had been tense. Little had been said, as five of the car's six passengers watched carefully for more evidence of divergences between this Los Angeles and home. Fred had spent the journey playing with the dashboard cigarette lighter.

However, they'd witnessed nothing more unusual than a bar brawl spilling on to the sidewalk as they passed through Westlake and a couple making out in a store doorway around Echo Park. Aside from one itinerant dragon, L.A. was still L.A.

And wasn't the Hyperion the same as well? Angel looked the building up and down, trying to pinpoint the source of his discomfort. It looked just the way it had when he'd left it a week ago: two wings flanking a six-floor central block, constructed in a mishmash of styles that could only be a permanent monument to a bet lost by a misguided architect whose name was now mercifully long forgotten. In the courtyard, the weeds Cordelia had been nagging him to do something about since the day he'd moved in still grew high. The ornamental fountain was still clogged with dirt and dry as dust. It looked ruined, broken-down, desolate.

And yet, he thought, not abandoned.

"I never thought I'd say this, but I missed this place," declared Cordelia as she hopped out of the car. "Okay, everyone out. Children and women in serious need of a bath and an escape from sequined underwire first."

"Wait," said Angel.

Cordelia was tapping her foot impatiently on the sidewalk. "I hope you've got a real good reason for coming between me and my loofah."

"I'm not sure about this. I think someone's in there."

Wesley frowned. "How can you be sure?"

Angel shrugged helplessly. "I can't. But we should check it out."

Cordelia looked back at the dark mass of the building. "Oh, come on. Look at the lobby windows!"

"They're filthy," Wesley said.

"Exactly. And, though I may possibly have been known to complain about it a time or two --" Cordelia did not even pause as Gunn snorted, "-- I do take the time and energy to keep those bottom windows clean. So nobody's there." Her expression changed slightly as she realized. "We're not there."

Gunn got out of the car and stood beside her. "That's gotta be a good, right?"

Wesley joined him. "Gunn?"

Gunn shrugged. "Think about it, English. Another version of L.A. means maybe other versions of us. But if we don't have twins here -- or they're off doing their own thing some place else -- that's gonna save some real awkward introductions. And it leaves the hotel vacant, so we've got a place to crash 'til we figure this thing out."

Wesley nodded slowly. Then his face clouded. "But if we never moved in -- "

Angel completed the thought. "The Thesulac demon never moved out. It's probably still there."

Cordelia sighed. "Terrific. Freaky here-be-dragons universe outside, paranoia-inducing demon inside. Hello, rock, allow me to introduce you to hard place."

Fred was frowning. "This is like the dragon thing, isn't it? Because I don't remember there being dragons here, before, but there are -- and I don't remember there being demons before either. But there are, here. So there shouldn't be demons." She looked up and smiled hopefully at Angel, apparently pleased with her ability to apply logic consistently. "That's right, isn't it?"

Before he could reply, Cordelia said briskly, "No, there were always demons. You just didn't notice them."

Fred's face fell. "Oh."

"We got rid of it before," said Angel: "We'll get rid of it again."

Wesley nodded. "Although we should make sure it's in there, first. No point in wasting time tonight trying to hunt down another orb of Ramjarin to raise it with if we're wrong." He thought for a moment, then appeared to reach a decision. "Angel, Lorne -- you'd better make a quick sweep of the building."

Lorne sat up and shook his head so fast his horns were a blur. "Thanks, but no thanks. In this movie, I am very clearly cast in the role of plucky comic relief, not action hero."

Patiently, Wesley said, "Thesulacs interfere with rational thought processes. Other demons aren't immune, but they're more likely to be able to shrug it off. You two are the logical choices to go in there."

"Think I'll come along too," said Gunn. "Could do with stretching my legs."

Wesley looked at him doubtfully. "I'm not sure. If the Thesulac's in there, it could very quickly have you thinking -- anything."

Gunn grinned widely, easy and reassuring. "Relax, Wes. Three people makes this go faster than two. Sooner we sort this, sooner we have a base, sooner we get answers and go home."

"Amen to that," said Cordelia.

Wesley considered this, then nodded. "Very well." His mouth quirked in an unwilling smile. "It's not as though you have many rational thought processes to be interfered with."

"I knew I shouldn'ta let you get to know me," Gunn said, his grin even broader.

Something rattled down the street, and they all tensed -- but when Angel wheeled about quickly, he saw only a soda can rolling down the gutter. Wesley squared his shoulders, again intent on the matter at hand. "We'll stay with the car and wait for you. Just in case there are any more nasty surprises lurking out here for us."

But as Angel moved toward the hotel's dark and silent facade, he was struck by the sudden and inexplicable conviction that it wasn't nasty surprises outside they needed to worry about.

"How long have they been gone?" Cordelia asked, her face creased in a frown.

"Only five minutes," Wesley said, holding up his watch so she could see it. Cordelia's brow furrowed even further, and he felt some extra reassurance was required. Making an effort to strike a tone which was more upbeat than he felt, he said, "I shouldn't worry. They've barely had long enough to get inside."

"I guess," Cordelia said, but she sounded unconvinced. Fred had shifted her attention from the cigarette lighter to the car's radio and was tuning it to each station in turn. Oddly, the only kind of music being broadcast on any frequency was Beethoven, with the exception of one rogue station where 'Copacabana' was on looped repeat. Whatever version of reality they'd landed in, thought Wesley gloomily, it was one of the stranger ones.

Cordelia sagged back in the car's passenger seat and, taking off her tiara, smoothed down her hair tiredly. "I want to go home, Wes. Dimension-hopping -- well, let's just say the novelty's wearing off real fast."

"I'll second that motion," Wesley agreed.

Suddenly, Fred gave a cry.

Instantly, Wesley was out of the car and scanning the street for the source of the danger; Cordelia was looking around herself frantically as well. He craned his neck and looked upwards, checking the smoggy sky for swooping mythical beasts and, with deep relief, finding none. But Fred was still screaming and pointing across the empty road at the Taco Bell directly opposite the Hyperion.

She stopped abruptly, and Wesley realized it hadn't been a scream, but a whoop of joy. "Tacos!" she announced, grinning with delight. "Nachos!"

"Nachos to you too," Cordelia said, scowling. "Jeez, Fred, are you trying to give us heart attacks?"

Wesley blinked, and frowned. He walked along this street three or four times a day, going to or coming from the hotel. From where he stood, he could see the twenty-four hour dry-cleaner's whose professional expertise he often challenged with clothing stained by the by-products of demon-slaying, and the bakery where the female staff cooed over his accent every time he stopped to buy breakfast on the way home. But he didn't recall there ever being a Mexican fast food place between them.

"Cordelia," he said slowly, "Should that be there? I mean, is there a Taco Bell there in our universe?"

She shook her head uncertainly. "I don't think so. New Taco Bell, the Longhorn -- maybe this whole dimension is done in tacky Tex-Mex. Scary thought."

"Burritos," Fred said dreamily, and she began to cross the street.

"Fred, wait." Wesley dug into his pocket and took out his wallet. "You'll need money."

She accepted the ten dollar bill he handed her, but stared at it curiously for some time, as if trying to remember exactly what it was for. Then her expression cleared and, smiling widely, she bounded away.

"We're gonna have our work cut out with her," Cordelia commented, watching her go. She glanced at the Taco Bell and shook her head. "I guess we've gotta expect stuff to be different here. And, as surprises go, I'll take extra fast-food joints over big, scary dragons in the sky any time."

"Yes, but..." Wesley began. He stopped.

She was looking at him. "What's the big?"

Uncomfortable thoughts were forming in Wesley's mind. Thoughts he wasn't entirely sure it would helpful to share, just now. For instance, his conviction that the Taco Bell not only hadn't been there in their reality -- but that it hadn't been there ten minutes before.

He was almost certain of it. Almost.

But, then again, it had been a long and strange few days, and he was exhausted, and he'd been on the lookout for a number of things far more important than fast-food restaurants.

Wesley shook his head slowly and got back into the car. "Nothing. It's nothing."

Angel stood outside what had been the Hyperion's staff entrance and now functioned as the building's back door. "Gunn, you check the ground floor and the one above it. I'll take the top floors. Lorne -- you've got the basement."

"I don't think so. I've seen enough Stephen King adaptations to know what happens to the guy who goes down to the basement, and it's never good."

"I'll take the basement," Gunn offered. "Ain't nothin' down there except the washer-dryer and a LOT of black sweaters." Pointing at Angel, he continued, "This is not a guy who has to separate his colors, if you know what I'm sayin'."

"We can talk about my wardrobe some other time. Everyone clear on what they're doing?" Angel asked. They nodded. "Good."

With one firm shove, he pushed open the door and slipped inside the dark building. After a second, he heard the others follow.

The lobby was just as he remembered finding it in another reality and months earlier: musty-smelling sheets thrown carelessly over battered furniture. "No paying guests for a while," Lorne remarked.

Angel shook his head. It was difficult to tell through the thick haze of dust in the air, but there was a scent, something fresh and tantalizingly familiar... "No. Someone's been here recently."

Gunn had moved behind the reception desk. "Probably squatters," he said. "Look." Reaching down, he lifted a plastic tub marked with the logo of a take-out Chinese restaurant, and prized open the lid. He sniffed cautiously, and made a face. "Urgh. Coupla weeks there, at least. Hey!"

He jumped back as a scrawny gray cat shot out from under the reception desk and ran past him. A second later, it had vanished into the dark recesses of the hotel's ground floor.

"If people have been here recently, the Thesulac must have chased them off," Angel said. "Or tricked them into killing each other."

Lorne pursed his lips. "At least he gave them time to have their last meal delivered."

"Let's just do this fast." Angel moved to the stairs and started to climb them. After a second Lorne followed; he could hear Gunn opening the door to the basement. He breathed in, took in the scent of the rancid take-out food again. Squatters. It made sense -- and yet, somehow, it didn't. He inhaled once more, concentrated. He could smell sickness in the air, something decaying, something he recognized but couldn't place. Something very, very wrong.

With Lorne close behind him, he ascended to the second floor. The smell of decay was stronger up here, and Angel was growing more concerned. Quietly, he said, "Why don't you check out the other end of the hall?"

"Oh, great idea. It's always been my fondest wish to die alone," Lorne said. But he did as Angel suggested.

Angel continued on his way, checking behind each door, listening carefully. After a heavy pause, he opened the door to 207 -- but sighed in relief when there was no sign of Judy, either alive or dead. If she weren't there, and squatters hadn't set up house, then the likelihood was high that the Thesulac demon had long since moved on, in search of fresh prey.

Perhaps, Angel thought, his perceptions were deceiving him after all. Maybe the cartons they'd found were evidence only of some teenagers who'd found the place, hung out one night and moved on.

As he stepped out of Judy's room, he looked up, stopped. There was a full length mirror at the end of the corridor, and in it he could see a sight that he had only just learned to recognize. The tall man staring back at him was powerfully built, with short, spiky dark hair. Strange, he thought, a reflection here too --

The reflection moved.

Angel didn't.

For a second they faced off in silence, and Angel quickly realized that the other's expression held more confusion than he felt. That made sense -- this other Angel probably hadn't seen himself recently.

Confusion slowly became recognition. "What--?"

Angel raised his hands in an automatic, placatory gesture. Where to start? He opened his mouth to attempt some kind of explanation, but got no further than the first word before he heard footsteps draw near behind him. He glanced back to see Lorne.

"The other end of the hall has nothing more terrifying than some truly lousy fake Louis XIV chairs, so it seems like Mr. Tentacles has moved on to -- HELLO."

Lorne drew up short, several paces behind Angel. When he turned around again, the door behind his double was opening as someone else came into the corridor, drawn by the noise.

Darla.

She was wearing a red silk nightdress that shifted and clung to her, tracing the curve of her breasts and hips exactly as she padded barefoot across the hallway and slipped her arm around the other Angel with casual intimacy. Her hair was tangled, and as she moved the thick smell of sex wafted to Angel on the suddenly frigid air. He felt cold as she looked at him with lazy, half-interested bemusement. Then she stood on tiptoe and delicately nipped at the ear and throat of her lover. "Angelus? What do we have this time?"

"Not dream girl again," Lorne said, and took a step forward.

"Stay behind me," Angel said sharply.

"Stay behind me," Angelus said at the same time, pushing Darla away from himself.

The coincidence was enough to unnerve both of them further. Unwilling but unable to prevent himself, Angel sought out the other's gaze, locked and held it.

Everything was wrong here -- everything --

Angel looked away first. And so he missed the moment when Gunn came bounding around the corner.

"Basement and first floor are clear, and -- and -- what the hell?" Gunn hesitated for only a moment, looking quickly back and forth between the two doubles. Almost instantly, he turned toward Angelus and Darla; his hand went, lightning-fast, to the stake he carried in his belt at all times.

"No!" Angel yelled, but too late; in a flash Angelus lunged, slamming Gunn against the wall. One of his hands was clenched around Gunn's left wrist, clamped down hard enough to make the hand shake until the stake tumbled to the floor. The other arm was across Gunn's face, pinning his head to the wall, leaving his throat exposed --

Angel jumped forward, instinctively moving to protect Gunn against a threat. He grabbed Angelus' arm, pulling it away from Gunn's face --

He touched Angelus' skin. Cold, dead -- his own. Revulsion lanced through him, so strong and primal that he physically shook.

Angelus pulled his arm back at the precise moment that Angel also jerked his hand away. The two backed away from each other slowly. Gunn was shaking against the wall, but he collected himself quickly and got behind Angel. Darla, for her part, was looking more and more confused and unhappy. "Angelus?"

Angel took another step backwards without turning around and said, "We're leaving." He wasn't sure whether he intended the words as a warning, a statement of intent, an instruction to Gunn and Lorne, or something else again. Whatever it was, Angelus understood, because as Angel backed away from him and toward the stairs he made no move to follow. Instead he watched silently, Darla at his side, holding his expression in a rigidly impassive mask which Angel instinctively knew meant he was equally shaken.

They descended the stairs at speed and in silence, down two floors, through the lobby and back out into the night. At the car, Wesley and Cordelia looked up at their approach, as Fred contentedly helped herself to another nacho chip from the paper tray she was holding.

"Did you find anything?" Cordelia asked. She took in Angel's expression. "You found something."

He got into the car without looking at her. "We've got to get away from here."

Wesley shook his head. "It's unlikely the Thesulac will follow outside."

"It's worse than that," Gunn said.

Cordelia looked at them in turn. "Define 'worse.'"

"Nacho?" Fred offered, holding the tray under Angel's nose.

"Define 'worse,'" Cordelia repeated more insistently.

Lorne said, "'Worse' as in, let's move before we all die violent, painful deaths."

"Him," Gunn clarified tersely, nodding in Angel's direction. "The name Angelus ringing any bells for you? Because Darla was using it a whole lot while she was hanging all over him."

Cordelia said, quietly, "Oh, fuck."

"That's how it looked from where we were standing," agreed Lorne. He looked back at the hotel's dark entrance. "Here's a suggestion: what say we leave now, panic later?"

"Who's Darla?" Fred asked.

Angel pushed Fred's arm away and started the car's engine. He could feel the gazes of the others settling on him, hostile, angry. Amid his own confusion and terror, he could also feel a deep resignation; in the midst of all this improbability, there was an element of inevitability. The truth will out, he thought.

Blood will tell.