Night of the Hunter

Summary: Cordelia has a vision of a brutal murder--which turn out to be copycats--or are they? Time gets cut to pieces, Angel and Cordelia get cozy and it may not turn out all right in the end

That was my first and only thought when I was jolted out of a dead sleep with a blistering, head-shaking motherfucker of a message from on high where migraine is just a word.

Rent's due tomorrow oh god he's got the knife out and he's smiling and she's sort of feeling dizzy and she can't run any more and there's that knife and it's sharp.

I realized that I was hoarse from screaming when I snapped out of the vision, and that Dennis was fluttering around getting frantic. That wasn't good. When Dennis is upset, things tend to happen--nothing I can't handle, of course. But I didn't want the plumbing to back up or my floor covered in slime or any of the totally inconvenient things that happen when my ghost gets flustered.

I was lying through my teeth. I was going to have to call someone immediately. For all I knew, Dennis even knew I was lying. But he simply brushed past gently after my reassurances.

I picked up the phone and dialed Wesley's number. If there was anything I didn't want to hear, it was Angel panicking on my account. Wesley's calmer. He may be a dork, but he's a calm dork in cases of emergency.

"Don't know," I said. "Would you call Angel for me? I scared the hell out of Dennis and I don't want him to get riled up again--and you know how Angel is when I have a late night vision."

He hung up and I held the phone for a couple of seconds, feeling exhausted and out of breath. I looked over at the bedside clock. 1:06 AM. That was just great. Wonderful.

I groaned, swung out of bed, and tried to get myself together before the boys arrived with the car and lots of questions I couldn't answer. I turned on the CD player to keep me company.

I drank a glass of water after gulping back four Advil with it. No kidding it wasn't up to me. If it was up to me, I would currently be asleep in a fancy Beverly Hills mansion with Heath Ledger next to me.

Gunn wasn't with Wes and Angel when they showed. Neither was Fred, but she wasn't much use in late night recon work. Gunn not being there, however, was definitely weird.

"He didn't answer his cell phone," Wes said crisply. He looked like hell and my God, did he need a haircut. He was starting to have Angel hair and that was so very wrong.

"Cordy, do you have any idea of where this guy was?" Wes said, getting down to business. I could tell he really wanted to get back to his warm bed.

"It was this alley in a really industrial part of town--maybe off the 10? You know, right around where all the freeways come together?" I said. "I'm not sure. It could be anywhere."

Angel looked at me thoughtfully. Sometimes Angel worries too much about me. Actually, that's not true. Angel always worries too much about me, which is both touching and scary.

"I don't know who he's after," I said. "He killed a prostitute. He was disoriented, but I got the feeling he'd been killing people for a long time."

"How else are we going to find the location, Angel? Be sensible," Wesley said irritably. Wes needs his eight hours of beauty sleep or he gets mighty cranky and no amount of coffee or Earl Gray tea can fix him.

It took us an hour and a half to find the place. Instead of being off the 10, it was off the 5 in Norwalk, and a really ugly section of Norwalk at that, so close to the freeway that everyone had to shout to be heard. The nearest house was half a mile away.

I was sort of oblivious to the area, mostly because the closer we got, the worse my post-vision headache got. Every time I looked up, I'd get weird visual effects from the streetlights. Everything was washed out anyway because the neighborhood was full of those horrible yellowy sodium lights that turn everything black and white.

It was extremely creepy, and I knew I wasn't the only one who thought so, because Wes kept looking over his shoulder at me, twitching like a rabbit.

I looked around at the world, bleached to grays and shadows and yellowish tones. For a second, I could have sworn everything blurred, became something else entirely. I blinked.

It was a different world. I blinked again and it was back to the industrial slums of Los Angeles. I tried to remember the question. I tried to have an answer.

But that's when the sirens started going off. We pulled over promptly and wordlessly, knowing instinctively that the best thing was to simply act dumb.

There really wasn't a good answer for that, especially if the officer decided to search the trunk, which happened to be full of weapons that really couldn't be explained--and I remembered that there was one still covered in ichor. Wesley had been trying to find a spell or compound that removed the slime, but no luck yet.

405? Angel was an idiot. For all the driving he does, you'd think he'd know the freeways a little better. I tensed up, hoping that we weren't screwed. Part of the problem with helping the helpless is that sometimes, LAPD is trying to do the exact same thing and they don't take well to civilians helping out.

"405? I think you're more lost than you think," the police officer said emotionlessly. He suspected something. Of course, you couldn't blame him. We didn't have a good reason for being around here--except that we were looking for a murder scene, which wouldn't be a good reason in LAPD's books. "You folks better find your way back home. There's an investigation going on here."

I immediately looked over at Wesley and Angel. They managed to remain calm. Angel even looked at the officer curiously, as if he didn't KNOW exactly what sort of investigation was going on.

"Turn around, make a right at the next light, go up three lights, make a left. You'll see the onramp for the 5," the officer said diffidently. Angel nodded, feigning mild middle-class concern. Thank God, that was enough for the police officer. He told us we could go and to have a good night.

We thanked him and promptly turned around, made a right and then made another right at the next light. I felt sick. We had obviously not made it in time. I tried to picture what the crime scene looked like to keep myself from getting sick when we actually got there.

"At one in the morning, our victim was still alive," Wesley said softly, trying not to sound pedantic. "Let's say she died about one thirty. That's an hour. This isn't a very high-traffic area at one thirty in the morning, so assuming the killer didn't place the call himself--"

"That is fast," I admitted, puzzling out time in my head. "God, I'm tired of the Powers sending me visions of people we can't save."

The world around us was still yellow-gray when Angel parked his car and we got out, trying to be as quiet as possible as we armed ourselves discreetly and headed toward the buzz of sirens. It was not a fun walk. Every shadow seemed to be hiding someone and I kept thinking about the man with the knife.

It's the third century. But what, I asked myself, did that matter? The guy had been human. Normal, mortal, human. Insane, evil, and into cutting up prostitutes, but he wasn't supernatural.

"I think we're almost there," Wesley said in a pig's whisper. He looked properly watchful, so it was a complete surprise when Gunn said, in a normal conversational tone:

Wesley shrieked like a twelve-year-old girl at an N'Sync concert. Which he would of course deny later, but he did anyway. Gunn smirked.

"Cordelia had a vision," Wes said. "So what do you know about the murder? Because I assume that's what you were investigating tonight."

"You don't want to go over there," he said. "The pictures will be in the LA Times tomorrow morning anyway. It's--it's intense. I got out of there three minutes before the cops showed up."

Angel wanted to see the body. We could all tell from the way he stood there, the way he was giving quick glances toward the crime scene, the expression on his face--

"Because until Cordelia showed up with her vision, I thought it was your garden-variety psycho serial killer," Gunn said. "So are we going to go or does Angel need to taste the blood before he'll believe it?"

"Why are you so tense?" I asked. "You've got to be a match for any human serial killer out there. And there are four of us. No big bad bogeyman's going to get you."

"He's an escalating serial killer," Gunn said, sounding so much like Wesley when he said it that I almost thought it had been Wesley who'd spoken. "This is the second one tonight."

"It was all street kids and prostitutes. My people were--are--scared out of their minds," Gunn interrupted. "I was mostly involved with getting LAPD involved--the second murder was enough, but they sent the guy underground. Until tonight."

He had been looking really tired lately, I realized. But that didn't explain everything by a long shot, especially not the part where Gunn was nervous. Gunn didn't get nervous. Ever.

It was a crisp October evening in London, one heavy with scandal, murder, and blood among the poor and unwashed of Whitechapel. I had been reading the Times aloud for everyone's amusement, though not every one had been amused by the notorious deaths of notorious women in the city's seedier quarters.

"Tis not a laughing matter, Darla," said Angelus in dour tones. For Angelus had been made strangely disconcerted by the Whitechapel murders, despite the advantages it gave us. As long as we avoided 'ripping whores,' we could evade the London police quite nicely, and we had had a merry time of it with various pieces of dockside rubbish of late.

"Hardly, young William, and he hasn't outdone me," Angelus said coldly. O! I knew that tone of voice. He was exceedingly jealous, but it made plenty of sense. "Do none of you know the meaning of caution?"

William, who seemed determined to be saucy and mocking at all costs, laughed again at Angelus' sour humour. Ever since he'd embraced his status of a child of the night, he'd seemed determined to flaunt it most coarsely, like a tradesman with a new title.

"Don't you know how to enjoy your unlife?" he said, springing to his feet. "If I were gloomy as you, I'd wish myself dead all over again. You might as well be in the bloody tomb, Angelus."

Before Angelus could make a response, William walked over to the chair where I was sitting, snatched the Times from my hands with no apology but a rakish grin--and proceeded to take up where I'd left off reading with a lusty enjoyment of the subject. Drusilla, who was always unable to constrain her delight in William's antics, clapped and cooed.

"Two communications of an extraordinary nature, both signed "Jack the Ripper," have been received by the Central News Agency, the one on Thursday last and the other yesterday morning," William informed us in a very proper voice. I tried to hide my smirk. No matter how he aped roguish ways, William was the most petit of the petit-bourgeois and he could never hide that most fundamental flaw.

"The first was a letter, bearing the E.C. postmark, in which reference was made to the atrocious murders previously committed in the East-end, which the writer confessed, in a brutally jocular vein, to have committed; stating that in the 'next job' he did he would 'clip the lady's ears off' and send them to the police, and also asking that the letter might be kept back until he had done 'a bit more work.' Fancy that! Would you like it if I clipped your ear off, Dru love?" he asked. He blurred his features into the vampire face and bared his fangs, snapping his teeth at her playfully.

Drusilla clapped her hands over her ears. Her eyes were bulging most unattractively, though to me, she'd always been somewhat pop-eyed. I would of course never mention that--to her, anyway. It wasn't something one said to one's family, no matter how true it might be.

"O! I need my ears to hear!" she said in a passionate tone. William began howling with laughter. He dropped the newspaper onto the new Persian rug and crossed the room in two steps, and then swept Drusilla into his arms, while she kicked and shrieked like a struggling kitten.

"What? Even if I desire them to whisper sweet nothings into? You'd deny me?" William said in mock-offense. He rained kisses on her cheeks and forehead while Dru giggled and shrieked. Meanwhile, Angelus continued his dour, ill-humoured look. I resolved to find him a proper emetic, and then retrieved the newspaper. I was interested in Jack the Ripper and his savage adventures, even if no one else was.

"O, you have no opinion, then?" I asked, rising from the chair and setting my hands upon my hips. "What if I confessed that I was the Ripper? It's true. I've set about ridding London of its whores. They're an insult to our ancient and glorious profession--"

Angelus' overweening caution stopped William sporting with Drusilla for a moment. He looked up and snorted rudely, and while I usually didn't agree with William--he was an obnoxious twit not worth the blood he'd sucked from Dru--and my opinion of Drusilla was low indeed--I felt he was quite right.

"Angelus! You're such a bore," said William, in his most boisterous voice. "Why don't we find this Ripper chap? Take him with us. He'd be a hell of a lot of fun as one of us, don't you think?"

Angelus favored us with a scornful look, one that upset me incredibly. If he was going to be in the habit of acting like that, I would take myself elsewhere. England was dull enough as it stood, but if he chose to behave like a complete bastard, I wouldn't stand around and watch. I was going to go shopping--perhaps find myself a nice shopgirl.

"Think what you will," said I in my haughtiest tone. "I intend to go shopping. I've tired of Angelus' ill-humours and I'm quite bored and hungry."

"O, but Darla! It's not fit for you to be out alone," said William. He was up to another jest, I could tell. "What if you're caught by the Ripper? I've heard he's down on whores. Won't stop til he does get buckled."

I could suddenly guess his joke by his perfect timing and solicitous worries for me--both things not at all natural in William--and so I found no harm in sharing my guess.

"You nasty little creature," I said, holding in the worst of my rage. "You've sent those letters to the Central News Agency, haven't you?"

"I didn't!" said he, an impish devil of a smile crossing his visage. "O, wait. I did. But don't you approve, Darla dear, of the name I've given old Leather Apron? Jack the Ripper--a far superior name to anything the PAPERS have dreamt up so far."

Once a writer, always a writer--the writing may be horrid, the logic worse, but such is always the case. Drusilla beamed her pride at her lover's diabolical and dreadful wit and I found myself feeling ill.

"My Spike's a poet of death," she told me while slipping her arms around the obnoxious child, pressing her cheek against his. "His words ring with blood and pain."

With that, I made a dramatic exit from our lovely, fashionable home-- completely ignoring the worried cries from within. I was weary of sour expressions and thoughtless merriment--and especially, I had tired of watching yet another pair of lovers dying of immortal love under my nose, while I woke up and was left with only Angelus.

Ill-tempered, boorish old Angelus. What! what could have driven him to such choleric peevishness? He had been a whirlwind, a very paragon of vampiric virtues--and now he behaved as dourly and dully as a village parson, always reminding us of what we should not do. What fear had altered him so?--could it be a lingering dread that Holtz would appear? Holtz had been dead at least a hundred years--could he still fear the man?

It was most likely Holtz. I knew it and should have known before. But, bah! who was I to heal him? One of those Viennese quacks claiming that talking about your mother and father would unlock the key to every grim ghost lingering in your memory? Not a chance of that.

I left our neighborhood, unsure as yet of where to go. Were I in the market for a new bonnet and a pert salesgirl, I had best stay in the right part of town, but I felt a want--nay, a need--for a stiff gin. No proper bar would serve a lady. I would have to cross over to the East End and that would probably require a cab.

London. I hated London and its filthy, noisy streets. We had taken lodgings too close to Lincoln's Inn in Bloomsbury--William's urgings, of course, had cemented us into too long a lease--and many a bankrupt found his day made even worse by passing us on our midnight rambles. The streets here stank of middle-class respectability and I knew that the tradesmen's wives looked at Drusilla and I askance.

Covent Garden--that's where I'd go to find some entertainment. Only a fool would consider me a lady alone at night and I'd be able to find a cuppa somewhere, though I'd probably be hassled by street-arabs and whores.

Stupid whores. I'd starve before I let myself be shoved against a fence by a common workingman. I'd freeze--I swore I would. I wouldn't have allowed myself to get into those straits in the first place, no I would not have. Not that I had any great sympathies for them--they were as greasy and smelly as their clients with filthy skirts and empty bellies even after a night's hard work.

When I had sold myself, I had kept myself in good money--though I had been pretty even when I was dying--and Colonial Virginia had hardly been the crisis of poverty and sin London was in this year of our Lord 1888. Poor wights, what else could they do?

Had I really just thought such a thing? It was too much--too much sympathy, and too much thinking in any particularity--Angelus' influence on me, to be sure. If I didn't watch myself, I would end up as cautious and careful as he.

I turned down Little Queen Street and passed a pair of toothless whores trying to look comely as they sat and shivered in the thickening fog-- it was no pea-souper to-night, but between the October chill and their thin, inadequate garments, well might they shiver--and felt my stomach turn in revulsion. Were I starving to death, I wouldn't have deigned to eat that pair of featherless birds. I found myself fumbling with my purse and pulling out a few shillings.

The two unfortunates snatched the money from the gutter carefully, and fled from me in furtive delight, muttering what was either a curse or a God bless you, though I cared not what they said to me. I was possessed now, possessed of the desire to escape London, and quite preferably, all of England. I've never been fond of this country. In fact, I was quite wild to return to Eastern Europe, where a vampire was properly respected--and then off we should go to the Orient--perhaps even to Mandalay. I was seized with the urge to see Mandalay as soon as possible. That reverie was enough to distract me from the alley I'd turned into and cause the next crisis.

"Where are you headed, miss?" someone asked me in a coarse, loud voice. "You know it's not safe out for man nor beast with Saucy Jacky abroad."

I turned around and scowled at the solicitous gentleman interested in my wellbeing. Either he was a pickpocket looking for an easy mark or he was a policeman trying to get the whores off the streets. I didn't want to be vexed by either.

"Are you sure now, mum?" the man asked, a small leer slipping onto his spit-encrusted lips. "Are you sure you wouldn't 'ave been safer with a bit o' protection?"

He was short, dirty, and definitely no policeman. I could smell him from eight feet away, a stench of fish and unwashed flesh that told me he was a desperate thing. He was carrying a pathetic dagger--hardly more than a steak knife--and his jacket was made of rags and tatters.

But fortune was upon my side in the matter--the street was fairly well deserted and the fog was growing thicker with every passing second. None would notice a squalid body for a time and I'd have time to return home and tell Angelus to get rid of the body--to drop it in the harbor. The police would assume he'd been a drunken market porter who'd lost his way, if they ever found the body.

The enterprising gentleman quickly found himself in surprise, as I shook my head and revealed my true nature. His eyes bulged to see me, running my teeth over my fangs with a coquettish smile. O, they were sharp tonight!

"Thank you for your kindness--but I have a bit of protection," said I, drawling outrageously. I walked up to him and drew his filthy, stinking body against mine with the smooth motion of one arm. "Didn't I tell you I could care for myself?"

I exposed his unwashed neck with my other hand, burying my fangs deep into it--and within a few moments he was eternally dry. I was pleasantly satiated as I practically twisted his neck from his shoulders and let the stinking carcass fall to the ground, licking a few stray drops of blood from the corners of my mouth.

"Rip that," I said cheerfully. I checked quickly to see if any of his dirt had gotten on my dress--and with only a few quick brushes, I was passably clean again. I had decided I wanted a new hat and a bouquet of violets. There should be new fashions in from Paris and the flower girls in Covent Garden were never missed, so many existed in its borders.

"Darla! O, Darla!" someone cried as I was about to turn onto Great Queen Street. I was quite vexed. I could see the rest of London, glowing in the rising fog and in some ways, as far away from me as the moon and the stars. I turned about to see who was calling to me and discovered it was Drusilla. From the expression on her face, one of her dolls had told her to fetch me and tell me all about the blood and agony the stars had revealed to it.

This was so remarkable a confidence that I laughed. "That's London," said I. "Remember, this is where you're from. Can't you recognize London, you silly girl?"

"O, no," said she in tones even more bedazzled than her usual. "It's comin' together, can't you see? It's gotten caught and it's twisting and turning and--"