Energy (A Buffy fanfic)

Chapter 4: Good Dog

I'm at the hospital with Willow, Xander and Theo. Giles says he'll be here as soon as he can. The doctors say she'll be alright, that she'll be awake soon. They given her some iron supplements - apparently she's anaemic. If only they knew.

Xander turns to me, says "You should kill him. He's a vampire, and he nearly killed your mother. Not that I'm biased or anything. I wouldn't want you to think that." I nod, barely listening, just watching Mom's chest rise and fall, so happy that it could, so angry that it had almost been stopped forever. As soon as she wakes up, if it really was Angel - of course it is. How could it be otherwise? Look at the wounds on her neck.

I'll hunt him down.

She stirs, her eyes fluttering. I'm at her side in a heart beat, holding her hand. "Mom?" I say softly, tenderly. She looks at me, eyes unfocused. Hardly surprising that she's still a bit dazed.

Her eyes focus, seeing me. My heart leaps. "Buffy?" she says weakly. "What happened?" I try to remember what the doctor had said. What was it? Oh yes - "You fell on a barbecue fork." I say calmly, trying not to let her know that anything out of the ordinary had happened, how close she had come to death. At least she doesn't know.

She frowns, confused "We have a barbecue fork?" Then something else replaces her confusion - worry. "Your friend must have been so scared. must have run off. I'm not surprised." I frown. It must have been Angel, Mom would never call anyone else my "friend". As if he wasn't a lot more than that. And a lot less.

I get up when I hear the door creak open. Giles. Now I can go and kill Angel, like I should have done as soon as I found out. I leave, saying that there are a few things I need to take care of, that'll I be back in an hour or two. She doesn't seem to notice, shes staring at Giles, a faint frown on her face as though she was trying to remember him. "Do I know you?" She asks, puzzled. I leave them to it.

If I know Angel, and I think I do, I know where he'll be. He will want to make this easy. He'll be at The Bronze, waiting for me. Waiting for one of us to die. I mean to make it him.

I pick up the crossbow I'd asked Giles to leave outside - I don't want to get close to him. Kill him from a distance. I head to The Bronze, and try to fill myself with the same numbness that I'd felt when I'd seen him feeding on Mom. It's harder, now, now that I'm so close. A strange place, Sunnydale, to build a hospital so close to a nightclub. I suppose it's logical, with the amount of accidents one gets there. It'll take me hardly any time at all to get there.

And indeed it doesn't. Not even five minutes later, and I'm standing outside the door. I take a deep breath before I go in. Not to steady my nerves - I'm not scared. To hold onto the numbness, to do what must be done. I go in

I'm not surprised to see him lounging there, completely at ease, toying with a dagger. He flicks it into the air, watching the light play on it as it spins, then deftly snatches it out of the air. Without even looking at me, the gesture changes, and I can hear the knife whistle past my ear, hear it vibrate as it hits the doorframe next to me. I have no doubt that that was his target. He wants to toy with me. Sadist.

Without seeming to move, he was upright, facing me, his yellow vampire eyes sparkling malignantly in the gloom. I'm not used to seeing anyone but Theo move that fast, but from what Giles has been teaching me, vampires can't move like that all the time, not even the oldest. He's just showing off.

Calmly, wrapping myself in numbness, I ready the crossbow, ready to fire, to kill. He just stands there, arms outspread, welcoming it.

I can't do it. Not if he won't fight. Why won't he fight?

I lower my crossbow, but keep it ready so I can fire it in a heartbeat, should it be necessary.

"Come on!" he snarls viciously, as only a vampire can. "Do it! Do what you came to do." He comes towards me, arms still outstretched, trying to goad me into it. Now, facing him like this, trying so hard to make me kill him, without him striking a blow against me, I can't believe he's evil.