~Same time, on the outskirts of Sunnydale city limits~

"You know, for a guy who's celebrated his bicentennial more than once, you're one of the biggest suckers this side of the Alamo."

"What?" Angel glanced up, startled, from his handful of loose change.

"Do you realize you just paid the man more for a little squeaky thimble of a car than I'd pay for the biggest monster SUV to ever terrify LA's taxi-loving heart?"

Angel blinked. "He overcharged me?"

"Tip for the future, my friend? If the guy you're buying a car from isn't wearing anything but a wife-beater, three days' worth of stubble, a gold tooth, and a bad toupee, let the buyer beware."

"Probably wasn't such a good idea to whip out that big fat rolls of bills that was supposed to have lasted us all through this trip." Gunn slouched over to them, disdain evident in his sour expression. "Any man with half an ounce of shrewd and a few pounds of beer gut just lights up when they see you coming."

"You are awfully innocent when it comes to money, Angel," Wesley chimed in, quite innocuously.

Angel glanced darkly at Xander, who seemed to be having a good deal of difficulty keeping a straight face. "How much did he overcharge me?"

"Whoa, whoa." Xander raised his hands. "We don't want Angelus coming out to play, thanks. So he soaked you for a few extra Jeffersons. At least they weren't Benjamins." He hesitated, the light of sudden panic filling his eyes. "They weren't Benjies, were they?"

"No. And the rest of you may now leave Angel alone, if you please. I've been placed in charge of the largest amount of our petty cash. I merely disbursed enough for Angel to feel useful in procuring us a vehicle."

Right on cue, Xander and Gunn snickered at the word "procured". Wesley rolled his eyes. "If you're quite finished? Infantile senses of humor," he muttered darkly.

"Baby yourself." Gunn smirked and blew his lover a kiss. Right on cue, British blushing. Kind he loved best.

Angel began to circle the small rental. "It does have blacked-out windows," he pointed out hesitantly.
"Important to those of us who tend to explode under the influence of UV." Still, even as Wesley supported Angel's choice, he folded his arms and looked askance at the small vehicle. "Do you think we'll all fit?"

"All of us, maybe, if we don't breathe - no insult, Deadboy." Xander flashed him a grin that was almost entirely not innocent. "With all of Cordy's luggage? No hope."

Angel sagged visibly under the reminder. After all, he'd been the one to drag every one of the bags that their sole female member had insisted were 'absolutely necessary', down the flights of steps from her apartment to his convertible.

Xander popped open the hood and peered inside. "Aw, jeez," he said after a dumbstruck moment. "Angel, did you--"

"No," Angel snapped. "Gunn, would you - what are you doing?"

The dark-skinned man was circling the car, kicking at the occasional tire. "Compact car, my ass," he mumbled. "Looks like it's been through a compactor."

"Gunn, give Angel a break, won't you?" Wesley tried the pleading eyes at the darker man.

"Break his leg, maybe. If Grandpa lead-foot over there hadn't decided that the 'check engine' light on the dashboard of his Ford Penis was just for decoration, we wouldn't be in this mess. Then he rents this POS and wants us to grin and take it up the ass."

"Must you be so crude?"

"I really must.  You seriously want me to take this lying down?"

"Thought you preferred standing up against the wall or doggy style," Xander deadpanned from within the engine as he rummaged about, connecting fuses and doing otherwise illgal modifications.

British blush doubled. Almost worth the nasty cracks, Gunn thought. He'd still have to smack Xander later for that, though.

"Enough!" Wesley sighed. "It's done now; we'll simply have to make the best of it." His hand went to his face as if to adjust the eyeglasses he'd given up wearing. "We'll all just have to inhale--"

"Except for the corpse amongst us," Xander cut in.

"--and make the best of it," Wesley continued, severely, as if he hadn't been interrupted.

"And ride all the way into town with Cordy's suitcases in my lap and Cordy in your lap."

"Hey! Why do I have to ride with Cordy in my lap?" Xander objected. "Ex-issues here, thank you."

Angel shook his head, hard. "I don't think she'd go for that."

Wesley pinched the bridge of his nose. "Then let her ride in Gunn's lap. I shall promise not to display any unbecoming jealousy."

"She ain't riding in my lap. Lady's got hips like coat-hangers. She damages any of my dangly bits and I know you're gonna display something mighty unbecoming then."

"Jaysus, Mary and Joseph!" Angel exploded, lapsing back into a hint of his old brogue as he slammed his fist into the trunk of the car. "Since, as you say, I was the one daft enough to rent this rattletrap, I'll be having her on my lap for the arduous," heavy on the sarcasm on that word, "--ten minute ride into Sunnydale and the Magic Box. And I'll not hear another syllable about it, do you hear me?"

"Except the fact that since you rented it, you're the only one who can drive it?" Xander asked innocently.

"Fucking hell!"

"Hey, at this point I don't care if we lash her to the roof." Xander eyed the top of the compacted compact. "Which, now I come to think of it--"

"Enough!" Angel roared. "We'll figure it out when she comes back." He stopped abruptly, and glanced around. "Where'd she go, anyway?"

Xander shrugged. "To get a map, she said. I personally think she's locked herself in the gas station bathroom, cockroaches bedamned, and she's doing her face so she'll be able to wow 'em when we roll back into home sweet home."

The four men exchanged looks. Angel groaned and sagged against the compact's door. "We'll be here for hours, then."

Xander glanced at his watch. "Thirty minutes. She might be done with the moisturizing and foundation by now -"

"Or she might have been actually buying a map--" the rolled-up item swatted Xander in the back of the head, "and going in for a pee, thank you, but ending up killing cockroaches, with which the bathroom was infested, thank you. And yes, I was going to freshen up, maybe a little, but no way I was even pulling my makeup case out in there - I mean, yuck - and oh, yeah, I was also busy having an eensy little migraine-inducing vision."

Cordelia hove into view like the fiercely beautiful figurehead on the prow of a ship, gorgeous and dangerous. She thwacked Xander on the head with the map a second time for good measure and because she looked like she felt like it.

"Vision?" Angel straightened, rushing toward his Seer. "What was it?"

"Damned if I know. You got any aspirin on you?" She took a bottle rummaged hastily out of Wesley's jacket pocket, and gratefully accepted Xander's offer of the rest of his Yoo-Hoo to wash the pills down with. "Strange things. Really weird, and I'm talking movie of the week weird, here."

"We are on our way back to the Hellmouth," Wesley pointed out. "Perhaps your closer proximity to this place enhances or distracts from the potency of the visions."

"In which case, count me back on the first bus back to LA. Better smog than migraines."

"Can't argue with that." Xander nodded like an agreeable puppy. "How about I come along and keep you company? At a discreet distance, say across the aisle and up a few rows." They might work together for AI, but all their fumbling high-school gropes in broom closets and a year or so separate before running into each other again had left them with a few issues, as in Capital Letter Issues. They could face each other, could even work together, but didn't exactly have what would be called a friendship. They had a state of amicable putting-up-with. No lines crossed, no explosions necessary.

"Yes, but what did you see?" Wesley pressed.

"Give me a minute, will you?" Cordelia rolled the semi-cold bottle of chocolate milk drink across her forehead. "Two women locked in a basement. They couldn't - no, they wouldn't come out. A little bottle of black glass. Something that looked like a demon cotillion."

Angel blinked.

"A what, now?" Xander demanded. "Since when do demons waltz and eat finger foods instead of fingers?"

"How many visions you got to hear about before you realize they don't make any sense, brother?" Gunn asked wearily. "So, great. Visions equal bad things. And here we thought it would only be a nightmare to be taking a trip to Sunnydale."

"Call it a two-for-one special. A trip to the hellmouth and a trip through hell."

Angel pulled an odd face and turned, scenting the wind. Wesley lifted his head. "What is it?"

"I'm not sure," Angel muttered, closing his eyes and straining to catch the faint, tangy odor. "It's mostly clean. Smells like humans around here." His eyes popped open. "Almost all humans."

"This close to the hellmouth?  That's not right. Not right at all."

"Maybe they're on vacation?" Xander suggested. The quartet of glares he received barely brushed his surface; he shrugged them off with a casually upraised finger. "So, anyone still up for that bus trip to LA?"

"You're coming with us if I have to tie you to the bumper."

"Easy, Angel. I like bondage as much as the next guy, but I never thought of you that way."

"Whoa, boy!" Cordelia and Gunn each caught one of Angel's arms. "You know he's all mouth," she soothed him, before shooting Xander a vicious look. "The spell needs all of us to work right--"

"If Wesley translated it right --"

"--and If he tries to brush us off one more time, I'll make sure he regrets it. And you know I can do it, too."

Xander paused in mid-breath, paling.

"Exactly," Cordelia said in satisfaction. She stepped back and tilted her head to glance at the rental car. "Not bad."

"Not bad?" Angel stood a little straighter. "See? Cordelia likes it."

She circled the car, dabbing at dents with a forefinger. "I mean, it's not exactly the kind of company car that'll enhance our image, but it's big enough for me and my stuff. Where are the others?"

Xander burst into laughter and saluted. Cordelia's lips pursed. "Angel?" she asked, her tone of voice warning him that there would only be one right answer to the question she was about to ask, and that he'd better have the answer she wanted. "You did rent something else, didn't you?"

"Cordelia..." Angel began to placate her - then stopped. He sniffed the air again, face crinkling in confusion.

Wesley looked around, as if he felt uneasy. Watched, or not-watched, as the case might be. "It feels like there's something here, but -"

"It doesn't smell like it." Angel frowned. "What has a demon's aura, but isn't a - yow!"

The vampire jumped back a good three feet, feet sending up a slurry of dust and broken concrete from where he landed. "What the hell was that?"

"Besides you doing a damn good impression of a spring uncoiling? Nothing. Not that I can see, anyhow." Now Gunn was peering into the dark, shading his eyes against the glare of the streetlight a bit further down the road.

"Not looking in the right places. Ssssssh." A soft, sweet, rough-furred hissed behind them.

Each member of the AI team took a quick, terrified glance at the other before doing the mental math and coming up with the inevitable answer.

"What the hell?" Gunn demanded, even as they automatically huddled together back to back.

A soft, rollicking giggle was his only answer. "Not asking the right questions," the voice chided, full of sibilants. "You don't see me?"

"No. Where are you hiding?" Angel asked, scanning the horizon.

"No one ever looks up," the strange voice said sadly. "Up, up, up! Up the tree with no place to call my home. Important day! I have to be here!"

The group froze. Slowly, as one, they glanced up into the thick branches of one of the old, half-dead trees that straggled around the edge of the gas station. A softly-curved, piquant face peeked out from between a cluster of leaves. "Me, me!" it chanted. "See me now?"

Xander swallowed. Hard. "No way," he breathed. "It couldn't be. Willow fixed her."

Gunn nudged him. "You know her?"

Xander nodded, jerky, automatic. "I did." He reached a slow hand up to touch the smooth angle of the creature's face. The woman, once sleek and comfortable and sweet as a sleeping cat, now clinging to half-rotten branches and giving him a crazed, dazzling smile.

She purred under his touch. "I remember you," she purred. "They don't know you're coming, but I did. I do. All the time I heard you calling and I saw what she --" pointing at Cordelia with a broken nail - "--saw. Knew I had to come to warn you, welcome you."

Angel exchanged glances with Xander. He'd never seen the boy look so sickened, not even after the three years he'd spent with them in LA. From an attitude-stricken boy full of rebellion at being the "useless" member of his local team, through his leather-wearing "rogue hunter" phase (thankfully passed through as quickly as Wesley's), and out the other side as a fully functional member of AI, Xander had seen it all and could bounce back from anything.

Not, it seemed, from this.

"Yeah, I know her," he said slowly. "Do you remember me?" he asked the woman, slow and careful, treading lightly as not to startle her. "Tara? Do you remember me?"

"Sssssxanderrrr," Tara purred back, mouth wide in a crazed grin. "Sssxander's come home at last. My Willow's going to be so happy!"


~ TBC ~

B A C K