“You really didn’t think my witch wouldn’t detect you, once she knew what to look for?”
From an expanse of blank wall, Angelica appeared, followed by the blonde witch. The wall shimmered, and then part of it disappeared to reveal a concealed doorway.
Magicians created wards, Clem had said, so that passersby never knew what was going on behind closed doors.
The door was open, and as Angelica and the witch stepped forward, they began to exit the room beyond and fan out into the alleyway.
Lois struggled, and she could see a bead of sweat forming on the witch’s forehead. Angelica noticed and turned to one of her men.
“Stop fighting,” she said. “You might break free, but not before bad things happen to your friend here.”
From the back of the crowd, a vampire dragged Jimmy. There was a dark bruise over the side of his neck, a place where the blood had congealed under the skin.
Lois instantly stopped fighting when the creature pulled a switchblade out and held it against Jimmy’s neck.
The witch looked a great deal more relaxed, and Lois realized that Clark must have stopped fighting as well.
“You never had a chance,” Angelica said. “This is the closest alleyway to the drop site. Did your brujah come with you?”
She still thought they had a witch. Lois’s mind raced. If she was able to speak, she might be able to take advantage of that misapprehension.
Angelica didn’t fully appreciate Clark’s power, though Lois had no doubt that the witch had tried to tell her. Lois hoped that there was something in Clark’s bags of tricks that he hadn’t told her, otherwise things were about to get much worse.
The thought of having something looking out with her eyes, using her body to get close to the people she loved was abhorrent.
Her parents hadn’t been good to her. However, they loved her in their own way, and she wouldn’t want something that looked like her to attack them.
Lois suspected that she’d make a horrific vampire.
After a moment, Angelica’s eyes widened. “Oh! Cat’s got your tongue?” She chuckled. “Well that won’t do, not at all.”
Turning to the witch she said, “Let them speak.”
“Let him go,” Lois said. It took her a moment to realize that Clark was saying exactly the same thing.
Angelica smiled. “Cut from the same cloth, I guess. Heroes….”
She stepped closer to Lois and set her hand on Lois’s throat. It was cold, colder than ice.
“I hear that there is power to be had in Slayer blood. They say you haven’t made it until you’ve killed your first Slayer. Of course, I don’t think this is what they had in mind, but I’ll take what I can get.”
The witch cried out, and Angelica glanced back at her. “Eduardo.” She said.
A trickle of blood dripped from the knife point set against Jimmy’s throat. The witch gave a sigh of relief.
Patting Lois’s face, she said, “Still, I’m a little more ambitious that the run of the mill fledgling, so I have an offer to make you.”
She turned to Clark. “I’ve got a deal for you. You heroic types tend to be self sacrificing, so here is your chance.”
“I’m going to kill your friend in front of your eyes. I’m going to kill your…girlfriend and drink her dry. You might be able to get free, but it won’t be in time to save either one of them.”
She gestured to the slowly growing crowd of vampires slipping out of the doorway beyond. Now that Lois could see through the doorway, she realized that the room beyond was part of another demon bar. There was a reason that this alleyway was isolated and isolated despite being so close to a major Hollywood landmark.
Angelica stepped closer to Clark. “Or you could make the other choice. Both of them could live. They could walk right out of here, and I’d never be able to harm a hair on their heads. Make the trade, and that could be part of the deal…their continued safety.”
“Don’t do it,” Lois said. “Remember what Lorne said.”
Angelica might not appreciate the extent of Clark’s powers, but she clearly understood politics. He’d be an excellent tool for her to intimidate the others, and once she discovered what he could do, there might be no limit to what she could do.
Angelica gestured, and Lois found that she could no longer speak. The witch behind her nodded in her direction.
“You won’t get away with this,” Clark said.
“Really? I think I will,” Angelica grinned. “I think I’m going to get away with a lot more than this.”
“Why would I think you’d keep to the bargain?” Clark said. “I could make the trade, and you’d just have your minions do the killing for you.”
“It’d be part of the magic,” Angelica said. “Free passage from them both and I won’t order or cause any harm to either of them. Failure to follow the contract makes it all null and void.”
“Contract?”
“A verbal contract,” Angelica said. “But when you have a powerful witch on your side, it’ll be binding.”
She leaned forward. “All you have to do is say yes.”
Angelica ran her fingers idly over Clark’s chest. “I’m not eighteen any more. Would it really be so bad?”
Lois felt nauseous at the thought of having sex with a corpse. The thought that it might be Clark who was forced to do it made it even worse.
The thought of Clark in even another living woman’s arms was bad enough.
“Don’t make me do this,” Clark said. From the tone of his voice, he wasn’t talking about the deal.
“It won’t hurt at all,” Angelica said. “It’ll just be like part of you is going to sleep.”
She slid around behind him, touching him on his shoulders and his back. “I’ll finally get to know what it’s like, and you’ll get to know that your friends aren’t being tortured or killed.”
She leaned close to Clark, nibbling his ear. “Or maybe I could make them like me.”
There was some sort of spark off the switchblade, and a moment later the vampire holding it swore and leapt back as the hand holding the switchblade caught fire.
He shrieked and stumbled into one of the creatures standing near him, and this one caught as well. Lois felt the grip on her movements weakening, and she strained forward, hoping she could get free.
The witch dropped to the ground, her face contorted in pain.
Lois’s hand twitched and she found herself rocking in place.
The first vampire was now a blazing inferno. It screamed horribly and a moment later she could see its skeleton. A moment after that, it was ash.
The others were beating the flames out of the second creature, but it was apparent that vampires burned quite easily.
Jimmy collapsed to the ground, and apparently that was all Clark needed. He pursed his lips, and a moment later a mighty wind whipped through the alleyway. The flames covering the second vampire vanished. Those vampires who were standing flew backward. One fell back into the witch.
Instantly the feeling of paralysis was gone.
Lois was moving a moment later, and Clark simply vanished. It was as though he had disappeared into thin air. An instant later Jimmy was gone from the ground.
Lois lunged forward, punching Angelica in the face.
It wasn’t Tae Kwon Do, or any other martial arts move, but it felt really good. After all the feelings of helplessness, of waiting for the next time Angelica was going to attack from out of nowhere, it felt good to finally lash out and get some of her own back.
Angelica looked stunned. If Lois had a piece of wood, it would have been all over that minute.
Instead, Lois felt herself being jerked backwards violently. She was alone in a group of twenty creatures that hated her.
The world spun around her, and then she found herself on a rooftop.
It had been Clark who’d grabbed her, Lois realized.
Jimmy was on the ground beside Clark. Clark looked at her for a moment, and it took Lois a moment to recognize the expression on his face.
It was the same expression she’d seen in the mirror every day since coming back from the Congo. It was a combination of shock, guilt and pain.
A moment later, Clark and Jimmy were both gone.
Lois suspected they were going back to the hospital. Lois hoped that this time Clark found Jimmy some place out of Los Angeles. Worrying that someone was going to find his hospital room and hold him hostage again was more than they needed at the moment.
If it hadn’t been for the change, that’s what her life with Clark would have been like. She would have always been a target, someone that people used to try to manipulate Clark.
It wasn’t ever going to happen to her. She was never going to be a liability.
She was never going to be a liability again.
**************
Five minutes turned to ten. Ten minutes turned into half an hour. Lois was beginning to wonder if Clark was ever coming back.
Lois was shivering. She hadn’t dressed warmly, and the wind up here was fairly constant.
She was only on the third floor. There wasn’t a door visible up here, and Lois was beginning to wonder if she might try jumping down a floor to the building beside her.
She heard the crunch of his shoes, and Lois turned quickly. Clark had landed silently behind her.
“Is Jimmy going to be all right?” Lois asked.
“I got him to a hospital in Kansas,” Clark said. “My parents will keep an eye out for him.”
For some reason, Clark wasn’t looking at her.
“Won’t he wonder how he got there?”
“I don’t care,” Clark said. He closed his eyes for a moment. “I don’t think I can do this anymore.”
“What?” Lois asked.
“This,” Clark said, gesturing at the skyline. “I thought I was finally ready to be around normal people, but…”
“What are you talking about?” Lois stepped closer to Clark.
“It’s time to go home.” For the first time, Clark looked Lois in the eye, and his expression was bleak. “What are we really accomplishing here?”
“Breaking the story of a lifetime?”
“We aren’t going to publish any of this,” Clark said. “You know it as well as I do.”
“There are parts we can publish,” Lois said. “Get out the parts that people will believe, at least point people in the right direction.”
“We should get out now. What more can we possibly learn?”
“I can’t believe you’re giving up,” Lois scowled. “So you just want to walk away?”
“I killed someone tonight,” Clark said. He was silent for a long moment. “How am I supposed to live with that?”
The question hung in the air between them. It was the same question Lois had been asking herself for days.
How did you go on after you have done the unthinkable?
“You killed something tonight.” Lois said finally. Her throat constricted. This wasn’t a conversation she wanted to be having with Clark. “It wasn’t human.”
“That makes it all right?” Clark said. “I’m not human. Clem isn’t human. We’ve seen a lot of people tonight who didn’t look human. Is that enough to make it ok to kill them?”
“You were protecting Jimmy,” Lois said quietly. “You had no choice.”
“There’s always another choice. I just didn’t want to take it.” Clark scowled. “Part of me has been waiting for this since I was ten years old. I’ve dreaded it all my life.”
What was the worst nightmare of an invulnerable man? Hurting other people.
“I’ve always been so careful. I played football in high school and college, and I never hurt a single person.”
But part of him had always been waiting for the other shoe to drop.
“Clark…” Lois wasn’t sure what to say. Communicating her emotions had always been difficult. She’d learned early on that what she said would be used against her later. It had always been easier just to go on the offensive.
People were less likely to find the hurtful things to say if they were off balance.
Clark’s voice was bewildered. “It wasn’t supposed to happen like that. I was just trying to make him drop the knife. I was going to heat it up and make him drop it.”
The vampire had moved. Lois remembered it vividly. It had shifted in its place, and Clark had caught its sleeve on fire.
“It all happened so fast,” Clark said. “I should have blown him out. It’s just…when I saw the fire, I froze.”
He’d probably been frozen, horrified. He hadn’t seen how terribly flammable the things had been at the Cortez ranch. It must have flabbergasted him to realize what was happening.
“I forgot tonight just how fragile people are. That’s something I can never afford to forget. You just don’t understand.”
“I understand,” Lois said softly. “You think I don’t understand how easy it is? They’re so fragile.
Lois closed her eyes as an image of flying teeth and cracking bones came to mind. She shuddered.
“It’s so easy to break bones.” Lois continued. The feeling of Olaf’s wrist under her fingers, snapping like a stick made her fingers twitch.
At least Clark was looking at her now. “I’m supposed to be better than that.”
“Better than me, you mean.” Lois closed her eyes.
Clark touched her arm and said, “No…I didn’t mean…”
“You killed something accidentally tonight, Clark.” Lois shook her head. “Something that would have killed Jimmy and would have gone on and on, killing until it was killed.”
Deep in her stomach she knew she was right. Not killing the thing would have been the greater crime, because it would have meant being responsible for the deaths of everyone the thing killed after it was released.
“I killed people, Clark.” Lois looked up at him finally. ”I’ve killed people, and I knew what I was doing.”
The words hung in the air between them like a death knell.
