Design of Darkness

By Petronius

'Through those who lived evil,
or sired by the undead,
or forsook their own lives,
By these the contagion is spread."

The Van Helsing Quatrains

* * * * * *

"What but design of darkness to appall,
If design govern in a thing so small."

Robert Frost

* * * * * *

Former LAPD detective Kate Lockley shook her head in amusement as she stood staring across the lobby of Wolfram and Hart towards the front receptionist's desk. She couldn't believe after five years, she had actually returned to LA and was going to see Angel.

She had left in what clearly was a previous lifetime with no job, no prospects and a load of emotional baggage that would have brought down a 747. Her firing from the force and subsequent suicide attempt left her no alternative but to pull up roots and try again. That and some other unsettling and unresolved issues very nearly brought the hardened ex-detective to the brink a second time. That she had survived at all was probably attributable to one pivotal night in her New York apartment when everything came crashing down all over, just as it had in LA. Only this time, there was no Angel to save her. And the next night she woke up and found she was still there.

Call it Luck, call it Design or Chaos, call it some kind of twisted providence. Angel would have found an obscure entity to blame it on, she fantasized. She never understood why, just as she never completely understood why Angel had been able to enter her apartment without being invited in the night in LA that she nearly overdosed the first time.

And now she was held up in the front lobby by a pair of officious and obviously paranoid security personnel. She had triggered an after dark alarm of some kind and waited patiently for Wesley to finish arguing with his own officers. Kate smiled like she used to do, a thin wry grin. She had always remembered Wesley as a pompous ass but that opinion rapidly changed. He quickly exercised his authority as one of the Wolfram and Hart senior staff and Kate was on her way in. She liked that. Authority was still a turn on. She relished it in herself and was attracted to it in others. After five years, some things didn't change.

"I apologize for the delay," Wesley said to her in a thoroughly professional manner. Or was it? British accents always sounded professional. Kate realized Wesley couldn't help but study her long flowing blond hair and well fitted blouse. "We're having the sensors recalibrated, and we get these false positives all the time."

Kate only nodded. Here she was in the belly of the beast, the den of the arch enemy, and one of the top management whom she barely knew from years back was chatting politely with her as if she were an old friend and disrobing her with his eyes at the same time. Everything did seem upside down but then everything seemed that way since her second pillathon in New York two years ago. Nothing had been the same since.

And then came the news through one of her last contacts on the force that not only was Angel now head of Wolfram and Hart, he had also regained his mortality. Something to do with an apocalypse and a prophecy that he and another vampire named Spike had fought over. She wasn't interested in the details. All she knew was Angel was alive and mortal. That's why, after five years, she had called him, asking for a job. That's why she had to come back.

"Would you like some coffee?" Wesley asked politely.

"No thanks," Kate said softly as she glanced around, taking in the flow of dozens of living, breathing Wolfram and Hart employees, each one busy, each one singly focused on their job, each one an important cog in the machinery of this giant corporate. . . whatever it was.

Of course Wolfram and Hart was a law firm, she thought, but what the hell was it really? With a former vampire now at its helm? Everything was upside down.

Wesley led Kate up into the wing of executive suites. Two short blonde women hovered nearby, one in front and one behind the Executive Assistant's desk. Kate shook her head and smiled again as she listened to the fuller figured woman, who was obviously the receptionist, babble over the phone. Definitely nothing had changed since the days of Cordelia Chase. Somehow, no matter how high up the corporate ladder Angel ascended, he always ended up with a mindless ditz as a secretary.

The second young woman was diminutive as well but thin to the point of anorexia. Instantly, Kate could sense the force around her, the aura of power. The young woman tossed her long blond hair as Wesley swept up to the desk.

"Harmony, could you inform Angel that Kate Lockley is here," he said.

"Thank you for calling, could you hold please," Harmony answered into the receiver, pushed the wrong button and lost the call.

"You must be Buffy," Kate said firmly to the other woman in front of the desk. She resisted the automatic response to reach out and shake hands.

"So this is the infamous Kate Lockley," Buffy replied, half cautiously and half out of a curiosity that Kate sensed was born of jealousy, "You're the one that Angel talks about all the time."

"Oh, I don't think it's that bad," Kate answered coolly.

"Oh yes it is!" Harmony piped up from behind the desk as she floundered with the phone console, "Ever since the word got out that you agreed to come back and work for the firm, it's been nothing but 'When I first came to LA, Kate and I did this,' or 'When I took down the Moo Goo Gai Pan Demon, Kate did that.'"

Kate grinned slightly and tipped her head so that her thick hair shifted gently across her forehead. She didn't remember a bit of it except one particular blown heist. That was the night Angel had pretended to feed on her to protect her from a band of especially nasty demons.

Actually it wasn't completely pretend. It had to look real to be convincing. So it was real. That sensation she could never forget, even years later in New York and now here back in LA. As she had so often in the weeks, months and years that followed, Kate unconsciously rubbed the faint scars on her neck.

"Old times get boring real fast," she answered calmly as she quickly clasped her hands behind her back.

"Angel!" Harmony shouted into her headset, "Kate Lockley's here for her 8 p.m. appointment!"

"So, when's the big day?" Kate asked Buffy, trying to keep the talk going to fill the awkward pause. She had heard the news of the impending wedding between Buffy and Angel during one of the half dozen phone and e-mail chats she had had with the former vampire over the previous two weeks.

"May fifth!" Harmony butted in, "Stinko De Mayo! The reception's going to be a huge bash in the lobby! The whole firm is gonna . . ."

"Harmony, shut up," Buffy said firmly.

"Congratulations," Kate grinned.

"Thanks," Buffy nodded back.

The large double doors to the main suite swung open, and Angel poked his head out.

"Kate!" Angel waved his hand, "Come on in."

Buffy eyed the former LAPD detective as she turned to enter the office.

"We'll be done in a little bit," Angel called out as an afterthought to Buffy, "Then we'll go out to get something to eat."

Inside, Angel paused as Kate swept into the suite. She stopped and stared in awe at the lavish surroundings and stunning view of the brilliantly illuminated city from the floor to ceiling window.

"Classy digs," she said in appreciation.

"Comes with the territory," Angel replied trying to sound humble and hold on to the sense of the early days the two had shared battling evil on the streets.

Both stood side by side staring out into the night.

"Kate," he finally said sincerely, "You don't know what it means to me for you to . . ."

"That's okay," she interrupted and spoke again after a pause, "Angel, do you remember that conversation we had before I left?"

"You mean that time in the alley after . . . " Angel stopped, embarrassed.

"Yeah, that's the one, after I tried to kill myself . . . the first time," Kate answered, not missing a beat, "When you explained your 'Epiphany.'"

Angel nodded.

"Do you still believe it?"

"You mean the part about fighting for redemption and then finally just to beat the other guy?"

"Yeah, that's some of it," Kate answered quietly, not taking her gaze from the night enshrouded city.

"Kate," he said ironically, "a lot of people think I am 'the other guy' now."

"Same here," she whispered to herself.

"What do you mean?" puzzled, Angel studied her.

"I was supposed to die that night," she said softly as she turned to him, "You saved me, but I never invited you in."

Angel pondered her words as he had the circumstances over and over for the past five years.

"We always presumed it was something for good," she continued, "That there was a reason you could come into the apartment to rescue me."

"And I'm sure there was," Angel tried to be reassuring.

"But what if that reason . . . wasn't good?" she said ominously as she looked down momentarily, "You kept me alive for a purpose. What if it was rather by design of darkness?"

"I don't get it," Angel shook his head.

"If I had died that night, I probably would have . . . come back."

"As a vampire?" Angel asked in surprise.

"You know the Van Helsing Quatrains," Kate answered clinically and then recited slowly from memory.

"Through those who lived evil,
or sired by the undead,
or forsook their own lives,
By these the contagion is spread."

"I understand the suicide angle," Angel explained gently, "That was the old way of thinking, that those who killed themselves returned as vampires, but you didn't die, Kate."

"That's true," she said in almost a whisper, "But if I had, you would have killed me on the spot. Case closed."

Angel was silent.

"Angel," she said as she turned to look at him directly. He suddenly realized he saw depths in her blue eyes he never realized existed.

"Angel, you weren't there in New York."

"I'm . . . I'm sorry for that," he stammered.

"I knew I wasn't going to make it," Kate whispered as her voice trembled.

"Kate . . ." he said but she put her fingers over his lips in mid word.

"Angel, don't say anymore," and Kate Lockley leaned forward, burying her face on his shoulder. Angel wrapped his arms around her to comfort her.

"You're cold," he said quietly in response to her silent embrace, "You sure you don't want . . ." Suddenly he stopped as he felt her face morph against his shoulder.

Instantly, her lips straddled the warm skin of his neck and her fangs plunged deep into the flesh, searching for the pulsing source of his life. She found it immediately and drew hard and fast before he could realize what was happening.

Angel's first instinct from his new found mortality was to tear her away and throw her to the floor. But his responses weren't fast or as powerful as they were when he was a vampire, and the throbbing pleasure of her feeding on him suddenly washed across his very being. She pulled him in closer, her lips clamping down harder for a firmer unyielding grip. He felt his lifeblood fleeing, pouring into her as she drew on him even harder. At the same time, from the memory of an earlier existence, he no longer felt the urge to stop her but rather relished the ecstasy of the act.

Then suddenly Kate halted, pulling her red lips away from his neck just seconds before he lost consciousness. She quickly rolled up her sleeve, sliced a small vein with her fingernail and smeared the oozing blood across his open mouth. He didn't fight back, but rather swallowed the crimson liquid which slid down his throat easily like an unholy sacrament.

Gently, Kate settled Angel's limp body into his heavily cushioned CEO's chair. She pulled his collar up around his neck, concealing the wounds.

"Why? . . . ." he murmured as consciousness quickly fled away.

"Design of darkness," she said gently as she straightened his clothing. "The Senior Partners were willing to wait a long time. They knew I couldn't die back then in LA . . . because of what you'd do. So it happened later . . . in New York."

Angel shook his head weakly.

"They need a new CEO and Senior Management team at Wolfram and Hart," she continued as if she were bidding him good night.

The darkness swept in quickly as Angel's head nodded forward onto his chest.

"Call me when you're feeling better . . . Angelus," she said. Kate stepped into the private washroom, rinsed off her mouth and swiftly arranged her hair, makeup and clothing. She then crossed the executive suite and authoritatively marched out into the hall as she closed the double door firmly behind her. The lock subtly snapped into place.

"Angel's got a lot of paperwork to finish up," she announced to Buffy, "He said to go ahead and he'll meet you at the restaurant in about an hour."

Buffy nodded.

"I guess we'll be seeing more of you around here then," the Slayer answered trying to smooth over the tension from their first encounter. Kate nodded with her razor thin smile.

"And Harmony," Kate said, then paused for effect.

Harmony's head popped up as she waited with bated breath to respond to the orders of this newest of the Firm's senior level employees.

"Angel said to hold all calls. He's not to be disturbed so he can get the work done quickly."

"Right! He's the boss!" Harmony grinned back.

As Kate Lockley briskly strode through the lobby, she felt a luxurious warmth, Angel's new mortality now fully inside her. She relished it, the authority, the power that was his and now was hers too, surging through her body. That slightest sensation he had given her during the bungled heist so long ago had been well worth the wait to satisfy.

Kate smirked at the security personnel still floundering with the perfectly accurate alarm settings. She cast a casual wave to Wesley and walked out into the night. Maybe Angelus would hold Wesley in reserve for her. In any event, the Senior Partners should have their new management team, the one they originally intended five years ago, in maybe another hour or hour and a half, tops.

Then he would come to her and they could finally be together as she had dreamed so often since his epiphany.

~Fin