[Gunnwesley] The Visitors (R, 2/2)

[Katarina Hjärpe]

Headers in part one.


**********

He'd never know how Faith got in. Certainly not by force, since the door was 
whole. Maybe she broke it open, or used a spell, though the thought of 
anyone selling spells to that girl was deeply disturbing. Even more 
disturbing, in fact, than having one's kidneys used as a punch bag.

"Hey, Wes, old boy!" She leaned down between punches, tilting her head so 
her hair wouldn't fall into her face. "You're not fading on me, are you? 
It's no fun if you're unconscious."

Wesley was a lot further from unconscious than he wanted to be, but he was 
keeping his mind busy. Whenever he thought of what Faith was currently 
doing, his mind leaped to what she would be doing next, and that made the 
pain so much worse. Without the anticipation, he could stand it – it was 
still a lot more pleasant than sitting around for days feeling his flesh 
rot.

And that thought set his imagination off again. Damn it. He forced himself 
to think of the door. She could probably have opened it with a skeleton key 
quite easily. The lock was uncomplicated after all, it wouldn't take more 
than a minute, and the neighbours wouldn't question.

Damn it again.

Her fist landed on his jaw, and since his reflection about the neighbours 
had brought him back to his surroundings – they wouldn't check up on him 
either – he anticipated the next blow and balked at it. Foolish of him. Gunn 
had told him time and time again that you were to move your head *forward* 
if someone was about to hit it, since that caused less damage to the neck. 
Even worse, his move made the rope tied around his body tighten further, and 
it was already half strangling him.

He gave a low, muffled moan through the gag, and Faith's face lit up at the 
sound, as eager as a little girl who had been given a present. "Life in you 
after all, huh? Kinda pleased to see it."

Such encouragement had evidently given her new energy, and he had plenty of 
time to regret it as Faith rained punches down on his face, his chest, his 
lower regions... every time the pain from one place started to blur, she 
started on another.

But after a while, her enthusiasm seemed to fade. She was getting bored, and 
he would have found that a lot more comforting if he thought she had any 
particular reason to want him alive after she finished with him.

She took a step backwards, watching the painting on the wall next to her. It 
was a badly done framed reproduction of a Van Gogh put up by the tenant 
before Wesley, but it was the only decoration in the room, and Wesley had 
kept it hanging because it was better than the wall, if just barely. It 
wasn't like Faith to show an interest in such things, and Wesley came to a 
conclusion concerning what she wanted with it just as her elbow hit the 
glass.

She was humming to herself as she picked up the largest of the glass shards 
from the floor and stepped over the rest to get back to Wesley's chair. 
"You've been doing better than I thought, so far." She drew the shard down 
his face. "But there are five basic torture groups, and I'm game for all of 
them if you are."

The cut stung a little, but was noticeably less painful than the beating had 
been. The thought of three more torture groups past this frightened him 
more. As long as she wasn't cutting out large chunks of flesh...

He was really causing more damage to himself than she was, and that was 
saying a lot.

As she trailed the shard over his chest, he forced himself to stop thinking 
altogether. All his thoughts came back to fearful anticipation anyway. He 
wished they could have taught him meditation techniques at the Council – but 
watchers weren't supposed to end up in situations like these. Danger was for 
Slayers, and Slayers were to handle it.

Faith suddenly jumped onto his lap. "You look bored. Hell, I'm bored. What's 
the problem? Aren't I bad enough for you?" She put the shard under his 
pinned-up sleeve and lifted it. "Too much pain already? Let's see what I'm 
up against."

He closed his eyes as she started cutting through the cloth. There was no 
way for him to stop her, but he certainly wasn't going to watch.

"I'll be damned..." she said, and he was entirely grateful he couldn't see 
her expression, because the quiver in her voice was bad enough. But it 
didn't take too long for her to get back to flippant. "That's some piece of 
work."

He didn't need to be told. The first night home from the hospital, he'd 
learned the sight of his shoulder by heart, and during the long months after 
that, he had learned what it meant. He recalled the number of times he had 
thought the surprises were over, only to find himself wrong. Those times had 
become few and far between, but he certainly hadn't expected the pain and 
humiliation as she cut that God-damned glass shard into scarred flesh.

The cut caused his phantom arm to shoot out. It immediately started trying 
to twist itself around like laundry wrung dry, and he had to bite the gag 
hard not to scream. He could always throttle her with the phantom, but what 
good was pretend murder when the situation was real?

"It's no good," she said, her voice pouty. "I could never hope to improve on 
something like that."

The weight on his lap shifted, and then he felt a sharp pain in his right 
shoulder. His eyes flew up automatically, and fear filled his heart.

"I guess I'll have to settle for making a copy."

Please, God, he thought, don't let her do it. Please don't let her. He 
couldn't turn his mind off any longer, couldn't ignore the images that came 
with the pain. All he could do was pray, and praying had never been a strong 
suit. Church had always just been an enlarged version of his family's dining 
room, with God presiding in the top chair, and as soon as he could away with 
not going, he had. But now he needed all the help he could get, even from 
such an unlikely source.

"Can you imagine what that would be like?" she asked, full of obvious 
fascination, and he could, far too well. He didn't need her whispered 
details in his ear to start sweating, but she seemed at last to have 
understood what would get to him and kept adding new things to his frantic 
imagination. It didn't matter that the shard was only trailing a circle 
around his shoulder, barely scraping the skin enough to scar.

"You want me to stop?"

He did, but he wasn't going to beg, not if his life depended on it. Instead 
he nodded over his shoulder, and when she looked down to see what he meant 
he extended his middle finger at her. He couldn't move much, but that he 
could do, and he felt a moment of triumph at having not given in to her, a 
moment was very quickly killed when she grabbed his hand and bent the finger 
back until it broke. Jesus Christ! He'd lost a limb – how could a small 
broken bone make him want to throw up?

"Still not bad enough for you? How about I break them all before I rip it 
off?"

Please God, please God... but if his prayers had been pointless before, how 
much more so would they be now that he had proven to be so utterly foolish. 
Begging wouldn't have helped, no, but prolonging the pain by ticking her off 
still was a very bad idea.

Someone started knocking hard on the door, and his heart started pounding 
with hope. His first thoughts went to Gunn – who was bound to have missed 
him by now, and at least Gunn would stand a bit of a chance against a 
Slayer. It had to be Gunn, couldn't be the neighbours. They'd never be so 
persistent in their knocking.

"Wes?" yelled a female voice from outside. "Are you in there?"

Not Gunn. Alonna. Good Lord, if Faith killed her it would devastate Gunn. He 
mustn't let that happen, but how could he do anything about it? All he could 
offer was a muffled cry as Faith went to the door, unlocked it, slammed it 
open and grabbed Alonna by the hair.

"What the f..."

Before Alonna could finish speaking she was tossed into a wall. She lifted 
her head up and gave Wes a startled and somewhat puzzled glance, but when 
she tried to get up Faith kicked her in the stomach, rolling her over again.

"Aren't you a pretty one?" Faith said, coming closer with the glass shard in 
her hand. "Wonder how you'll look with your face cut up."

Alonna was cowering, which was so utterly unlike her that Wesley started to 
worry that perhaps she was seriously wounded. Slayer strength was only meant 
to deal with demons, and for a human to be thrown across the room like 
that... He could only hope that she wasn't, and that she'd be able to get 
out somehow. It was a bit too high to jump out the window, but he thought 
one could survive such a leap, and it was certainly better than aiming for 
the door – but please, girl, get *up*!

Faith leaned down over her victim, and as Alonna quickly moved forward there 
was a glimmer of something in her hand. And somehow – Wesley couldn't 
believe it, but miracles were not to be questioned – Faith fell to her knees 
and then slid to a graceless heap on the floor. He heard a whispered "you 
bitch" from her, which was quite a textbook examinationple of the pot and 
the kettle, but he couldn't contemplate that for long, because now Alonna 
was dragging herself up from the floor and then cutting his ropes with the 
bloodied knife. "Are you okay? Jesus, Wesley, you look like hell..."

"Where did you get that?" he breathed as soon as she'd gotten the gag off.

"Never go anywhere without it." Her hands were shaking and he could feel the 
knife nick his skin from time to time, but it was a lot better than the 
ropes. "I'm surprised you do. Never know when a demon's going to show up at 
your home, right?"

"She's not a demon."

Alonna's hands stilled on the ropes, and she stared up at him with her eyes 
round and wide. "What do you mean, not a demon?"

He slowly moved his aching feet away from the stumps of rope and watched 
Faith's fallen body carefully. Her chest still rose and fell, if slightly, 
and part of his mind wanted those breaths to stop, but he still had Alonna 
to think of. She was the one who would have killed a human, and it was very 
clear from her expression that she wasn't ready for that. Even if he tried 
lying to her she'd probably guess the truth, and he was much too tired for 
lies anyway.

"You'd better call an ambulance."

Without a word, she went to fetch his jacket, searching the pockets for his 
phone. Not until she started dialling the number did she speak again, 
asking, "For you or for her?"

He could manage without an ambulance, he was sure. Still, if she was calling 
one anyway... "Both."

"I stabbed a human?" she asked, but he didn't have to answer, thank God, 
because she flinched in the middle of speaking and then started talking into 
the phone. "Hi. There's a woman with a stab wound to the chest and... I had 
to do it. She was torturing him."

She wasn't completely coherent, but managed to get the address out along 
with a description of his wounds that was much too graphic for his liking. 
Certainly it couldn't be *that* bad – after all, he managed to get back on 
his feet without further aggravating his injured arm.

Torture, Alonna had said. It wasn't a word he wanted to cling to. If he'd 
heard correctly she had also confessed attempted murder. Did 911 tape their 
calls? Even if they didn't, a testimony would be bad enough. Keeping Faith 
alive suddenly became an urgent matter. Alonna could claim self defence. 
It'd be a rotten mess, but he'd drawn her into it, he had to get her out.

He didn't dare get down on his knees to see to Faith, afraid he'd never be 
able to get back up, so he just stood there watching, hoping the slayer 
wouldn't die, but wouldn't regain full consciousness either. Alonna finished 
the phone call and walked back to him.

"Are you okay?" she asked, putting her hand on his least bruised cheek. He 
meant to tell her to check on Faith, but something in the gesture gave him 
pause. Alonna wasn't big on touch, not with anyone, but he'd seen her do 
exactly this once before, when that prostitute had gotten impregnated with 
demon spawn. But that girl had been her *friend*. She didn't even like 
Wesley.

He fought an impulse to turn away. Whatever had caused her reaction, he was 
fairly sure it wasn't pity. And whatever it was, it was a moment's comfort, 
so he let it be.

**********

The hospital was too fucking huge, with too many things for Alonna to watch. 
On one end was the corridor where they'd wheeled off with the chick she had 
stabbed, on the other was the room where they'd taken Wesley, and somewhere 
in between there were three uniformed policemen and a nurse, talking to each 
other. What they were saying, she didn't know, but they hadn't arrested her 
yet, and that was a lot better than she would have expected.

"Miss Gunn?"

Boy, was it weird to be called that. She looked up into the troubled face of 
a middle-aged Hispanic policeman.

"Is she dead?"

"No, she's still in surgery. We have a positive identification, though. Her 
name's Faith Wilkins – although we have reasons to believe that's an alias – 
and she's wanted for several cases of assault."

The name meant nothing to her, but the rest did. "She's done this shit 
before?" That sure as hell helped her case – stabbing a dangerous fugitive 
was a whole different thing than stabbing a random white woman, whatever the 
circumstances. Not that either thought was very comforting.

"Not exactly this..." The policeman glanced at the examinationination room 
down the hall. "I hope."

She thought of what she'd seen in Wesley's apartment, and of the man with 
the camera who'd gone into the examinationination room before. Photographic 
evidence wasn't generally something they bothered with for simple assault 
cases.

Wesley hadn't seemed to be hurt all that bad, considering how strong that 
girl had been, but Alonna thought of what Faith had threatened, and she 
thought of listening to those threats over and over... She rubbed her arms 
that had broken into goose bumps and looked around, hoping to distract 
herself.

"Gunn!" she said, relieved to see the familiar face among the strangers in 
the corridor. Her brother steered through the crowd and soon she found 
herself in a tight embrace.

"Are you okay?" he asked, touching her cheek gently.

"I'm fine. Just bruised."

"And Wes?"

She couldn't meet his worried eyes. What the hell was she supposed to say? 
"He'll be fine too. They're stitching him up now."

If Gunn noticed the change to future tense, he didn't have time to say so, 
because the policeman chose to chime in:

"Are you Charles Gunn?"

Alonna stiffened, wondering how he could know that. She sure hadn't told 
him, and seeing how Wes had clammed up the moment they stepped inside the 
hospital doors, she very much doubted he had.

Gunn sensed the change and let go of her slowly, watching the policeman. 
"That's right."

"And is this your address?"

Address? What the *hell*? Alonna stepped up to see the paper the policeman 
was holding up just as Gunn closed his fists and asked, "Where did you get 
that?"

"The perpetrator carried it in her pocket. Any idea why?"

Alonna stared at the list of four addresses. First Wesley's, then their own, 
then the center's, and at the bottom one she didn't recognise, under the one 
word "Angel". She wondered if Angel was a person or a business. The address 
wasn't very fancy.

"In her pocket?" Gunn turned to Alonna, his eyes wide. "Do we know her?"

"I never saw her before in my life." She stared at the addresses as if they 
could provide the answers. "I think Wes does, though. And he's on top of 
her... list."

She didn't say "hit list", but that was where her mind went. It troubled 
her, because even though she could think of many people who might put Gunn 
on a hit list, very few of them were human, and even fewer might want to 
have Wesley tortured.

"Do you recognise the other addresses?"

"Yeah, they're... people I know, I guess you could say."

"People you know." The policeman's voice revealed that he had formed himself 
an opinion, but what sort of opinion she had no idea. Couldn't very well be 
the truth. "Is it possible she was sent by a rival gang? Something like 
that?"

Alonna's exasperated laughter bordered on hysteria. Gangs. Jesus Christ. She 
had nearly forgotten the normal situation where people fought each other 
instead of teaming up so they wouldn't be snacks for demons and vampires.

"We're not in a gang," Gunn said. His voice clearly said he didn't mean to 
expand on that half-truth. It was a classic line of defence that he had 
taught her early on: if you can't tell the truth, don't get involved in any 
elaborate lies. Just say as little as possible.

But what if that wasn't enough?

"Am I going to be arrested?" she asked, forcing herself to stay calm.

The policeman sighed deeply. "Probably not, if the girl lives. But I still 
want to know what happened back there and why, so if you want a lawyer, go 
ahead."

"I don't have a lawyer." The disdain she felt died away as another thought 
struck. "Gunn? Do you think we could call Anne's lawyers?"

Gunn's head snapped around with a force that shocked her, and he caught her 
hand. "Don't call them. Get a lawyer if you want, but not one of them. 
Okay?"

"Okay." There was no mistaking the urgency of the request, but she still had 
no idea as to *why*. He'd have a lot of explaining to do once they got out.

**********

_________________________________________________________________
Hitta rätt köpare på MSN Köp & Sälj http://www.msn.se/koposalj