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Disclaimer: Characters from Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel: the Series are property of Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, Kuzui Enterprises, Sandollar Television, the WB, and UPN.

Part II

Her name was Drusilla (though it had required nearly an hour of somewhat disjointed conversation for him to learn that much), and she was without question the most fascinating woman he had ever met.

No denying it, you had to be careful about getting stuck on your first impression. If he’d had only the one sighting to go on, he would have sworn she was stoned or mentally unhinged. Having her beside him, though, feeling the flow and force of that extraordinary personality, seeing himself in her eyes (her eyes!), he had no choice but to revise his opinion; no, to junk it and start over. That quicksilver mind, leaping from one subject and opinion to another, faster than he could follow; the cool slim fingers, trailing along his arm or across the line of his collar with a near-electric thrill; the bewitching smile, glossy dark hair, ivory skin (almost translucent, so pale and flawless); and her eyes, always those eyes … She was charming and quirky and sensual in an other-worldly way — Janie, who had seemed so exotic, was a gawky, freckled farm girl by comparison — and for her to be with him was like the fulfillment of some fairy tale he had scorned before being confronted with the living fact.

Nor was he the only one to be struck by how special she was; the ship’s crew and staff, and many of the other passengers as well, practically danced attendance on her, hovering around the two of them like some fluttering cloud of anxious butterflies. She accepted their attention with regal unconcern, even seeming annoyed sometimes (and he was getting a little irked, himself) at the ceaseless stream of supplicants panting for the chance to carry out her smallest wish; but, no, it was impossible to be angry while she was near, only grateful and accommodating and eager for more.

After her first words to him, he had put the magazine back on the gift shop shelf without looking, and gone with her to one of the below-decks ballrooms. (He had suggested a walk topside, but she had gracefully declined, murmuring, “Not yet.”) There they talked, and talked, though mostly he listened, and couldn’t really remember much of what was said, that wasn’t what mattered. She was widely traveled and vastly experienced; he couldn’t always follow the thread of her narrative, but she had visited countries he’d never heard of, and her expression would become truly rapturous as she spoke of dining in Tirana, Novosibirsk, or Ad-Dujayl, though she seemed deeply dissatisfied with the service she had received in Prague. (More than once he marveled that a girl with such a hearty appetite could remain so slender.) Some of her reminiscences included someone called “Spike”, who apparently was a decent enough fellow despite the pretentious machismo of the name, because she would occasionally speak of him as her poor, lost angel; at least, that was what it sounded like. She was traveling alone just now, however, and that was perfectly to Hank’s liking.

At last she had stood, announced, “The moon is calling to me,” and looked around the ballroom with eyes that dared anyone to follow. No one did, and at last he had her to himself.

In the moonlight of the open deck, his companion was even more a creature from a dream. It was all he could do to focus on her words, and they strolled together, her arm in his, with only the infrequent other couple to pass near the periphery of their blissful solitude. “It grows,” he realized she was saying. “Sprouting within him, tendrils sinking deep. Lions have roots, you know, and lions’ roots will sink even into thin poor soil if you water it right …” She trailed off, gazing out over the still surface of the ocean. “Too much salt,” she said, and looked to him with a reproachful twist to her mouth. “But still it grows.”

“I feel that way sometimes myself,” he agreed. “Every time I go abroad, I try to get a little outside the beaten path. I’m no jet-setter like you, but I expand my horizons when I can.”

“Twittering,” she said dismissively. “He’s a book with old pages, but the roots go through them anyhow. Poor soil, yet it grows.” She turned away again. “A puzzlement, like the dreadful girl but less. She calls him Father, while her heart knows elsewise.”

“Buffy?” He frowned, trying to remember; when had they talked about his daughter? “We’ve had some rocky patches, I’ll admit, but I don’t think she’s one to hold a grudge.” You missed her last three birthdays, something inside him prompted with faint scorn. How’s that for grudges? He pushed it away; he’d make it this year, he’d sworn to himself that he wouldn’t fail her again. “We’ll be okay.”

“She has her father’s eyes,” Drusilla mused (which wasn’t true, Buffy’s eyes weren’t like his or Joyce’s, but were uniquely her own), and began to move around him in the patterns of some obscure little dance. “A closed trio,” she said, almost humming the words. “The daughter is lightning, and the father is a sword, and the mother is a flame — she burned away my angel, you know, before I changed the path — can’t touch them, so I trifle with you.” She smiled up at him, sliding her hands over his shoulders and across his chest as she revolved around him. “Fourth corner of the triangle, odd man out, still standing when all the chairs are filled …” She stopped, and pouted. “But lions’ roots. You are such a disappointment.”

“I’m sorry,” Hank said to her, and meant it; the last thing he wanted was to disappoint her, he’d been guilty of too much of that in his life. “Anything I can do, just tell me.”

“A tune that keeps playing out the same verse,” she sighed; then she looked back to him with doubt and speculation and a kind of arch interest. “Anything?” she repeated.

“Anything at all,” Hank assured her. Just don’t send me away from you.

“His eyes are bitter,” she told him, “and his breath burns. He wearies me, this man. Do you feel his eyes?”

Until the last part, Hank had thought she was talking about him again, it followed the pattern of her earlier speech. Now he looked around, trying to see who she might have meant. The only person in view was standing almost fifty feet away, leaning against the rail with his back to them. Hank had noticed him in the throng at the ballroom, a thick-shouldered linebacker type in a white short-sleeved shirt with large pockets and a square hem worn outside the trousers, the kind of shirt you saw in the Philippines and some Latin American countries. “That guy? What, has he been bothering you?”

“He has a wicked soul,” she said in seeming agreement. “So sweet. But he does not conduct himself properly in the presence of a lady.” She turned to Hank with sudden urgency and said, “My toes, they twist opposite each other. How can I dance upon such toes?”

Something about that wasn’t right, but Hank was tunneling in on the fellow at the rail. Tough-looking customer, and was the man posed there just a little too casually? He wanted to leap to the attack (he’d been sincere when he said anything at all), but the principles of his rudimentary briefings and memories of LeCarré held him back: if the man was actually a threat to Drusilla, initiating a confrontation might endanger her even more. “Come this way,” he told her, taking her by the arm. “We’ll see if he follows.”

She didn’t seem to hear him — she was whimpering, “It bleeds, it bleeds!”, and he felt a swell of rage at seeing her upset — but she allowed him to lead her away, moving to place the walls supporting the observation deck between them and the man at the rail. Hank felt his muscles relax; the other guy hadn’t even shifted to keep them in view, if he’d ever been able to see them in the first place. All the same, he reminded himself to stay alert, there were tails that worked in teams, and the other part of one such could be angling toward them now …

There, that couple. Now the sweat on his temples went cold; they had been in the ballroom, too, and now that he thought about it, he was sure they’d passed him and Drusilla twice since the two of them had come outside, only now they were moving in the opposite direction. He studied them with breathless concentration; he could be getting keyed up, imagining things that weren’t there —

No. He knew. The woman had a small radio in her bag, and the man was carrying a weapon: a taser, not a handgun, but he’d use his boots on you once you were down. How Hank knew this, he couldn’t have said, but he didn’t question it. He pulled Drusilla into an unplanned course correction, towing her after him up the stairs. She let out a little cooing sigh, like a child seeing a delightful surprise, and not even the growing fear could override the jolt of adoration he felt for her. They wouldn’t hurt her, he wouldn’t let it happen, he’d kill anyone who tried.

To his surprise, the observation deck was clear. There should have been someone there, either crew or passengers, but for the moment they were alone. “Looks like we have some breathing space,” Hank told Drusilla. “Look, why would anybody be after you? Are you an heiress or something?”

“I’m a princess,” she said, with the blithe certainty of one whose provenance has never been questioned. “I even had a consort once, but the little red witch put the horrid thing back inside him.” Her face lost its dreamy expression, and crumpled into grief. “My poor lost angel …”

Damn it. A princess! He should have known: the places she’d been, the air of being above it all, the way she automatically commanded attention and obedience; even the accent, she must have learned English from a nanny with lower-class roots. So she was important, certainly wealthy, perhaps of a family with political influence that went beyond the borders of her own country. And a target, suddenly, with no protection other than what he could provide for her.

They couldn’t stay here. They were alone for the moment, but exposed. He pulled her to one of the central stairwells and they went down again, away from the open decks, seeking cover in the interior of the ship. As they dropped below floor level he caught a flash of motion from the other side, someone coming up to the level they had just left, perhaps the couple that had been tracking them. God, that was close! He had to find some place to hide her. His room: if she was the target, they might not know who he was or where to find him, and he could keep her safe there for a short time while he decided what to do next.

He could remember being confused by the ship’s layout when he first came on board, but tonight he knew exactly where he was and where to go. The corridors were clear, much more than he would have expected; this wasn’t a movie, where New York City streets were conveniently deserted whenever dramatic purposes required it, and the anomaly troubled him even while he welcomed the absence of potential opposition. There should have been someone, it just didn’t make sense! In the background the voice on the PA was saying something about the purser and entertainment director needing to report immediately; it was the same form and routine he’d been hearing since he boarded, but he knew with instant unreasoning conviction that it was a coded alert, that other teams on the ship were being called out to hunt for them. In heaven’s name, how many people were in on this?

He used the internal stairs to move them from one deck to the next, not trusting the elevator, too easy to get boxed in. His breath was quick with excitement but not exertion, his body was holding up just fine to the unexpected demand, forty-four or not. Of course, the waif-woman he led was keeping up with equal lack of strain … To his astonishment, he realized she was actually singing, a child’s rhyme: “See how he runs, see how he runs —!” Even as the awareness hit him, she stopped suddenly, and he was almost yanked from his feet by his own grip on a wrist that was suddenly immovable. Before he could protest, she pulled him to her. “My hero,” she whispered, her eyes all but glowing. “My valiant protector.” And then cool lips were pressing against his own, and some kind of amazing explosion went off inside his skull.

It was nearly impossible for him to keep remembering their position and his responsibility for her, but he made it happen. “My room,” he gasped, pulling away from her. “It’s right down this hall. Come on, we can hide there for a little while —”

Despite all his desperate will, he was still dazed from the intoxicating power of that kiss, and failed to do a quick side-peek before leaving the stairs for the corridor. As he led Drusilla into the hall, there was a motion at the farthest edge of his peripheral vision; a reflex that shouldn’t have been there jerked him away in an abortive evasion, but too late to save him from the fist that thudded into the side of his neck. He had never been hit so hard, he almost blacked out on his feet, but he drew strength from the small hand resting in his own and staggered a step to the side, turning to face his attacker.

It was the man from the rail, the one in the Philippine shirt. “Tryin’ to be clever, huh?” he said, advancing on the two of them with unworried confidence. “Doesn’t matter, we always find you.”

“Look, wait, we can talk about this,” Hank said, fast and frantic … and struck, launching a downward-slanting side kick that would crack the other man’s knee, with a backfist ready to flash in right behind it. The speed and fluency of the move were a fresh astonishment, the adrenaline was really squirting tonight! but the big-shouldered man forestalled it, sliding in to slam a knee into Hank’s thigh, numbing the leg, and the follow-up punch found Hank’s solar plexus with surprising delicacy and devastating effect. He fell as if someone had pushed an OFF button, unable to breathe, all but paralyzed by the impact to the nerve cluster.

“Same damn thing every damn time,” the other man sneered, his breath redolent with garlic. “Buddy, you are pathetic.” He reached down, and Hank rolled to his side and wrapped an arm around the ankle next to him, locking it tight to his body; his legs, he could barely move his legs, but he twisted them around and took the other man down in a clumsy scissoring movement, and as the man landed Hank hammered kick after kick into the beefy face until resistance ceased.

He made it onto his knees by his own effort, and Drusilla drew him the rest of the way up. “Growl and grumble,” she said resignedly. “The lion grows. So vexing … but he does it for me. Such a bold heart, how might it taste —?”

He wanted desperately to understand, but there was no time. Again he pulled her along and again she went without struggle or protest. He double-bolted the door to his room as soon as they were inside, and turned to his companion, momentary relief warring with fresh anxiety. “That guy got a good look at me, and I think some of the crew might be with him, so we may not have much time. You have to have some kind of security, don’t you? Someone we could call?”

“I am traveling incognito,” she said with simple, serene dignity. “These others, they’re nasty but they have no weight.” She slid her arms around his waist, moving her body against his. “So gallant. A book with old pages, but new pictures sometimes.” She glanced toward the bolted door and added, “They can’t harm me. They don’t dare.”

Hank wished he had her confidence. They might indeed be determined to take her unhurt, but their plans after that would surely involve threats they might feel it necessary to carry out. He was her only line of defense, and not even the heady tonic of her praise could erase his conviction that she needed a more capable champion.

He forced himself to think. He couldn’t get out a call without going through the switchboard, which would take far too long even if he could be sure it wouldn’t be intercepted. There was no quick way to reach any of the Company people above him — it didn’t work like that, he wasn’t an agent, they called him if they had any use for him — and the standard lines of communication could never accomplish anything in time. It was hopeless, he was cut off here —

No, there was a way. Get a message into Janie’s luggage, tucked away where it would escape casual inspection but not where she’d fail to find it. His involvement here was accidental, they’d have no reason to take extraordinary measures in dealing with him. It wouldn’t prevent a kidnapping, but it might get the Company involved a little more quickly and with more information. He’d have to work quick, call up whatever pertinent details were available and get them recorded and hidden before he was tracked down here.

“Near,” Drusilla mused, yanking his attention back to the immediate moment. “And soon, they gather and press, so many of them.” He looked at her, unsure but fearful all the same, and she repeated, “Near and soon. Oh, he is undone, he is.”

For once he was able to follow her meaning, and he grabbed her, shoving her toward the bathroom with an insistent, “Get in there, lock yourself in!” Without even looking to see if she had obeyed, he leaped to gather such weapons as he could: the champagne bottle, he wished now he’d ordered a larger size but he’d have to make the best of it, and for good measure he dropped a heavy glass ashtray into one of his spare socks, letting it slide down into the toe. It was done in seconds, he might have put in weeks of training for just such an eventuality, and he finished and was already turning with eerie foreknowledge as the cabin door clicked and swung open.

He recognized them as they filed inside, more than a dozen of them: the stewards he’d dealt with today, the people from the ballroom, the couples who had passed him on the deck, the gift shop woman … even the ones he didn’t remember, he knew them, as if he’d been dealing with them all for a long time. He faced the lot of them with teeth bared and an improvised weapon in either hand; but the first words spoken, by the man who had led Drusilla away for a drink this very morning, weren’t addressed to Hank. “Ma’am, you know we can’t leave you alone with him. We’ve discussed this many times.”

“But he’s such a treat,” she answered from behind him, and Hank realized with horror that she hadn’t locked herself away after all. “His mind tickles, and the roots are still growing.”

He should have stalled, talked to them, dragged it out as long as possible in hope of some miraculous deliverance. He couldn’t stop himself, though, the danger to his helpless companion triggered a kind of madness. With a bellow he hurled the weighted sock like a stone from a sling, and launched himself after it, clubbing with the champagne bottle. They had arranged themselves while the steward was talking, two with tasers at the forefront, but the thrown missile took one on the cheek and he fell into the other, and Hank was on the rest of them before they could recover. They gave way before him, swearing and stumbling over one another, and he connected twice, solidly, then his arms were seized and other arms clutched at his legs and waist, bearing him down by weight and massed strength. He kicked, struggled, tore at a too-close wrist with his teeth, screaming in rage and despair. Drusilla, if he fought hard enough he might keep them occupied until she could get away, Drusilla —!

He saw her as multiple hands turned him over and a hypodermic needle appeared at the edge of his vision: a man with the shoulder-boards of a junior officer had hold of her, leaning back as if braced to lift her from her feet, those pale hands clenching in the cloth of his uniform. The sight galvanized Hank into a fresh eruption of effort, heaving and snarling, and she must have done something because the man slumped and fell, there was blood on her mouth and her face was twisted with what had to be terror. Then he lost her again as more and more bodies piled atop him, burying him in numbers and helplessness and failure.

Crushed and immobilized, he heard someone saying, “Hold him steady, I can’t get to the vein!” — and then the pressure on him disappeared, curses and thuds of violent impact, and slender, powerful hands yanked him upright. Impossible, no explaining it but act don’t think! He started for the open door, tugging her in his wake … and was again jerked to a stop, as if she were a steel post sunk into concrete.

Protests died on his lips as she swung him to face her. Other faces, other voices, other sights and sounds faded and vanished, there was only Drusilla. Her fingers caressed his cheek, moved up to slide into his hair, and the other hand rested against his temple, lightly but as implacable as if the nails extended through the bone of his skull. She was only, she was all, there was nothing else; her lips brushed his once more, and her breath whispered through him. “Be. In my eyes. Be. In me.”

Too late he felt it, the memory that had lain quiet while so many others clamored to break free. He would have fought it, he would have begged, he would have he didn’t know what, her will and power enfolded every part of him. With a last silent cry to his lost daughter, he fell, and was gone.
 

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