The Demon Detective

The Ice Inside

The cold was not in his bones. It was in his *mind*. It was in the place where his soul lived. Angel lay on the couch in the dark office, trapped. His eyes were open, but he did not see the ceiling. He saw the past.

*He was in a different city. London. The air was thick with coal smoke. He was not Angel. He was Angelus. He was smiling. A young woman with red hair was begging for her life. Her fear was a sweet smell. He reached for her...

Angel jerked on the couch. A low groan escaped his lips.

"He's moving!" Cordelia said. She had a wet cloth in her hand. She tried to put it on his forehead, then pulled it back. "He's freezing cold. Like a corpse."

"Because he is one, dear," a new voice said. Lorne stood in the doorway, having let himself in. He looked at Angel with pity. "But that's not the problem. The problem is the hex. It's freezing the part of him that isn't a corpse. His soul."

Wesley was flipping through a huge, moldy book. "Soul-Chill. It's a tormenting spell. It doesn't kill. It traps the victim in their worst memories. It makes the soul relive its deepest shame... over and over."

"So how do we fix it?" Gunn asked. He was pacing, angry. He didn't like magic. You couldn't hit it with an ax.

"We need to warm his soul," Lorne said, simply. "Not with fire. With... connection. With something real and now that can pull him out of the past."

Cordelia knelt on the couch. She took Angel's icy hand. "Angel? Can you hear me? You're in your office. You're safe. We're here."

***

In his mind, Angel was falling.

*Now he was in a field in Italy. A young farmer was running. Angelus was laughing, chasing him like a cat with a mouse. The moon was bright. The scream was louder than the night...*

The memory shattered. For a second, he heard a voice. Cordelia's voice. *"...safe..."*

It was a tiny pinprick of light in the endless cold dark.

"Keep talking to him," Lorne urged. "All of you. He needs to hear the present."

Wesley sat down awkwardly. "Angel, this is Wesley. We... we destroyed the crystal. The marked vampires are gone. Lee got away, but we stopped his plan."

Gunn crouched nearby. "You took that shot for your friend. That was a solid move. Now stop napping and get up. We got more to smash."

***

The voices were ropes thrown into a deep, black well. Angel was at the bottom, drowning in ice and blood.

*He was in a cellar. A family was huddled together. A mother, a father, two small children. Their faces were white with terror. Angelus picked up the little boy...*

**NO.**

The thought was his own. New. A c***k in the ice.

*The memory wavered. The little boy's face began to change. It became the face of the girl on the fire escape, Lisa. She was not afraid. She was holding his business card. "Thank you," she said.*

The ice in his chest cracked again. A painful, wonderful warmth seeped in.

He gasped. A real, ragged breath. His eyes focused. He saw the worried faces of Cordelia, Wesley, Gunn, and Lorne looking down at him.

The cold was still there, but it was melting. The crushing weight of the past was pushed back by the present. By his friends.

"You're back," Cordelia whispered, squeezing his hand. His hand was still cold, but not dead.

"Barely," Angel rasped. His voice was rough. He sat up slowly. The world swam. "Lee?"

"Gone," Gunn said. "But we made a new friend. The cops."

"The detective," Angel said, remembering the hard-eyed woman. "Lockley."

"She'll be back," Wesley said, closing his book. "She knows something is wrong here. We are now on the radar of the Los Angeles Police Department."

"Great. Just what we need," Cordelia sighed. "Another kind of monster to deal with."

Lorne helped Angel to his feet. "The soul-chill is broken, but you'll feel brittle for a while, sweetcheeks. Be careful. And maybe invest in a magical bulletproof vest."

Angel stood, steadying himself on the desk. The guilt was still there. The memories were still there. But they were his again, not a prison. He looked at his team. "Thanks."

"Don't mention it," Gunn said. "Just next time, maybe duck?"

***

The next day, the office door opened without a knock. Detective Kate Lockley walked in. She looked at the messy office, the strange group of people, and finally at Angel, who looked pale but stood straight.

"Angel," she said, not a question. "I did some digging. Your name is on a lot of weird incident reports. Always on the edge of the action. Never quite in the picture."

"What can we do for you, detective?" Angel asked.

"I have a case. Two cases, actually." She put two photos on the desk. One showed a man in a nice suit, dead in an alley. His neck was broken. The other showed a different man, also dead in a parking garage. Also a broken neck. "No robbery. No motive. Just... snapped. Like they were rag dolls."

"Strong killer," Gunn observed.

"Very," Lockley said, watching them all. "But here's the weird part. Both of these men were lawyers. From the same firm. Wolfram & Hart."

The room went very still.

Lockley saw it. "That name means something to you."

"They're not a good firm," Cordelia said carefully.

"I know they're slime," Lockley snapped. "I can't touch them. They're too powerful, too connected. But someone is touching them. Someone is killing their lawyers. And I think you know who. Or *what*."

"Why come to us?" Wesley asked.

"Because the scenes aren't human," Lockley said, her voice dropping. "No fingerprints. No traces. Just... a feeling. A cold spot. And one witness, a homeless man, said he saw a shadow move. A shadow with glowing eyes." She stared right at Angel. "Sound familiar?"

Angel met her gaze. "What do you want, detective?"

"I want to stop a killer. I don't care if the victims are bad guys. Murder is murder." She took a step closer. "Help me find this thing. Or I start digging into *you* until I find something that sticks. I can make your life very difficult."

Angel knew she could. A police investigation could ruin everything. It could expose them, endanger the people they helped.

"Alright," Angel said. "We'll help. But we do it our way. You get our findings, not our methods."

Lockley nodded once, sharp. "Deal. For now." She handed him a card. "My number. The next lawyer who dies, I call you first. You tell me what I'm dealing with."

She left, leaving a tense silence behind.

"We're working with a cop now?" Gunn said, frowning.

"She's a good cop," Angel said. "And she's right. A killer is out there. If it's targeting Wolfram & Hart, it's powerful. And we need to find it before it turns on someone else, or before Lockley gets in over her head."

"And if she finds out what you are?" Wesley asked quietly.

"Then we have a bigger problem," Angel said. He looked at the photos of the dead lawyers. Something was cleaning up Wolfram & Hart's mess. The question was: why?