Chapter Two

Altered States

He sat at his desk with his feet up, his head leaning back and his eyes closed. In his hand was a picture of a girl, a beautiful blonde that in all likelihood hated his guts.

He opened his eyes and stared into the eyes of his mate. His fingers lovingly stroked the perfect check bones that graced the photo. His eyes roamed down her long supple neck staring at the pulse point that had so often fascinated him with its constant beat of life. He looked at the full pink painted lips that he knew tasted as sweet as the sweetest nectar made by God himself. Lips he knew he would never again taste or feel.

His body shuddered as he remembered the last day he saw her. God he was such a bastard. He never thought that he would have it him to do what he did. The cold callous words that came out of his mouth were things the demon would say, not the soul. Yet, he had and now he was tortured everyday as every word reverberated in his head making him sick to his stomach.

He had irrevocably changed that day, he knew it; he wasn’t stupid. Even if it weren’t for the looks of unease that he got from Cordy and West, he would still know because the demon clawed at his soul. His bloodlust to hunt and kill, to inflict pain to anyone he could was a constant scream in his head. Everyday he fought to keep control. Everyday he struggled with doing what he was supposed to do even though the drive and determination was not there. He still did the same things but now it was done vacantly. Before he had a purpose, he had a reason to keep fighting, Her. She was his motivation to fight for his salvation; she was his pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

But there was no rainbow now. That dissipated with every vowel and syllable of lies that had spewed from his mouth that day. No there was no doubt in his mind that he had pushed her so far away that she would probably stake him as fast as he could say hey. Now there was no reason. Now he just went through the motions, doing what everyone expected him to do: save people.

After that day he didn’t remember much because everything was just a blur. He remembered Darla coming back to life, which seemed surreal at the time. He remembered trying to lose his soul in her just wanting the pain to stop and he could easily remember the rage that followed after when he realized he hadn’t.

He looked up at hearing a noise and saw Kate walking towards him. She was nice he liked her but she wasn’t Buffy. He looked back down at the picture in his hands and felt a twinge of guilt that he was using Kate. But there was nothing to be done about it. It was just the way things were. Did he love her? No. He knew that as sure as he knew that Buffy hated him. But she was all that was left to him and he might be dead but he still needed the company of a woman from time to time and Kate filled that need.

“Angel?” Kate walked into the room and closed the door. She walked over to him and started to run her fingers through his hair. “Everything go alright tonight?” Her hands wandered down his shoulders and to his arms.

He just nodded at her still staring at the picture in his hands. She saw him looking at the picture and once again wondered what pull this tiny girl had on the vampire. She asked Cordelia but she just gave her a nasty look and said, “I don’t think that’s any of your business.” Wes sputtered something about an old acquaintance. And Angel, the one time she asked him, he threw her the hardest coldest look she had ever seen and told her that she was no one.

She pulled the picture out of his hands and placed it on the desk, turning him around to face her. She dropped to her knees and caressed his crotch, unzipping his pants in the process. She took his cock out and started a slow up and down motion. She leaned down and licked the tip of his head and then consumed his whole length in her mouth.

As she sucked him he stared at the picture on the desk. His mind imagining that it was Her lips on his cock pleasuring him. The demon added his own images of a blonde head bobbing up and down between his legs and in no time he came in Kate’s mouth shooting his seed. But the fantasy soon faded at the sound of her spitting his cum out of her mouth like it was a disease.

She got up from the floor pleased with herself and took his hand pulling him out of the chair and leading him away from the picture, away from Her.

***

A few hours later he was staring at the ceiling with his hands behind his head. He had to be losing his mind, he thought. After Kate led him up to his bedroom he had taken her pretty roughly, he had two orgasms for Gods sake and he was still note sated. Kate hadn’t said anything but he knew that she didn’t enjoy it that much. But with the lingering images of Buffy giving him head, that Kate had unknowingly invoked, he was so turned on he couldn’t control him self. He just closed his eyes and imagined that she was Buffy.

He sat up on the edge of the bed his agitation growing. The demon mocked him cruelly, laughing at him to face the fact that no woman would ever be able to sate him. And the one woman that could would never let him touch her again. He angrily rose and dressed quietly he needed to work off some steam, he needed to kill something.

Kate lay still watching him get dressed. She could feel the irritation and tension coming off of him in waves and it really ticked her off. She gave him pleasure, she let him come in her mouth, she let him fuck her brutally without one word of how much it felt like was ripping her in half, and he still wasn’t satisfied. She knew that many times after they made love he would wait for her to fall asleep then he would rise and leave her, going out into the night seemingly trying to escape something.

When she first started this relationship with him, she knew he came with baggage, doesn’t everyone? But she didn’t care she had wanted him from the first moment she laid eyes on him at that club. Besides his brooding, he was everything a man should be in her eyes and she never had it as good as with him.

He put on his jacket and slipped out the door.

She rolled over and lay on her back. It was probably that blonde in the picture he was hung up on and Kate wondered once again whom she was. She sighed, it didn’t really matter in the long run because she was not here, she was not sharing his bed and if Kate had anything to do about it, she never would.

***

When he got outside he started hunting. Finally coming across some vamp trying to snack on a girl in an alley he moved in to strike but the vamp sensed him and ran. He watched him run down the street; he climbed the building wall and jumped from rooftop to rooftop chasing his prey. He stopped at the edge of a roof and looked down. He saw a shadow turn the corner, with a smile on his face he jumped and landed right in front of the vamp.

“Going somewhere? But we were just starting to fun!” He threw a right cross landing it squarely on the vamps chin knocking his head back. He grabbed him by the throat and brought him flush to his face. “Why run you know it’s just going to make me angry?”

The vamp he held was scared, he knew who he was dealing with. “Angelus I don’t want any trouble with you.”

“Too late.” Angel sneered at him as he deftly put a stake through his heart.

He wiped away at the dust that settled on his leather and took a big sniff, the sun would rise soon it was time to go home and back to his miserable existence.

***

The hunt did nothing to appease his agitation and as he entered the Hyperion he pushed the doors open forcibly, banging them into the wall and making the pictures rattle. Cordelia, who was sitting at the front desk reading her latest Vogue magazine, jumped at the loud crash spilling her coffee in the process.

“Geez! Can you not break the doors down when you come in?” She sneered at him. He barely acknowledged her as he climbed the stairs to his rooms. Cordelia shook her head at him; he was so different that half the time she didn’t know if she was dealing with Angel or Angelus, she was getting really sick of it. Not to mention the fact that he hooked up with that bitch Kate.

Cordelia seethed with anger at the thought. She wasn’t quite sure why she hated Kate so much; maybe it was just the fact that she was a haughty bitch. Or maybe it was that she knew why Angel was with her to begin with. First it was the Buffy-Incident and then it was that fiasco with Darla, it was obvious to Cordy that the only reason Kate was around was because Angel had lost his mind…plain and simple.

Since he had sent Buffy back home six months ago she wasn’t too sure she liked him much anymore. She was really starting to think that that had been a big mistake. When Wesley had told her what happened she actually felt sorry for Buffy and secretly she had been angry with Angel for doing it so heartlessly. She shook her head she never thought she would have seen the day that she would be on Buffy’s side.

But she had to admit that she would prefer to see Angel back with Buffy. She had seen what their love was all about and there were many times that she had been jealous of that love. They were just meant to be that was it. There could be no other for him just like she knew that there could be no other for Buffy. Even if the both of them were living in denial, Cordelia wasn’t.

“Was that Angel?” Wesley came out of the office with a book in his hand.

“Yup that was our esteemed happy go-lucky leader. You know if he doesn’t change his attitude soon I’m going to stake him myself. This was a brand new cashmere sweater and now it’s ruined!” she wiped at the coffee stain.

Wesley looked up to the second floor worried about the vampire. He had been closely watching him since the Buffy episode and he didn’t like what he’d been seeing. Angel had worked so hard to get to the point where he was feeling good about himself and his mission, working towards the ultimate prize…Shanshu.

But now it seemed that he just didn’t care. He didn’t care about them; he didn’t care about the people he saved. He just went through the motions. He was so despondent that he rarely ventured out of his rooms when he was in the hotel. He stayed hidden up there doing God knows what. He only came downstairs to get blood or to leave the building.

At first Wesley had been happy about what happened, he would never say anything to Angel, but the thought of a Slayer falling in love and sleeping with a Vampire always seemed wrong to him. He assumed it was the Watcher in him that was turned off by the idea. Because even though Buffy never trusted him as her watcher, in his heart he always felt a sense of protectiveness for her and Faith.

He had a lot of guilt when it came to both of them, especially Faith. He had on many occasions belittled himself for how he had handled things with them. He knew now that he really was a pompous ass that knew nothing about what went bump in the night. But since he’d come to LA and started working with Cordelia and Angel he’d seen that people could change and better themselves, something that Angel had been working towards. Now though, it seemed as if he was going backwards.

And this whole Kate business was bothering Wesley too, because he didn’t trust her for some reason and he felt that Angel was blindly walking into something that he was going to regret later.

He walked over to the counter and put the book down. “He’s under a lot of pressure Cordelia.”

She looked at him rolling her eyes. “Pressure, please he’s just in permanent Buffy mode and has been for six months.” She started to file her nails.

“Is Kate still here?” he asked.

“No, thank God. She left right after him; all pissy too I might add. I guess she didn’t like waking up alone.” She snickered.

“Yes well then perhaps after a good night sleep he’ll feel better.” He lamely said.

“Yea right and I’m fat and ugly.”

Chapter Three