FicWad

It's quiet after they've all gone; suddenly, eerily, quiet. Cameron looks around the deserted room and rubs her arms. She feels cold, a little dazed and more than a little confused about exactly what happened in here.

The sheets on the bed are rumpled, sweat-stained and, in places, torn. She pulls the covers up, absently rubbing the hand that almost fell foul of Nina's snapping teeth.

(Fangs, yes, she knows they were fangs, but somehow she keeps sliding away from that word like she can't quite bring herself to look it in the eye.)

She walks back to the office, looking over her shoulder nearly every step of the way. Cuddy's door is shut and there's no sign of Vogler. There's no sign of anyone. She shivers slightly, fighting off a sudden, irrational conviction that she's alone in the entire building. It's a hangover from childhood, an out-of-nowhere certainty that settles over her like cold fog: they're gone they're all gone there's no one left you're all alone.

She shakes herself, and tries to find some paperwork to concentrate on. Some lab reports maybe - something with numbers and facts and concrete empirical data.

It doesn't work. She stares at a few sheets of paper for a while without absorbing any of the contents, then pushes them aside with a sigh. Finally she takes out the business card Angel gave her, running her fingers over its smooth surface. She hesitates for a second, then picks up the phone.

It's answered swiftly, before the first ring is even completed. "Pryce," says a man's voice.

It catches her off-guard; she was expecting to have time to think better of it and hang up. "Oh," she says. "Yes. Um. Hi."

"Can I help you?"

She wouldn't call the voice warm, exactly, but the tone is mild and there's an undercurrent of something that sounds like amusement. Friendly, laughing-with-not-at-you amusement, as opposed to the kind she's got used to hearing round here.

"I, uh, I'm not actually sure. You don't know me - my name is Dr Cameron and I'm at the Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital. I - "

"You're with Nina? Is everything all right?" Immediately, the voice becomes sharper, more focused. She imagines this unknown man leaning forward in a swish, executive office chair, poised to push buttons and call minions and make things happen. What must it be like, to have that kind of power? That kind of respect?

"I think so," she says. "But I'm not with her any more. The others - Angel, and some of the other doctors here - they took her out of the hospital, to - to somewhere safer. They were worried that she might be, uh, dangerous, I think."

"I see. Then you're aware of her condition, I take it?"

Cameron closes her eyes for a second as laughter tries to stir in her throat. Condition. Condition. As if what she saw this morning was on a par with a particularly irritating fungal infection.

"Dr Cameron? Are you all right?"

She chokes the laughter back down. She's a woman in a high-expectation, high-pressure environment. Hysteria has never been an option.

"Yes. I'm fine. Thank you."

He pauses. "I'd imagine Nina's was a unique case for you, yes?"

"Yes," she says, and her voice is almost a whisper.

"It must have been quite a shock." Now she's sure she's not imagining the warmth in the voice. It feels soothingly non-judgmental; the impression it gives is definitely that it's okay to be a little disturbed. A little freaked out.

Or maybe she's just projecting. House says she does that a lot.

"I, uh - " She stops, and takes a deep breath. "Yes."

There's a small sound, like a brief sigh. "I remember when I had my first...encounter, shall we say. I had the benefit of training and a family background in the subject, but it was still a rather traumatic experience. I can imagine how you must be feeling."

"Training?" She smiles, if a little shakily. That's a good word. A comforting word. It implies rules and regulations and management. It implies control.

"Yes," he says, and she thinks that the old cliché really is true: you can hear a smile in someone's voice. The one she's listening to right now sounds a little wistful.

"So you, uh, you people deal with this sort of stuff all the time? Werewolves, I mean, and - and demons. Vampires." She shakes her head. Did she really just say those words out loud?

"More than we'd like, yes. Oh, and I should probably say - you met Angel and Spike, I assume?"

"Yes."

"Well, they're pretty unusual as far as vampires go. I won't go into the technicalities, but it comes down to the fact that they're the only two who won't try to kill you. If you ever see another vampire, run."

"Right, right. Thanks." Her voice cracks on the last word and suddenly, unexpectedly, her eyes are full of tears. She didn't ask for this; didn't ask to know that the world really is just as scary and full of horrors as she always suspected but refused to believe. She didn't ask for it and she doesn't know how she's supposed to deal with it.

"Dr Cameron? Are you sure you're all right?"

"Yes. No." Her hand is shaking, making the receiver flutter against her ear. "I'm scared," she says quietly, as the hot, shameful tears begin to spill. It's hardly a revelation; she's been scared all her life. She was scared of finding love, and of losing it - so she married a dying man. She was scared of death, so she became a doctor - but now there's this whole other world of things to be scared of. Real, physical, flesh-and-blood evil. What does she do about that?

"It's okay," he says, his voice so gentle that it makes fresh tears fall. "It's good to be scared. Remember - if you can keep your head when all around you are losing theirs, it means you really don't understand the seriousness of the situation."

She laughs then, a shuddering exhalation of air that seems to release the tight knots that had gathered in her chest and throat. She tucks the phone between her chin and shoulder, and wipes her eyes with both hands.

"Thank you, Mr Pryce" she says, and her voice is rough but steady.

"Wesley, please."

She smiles. "Then I'm Allison. But really, I should let you go. I'm sure you have more important things to do."

There's a long pause - so long that she starts to wonder if he's simply taken her at her word and cut the connection. But then he says, "I have things to do, yes. But important things - lately, I've been wondering about that. There was a time when this kind of phone call, it was - well, it was what we did. What we were there for. I keep asking myself why that changed, and I don't really have an answer. And that worries me."

Cameron leans forward in her seat. "What happened?"

"Can you hold on for a moment?" There's a clicking sound, and she hears his voice from a little distance. "Harmony? Please call down to the lab and have them put that delivery for Fred into storage. I'm not going to have time to inspect it. Standard physical and magical containment procedures. Thank you."

Another click, and his voice comes through strong in her ear again. "That's better. Now, where were we?"

*

Let's go, Spike had said. Which was proving a lot easier to say than do. Chase had never given much thought to the logistics of getting eight people and an unconscious werewolf into two cars - but if he had, he would probably have opted to stay behind with Cameron.

They're on the fourth attempt at a combination that will get everyone in without creasing Lorne's coat, jiggling Fred's equipment, ripping Angel's suit, breaking House's leg or setting Spike on fire, when Gunn holds up his hands.

"Okay, I call time out. Listen, you guys go on without me. We've got some people in the area, so I'll go pay a few visits and see what I can find out about this Vogler character, just in case we do need some ammunition in the future. I like to do my homework early." He looks at his watch. "And besides, I'm meeting Lisa for lunch at one-thirty."

Chase's hand slips in the middle of loading House's cane in the back seat, which earns a muffled howl from Spike. He pokes his head out of the car to stare at Gunn. "You're going out with Cuddy?"

Gunn flashes him a winning smile. "It's all about making contacts, my man. And good Italian food, obviously." He raises a hand in salute and walks away.

House grins as Chase watches him go. "Wishing Daddy had been a lawyer instead of a doctor? At least you could have followed in his footsteps in better shoes."

Spike's voice drifts up from the blanket-covered lump tucked behind the driver's seat. "If you've finished flirting with your puppy, can we go? I hate to be a party pooper but, you know, almost combusting down here."

Angel stretches his arms out along the back of the seat comfortably. "Wanna tell me again how much of a - what was it? Ponce? - I am for getting this suit?"

Chase glares at the blanket. "Puppy?"

It snorts. "Oh, come on. Don't even try to tell me you're not his bitch."

Chase's eyes go wide and there's a muffled sound from the other car. He glances over to see Foreman looking back at him with a carefully blank, innocent expression. "What?"

Chase ignores him, trying to control the blood flow to his face by sheer force of will. He jumps when Fred lays a hand on his arm. "Robert," she says gently. "We really need to go. Take no notice of Spike. He's just -" she shrugs. "Spike."

Chase nods, taking a deep breath to compose himself. Fred heads towards Foreman's car while House lowers himself into the passenger seat. "Woof," he says, with a look of such frank speculation that it blows any chance Chase ever had of stopping the blush from lighting up his face like a nuclear reactor on meltdown.

He shakes his head and reaches down to start the ignition. "I thought the vampires were supposed to be the evil ones," he mutters as they drive away.

Emma's place is a small, single-story workshop with a drab grey exterior that makes it indistinguishable from all the other units on the little development. She's waiting outside when Chase's car pulls up, a large bunch of keys swinging from one hand and a big, welcoming smile on her face. The smile widens when House opens the door and eases himself out, then takes on a slightly fixed look as he's followed by Angel. It begins to falter a little when Foreman's car arrives, and by the time Fred and Lorne are helping to lift out a chained-up Nina, it's dropped away completely.

She holds up her hands. "Whoa, wait a minute. What is this? Rob, what the fuck are you into, here? This is - " She breaks off as Fred steps forward, reaching into her bag and coming out with a chequebook. "None of my business," she finishes, taking the cheque Fred writes out and folding it neatly into two. The smile returns as she slips it into her jeans pocket, and tosses the keys to Chase. "Have a nice day."

Fred shrugs at Angel's look. "It works for Charles."

Chase fits the key into the lock and opens the door, holding it wide as Spike hurtles out of the car and dashes into the dark interior. "Great," he says, throwing off the smouldering blanket. "No windows. I like this place already."

The cage is built against the left hand wall, and is about six feet square. "It's not much of a habitat," says Fred as Spike and Angel haul Nina inside, "but I guess it'll do." She rattles the bars. "It seems sturdy."

Nina lays limply on the floor as Angel attaches her chains. Chase bends down and checks her pulse; it's a little weak, but it's there. "She's okay," he says. "Well - relatively speaking, of course."

When Nina's secured, they all troop outside and Angel locks the cage door. House looks at him expectantly. "Phase one complete, then. What happens now?"

Spike looks around. "Hmm. We're holed up in a sex dungeon. Wonder what there might be to do?" He grins at Chase, who flushes again.

"What we need to /do/," says Fred sternly, "is figure out exactly what happened to Nina. Maybe if we know a bit more, it'll help us work out how to fix it."

Angel nods. "Good idea. So - what do we know?"

"She came in as a Jane Doe," says House. "Found naked and unconscious by a guy out walking his dog. Nobody could figure out what was wrong with her so she was brought to us. She had a fever and she was talking about being bitten by a demon - we thought she was delusional at first, obviously."

Fred scribbles on her little notepad. "And she said it was a Mannika demon."

House looks at Chase, who nods.

"Why did it attack her? Did she say what happened?"

"No. She just said it bit her. Infected her."

In the cage, Nina slowly begins to stir. She gets up onto all fours, her hair hanging down over her face, and growls.

"We need to be able to talk to her," says Angel. "Fred, is there anything you can do? Even to just delay the change, so that we can try to get through to her?"

Fred considers this. "The spell can't reverse it, but it might be able to hold it off. It's worth a try."

"Do it," says Angel, and she tips out her bag and gathers the stuff together. Angel watches anxiously as she begins the chant.

"Nina," he says urgently. "Nina, it's Angel. Can you hear me? Can you understand me?"

Nina sways, her eyes rolling, but after a while she lifts her head and seems to focus on him.

"Nina. We're going to help you, but we need to know what happened."

She moves slowly, easing back into a sitting position. Her breath is shallow and a little ragged, but her eyes look clearer. "Angel," she says.

"Yes. Yes, I'm here. Tell me what happened to you."

"Coffee," she says. Angel shoots a confused look at Fred, who returns it. "Coffee shop," Nina continues. It looks like it's costing her some effort. "Near Miranda's. Venom in the coffee. Mannika. Controlling people. Joe - guy called Joe - he knew - I tried - I tried - " She breaks off, shaking her head wildly.

"Angel," says Fred. "I don't think I can hold it any more."

With an agonised cry, Nina collapses to the floor. Her body convulses and stretches, and it's quickly apparent to all of them that they've heard all the speech from Nina that they're going to. The wolf howls and launches itself at the bars, but they hold. Chase notices that all the humans take at least one step backwards.

"Phase two, then," says House. "Investigate this coffee shop."

Fred nods, pulling her bag onto her shoulder. "That looks like our big lead. You know where this Miranda lives?" she asks Angel.

"Yeah." He takes her notepad and scribbles down an address. She rips the sheet off and tucks it into her jacket pocket, then turns to Chase and Foreman. "Well? You guys ready to go be detectives?"

Angel's head whips round to face her. "Hey, Fred, wait a minute. I think I should - "

She shakes her head impatiently. "The longer Nina's in this state, the harder it's going to be to get her back. We need to move now - and in case you'd forgotten, it's the middle of the day. That counts Spike out, and in that suit you're not exactly going to be the world's sneakiest undercover agent. That goes for you too, Lorne." She turns to House. "And no disrespect intended, because you seem like a really smart guy and I'd love to have you with us, but if something comes after us and we need to run, you're gonna end up getting eaten. And I don't want that on my conscience. So - "

House blinks. "No. Well, I wouldn't want to think of you losing sleep on my account."

"At least he might tranquilise it, with all that Vicodin in him," Chase mutters. "Or give it indigestion, at least."

Spike claps him on the back, knocking him forward and almost off his feet. "That's the spirit, Doc. You know, there might be hope for you yet."

"So - " says Fred loudly, swinging back to Chase and Foreman, "that leaves us."

Chase looks at Foreman, who shrugs. "It beats clinic duty. I'm in."

Fred beams at both of them, and they follow her out of the door.

TBC...