Disclaimer in Part One-a.

*****

Jakob slowly became aware of his surroundings, as if waking from a dream. He didn't know how long he'd been out of it. The visions had been almost constant since he found the truth in the books his mother had hidden. He only remembered pieces of their trip to ... wherever they were right now.

Rubbing his eyes, he realized he wasn't alone in the richly decorated room, something for which he was very grateful. If he'd been alone, he wouldn't have been sure if it was real, or another vision. He watched the brunette lounging in the chair on the opposite side of the room, she was the same one who had been in Caritas.

"You have no idea what you've gotten yourself into," Faith said quietly.

She had to talk to the boy, had to make him understand just what a dangerous game he was mixed up in. He had no idea what Darla was capable of, and if Faith was going to get him back to his parents in one piece, she would need his full cooperation.

"What would you know about it?" he asked in an acrid tone, not looking at her.

Jake was sick of people telling him what to do, who he was. As far as he could tell, doing 'the right thing' had only screwed up his life.

"I know that you're in over your head. I know that you're acting like a stupid little boy. And I know that regardless of what you might think, you are no match for Darla."

Jake stifled a groan and changed positions in the chair, he was sore from long hours of sitting. He glared at the vampire.

"I thought you were her friend or something. Sounds like you're trying to warn me off," he noted coolly.

Faith smiled. Oh yeah, he was an innocent, no matter how bad he thought he was.

"I may be a lot of things to Darla," Faith said darkly, "but her friend is not one of them. She's my companion, my lover, my Sire. She's also a vengeful bitch and she's very, very dangerous."

Jakob didn't say anything, trying to appear aloof. Changing the subject, he asked, "Who are you and why do you even care?"

"My name is Faith. I'm an old friend of the family," she answered in neutral tones.

"What the hell does that mean?" he bit out, losing his patience for cryptic conversations.

Faith smiled. "I know your parents," she said dryly.

"Which ones," he asked coldly, "my mother and Riley or my mother and Angelus?"

Faith frowned. Darla was doing a number on this boy. "Neither. I never knew Angelus. He was only around this century for a few months. I never met Riley either. I knew your mom and Angel."

Jake didn't say anything. He didn't understand the distinction she was making between Angel and Angelus. They were one in the same.

Faith chewed on her bottom lip and leaned forward in the chair in a pensive attitude. "I was a Slayer before I was turned," she explained slowly. "I worked with your mother. Well, sometimes I worked with her. We had some rough times. I was ... lost for a long time."

"Lost?"

"Lost. Saving the innocents wasn't exactly on the top of my 'to do' list. I used my abilities for the wrong purposes. I got in a lot of trouble, did a lot of damage. Made a lot of stupid mistakes."

"Got vamped in the process," he supplied flippantly.

"No," she said calmly. "I got vamped after I'd found my way back to my calling. Slayers keep their souls when they're turned."

"A vampire with a soul?" he asked incredulously. "How is that possible?"

"Happens sometimes. That's what happened to Angel."

"Angel was a monster, they called him The Scourge of Europe."

"Angelus," Faith corrected firmly. "Angelus was The Scourge of Europe. Angel was just a vampire with a soul who got a royal karmic fuck for a bunch of things he couldn't control."

*****

"If you really have Angel's son," Lilah said, "we can't afford to wait. We have to move now."

The lawyer was worried about keeping not only her job, but her head in the next division review. Scoring Angelus would be a huge coup, she might even be promoted.

Darla smiled wickedly. "I thought you said the tribute would be astronomical. You think you can get that together on the spot?"

Lilah regarded the vampire carefully. "The senior partners very much want Angelus on their side," she explained. "It sounds like you actually have a viable way to get him back in the game. With a payoff like that, I'm sure we can get the tribute together quickly."

"He's not ready," Darla said seriously. "The boy needs time to mature."

"Too bad," Lilah said, laughing in amusement. "You think his parents are just going to sit by and let you do this? You think he'll willingly submit to having you rip his soul away? It's now or never."

Darla bristled, she'd always hated Lilah. "If the boy's not ready, then we don't have a guarantee it will work."

"We won't have a guarantee regardless, and this may be our only shot," Lilah pointed out. "Are you in?"

Darla was absolutely still for several long moments before she answered, "I'm always in."

*****

Jakob's body was rigid, he swallowed visibly. "I don't understand," he said quietly, his voice devoid of all its former sarcasm.

"Angelus was an asshole," Faith supplied bluntly. "He did a lot of horrible things and eventually pissed off the wrong people. He killed a young gypsy girl. Her people sought revenge by cursing him with a soul."

"Curse?" Jake asked, his brow furrowing.

"Most definitely. Can you imagine?" she asked lightly. "Three hundred years ago he's just some stupid human guy in the wrong place at the wrong time who decides to try and pick up the *wrong* chick, he gets vamped, his soul goes ... wherever souls go. Angelus, the demon, has a grand ol' time torturing and eating people with his Sire and mate, Darla. Then a hundred and fifty years later the demon who's been rampaging through half the known world eats a gypsy and *bang*, the soul is pulled back to this world and stuck into the body with the demon."

"With the demon?" Jake asked, cocking an eyebrow.

"That's the way I understand it. Angel - the soul - was the one in charge, but the demon was always there. Anyway, Angel is stuck in this demon body with all of the demon's memories of all these horrible things he did, and Angel still is a vampire. I mean he has to drink blood and everything, but the problem is he has a human soul, a human conscience. So he's tortured with guilt for almost a century for all of these things that the demon did."

"They're two different ... beings?"

"Yes. Angel and Angelus shared the same body, the same memories, but they were *not* the same. Angelus was the demon. Angel is a human soul. Angel is a warrior for the cause of good. He's my friend."

Jakob took it all in for a few minutes, staring intently out the window while he tried to sort through things. It didn't take a lot to figure out that Darla had left some pretty important facts out of her version of events.

"What happened between him and my mother?"

"They fell in love. You know, *true* love, the shit that you read about in epic poems, the thing most of us will *never* find. No one knew it at the time, but there was a loophole in Angel's curse. If he experienced a moment of true happiness he'd lose his soul and Angelus would come out to play. He did. He fell in love with Buffy, she made him completely happy. Hello sicko demon jerk."

"That's how Angelus ended up in Sunnydale?"

"Yeah. He was only loose for a few months. Buffy finally got rid of him by sending him to hell. Only it wasn't him. At the last minute before she did it, Willow managed to return Angel's soul. It was too late. Too many things had been set in motion. Buffy ended up sending Angel to hell. She had to, or the whole world would have been destroyed."

Jakob didn't speak for a long time. "She sent him to hell to save the world?"

"Yes," Faith said slowly, amazed that Jakob was as calm as he was. "Angel was released later. From his perspective he spent a couple centuries in Hell, but he was only gone from our time for a few months."

"They got back together?" Jake asked, confused.

"No. The curse was still there. They couldn't be together without risking setting Angelus loose again. Angel left Sunnydale. Riley showed up. I think you know how it went from there."

"So how am I ... "Jakob trailed off. "I mean, I didn't think vampires could ... have kids."

"They can't as far as I know. Also, when Buffy got pregnant with you, she was supposed to have been with Riley. I don't know what happened. You'll have to take that up with your parents. Angel has a lot of secrets. He keeps a lot of things bottled up inside, even now that he's human."

Jakob's head shot up and he stared at Faith. "Angel is human now?"

She nodded slowly. "Yes. It was his reward for helping save humanity, for atoning for all the demon's sins. It was supposed to mean that he could finally be with Buffy, but by the time he was human, she was married and living in Iowa with Riley."

Jake sat in silence considering everything she'd said. His father wasn't a monster, he was a good guy, human even. The realization that he had made a *huge* mistake began to sink in.

"What's he like?" Jake asked quietly.

"Just like you," she said wryly, "only he's even more dense and even more of a pain in the ass. With any luck, maybe you can avoid making all the same mistakes as him although you're not off to a real good start."

*****

Buffy paced agitatedly around the lobby, glancing at her friends from time to time. Everyone had assembled at the Hyperion, including Willow, whom Wesley had called earlier in the day.

"What do a bunch of lawyers want with my son?" Buffy asked Wesley in frustration.

"Hopefully Angel will have a better idea of that when he returns," Wesley said in as optimistic a tone as he could muster. Nobody was exactly sure where Angel had taken off to in the wake of Faith's phone call.

*****

Darla listened half heartedly to Lilah's telephone conversation. The lawyer seemed to be upset about something. Darla didn't particularly care.

Putting down the phone, Lilah addressed the vampire, "We're going to need to put the boy somewhere safe while we arrange things."

"How long will it take?" Darla asked caustically, not relishing the idea of being stuck in a safehouse somewhere for weeks.

"We'll proceed as quickly as possible. It seems your newest Childe has been playing both sides of the fence. She tipped off Angel and the Slayer to the boy's whereabouts. We need to move quickly."

"Well, now, isn't that interesting," Darla said acridly, embarrassed by Faith's betrayal. The girl would be severely punished.

*****

"We need to get out of here," Faith said in a clipped tone. "I called Angel and let him and Buffy know where we are. We need to get you somewhere safe before Darla can do anything serious."

"Angel's ... with my mom?" Jake asked in disbelief.

"Yeah," Faith answered as if it were a given.

"Why? I mean ... they haven't even spoken in years," Jake asked in disbelief.

Faith cocked an eyebrow at him as she headed to the door, resting her ear against it and listening for sounds from the outer room. "I already told you, *true love*. They've been staying away from each other thinking they were both doing the other a favor. Your disappearing act must have brought them to their senses. You think they're just going to let their kid run away with a psycho demon 'ho and not do anything about it?"

Jake didn't have an answer. The realization that his mother was going to kill him slowly sunk in, but why did Angel care? Jakob had never even met him before, didn't even know what he looked like.

"Angel doesn't know anything about me," he said, foundering.

Faith looked at him with something akin to sympathy. She understood what it was like to be so distrustful of anyone who claimed to have your best interests at heart. "He knows you're his son," she said evenly. "That's enough. Now, let's go."

*****

Buffy's head turned, along with everyone else's as a man came stumbling quickly through the Hyperion's doors. It was evident that Angel, who was following closely behind, had pushed him.

"Talk, Lindsey," Angel ordered.

"Kiss my ass!" Lindsey spat insolently, straightening his suit.

*****

Faith was pushed back into the room as the door swung open and an army of security guards rushed into the conference room.

"Run," she yelled at Jake, but there was nowhere to go.

Faith let out a grunt as the guards tazered her multiple times. With a thud, she fell to the floor in a heap. Jake watched as the security guards dragged her from the room.

Backing up against the wall, Jakob frantically searched for an exit as the security guards surrounded him. One of the guards lunged at him, and Jakob caught him in the jaw with a stunning blow. He doubted he could take on all the guards, but he refused to go down quietly.

"Watch it," one of the guards ordered, "he's stronger than he looks."

Jakob shifted his weight to the balls of his feet, preparing to spring. He froze as a powerful jolt of electricity coursed through his body. The pain was incredible. As a club impacted with the back of his head, he lost consciousness.

*****

Buffy and Willow watched in disbelief as Angel walked into his office, grabbed a tire iron, and predatorily closed in on Lindsey. He had every intention of using the weapon to beat information out of the lawyer.

"No!" Cordy, Gunn, and Wesley yelled in unison, rushing towards Angel, trying to disarm him.

Angel attempted to fight them off, his need to rend Lindsey limb from limb overriding everything else. The scumbag lawyer knew where his son was, knew what Darla's plans were for him, and Angel was going to find out what they were, if Lindsey had to die in the process, preferably if he died in the process.

Gunn managed to pry the tire iron from Angel's grasp, but the former vampire broke their grips, ramming into Lindsey, knocking them both to the ground. His hands closed around the lawyer's throat, choking the life from his body.

"Stop!" Buffy screamed in horror.

She didn't have any idea what was going on, but Angel was about to kill the man he'd called Lindsey, the man who might know where her son was. Angel stilled immediately and both he and Lindsey turned their gazes to the distraught former Slayer. It was the first time Lindsey had noticed the blonde woman and he instantly knew she must be the Slayer.

"What's going on?" Buffy asked in a harsh whisper.

"Lindsey is a lawyer," Angel explained, rising to his feet, unpinning his prey. "He works for Wolfram and Hart, the law firm that brought Darla back. There is no way he doesn't know what she's up to."

"Do you know where my son is?" Buffy asked Lindsey, tears standing in her eyes, her terror evident.

Though he wouldn't have thought it possible, Lindsey's heart wrenched at her plea. He'd been informed only a short while earlier of Darla and Lilah's latest scheme. It hadn't particularly interested him one way or another. He was sick to death of Wolfram and Hart's obsession with Angel and Angelus. As far as he was concerned, the further they stayed away from both of them, the better. He did know, however, they planned to try and bring Angelus back using Angel's son as a host, destroying the boy in the process. That hadn't particularly bothered him either. What did he care about Angel's son? Until the moment Buffy spoke to him, he hadn't given a moment's consideration to the boy's mother - to the fact that someone besides Angel might be hurt by the death of the boy's soul.

Despite every bit of self preservation in his being telling him to keep his mouth shut, Lindsey replied, "Yes."

*****

Jakob woke feeling awful, like every nerve in his body had been fried - which, he reflected, they had. He was lying on a cold stone floor in some dank cell, the only illumination coming from a bare bulb suspended from the ceiling. Maneuvering himself into a sitting position, he surveyed his surroundings. The cell was enclosed on four sides by heavy iron bars. He was housed alone. It appeared that his cell was one in a row of many. Faith's still unconscious form was sprawled in an adjoining cell.

"Faith," he whispered. She did not respond.

She was alive, or rather undead. Vampires dusted when they "died". She was still in one piece, so that, at least, boded well. Confused and exhausted, Jake leaned forward, resting his head against the bars of the cell, closing his eyes. How long he rested like that, he didn't know, but as ice cold fingers brushed along his cheek, his head shot up. Instinctually, he scooted back from the bars, stopping when he reached the center of the cell. A dark haired woman garbed in a creamy white babydoll dress watched him intently.

"My little lamb," she said in a sing song voice that set Jakob's nerves jangling.

"Who are you?" Jake asked, but she didn't seem to hear him.

"My daddy is coming home, little lamb, home to stay."

"Dru! Leave him alone," Faith shouted.

Drusilla hissed, bringing her hands up, mimicking claws striking at the turned Slayer. "Nasty creature," Dru scolded, "trying to keep daddy from taking the little lamb. It won't work. Grandmummy and the nasty lawyer will bring him here to eat the little lamb's soul and then we'll be happy again."

Faith's gaze shot to Jakob as the meaning of Drusilla's ranting became clear. "Darla and Lilah actually found a way to bring Angelus back?" Faith asked Dru, frantic.

Dru laughed and began twirling in circles. "My daddy is coming home and we'll feast for days!" she said gleefully.

Faith sighed heavily, Dru was gone into her own world again. She looked at Jakob hopelessly. The boy had no idea what he was in for.

***** As Lindsey relayed the plans Darla and Lilah had for Jakob, Angel walked across the room to stand behind Buffy, supporting her physically. For once, his presence did nothing to calm her.

Her entire body trembling, Buffy asked Lindsey, "They want to bring Angelus back using Jakob's body?"

The raw pain and fear in her voice was overwhelming and with much shame, Lindsey answered, "Yes. As far as I can tell, that is their plan."

"When?" she asked frantically.

"As soon as possible, probably this evening," Lindsey replied, not pulling any punches. "They can't afford to wait. By now they know you're on to them."

Turning in Angel's embrace, Buffy looked at him with large, frightened eyes. "We have to save him," she whispered.

Angel looked at her for a long moment and nodded. "We will," he said firmly.

*****

"The tribute is almost ready," the guard informed Lilah as she walked into her office.

The lawyer turned to see Darla smiling. The cold gleam in her eye was unsettling. With a nod, she dismissed the guard who had been left to watch the vampire, Lilah had never trusted Darla.

"It seems there have been some new developments," Lilah said to the vampire.

"New developments?" Darla asked, cocking an eyebrow.

"Lindsey is missing. He was last seen getting into a car with a man who matches Angel's description."

Darla's smile didn't fade.

"You're not worried that he knows what's going on?" Lilah asked incredulously.

"I'm absolutely thrilled he knows what's going on," Darla replied cryptically. "I was worried that the Slayer would try and fix this on her own."

Lilah stared dumbfounded at the vampire. "You know that they know, that they're probably on their way here now to stop this, and you don't care?"

"Oh Lilah," Darla said slowly, as if speaking to a slow child, "I care."

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