CHAPTER 9: REQUIEM REHEARSAL

The vision didn’t knock her down this time. It eviscerated her.

Cordelia Chase stood in the middle of the Hyperion’s dusty lobby, mid-sentence about some half-baked plan to stake a nest of Fyarl demons, when the migraine detonated behind her eyes like a flashbang. She staggered, one hand clutching the reception desk, the other pressing uselessly against her temple. The images came fast and merciless: her own face, pale and blood-streaked, eyes wide with the kind of final terror she’d always sworn she’d never feel. Her body crumpled on cracked pavement, rain mixing with the blood pouring from her nose, ears, mouth. No heroic last words. No dramatic fade-to-black. Just pain, endless, grinding pain, and then nothing.

She tasted copper. Felt the warm trickle over her lip.

Great. Another nosebleed. Because dying in my sleep wasn’t dramatic enough.

“Cordy?” Angel was beside her in that silent, vampire way of his, one arm sliding around her waist like it belonged there. Which it kind of did now, in the secret, stolen hours they’d been carving out since she’d first let him see her crack.

She forced a laugh that came out more like a wheeze. “Vision bingo. Ten points for the ugly demon with the tentacles. Nothing I can’t handle, Broody. Back off before you wrinkle my shirt.”

His grip tightened, thumb brushing the small of her back in a way that sent a different kind of shiver through her. “You’re bleeding.”

“Occupational hazard. Occupational suckage, but whatever.” She swiped at her nose with the back of her hand, smearing red across her knuckles. Snark was her armor. Always had been. Even when the visions were showing her a front-row seat to her own funeral.

She kept it together through the briefing. Through Wesley’s meticulous notes and Gunn’s half-joking complaints about overtime. Through the hunt itself, where she played bait like always and pretended the headache wasn’t carving canyons into her skull. Angel never left her side. Not really. His eyes followed her like a shadow, dark and knowing and full of something she was too scared to name yet.

Later, when the others had cleared out for the night—Wesley muttering about obscure texts, Gunn heading home with a wave—the lobby felt too quiet. Too intimate. Cordelia sat on the round couch, knees drawn up, staring at the floor like it might open up and swallow her whole. Angel leaned against the desk across from her, arms crossed, waiting.

She lasted maybe five minutes.

“I saw it,” she whispered, voice cracking like cheap porcelain. “Me. Dead. The visions… they’re killing me, Angel. Not some big bad. Not a demon. This. Every time it hits harder, longer. And tonight? Tonight it showed me the end credits.”

He moved then, dropping to his knees in front of her like gravity had given up. His hands—those big, cool hands that had held her through a dozen apocalypses—framed her face. “Cordy.”

“Don’t.” She tried to pull away, but there was nowhere to go. Not from him. Not anymore. “I didn’t want to tell you. Not yet. I thought… I don’t know, maybe if I ignored it, it would just… poof. But it’s not poofing, Angel. It’s getting worse. And I can’t—God, I can’t keep pretending I’m fine when every migraine feels like my brain’s rewriting itself into a tombstone.”

Tears burned hot and ugly down her cheeks. No pretty crying for Cordelia Chase. This was snot and gasping and the kind of raw, broken sound that made her want to punch something. Or someone. Preferably the Powers That Be.

Angel drew closer, his breath ghosting across her skin. “You’re not dying. Not on my watch.”

“You can’t brood this one away, hero.” Her fingers curled into his shirt, twisting the fabric like it could anchor her here. “I’ve been carrying this for weeks. Every vision’s a preview. My death. Slow. Painful. Alone in some alley because I pushed everyone away so they wouldn’t have to watch.”

“You’re not alone.” His voice was gravel and velvet, the way it got when the soul in him warred with the demon. “Not anymore. Not ever again.”

She laughed through the sobs, snarky to the bitter end. “Yeah? Tell that to the Powers. They’ve got a real sick sense of humor. Give the cheerleader visions, make her useful, then fry her brain like an overcooked egg. Classic.”

He pulled back just enough to look at her, eyes burning with that intensity that always made her stomach flip. “I love you.”

The words hung there, simple and devastating. Not the first time he’d said it—whispers in the dark, half-confessions during patrols—but this time it felt like a vow carved in stone. Or a prayer.

Cordelia’s breath hitched. “Don’t you dare say that like it’s a goodbye.”

“It’s not.” His thumbs swept away her tears, tender as a promise. “It’s the reason I’m going to tear apart every book, every scroll, every damn demon contact we have until I find a way to stop this. There has to be something. A ritual. A relic. Hell, I’ll make a deal with the devil himself if it buys us more time.”

“More time,” she echoed, voice small. The admission tasted like ash and hope all at once. “Even if it doesn’t fix what’s already broken… just more time. With you. With this stupid, impossible thing we’ve got going.”

His mouth found hers then—desperate, claiming, the kind of kiss that blurred the line between comfort and need. She kissed him back like the world might end tomorrow, because it might. Fingers tangled in his hair, bodies pressed close on the couch as if proximity could defy fate. It wasn’t about heat tonight, not the way it had been in stolen nights before. This was raw. Anchoring. The kind of closeness born from secrets and shared terror.

When they broke apart, foreheads still touching, she managed a watery smirk. “If I die, I’m haunting your ass. You’ll never get a moment’s peace, mister.”

“Not happening.” His hand splayed across her back, holding her like she was made of glass and wildfire. “We fight this. Together.”

The next morning, the research frenzy began.

Angel tore through the books like a man possessed—which, technically, he was. Ancient tomes piled high on the office desk, notes scrawled in his precise handwriting. Vision suppression. Neural dampening. Demonic transference. Anything to take the visions away. Not a cure for the damage already done, maybe, but a reprieve. A little more time. A little more them.

Wesley found him there at dusk. The Englishman’s glasses were perched on the bridge of his nose, a fresh pot of tea steaming on the desk beside the stack of dusty volumes he’d brought with him. “Angel. You’ve been at this for hours. What exactly are we looking for? Another apocalypse? Because I’ve cross-referenced—”

“It’s nothing.” Angel’s jaw tightened. He slammed a book shut a little too hard. “Personal project.”

Wesley’s eyes narrowed, that watcher brain of his clicking pieces together faster than Angel liked. “Personal. As in… Cordelia? She’s been off lately. The nosebleeds. The way she deflects. And now you’re researching neural suppression spells like the fate of the world depends on it. Angel, if there’s something—”

“There’s not.” The lie tasted like dust. Angel met his gaze, steady as he could manage. “Just… old debts. Demon contacts. You know how it is.”

Wesley didn’t look convinced. He hovered there a beat longer, adding things up behind those wire-rimmed glasses—close, too close—before Cordelia’s voice cut through the tension from the lobby.

“Hey, boys! If you’re done with the cryptic staring contest, there’s a Fyarl nest that needs stabbing. And I’m not doing it in these heels.”

Angel exhaled, misdirecting with a shrug. “See? Nothing. Let’s go.”

But as Wesley turned away, muttering about “bloody secrets,” Angel caught Cordelia’s eye across the room. She gave him that trademark smirk, the one that said I’m dying inside but I’ll still out-snark you, and his chest tightened with the kind of love that hurt.

They’d fight. They’d bleed. They’d fall a little harder every damn day.

Because a little more time? Yeah. It was everything.

~ NEXT CHAPTER ~

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