Trapped By A Demon That Fed On Our Hate, We Found A More Intimate Way To Starve It

The phone rang long after midnight, a shrill intrusion into the quiet gloom of the Hyperion Hotel. Angel didn't need to be asleep to be disturbed by it. He picked up the receiver on the third ring, his voice a low monotone. "Yeah."

"Angel? Thank God." Giles's voice, thin and strained with static and something else—fear. It had been a long time since Angel had heard that in the Watcher's tone. "We have a problem. A serious one."

"Sunnydale always has a problem, Giles."

"Not like this," Giles insisted, his voice dropping. "There's a new entity here. It doesn't kill, not in a way we understand. It leaves its victims... empty. Catatonic. All emotional energy, all life force, just… gone. The doctors are baffled. We found the first one this morning."

Angel stood, the cord of the phone stretching as he paced the length of his office. The familiar pull of that town, a current he’d fought for years, was already tugging at him. "Who was it?"

A heavy sigh on the other end of the line. "A boy. Percy West. You wouldn't know him. A former classmate of… of Buffy's. They found him in the high school library. Just sitting at a table, staring at a book he wasn't reading. He hasn't moved or spoken since."

The library. Of course. The heart of the Hellmouth. "Why call me?" Angel asked, though he already knew the answer.

"Because she isn't here, Angel," Giles said, the words stark and heavy. "And this feels… big. I need you."

The drive was eight hours of grim silence, the black convertible eating up the miles of dark highway separating him from the one town he swore he'd never willingly return to. Every sign for Sunnydale felt like a warning. He pulled up to the Summers' house just as the sky was beginning to pale with the first hint of dawn. The lights were on, casting a warm, deceptive glow from the windows.

He didn't bother knocking. The door opened into a living room thick with tension and the smell of stale coffee. Willow sat curled on the armchair, her face pale, Tara rubbing her shoulders with a worried expression. Xander was pacing near the fireplace, his hands shoved in his pockets, while Anya watched him with an unreadable look.

Giles stood as Angel entered, his face etched with exhaustion. "Thank you for coming."

"What have you got?" Angel asked, his eyes sweeping over the worn-out faces of the Scooby Gang. Xander stopped pacing to glare at him, a flicker of the old resentment in his eyes.

"Not much more than what I told you," Giles admitted, handing him a mug of coffee that Angel ignored. "We canvassed the school. No one saw anything unusual. Percy was studying late. The janitor found him. The doctors say his brain activity is minimal, like he's in a deep, dreamless sleep, but his eyes are wide open."

"It's like he's a ghost already," Willow whispered, her voice trembling slightly. "There's nothing there. We tried a few simple spells to check for demonic possession or soul-theft. Nothing. It's like the part of him that feels was just… erased."

Angel absorbed the information, the grim reality settling in his gut. This wasn't a simple kill. It was something more insidious, something that fed on the very essence of a person. His gaze settled on Giles. "The library. That's where I'll start."

The Sunnydale High library was just as he remembered it, only quieter. The scent of old paper and dust hung in the air, a scent forever mingled in his memory with the metallic tang of blood and ozone. A chill that had nothing to do with the temperature permeated the space, a lingering residue of wrongness. He ran his hand along a scarred wooden table, feeling the deep gouges left by some long-ago fight. This place was a monument to conflict.

“Fancy seeing you here.”

The voice, low and laced with a familiar mocking drawl, came from the shadows of the upper mezzanine. Angel didn't need to look. His shoulders tensed, a century of instinct screaming at the sound.

“Spike.”

Spike leaned against the railing, a cigarette dangling from his lips, its cherry a lone red eye in the gloom. He was wearing his black duster, a silhouette of worn leather and bleached hair. “Come back for a bit of nostalgia, have we? Or did you bring this new playmate with you? Smells like your brand of existential dread.”

“I’m here to help,” Angel said, his voice flat and cold.

“Help?” Spike laughed, a harsh, grating sound. He flicked his cigarette over the railing, the butt skittering across the floor below. “You show up, and some poor sod gets his feelings Hoovered out. Bit of a coincidence, don’t you think? Everything you touch turns to dust and misery, Angelus. Always has.”

The name was a deliberate jab, and it landed. “I had nothing to do with this.”

“Didn’t you?” Spike vaulted over the railing, landing in a silent crouch a dozen feet away. He rose slowly, a predator uncoiling. “This thing, it feeds on despair, on regret. You’re a walking buffet. A bloody all-you-can-eat misery banquet.”

That was all the warning Angel got. Spike lunged, not with a fist, but with his full body weight, slamming Angel back against a towering bookshelf. The structure groaned, wood splintering. Books rained down around them, a cascade of paper and forgotten histories. Angel shoved back, sending Spike stumbling.

“You’re the one who crawled back to the Hellmouth,” Angel snarled, grabbing the front of Spike’s jacket and slamming him into the card catalog. Drawers rattled, one sliding out and spilling its contents across the floor. “Couldn’t stay away, could you? Still chasing a ghost.”

Spike’s fist connected with Angel’s jaw, a sharp, cracking impact. “Don’t you talk about her.” He drove a knee into Angel’s stomach, but Angel twisted, absorbing the blow on his thigh and using the momentum to throw Spike over a reading table. The table collapsed under the weight, splintering with a deafening crack.

They came up snarling, circling each other amidst the wreckage. The air was thick with their hatred, a palpable force that seemed to make the very shadows writhe.

“You think that soul makes you better than me?” Spike spat, wiping a trickle of black blood from his lip. “It just makes you a whinging ponce who’s afraid of his own shadow.”

“It’s more than you ever had,” Angel shot back. “You’re just a cheap copy. Darla’s consolation prize.”

The insult hit its mark. With a roar of pure fury, Spike tackled him, sending them both crashing through the main desk, shattering the privacy glass and landing in a heap of splintered wood and paperwork. They rolled on the floor, fists flying, a tangle of black leather and rage.

“ENOUGH!”

Giles’s voice, amplified by fury and desperation, cut through their brawl like a blade. They froze, Angel’s hand fisted in Spike’s shirt, Spike’s knee pressed against Angel’s chest. The library doors were wide open, revealing the Watcher, his face a mask of thunder, flanked by a pale Willow and a furious Xander.

Breathing heavily, they pushed apart, rising slowly from the debris. The library was a disaster zone, a testament to their mutual destruction. They glared at each other, chests heaving.

“Have you quite finished?” Giles demanded, his voice dangerously quiet now. He stepped over a pile of fallen books, his eyes sweeping over the chaos before landing on them. “Buffy is not here. Whatever this creature is, looking at the two of you, I’d say it’s found its primary food source. You are the most powerful weapons we have against it. And as God is my witness, you will learn to aim them in the same direction.”

Giles’s gaze was sharp, cutting through the haze of adrenaline that still clung to them. He gestured with a disgusted sweep of his hand at the destruction. “This… this is exactly what it wants. This is what it feeds on.”

Spike scoffed, brushing dust and splinters from his duster. “What, it’s got a thing for shoddy carpentry? News flash, Rupert, everything in this town is made of balsa wood and bad memories.”

“It feeds on conflict, you imbecile,” Giles snapped, his patience worn to a thread. “On animosity. On lingering, bitter emotions. The psychic residue of pain.” He walked over to the ruined front desk and picked up a heavy, leather-bound book that had miraculously survived the chaos. He slapped it down on a less-damaged section of the counter. “I’ve been researching. The closest parallel I can find is a creature the texts call a ‘Misericord.’ A demon of despair.”

Angel took a step closer, his eyes on the book. The Latin script was archaic, the illustrations disturbing. “It drains its victims of emotion?”

“Completely,” Giles confirmed, turning a page to a grim woodcut of a hollow-eyed figure. “It’s drawn to places where intense, violent, or sorrowful events have occurred. It leeches the ambient energy. When it finds a living host, particularly one already mired in their own misery, it latches on and drains them dry. A high school library on the Hellmouth, the site of countless battles… it’s a perfect hunting ground.” He looked from Angel to Spike, his expression hardening. “And a brawl between two ancient, rival vampires probably acted as a flare, drawing it right to this spot.”

The implication hung in the air, thick and unpleasant. Their fight hadn't just been a pointless indulgence; it had been actively dangerous, an invitation.

Xander folded his arms. “So what, they’re its cheerleaders? Great. Just what we needed.”

“On the contrary,” Giles said, his tone shifting. He tapped a specific passage in the book with his finger. “This is the crucial part. The Misericord is a psychic entity. It’s almost impossible to see or sense unless you are… attuned to its frequency.”

“And what frequency would that be?” Spike asked, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “Angst FM?”

“The frequency of profound regret,” Giles stated, looking directly at them, his gaze unflinching. “The text is quite specific. It can only be tracked by those with a deep, personal history of violence. Those who carry the weight of their past actions like a shroud. It’s a burden, yes, but in this case, it’s also a compass.” He closed the book with a definitive thud. “The two of you… you are saturated in the very thing this creature hunts. You can feel it in a way the rest of us cannot. You are the only ones who can follow its trail.”

The silence in the library was suddenly heavier than before. It was no longer about a temporary ceasefire. It was a condemnation and a conscription all in one. Their entire bloody, shared history—the thing that made them hate each other—was now the very tool required to save the town. The irony was so thick Angel could taste it.

Spike let out a short, bitter laugh. “Oh, that’s rich. That is bloody priceless. So our reward for being monsters is we get to be the bloodhounds? No thanks.”

“This isn’t a request,” Angel said, his voice low. He wasn’t looking at Spike, but at Giles, a grim understanding dawning in his eyes. He could already feel it—a cold spot in the room, a subtle resonance of misery that he had initially dismissed as his own. It was a foul, familiar song, and he knew, with sickening certainty, that Spike could hear it too.

Spike stared at Angel, a muscle twitching in his jaw. The cold spot Angel felt was a familiar dread coiling in his own gut, a low hum of despair that had nothing to do with his own soul. It was coming from outside, a beacon in the dark. He knew Angel was right, and he hated him for it.

“Don’t you dare go all noble hero on me,” Spike sneered, his voice low and venomous. “We both know you’re just as much of a monster as I am. The only difference is you cry about it afterwards.”

“This isn’t about us,” Angel said, his tone clipped. He looked away from Spike, back to Giles. “Where does it feel strongest?”

The question was for Spike, but posed to the room. Spike’s eyes narrowed. He closed them for a moment, pushing past the reflexive hatred and focusing on the cold, empty pull. It was like the silence after a scream, a psychic vacuum that tugged at the edges of his consciousness. It felt like… failure. Like the ashes in his mouth after a fire has gone out.

“West,” Spike finally bit out, shoving his hands in his pockets. “Towards the industrial park.” He didn't have to guess the exact location. A specific memory, sour and sharp, was already rising in his mind. He met Angel’s gaze, and saw the same grim recognition reflected there. Of course. It would be there.

Giles nodded slowly, his expression grim. “Go. And for God’s sake, try not to kill each other. You’ll only be ringing its dinner bell.”

Without another word, Angel turned and walked out of the ruined library. After a moment’s hesitation, a silent curse twisting his lips, Spike followed. They moved through the deserted night-time streets of Sunnydale in a tense silence, a wide berth between them. The psychic pull grew stronger with every block, a nauseating pressure building behind their eyes. It was a shared, private agony, a frequency only they could hear.

The factory loomed at the end of the street, a skeletal silhouette against the moonless sky. Rusted, derelict, a monument to decay. The place where Spike had chained Angel to the ceiling, trying to torture the location of the Gem of Amarra out of him. The air grew thick and cold, heavy with a misery so profound it felt like drowning. Every step closer was a struggle against an invisible current of despair.

“Charming place,” Spike muttered, more to himself than to Angel. “Brings back memories.”

“I remember,” Angel said, his voice devoid of emotion. He pushed open the large, groaning metal door and stepped inside, disappearing into the oppressive darkness.

Spike followed, the door scraping shut behind him with a sound of finality. The inside was worse. The air was stagnant with the smell of rust, damp concrete, and something else… a cloying sweetness like wilted flowers. Dust motes danced in the thin shafts of moonlight breaking through the grimy upper windows, illuminating a cavernous space filled with the hulking shapes of dead machinery. The cold was bone-deep, and the silence was absolute, broken only by the drip of water somewhere in the vast darkness.

The feeling of despair was a physical weight here, concentrated and suffocating. It pressed in on them, whispering of every failure, every regret, every moment of weakness. It was the collective echo of their shared history in this very spot.

Angel stopped, his head tilted. He was looking towards a small, windowless office built into the far wall, the source of the psychic pull. He started towards it, his movements stiff. Spike trailed a few feet behind, his hand resting on the hilt of a weapon he couldn't see but knew he’d need.

The office door was slightly ajar. Angel pushed it open.

Inside, slumped in a rusted metal chair, was a man. His eyes were wide open, staring at nothing. His face was a slack, emotionless mask, his skin pale and waxy. There was no sign of a struggle, no mark on him at all, but his emotional energy was gone. He was a hollow shell, another victim of the Misericord. On the floor beside him lay a single, wilting rose.

Angel stood in the doorway, his expression unreadable. Spike came up beside him, peering into the small, grim room. The sense of misery was a palpable scream here, centered on the empty man in the chair.

“Well,” Spike said, his voice unnaturally quiet in the crushing silence. “Looks like it’s got a type.”

Angel didn’t respond. He was staring at the victim, but his focus seemed to be inward, on the cold resonance that connected this place, this creature, and the two of them. It wasn’t just drawn to conflict. It was drawn to their conflict. Their past was the bait, and they had just walked straight into the trap.