demonbelthazor | Warehouse on the edge of town, Wednesday Night -- NFB

After leaving Allie at the diner, Bel shimmered to the old warehouse on the edge of town. He had no idea why Veronica wanted to meet him there of all places, but he hadn't had the chance to ask for an explanation after she'd passed him the note in Sociology.

Finding a spot where a streetlight outside streamed through a cracked window, Bel lit a cigarette and waited.

Veronica walked in and cringed internally when she smelled the cigarette smoke. A wave of panic threatened, but she managed to quell it by reminding herself that she had requested this meeting.

"I wasn't sure if you would show," she said to Bel.

"Call it curiosity," Bel said. "Why do you want to talk to me? And why here?" He looked around a little suspiciously as if expecting some sort of trap with Logan or Marty lurking in the darkness with a gun.

"I need a favor," Veronica admitted. "And I knew there wouldn't be anyone here to overhear us talking."

"What kind of favor?" Bel asked warily.

"I hear you can get people in to places they couldn't normally get in to," she said.

"Yeah," he said carefully. "What did you have in mind?"

Veronica gave him a serious look. "Somewhere I think you've been already," she said. "Aaron Echolls' prison cell."

Bel couldn't help but grin a little as he took a long drag off his cigarette. "Yeah, I remember that," he said. "Logan wanted a chance to, uh, 'talk' to his dad, so me and Angelus took him for a visit."

"Funny how they found him in a locked cell badly beaten a few months ago," Veronica said.

"Your boyfriend isn't too bad with a crowbar," Bel said.

"Apparently he wasn't good enough," she replied bitterly.

"Funny, I would've picked you as someone who didn't want her boyfriend to have blood on his hands," Bel said, raising an eyebrow at the emotion in her voice. "But yeah, he couldn't finish the job."

The rational part of Veronica was glad that Logan couldn't go through with it. But the emotional part of her was tired of being a victim and wished he would have. "Could you?" she asked.

Bel tossed his cigarette to the floor and took a step closer to Veronica. "Is this some kind of joke?" he said angrily. "Are you playing tempt the demon to see if I'll fall for it and give you an excuse to kill me?"

"No joke," she said, her voice cold. "That bastard killed my best friend. He tried to kill me twice. I'm tired of being a victim."

"So you want me to deal with him for you, is that it?" Bel said, still suspicious.

Veronica pointedly looked around the warehouse and raised an eyebrow at him in response.

Well, now he knew why she wanted to meet him here at least. "Then what?" he asked. "You forgive and forget, or do you go running to Angel to tell him I'm still a killer?"

"This is strictly between us," Veronica said. "No one can know. Not even Phoebe or Logan."

"How do I know this isn't some sort of test?" Bel said. "You setting me up, Veronica?"

"I can understand why you'd think that," she said. She swallowed hard, unable to mask her emotions anymore. "Do you have any idea the hell I've gone through because of that man?"

Bel paused to light another cigarette, keeping the fireball he conjured to do so small and non-threatening. He had never heard the full story about what had happened to Veronica, only bits and pieces and hints here and there. "Tell me," he said.

Veronica sat down on the dusty floor and leaned back against the wall, closing her eyes. "I spent my junior year of high school trying to find out who murdered my best friend," she began. "I finally found evidence that he did it. Unfortunately, he realized I had the evidence. He tried to kill me." She paused and took a deep breath. "He knocked me out and when I came to, I was trapped in what turned out to be a refrigerator. He poured gasoline over it and lit it." By now there were tears streaming down her face, but she was oblivious to their presence. "My dad happened to find us in time and rescued me."

Guilt stirred in Bel. That was where her fear of fire had come from, and he had used that fear to torture her after Angel had been re-souled. It felt too lame to say "I'm sorry," again, so instead he gruffly said, "You said he tried to kill you twice?"

"He hired some guy to try to kill me. He showed up in town over the weekend."

"He's already taken care of, I take it?"

Veronica nodded and hoped Marty was okay. "Yeah," she said, wiping her face with the back of her hand.

"You afraid Echolls is going to try again, or do you just want payback?" Bel asked.

There was a pause as Veronica considered this. She finally looked up and met Bel's eyes. "Both."

Pausing thoughtfully as he took in a lungful of smoke, Bel exhaled and said, "Let me think about it. You haven't told anybody about this? Not Logan, not Angel?"

"Logan doesn't even know what happened this weekend," Veronica said. "And I expect that to stay the same."

"What about Angel?" Bel asked. He couldn't care less about what Logan thought of him or what he did, but what Angel thought mattered. "Does he know you're talking to me about this?"

"No. I don't trust him not to tell Logan."

Bel nodded, still considering. On one hand, he owed Veronica for what he had done to her. And killing a killer wasn't evil, was it? On the other, he had the feeling that Angel would be disappointed in him if he went through with this. And Veronica could be putting on a good act -- he still wasn't sure this wasn't a trick to show he hadn't changed.

"Let me think about it," he said again.

Veronica nodded. "Please don't tell anyone about this."

"Not planning on it," Bel said. Even agreeing to think about killing a man would probably get him in more trouble than he wanted.

"I won't hold it against you if you say no," Veronica told him. "I'm just tired of playing the damsel in distress."

"You're meeting the demon who tried to kill you alone in a dark warehouse where no one can hear you scream," Bel said. "Hardly the act of a damsel in distress." Still, she kind of was, and that tugged at Bel's conscience even more.

She shrugged. "I figured the worst you could do was kill me."

"Not the worst I could do," Bel said absently before he could stop the words.

Veronica raised her eyebrows. "Point," she agreed. "But you can't do anything worse than has already been done, so I figured meeting you here was pretty low risk."

"You didn't really think I'd try anything, did you?" Bel asked.

"No," she surprised herself by answering honestly. "And there was a tiny part of me that wouldn't have cared if you had," she admitted.

Either she was a great actress or she had scars deeper than he had ever guessed. "Um, I'm not going to," he said awkwardly. "Try anything I mean. But if you really want me to kill Echolls for you I can do that, but you should think about it for a little while longer, okay? Make sure that's what you really want and that you can live with it."

Could she live with it? She didn't know. Ridding the world of a sadistic bastard, sure. Having someone kill her boyfriend's father? Maybe not. "I'll think about it," she finally said. "It's good to know the option is there."

"Okay," Bel said. "Let me know. And I don't just go around agreeing to kill anyone," he added. "It's because I owe you, and it really sounds like this guy deserves it."

Veronica stood up and dusted off the back of her jeans. "Thanks."

"You want me to, uh, walk you home?" Bel said. "Or shimmer you?"

"It probably wouldn't be a good idea for us to be seen walking through town together," she pointed out.

"Yeah, I guess so," he said. "And you probably don't trust me to shimmer you. You sure you're gonna be okay walking alone? This part of town is kinda dangerous."

Veronica bit her lip. "Could you guarantee that no one would see us if you shimmered us?"

"Yeah, I can take you right outside the dorms where no is around," he said. "Then you could walk in by yourself."

After a moment of hesitation, Veronica said, "Okay." She wouldn't admit it, but she was a little afraid to walk through town alone.

Bel dropped his cigarette and ground it out, then held out his hand to Veronica.

Right. She'd have to touch him to have him shimmer her. "Let's go," she said, grabbing his hand and hoping to get this over as quickly as possible.

The warehouse blurred and disappeared, then they appeared in the shadows under some trees several yards away from the dorm entrance. "There you go," Bel said.

Veronica put a hand up against a nearby tree. "Thanks," she said, taking a few slow, deep breaths. "I think I'm going to stay here for a minute and re-gain my bearings. I'll talk to you later."

"Okay," Bel said. "Let me know what you want me to do. Just be sure it's what you really want." He took a step back and shimmered away from her.

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