“You’re making fun of me,” the man charged, his voice stone cold.

“Absolutely not,” Logan promised him. “The world isn’t exactly how people think it is; we’ve seen more weird shit than you can imagine.” He almost added that they were, technically, part of that weird shit, but that seemed to be carrying things too far.

“Oh shit,” Scott muttered under his breath, shaking his head and looking away. “Demons couldn’t have gotten him, could they? I mean, with his power?”

Logan glanced and him, and said in a low monotone, “Do you think a broken arm’s gonna mean anything to a vampire or a Berserker?”

The man had been watching them as they talked, and remained clearly skeptical. “You’re putting me on.”

“I wish we were, but I swear we’re not.” Logan sighed, aware he probably thought they were maniacs now. “Do you have any idea what kind of demons are around here?”

He just stared at them as if trying to decide if they were crazy, or simply punk ass kids. “Is this for one of those hidden camera t.v. shows?”

Okay, they had blown it. He was never going to believe them, no matter what they said. “No, I’m sorry we bothered you,” he said, dropping the fifty dollar bill in his lap as he turned away. He grabbed Scott by the arm and forced him down the sidewalk with him. He looked like he was going to protest, but decide not to. “That was a waste of time, wasn’t it?”

“Not necessarily, no. Now we know this area’s known for its demons.”

“And what good does that do us? We have no idea what kind, or if they have Matt.”

Logan grinned at him, loving this part of the gig. “Well, there’s one way to find out, isn’t there?”

He swore, if Scott kept looking at him like that, he was going to laugh.

 
4

“Are you sure I’m out? I still smell smoke.”

Even though he knew he was, Wesley glanced at the back of Angel’s coat, just to humor him. “You’re definitely out. It’s a good thing the Arbo’ghasts brought non-alcoholic champagne. Sorry I threw it at you like that.”

“It’s okay - the flames hurt a hell of a lot more than the glass did.” Still, Angel paused and rolled his shoulders, as if working some kinks out. The bottle had shattered against his back, and - vampire or not - that still had to hurt. “Now, what the fuck happened in there?”

“The rite of bonding of the Arbo’ghasts, as it said on the appointment schedule.”

Angel gave him a stark, hollow eyed look that meant he was either on the verge of getting angry or completely giving up. “Wesley, they set me on my fire, and I just killed three of them.”

“I admit, the fire was an … unexpected variation, but the Arbo’Ghast bonding ceremony involves the slaughter of those designated the Chosen, who are then bonded to the others in the clan.”

“How are they bonded if they’re dead?”

“Through ingestion. Didn’t you read the memo I sent you on the rituals of the Arbo’ghasts?”

Angel sighed as he leaned against the hood of their sports car, one of the many in his personal Wolfram and Hart stable. He could have had a driver, but Angel obviously relished the chance to drive these cars whenever he could. He ran a hand through his hair and squeezed out some non-alcoholic champagne and glass fragments, which hit the pavement with a small noise, mostly buried by the harsh cries of seagulls fighting over discarded French fries in the fast food parking lost up the street. “Harmony dumped a bunch of files on my desk before we left.”

“So that’s a no?”

“That’s a no.”

The sun hadn’t gone down that long ago; the sky was a deep, dark shade of blue, and he disturbed himself by thinking of it as a cyanotic color. He really needed to get out of the office for a while. And this was a great place to do it; a shabby neighborhood of mostly closed down warehouses and half-dead fast food places near the docks, it was still a strangely nice place. Although knowing this particular place was owned by an Arbo’Ghast clan took the shine off of it somewhat.

Wesley leaned against the opposite side of the hood and told Angel what he knew about the bonding rite, and how it added up to that melee inside. In theory, it sounded like a wedding of some sort, but Arbo’Ghasts were semi-parasitic demons who passed on clan knowledge via ingestion of the brain tissue of its eldest members. The bonding ceremony was just the ritual murder of its eldest members for “bonding” to the next clan leaders. Since Wolfram and Hart had a good relationship with this particular clan, they always invited its leader down to “participate in the bonding rite” (I.e. kill the Chosen). And it was a good idea to keep an amicable relationship with them, as Arbo’Ghasts were extremely violent, and thanks to rites such as the bonding ritual, once you were on their shit list, you were on their shit list forever.

He had no idea the Arbo’Ghasts would decide to have a little fun with the vampire. Apparently they were unaware of the big changes in Wolfram and Hart management, and they must have decided the only way to save face in this matter was by getting killed in a fight with the half-breed, rather than simply acquiescing to getting their throats slit over the traditional sacred basin. And maybe they thought if Angel accidentally died, he - as supposedly his “Second” (he wasn’t really, not in the Wolfram and Hart hierarchy - he was simply head of security and intelligence, but how were the demons to know that?) - would take over the ritual. They did try and hold him back once they launched their surprise attack on Angel, but in spite of their overwhelming strength, size, and numbers, Wesley got free long enough to lob the bottle at Angel once they set him on
fire with the ceremonial candelabra. Several seconds before, someone had accidentally spilled ch’vecha - a sort of demon alcohol that was about two hundred proof, and could kill a Human with a single shot - all over him, clearly as
an accelerant.

While being pinned down by a three hundred and fifty pound Arbo’Ghast was no fun at all, they hadn’t actually hurt him. Luckily, none of Angel’s wounds were serious either; the fire hadn’t really gotten through his leather coat, and just the back of his hair was singed (if he’d been in a second later in throwing that bottle, his whole head might have gone up like a torch).

As soon as he was done telling him what he hadn’t read, Angel picked glass slivers out of his hand, and said, “Tell me we’re never doing this again.”

“The bonding ritual is traditionally held every twenty years - they don’t have long life spans.”

“Gee, I wonder why.” He flexed his hand to make sure it was all right, then asked, “Can I have a curse put on them?”

“Well, it’s within your power as head of Wolfram and Hart, but only up to a class seven. Otherwise, you do have to get a consensus within the hex and penalizing spells department.”

“What’s a class seven curse?”

“In a general sense? Oh, the usual medieval variety: boils, plagues of frogs, death of first borns, severe appliance malfunctions, intensive IRS audit.”

“That last one sounds good.” He then groaned and hung his head in his hands. “Have I told you lately that I hate this job?”

“If you count lately as this morning, yes. And this should be where you tell me “Things used to be so simple”.”

Angel looked up at him with a scowl. He had a bit of a flash burn on the left side of his face, but it was slowly but surely healing, and had pretty much avoided his eye, which was a rare stroke of luck. “Are you that jaded, or am I that predictable?”

“It’s probably -” But he never got to finish his sentence, and the night was rent by a sudden, blood curdling scream.

They both jolted and looked up the street, as it was coming from somewhere closer to the docks, a couple of streets away. And before Wesley could get even the vaguest idea of direction, Angel took off running between two warehouse, quickly getting lost in the shadows like only a vampire could.

“Bollocks,” he muttered, running after him. There was no point in telling him to hold up; there was no point in telling him to not do this either, as it could be a major security risk. And he knew, the moment he really seriously believed that, it was time to quit. They were supposed to be fighting the good fight, right? That included the small as well as the big.

He followed the sounds of footsteps down a secondary alley that smelled heavily of fish guts, and eventually heard voices around the next turn. He stopped and peered around the corner as he reached into his jacket for a weapon.

“ - ice surprise?” A woman said. “Angelus.”

Oh, that didn’t sound good.

In not so much an alley as a natural dead end at the loading end of a warehouse, was an odd group of vampires. The leader who must have called Angel Angelus - was a curvaceous, striking woman with long, curly reddish-brown hair, and pale blue eyes the color of a summer sky, dressed in what looked like a black velvet cloak. She had three companions, one of whom had the person who must have screamed by the throat. The truly odd thing was the person was a reptilian looking, genderless Markisan demon. Markisans were generally peaceful and hard to find, and their blood was generally unpalatable to vampires, unless the vampires were really desperate.

But none of these vampires looked like they were starving. And save for the redheaded woman, who looked like she was maybe in her early twenties, her three other female vampire companions were young - almost frighteningly so. They looked, at the oldest, sixteen - Weird Sisters age. The one holding the demon was a tall, slender girl with short, punky black hair, wearing sleek wraparound sunglasses to hide her eyes. The girl off to the far left, sitting on a pile of boxes, was a smaller, wraith like Cambodian girl, who was staring hollow eyed at absolutely nothing, and might have been drugged in some fashion. The girl off to the right was a sturdily built Hispanic girl with her long black hair held back in a tight ponytail. Absolutely no one looked concerned by Angel’s sudden appearance.

But Angel’s posture was stiff, as if he was caught up short. “Clarice,” he said, low and deadly. The redhead’s name, he gathered. As he scoured his memories of what he knew of Angeles’s historical companions, he recited a few magic words as he pulled what appeared to be a short metal pipe out of his coat.

The pipe rapidly grew and coalesced into a compact but powerful crossbow with wooden arrows. With a simple change of words, it could have come out with silver arrows for werewolves, or copper arrows for Freniks or Ressiks. He loved the up to date Wolfram and Hart magical technology. He aimed the crossbow at Clarice as he came out into the narrow lane, sidestepping carefully so he never lost sight of any of them as he moved farther to the side, so Angel was clear of his shot.

Clarice’s azure eyes fixed on him, ignoring Angel completely, and she grinned. “Oh, look, you brought a little Human as back up! I heard you’d been chumming around with Watchers, but I couldn’t believe it. Are you a Watcher, little man?” She tittered, as if the very idea was funny.

“What the hell are you doing here?” Angel demanded. “I thought you died in Bangalore.”

“And I thought you weren’t a traitor to your species. People think a lot of things that couldn’t be more wrong.”

“Let the Markisan go. Or are you into tormenting weaker demons for no reason?”

“There’s a reason for everything, Angelus. Go ahead and let it go, Jade.”

The girl wearing the sunglasses - clearly Jade - ripped a necklace off the Markisan’s throat, and then, in one smooth motion, snapped its neck. Angel instantly sprung into action, and Clarice yelled, “Jamais Vu, take him.”

It was the sylph like Cambodian girl who jumped into Angel’s path, and Wesley almost laughed. They had to be kidding - vampire or not, Angel had over one hundred pounds and a good solid foot and a quarter of height on her, not even counting his age and experience, which Angel generally had on most vampires.

But when the girl (Jamais Vu couldn’t have been her name - but it couldn’t have been a nickname either, could it?) opened her eyes, Wesley was sure he saw … something. Like a glint of light off a silver coin, something small and yet noticeable in this darkness. Angel clearly didn’t want to hurt the girl, vampire or not, so he lashed out with his arm, meaning to knock her aside … and she blocked it. He followed that with a kick, but she blocked that too - and she wasn’t even looking at him, but down at the ground.

Angel launched a flurry of combinations that were so rapid Wesley wasn’t sure he even saw half of them, and yet the girl Clarice had called Jamais Vu blocked every single one of them with frightening speed, and never looked up once. Even when Angel attempted an end lunge around her, she predicted that too and was ready for it.

Predicted ..?

Wesley took aim with the crossbow, but just as he pulled the trigger, Jamais Vu shouted, “Incoming!” and never once looked his way or stopped blocking Angel.

Clarice turned as the crossbow arrow flew towards her, and when she turned back around to face him, he saw she had plucked the arrow out of thin air, and was holding it in her hand like a dagger. Clarice’s blood red lips curved up in a sneering smile. “Thank you, little man. Just what I needed.” She then pivoted towards Angel, who was still busy trying to catch Jamais Vu by surprise.

“No,” he shouted, aware she was going to try and stake him. He reached in his pocket and withdrew what looked like a type of high tech grenade, reciting the activation spell, as Jamais Vu finally looked over at him, and shouted, “He’s going mystic!”

“Jade!” Clarice shouted, almost instantaneously.

The girl with the sunglasses suddenly punched the air as he pulled out the stasis spell grenade -

- and it was like he was hit in the chest by an invisible Mack truck. He went flying off his feet and came down hard, sliding along the concrete and feeling it rip up the skin on his back. Blast, that was going to hurt.

Jade had gotten Angel with it too - whatever it was - but at least he was no longer engaged in a pointless battle with the unbeatable Jamais Vu. Still, Angel recovered faster, and hopped back up to his feet as the four women gathered in a group, surrounding the short Hispanic girl. “It’s been real, Angelus - really funny,” Clarice said, as the Hispanic girl’s fists seemed to glow with gold light. What the hell was this? Wesley rolled up to his feet, wincing at the pain in his back, and glanced around for the grenade. It was no danger to them, as anyone who worked for Wolfram and Hart was protected by a counter-spell (that was called “idiot proofing” in the weapons department), but he could have used it right this second. His crossbow had gone flying too. “I’ll give Diablo a kiss for you, huh?”

The light from the girl’s balled hands seemed to flare … and then they were gone. All four of them, in the blink of an eye. The only sign that they had ever been here was the dead body of the Markisan.

“I hate to repeat myself,” Angel said, brushing dust off his half-burnt coat. “But what the fuck just happened?”

“The girl was a teleporter,” Wesley sighed, finally finding his crossbow. But where was that grenade? “And I think that other one was predicting moves before you made them.”

“How?”

“I’m not sure.” He rubbed a sore spot on his chest, where he was sure he’d have a bruise later. (But from what? Nothing solid hit him … or did it?) “Who’s Clarice?”

Angel grimaced, clearly reluctant to talk about it, but he had to know they weren’t leaving this alley until he told him. “She was a woman I turned in Scotland shortly before I got cursed. She was … I think Darla groomed her a little too well. She was very into the whole vampire lifestyle.”

“Who’s Diablo? Certainly she wasn’t referring to a devil.”

But Wesley suddenly wondered if he spoke too soon as a cold, troubled look passed over Angel’s face, and he looked away, as if too ashamed to look him in the eye. “In a manner of speaking, she was.”

Now he knew he wasn’t going to get that weekend away from the office anytime soon.

 
5

There was a well worn movie cliché about things being “too quiet”, but Scott hadn’t had any experience with it until right this moment.

It was like the block became a sudden dead zone at about five minutes after two in the morning, once cabs had picked up drunken stragglers from the clubs, or they had staggered down the street in ungainly packs. You could occasionally hear drunken laughter, and the ubiquitous honk of horns and throbbing bass of car stereos, but it was on another block - it could have been miles away. The breeze caused litter to scrap along the gutters, and the noise seemed impossibly loud. He suddenly felt cold, but didn’t think it was connected to the weather.

He wondered if he was completely alone. He didn’t feel watched, and he couldn’t hear anything beyond the noise of trash being shuffled by the wind. Maybe he was alone; he wouldn’t put it past Logan, who probably thought it was funny. He told him he should pretend to smoke, look preoccupied, but he wasn’t even going to fake such a disgusting habit. Still, it was kind of obvious just standing around here, waiting to get attacked.

So he sat down on the curb and started going through the contents of his coat pockets. It was weird how much detritus gathered there, even if you weren’t sure where half of it came from. He seemed to have a random assortment of business cards he couldn’t remember getting and various receipts, some of which were for things he had no memory of buying. When did he ever buy nothing but two packs of gum and a bottle of Elmer’s glue? Had someone been borrowing his coat?

He was so into the puzzling out of his mystery receipts he jumped slightly when a man asked, “Hey buddy, ya got the time?”

Shit he hadn’t even heard him walk up. “Yeah, sure,” he said, looking at his watch. “It’s -”

He wasn’t prepared for the man to grab him, haul him to his feet like a sack of potatoes, and throw him against the wall, so hard that his breath escaped him in a single, pained, “Oof.”

It was then he saw that the man who asked for the time was not really a man at all. It was some kind of demon who looked like he was covered with thick rhino hide, only it was a sort of bluish-green color, and seemed to have wart like bumps every few inches. It had a face that looked like it had been mashed flat with a frying pan, then stomped on by a series of angry flamenco dancers in tap shoes. Its eyes were angry yellow slits, staring out from the misshapen mass of its unfortunate face. “Hey, Human, didn’t yer mother teach ya never to talk at strangers?” A monster with a heavy Bronx accent, whose breath smelled of … old paste. Had he been borrowing his coat?

“I’m an orphan,” he snapped, ripping his gnarled hands off his lapel. His skin felt like beef jerky, and it was all he could do not to shudder in disgust. “And you had all night to think of a line. Was that really the best you could do?”

The demon’s face seemed to purse in confusion. “Why ain’t you scared?”

“Because I could blast your butt into the Hudson. Also -” There was a noise of something heavy slapping against the pavement, as Logan jumped down from the roof of the barbershop (! So that’s where he was) and slipped an arm around the demon’s warty throat, and put his other fist in front of its face, slowly but surely exposing a single claw. “- I have a psychotic friend with me.”

“I am not psychotic,” Logan groused.

The demon’s eyes were suddenly big enough to see as he gaped at the claw growing in front of his face. “Holy fuck! What kinda freaks are youse guys?”

Scott stepped aside, and Logan shoved the demon face first into the wall, so violently Scott was surprised he hadn’t left an imprint in the bricks. “Okay, warthog,” Logan snapped, spinning him around to face them. A trickle of greenish blood dripped out of the flattened mess of its nose. “Tell us where the hell you were at this time last night, or I’m gonna start lopping off body parts.”

“Wh-what? Are youse guys freak cops or something?”

Scott crossed his arms over his chest, and decided bad cop/worse cop was probably the only way to play this. “There was a teenage boy here last night - he’s missing. You’re going to tell us what happened to him, or my friend here is going to slice you up for some other demon’s dinner.”

“Hey, I wasn’t even here last night -”

“Bullshit,” Logan growled, springing the rest of his claws.

The demon jolted, and looked like he was about to jump out of his own skin while peeing his pants. “No, no! I’m tellin’ the truth, I wasn’t here last night! Th-that weird guy was, not me!”

“Weird guy?” Scott asked, as Logan held the demon firmly to the wall with one hand on his throat. Otherwise, he was holding his three sprung claws at the demon’s eye level, pretty much guaranteeing he wasn’t even going to consider moving. That was why Logan thought Scott would make better bait - he didn’t think many demons would even think about jumping him, unless they were completely insane. Scott begged to differ, but, whatever - this worked.

“Y-ya know, that vampire. He has, like, this weird cult following. They all give me th’ creeps. I try not at be around when they are.”

Scott felt his heart plunge into his stomach, but he didn’t let himself get carried away with it - the demon could be lying to save his own skin. It was remarkable what people would say when Logan snarled at them and shoved his claws in their face. “What’s this vampire’s name?”

“Where can we find him?” Logan added, still growling. He seemed to be laying it on a bit thick … unless he was serious. If that was the case, the guy was really in trouble, because Scott didn’t know how you stopped Logan when he was in this kind of mood, unless you had elephant tranquilizers handy. (And even then, it was a fifty/fifty proposition.)

“I don’t know, I don’t know!” the demon cried, starting to grow hysterical. It looked like he’d tried to squirm out of Logan’s grip on his throat, but since Logan had locked his elbow - meaning the demon would have to power his way past adamantium to get free - he couldn’t even get a millimeter of space. That was probably very frightening to a being who was accustomed to having the edge over everything else. “He and his whole creepy group just showed up a coupla weeks ago! They hit this neighborhood mostly on weekends, but I don’t know where they went afterwards! I don’t hang with vamps, right?! They got their own thing! I’m only interested in spleens - I don’ give a fuck about blood!”

“Spleens?” Scott repeated, not sure he heard him right. “You eat spleens?”

“Somebody’s gotta,” Logan said, showing a rare flash of dark humor. Maybe the “rabid dog” thing was just an act after all.

“It’s real hard to get good spleens at the butcher shop,” the demon said, possibly making a plea for mercy.

Scott glanced at Logan, and asked, “Think he’s telling the truth?”

“Nobody’d lie about eatin’ spleens,” he replied, flashing him a smart ass grin. Then he sobered up, and said, “About Matt? Yeah, I think so.”

“Shit.”

“Guess I’ll have to kill ya now, since yer no good to us,” Logan growled at it.

“No, no!” It cried, before Scott could tell him to stop. He didn’t like the idea that it ate people’s spleens, but he still didn’t feel comfortable killing it in cold blood. Or at all. “I-I can find out for ya! I know people!”

“And why the fuck should we trust you?” Logan shot back. “As soon as I let you go, you’ll run for the hills and we’ll never see you again.”

“No, no, I swear, I’ll come back! I’m not a Belial, I’m good for my word! J-just … I can’t meet you here. If I’m seen with Humans and not eatin’ ‘em …. Well, it’s bad for the reputation, ya know?”

Logan thought about it a moment, then huffed a sigh through his nose. “Fine. There’s a Starbucks about three blocks from here. Meet us there at noon. And don’t be late, ‘cause, guess what, Sparky? I got your scent; I can now track you down anywhere, at any time.” He let that sink in before he added, in a slight growl, “And just like laws don’t apply to demons, they don’t apply to us either.”

Although Scott knew that was wrong, now was not the time to correct him. Logan let it sink in, until the demon honestly looked like he was going to die of a heart attack, and then he released him, although he waited a few seconds before pulling his claw back out of direct impaling distance. The demon gulped in air like a drowning man pulled to the surface. “Find us, or we find you,” Logan said menacingly.

The demon nodded, straightened out his shirt as if attempting to recover his dignity, and said, “Yeah, no problem. But then you leave me alone and never come to my territory again.”

“We’ll see,” Scott said non-committally. He didn’t like being told not to show up somewhere, especially in the city (even if it was as awful a block as this).

The demon wandered off, giving them a couple of wary backwards glances, pretending he wasn’t walking a bit faster than usual. Once he broke into a run and was out of sight, Scott said, “Think he’ll show?”

Logan retracted his claws and shrugged. “ Even odds, but even if he doesn’t, Helga should get back to me by then.”

“Helga?”

“I called her to ask what the big demon hang outs are in New York since we destroyed Seventh Circle. If anyone would know, it’s gonna to be her.”

It was Scott’s turn to shrug. He supposed he had a point. But what if this was all moot?

If Matt had indeed fallen victim to vampires, it was a good bet they’d never see him again.