They had to search two barns before they found what they needed, and by that time the fire was a raging inferno, the wind desert hot from the angry orange flames devouring the trees and the far edge of town; the stench of burning flesh was nearly overpowering as the bodies began to burn in the street

Spike had a moment of panic, gesturing desperately that they should leave now, before they were trapped by the flames-or at least Angelus thought that was what he was trying to say; sometimes it was hard to tell if he was trying to communicate or just swatting away smoldering ashes-but Angelus wasn't too concerned since he saw a path leading down a hill from behind the second barn; a narrow lane cut between overgrown shrubs that led to something that glimmered in the moonlight like the blade of a knife :water. This was a seaside town, if his estimation was correct; and he was never wrong, so it had to be.

Angelus had to retrieve a severed goat's head from the street outside and wring out what was left of its blood in a thin line before the barn door, stretching it out for as far as he could on the hard packed dirt floor. A pentagram was out of the question-the goat didn't have that much blood left-so he settled for a circle, and motioned Spike over to put a ring of salt just beyond the circle of blood.

Drusilla watched, occasionally dabbing up goat's blood with her fingers and licking it off, but he grabbed her and sat her down on a hay bale ,put the open book in her lap, and said, "You know what to do? Sound it out."

She nodded, her azure eyes as vacant as always as she smiled up at him. "He's been a naughty boy; he'll get no cakes for tea."

"Right," he agreed, wondering, for the hundredth time, if maybe he drove her just a little too crazy.

Smoke was pouring into the barn through a huge hole in the wall of the stable, covering up the cloying stench of horse shit, and Angelus's eyes started to hurt, which annoyed him even more. The Executioner fuck was going to pay for it all, a pound of flesh at a time.

Spike had just completed the salt circle when the door exploded open, shattering to dozens of wooden splinters as the Executioner came through it, reeking of pine smoke and roasted flesh. "Hey," he crowed happily, grinning like a drunken sailor. "What stupid plan are you cooking up now? So to speak." The Executioner turned his red orbs on Spike, who seemed to sink back into the shadows at the far edge of the barn. "Blondie! Great! I wasn't finished with you yet!" The Executioner then turned his gaze back on Angelus. "But you first, right laddie?"

Angelus glared back at him, unable to suppress the smug grin that crept onto his face, and pointed at Dru. "Now, Drusilla."

"Hmmm?" She then seemed to remember, and started sounding out the words on the page Angelus had found: it was probably what the Satanists in the woods meant to do, the spell they were trying to cast, but they screwed up. It was a spell that would have bound a demon to the town to protect it from all outsiders, but what they ended up with was the ultimate protector-a demon that killed every living thing that crossed it path, no exceptions, and could not be bound to anyone, as it was already bound to Hell.

That was exactly why Angelus felt spellcasting should never be done by amateurs: luckily, they had a tendency to weed themselves out of the gene pool.

The Executioner stepped towards him, right into the concentric circles of salt and blood, his shadow looming and jittering before him thanks to the hellish flames outside the shattered barn door, and he continued to smile as he neared Angelus, who held his ground beyond the edge of the sacred/unholy circles. "Oooh, going to spells, are we? I hate to crush your hopes-oh hell, who am I kidding? I love to crush them!-but that ain't going to cut the vein, fang. None of you worthless beings have what it takes to remove me from this plane of existence. I'm here to stay-shame you're not."

He reached the edge of the circle, and Angelus took a step back, realizing that Dru had stopped reciting the words. "Dru," he snapped. "Go on, damn it!"

But instead she stood up, the book falling from her lap and kicking up a small cloud of dust from the floor, and she glared at the Executioner, her pupils impossibly wide, black holes that had reduced her irises to thin blue rims in their orbit. Hands held down at her side, palms facing the floor, she suddenly began to chant in a guttural language-a demonic tongue-that made the Executioner jump in his tracks, his head snapping towards her in shock. "What the hell..?" The demon gasped.

Angelus understood. He didn't know how, but Dru was speaking his language-and reciting a better spell. He didn't understand most of it, but he did understand a phrase Dru repeated numerous times: "Gates of Hell, open up and accept your child home."

"Stop that right now, bitch!" The Executioner snapped, stepping onto the salt circle...and jumped back, howling in pain, as an invisible field seemed to repel him, and the salt seemed to eat into his boot leather like acid.

Something was happening; even before he felt the ground rumbling beneath his feet, Angelus felt energy crackling through the hot, smoky air of the barn, a static charge that made the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. The air seemed pregnant with tension, just like before a thunderstorm, but a thousand times more potent. And evil; evil enough to make Angelus shudder in pleasure. This was some powerful dark magick Dru was calling up; he never knew she had it in her.

The Executioner snarled, the congealed blood of his eyes oozing down his cheeks like they were melting from the heat, and managed to punch his hand through the invisible field, grabbing Angelus by the throat. "Stop it now, or loverboy loses his head!" The Executioner shouted at Dru, who seemed to be staring straight through him. Suddenly, Angelus wondered if it was Dru speaking at all...or if the Satanists had called up something else, as well as the Executioner.

Angelus saw a glimpse of metal out of the corned of his eye, and the Executioner's arm fell to the floor, releasing his vise grip on his throat, as Spike had brought the edge of a shovel blade down hard on The Executioner's arm, neatly severing it at the shoulder.

The Executioner stared at him in surprise, and Spike mouthed something, since he still couldn't speak, but Angelus could read his lips quite well: Spike had 'said', "This is for my voice." And with that, Spike swung the shovel around, and used the edge of the blade to slice through his neck, severing the Executioner's head and sending it flying to the edge of the sacred circle.

As the Executioner's body fell inside the circle, Angelus retrieved the scythe he'd found in the hay loft and joined Spike in rending the Executioner's body asunder by chopping it up like a slaughtered lamb. They had to stay beyond the edge of the sacred circle themselves-it would burn and repel them as much as it had him-but the shovel had a long handle, and the scythe blade was longer than Angelus's arm. They had him completely dismembered in no time, but Spike, so enraged he had morphed into vamp face, began chopping up the Executioner's torso, mushing it with the shovel blade until it looked like a cow put through a grinder. Angelus finally had to restrain him and pull him away, as it was accomplishing nothing but splattering intestines on their clothes.

"You're nothing," the Executioner's head spat, his eyes running down his cheeks like red rain, revealing empty black holes. The roof was on fire now, dropping burning wood and ash on them all, the hay bales erupting like kindling. "You lowly creatures cannot destroy me! I am the Executioner! You are unworthy!"

Suddenly the energy in the room seemed to climax, and a sudden surge threw both Angelus and Spike violently to the ground as the energy barrier flared blue, then seemed to fill with a black, cold fire.

"You cannot kill me!" The Executioner screamed, his voice spiraling upward into a hysterical, glass shattering pitch, and then the circle became a cyclone of black fire that obscured the remains of the Executioner for a split second-and then it all died, along with all the hellish energy inside the barn.

And the remains of the Executioner were no longer anywhere to be found.

19

"You killed him with a book, some salt, and a shovel?" Maximum Bob replied, chuckling to himself. "And while the world was burning down around you? Quick thinking. Angelus must have been something."

"Angelus was a complete and total prick," Spike countered angrily, continuing to pace like a tiger trapped in too small a cage. "But he could think fast on his feet. Unlike some other people around here." Spike glared at Angel, and Angel glared right back. Considering how well Spike planned anything, any criticism coming from him on the subject was hilarious, and they both knew it.

"What about the book?" Bob wondered, looking between the three of them.

"We let it burn," Angel admitted sheepishly. "There seemed no point in saving it."

"It was a worthless piece of shit," Spike concurred.

Bob's violent blue eyes focused on Dru, who seemed to be fascinated by the power cord running out from the iBook. "What about you darling? Do you remember the spell you cast?"

Dru seemed to think for a moment, canting her head to the side like a parakeet. "No. But it wasn't my spell."

"Yeah, I gathered that. How'd you know to do it?"

Dru glanced around conspiratorially before leaning over towards him and whispering, "A little birdie told me." She then leaned back smiling, highly pleased with herself.

"Oh, come on, you can tell me-what told you?"

"She did tell you, asshole-a little birdie," Spike repeated sourly, as if Bob was the world's biggest idiot, while Dru joined her thumbs together and moved her fingers, mimicking the wings and flapping motions of a bird in flight.

"It had to fly away home; it's house was on fire," she added, then laughed, her bird impression gone and forgotten.

Bob studied her skeptically before glancing at Angel, a startled look on his face. "Man, a brain really can be broken, can't it?"

Angel looked down at the floor, a spasm of guilt and shame making his stomach knot like a fist, but Bob had already moved on to the topic at hand. "I don't have any spell books off hand, but if he needs to be sliced and diced, I think I can help you. If push came to shove, Spike, how much of the tool shed could you use?"

"All of it," he replied confidently.

"Good, because I have a gag gift that might come in handy." Bob pulled on a pair of black leather gloves before reaching inside the wall safe.

"A gag gift?" Spike repeated incredulously. At least it stopped his infernal pacing. "Oh yeah, why didn't I think of that? Beat the Ex to death with rubber chickens. Brilliant!"

"It's a back up plan," Bob said.

"He'll never see it coming," Angel agreed, earning another dirty look from Spike. But it was worth it.

Bob withdrew an ornate, gem encrusted scabbard from out of the safe, and pulled out a clean, gleaming silver knife that looked hardly used at all, its eight inch blade as wickedly curved as a crescent moon, its haft decorated with gold filigree.

"Oooh," Dru cooed upon seeing it, but then she frowned violently and stepped back. "I don't like it. It sounds mean."

"A dagger?" Spike erupted angrily. "All this build up for a fucking dagger?!"

"Not just a dagger, Spike. Want to see? Here, catch," Bob said, lobbing the dagger at him.

Spike caught it, and his hands began to sizzle instantly, the smoke and scent of burning flesh filling the small, enclosed space. He dropped it instantly, cursing spectacularly and morphing into vamp face from rage and pain as the knife clattered to the floor, its razor sharp tip embedding itself in the hardwood flooring. Dru cackled at his obvious distress, while Spike ,remaining in vampire face, snarled at the Belial, "What the hell is it?"

"It's been consecrated?" Angel guessed.

Bob shook his head as he shut and locked the safe, replacing the wall panel over it. "Better than that, my friend. It was dug up in the Sahara about a decade ago, with an interesting story behind it. Legend has it this knife was blessed by Allah, or Vishnu, or some such god. They need to wear name tags, you know? I can never keep them straight. Although Ganesha ,the guy with the elephant head, you can tell him by smell alone-"

"Why would a god bless a knife?" Spike snapped, reluctantly morphing back into human face. "You are so full of shit, Crocodile Dundee."

Bob just smiled at him as he opened the top drawer of his desk, which Angel noticed, with some confusion ,was full of leather gloves. "So its followers could kill demons like you, smeghead." Bob took out a pair of gloves and tossed them to Angel, who easily caught them. "The drawback is you'll have to get in close, but I'm sure it'll take the wind out of his sails."

"Why so many gloves?" Angel asked, pulling on the black leather pair Bob had just given him. They fit, which was weird, yet somehow not surprising.

"There are times when a man doesn't want to leave incriminating evidence," Bob replied, giving him a leering, predatory smile.

Angel had a feeling he never should have asked.

Once he had the gloves on, he reached down and pulled the dagger out of the floor, studying the dagger up close, and for just a second-the space of a human heartbeat-he could swear he saw his own reflection in the blade. Once the shock had knifed through him, he glanced at Bob and scowled, although the black marketer continued to grin at him like they were old buddies. Maybe Bob wasn't as old as Lia, but he was still gifted at clouding the mind, especially when your guard was down.

"Come on, Spike, let's get you a unholy Ginsu," Bob said, coming around the desk and heading for the door. He paused half way, turning to glance at Dru. "Hey darlin', want to come along? I'm sure I've got something for you. In fact, I'm sure I have a lot I want to give you."

Spike glared at Bob hatefully-again-while Bob and Dru exchanged lascivious smiles, ignoring him completely. Dru sashayed over to a box with a bright orange HazMat slapped on the side, and stroked it like an animal. "Can I have what's in here? Please?" She gave him a coy look through her heavy, dark lashes, and Bob made a show of thinking about it before relenting with a warm smile.

"All right, but I want it back, okay?"

She made a noise of pleasure as she scraped her fingernails across the top, leaving scars in the wood. "Okay. I won't be naughty...unless you want me to."

"Oh, give me a fucking break," Spike exclaimed angrily, storming out the door as he continued to curse the entire world, and his life as an afterthought.

Bob smirked at Angel, and commented, "Touchy, ain't he," before following him out into the hall.

Angel jumped as Dru suddenly ripped the lid off the small crate, letting the wooden remains of it fall to the floor. "Somebody's not having his tea tonight," she said, lovingly petting whatever was in the box.

Angel glanced at the ornate knife in his hand, and suddenly wondered what effect it would have on a vampire if stabbed into their dead heart. Dru glanced up suddenly, a sharp and angry look on her face. "You think you hurt now? You have no idea what's to come, Angel. You will burn."

He stared into her eerie azure eyes, which had suddenly become as hard as ice, and while part of him still mourned what he had done to her, another part of him knew if he was ever going to end the horror he had unleashed on the world, there'd never be a better time than now. He took a step forward, resolving himself to this, but Dru snapped her head towards the wall behind her, and whimpered deep in her throat. "Here he comes."

There was a noise like the bar exploded, followed by several rapid fire gunshots, and Angel heard Lia shout, "Ah fuck, Angel-you owe me a door!" He stuck his head out the door in time to see her backing down the narrow, dark corridor, firing two identical handguns into the bar's front room. She glanced over her shoulder at him, and shouted, "You'd better take this outside, or have a big bank account!"

A large shadow occluded the mouth of the corridor, and the Executioner jerked slightly as the bullets slammed into his face, chest, and neck." Quit it: that tickles," The Executioner said, his smile growing back over several fresh bullet holes in his face.

Angel steeled himself, every muscle in his body tensing in preparation to strike, and quite probably get killed.

No matter - it was show time.

20 

Los Angeles, California-Present Day

Lia shot Angel an impatient, sidelong glance. "Well, you're the goddamn white hat-do something!" She then muttered, mostly to herself, "I'm not even supposed to be here today."

He didn't know what to tell her about that, but the Executioner looked at him then and smiled. "Angelus! You ready to get this thing done?"

"More than you know," he replied, and then said quietly to Lia, "Eyes."

He hoped she'd understand, and she did, opening fire on the Executioner's bloody eyes as Angel lunged out of the doorway, driving the dagger deep into the demon's chest.

The Executioner screamed and lashed out with an arm, throwing Angel through the wall; the pain that shuddered down his spine was electric as he tumbled out of the ruined wall, the jagged plaster ripping at his skin as he hit the floor of Bob's office, his head bouncing off the hardwood sharply enough to make him black out for a millisecond. But he fought back against it, clawing to hang on to consciousness as he heard the Executioner's heavy footsteps approaching.

"Oh, you fucking bastard, that hurt," the Executioner growled, his voice unusually tense and low ."Now it's my turn."

But Dru charged him with an angry snarl, whipping the two headed antique mace she'd found in the box and embedding the spiked balls in his reformed eyes with a wet but hollow thunk. "You buzz in my head like a little fly," she said coldly, yanking the mace out viciously enough to take clots of blood and stringy fragments of flesh with them. "Bzz bzz bzz." She smashed the mace upside his head, sending the Executioner stumbling. "I hate flies. They eat all my candy, and put maggots in my bread." She swung the mace once more towards his face, but the Executioner had recovered somewhat and managed to grab the chain and rip it out of her hands, tossing it aside, while grabbing her by the throat with his other hand.

"Don't you ever shut up ,you fucking lunatic?" The Executioner spat in her face, holding her up off the floor as she whimpered, her eyes bulging out as he squeezed, threatening to snap her neck.

Angel knew he'd probably regret this, but he rolled towards the Ex and stabbed the dagger right through the top of his boot, almost literally nailing it to the floor.

He screamed and dropped Dru, reaching down to grab Angel ,but he'd pulled the dagger out and rolled aside, ignoring the wave of dizziness that hit him as he sprung back up to his feet.

The Executioner snarled at him, and Angel noticed his stomach wound hadn't closed; it was still oozing sluggish red blood, staining the front of his shirt black. It was hurting him, weakening him; Angel wondered if he could kill him by using the dagger to cut his head off. "You idiotic bloodsucker! Do you

know the world of hurt you're in for?! And when I send you to Hell, another me will be there, waiting to pick up where we left off! Do you remember, you self important son of a whore?!"

For a single moment, Angel was stunned-had he been one of his tormenters in Hell? He couldn't remember, but it would stand to reason since he was its watchdog.

The Executioner came forward, dragging his bad foot behind him, and Angel steeled himself for another lunge, gripping the knife tightly in his hand.

And that's when they heard the motor.

It sounded like a motorcycle had been kick started in the next room, making both the Executioner and Angel pause, but Dru, leaning against Bob's desk as she recovered from her partially crushed throat, suddenly laughed, and rasped, "Time to watch the pretty trees fall down."

The mechanical growling grew louder, and then Spike appeared in the open doorway...holding a chainsaw.

Spike gave the Executioner a smug, predatory grin, and said, "I do believe I have some issues to work out with you, mate."

Bob certainly had a strange idea about gag gifts.

"You can't kill me with that, you stupid twonk," the Executioner hissed, his voice barely audible over the angry growl of the motor. "But I bet I can kill you quite nicely."

"Come and get me, dickhead," Spike challenged, holding the chainsaw like a freshly drawn gun. When the Executioner didn't move, he took a step forward, and the Executioner belied his threats by taking a step back.

Angel glanced at Spike as he took a step back, but for very different reasons. When he caught Spike's eyes, he tried to gesture with his eyes as to what he wanted him to do, then gave up, knowing it was pointless, but to his surprise Spike nodded slightly and came forward, making the Executioner retreat even further.

"Aw, come on, it'll only hurt for a minute," Spike said, grinning just like Dru." Well, on the first limb. I bet it'll really hurt when I shove it up your ass."

Angel had to bite back a comment on how classy Spike was as he snuck behind the Executioner, with Spike moving to the right of the room, drawing the Executioner's attention with him. Dru came away from Bob's desk and took a position at the left hand side of the room, far from the demon's reach, and Spike kicked the mace back towards her so she'd have a weapon. She picked it up, leering at the Executioner in spite of the purple-black bruise in the shape of his hand forming on her eerily alabaster skin, and held the mace by the wooden haft, letting the spiked iron balls swing back in forth like pendulums, although it also made Angel briefly think of a thurible. "Just like at my mummy's funeral," she said, apparently apropos of nothing but Angel's thought.

Spike feigned a lunge with the chainsaw, making the Executioner jerk back and Spike laugh. "I'll make you eat that, blondie," the Executioner snarled.

And that's when Angel jumped over Bob's desk, grabbed the Execution from behind, and slit his throat.