The worst part was this whole confrontation taking place in a library. He loved books, and he just knew many of them were going to get hurt - along with innocent people, if he didn’t do this right. Why did this kind of shit always happen to him?

They hadn’t seen him yet, so he slipped back into the stacks, hoping that he could intercept them without too many shots being fired. The Ressiks were fanning out, coming through the stacks with their guns ready, making startled people flee before them, some screaming and some not, but all of them pretty freaked out. Logan stood at the end of the aisle, back against the end of a bookcase which also blocked him from view, and waited for one of the Ressiks to come to him. Finally one obliged, coming out gun first, and Logan spun and grabbed the gun with one hand, and with the other he punched him in the face, popping his claws at the last second.

The demon tried to alert the others, but his claws already punched through his skull, and as Logan pulled his hand back the Ressik collapsed, thudding to the carpeted floor. The noise was well covered by all the other noises in the library. One of them was even shouting, “C’mon mutie, it’s chickenshit to hide!”

Ideally, he could take them all out one by one, and keep one conscious and capable of talking long enough to figure out who the hell was after him, but he knew Ressiks didn’t have a reputation for being cooperative. Still, maybe they just hadn’t had the right impetus.

He tucked the gun in the waistband of his jeans - he wasn’t going to use it unless he absolutely had to - and took out three more Ressiks in the aisle, killing them quietly (or at least seriously wounding them - it was hard to tell with Ressiks) and ruining their guns in the process, but one of the Ressiks found a body, and started spraying bullets wildly through the stacks. Logan crouched down as the bullets slammed through the books and wooden shelves, throwing shredded paper and splinters all over the place. The bullets were louder, more destructive than they should have been, which definitely meant they were explosive rounds.

After the fusillade died down to a ringing in his ears, he heard one of them shouting from the front of the library. “Hey mutie! Show yourself now or I’m gonna kill this bitch!”

Oh great - did he have a hostage? That seemed to be the implication.

He tried to sneak up towards the front, wanting to get a better look at the Ressiks and see how many there were and where before they saw him, but then he heard a loud, pained “Oof!” followed close behind by another one shouting, “Fucking A! What do you think you’re doing, bloodsucker?!”

Logan glanced around the corner of a bookshelf, and saw that Kier had joined the fray and had engaged about a half dozen Ressiks. They were too close in to shoot him, but there was also the problem that he was a vampire and bullets could only hurt him, not stop him for long. Rags presumably had teleported them both in, but he didn’t see Rags anywhere.

The Ressiks ganged up on Kier, trying to swamp him, and with their backs turned, Logan popped his claws and charged in. He didn’t get fancy or detail oriented - he simply slashed the first bit of lizardy thing he saw, dropping them left and right in various stages of wounded. One of them shot him from the floor, the bullets tearing through his right leg and shredding his calf muscle, the pain sharp and so sudden he nearly dropped to his knees. But he could use that pain, that rage, and he let it propel him onward.

One of the Ressiks had grabbed Kier and thrown him down on a table, making it shatter beneath him, which gave the Ressik a convenient weapon to use against him. But as the Ressik raised the sliver of wood to stake him, Logan slashed through his arm, cutting it off, which really surprised the Ressik. He looked at his shoulder, as if curious why his arm wasn’t responding to his nerve impulses, but before he could react to the loss of limb Kier got both feet up and kicked him hard in the chest, sending him flying backwards into an intact buddy.

Bullets raked his back, exploding in his body and sending savage, blinding pain shuddering through him. This time he did drop to all fours as he saw nothing but red behind his eyes, the pain like a humming in his ears, but it stopped in an animalistic snarl and the dull, hard sound of flesh on flesh, as Kier took out the gunman.

As soon as Logan could catch his breath - he was pretty sure one of the bullets caught his lung - he shouted, “Keep one alive! We need him!” He wouldn’t have to worry about that if it was Angel who was taking on the Ressiks, but this was Kier - he’d already proven he didn’t mess around. Mercy wasn’t a quality he had in abundance.

By the time he got back to his feet and slashed through the rest of the standing Ressiks, he and Kier were clearly winning. It looked like a couple snuck out of the library as he was driving his claws through the midsection of a sickly green Ressik and Kier was snapping the neck of a brownish-grey one.

Another Ressik grabbed him in a choke hold that would have done the LAPD proud. He had an arm as thick as a man’s leg, and the demon was attempting to cut off both his air supply and the blood flow to his brain. Logan started throwing his elbow back rapidly and hard, turning his face into pulp, but the Ressik wasn’t ready to let go yet. Even as Logan started to black out he continued throwing his elbow, the demon’s coppery blood splattering on the back of his neck as his consciousness started to waver. This fucker was just hanging on like a bulldog, so he twisted his arm around and stabbed back blindly, finally hitting something painful, as he yelped and loosened his chokehold. Logan spun out of his grasp and slashed as he turned, cutting his head into four separate pieces.

Logan was still catching his breath as he heard Kier let out an inarticulate shout of pain, and he spun to see a big, thick necked Ressik, about the size of your average refrigerator-freezer, had driven a jagged wooden table leg through Kier’s back, slightly south of his right shoulder. Before Kier could recover, the guy pulled out a silver bladed knife almost as big as a machete and drove it through Kier’s stomach, using the brunt of the impact to drive Kier to the floor and pin him there, with the knife through his belly.

But before he even looked up, Logan had him. He spun and kicked him in the side of his head full force, something in his skull cracking as he staggered aside, and then he punched him, letting his claws puncture his face. He collapsed to the floor, dazed and bleeding but not unconscious (this one could take a lot of damage).

“Little help,” Kier gasped, trying to pull the knife out of his own stomach, but the knife was well buried in the floor.

Logan grabbed the shaft of the blade and yanked up, ripping it out of the floor and his belly, and he swallowed a scream as he grabbed his stomach and rolled over on his side. “I’d thank you but I’d rather punch you,” he wheezed.

Logan returned to the Ressik, who was starting to get up, and pinned him to the floor by stabbing the knife through his stomach. The Ressik made a pained noise and reached for him, but Logan intercepted him with his claws, and pinned his arm down to the floor with them. That finally made him scream as Logan buried a knee in his gut and held his other fist over his bleeding, perforated face. “Okay sunshine, ya wanna live? Talk. Who hired you?”

The Ressik, who was as green as a fern with eyes as yellow as the sun, spit brackish blood at him. “Fuck you, meat bag!”

Kier, who was on his feet in spite of the bloody wound in his gut, stamped hard on the Ressik’s left hand, which had been free until that second in time. He ground his heel in, making his finger bones snap and crackle like kindling in a fire. “You wanna live to spend your fucking money? Spit it out. Or we’re sending you back to your crew in a box,” he snarled, still in vampire face.

Logan moved his free hand down from the Ressik’s face to his groin, his fist hovering two inches above it. “You’ve got five seconds, Kermit, then I turn you into a eunuch. One … two …”

“Okay okay, Jesus,” he spat, trying to twist his arm from beneath Kier’s feet. (No go.) “We were hired by these vampire fucks, I think they called themselves the Brotherhood of … something. I don’t know, some made up word.”

“Why do they want me?”

“They don’t. They wanted us to get you outta town, dump you off at some kinda military base or something. They said you were trouble, and they wanted you gone ASAP.”

“Why?”

The Ressik glared up at him, anger hiding the pain. “Like I said, they thought you were trouble. They didn’t care how visible we were. They said every second you were around was a second too long.”

“Do they know me?”

He scoffed, although it sounded a bit like a gargle. “Fuck if I know, man. I don’t hang with parasites, I just go where the money is.”

“But they said I was trouble.”

“Yeah, the crazy bitch seemed to think you could ruin everything, and the bloodsuckers seem frightened of her, so they just went along with it.”

Logan started to get a bad feeling about this - well, worse than before. “What am I supposed to ruin?”

“I already said I don’t know. I don’t ask for details as long as the cash is good.”

“Did they have a Human girl with them?” Kier asked. “Did you see?”

The Ressik’s huge eyes rolled towards him in what seemed to be contempt. “The bloodsuckers came to us. There was just the crazy bitch, the long haired freak, and a couple of other random parasites. They didn’t bring a snack.” That last comment made Kier grind his heel in further, since he was clearly asking about Kayla. Too bad the demon had no idea he was asking after his sister, or he could have saved himself another broken finger.

The long haired freak was obviously the vampire from the homemade snuff film. But this “crazy bitch” he kept mentioning was starting to gnaw at him. It couldn’t be … could it? “Where did they come to you? Where did they hire you?”

“A bar called Oubliette. But you don’t wanna go there, meat, not unless you wanna end up on the menu.”

“Oh right, a demon bar. I’m shaking. So who’s the crazy bitch? She got a name?”

The Ressik glowered at him, like he wasn’t pinned down to the floor by a variety of sharp implements, like his blood wasn’t soaking into the carpet beneath them. “Prob’ly. I don’t know it.”

“What did she look like?”

“Small, black haired, skinny, pale. A Goth chick vamp, only bugfuck nuts. She couldn’t even put a coherent sentence together.”

Oh yes, he knew exactly who it was, and this was horrible news. After a moment, Logan glared down at the Ressik, and said, “I’m an avatar of the Powers That Be. Tell your crew to take the money and run as far from here as possible, or I’ll have you all burned down to ash. This is your only warning.” Before he could respond, he grabbed the Ressik by the head and smashed it as hard as he could into the floor. The Ressik’s eyes rolled up into his head, and he went limp.

“Do you know who he’s talking about?” Kier wondered.

He withdrew his claws from the demon’s arm, then grabbed the knife and yanked it out of his gut. An extra blade could always come in handy, especially one as nasty as this one. “Yeah, I’m afraid so.” Once he got to his feet and looked around, he asked, “All the people left?” There were just dead, dying, or seriously injured Ressiks laying around, but no one else.

“Oh. Once I heard the gunshots, I told Rags to teleport us up here. Rags said he’d get the people out ‘cause he wasn’t a fighter. I thought he was just saying that so he didn’t have to fight, but I guess not.”

“I don’t think Rags would have been much of a help anyways.” He was too drunk to fight, basically. Also, as far as he could tell, Rags left the fighting to other people - he was not by nature a brawler.

“Who’s the vampire he was talking about?” Kier prompted impatiently.

It explained a lot if he was right. It explained how they knew where he was, how they knew he was coming, and how to prepare for him. It also complicated things immeasurably. “Angel ever tell you about a vampire named Drusilla?”

Kier frowned down at his gut wound as he thought, but then looked up sharply, the surprise visible even as he morphed back from vampire to Human face. “No, but Bren told me about her. Holy shit! The freako vampire chick? Her?”

He shrugged with his hands. “She has some kinda precognition powers, although I’m not sure they actually deserve that name. She just knows shit she shouldn’t know. And yeah, she’s as crazy and vicious as a starving shithouse rat. If she’s mixed up with the Brotherhood of Vestus, we’re in even deeper crap than I thought.”

There was something stark and harrowing about his expression as he stared at him, like whatever last smidgen of hope Kier had been hanging on to had just died. “That means Kayla’s probably dead, doesn’t it?”

Did he lie to the kid, or just make a wild guess? Logan honestly wasn’t sure which would be better; he didn’t know enough about Kier’s personality to know which would make him easier to work with. “Not necessarily. Dru isn’t known for subtlety. If she wanted her dead, she’d be dead - she wouldn’t have bothered to kidnap her. She’d have left her corpse out for us to find.”

“Or she’s changed her already.”

Also a possibility, one he didn’t like to think about. Sure, Kier was already a vampire, but clearly he didn’t like the idea of his sister joining him amongst the undead, and Logan couldn’t blame him. Kier turned away and started stalking towards the door, and a Ressik on the floor struggled to get up. Kier kicked him hard in the face and he went down again. “Hey, where did you learn to fight?” It was partially to distract him from broody thoughts about his sister, but it was also a question that just started nagging at Logan. The kid was good - he held his own pretty well against the Ressiks before Logan intervened, and that didn’t count his taking on of the succubus and the Organization strike team back in LaLa Land. If he was an old vampire he wouldn’t have any trouble with the idea, but this kid hadn’t even been undead for ten years, had he? He was a newbie, and as he understood it, the newbies - while stronger than your average Human - were still easy pickings when ! compared to your older vamps. Also, it wasn’t like Kier was a soldier or even a weightlifter when he was a regular Human - he was an actor, for Christ’s sake. All they could do was look pretty and complain.

Kier paused, turning back with some reluctance. “Well, I learned to stage fight, but I know that’s not what you mean. When I was a kid I got black belts in judo and tae kwon do, and I took kickboxing to avoid kendo. I mean, I’m sure kendo’s great and all, but fighting with bamboo swords? What the hell’s the point of that?”

“Kendo teaches supreme discipline. It hones you as a weapon, body and mind.” Logan realized what he was saying, and stopped. “Where the hell did that come from?”

“You’re asking me? Besides, Bren said you knew, like, every fighting style known to man, so why are you surprised you’d know that one?”

“I don’t. I mean … I’m fairly certain I don’t know every fighting style. Or if I do, I don’t know I do.” He shook his head, getting back on track. “We’re talking about you. Why all the training?”

Kier shrugged a single shoulder, grimacing slightly. “I dunno. My parents were the kind of people who thought you weren’t maximizing your potential if you weren’t always learning something, so Kayla and I always had our days packed full of stuff. Actually, the kickboxing was really good; it’s good cardio, and it kept me in shape, which is important when you’re an actor. You can only be a schlubby character actor type if you’re really good, and I wasn’t there yet.” He mimicked a heavy sigh. “I guess I’m never getting there now, eh? And cardio - what bullshit. I can’t even remember what it feels like to have a beating heart.” He unconsciously rubbed his chest, as if searching for the heart long since still.

“You miss being alive.” An obvious thing to say, but it seemed important somehow. The only vampire he knew that hadn’t been happy with their lot in life was Angel, and that was only because he had a soul.

Was that was what was going on here? Kier was concerned about his sister, missed being a living, starving actor - did he have a soul? How? As he understood it, that was a curse - that wasn’t something that could just happen. And the circumstances under which Kier died and was transformed didn’t support a curse scenario. So what was going on with him?

Rags staggered in the door, leaning against the jamb like his legs were giving way, as thunder rumbled and shook the building. “It’s dark enough we can walk away from ‘ere, if yer done,” he pointed out, his syllables starting to get mushy.

“Yeah, give me a second,” Logan said, returning to the computer stations. He found one that hadn’t been accidentally shot and started printing out the untranslated documents Giles had emailed him.

Dru thought he was trouble, huh? Did it have anything to do with this? He had no idea, but he wasn’t taking any chances. The answers to the Brotherhood of Vestus could be here, and he wasn’t about to let it slip away that easily.

****

Sometimes life seemed like one continuous deal with the devil. Or at least lately.

Revol heard the crashing and smashing in the next room, shattering glass and heavy thuds, along with the occasional scream. Jack finally appeared in the doorway as he squeezed the last bit of blood out of the girl’s wrist. She was just a corpse slumped on the loveseat now, some dippy little sixteen year old in a baby tee and a skirt so short it almost pulled up to her waist the second they shoved her down on the settee. While young, fresh blood like this was always delicious, these anorexic little tarts never had much blood in them. It was depressing.

“She’s upset,” Jack said, running his hand over his bristly blond hair. Jack was a bit of a Teutonic stereotype in vampire form - tall, built like a brick shithouse, blond haired and blue eyed - and even had a livid scar running diagonally across his left cheek. Put him in a Nazi uniform, and he could have been an extra from a World War Two movie. The funny thing was, he was in the war, only not on the German side. When he got drunk, he’d sometimes ramble interminably about how he got his scar in the battle of Stalingrad.

“No fucking kidding,” Revol snapped irritably, as yet another something shattered violently against the wall. “I hate this screwy bitch.”

Jack shrugged, shoving the girl’s corpse to the floor so he could sit down on the loveseat. Jack’s real name had been lost to time, along with his accent, but that was okay - Revol lost his name deliberately. He just wish he could lose some other things just as easily. “But I thought the oracle said -”

“- our best chance of success is with her. Yes, I know.” And he hated it, but the Brotherhood was a shambles, a sad, pathetic vestige of what it used to be. Their only hope laid in finally getting the Ascendant, in bringing back Vestus. When he’d discovered last month that there actually was an Ascendant, that all the signs were in place, he was almost shocked dumb. He’d all but given up on it.

But the Watchers said it; the Watchers wanted the Ascendant dead before the Brotherhood could find them. And if the enemy was so hot after something, you had to go after it yourself. That was the nature of war, after all.

Drusilla was screeching something about the Ressiks, but Revol had already figured it out. They had failed, like he had half expected them to. Yes, they were god killers, demons made to kill everything in their path, but if this was the Ascendant - or the Ascendant was amongst this group of people - it wasn’t going to be that easy. Forces would align in their favor.

Drusilla seemed to think they could escape a big confrontation, but it wasn’t meant to be. Which was fine with him, actually. She thought they were following her orders, but he’d been the leader of the Brotherhood for almost a century now, and he wasn’t about to cede control to some vampire with bats in her belfry, no matter how much the other vamps were afraid of her.

Now it was time for plan B.