5

It quickly became apparent that they needed to dump Rags somewhere, preferably out of the way. The wind did have some pretty strong gusts, but nowhere near strong enough to knock someone over, which is what nearly happened to Rags several times. How drunk did you have to be? Seriously.

Logan pulled him into the nearest hotel, where the desk clerk gave them a funny look. Three guys wanting a single room? If that just didn't scream "gay orgy", what did? It didn't help that Kier, sensing both this presumption and disdain, decided to camp it up a bit, adding a lisp and asking if they had a hot tub large enough for a group. Part of Logan just wanted to punch him in the head, and the other part wanted to laugh his ass off - he was really horrifying the clerk, who couldn't completely show it. That was always fun. Marc really would have enjoyed this.

Rags had a credit card for a "David Radison", which seemed to be valid and go through, but Logan didn't ask him about it until they got up to the room. Rags said it wasn't stolen but a valid card, acquired for him by Thrak, who furnished lots of demons with "passable" Human i.d.'s. Thrak supposedly had a taxi license under the name "Tad Watson". (Tad? Really?)

Rags collapsed on the bed, and within five minutes was snoring away, leaving him and Kier to try to figure out their next move.

The Oubliette wasn't exactly listed in the phone book, but Kier thought he knew of a way to find it. There were certain "demon sections" of town - all big cities and even some small ones had demon sections, whether they knew it or not - and Kier felt if he went there and asked around he'd be pointed in the right direction. Of course if he had a Human with him it would bugger things up ... unless he was his "thrall", a kind of addled vampire groupie. Which he already knew of, since he went through this with Yasha in Tokyo. "We are not making out," he told him. "If you have to kiss me or punch me, punch me. Just aim for a fleshy part, or you'll break your hand."

"You don't want to kiss me? I'm heartbroken," he replied, putting on a sad face. He couldn't hold it for long; a big smile lit up his face, making him look frighteningly young and Human. How old was he when he was turned? Twenty two? "Why would I kiss you? Thralldom isn't always a sexual thing."

"I've just ... I've faked it once. Kissing seemed to be involved."

"Really? Was it with Angel? 'Cause I have to admit that's kind of an enjoyable mental picture."

"I'm gonna punch you now."

He stepped back quickly, raising his hands in a warding off gesture and chuckling. "I'm done. It's gone from my mind, swear to god." From his goofy grin, he didn't think that was true.

What was it with him and smart asses? Could he not know anyone who wasn't a smart ass? (Okay, there was Cyclops, but he was a tight ass, and they annoyed him even more than the smart asses. There was just no way to win.)

Still, traveling as Kier's thrall or not, there might be a certain danger to him if the Oubliette was a really rough demon bar - Bob's was actually an oddly peaceful and contained one, probably because the proprietor was a god who wasn't going to take any shit. (It also helped that Helga, the toughest demon in the West, was the manager.) Logan told him he could handle it, but Kier really wasn't worried about that - he was worried about the two of them possibly having to fight an entire demon bar. Again, Logan didn't see the problem. He'd fought entire bars before all by himself, and he'd already come to the conclusion that Kier wasn't your average vampire, so he was sure they could take 'em if they had to, and with little in the way of problems.

Rags wasn't so much sawing logs as chainsawing a forest when they left, and he wondered if someone on the floor was going to make a noise complaint about him. If so, he kind of doubted Rags would wake up to answer the phone or the door, so he hoped the hotel had a big stock of ear plugs.

Logan had brought the print outs with him, as he wasn't completely done reading them, but he called Giles to let him know what he had learned so far. Giles was good at doing the unflappable British thing - not quite as professionally as Wesley, but close - and yet he still had a thread of tension in his voice that betrayed his true feelings. It really came to the fore after Logan asked, "Could something of this Ascendant program survived?"

He was quiet for a long moment before he answered. "I thought the implication was they killed them all."

"Yeah, but if I know anything about secret monstrous experiments - and believe me, I know plenty - it's that sometimes something slips through the cracks. Could one of these Brotherhood people be one of 'em? An experiment that got away?"

Again, a long beat of silence. Giles wasn't comfortable talking about the sins of the Watchers. "It's ... not out of the realm of possibility, but we have no proof of that."

He snorted in dark humor. "We got no proof of anything. We're flyin' blind here."

"You can read the documents?" That question seemed to come out of left field.

"Yeah, I can."

"And what language is it?"

That was more of a stumper than it should have been. "It's a kind of old Cyrillic, but it's scrambled, in a way - a kind of basic coding system."

"You know a lot about basic coding systems?"

He didn't like his tone of voice. "Are you implyin' somethin'?"

“No, I’m just impressed. I had no idea you could read codes, that’s all.”

“I did work for the government. Well, some government at some point. And I was an interpreter.” He hated how defensive that sounded, but there seemed to be no way around it.

“That’s different than a cryptographer.”

“Depends on what you’re doin’, I guess.”

This seemed to be a dead avenue for discussion, so Giles moved on to what this could possibly all mean. He though he knew of a Watcher he could talk to, who might tell him something about this, but Giles couldn’t promise anything; he wasn’t exactly a beloved figure among the remaining Watchers. But he said he’d call back if he discovered anything of interest. He thought they shouldn’t pursue this until they had more information, especially if Dru was involved. But Dru knew they were here, and knew what they were after - she’d come for them if they didn’t take the battle to her. There was no way to keep out of the fight, and the best way to win it was to control it. And you controlled nothing when it was the enemy doing the sneak attack.

Besides, he’d been in some redneck bars in his time that were worse than any demon bar. How bad could it be?

****

It was only when he got the table broken over his head that Kier wondered exactly when everything went wrong.

Luckily Logan had already loosened the table (by being whacked with it, and that adamantium in him really did a good job of breaking other things, even when it wasn’t in scary knife hand form), so while there was a sharp pain where it impacted with his skull, he was able to stumble away and shake off the ensuing dizziness. And when the huge Vetik demon lunged at him, he grabbed a stool and let the big clumsy demon - who was essentially a pile of muscles with stubby legs and a head shaped distressingly like a penis - impale himself on the legs, ramming the metal protrusions through his eyes and out the back of his skull with a sickening liquid noise. It then fell to the dusty bar floor twitching, and Kier had just enough time to duck as something large came flying towards him. He thought it was furniture, but the way it landed with a squelch indicated that no, it wasn’t that, just another big piece of random demon that Logan had carved off violently in mid lunge.

They found the Oubliette, and fittingly it was in the basement of a building that had a butcher shop on the ground floor. (Perhaps that was foreshadowing of trouble.) To say it was a dive was an insult to dives everywhere - it was more like a sty. There were few lights, so it was like stepping into night itself, and the smell of the place made both him and Logan cringe. Too many hot, sweaty demon bodies in one place, too much blood and too much cheap beer, too much vomit, piss, excretions, and lingering fear of whatever had been on the menu these last couple of days. How could any sensitive nosed vampire stand to be down here? Maybe that’s why there were few vampires in here.

The floor was dusty, and even had a few scales from demons that had molted in the place - did anyone ever clean up in here? There were a few scattered tables, but the highlight of the bar was a killing floor with a genuine altar and a moon shaped bar where a big, orange eyed Corvalgh demon worked as bartender. There were few beers and alcohols available; there was mostly a variety of bloods, including Human stocked by age and inclination.

There was no wood at all in the bar beyond the walls, a friendly gesture for the vampire clientele: the tables were plastic, the chairs and stools metal with padding of either cloth or leather. The seats weren’t comfortable, but at least they weren’t lethal weapons. (Well, to him.)

The problems probably started after the bartender asked why he didn’t keep his Human on a leash. At first Kier thought it was a joke, maybe a reference to Logan’s slightly wolfish appearance, but no, the guy was serious - they actually had leashes and other restraining devices hanging up behind the bar. As if this wasn’t quite S&M enough, a demon came up and bit Logan’s arm - and broke his teeth. He did break Logan’s skin, though, and out of reflex Logan punched him in the face.

Yeah, that’s when everything went to hell.

The demon patrons attacked them en masse, but most of them were addled by too much food or drugs, and their coordination and viciousness levels varied wildly. They pretty much dog piled on Logan - perhaps they figured the first one to get the kill would get the meal - but that was a mistake, which became evident the second he popped his claws, one set right through someone’s gut. It then got messy and ugly - well, uglier.

The overflow demons attacked him, but he prepared for more once the demons realized that Logan, in spite of being Human, was the harder target. But Logan had lots of experience clearing a bar, or at least it seemed that way, as he went through all the demons like a humanoid threshing machine, cutting them in several different pieces and so quickly most didn’t even realize what had happened. He saw one guy try to move after his leg had been cut off - he hadn’t realized he lost it.

Nobody had any wooden weapons, so all the demons could do was hurt him, but some of them did punch pretty hard, and had really nasty claws. While he enjoyed his victory over the Vetik, he was tackled by a brick wall - or a Brussah demon, whichever. Felt pretty much the same.

Kier felt himself go flying, and he hit the rack of bottles behind the bar, all of it shattering beneath his back before he dropped to the floor, which was surprisingly lumpy.

Oh, no it wasn’t - he’d landed on the bartender. Well, that was a lucky break, actually, as this was just the guy he wanted to torment.

He grabbed the Corvalgh and slammed his horned head against the concrete floor, snarling, “This’ll stop as soon as you tell us where the Brotherhood of Vestus are.”

“Who?” he replied, and Kier slammed his head down again.

Corvalghs were leather skinned demons who could almost pass for Human, as long as you didn’t touch them, and as long as they wore a hat to cover the smattering of small yellow horns that were scattered across their bald pates. They were stubby, basically useless horns, not attractive or functional, and he wondered why these poor sods got the bad end of the genetic lottery.

He continued to smack the bastard around, but he continued to claim he had no idea what he was talking about, and the sounds of fighting and squelching were dying down rapidly, as Logan had pretty much cut through them all with little help from him. That kind of figured; Kier just assumed he’d be in his way.

He hauled the Corvalgh to his feet, and slammed his back against the bar. “You know damn well who the Brotherhood is - they were here with a freaky chick, hiring a bunch of Ressiks. Now where the fuck are they?”

The Corvalgh glared up at him like he was the stupidest thing he’d ever seen. “I already told you - I’ve got no fucking idea what you’re talking about.”

Logan slammed his claw right through the bartender’s shoulder, making him scream in pain. He then twisted the claw, making it worse. “Talk, or lose the arm.”

He was shockingly good at this torture stuff. Kier wondered belatedly if he should be nervous about that.

“Fine,” the Corvalgh spat, tears running from his tangerine colored eyes. “I think I know who you mean, but I don’t know where they are. That vamp chick with ‘em is crazy, she started having some kind of conniption and killed a customer; I tossed them out. I don’t know where they went after that.”

He must have been telling the truth, because Logan yanked out his claws and the guy slipped to the floor behind the bar, making mewling noises and grabbing his shoulder. Kier hopped over the bar, and he and Logan asked the demons still living or conscious if they knew about the Brotherhood, but they came up with a big, bloody blank.

Which didn’t make a lot of sense … unless the Brotherhood was that good, or everybody was so scared of them that they’d rather die than reveal where they were. And that wasn’t a promising development.

****

What was it with vampires and runaways? You wouldn’t think that was a natural combination, and yet somehow it was.

A rather large nest of vampires had sprung up near the downtown Greyhound station, so they were gearing up to put an end to it. It almost made Giles nostalgic, that’s how old fashioned this was.

They’d gathered all their weapons and were about to leave when the phone on Bren’s desk rang. Brendan all but dove for it, and Giles felt bad for him. He knew he was waiting for Kier to call, and he knew why he wasn’t, but he also knew why he couldn’t tell him. Bren probably would go after Kier, and that was a bad risk. He was sure Kier was trying, but two of him didn’t even equal one Bren.

“Angel Investigations,” Bren answered happily, and after listening for a moment, his face fell. He put the receiver on his shoulder, and said, “It’s for you, Giles. Some grumpy British chick.”

Normally that would be a rather broad category, but he’d been expecting this call. Angel looked at him and subtly raised an eyebrow. “Something important?”

He shook his head as he took the receiver from Bren. “Not really. I shouldn’t be but a minute. I’ll meet you downstairs.”

Angel looked at him for a very long moment before nodding and opening the door, motioning Xander, Bren, and Naomi out ahead of him. Angel knew something was going on, but respected him enough not to ask. Yet. He expected him to corner him soon and ask him what was going on, but he still wasn’t sure what he would tell him.

As soon as they were gone, he lifted the receiver off his shoulder. “That was quick.”

“You’re lucky I had nothing better to do today,” Ruby snapped, sounding rather bitter about it. Of course that was typical for Ruby Von Allman, ex-Watcher, ex-MI5, current werewolf, and easily the techiest woman in Britain. He liked her very much, but she was brusque and generally unpleasant, and was that way long before she got bitten on the job. If anyone was born to be a werewolf, it was her, but he’d never tell her that, as she’d probably thump him. “Anna had to dig for it, but she found something.” She then paused heavily.

Anna was the ghost of another former Watcher, one who kept and attended the secret library in London, full of Watcher history and lore. When HQ was destroyed, most of those records were destroyed with it, but there was always a back up. The Watchers weren’t complete idiots. “Are you going to tell me?” he wondered.

“Are you going to be a rude bastard?”

He sighed. The important thing to remember was whenever you talked to Ruby was she was in control, even if you happened to be holding a gun on her. Some people were just like that. “Thank you very much for this, Ruby. Now, what did you find?”

She huffed an impatient breath, as if not completely satisfied with that, but let him have it. “A couple of decades after the Ascendant project was supposedly shut down, a Watcher in Russia found some evidence that one of the subjects may have survived and had descendants.”

That was a development that wasn’t that surprising, but was still a bit alarming. “Is there any proof that one of them may have been turned into a vampire?”

“As of now, no, but Anna’s still looking. But what she found seems to indicate that the Watchers were very alarmed, because the survivor seemed to be showing some … traits.”

“Traits of what?”

“That’s just the thing. We haven’t discovered what precisely, there’s just some vague notes that they were more than Human.”

That was a very troubling development. If they were more than Human to start with, and then became a vampire … what kind of monster could they be dealing with now?

****

They got back to the hotel, bloody, sore, and depressed - sounded like a normal Saturday night for the both of them - and Rags was still snoring away, looking like the sane one of their sad trio. And how sad did they have to be for that to be true?

Logan went to take a shower to wash the blood off him, while Kier was left to contemplate whether he should try and call Bren yet. What did he say? It wasn’t that he wasn’t good with bullshit - he was an actor, for Bob’s sake; he was great at bullshitting - but he felt like a failure on several fronts right now, and he didn’t know how long he could cover that. Bren usually knew when he was down, even if he tried to cover it. Shouldn’t he be accustomed to failure? How many roles had he been rejected for in his brief lifetime? He should be able to take this like it was nothing. But Kayla was in danger, probably because of him (somehow - he still hadn’t figured out why), and it really bothered him, even though it shouldn’t have. What good was being a vampire if you weren’t immune to feelings of guilt?

He was sitting on the end of the bed, listening to Rags snore, when his cell phone rang. Was it Bren, calling him and asking why the hell he hadn’t called him yet? Oh dear, he hated calls like this. He’d never been very good at relationships; he was much better at one night stands and bouts of sex that never led to anything more than an occasional booty call.

Okay, so he was a slut. Again, actor - what did they expect?

He went out in the hall, because over Rags’ snoring and the roar of the shower he was pretty sure he’d never hear the person on the other end of the line. Only then did he answer his cell, glad the corridor was empty.

It wasn’t Bren on the phone; in fact, he almost didn’t recognize the voice at all, except it sounded like the voice on the film. “Can you talk, Kieran?”

Fear stabbed through him. “How the hell did you get my number?”

“How do you think?” the long haired vampire from the sex club massacre replied icily. “Kayla has your number, does she not?”

“What have you done to her, you son of a bitch?” He hissed, so suddenly angry it was hard not to morph into vamp face. “What do you want from us?”

“Now now, I have a compromise that should be amenable to all of us. Are you listening carefully?”

He wished he could reach through the phone and yank this fucker’s head off. “What?”

“An exchange. In three hours, you should lead your motley crew to High Park. I trust you know where that is?”

“Of course I do.” It was a major Toronto attraction. Also, like many big parks in major cities, there was a part of it where, at night, men loitered for quick and anonymous sex with each other. Not that he ever did that, mind you. (Well, not in Toronto.) It usually attracted vampires looking for an easy meal too, but he didn’t know about that part of it until he actually was a vampire.

“Come to Grenadier Pond. Once there, we’ll exchange Kayla for your friends. You two will be allowed to leave, but only if you do so at that moment. If you warn your friends, if you try and help them, you’ll all be killed. Do you understand?”

“What?” What sense did that make? Logan and Rags for his sister? “No, I don’t. Why do you want them? Why did you take Kayla in the first place? What the fuck did I ever do to you?”

There was a long moment of silence before he answered with a surprising amount of venom in his voice. “This is not a discussion. We know where you are, and if we wanted to kill you now, we could do it. I’m giving you a chance to collect your pretty little sister and save your own scrawny neck. Shall I just assume you’d rather we firebomb your hotel?”

That was probably just exaggeration - but considering what they’d done at the sex club, maybe not. Could he take that chance? “No, of course not.”

“Then we have a deal?”

Oh shit. The wrong answer could mean death to Kayla and a whole lot of other people. Then again, so could the right answer. Was there any way to win here? He didn‘t know; he was so far in over his head he felt like he was drowning. He was a silly, inconsequential man who‘d led a silly, inconsequential life, and now he was thrust into a kind of afterlife that was too serious and too substantial for a vain, shallow person such as himself. He went into his vampire life with nothing but a laundry list of regrets, and the hurt of it just never stopped. “Yes.”

“Three hours. Don’t be late.” He then heard a click and the empty drone of a dial tone.

He hung up his cell and dropped it back in his coat pocket, leaning against the wall and sinking down to the saffron colored carpet. What the fuck was he going to do? Did he risk telling Logan and Rags about this? Or would they really know? Was Kayla already dead and they were just toying with him? Would he backstab some more friends, only to discover he’d done nothing but make them hate him before they all died?

He’d have given anything just to know what the right thing to do was at this moment. But he just didn’t know.