11

He hit the ground so hard and so fast, he momentarily regretted having had such a big breakfast.

He tried to get his legs under him, but the fall was too fast, and strangely disorienting, so he settled for getting his arms up in front of his face. As it turned out, it was barely in time; he hit what felt like a stone floor hard, but it was generally absorbed by his skeleton, which could certainly take the blow.

He felt something dry and tepid scrape slowly alongside his right arm, and looked up, aware it was a huge boa constrictor. He guessed he was supposed to be scared, but he wasn’t; he couldn’t honestly be afraid of animals, be they mammals or reptiles or other. Animals had no ability to generate intentional malice; they were creatures of pure instinct. Only Humans - and demons, of course - could be malicious.

Logan raised himself up to his knees, and looked around. There wasn’t much to see - the darkness was Stygian, thick enough to be nearly solid, and it might have been, since even his sharp eyesight couldn’t see through it. He could only see about twenty feet around him within a small circle, that seemed lined with tiny ivory bones, and small braziers were at five points around the circle, pouring dark smoke up into the warm, stale air. It generally smelled like sulfur and charcoal, with a hint of sweat and something that smelled not unlike crab meat. The boa was maybe twenty feet long, almost as thick as his arm, and it ignored him completely, as he suspected it would. He had no idea where it went; the darkness seemed to swallow it whole.

He got up, stretching to work the kinks out of his back, and said to the blackness, “Too scared to show yourself? Some big bad guy you are.”

There was a noise like the rumble of an old dump truck with a badly tuned engine, but he soon realized it was actually a laugh, one that surrounded him, seemed to be coming from above him and all sides. God, was all of Los Angeles into show business bullshit? “You’re a cocky Human, aren’t you?” A voice said. It was deep as the voice of the singer in the Sisters of Mercy, and magnified about fifty times, so it sounded like the voice was coming from a giant with a baritone that would make James Earl Jones weep. It could shake the earth, break the sky. It would intimidate most people … well, most who didn’t hear the faintest metallic buzz of a voice modulator and what was probably an amplifier of some sort. “But I should have known that from the fight last night. ‘Next’. Have you no fear at all? You should.”

“Should I, Darth?” He scoffed and shook his head, pacing around the edge of the circle. The closer he got to the boundaries delineated by the bones, the more the hair on his arms stood on end. There was some kind of field, a spell, something to keep him from going outside it. He did notice one thing interesting, though - the closer he got to the smoke, the more he smelled that sulfuric, demon-y smell. Ah, so literal smoke and mirrors, huh? “Do you think I’m an idiot? I’ve been around demons long enough to know when I’m bein’ hit with mumbo jumbo. And that’s what all of this is.” He ran his hand along the unseen barrier, feeling something like water tension charged with static electricity. The more he pushed against it, the more it stung; he was roughly certain he could take it, but he might lose a layer of skin or two. Still, he wasn’t going to push through it until he knew for certain what was on the other side.

“Is it now?” There was a gloating tone in his artificially pumped voice that should have served as warning, but he had no time to react.

It wasn’t that a physical something hit him, but a spell that hit like a fucking lightning bolt. He felt it first in his spine, and it dropped him down to the floor as his nerves seemed to scream, feeling like a million razor blades were slicing him up from the inside out, bursting through arterial walls and cutting deep into muscle and sinew …

… for almost a minute. Then it stopped, fading almost as quickly as it hit. “Tell me more about mumbo jumbo,” the voice said.

He chuckled as the pain trailed off, aware he should be angry, but unable to muster it up. Maybe because this was so pathetic. "The scent isn't yours."

That seemed to puzzle him. "What?"

"This smell, this demonic reek, it's coming from the smoke." He rolled over and started the slow climb to his feet again. Man, did his body hate his guts right now. "Which leads me to a couple of possibilities. You knew about my ... well, super smell, whatever the fuck you wanna call it ... and wanted to conceal your real scent from me, or this is just a general scare tactic, something that you thought would make a Human shit their pants in fear. How close am I?"

There was an ominous pause before he replied. Okay, he'd pissed the guy off; he had no idea he had such a sharp sense of smell. "They're needed for the ritual."

"Are they now?" Bullshit. Okay, people used weird things for spells, and sulfur and charcoal could in fact be very popular ingredients, but eau du shellfish? No way. Unless someone was trying to resurrect some clams or something.

"You seem to be implying a knowledge of black magic. Is that what kept you alive in the pit?"

"Would I have ever gotten hurt? Fuck you. I can't cast a damn thing, but I've been around the block enough to know when someone's putting the whammy on me. And this is starting to strike me as a real Wizard of Oz moment." Maybe there was a reason that Gold had a Tin Man in the hall - it was a warning.

"As a what?"

"Ignore the man behind the curtain! You said you wanted to meet me, but you're hiding behind this smokescreen. Somewhat literally." He shook his head dismissively. "Let me outta here. I'll only meet with you face to face. I ain't fallin' for this David Copperfield shit."

The sound of snakes hissing increased, and the deep voice dropped another register. "You leave when I say you can leave. Your arrogance was initially amusing, but now you're annoying me."

"Back at ya, asshole."

The darkness seemed to move, waver like a mirage, and he kicked over one of the braziers to see if he hit something flammable on the other side. He didn't, so he moved on to another one. After he kicked that one over, snakes started to pour into the circle at all sides.

Not boas this time, things that could strike fear into him (supposedly) by size alone, but more instantly deadly type of snakes: colorful copperheads, black cobras, brown rattlesnakes, black mambas, pit vipers and fer de lances. It was a swarm, maybe fifty, possibly a hundred, strangely unaware of the other breeds. Was this supposed to scare him too?

He decided to show him. He sat down cross legged on the floor, and let the snakes come. He let them slither over him, dry scales scraping his arms once more, and while they quested over him, forked tongues darting out to taste the scents in the air, he didn't move, and none were inclined to strike him just yet. They could; their venom wouldn't kill him, just make him briefly sick. He wanted to say he also knew - kind of - a snake god, or at least a god made out of snakes, but that was too much information, and might give up the game.

One of the copperheads worked its way under his shirt, and strangely enough it felt kind of good, in a really odd sort of way. At least snakes weren't slimy. Finally the voice said, with a contemptuous tone, "You're going to be trouble, aren't you?"

"Don't waste my time," he told him. "You can't impress me with parlor tricks. I'm not some normal Human who just blundered into this. I'm a mutant who's spent his whole life on the fringes of society, just like a demon. I'll go in with you as an equal, but don't waste my time otherwise. If I wanted party tricks, I'd go to the Magic Castle. Comprende?" His legs were almost buried by snakes now, their slim, colorful bodies meshing and intertwining, a couple working their way up his pant legs, but no one had bit him. Again, he wondered if knowing a snake god bought him some kind of cache here, or if it was just the fact that he wasn't letting off a fear scent, and hadn't made any sudden moves.

After an even longer silence, there was that low chuckle again. "I don't know whether to kill you or kiss you," he said (disturbingly), and Logan felt suddenly yanked up, as if a giant invisible hand had grabbed him by the scruff of the neck. The snakes fell away, and he was in complete darkness.

For a moment. Then he saw daylight as he was thrown roughly into the hall of Gold's mansion, and once he stopped rolling, he looked back and saw the metal door was back in place, as solid as ever.

He was still on the floor when Gold came up, a martini glass in one hand. "So, how'd it go?" he asked casually.

Logan stared up at him in slight disbelief, but then figured everybody must have gotten the boot like that. "He's a total prick," he growled, pushing himself up to his hands and knees. "He's not sure if he should kiss me or kill me."

"Ooh, you've impressed him. Good show." He took a sip of his martini and walked away, back down the hall. He was out of sight when he called back, "And we really have to talk about getting you a contract, sunshine. With the boss's backing, I know I can get you a three picture deal at Fox just like that." He snapped his fingers in audio demonstration.

This assignment was turning out to be much more of a pain in the ass than he bargained for.

12

The good news was Logan must have been close to the object. The bad news was that Giles knew that because he'd disappeared off the radar in the exact same way. "I thought you said you could find him through a cloaking spell," Angel said, a bit annoyed. It really wasn't Giles' fault - he could kick up one of the strongest spells around; he could probably qualify as a bush league sorcerer if only they let ex-Watchers in the guild - but it was still an uncomfortable feeling. Yes, Logan could take care of himself, almost better than anybody he had ever known (where was he when they were going after the Black Thorns?), but he didn't like the idea of leaving him alone out there, with gods knew what. If it came down to the physical, no problem - but spellcasters of that ability never let it get down to the physical. Logan could be dead before he even thought about closing the distance.

"A normal one, yes," Giles replied snappishly. He was obviously frustrated and annoyed himself. "And a strong one, which leads me to think this is something else entirely."

"Like what?"

"Either a spell unlike one I've encountered before, or a pocket dimension. I can't find him if he's not here."

That flabbergasted him for a moment. Holy shit, that thought never even occurred to him. "Do you realize what you're saying? A pocket dimension can only be created by -"

"- a god, yes I know, or a demon powerful enough to destroy us all. But it is possible - remotely, but still - that a very skilled magic practitioner was able to exploit the artifact to open a pocket."

Angel sighed, rubbing his eyes, hearing Brendan ask quietly, “What’s gone wrong now?”

It did seem to be a common occurrence, didn’t it? It seemed to be the one thing they could count on. He made a quieting hand gesture, and hoped he’d live with that for now. “So what do we do?”

It was Giles’ turn to sigh heavily in frustration. “There’s nothing we really can do. Just wait for Logan to come out of it.”

“And what if he doesn’t?”

There was a long pause - way too long. It made him nervous as hell. Giles getting stumped was always a really bad sign. “Then we’ll go to plan B,” he finally said.

“We have a plan B?” It was news to him.

“Well … no, but we still have time to come up with one.”

Angel heard, somewhere near the front of the bar, a demon gasp, “Look at that sky. What the hell’s going on? Did somebody schedule another apocalypse?”

He looked over to where he heard the guy, and saw that the bar door was open, looking out on the street. He instinctively cringed, but realized that there was no need, as it was as dark as night out there. “What time is it?” he asked Giles, sliding off his stool and approaching the door. Brendan and Naomi followed him, and because he wasn’t exactly beloved by the demon community, they made a grudging path for him and his friends.

“Three forty four. Why? What’s going on?”

The sky wasn’t dark, but a curious bruise purple, with thick black clouds like flattened out thunderheads. There wasn’t a single ray of light; it could have very well been night. “Is it sunny where you are?” he wondered.

“Yes, why would -” his pause was so abrupt, he knew Giles had just looked out his window. “Good lord. Is this the prelude to a tornado?”

“I was thinking more like a cataclysmic electrical storm.”

Naomi stuck her face out into the wind, as if scenting the air, and said, “No, it’s not electrical. I’m not sensing an above average electrical build up.”

Brendan looked at her in amazement. “You can feel electricity?” She nodded, and he asked, “Can you control lightning bolts?”

“I can’t make the clouds discharge,” she admitted, so quickly Angel was sure this meant she had tried it before. “But once they do discharge, I can control the direction of the bolt.”

Brendan let out a small gasp of awe. “Kick ass.”

Angel took a deep sniff, and proclaimed, “It smells like snow.” Which was generally alarming, because it didn’t snow in Los Angeles any more than it snowed in the Bahamas. But the Powers That Be presumably made it snow once in Sunnydale . Still, he didn’t think the PTBs had anything to do with this.

“It’s getting worse,” Giles said wearily. He meant the reality breaches, of course. So if this was someone else’s weather, did that mean a perpetually cold and dark dimension was now being flooded with heat and sun? That couldn’t be pleasant for those life forms.

Angel slammed his fist hard against the doorjamb, but not hard enough to hurt the frame. God, this was so frustrating. Bad shit was happening, and they could do nothing but stand by and watch helplessly. “We can’t just -”

“Wait a second,” Giles interrupted, sounding distracted. After a few seconds, he came back on the line. “Logan’s back. I’ve just picked him up in Los Felis.”

“Seriously?” It wasn’t that he doubted Giles’ abilities, just that Los Felis was an odd place for both Logan and Brezakaran to be. It was an upscale area, mostly known as the location of many a wealthy star’s extravagant homes, and Brezakaran, who preferred to impress demons with his wealth as opposed to competing directly with actors and producers, used to live in East L.A., in what must have been the largest and best maintained condo on the entire east side. After he had killed him - he shoved him out a fourteenth story window, where his penthouse was located (and even though he was a Matabiri demon with a blistered hide as thick as a rhino’s, there was no way he could survive a fall like that, and Angel knew that he didn’t; he’d seen his skull split open, his brains splattered on the street like road kill) - the condo was bought and razed, and he believed an El Polo Loco now sat on the site. That might have pissed Brezakaran off, but he didn’t seem the type to ! pack up and move to Los Felis. It just didn’t fit his modus operandi, not to mention his personality. He liked to gloat; he wouldn’t want to compete with actors and musicians who made more than him.

“Without a doubt. We should wait until he contacts us.”

“Yes, we should. See you later,” he agreed, and gave Brendan back the phone, as he had no idea how to hang up the bloody thing.

Brendan seemed to understand that, and cut the connection before pocketing the phone. “So we’re actually gonna do something stupid, aren’t we?”

He stared at the kid. Yeah, he was far too worldly by half. “We, kemosabe?” He locked his eyes on Naomi, and said, “Brendan will take you to Giles. He’s a friend of mine, and I think you should meet him, he can bring you up to speed on what’s going on. I’ll meet you there later.”

She nodded, still too confused to be rebellious. But Brendan scowled at him, his eyes scolding and angry. Angel ignored it as he headed out, into the sudden pseudo-night. The temperature had dropped almost thirty degrees from the time they entered the bar, and the wind had come up, with a chilling bite as sharp as a knife blade. Finally the dusters he liked to wear paid off in practicality as he raised his collar against the sudden cold, shrugging deep inside his jacket. You knew the cold was bad if a vampire could feel it.

He was two blocks away, wondering if he should call a cab (no, he didn’t know where in Los Felis Logan was, but he was roughly certain he could smell him if he got close enough, or smell Brezakaran, or just recognize Brezakaran’s rather tacky sense of style), when he heard footsteps pounding the pavement behind him. A glance over his shoulder revealed Brendan jogging up. He stopped and frowned at the boy. “What did I tell you -”

“You told me shit,” he replied sharply, his words becoming clouds in the air between them. “I asked Helga to take Naomi over to Giles. I’m coming with you.”

“The hell you are. I’m not going to fight, I just want to see where he is.”

“Me too. I’m good at sneaking, and I can pass for a pool boy. Can you?”

Again, this kid was too good. “What did they teach you at that mutant school anyways?”

“They didn’t teach me any of this,” he argued. “I’ve been a street kid, like, forever. You learn to survive, or you die. Simple as that. And a lot of times, survival hinges on successfully pretending to be something you‘re not.”

Yes, sadly that was generally true. He didn’t think that Brendan’s streetwise knowledge was enough to save him if push came to shove, but he could get by for now. Still, he didn’t want a sidekick, and certainly not one so young and vulnerable, no matter how tough he thought he was. He had a lot to learn, he just didn’t know it yet.

They covered another couple of blocks in silence, and Angel was about to ask the kid if he had access to wheels, when he heard a faint but relatively close “pop”. There were more of the sounds in a row - pop pop pop - accompanied by screaming. Gunshots, muffled by walls.

Brendan heard it to, posture going ramrod straight, looking around in feral alertness. Although he was still in Human face, a hint of green swam beneath its surface. “Where did it come from?” he asked.

“Next block,” he said, breaking into a run. Brendan came running right after him, like he was afraid he would.

There were gunshots coming from a Safeway on the corner of the following intersection, which immediately struck Angel as odd. It might be a good spot for a robbery, but most robbers just took the money and ran. And they rarely sported automatic weapons, which is exactly what it sounded like - the firearm in use was automatic or semi-automatic, spitting out bullets faster than a Human could breathe.

Angel charged in the door - as much as you could actually “charge” an automatic door - and the scene he saw was immediately off putting. A single man was standing in the aisle at the end of the check out counters, emptying an AK-47 in a wide arc across the store, spraying bullets into all the aisles and the check out stands. Pop cans in an aisle display exploded one by one, spraying brown liquid like arterial blood, and just to add to the surreal scene, cranberry juice and spaghetti sauce also spurted out of destroyed plastic jugs and shattered glass jars, making it look like an orgy of bloodletting. Angel could smell blood beneath the food smells, though, and he saw at least two bodies splayed in distant aisles.

“You’re all demons!” The man shouted angrily, continuing to fire without obvious aim. “I know what you are! I won’t let you -”

He had no idea what else he would have said, as Angel tackled the man, grabbing the gun with one hand and punching him in the face with the other. He smelled like a Human; a scared, angry Human pumped up on adrenaline and some kind of low grade methamphetamine.

That’s why the man’s following actions caught him by surprise.

Angel punched him hard enough in the face to send three of his teeth flying and to fracture his jaw, but the man’s eyes burned with an unholy rage, suggesting something beyond simple hallucinations. He bucked underneath him, and ripped the hot gun out of his grip with a strength that was definitely inhuman. “You’re one of them!” he screamed, bloody spittle flying, as he smashed the butt of the gun in the side of his head, hard enough to make something crack.

Angel hit the tiled floor, small sparks of pain bouncing across his line of sight as he tried to gather his wits together. This man wasn’t operating under a demon induced illusion - he was fucking brainwashed. Brainwashed and too strong, and too fast for someone who wasn’t a hybrid. But he didn’t smell like anything but a Human.

The man was already on his feet, aiming the rifle down at him, but Angel grabbed the barrel and wrenched it, tossing the man over him and making him crash on his back to the floor. And still the man held on to the gun, depressing the trigger, causing bullets to spit out once more. The barrel was aimed away from him, so he was in no danger there, but the barrel heated up fast, to the point where Angel was sure he could smell his own flesh starting to smolder.

He was still sitting on the floor, which seemed not only awkward but totally undignified, so about the only thing he could do was kick the guy in the head as he tried to yank the gun out of his hand. He managed to pull the gun away, almost too easily, and in a millisecond he knew why.

The man had a machine pistol in his coat pocket, and when he let Angel pull the AK-47 away, he pulled it out and shot Angel almost point blank in the chest.

It laid him flat on the floor, gasping for a breath he didn’t need. No, bullets couldn’t kill him, but they hurt like hell, especially when you were so close that the gunpowder could bury itself into you, burn through your skin.

The man was up on his feet, far too fast, blood dribbling from his mouth, pistol aimed squarely down at his face. “You think you can stop me, demon?! Your kind will -”

Once again he never got to finish his thought, as a large, decorative ceramic vase was slammed onto his head. It staggered him, but before he could fully recover, the pistol was ripped out of his hand and slammed butt first into his face, with enough force to break something else. Not satisfied with that, the pistol whipping continued with inhuman strength, until he collapsed bonelessly to the floor, a bloody, (temporarily) harmless heap. “Stupid motherfucker,” Brendan spat, wiping his fingerprints off the gun with the bottom of his t-shirt before dropping it to the floor. As if to make doubly sure the man wouldn’t get it , he kicked it into one of the check out aisles.

“Didn’t I tell you to stay outside?” Angel carped, climbing painfully to his feet. God damn, his chest hurt.

“No.”

“Well I meant to. Don’t you ever fight a man with a gun, do you hear me? He could kill you with a bullet.”

Brendan shrugged. “I know. I’ve been shot at before.” He had? Then how could he be so casual about it? “What was that guy on?” Brendan continued. “I didn’t think an ordinary Human could kick a vamp’s ass.”

“He didn’t kick my ass,” he snapped, perhaps a little too defensively. “He surprised me. And I don’t know what the hell was done to him, but if it’s a delusion, it’s getting a hell of a lot stronger.”

People started to emerge from their hiding places, including a female cashier who had crouched down inside her station to hide from the shooter. She looked at them warily, her thousand yard stare suggesting shock was settling in. “Is he dead?” she asked faintly.

“No, just out.” And considering Brendan had probably fractured his skull, that was either luck, or more proof that this dimensional “bleed” was starting to effect people in many unexpected ways. There was no way for Giles to have predicted that; there was no way for anyone to have predicted that. There were no solid records of what happened the first time the Erebus sliver fell to earth. All they had were a few legends of the aftermath.

Angel picked up the man’s AK-47, braced himself for the shock, and with a single rapid and forceful movement broke it over his knee. It snapped at the barrel, and he let the pieces fall to the floor. He couldn’t use it, even if he did wake up before the police arrived.

Think of the devil. He could now here their sirens, distant but rapidly growing closer. Presumably someone hit a “panic” button as soon as he pulled out his gun. He grabbed Brendan’s arm, and said, “We’re gonna go meet them. If the guy moves, drop your cash register on him.” God knew those things were usually heavy enough to do real damage.

“Hey, wait,” someone said, a man this time, but neither he nor Brendan stopped as they left the store and quickly turned towards the back, where an alley would deposit them on a street the next block over. They would have to catch a cab, and quickly, before the police decided that the “good Samaritans” might actually be “persons of interest”.

Giles was right. Things were getting worse - much, much worse.