12

It was obvious as soon as he hung up that Angel was going to do something stupid. So Giles wondered why he should be alone in doing that.

He had contacts of his own, but some of them were not easy to reach - nor very safe. But desperate times and all that. He’d already had the place prepared, a clear spot on his hotel room floor, although he had to make it in the bathroom for the embarrassing reason that it was the only place not covered with carpet.

The initial ritual was easy enough. Setting up the beeswax candles on the counter, turning off all the lights so only the low flames of the candles offered any illumination as he said the words and poured the circle of salt, adding a line of salt at the doorway. It was unlikely they’d make a run for it, but it was better safe than sorry, especially with this kind of demon.

He sat cross legged inside the salt circle, wincing slightly at the popping in his joints. He was too old for this shit, if he was to be completely honest with himself, but then again, who better to do this? He had experience that amount of power couldn’t make up for, or at least he liked to tell himself that. He picked up the razor blade and made a thin incision across the palm of his hand, watching the blood well in a slender horizontal line. He pressed the base of his palm to speed the bleeding, then said the words of the summoning invocation, letting his blood drip outside the circle, as well as patter on some of the salt, soaking it through. He knew he muddled the pronunciation of some of the words, his conversational Sumerian wasn’t always the best, but he knew those words weren’t as important as some others. A breeze started to blow, making the candles flicker violently, and he could feel the energy building in the room. A sour but unidentifiable scent stung his no! strils, and he pulled his hand back inside the circle just as it appeared.

There was no noise, no lights; the candles simply stopped flickering and the breeze died violently, and he could see movement in the corner of his eye. Then it was in front of him, only the circle of salt holding it back.

“Oh, Giles, it’s you,” it grumbled, its voice an odd combination of fingernails on a blackboard and a maraca. “Why do you bother me?”

Hantu Kubor was as dangerous as he was unattractive. Currently he appeared on all sixes, the six thick appendages that were both arms and legs, ending in long, six digit claws that could work as feet and hands at the same time. He was technically quite short, standing only four feet high when he decided to stand upright on only two (or so) appendages, but his claws and his jaw - which he could distend enough to swallow a Human whole (and had several times, apparently) made him more than formidable. His head was mostly that swollen jaw full of teeth, as his eyes were on stalks that moved and swayed, looking behind him, in front of him, to the side, upwards and downwards all at once, all moving independently of one another. Considering he had thirty two foot long eye stalk on top of his head, he could see how Medusa might have gotten tagged with the snake hair, even though the myth properly belonged to Hantu Kubor, and they were neither snakes nor hair. Even worse, if you c! ut off some of his eye stalks for any reason, they grew back stronger than before. His body was remarkably flat, but all flawless muscle, his skin smooth and grey as graveyard ash. When he paced back and forth across the tiled floor, his claws clicked, and his long, thin black tongue flicked out and licked up his blood, coming to the edge of the salt. Even though he knew Hantu - vaguely - Giles knew that if he moved beyond the circle, the demon would pounce on him and tear him to shreds.

Actually, Hantu Kubor was a race of demons that dwelled in the underworld and fed off the remains and refuse of other worlds, and since they saw themselves as a singular entity, none of them had names. They were all Hantu Kubor, and what one knew and saw, all knew and saw. He had no idea if this one was the same one he encountered at the British Museum so long ago, but the difference was purely academic. “I need some answers,” he told him, wondering how he had ever gotten so old. (His legs were starting to go numb.)

The Hantu Kubor paced back and forth restlessly, malevolence radiating from it like an aura. The majority of its eye stalks were swiveled in his direction. “Of course you do, old man. All you want is answers. It’s tiresome.”

“But while I have you here you have to answer me.” It was true. The Hantu Kubor summoning spell pretty much obliged the demon to answer questions truthfully, otherwise it couldn’t leave. And most of them didn’t find this world pleasant. According to them, it was too bright, and smelled funny.

“Yes, yes, I know,” he grumbled impatiently. “Get on with it.”

“How does one destroy the Erebus sliver?”

That made it stop pacing, swiveling its remaining eyes towards him. “Foolish Human! Do you really think you can destroy anything of the gods?”

“Yes. Gods can be destroyed, and so can their things. And don’t think I haven’t noticed that you haven’t answered the question.” While they had to be truthful, that didn’t mean they couldn’t be tricky.

It grumbled and sat down on what could have been its haunches. (It didn’t actually have a butt, which was only disturbing when you thought about it.) “You can do it, perhaps, but not without cost.”

“Erebus has nothing to do with this plane anymore.”

“No, not with the living,” he grated, many of his eyes giving him hard looks. They were all as big as grapes and black as ravens, with an orange slit pupil like fire as seem from underneath a door. “But once you’re dead, you’ll face his judgment.”

“A risk I will take.” And he would. Once he was dead, he honestly didn’t care what happened to him. Besides, he probably owed a lot of demons and gods something; they could fight over him like the wishbone of a Christmas turkey.

Its eyes bobbed and swayed, as if in an invisible breeze, and it made a noise that was one of grudging acceptance. “You are either stupid or brazen. I’m not sure which one is worse for you.”

Giles just shrugged. He’d been called both - and worse - and he wasn’t sure he cared. “Just tell me how to destroy the sliver.”

The Hantu Kubor finally told him what he needed to know, and he wondered how he was going to do this. He was just going to have to figure out a way, and hope they all lived through it.

13

Logan had a hard time getting out of Gold’s house. It wasn’t that he couldn’t walk out the front door, but Gold kept saying he could have someone go get his things, or get what he wanted, to the point that Logan knew the guy was trying to keep him here. Fed up, he angrily told him he was gonna go and get his own fucking smokes (he knew Gold didn’t smoke; he could smell a cigarette months after one had been lit up), and he was going to come back, if that’s what bothered him. Gold seemed off put by his aggressive stance (afraid of him, was he? Good, he should be), but quietly insisted he use “his” driver, as it was a long way into town. That’s when he found out he was in Los Felis. Way too fancy for him; he’d stick out like a sore thumb in this neighborhood. No wonder he wanted him to take a driver, he was probably afraid someone would call the cops on him as a “suspicious looking person”. So he took up the offer of the driver, figuring he could ditch the guy when he needed! to.

It was weird outside, dark and Canadian cold, with the smell of snow sharp in the air. It didn’t snow in Los Angeles, so he figured things were getting real bad.

The “driver” was a Human named Hector, and the car was a silver Lexus. Sitting in the back with a costumed driver made him feel funny. He decided he wouldn’t make a good rich person. (Which would surely be a shock to everyone who knew him.) He had him drive until they returned to Los Angeles, and a truly bad part of town. It made Hector nervous, but he had him park in the cracked parking lot of a bodega with bars over its dusty windows, and huge neon signs advertising malt liquor. But it also had a small sign advertising a pay phone inside.

Hector was happy to stay with the car as he went inside and hit the pay phone, calling the Way Station. He was hoping for Helga, but Lau picked up. Still, better than Lia. He left a message that he had made a kind of contact with Brezakaran, but he wasn’t too sure about any of this. There were too many smoke and mirrors, too much stalling, too much play acting. Something was off about all of this, but he couldn’t put his finger on it. Lau agreed that it sounded fishy, and it was the longest sentence he’d ever heard the taciturn Samoan use. Wow - if he could get Lau to speak, something was wrong.

He hung up, and went to pick a beer out of the freezer case - a normal beer, as malt liquor smelled like horse piss. A guy came in, shouting obscenities at the hapless Arab store owner and waiving a 9 millimeter around, demanding the money. But his tone started to take a familiar and sinister turn. “You think I don’t know what you are?” The guy was saying. His words were coming together in a big slurry rush, like he’d been smoking crack most of the night. “I know what you are. You wear a mask but it doesn’t fool me -”

Logan stuck the can of beer under his arm and stalked up the aisle quickly but quietly, directly behind the gunman, a big sweaty guy who reeked of body odors, and cheap chemicals used in crank production, as well as that piss smelling malt liquor. The guy’s heart was pounding so hard Logan would swear he could hear it from a distance. The guy looked around nervously, but never did look behind him.

He was too busy leaning over the counter and waving the gun in the clerk’s face to notice Logan until he was right behind him. But Logan didn’t give him a chance to turn around. He simply grabbed the back of the guy’s head and slammed his forehead down hard on the top of the old fashioned cash register. The cash drawer sprung open on impact, and the guy collapsed to the floor, bleeding from the cut on his forehead and unconscious at the very least - his left leg twitched spastically for a bit, making Logan wonder if he hit his head just a little too hard. He picked up the gun from where it had fallen on the dusty floor, and picked it up, putting it on the counter butt first, before putting his beer can down. “Got any cigars?” he asked the clerk, who stared at him in wide eyed shock.

After a minute, the clerk seemed to regain his composure, and sold him the can of beer and a cheap but still overpriced cigar. He thanked him, and Logan told him, “If the cops ask who did this, say I was a big black man wearing goggles, ‘kay?” He nodded dumbly, and while Logan left, he wasn’t sure he actually would. Still, if he did, Marcus would probably find it funny.

Logan noticed, as he got back into the Lexus, Hector was just hanging up his cell phone. He didn’t say what that was about, but there was something so serious about his expression that suggested it wasn’t a good call. They beat the arriving cops by about two minutes, and as the cops drove past them, sirens blaring, Hector asked warily, “Did something happen back there?”

Logan cracked open his beer, and put up his feet on silver leather backseat. “Nothin’ special.”

Hector wasn’t taking him back to Los Felis; that was obvious almost right away. Logan asked him, “Where we headed?”

Hector shifted nervously in the front seat, as if aware that if Logan didn’t like his answer, he could simply pop his claws through the seat, and it would be goodnight nurse. “The boss wants to see you.”

A weird statement, since he’d seen more of Gold than he ever wanted to see. But he must have meant Brezakaran - which was, once again, odd, since he’d theoretically already seen him in Gold’s house. “Ah, so he’s gonna really show himself now, huh?”

Hector shrugged, but he was starting to let off a fear smell. Logan didn’t think he was really all that afraid of him, so he figured the big guy was bringing this on. “You met the boss?” Logan wondered.

Hector was quiet for a long time, clearly weighing his response. “Not … exactly, no. he doesn’t usually meet … uh … Humans.”

Did he hesitate because he was afraid to say the word demon, or was he suddenly unsure if he was Human or not? Did he think mutants weren’t Human? No, he couldn’t let himself get distracted by vague things that could mean anything. “But I’m special, huh?”

“It seems so.” He glanced in the rear view mirror, as if trying to see what was so special about him. He almost made a face, but didn’t.

Hector hit the nightmare that was the Los Angeles freeway, so Logan finished his beer, and wondered what the fuck was going on. What game was Brezakaran playing, and why? Did even have the stone, or was this just the weirdness of a mob boss who was paranoid since he’d been killed once before? Something just wasn’t adding up here.

Once he finished his beer, he sat back and closed his eyes …

… only to find Mariko staring straight back at him.

He opened his eyes with a jolt, and had to swallow back a surge of anger. Now, see, that was just another thing that was wrong. Who was fucking with him, and why? Better yet, just why - why did people always love to fuck with him? Why did they love to rape his memories and his mind like it was required? Did he have a big “Victimize Me” sign on his forehead? How did he put an end to all of this?

It sounded like a rhetorical question. And that was the second worst part of it.

After what seemed like an eternity, Hector pulled into the parking lot of a huge condo of mirrored glass, a tower so phallic he expected it to be called the dick monument. Instead it was called Hyperion Tower, making Logan wonder if “hyperbole” had been taken. Hector parked in a reserved spot, and for a moment just sat there, unmoving, giving off a subtle scent of unease. Finally, he said, “Tell them you’re expected. He’s on the twentieth floor.”

“Not going in with me?”

He shook his head. “I’m not supposed to.”

Fair enough. He got out of the car and walked towards the front, wishing he’d worn a jacket. Who knew it’d ever get this cold in Southern California?

The lobby, all sterile marble and chrome, had a security officer behind a desk. He asked him who he was hear to see, and when he told him he really didn’t know, he was just expected on the twentieth floor, the rent-a-cop sprung to his feet with sudden deference. He also had to unlock the elevator with a key card so he could access the twentieth floor. It seemed as silly as hell, but at least it was better than a security fence.

The elevator was silver, high tech and cold, and smelled faintly of lemongrass, but at least it didn’t play muzak. When it opened on the twentieth floor, there was nothing there but a very small foyer and a metal door painted a flat gray. He sniffed the air warily, but didn’t smell anything demonic. In fact, the one scent he was picking up …

A lock clicked, and the door swung open, revealing a tall, lean man with snow white hair, holding a tumbler full of scotch. In spite of his hair color, he looked to be somewhere in his thirties. “Logan, the man without fear,” he said, with an unpleasant smirk. “Do come in.” He didn’t wait for further acknowledgment, just turned away and retreated into his penthouse, leaving the door ajar.

Okay, now he knew something was wrong. This was not Brezakaran; they were being played.

The man was Human.

14

Shortly after they caught a cab to Los Felis, Giles called Brendan’s cell phone, and asked them to meet him right away at an address near Brentwood. Brendan agreed and hung up before asking for clarification, and Angel scowled at him. “Couldn’t you even ask why?”

“He said it was urgent,” he replied, tapping the bulletproof divider and telling the cab driver their destination. Of course, when he heard it, Angel realized the address was vaguely familiar.

“Huh,” he said, wondering why Giles wanted them there.

“You know where that is?” Brendan wondered. “I haven’t been in that area yet.”

“It’s a museum. A museum of the macabre.”

“Really?” He seemed intrigued. “I didn’t know L.A. had one of those.”

“Yeah, it’s a privately owned museum. A collection of arcane artifacts accumulated by a rich eccentric who briefly started a cult in the ‘20’s. Once he died, his family turned his home into a museum since no one wanted to buy all his worthless crap. Most of it is just cheap knock offs of actual artifacts if not just made up tchotchkes.”

“So why are we going there?”

Angel stared at him hard, but inevitably just shrugged. “Ask Giles.”

It didn’t take long to reach the area, and but then hail was pelting down from the sky, pea sized balls of solid ice that pinged off the roof like stones. The Ferrando Occult Museum was a split level Victorian style home complete with needless gables and pillars, and plaster gargoyles on each corner of the peaked roof. It was set - quite fittingly - next to the sprawling Holy Oak Cemetery, which was full of mostly film stars from the ‘20’s and ‘30’s that no one remembered anymore. The area had the subtle air of the long forgotten, a place haunted not by ghosts, but by the lack of them, by faded glory. Even with the home set among a backdrop of towering oaks and a smooth swath of green grass and tombstones as upright and uniform as teeth, the place seemed as empty as a ghost town. You knew there was something wrong about a place if it could even give a vampire a chill.

The cab let them out at the wrought iron fence that surrounded the “museum”, and the gate was already open. Giles and Naomi were standing beneath the shelter of the front porch, looking as if they were waiting for someone to answer the door. But as he and Brendan went up the concrete path to the front steps, he could clearly see there was a sign on the wide double doors that said, in big block letters, ‘Closed for remodeling - open in October’.

“What’s going on?” Angel asked as he and Brendan went up the steps. He noticed Giles had a white bandage on his hand. “What happened to you?”

Giles looked down at his hand, and said rather blandly, “I cut myself. Listen, I know this is going to sound crazy, but the Sword of Weyland is inside this building.”

Angel stared at him in disbelief. “Uh, is it April first?”

Brendan looked between them, confused. “We’re here about a sword? I know a guy on Venice Beach who sells nice ones …”

“It’s a very special sword,” Giles informed him. “It was forged from the blood of a demon god named Dolonn .”

“Forged from blood?” Brendan repeated, in a tone of voice that suggested he thought Giles was shitting him too. “Umm, how does somebody do that?”

“Dolonn’s blood was liquid metal.”

“What, like the second Terminator?”

Giles gave Brendan a look that he had given Xander about eight billion times. “I wouldn’t know,” he replied tartly.

“The blood imbues it with special power,” Angel explained, trying to defuse any tension. “It can destroy anything; immovable objects, cursed spirits, gods. But it was lost, Giles - it was sucked into a time vortex during the Battle of Al-Almeina.”

“Sucked into a what where?” Naomi wondered, eyebrows knitting together in confusion.

“A long story,” Angel assured her. “But it was lost forever.”

Giles shook his head vigorously. “That’s what we were all led to believe, but it was just misplaced in time, probably for good reason - the gods would hardly want something laying around that could destroy them, would they?”

Angel pointed at the sealed doors, where the peeling paint was an obvious sign of its age. “And it’s here? How do you know this?”

“A trusted contact. It’s here, but they don’t know what they have. They think it’s just a sword, and I’m sure most people who see it do as well. It’s been hidden in plain sight.”

Angel frowned, not sure he could buy this. Yes, it sounded both perverse and absurd enough to be true, and Giles wasn’t the type to be sucked into a prank, but it still seemed so unlikely. The sword existed, and no one ever looked for it or found it?

Then again, who would look for it here?

Giles pulled a stone out of his pocket. Small and smooth, about half the size of a tangerine and milky white, Angel recognized it instantly. “And this should lead us right to it.”

“A rock?” Brendan said skeptically.

“A chameleon stone,” Giles clarified. “In proximity to the Sword of Weyland, it turns a rosy red. It also takes on other colors when magic has been used, and I can confirm this place has no mystical wards on it. Just standard security systems.”

“And that’s where I come in,” Naomi said, approaching the doors. She pulled her gloves off, tucking them in the pocket of her coat, and put her bare hands flat against the door. She didn’t appear to do anything, but after a moment, she stepped away, tiny arcs of electricity sparkling on her fingertips. “It’s done. There’s no electricity reaching the entire museum.”

Giles nodded, and looked at him. “Would you do the honors?”

“What honors?” Brendan wondered.

Angel stepped up on the porch, mentally picked his spot, and then launched a flat footed kick at the door. The doors flew open, an inside deadbolt flying off and clanging down the hall as it bounced along the floor.

“Oh, those honors,” Brendan said.

The four of them proceeded inside, and Giles pulled out a flashlight that he handed to Brendan to hold. The museum was - of course - pitch dark, and full of both dust and clutter. If they were remodeling, they hadn’t started yet, or it was code for “goofing off”. There were cluttered halls leading to even more cluttered rooms, and there seemed to be no rhyme or reason to any of this; it was haphazard and as slapped together as a basic thrift shop. “Why is it called the Sword of Weyland?” Naomi asked. She was sending a bigger arc of electricity between her fingers on her right hand to light her path, and because of it, she took up the rear, so she didn’t accidentally bump someone and shock them. In the suffocating stillness of the museum, her voice seemed inappropriate somehow, even though she kept her tone to a whisper.

“Weyland was the name of the wizard who slew Dolonn and forged the sword,” Giles explained, his voice even more hushed.

“Why didn’t he come after it?” She asked.

“He was killed in the Battle of Al-Almeina, where the sword was lost.”

“Wow, this is like the Tardis,” Brendan explained, playing the beam of light across the replica of an African mask hanging on the wall. “Bigger on the inside than the outside.”

“Not quite,” Giles replied, actually aware of what he was talking about.

A strange feeling came over Angel; something like a shiver wormed its way down his spine, and the sound of the hail pounding the roof ceased so abruptly there was no way it could have been natural. “Shh,” he hissed, listening hard, staring into the surrounding darkness. He was a vampire, he could see body heat in the darkness, smell blood, hear the beating of a living heart. “We’re not alone anymore,” he whispered.

As a natural response, they all crowded together, back to back, all of them too experienced at battle to leave themselves open, although Naomi was careful not to physically touch anyone. “Who is it?” Brendan whispered.

“Oh dear,” Giles said, holding up the chameleon stone. It was now glowing a rather sickening chartreuse color, like phosphorescent pus beneath an infected wound.

“I’m guessing that’s not good,” Naomi remarked.

”I’m guessing that means we’re fucked,” Brendan agreed.

“Black magic,” Giles confirmed. “Serious black magic has just been used on this place. On us.”

Angel caught the smell then, the rank smell of spoiled meat, fresh, hot blood, and brimstone. It was sadly familiar. “It’s hellhounds, “ he told them, although he expected that Giles alone would understand the true nature of the threat. “My guess is an entire pack.”

Giles’s sigh was small, but deeply portentous. Yes, he knew, and he knew this wasn’t good. Four of them against roughly a dozen hellhounds - most likely ravenous hellhounds. Live flesh, dead flesh, they didn’t care; they would eat anything, rip it to pieces just to bathe in the blood. “They knew we were coming,” he said, sounding strangely disappointed.

So they weren’t the only ones who knew the true nature of the sword here, were they? Good bait, nice. How could they refuse? Brezakaran was much sharper than he ever gave him credit for.

And the silence of the museum was subsumed by the growling of a dozen hellish beast surrounding them in the dark.