Ananga threw out his hand, sending a wave of heat and force straight for the Frenchman, but he dissolved before it, fading to black shadow before it hit him. Before he could move, he felt something stab through him, an unfamiliar sharpness that ached dully, and he looked down to see the tips of three metal blades sticking out of his chest. Someone had stabbed him through the wall of the set. Although he did wonder how they could actually stab him and make him hurt, he slammed his arm back and made the set collapse and burn. “This won’t help you, father!” he shouted, searching for him among the gathering shadows. His chest continued to ache, and it irritated him no end. He should not hurt; gods didn’t hurt.

He sent a shock of bright light up into the sky, trying to illuminate the scene, but it seemed to be instantly swallowed by darkness. The darkness was working with them - it was a spell. But no spell could trump his power … unless … “What have you done?”

Suddenly he was hit from behind by a piece of flaming debris.

It didn’t hurt, it was just more of a surprise than anything else. The magic wasn’t going to protect them forever; they would die, it would just be more difficult than it should be. The darkness swarmed once again, and suddenly he heard behind him, “We done gone and got us some adamantium knives.”

A woman’s voice, punctuated by a slash across his back that burned like fire. Before he could do anything, he caught a kick in the face that didn’t hurt, just shoved him around. Where he came face to face with a vampire, the stink of magic and his father’s corrupted blood coming from a mark on his misshapen forehead, and he stabbed him in the stomach before giving him an uppercut punch that sent his head snapping back. It burned, the metal in his stomach hurt, and it shouldn’t have. What sorcery was this? Mother made sure the metal that hurt was gone!

He stumbled back, and the woman from before, some dark haired harlot, rammed her knife straight through his back. It too sizzled like fire. He screamed in frustration and sent a shockwave throughout the lot, knocking down the remaining studios like dominos, sending the woman and the vampire flying away from him. They should have been vaporized, they should have at least screamed, but neither happened. The darkness seemed to swallow them, and he was suddenly aware of another woman out of the corner of his eye, a coalescing shadow, and she said something in Latin, shocking him with a burst of magic that seemed to sting his skin like a thousand wasps. He saw an old man come in, saying something in Arabic and lobbing what looked like a glowing object at him. He put up a force field, but the thing broke on impact with it, and - it burned! He could feel it eating away his force field like it was stripping the flesh off his bones, and he reeled away, not sure how this c! ould be happening. He was promised clear access; he was promised revenge. His father was vulnerable, he was in no position to stop him - so what the hell was this?

He heard faintly, from everywhere and nowhere, a man singing. “So I see that you’re leaving me, and taking up with the enemy -”

Was that him? He looked around, but all the dark moved. It was amorphous, moving in and out like it was an animal, like it was breathing. The people had disappeared inside it somehow, and he couldn’t see them - he couldn’t sense them, which was somehow worse.

The singing continued, somehow taunting. “ - the cold comfort of the in-between - ”

He let out a scream of frustration and stomped the ground, causing a sudden, sharp earthquake that cracked the asphalt into a fine spider web of cracks. Some of the asphalt broke into jagged chunks, and he hoped that that would catch them short, but if it did, he didn’t see it or hear it. “Face me, you cowards!” he roared, letting the fire come into his hands.

The first one he saw was dead, whether his father cared for them or not.

*****

His impulse was just to run in there and start pounding on him, but that wasn’t the plan.

Logan hated the plan, at least where it applied to him. He didn’t like hiding, but they were using something called a “veiling spell” to hide behind and remain out of his view, except for when they stepped around it. Bob wanted him to especially hide, as he was the “secret weapon”, and wasn’t to reveal that he was the guy with the troublesome claws until it was completely unavoidable. These sneak attacks were awful, especially after the fucker tried to vaporize him.

Not that he was bothered, it was just startling to have the building come down on his head, already slagged wreckage. He barely felt it, though; the wards or the spells or all of them combined to make them a barely noticeable irritation. Once he climbed out, he found a nice sized piece and threw it as hard as he could, nailing the sucker in the back of his head. No, it wasn’t the plan, and it wouldn’t hurt him, but he had to do something to him for that.

What was it going to take for this guy to bilocate? He figured Faith and Angel's dual attack would be enough, but he just seemed to be getting pissy. Willow and Giles combined attack really pissed him off, and the subsequent earthquake made Logan stumble and almost lose his balance. Someone grabbed on to him to maintain their own balance, and he saw it was that girl, Faith.

"Sorry," she said quietly, letting go of his arm once the tremors had subsided. Had she felt up his muscle? He was sure she had.

"It's okay," he said, giving her a brief glance. So, she had "Psycho" on her shirt - was that a warning? She seemed awful strong, but according to Angel, all "Slayers" were. And this wasn't the Slayer that Angel had a big mad on for, but why not? She was a looker, and her tight t-shirt and jeans showed off a really sleek, tight body ...

Okay, mind in the game! Shit, he was going to need ADD medication if he couldn't keep a single focus.

" - a little less than a Human being - " Bob sang, clearly annoying Ananga. The only family resemblance was those glowing blue eyes.

Mordred came in again, hitting him with a bright burst of magic that seemed to cut through him like a lightning bolt, but even as Ananga reeled from the hit, it all went to hell really, really fast.

He bilocated, but there was no warning at all. There was just one of him, stumbling, but suddenly there was another right behind Mordred, who grabbed the annoying English/Frenchman by the throat, but from the back so he was more or less helpless. From the rather startled look on Mordred's face, from the way his eyes bugged out, Ananga must have been squeezing very hard. "Pest, don't you know I'm a god? You can't do this to me!"

"We can do anything we want," Angel snarled. "Haven't you heard? God is dead." He then stabbed the second Ananga straight through the back of his neck.

He roared, a sound with a physical force, and tossed Mordred aside as he turned to go after Angel, who'd already been thrown back. He took a step into the darkness and then started to cough like a six pack a day smoker, doubling over in pain.

Bob said Degei might help them out. Degei was the only god Bob could really talk to in his current "mortal" state, because he said all you had to do to get Degei's attention was talk to a snake. He said he made contact with him by talking to a milk snake in a pet store. It could have been more of Bob's bullshit, but it was just weird enough to quite possibly be true.

Ananga two was vomiting up tiny slender snakes. He had no idea what kind they were, other than perhaps babies, but it was deeply disgusting.

"What the hell..?" Faith gasped.

"I don't get it either," Logan admitted. "But Degei's a god. His snakes can show up wherever he wants them."

"I don't think I'm having spaghetti for a while."

That was almost funny.

The first Ananga was right there in front of them, his back to them as he looked at his twin in equal shock. Although he hated attacking anyone from behind like a coward, there was no opportunity better than this.

He knew from stabbing him earlier that something about Ananga's hide made him hard to stab. It was like trying to punch through a wall plated with just enough adamantium to make things difficult. Maybe a little added force was needed.

"Can you take him down, but stay low?" He asked Faith. "I wanna end this."

"Yeah, no problem," she said, and didn't even wait for him to elaborate. She ran out of the veil and slid on the ground, like she was sliding for home in a baseball game. Logan had to move fast as she slammed into the first Ananga's legs, sliding right past him as she sent him flying backwards.

There was no finesse, but really none was needed. As Ananga fell back towards him, he simply threw a punch aimed at his head, and popped his claws. They punched through his rock hard skull with a bit more ease - the implacable force of gravity was a big help - and ripped up as the rest of Ananga fell towards the ground.

He'd torn off the top of his skull in one whole piece, exposing a very Human looking brain, and as Ananga hit the ground he looked goggle eyed up at his hair and the roof of his skull caught in Logan's claws.

"Holy shit!" Willow exclaimed, and it sounded funny coming from her. Maybe it was because she had such a soprano, little girl voice.

Ananga the first was still conscious, though, and glaring up at him with a hate that was incandescent. He opened his mouth, and roared.

It was not a scream; it was a genuine roar, one with its own physicality - it hit him like a blow from a wrecking ball. It didn’t so much throw him as launch him at a great velocity across the lot. The veil - such as it was - was cushioning, and drew him in, so it was kind of like hitting a pillow, but he still felt winded, and his chest ached and his head seemed to spin, following the motion of the Earth. He dropped down to the ground on his hands and knees, and tried to catch his breath and get a grip. He looked up, to see if Faith was doing better.

Actually, things had gotten worse. The force of his angry roar also had heat behind it, and all the debris was on fire, while some of it flickered up from the new fissures in the asphalt. His first self had climbed unsteadily to his feet, brain still exposed, orangish blood now streaming down his face from where it slopped over the top. He should have been dead, but gods just didn’t go down that easily. Still, his eyes were glazed, and had the special madness of a rabies victim. “Filth,” he spat, his voice gravelly and hard to listen to. It was like iron fingernails down a blackboard. “Filthy Human refuse. The magic can’t protect you forever. I can kill you a thousand different ways, and never quite let you die.”

Logan just shrugged. “Sounds like my life.”

He shouldn’t have said anything, as that allowed Ananga to focus on him, figure out where he was, and he started towards him, energy starting to boil beneath the thin veneer of his skin. “You’re d -”

Faith came out of nowhere behind him, and stabbed him in the brain , driving her adamantium knife down into the exposed tissue. “Die already, you fucking bastard,” she snapped.

Eyes so large they seemed to be bugging out of his head, he shot out his arm and Faith went flying, colliding with Angel, who had come out to join her (or possibly stop her - impossible to say), and the adamantium knife remained sticking out of his cranium. The second Ananga let out a strangle noise of choking rage, but before he could make a defensive move, Giles and Willow double teamed him with bright bursts of energy that made him stagger.

Mordred coalesced from the shadows, behind the first Ananga, who was staring blindly and making vague hand gestures, like he was trying to reach up and grab the knife, but couldn’t quite make it. It was pathetic, and he figured it was time to put the thing out of its misery. He darted out of the shadows, and sliced his claws through his neck, sending his head flying. And Mordred said something in what sounded like Greek and grabbed Ananga’s body, which burst into white fire, like phosphorous.

Ananga number two screamed, sending out a wave of force that toppled them like toy soldiers and seemed to press down on them like the weight of the world. The air was wet cement, trying to suffocate them and press the air out of their lungs, and the darkness seemed to breaking up beneath the strain. But Ananga’s headless corpse finally burned out like a candle, disappearing in a puff of white smoke that tasted like burnt blood.

He bilocated again, and tried to sandwich them all in between the crushing embrace of his power - the asphalt continued to crumble, continued to melt into molten goop beneath the flames - but Angel threw his adamantium knife, nailing one straight in the eye, and his power stream briefly faltered. Willow took advantage of that, hitting him with a burst of power that seemed to surround him like an opalescent bubble. Logan could still hear Bob faintly singing, “ - a little less than a happy high - ”

Where the hell was he? The bastard was milking this for all it was worth. Logan got up and lunged for the closest Ananga, bursting the bubble of magic and driving his claws into his body, punching his claws into him again and again, making him bleed out like a leaky dam. He threw him again, hitting him with a force like a Mack truck, and he could taste blood in his mouth, feel it crawling down his throat as his nose shattered and he hit the burning asphalt hard enough to feel it tear into his back. “Come on, Bob,” he muttered, as Willow, Giles, and Mordred struggled to repel the Anangas and keep them from doing more harm, as Faith and Angel briefly launched physical attacks on them that were futile and quickly stopped with a wave of his hand. They both hit the ground quite close to him.

Bob’s voice, neither here nor there. “ - a little less than a suicide - ”

Logan rolled up to his knees, and prepared to stand, as Angel and Faith both sat up, him bleeding from a split lip, her bleeding more extravagantly from a large gash on her forehead. Angel wiped the blood off his lip with the back of his hand, and gave him a knowing look. “How you doing?”

“Hangin’ in there,” he said, feeling the warm and extraordinarily uncomfortable feeling of the shattered cartilage in his nose starting to knit itself back together again. “You?”

Angel shrugged. “Not dust yet.”

“Where is that Aussie asshole?” Faith snapped, looking around.

Apparently all you had to do was speak of the devil. Because Bob coalesced out of the shadows, behind one of the Anangas, and punched his fist straight through his chest. It went all the way through, blood and broken bone splashing into the fire and making it sizzle, and the other Ananga launched himself at Bob with an angry roar.

They collided as a wave of force seemed to roll off of them and send them all flying backward, the ground rippling like a pond on impact. They rolled along the flaming street, Ananga finally getting the advantage of Bob, straddling him and punching a hole straight through his chest. “How do you like it, dad?” he growled, the blue glow in his eyes growing brighter than the flames.

“Not as much as I like this,” Bob grated through gritted teeth, grabbing Ananga by the throat and sinking his fingers into and through his neck. Orange blood spurted out, and Logan caught a glimmer of something in Bob’s fingers, something he was slipping under Ananga’s skin.

It looked familiar, but he couldn’t place it. It was Angel who recognized it. “Is that the amulet of Taliesin?”

It was, and now it was in Ananga, whose eyes widened horror, and he scrambled back, off his father, digging at his own throat with his hands. He ripped out chunks of his own skin, making blood spew out of him with arterial force, but his skin was already starting to deteriorate, slough off him in thick pieces. Bob sat up, hand over the hole in his chest, and said to him, “I’m sorry, son. But you never belonged here, in this world or the next.”

Anaga simply dissolved into a bright orange chunk of … well, who the hell knew? But he died screaming, half in rage and half in pain, and the dead body of the other Ananga simply disappeared, along with the flames, which died as suddenly as if bathed in water.

The resulting silence was strange, as eerie as sudden deafness, but finally it was broken by Mordred. “It’s over?”

Angel looked around, and got slowly to his feet. “I think so.”

“Good,” he sighed, and promptly passed out, crumpling to the ground in a heap.

Giles dropped to his knees, dripping with sweat and clearly exhausted, but at least he didn’t pass out, which was a credit to him. Angel helped Faith up, and she briefly stumbled, but remained standing. The sudden lack of magic - a sense of armor he hadn’t realized he was wearing - was a bit disorienting, but he got up and managed to get one foot in front of the other. His healing factor was kicking into overdrive now, his skin flushing like he was gripped by a sudden fever. “Are we all okay?” he wondered.

“Yeah, just … yeah,” Willow said, running a hand through her sweaty hair, hovering over Giles like a nervous mother.

Logan nudged Mordred with his foot, and he groaned slightly. He was fine; if you could make a noise, you weren’t dead. But Bob hadn’t said anything, he was just sitting on the pavement, arms wrapped around his midsection, seemingly staring at the gleaming gem that made up the amulet of Taliesin, which had dropped naked to the pavement after Ananga had disappeared. And the closer he got to him, the more he could smell blood - Bob’s blood, tinged with the strange, unearthly smell of magic.

And he knew why Mordred had collapsed - the magic had been pulled out of him. And there was only one place where it could go.

“Bob? Bob, what the hell have you done?” He was almost within arm’s reach of him when Bob turned his head to look at him, and his eyes were a pure, lustrous black that still seemed to glow. It was a dark fire, one that was invading the veins of his face, gorging itself beneath his skin.

“Putting an end to this,” he said, and his voice had changed slightly. It was part Aussie larrikin, and part god, an ethereal, otherworldly voice that made something in your mind cringe. “You can’t channel primal magic, not even share it, without a sacrifice. It’s just the way it’s done. Coin of the realm.”

“What?” Faith sounded shocked, and probably spoke for all of them.

But Logan got it. He felt his stomach turn hard and cold, set like ice, and he didn’t know whether to be angry or sad. “You son of a bitch. You knew -”

“I’ll be back,” he interrupted, with a sickly smile. Black lines were branching out all over his face, spreading down his neck, looking like needle thin snakes had invaded his bloodstream. “I’m a Power, and they own me. I’ll be back in a couple of weeks. This isn’t the first time I died, you know. I’m karma in action. They keep putting me back here, again and again and again, because Powers don’t kill other Powers, and because they want me to learn … something. I guess once I figure out what, they’ll let me be a full blown Power again. But I don‘t want to be one of ‘em, so I guess I‘m stuck on this merry-go-round.”

Logan knelt beside him, still not sure what he should do. He felt like punching him. “It was for you, wasn’t it?” He meant the song; the song that Bob was singing was for himself, not Ananga. A musical explanation; a type of eulogy in advance.

“Hey, I like to sing.”

“You can’t -” Angel interrupted, and turned to Giles and Willow. “We can stop this, right? There’s a way around this, there has to be.”

But Willow looked at him sadly, shaking her head, and Giles didn’t even bother to look up, he simply put a hand to his face, seemingly wiping the sweat from his face, hiding his grimace. They didn’t know how to stop it; they didn’t even know how to start.

Logan leaned in, grabbing Bob’s arm. His skin felt impossibly hot, and he had no idea if he could see him, even though he was technically looking right at him. “I’m your avatar. What’s going to happen to me?” It seemed like a selfish thing to ask, but it also seemed like something important.

Bob put a hand on his shoulder, and it was a strangely comforting gesture, even though it felt like his heat was actually burning his skin beneath his shirt. “It won’t last long. Take care of them. Remind Hel to keep the fridge stocked. I promised her I’d cook her dinner on her birthday, and I’ll be back to do just that.”

“No, you can’t leave me on the hook like that. Bob, you’re a god, you can fi -”

But Bob shoved him away, and just in time, as Bob was suddenly consumed by what looked like darkness itself, a void bursting through his skin and swallowing him whole. Logan thought he felt … something, a wave of that heat wash over him as Bob disappeared, but it was not scalding. No, it was strangely calming, almost soothing in a way he couldn’t explain, and twice as empowering.

Someone, Willow perhaps, stifled a sob, as they all found themselves alone in the ruins of the Paradigm Studios back lot, stars glimmering through the premature darkness. As Logan climbed to his feet, Angel reached down to help him up, but he didn’t need it. He felt just fine; he felt better than fine.

“That’s it?” Faith asked. “I thought he was a god; I thought he found a way around the whole primal magic thing.”

“It was a lie,” he told her. “He’s in a Belial demon shell, remember? They’re the best liars on the planet.”

Angel gave him the strangest look, like he wasn’t sure he knew who he was looking at, and his nostrils flared briefly, like he’d picked up a change in his scent. Had he? Perhaps, but a very minor one. “Was he lying about coming back?”

He shook his head confidently. “No, he’s coming back. But I think, until he does, we should keep this between us. Because if his enemies think he’s gone … well, you saw what happened. For the sake of this dimension, we let as few people know as possible.”

Angel continued to stare at him, morphing out of vampire face and into his normal Human visage. The look in his eyes never changed, even as they went from yellow to brown. “How much of his power do you have now?”

He didn’t even know how to answer that question, but when he closed his eyes, he could see the faintest glimmer of blue . “Enough.”

And he sincerely hoped it was.