Angel just stared at him a moment, making sure he didn’t go away if he willed him away (no), then asked, “Does anyone else see him?”

Wesley just cocked his head curiously, looking to the others for an answer. Bren did a double take, but not in Wesley’s direction - he was looking towards a store front. “Holy shit!”

Giles winced as if hit, and said wearily, “You mean she not he, correct?”

Xander closed his eyes and turned away, towards Wesley. “Yeah, you screwed up the gender.”

“Regrets personified,” Wesley said once more, and Angel finally got what he was trying to tell him.

“Everyone, tell me who you’re seeing. I’m seeing Wesley.”

“Wesley?” Giles asked, surprised. “I’m seeing Jenny.”

“Ms. Calendar?” Xander replied. “I’m seeing Anya.”

“I’m seeing Matt,” Bren reported.

After a moment, Naomi said, “Should I be feeling left out because I’m not seeing anyone out of the ordinary?”

Angel looked at her curiously. “You have no regrets?”

She shrugged sheepishly, and began to say, “Well, I do …”

She was interrupted by Wesley, although she didn’t hear that. “Her regrets can’t be personified. She regrets the loss of so many memories; that’s a purely abstract concept.”

“Huh. Amnesia seems to be protecting you from this, simply because your regrets aren’t tied to a person - it’s a thing.”

Giles moved closer to him, probably to be in his direct line of sight, but also to avoid looking at Jenny. “How do you know that?”

“Wesley told me.” Now that he said it, it sounded silly.

“I’m just being cussed out,” Xander said, the cant of his head suggesting he was trying not to hear, but also felt he deserved it.

“Why is he … helping you?” Giles wondered, his tone of voice suggesting this was all suspicious.

And it was, but Wesley simply said, “Because you seem to believe that he would.”

Angel felt a stab of guilt run through him, but repeated what he said. Giles simply adjusted his glasses and nodded, trying hard not to look in the direction where Jenny must have been.

People around them continued to react in a mostly poor manner to the return of their personal regrets, while Naomi looked around, seemingly searching in vain for her own. Wesley came to stand beside them but just slightly removed, like he was honestly part of the group. “You should get off the street,” Wesley said, continuing to survey the chaos around them. “Perhaps Giles can conjure up some protective spell, or if it’s a god’s influence, appeal to the Church of the Stone Temple for a blessing.”

“That’s a good idea. We should go to the Stone Temple.”

Xander gave him the most bewildered stare. “We should go to a Stone Temple Pilots concert? Man, I hate to break it to you, but I think they’ve broken up.”

Bren ignored that. “We should?”

Giles got it. “Yes. It may have a protective influence, and no matter how bad the god in question, they’ll probably be reluctant to defile another god’s hallowed ground. Especially the Gorgons.”

“Yeah. When they get mad - wow.” Bren grabbed his pendant, and his eyes widened as if he just got an electric jolt. “Shit!”

Angel reached up for the sword again, but he saw Wesley shaking his head out of the corner of his eye. “What?”

“Matt just disappeared.”

“And we have our confirmation,” Wesley said, sounding a bit proud of himself. “The Gorgons’ blessings are stronger then whoever’s causing this.”

“Okay, let’s go. Bren, lead the way.” It was the one break they had caught so far this evening, beyond Bob walking in on Taqwus before he could start trying to kill them. But it was possibly their last break, until they could find Bob again.

Where the hell had he gone?

*******

Was there anything colder than a cement killing floor? Bob didn’t think so, although he supposed the Antarctic, and certain hell dimensions might be colder. But barely.

He had stripped down to his boxers, and since they were silk he regretted putting them on today, but oh well, he couldn’t do anything about it now. He sat down on the cold, cold floor, and shivered even before he brought the equally icy blade up to his arm and started carving.

He’d fortified himself with a stiff shot of rev, a demon specific upper, so it didn’t hurt that much as the tip of the blade penetrated the first layer of his skin, and he began slicing the patterns. The cuts weren’t deep, and couldn’t be, simply because he had so many to do - he couldn’t lose so much blood he’d pass out before he was through. Just in case, a little garter snake watcher of Degei’s was hiding in a shadowy corner of the room, keeping dark eyes trained on him.

Bob carefully cut swirls and loops all over his arms and chest, his blue blood swelling up and spilling out over the patterns, running ink on fresh tattoos. The blood began to patter on the floor, a dribble becoming a weak stream, but the circle of chalk and smudged sage contained it. He was a little light headed and achy when he worked on the last parts of the pattern, two spirals carved in his upper thighs, and used the hand mirror to slice a pattern into his cheeks. On the right, a swirl that also encircled his eye, and on the left a sort of scar pattern, three small gashes in a row like claw marks.

Finally done, he blinked blood out of his eyes as he set the mirror down, and wiped the blood slicked knife on his leg before tucking it in the back of his boxer shorts. He stood up, holding his arms out for maximum blood drippage, and started saying the incantation - the one not in any book or scroll or archive on the planet, because no one here could do the summoning, even if they knew the words. You needed the Blood to open the door, and while he didn’t have the powers, he still had the Blood.

The warehouse trembled, as if an earthquake had begun, but it was contained to this barren, dark room, and he shouted the final words angrily, adrenaline kicking in and giving him a fresh wave of energy and rage. Finally a wound opened in the air, a gash bleeding corrosive orange light, and he took a deep breath sour with baked blood and charred bones.

Did other people have to do this shit to talk to their ex-wife? He bet not.

Finally she appeared out of the wound, a glowing apparition limned with reddish orange light, her form humanoid and attractive for it, long and lean, her orange skin flawless, her deep black eyes like wells, her hair a mid-length fall of the purest burnt sienna. She wore what could have been a clingy green silk robe with plunging décolletage, but he knew it was just light. Indrani was technically a much more powerful god than him, but it all depended on how you used the power; she was all about the big, ham-fisted stuff. That’s why his preference for subtlety took her by surprise. At the end of the day, the better liar won.

Not that she saw it that way. She sneered at him, revealing newly pointed incisors. “Finally, you call. What do you want, an anniversary card?”

She had started to advance on him, but thought better of it. The pattern he’d carved into his body was protective, with his blood making the wards that much more powerful; she couldn’t breach the circle or touch him without hurting herself badly. The Old language he’d written on the walls and on the floor in front of the door would keep her from leaving. She was stuck here, and the only place for her to go was back to her sub-dimension. “I think you know what’s going on, Indrani. Are you working with them?”

She gazed at her green fingernails as if she’d just painted them. “Work? Honey, have you forgotten which ex of yours I am?”

“Try this coy shit with me, and I will say the Words. I’m in no mood to fuck around.”

At the mention of the Words, her eyes focused once again on him, her glare molten. “That is a change for you. Are you no fun anymore?”

He said one of the Words, and she reeled back, as if her body was real and he had just punched her in the stomach. When she recovered enough to look at him again, she had opened three eyes along her forehead, which leaked hot orange light out into darkness. “You impotent little Power,” she growled, in a voice so deep and gravelly it sounded like the Earth itself was speaking to him. “You think I don’t know you’re trapped in a shell? I can smell the stink of it.”

“And I can still hurt you in spite of it, so you’d best knock the shit off now. The Partners have something here impersonating our son. Are you helping them?”

At the mention of their son, she straightened up, and a smug look came over her face, her orange eyes half lidded and smoldering like embers. “Ahh, beautiful An. The child you murdered in cold blood. How do you sleep at night? If you do - but then, you did go native, didn’t you? You and your precious Humans …”

“You’d know all about cold blood, wouldn’t you? Now answer my fucking question, Dran, or you’re going to hear another one.”

Her look was sour, and probably would have been disemboweling under normal circumstances. As far as he could tell, their entire relationship had been a lie, but the why of it was baffling. It was hard to believe that she would work in concert with the Senior Partners, but why not?

For a while, she was on Earth, and they had a hell of a time. They were sort of married in a god sense, if not in a legal sense. Then one day she just disappeared back to her home dimension without a word. When he went after her, she told him simply that it was fun, but she couldn’t stand Humans any longer, and as an extra flourish, locked him out of her dimension. He didn’t even know about their son until he came to earth at the head of an apocalyptic army. As far as he was able to make out, it was all an attempt to incorporate some of the Powers’ energy into a darker force, and supposedly create a hybrid being more powerful than either parent. He was; it almost worked. He had to call in the collective energy of the other Powers (who blamed him and his “repulsive urges” for the problem), to defeat Ananga, and he incorporated just enough of Ananga’s energy to lock Indrani into her home dimension. He would have preferred to lock Ananga away too, but the Powers didn’t give ! him a choice, and it was probably impossible anyways.

“It’s not a fake - it’s Ananga. Karma’s a bitch, isn’t it?”

He shook his head. “What did I say about bullshit?”

“It’s not bullshit, you naïve little pretty boy. Did you think that I didn’t anticipate that you might be so enamored of your pets that you’d kill your own blood to save them? I spirited away part of his essence - to put it in Human terms, I made sure there was a clone standing by. Sadly, I didn’t get quite enough. It’s taken awhile to get him up to speed.”

She had to be lying; it certainly wouldn’t be new for her. And yet it was just chilling enough to have a ring of truth to it. “No.”

“Oh yes. Suck it up, Bob.”

Perhaps the worst part was she was enjoying this. He was so angry, shades of blue were creeping into the edges of his vision. “What is the point of this, Dran? What the fuck could you want?”

She stared at him with all five eyes, a look of triumphant arrogance making her delicate features look as sharp as broken glass. “Are you that stupid? You know this plane is the nexus, the gateway to a thousand different dimensions. Reality is thin here, in some spots worn down to a mere tissue - who wouldn’t want that? Control the gateway, control everything beyond it. Isn’t that why you want to protect it so badly?“ She then chuckled, but it was a mirthless thing, as dry as the desert. “Oh, that’s right. You have some affection for the little primates on this dirtball, and all your half-breed children …”

“Ananga is going to die again,” he snarled, ignoring the sick twisting in his gut. Second verse, same as the first, and he had a feeling the fact that repetition wasn’t going to make it easier.

“Not by your hand,” she replied, gloating. “You’re just a shell now; you’ve been neutered by your so-called “people”. You are helpless before his might. Isn’t that a pity?”

He wasn’t helpless, and he figured she should have known better. But were there enough people who could actually help him?

The fact that he might have to ask other people to kill his son this time didn’t make it any easier.

7

Angel looked through the shop front window incongruously a part of the Church of the Stone Temple, trying to see the others inside, beyond the front display of a granite fountain, garden gazing ball, and fake, trailing ivy. What was that about anyways? Did they sell garden accessories on the side?

“You could have gone in,” Wesley pointed out. “You could have tolerated a blessing.”

Was there any point in lying to him? It wasn’t that he was actually Wesley; he was just his mind’s best approximation of Wesley, guilt driven and spell enhanced. With the slightest of sighs, he admitted, “I think you know why I didn’t go in.”

Wesley nodded knowingly, gazing in the window beside him. “You don’t want me gone just yet. You think I can help.”

“You already did.”

He shrugged. “If you say so. But constantly talking to an apparition only you can see might undermine some confidence in you.”

“I can live with it. I’ve lived with worse.”

“There’s nothing I can do that Giles can’t. Believe me, of the two of us, Rupert is much better at all of this.”

He turned his gaze on him in quiet disbelief. “Don’t try and talk me out of it. I can’t believe you would -”

Angel broke off, as he saw something curious down the street, just past Wesley. The chaos - which was mostly random outbursts of hysteria - was continuing, but the violence was nominal; most people were too horror stricken at their own personal demons to lash out at other people, and even when they did, it was brief. So the thing he saw was unusual because of its movement; it was like a huge, dark cloud had suddenly blown in and taken humanoid shape at the corner, but a dark and featureless form that seemed to be constantly shifting and shimmering. As soon as Angel realized it was a humungous swarm of insects - beetles? - it walked right into a man. He made the briefest strangling noise, then fell through the insect man … and hit the sidewalk behind it as a bunch of bones tangled within clothing, his sunglasses bouncing along the sidewalk.

Angel reached for his sword, but Wesley said, “Wait! I think that’s the god of the Awa-hon-do. Turn away, pretend you didn’t notice him - if we don’t take him by surprise, you won’t get a chance.”

Reluctantly, he faced the window again, but kept an eye on bugman’s reflection. “Because he can break into a thousand different pieces and reform again?”

“Exactly. He is a collective god, one of many parts. You can kill him with the sword, but only if he doesn’t see it coming. Otherwise he’ll just break up before the blow, and being a vampire won’t save you from his attack. He’s a flesh eater, and you have that.”

The bugman didn’t seem to notice him, or the sword on his back, suggesting that Giles’s cloaking spell was still holding (a relief), but as it walked behind him, he couldn’t help but tense. The thing hummed, like the buzz of ten thousand bees in the hollow confines of a hive, and it was enough to make your skin crawl. It almost felt like one of the bugs was skittering up his spine. Why was he getting stuck with all the bug demons today?

It walked past, its gait unusual and loping, a mimic of something it had seen but didn’t understand, and as soon as it was by him, Wesley whispered, “Now.”

Angel did it all in a single smooth motion. He turned and pulled his sword, slashing towards the dark agglomeration of insects as he completed his spin. The sword chopped through the insects at chest level, sending dead bugs flying like pebbles down the sidewalk, and the rest of his loosely formed body collapsed in a writhing mass. Angel stabbed the sword down into the sidewalk, in the center of the largest group of bugs, and just the proximity of the sword killed the bugs. It was that toxic, and gaining more power with each kill.

He was aware of a slight trembling in the ground, a sound like percussion, and he heard Wesley say, “Oh no.”

Angel turned back around to see, at the head of the street, and oncoming wave of big, ugly demons dressed in matching, vaguely Nazi-like black uniforms, marching stiff legged in front of an ever larger demon, a kind he’d never seen before. It was nine feet tall and appeared to be have metal skin, which seemed grossly appropriate with its bullet shaped head and pincer shaped hands. “I know that’s the Scourge,” he said, nodding at the black clad demon bastards, the ones who killed Doyle. “But what the hell is that thing?”

“I think it’s a Dolonnite,” Wesley replied, sounding breathless with shock.

“Dolonnite? As in Dolonn, demon god with metal blood?”

“One and the same.”

“So the sword won’t kill it?”

“Correct.”

“Shit.” Douglas Adams was a prophet: it was a universal truth that nothing was ever so bad that it couldn’t get worse.

One of the scourge, surely the leader, had a megaphone and was announcing exactly how the Humans were going to die before their superior might, and many of the soldiers had doubled headed battleaxes, pikes, spears, maces, and at least one had a chainsaw (they must have emptied the whole tool shed). People were fleeing before them, but clearly some thought it was just a really vivid hallucination and ignored it. Angel moved out to the center of the street, sword held high, as the sword would kill the Scourge if not their Dolonnite friend - he decided he’d worry about killing it when it was about to kill him - when Wesley suddenly shouted, “Behind you!”

But it was too late. Tentacles like strong, fine wires wrapped around him, pinning his arms to his side as it yanked him backwards violently, dragging him down the street. The sword of Weyland almost smashed into his face, and he was glad that Giles had thrown a charm on it so it wouldn’t kill him if he slipped up and touched it - and yet, was it strong enough? This close to the blade, he still felt sick, like the sword was draining energy from him.

A glance back confirmed what the smell of rotting fish had already told him - he’d been grabbed by a Tinirau. It looked humanoid, but only up to the waist; it had muscular, stocky legs, and slender humanoid hips, but from the waist up it was little more than an open mouth, a triangular shark’s mouth with three rows of razor sharp teeth, the arms at its side becoming dozens upon dozens of thin but virtually unbreakable tentacles/tendrils, that could grow as long as they needed to, up to fifty feet in length. It was one of the most butt ugly demons around, and rarely seen this far inland. But tonight, clearly all bets were off. The Senior Partners must have called in all their debts, or made every deal they thought possible.

He saw the door to the Stone Temple had opened, and the others poured out to see the near apocalyptic scene unfolding in the street. “Holy shit!” Xander exclaimed, as Bren quickly swung his crossbow around and took a shot at the Tinirau. It hit home, he heard it make a gurgling noise like a toilet clogging up, but it didn’t slacken its grip on him, nor stop hauling him backwards towards its mouth. It would take a lot to kill a Tinirau; in fact, as far as he knew, the only things that could kill one were certain spells, acid, and - of all things - alcohol. Alcohol was like cyanide to them.

From his vantage point on his back, Angel saw several things, none of which were any good. A fly like Beezle demon was crawling down the outer wall of the record shop down the street, the sack in its throat starting to distend as it prepared to vomit digestive acid on a group of startled people who seemed to be searching for television cameras; and on the roof of the novelty gift shop at the corner were two silhouetted figures looking down at the marching Scourge, and one of those silhouettes could only have been Spike.

“The Beezle,” he shouted at Bren, jerking his head towards the insectoid demon. Bren obeyed, quickly shifting his aim from the Tinirau to the Beezle and firing. It was a good shot, it hit the ugly demon right in the center of the chest, but that wasn’t even close to a killing blow for its species. All it did was get the Beezle to switch its attention, and the people below him finally looked up, and noticed what kind of trouble they were in.

“Xander, your flask!” Angel shouted, as he realized he was almost in the Tinirau’s line of bite.

Xander stared after him like he was nuts. “What?”

But Giles already knew the situation, and reached into Xander’s coat, finding the flask and ripping it out of his interior pocket. He stepped out into the street, ripping the cap off, and threw the whiskey on the Tinirau.

Instantly the tentacles holding him went slack, and Angel jumped up to his feet, holding the sword away from him, as the Tinirau reeled and screamed, which sounded more like a drain overflowing. Angel spun and drove the sword right through its mouth and out the back of its head, helping it die a little faster.

“There’s a demon that’s allergic to Jack Daniels?” Xander asked, bewildered. “Now that’s specializing.”

“What do we do about the big ugly?” Bren asked, looking down his crossbow at the Scourge and their Dolonnite friend.

Giles exchanged a helpless look with Angel, unaware that Wesley was standing just behind him, grimacing in thought.

Just then, the neon sign in front of a tattoo parlor flickered and faded, as did all the streetlights, and a massive glow started filling the corner of his eye. They turned to see Naomi had become a battery, and all the electricity was snaking towards her, living streams of blue energy bleeding from signs, pouring from streetlights and stoplights, pooling at her feet and crawling up her body until she had a visible blue-white aura. She walked out into the center of the street to intercept the Scourge, the streams of energy following her like obedient dogs, and energy began bleeding from cars, joining the streams of electricity that were now quickly becoming a living, endless river. “I’m a Human,” she shouted at the Scourge, as she quickly became the brightest thing on the block, a false sun almost painful to look at. The leader of the Scourge suddenly had his megaphone lose its energy in a large spark that jumped towards Naomi and made him drop it, shaking his hand in pai! n. “Want to start with me?”

The wall of black clad demons actually hesitated and stopped, and the one with the chainsaw tossed it aside just before the motor exploded, overloading. The static electricity was so great Angel could feel his hair responding to it, sparks crackling in the breeze. In the reflected light of Naomi, he could see Spike’s face, and he looked equally shocked and horrified. Did the Senior Partners not do their homework on Naomi? She couldn’t be hurt by electricity; she could absorb and control amounts whose lethality couldn’t be calculated - such as now. She could power a city block, or the entire city itself; even Naomi had no idea what her upper limit was. And now the Scourge and their Dolonnite friend - who probably conducted electricity like a treat - didn’t know what to do. All Naomi had to do was will it, and all that electricity would change direction, and head straight for them like a tidal wave.

“What a brave woman,” Giles whispered in admiration.

Yes, she was. It was easy to see why Logan had fallen in love with her.

“Uh .. . How’s she doing that?” Xander asked. “Is she a witch or something?”

There was no chance to answer him, as screams erupted behind them, and they turned away from Naomi single handedly holding back the Scourge to see that at least a dozen vampires - two nests’ worth, perhaps more - were swarming out of the shadows and picking off the Human escapees at the end of the street. “I think we can handle this,” Giles noted grimly, pulling a stake out of his coat. They all had stakes, in fact, although Angel didn’t bother with his, since the sword was better.

“Anyone got one for me?” Xander wondered, and Bren gave him one of his stakes. “Thanks. Dusted a lot of vamps?”

“Until they killed me, yeah.”

Even Angel didn’t know what Bren meant by that.

But there was no time to talk about it, as they all charged into the fray, ramming stakes through vampire hearts, while Angel contented himself with slicing off their heads. Bren proved he had indeed turned himself into an amateur vampire slayer by taking on two or three at once, using a spinning kick to send one reeling while he staked another, and used his Brachen strength to throw a third straight into Xander, who obliged by staking it. For a guy who had been out of the game for a while, Xander hadn’t lost the knack, which was good, because that meant he didn’t have to worry about him.

Angel had just impaled two vamps with one stab - rare two-fers like that were always strangely satisfying - when he saw the Beezle come flying out of the bulk of the crowd. It landed hard on the hood of a parked Mustang, leaving a good sized dent, and rolled over on its side. Angel realized it was trying to pull something out of its mouth - it looked like a concrete block - when a woman with long brown hair stormed through the crowd and grabbed it by the head. “I hate you fucking things,” she snapped, ramming its head violently into the hood. “Vomiting on people? How fucking gross is that?”

The woman pulled out a large hunting knife, one that Angel would have sworn was in the hands of a vampire he saw a couple of minutes ago, and neatly decapitated the Beezle. Its head rolled off one side of the hood while the body slumped down the other side, its acidic blood burning a trail in the hood. He knew her, didn’t he? Her body was familiar, her smell was familiar, her fighting style was familiar. But he couldn’t believe it.

“The Powers work in mysterious ways,” Wesley noted wryly.

She turned around, holding the knife - now sizzling with acid - and her eyes settled on him in the crowd. “Angel?” she gasped, surprised. “Hey man, how’s it hanging?”

Angel couldn’t help but smirk, never as glad to see Faith as he was right now.