8

Only after they’d thought about it for a while did they realize that something had been very wrong with the succubus. Namely, it had been partially visible - someone had hurt it before them, made it partially visible. They didn’t have to think about it long before the obvious answer reared its head: Saddiq. Angel fought back a sudden surge of anxiety, wondering if they were finally going to find their first dead body.

He was not where he’d told Bren he was staying, and there was no sign of a struggle, which you’d think there would’ve been. Since he hadn’t come to the hospital, they checked the sewer access (it was unlikely he came that way, but not impossible), and Kier suggested they check the office. It turned out to be a wise decision, because once they were inside Angel could smell the succubus’s blood, and they followed the scent to the war room, where they found Saddiq sprawled on the floor, a spent and broken bolt thrower just out of reach of his outstretched hand. He looked oddly pale, the color of curdled milk, and he was barely breathing, but he was still alive, which was a relief. Since Bob wasn’t back yet from wherever he’d gone, they had to take him back to the hospital on their own. Doyle was a little confused - he’d thought Saddiq was totally invulnerable - and the doctors at the hospital discovered the hard way that Saddiq’s skin was impenetrable to average needles.

Bren was conscious, and they filled him in on what happened that he missed.. He was sorry he didn’t get a chance to hurt the succubus as well. He was more worried about Saddiq, though.

When Bob returned, Angel was fairly certain he smelled faintly of lava, but that didn’t make a lot of sense. He went and healed Saddiq before returning to Bren’s room, where they’d all gathered. “Okay,” he said, his t-shirt suddenly reading ‘This Isn’t My Fault’. That wasn’t a good sign. “I can assure everyone that the people behind the succubus aren’t going to bother us again. But we have another problem -”

“Who were they?” Angel interrupted. Did he really think he was going to get away without telling them?

Bob rolled his unearthly eyes and frowned at him, looking like he was about to tell him to fuck off. But he clearly thought better of it, and admitted, “The Senior Partners were trying to keep us distracted. They’re going to stop, because I threatened a hostile takeover.”

“Wolfram and Hart were behind this?” Angel repeated in disbelief. Oh, son of a bitch. How many of their buildings did he have to destroy before they decided to leave him alone?

“They what?” Kier asked, looking really surprised and pissed off. That was an interesting reaction.

Bob waved his hands, as if trying to discourage them. “Guys, as a problem they’re the past. We have a new, more pressing problem.”

“Don’t we always?” Giles noted wryly.

“Xander’s soul is in the custody of Gwyn, a god with a … history with Mordred. And not a good one. Now before you say “Mordred didn’t help us”, I know. I’m pretty sure Gwyn doesn’t honestly give a fuck.”

“What can this Gwyn do?” Naomi asked. “And why does he want someone’s soul anyways?”

“Gwyn is … it’s hard to explain. He’s been out of the game for a while, As for what he could be doing with someone’s soul, I have no idea - he doesn’t need ‘em.” Bob sighed, ran a hand through his hair, and scowled at his own thoughts.

“So what do we do?” Kier asked.

“Nothing. I think this is one I’ll have to take care of myself. Oh, and with Mordred.”

Doyle’s look seemed to cycle through several disbelieving stages, finally settling on indignance. “So what the hell are we gonna do? Just sit here and twiddle our thumbs?”

Bob shrugged. “You could probably find something better to do.”

Angel knew what this meant, and didn’t like it. “You’re leaving us out.”

Bob shrugged. “I’m sorry, but this is probably a god fight. But don’t worry, I’ll get him back.”

Angel forced a sigh, shaking his head. “I can’t sit here and do nothing.”

His cobalt eyes took on a sly gleam, and he smirked in a lopsided way. “Oh, I think you’ll find something else to do.”

It took him a moment to get it, but the thought entered Angel’s mind as if the thought had been subtly planted there by Bob.

And maybe it had been - but it was a damn good idea.

****

He probably should have come here directly, but Bob had decided he wasn’t going to do this anymore. He was tired of fucking around with gods, especially those who had pointless little battles that endangered other people for no reason, but he knew he needed more firepower just to shut this all down without a fight. Luckily, he knew exactly who to go to.

She was amenable to bargaining, which was a good thing, and as soon as he got the bargaining done, he showed up at Mordred’s place.

He’d never been there before, and he was surprised at how nice a place it was. It was a huge penthouse suite overlooking the fabled Left Bank, and Bob was roughly certain that it hadn’t existed until recently. Amazing no one had noticed, but that was magic for you. It had hardwood floors occasionally covered with decorative and rare Oriental carpets, and a huge window wall that let in every bit of sunlight breaking through the cloud layer over Paris.

Mordred was in bed, and what a big bed it was. It wasn’t king size more than it was Luciano Pavarotti size, a huge nest of silk sheets and down comforters in a riot of primary colors. Bob only knew he was in there somewhere because his foot was sticking out over the near end of the mattress.

The room was very sparsely furnished in an art deco style, which managed to look elegant and not austere, a rather tricky thing to pull off. But then again, if you were half magic you could probably pull off all sorts of miracles. “Mordred, wake up,” he said, then went over, grabbed his exposed foot, and partially yanked him off the bed.

That woke him up. He made a startled noise and sat up, pulling his foot back, and attempted to blink the sleep out of his eyes. He said something that wasn’t a word, paused, and tried again. “What the fuck are you doin’ here?”

“Gwyn’s back on the map, and he’s after you.”

Now he was really awake. “What?”

“He took a friend of mine, and I’m getting him back. You’re gonna go talk to him and work this shit out. I mean seriously, how long has this been going on? Since Myrddin, right? Gwyn’s pissed he used magic to create you; you’re obscene or something.”

Mordred scrubbed his hand through his mussed hair, trying to make his sleepy brain work a bit more clearly. “Uh, yeah, I guess - Gwyn? I’m not facing that fucker.”

“Yes you are. But don’t worry, you’re not going to fight with him.”

“I’m not?” To say he sounded dubious was a complete understatement.

“No, I have a plan. Come on, get dressed, we have a dimension to storm.”

Mordred clearly intended to protest, but he knew it would be pointless, and just threw back the covers and got out of his huge bed. He wasn’t looking forward to this, but Bob didn’t expect him to. He didn’t know how perfect his plan was.

But he would soon enough.

9

They waited until everyone was conscious and able to take part, although it was completely voluntarily. Luckily recovery was pretty much done by the next day, and as Angel had expected, no one refused to take part.

Although he wanted everyone’s input, in the end the main strategists were the ones he anticipated: himself, Giles, Helga, and Logan, with Helga and Logan pretty much embracing the “let’s-just-plant-C4-and-walk” aesthetic. Crude, but what it lacked in finesse it made up for in sheer carnage. But they came around to the idea of a much more up close and personal touch.

Angel wasn’t sure about having Kier in on this, especially after what he’d told him about working for Wolfram and Hart, but his anger towards them (mainly for trying to kill Bren, as far as he could tell; the rest of them could go hang, but nobody messed with Brendan) seemed genuine, which Bob confirmed. The funny thing was, Bren was still acting frosty towards him, as if he hadn’t forgiven him for being a mole,

Could soulless vampires love anyone beyond themselves? He’d have said no … except he knew Spike had loved Dru - albeit in a very sick way, but still - and he always felt some kind of … pull (for lack of a better word) towards Darla. It could have been just the sire/sired connection, but he wasn’t sure that was it. He’d sired quite a few vampires, and that sense of pull wasn’t always in effect - look at him and the Weird Sisters, for example. They pretty much hated him, but in an odd, almost passive aggressive way, and he couldn’t blame them in the least. So he supposed it was possible, in a way, just unlikely. But if he was bullshitting, Bob would have known. He didn’t know if he’d ever trust him, though.

But right now they were all on the same page, mainly because they needed to be. They would start at precisely sunset so neither he nor Kier would be impeded, and as it was, it was a heavily overcast, non-stereotypical L.A. kind of day, so they had no problem heading out early. Kier had actually given them vital information on the mystical wards protecting the lobby, and Helga and Giles easily came up with spells to counter them. But the first person in was Naomi, at least in the lobby proper - hidden with the hood pulled up on her sweatshirt and sunglasses on, she would drain all the power, shutting down the elevators and paralyzing all the tech in the building. Meanwhile, he and Logan would be coming up through the sewers, which fed directly into the sub-basement, where they would launch their attack.

Logan complained about the smell - he always did when they traveled through the sewer - but Angel was glad to have him as his fight partner. Not just because he knew his fighting style, but because he was a guy he never had to worry about. He didn’t have to keep an eye on Logan’s back as well as his own; Logan took care of his own. And if he did get hurt, he was generally okay in a minute,

Logan took point, leading the way down the corridor, and he was confronted by guards alerted to the presence of an unauthorized vampire. One shoved a crucifix at him while the other threw holy water in his face. Logan wiped the water off, and muttered, “Coffee would’ve worked better.”

They seemed to get the idea he wasn’t the vampire and reached for their more conventional weapons, but that was all they were able to do before Logan put them both flat out on the floor. It never did take very long.

On their way up through the sub-basement levels, they encountered about a dozen more guards, but they hardly slowed them down. Angel took on the guards armed up to take on a Human, and Logan took on the ones armed up to take on a vampire, and they were down with little trouble at all. A couple of punches and kicks, and they were through.

The power died with little warning. There were a couple of quick, faint flickers, and then the power just completely went out. He could imagine Naomi loitering in the lobby, pulling the power out of the building and blocking it off, even depowering their own internal generators. It was a rather tall order, but nothing she couldn’t handle - if she could take out a city block, she could take out Wolfram and Hart’s building.

The power outage cut off reinforcements from reaching the basement. But it also meant they had to climb up the elevator shaft to reach the lobby. Angel thought that Logan would use his claws to climb up the walls, but he didn’t, he just pulled himself up the main cable after him. Angel was actually impressed with how he was able to keep up with him; he sometimes forgot his muscular arms weren’t just for show.

Once Naomi had cut off the power, Giles would be hitting the lobby with a spell that would neutralize the protective wards, and Helga, Saddiq, and Kier would burst in, giving any civilians the chance to flee before it got bad. Giles, Doyle, and Bren would be the last ones in, making sure that Wolfram and Hart didn’t try and send in reinforcements from the outside.

By the time Angel had pried open the elevator doors from the inside, the fight was on. As soon as there was a massive power drain they must have known what was going on, and armed goons had come pouring down the emergency stairwells. Saddiq, Helga, and Kier were crushing heads with little abandon, and he and Logan instantly joined the fray, as Giles came in and threw some wards to seal the stairwell doors. There was some light in the lobby, mainly due to the fact that Naomi had absorbed so much electricity that she now glowed with it, little flickers of miniature lightning bolts coiling around her arms and face, sparks dripping from her fingertips. Some of the guards saw her, froze, apparently debated internally how they were supposed to handle her, and then turned away, choosing ignorance as better than being fried like a Twinkie at the county fair.

It was like fighting in a crowd, but with so many hard fighters, the Wolfram and Hart goon squad found themselves coming up surprisingly short. Saddiq would grab their arm as they raised one of their guns, and with a single twist dislocate their arm from their shoulder with an audible “pop” and throw the guards straight into Logan, who would elbow them or punch them so sharply in the face that their heads would snap back like they’d been shot, and they’d be added to the quickly growing pile of unconscious and useless men on the floor. Helga and Kier played volleyball with their guards, Helga using her tail to grab them by the throat and drag them into Kier’s path so he could disarm them and beat them up a bit before she brought them back to her. Given the choice, they’d probably would have rather been beaten by Kier, as Helga seemed to take too much joy in hearing their bones break. (Would they have felt any better if he told them he’d talked her into not bringing her ma! chete along?)

Angel just threw some roundhouses, connecting solidly with jaws and midsections, while a few snap kicks cleared a path. Bones snapped, teeth flew, and the scent of blood filled his nostrils, reminding him he was hungry.

A team broke through one of the protective wards Giles had thrown up, but just as they were about to come through, Logan raced to cut them off. He threw open the stairway access door just as they started to come out, startling them, and then he began slashing his way through them, disappearing inside the stairwell. There were many thuds, sudden flurries of shots, and aborted screams that followed.

Doyle, holding a stun stick he had taken from a guard, asked, “Do you think he needs help?”

As if on cue, a guard came flying through the stairwell door, hitting the wall so hard his helmet audibly cracked and fell into two separate pieces as the guard himself slumped to the floor. Without missing a beat, Doyle said, “Should I take that as a no?”

“I would,” Angel admitted.

Pounding on these poor wage slaves wasn’t really the point, although it certainly helped get a message across. Guards tried to enter through the elevator shaft, but Naomi turned the power back on for that one elevator, and lowered it to the point where the men had to crouch to avoid being crushed by the empty car, leaving them no leverage with which to pry the lobby doors open.

Just off to the side of the main lobby desk, where the security guards usually sat, Giles used chalk to draw symbols on the marble floor, the chalk so pale it was all but invisible in the dimness. That was the point.

Giles had finished just in time, as the thing they were waiting for occurred happened. Gavin Park, ghost lawyer, appeared amidst the unconscious soldiers, looking around in utter shock. “What the hell is the meaning of this?” he exclaimed, luminescent in a spectral way.

Giles threw down the small glass orb of liquid he’d had in his pocket, and when it splashed on the chalk circle it briefly lit up green, then faded to black, Gavin stuck inside. From the horror on his face, Gavin knew he was trapped, stuck like mystical glue, at least for the time being.

“I want you to listen good,” Angel told him, converging on the circle. Everyone did, making him feel surrounded and vulnerable, a rare but memorable experience for a ghost. Even Logan came out from the stairwell and joined them, leaving his claws out so the blood could drip from them dramatically and Gavin couldn’t help but see it. “You made my life hell last time and killed my people. This is your one and only warning. I won’t tolerate it next time. Bother me and my people again, and we will bring this place down around your ears.” Angel stepped up to the edge of the sacred circle, and pulled out the knife he’d had hidden away in his jacket, and held it towards Gavin. The knife was mystically, specially treated, so it could effect ghosts. From the way Gavin suddenly reared back, he must have felt it. “Do you understand? Fuck with us again, and it’s the last thing any of you will ever do.”

“I get it.” Angel let the knife slip forward, and Gavin stepped back to the edge of the circle, as far as he could go. “I said I get it, all right? Put that away.”

“Tell the Partners I’m done with their bullshit,” he growled, fighting hard to keep his vampire side down. “It’s over.” He held Gavin’s gaze until he nodded sharply, communicating both his understanding and his fear. If Angel wanted to kill him now - temporarily admittedly, since he was still under contract - he could, and they both knew that.

Kier came up on the side of the circle, and he was in vamp face, flecks of blood splashed across his face. (That was just from fighting, right? He hadn’t bit anyone when he wasn’t looking, had he?) “And tell that Sagawa bitch I quit,” Kier snarled. ”If any of you fuckers bother me again, I’ll kill every single fucking one of you in your sleep.”

“Can I threaten someone?” Logan asked sardonically.

Helga patted him on the back before squeezing his shoulder. “Hon, just by showing up we’ve threatened them all.” Which was oddly true. Not only were they both former assassins, both incredibly deadly on their own terms, they were also inextricably tied in with Bob. A move against them would doom the Senior Partners to an unbelievable world of hurt. Angel couldn’t imagine that they’d dare right now or ever again.

“This was the warning shot. You won’t get another one,” Angel said, turning on his heel and walking away. Just the act of turning his back on them and strolling away as if they could never be any kind of threat was an insult in itself. The others followed suit, although Giles, Naomi, and Logan left last to make sure no one tried anything or tried to follow. Naomi only gave them their power back as soon as they were all outside, and the change was dramatic. From shadowy gloom to a skyscraper lit up like it was noon.

It was all part of a helpful reminder. They were playing with fire. If Wolfram and Hart really wanted to get burned, it was their choice. You couldn’t say they didn’t warn them.