5
 

Kier only realized he’d grabbed Bren’s iPod after he left the apartment, but at least Bren’s musical tastes weren’t too bad. Actually listening to his ipod helped him understand that Brendan liked eerie music . (Was this the soundtrack of Bren’s life?) Everything in his play list had something slightly unsettling about it, from the inhuman coldness of Ladytron to the deliberate weirdness of Mike Patton and Vidna Obmana to the low key, almost lethargic eeriness of the new Thom Yorke album. He didn’t have the whole thing, just a couple songs that were so quiet they almost didn’t exist, and he sung like he was half asleep. Kier honestly thought it sucked, but then he realized the music made him feel itchy, like something loud was just going to happen (but never did), and he became aware that the lyrics were surprisingly bitter and angry, but sung in a way that suggested boredom; he was so disappointed he couldn’t even work up a good head of steam. For some reason that just s! eemed unsettling; kind of like you could hear his sanity draining away.

Perhaps it also encapsulated his life right now. Wolfram and Hart were lying to him, and he knew it, but he wasn’t sure what to do about it. Was there anything he could actually do? He knew going in that being lawyers affiliated with some collective demon god thing they had but a casual relationship with reality, and they only cared about their specific bottom line. They were a good career move, and he thought they were the only game in town (this was before he knew about Bob), but now that he knew better he wondered if he’d made a big mistake. If they were planning to screw him over or sacrifice him in some play, there was no reason for him to have any loyalty to them. Well, okay, they could gut him in a mystical manner, or do something even worse to him, but that was the risks you took, right?

He wondered what would happen if he threw himself on Bob’s mercy. Bob could protect him from Wolfram and Hart, right? You’d think so the way they were so afraid of him. But would he want to? Yes he’d been lying to them, yes he was technically playing for the enemy … but people fucked up, right? Angel had fucked up; Logan for damn sure had fucked up; and he got a sense Helga had probably fucked up, but far be it from him to say it to her face. (She might rip his face off.)

He supposed that Bob would expect him to be contrite or something. Was he? Well … no, he was afraid for his skin. But if he was to be totally honest, he liked Bren more than he expected to. It was cool to have a younger fellow demon to kick around with, he was a good looking guy who didn’t seem to know he was good looking (the best kind), he wasn’t bad in bed, and his musical taste wasn’t bad. Weird, but not bad. It was kind of nice to be with someone who didn’t expect a lot from him. Bren didn’t trust him, he knew that, but it didn’t seem to hinder their relationship in any way. Kier honestly didn’t want to know what that meant.

Yet he had come to the decision that he couldn’t kill him. Oh, he could kill him, even though Bren thought he was the big bad demon hunter, but when it came down to it he didn’t want to. He had no problem with the idea of dusting Angel - he was kind of a prick, wasn’t he? - and Xander was annoying; Giles seemed a bit self-important at times; Naomi he just didn’t know well enough to care about either way. But he knew he couldn’t kill Bren; he liked him. Did that make him a bad vampire or a bad double agent?

He walked into Bren’s apartment, glad that Bren kept the windows blacked out on his behalf, but he’d barely had the door open when he felt that something was wrong. There was a presence that shouldn’t be, something otherworldly that made his skin crawl.

Kier threw the door open, bracing himself, but nothing attacked him. In fact, the room seemed empty except for Bren sprawled asleep on the bed as he’d left him. Only … was the mattress pressed down a bit more than normal? As he came in he saw it was, and that Bren sounded like he was having trouble breathing.

And no wonder. There was something on top of him.

It wasn’t exactly a shape, but a suggestion of one. A suggestion of a large, humped beast that was all but invisible, but still distorted the air in a manner that indicated there was something there that shouldn’t be, but was nevertheless. A ghost? He thought you couldn’t see those … but hey, he was a vampire. He wasn’t supposed to exist. “Hey!” he shouted, to see if something happened, but nothing did. Bren didn’t even wake up. Okay, now he knew that wasn’t right.

He ran to attack the thing, but it moved then, a blur of air, and something that felt like a tentacle made of stone smashed him in the chest, sending him flying into the kitchenette, where he slammed into the fridge so hard it felt like his spine had snapped. He sunk down to the floor, chest aching, and he snarled at the thing, vamping out involuntarily. It was between him and Bren, but at least it was off Bren. “You’re gonna pay for that, sunshine.”

The dull ache in his chest suddenly became cold, then queerly hot; it was like he’d been hit with something so cold he’d gotten instantaneous frostbite. But since he was a vampire, he’d recover; it took more than that to put down the undead. He climbed up to his feet and braced himself to pounce, but the thing took off through the open door in a cool gust of a movement, like it was nothing but a stray breeze.

What the fuck was that thing? He briefly considered going after it, but then he looked at Bren still splayed on the bed, and figured the fucking thing had better run and not stop until it reached the county line.

He scrambled on to the bed, and asked, “Bren? You okay? Bren?” He shook him, and his skin was distressingly cool to the touch. His skin tone was far too pale as well, the vague teal undertone of his Brachen side almost visible beneath nearly translucent skin. Wow, this wasn’t good. “Brendan, come on, wake up!” he shouted, shaking him violently, morphing back to Human guise so he didn’t startle him further.

Finally Bren roused, coughing weakly, and his eyes just barely fluttered open. “What, what? I’m tryin’ to sleep here …”

“I need to get you to a hospital or something. You’ve been attacked.” Bren was wearing nothing but boxer shorts, most of the covers kicked off, so he was able to do a quick visual search of his body for wounds. He found pale marks on his shoulder, but that was just from him. (Sometimes when they had sex, he couldn’t help but bite him; the urge was too great to ignore. But he never drank his blood, because it was way too sour; kind of like an unripe pineapple. He could tolerate a sip, but after that he couldn’t stand it. Bren didn’t seem to mind at all; actually he seemed to get into it. One switch to his Brachen form and back and the fang marks usually disappeared.)

Bren snorted in disbelief and rolled over onto his side. “So you were having a nightmare too, huh?”

“I’m not kidding, Bren. C’mon, we gotta get you up.” He grabbed him and hauled him up to a sitting position, aware that there was now a discoloration forming on Bren’s chest, a sort of formless red blotch that seemed to cover his torso from collarbone to hip. Was that some kind of reaction to the attack? Reaction to the cold that thing gave off? Or something else? Oh shit, he had to get him to the demon hospital - maybe he had a flesh eating thing, or was incubating demon young or something. Holy fuck, what was that thing?

Bren tried to shrug him off, but was too weak to do so. His ruby eyes fixed on him, and he slurred, “What the fuck is your deal? ‘m tired, okay?”

“You don’t remember being attacked?”

The look he gave him was glazed and non-comprehending. “Huh? What’re you talking about? I had a nightmare, but -”

“It was in your dream?”

“What?

Kier heard a noise that made him look towards the open door, and standing there were two men, big enough to block out almost all the florescent light in the hallway. “Brendan Chambers?” One of them said, in a voice as deep as well water. “You need to come with us.”

These men smelled like gun oil and cigarettes, and Kier didn’t trust them for a second. He stood up, and asked, “Are you Wolfram and Hart?”

The men exchanged a glance that he could only see because his vampire vision allowed him to see sharply in dim light, and that look told him no even as the one who spoke before said, “Yes, we are.”

“Bullshit,” he snapped. “Who do you work for? Why are you here?”

As he approached them, he saw them reaching under their matching black jackets, and Kier didn’t give them a chance to pull out their weapons. He vamped out once more and moved, using his superior speed to get the drop on them even though he was right in front of them. He grabbed one man’s arm and twisted it in a direction it wasn’t meant to bend, the bone snapping like it was made of spun sugar, as he kicked the other man straight in the face, feeling his nose shatter beneath the heel of his boot.

Both screamed, the one kicked in the face fell backwards and hit the floor, while the one with the broken arm just stumble back and stared at his yellow eyes and distorted, plentiful teeth with a look of stunned wonderment. “Mutant!” he shouted, glancing briefly towards the hallway. “Unknown mutant -”

Kier planted a kick in his gut that silenced him, and grabbed him by the hair so he could look the fake Wolfram and Hart goon straight in the face. “I ain’t a mutant, you fucking moron. I’m a vampire. And you picked the worst day to visit, because I’m pissed off.” With that, he rammed his knee in his face, knocking him out and rendering his ugly face a broken mess. Good.

He was angry - he was fucking pissed off that that thing had hurt Bren and gotten away, and he was pissed at Wolfram and Hart for thinking he was an idiot, and he was angry at himself for being so easily manipulated by a bunch of evil fucks who thought of him as nothing but a pawn to move across a board and sacrifice at a whim. And most of all, he was just angry that someone was attacking the one good thing in his life. No one, absolutely no one, fucked with his boyfriend.

There were others in the corridor, two men and a woman, and while they had weapons out (boxy black things that reeked of ozone and crackled even louder than tasers), it wasn’t enough. He decided to show them what a vampire could do by moving as quickly could, running up walls like the laws of gravity had suddenly been revoked and jumping over them, grabbing one from behind as he came back down to the floor and snapping his neck with a single savage twist, tossing his still twitching corpse into the woman advancing on him. The other jabbed his fancy taser at him, but Kier saw it coming and let him lunge forward, slipping beside him and then stepping behind him, sinking his fangs into his neck and turning his head, ripping out a huge chunk of his neck and getting a mouthful of his blood in the process. He spit out the flesh as the man grabbed in his bleeding neck in horror, and attempted to stagger away, falling against the wall as his blood pumped out with every beat of h! is heart. “Think I’m a mutant now?” he wondered, licking the blood off his lips. “I’m a predator, and you creatures are my prey.”

Gunshots rang out, and Kier felt them punch through his body, slam through his useless lungs and even more pointless spleen, and he spun to face the woman who had shot him. He faced her straight on and smiled, a gesture that made her hand tighten nervously around her gun even before he held his arms out, making himself a bigger and easier target. “Okay, bitch, you wanna live? Who do you work for? You have three seconds to tell me before I rip your heart out.”

She reached a slightly shaking hand to her ear, which is how Kier realized they were communicating by earpiece radios. “Abort,” she said in a low register that didn’t quite hide the tremor in her voice. “Inhuman hostile, abort mission.”

She tried to run back towards the elevator, but Kier was on her even as she turned and fired another shot at him. It went wide because he had pounced on her, grabbing her gun arm, and then he jammed her own nine millimeter under her pretty chin and made her pull the trigger, blowing the top of her head off in a truly nasty display that geysered blood and brain matter all over the ceiling and near wall. They’d never get her out of the carpet.

On his way back to the apartment, he flipped over the man with the broken neck and grabbed the small black earpiece out of his ear. He wasn’t going to put it in - eww, gross! Someone else’s earwax was on it! - but he slipped it in his pocket. Maybe it might mean something to someone else.

Bren was still on the bed, but he was sitting on the edge, looking at the two unconscious men in his apartment with a dazed, almost drugged look. “What the hell was this?” he wondered. “Am I still dreaming?”

“Yes, exactly,” Kier said, morphing back to Human face and grabbing his shoulder, hauling him up to his unsteady feet. “And we have to get out of here before the Earth opens up and swallows us whole.”

“Really?” he asked, allowing Kier to drape his arm over his shoulders. Bren leaned against him drunkenly, almost as boneless as a puppet, and he realized he was struggling to stay conscious. He gave Bren a kiss on the cheek - he knew he wouldn’t give up that easily. He didn’t love a coward.

Did he think love? Oh weird. He was a soulless vampire, so love wasn’t possible … right? Oh shit, he couldn’t think about this now.

He walked Bren out to the elevator, figuring they’d go to the basement and take the sewer access out of here. These suits probably weren’t down there, which was a shame, as that taste of blood made him hungry for more. He kind of wished they sent an army, so he could burn off some of this rage, ‘cause frankly this pathetic half dozen just didn’t do it.

Bren looked at the bodies and the blood painting the walls as they passed, and asked once more, “This is a dream, right?”

“Absolutely,” he lied.

Well, he just wasn’t awake enough for the truth just yet.

****

A search of the Vrenick’s “ranch” didn’t turn up anything amazingly useful, suggesting that whoever did this cleaned up after themselves quite well. He thought he smelled Humans, but with so much Frenik blood and guts around, it was hard to tell. Gold stayed outside while he searched, not wanting to stay in the house a second longer than necessary.

As he came back out, Gold was leaning against the cab, making a call to someone, but he’d ended it just as Logan stepped onto the porch. “Find anything, Marlowe?”

Was that a Philip Marlowe joke? Oh, why not? “Nothing helpful. They cleared out ahead of us.”

“So what’s our next move?”

“Our? You go home. I have to go talk to somebody.” Although it would be funny to introduce Gold to Bob, he really wasn’t in the mood for it right now.

Gold gave him an exasperated look and put his hands on his slender hips. “Someone murdered my clients. Okay, about to be ex-clients, but I don’t like it.”

Logan frowned at him, wondering if he could knock him unconscious without breaking his whole head. He looked really fragile. “Can you fight? ‘Cause it’s possible I could encounter these guys on the way, and I doubt they’re gonna give us goody bags and apologies. So?”

Gold grimaced and glanced away, embarrassed. “I don’t suppose you have any weapons, do you?”

“Just the ones in my hands.”

“I was afraid you were going to say that.” He sighed heavily, and admitted, “Look, I leave the fighting to others. I don’t have to fight; I can crush people’s careers with one phone call.”

“Which ain’t really helpful in a street fight. Why don’t you use your skills to call around and find out who might have hired the Vrenicks? Are there secrets in this town?”

Gold snorted derisively. “Fuck no, honey.”

“Then the truth is out there somewhere. Go find it.”

That seemed to do the trick, as Gold allowed Thrak to drop him off at his house before Thrak went screaming off towards the Way Station. Once again it was like being on the world’s worst roller coaster ride, and he wondered how normal beings without healing factors managed to survive having their organs sloshed around so violently. Luck?

Stumbling out onto the hot concrete, he was almost absurdly grateful for solid ground, and went directly into the Way Station, the bright day and sounds of a drug deal on the corner giving way to sudden, moody darkness and the sonic wash of Serena-Maneesh. The place was empty save for Helga sitting at the bar, sipping a frappuchino and looking at a map of the Los Angeles area, except it was an odd map full of squiggly lines of different colors and weird symbols. Her glance at him was casual, but then she did a slight double take. “Fried donkey balls?” she asked.

“It’s not my shirt,” he explained with an embarrassed shrug. He went behind the bar and helped himself to a lager as he told Helga about the Vrenick Brothers’ ill fated day, and by the time he finished he slipped onto the stool beside her. She thought about it a moment, frowning, then said, “Maybe you’re looking at this the wrong way, tiger.”

“What d’ya mean?”

“Just about everybody who’s anybody in the demon community knows they can’t take the Decapitator down with bullets; you’re considered an honorary demon, at least in the ways of hurting you. Now these guys are probably way out of the loop having gone Hollywood, but I can’t believe even they didn’t know that shooting you would do nothing but piss you off.”

“I’m considered a demon? Is that good?”

“Actually, yeah; it’s a high compliment. Humans are considered weak and clueless by most demons. Considering you one of them means they don’t think you’re weak or clueless.”

“Oh, okay.” Wow, how about that - getting a little respect from the demon community. Too bad that didn’t translate to the Human one. “So you think the whole attack was what exactly? Just to piss me off?”

Helga shrugged. “Maybe. Or maybe it was a way to get your attention.”

“For what reason?”

“Hell if I know. I’m just guessing.”

He considered that as he drank his beer. So someone wanted to gain his attention … to a mass murder of Freniks? No, that made no sense, especially since they presumably didn’t know they were about to be torn apart like do It yourself confetti. Besides, there were other ways to get his attention that didn’t involve perforating him like a ballot. So what was the point of it all?

He was about to ask Hel what this funky map was, when Bob appeared, walking in from the hallway. “Well, Hecate was really in a mood,” he said, brushing what looked like burned leaves or feathers from his hair (smelled like both). He was wearing the same outfit he was wearing before, but now his t-shirt read, in purple script. ‘Don’t Hate Me Because I’m Beautiful’ . “I’m probably lucky she didn’t turn me into a toad.”

“So no Xander, huh?” Hel asked.

Bob shook his head as he walked behind the bar and helped himself to a beer. “Nope. He got real offended ‘cause I implied she’d take a soul from a man.”

“Oh, right, and she doesn’t like men.”

“Nope, she thinks they’re icky.”

“Uh, aren’t souls genderless? Also gods?” Logan asked. He wasn’t sure he actually cared, he was just trying to keep things straight in his head.

Bob nodded as he took a hearty swallow of beer. “Oh sure, but it’s the principal of the thing.”

“Well, you guys are a buncha dicks usually,” Helga said, with implied irony.

“But that’s what you love about us,” Bob teased, leaning in to give her a kiss on the forehead. She smacked him on the side of his head with her tail, making him pull back chuckling.

The bar telephone rang, and Bob answered it. “The Way Station, for all your apocalypse needs,” he said cheerfully. But the grin fell from his face as he listened to whoever was on the other end of the line, making Logan tense. What the hell had gone wrong now?

“Hang on, we’ll be right there,” Bob said grimly before hanging up. “Hel, can you hold down the fort?”

She frowned at him. “Do I have a choice?”

“Thanks hon.” Bob came around the bar, and told them what was up. “Brendan was attacked; Kier took him to the demon hospital.”

“What?” Logan suddenly had this picture in his mind of Bren shot up like a duck in a shooting gallery. “Who did it? Is he okay?”

“He will be. Let’s go.” And with no foreplay at all Bob grabbed his arm, and the world twisted inside out, spitting them out into the slightly medicinal smelling corridor of the demon hospital. There were staff nearby, and when they saw him and Bob they cast their eyes down, like they were in such a holy presence that they could barely stand to look at them. Wow, this was weird.

They were in the corridor just outside part of the ICU, and Kier was standing against the wall, a cell phone still in his hand. The pretty boy vampire looked at them in surprise, tucking the phone in the pocket of his long black leather duster. “You weren’t kidding by being right here.”

“I don’t kid about things like this,” Bob replied, walking straight into the ICU. The medical personnel working on Brendan - who was laying unconscious on a gurney, an i.v. already in his arm - parted like the Red Sea before Bob, moving back to let him work on Bren in his own way. Bob took his face in his hands, and simply said, “Brendan, look at me.”

Bren’s eyes shot open, suddenly conscious and alert. Yeah, he’d be fine.

As such, Logan turned to Kier, and realized he smelled strongly of Human blood, cordite … and something else. An odd smell that was definitely otherworldly, but he couldn’t place it. “They shot you? What the fuck they do to him?”

“They didn’t do anything to him, they just tried.” Kier explained that he found a mostly invisible demonic “something” attacking Bren and scared it off before the people arrived. “They said they were Wolfram and Hart after I asked, but I knew that was bullshit. Wolfram and Hart could neutralize a vampire; these people were clueless. They kept trying to get me with these taser things, and then shot me, which did fuck all. They were idiots; clearly they had no idea what they were dealing with.”

“You kill ‘em?”

He shrugged and looked away nervously. “Not all of ‘em.”

“Did they say why they wanted Brendan?”

“They didn’t say anything, except they thought I was a mutant. What the fuck was up with that? Oh, and they were using these.” He reached in his pocket and pulled out a small black plug shaped object Logan recognized instantly: an earpiece radio.

“The Organization,” he gasped, taking it from him. They always did seem flummoxed by vampires. It was counterintuitive that bullets wouldn’t work but the broken leg of a coffee table would; they just couldn’t grasp it.

“Those mutant hunting people? Why would they come after Bren? I mean, I know he’s a mutant, but … I thought they went after certain kinds, you know.”

Logan looked at him sharply. “No. What kinds?”

He grimaced nervously, running a hand through his hair. “Lethal kinds. Bren isn’t the killer type.”

Logan wasn’t sure he liked the implication, but he let it go.

The medical team had all filed out, so Logan went in, but Kier stayed in the hall. Logan threw over his shoulder at him, “You shoulda killed ’em all.”

He couldn’t hear what Bob was saying to Brendan, but that was okay, because it wasn’t meant for him. When Bob finally turned away from Bren, it looked like the kid’s color was coming back, his tone changing from a sickly pale with greenish undertones to his more normal wan tan. When Bob faced him, his brow was furrowed, his eyes hooded with dark knowledge. “We have a major problem.”

Logan grunted in ill humor. “I kinda guessed.”

“Bren was attacked by a succubus.”

For some reason, Logan wasn’t expecting that. “What, one of those demons that fucks guys to death?”

“Ah, see, that’s a fantasy passed on by some horny demons. I’m talking about a real, genuine succubus; the kind that drains the life force out of people and demons alike. Bren’s gonna have to rest for a bit, but he’ll be okay - Kier interrupted before really serious damage could be done.”

“Why didn’t it go after Kier?”

Bob shook his head. “Vampires are among the few demons a succubus can’t effect. They don’t have a life force, or at least not one a succubus can use.”

“Okay, so what’s the problem? We send Angel after it and go to lunch.”

“The problem is a succubus shouldn’t be here. They were wiped out of this dimension a millennia ago, and by demons no less. They were abhorred more than Berserkers and vampires combined. As far as I know, pure succubae only exist in shadow realms, and spend most of their time hiding, so they aren’t wiped out by their fellow demons. Even demons consider them menaces of an intolerable variety.”

That didn’t sound good. “How do we hunt it down?”

Bob’s lips thinned to a grim line, and he slowly shook his head. “I don’t know. This one has obviously availed itself to enough life force to be fairly sizable and be able to cloak itself. The more life forces it gets, the stronger it’ll be.”

“So we have to get it now. You can’t tell me you can’t find it.”

“Although I appreciate the confidence, I really can’t trace it from a distance. These things have evolved to avoid all sorts of detection.”

Logan glared at him. “You’re saying we’re fucked.”

“Not completely. There is a way to possibly trap it, but I don’t like it.”

“Why not?”

“Bren would be bait. See, once these things feed on you, they leave a kind of psychic mark, so they can always find you and feed on you again; they only immediately kill their prey if they absolutely have to.”

“Shit.” He glanced at Bren, who seemed to be sleeping peacefully, his color back to normal. He was doing good for himself, and technically he was an adult, but Logan figured he’d always be a kid to him.

“I have to talk to Kier for a minute. Can you stay here and guard Bren? I’ll be right back.”

“Guard? You think it might come back this soon?” He glanced at the open door of the ICU and set his shoulders, dropping his hands to his side and balling his hands into loose fists. Actually he hoped it did come back; he could pay it back for what it did to the kid.

Just ‘cause you couldn’t see it didn’t mean it couldn’t bleed.

****

Kier had just stopped aching and dug the last bullet out of his flesh (it was kind of shallow, having wedged itself against his collarbone) when Bob came out of Bren’s room, letting the door flop closed behind him. “How is -” he began, but Bob didn’t let him finish.

Bob grabbed him by the throat and slammed him violently up against the wall, making him see stars, as the flesh of Bob’s hand seemed to burn against his neck. His eyes were almost glowing blue, but not quite; it was a near thing, rage barely contained. “I should kill you right now.” he snarled into his face.

Okay, yeah, this wasn’t good.