Angel had expected an unseen opponent - as bizarre a concept as that was (at least it wasn't new; he knew some ghosts)- but what came gallumping down the hall towards them was partially visible, in the strangest way possible. Its chest and the front half of its lower body were visible, while the rest of it wasn't.

The chest was almost literally barrel shaped; it had a wide curve, like its ribcage was perfectly circular. Its flesh was covered with overlapping scales, each as big as a butter knife (and similar in shape), a kind of opalescent off-white, almost yellowish in color. It had some bleeding (? or at least seeping) wounds in its visible chest, about a half dozen holes leaking white fluid, although one in the center of its chest looked particularly big and nasty, the yellowish flesh beneath the scales perfectly visible, the striated muscles a kind of pinkish-orange. Its front legs ended in flat, blunt claws, almost like a gargoyle statue on a Gothic church edifice. Just guessing from the size of the chest and the front legs, he'd say it was about eight to nine feet tall, and about five and a half feet across. It put the "bus" in succubus, he supposed.

Angel didn't wait for it to come to him, he charged it, ramming the sword into that big open chest wound. It let out a screech that threatened to break his eardrums and seemed to vibrate his internal organs, and it continued forward, knocking him off his feet and throwing him straight back into Naomi. He felt a mild electric shock as they collided and hit the floor.

It turned to burst through the doors - or at least that's what Angel thought; it was impossible to say with a half visible creature of dubious intent - when Kier came flying through the door, something metal and shining in his hands. "For Bren, fucker!" he shouted, as he drove what was apparently a broken i.v. stand into the invisible area above its visible chest - the cranial region?

It screamed even worse now, thrashing in a way that sent bits of the wall and the plastic chairs flying (okay, so it had a tail), and it tried to throw Kier off but he grabbed the sword Angel had buried in its chest. It did buck Kier off, but he came away dragging the sword with him, opening up an even bigger cut, the demon's white plasma spurting out all over the floor.

Angel was back on his feet and pulled out the only weapon he had left - a stake - and drove it into what he assumed was an invisible flank. The stake broke, but he'd put enough force behind it that it penetrated the scales, its white blood oozing onto his hands like hot glue. The beast thrashed, but Angel was ready for it, using the opportunity to grab its back (it had a slight hump) and jump on it, hoping to feel his way to its neck - if it had one - and crush it. But its thrashing became wild, and it even hit the floor, rolling over on its side and crushing his leg, threatening to crush the rest of him as well.

Kier clearly didn't know much about sword fighting, but it didn't matter, as he hacked away at the thing like a piece of frozen beef, sending scales, blood, and flesh everywhere as the thing became more and more visible. The screaming was almost constant now, a noise you could feel in the pit of your chest and made your gorge rise involuntarily, and Angel was able to pull himself away from the succubus and roll free as the thing lunged at Kier, trying to get him to stop hurting it. It collided with Kier, ramming its head (? Couldn't see) into his midsection and sending him smashing into and through the wall. But even as he was being pulverized, Kier hung on, and rammed the sword through whatever was crushing him. The subsequent cascade of blood revealed the sword sticking sideways through a flat, almost serpentine head with about a half dozen tiny eyeballs clustered together like black grapes in the center of its forehead. The only other features visible were a wide, lipl! ess gash of a mouth, and two vertical slits that could have been nostrils.

It reared back and Kier fell to the floor, bleeding from the nose and mouth, just as Angel used the nearby wall to help him get back up to his feet. He was sure he had at least one broken bone in his leg, he could feel its jagged edges grinding into his flesh as he tried to balance upon it, but he figured he'd heal given enough time. The one good thing about being a vampire was you could take damage like this and not have to worry about it too much.

Just as he was gearing himself for another attack, a familiar voice shouted, "Fire!" While technically there was no flame at all, the succubus reared back, as if Bob's voice alone was a weapon.

Then there was a series of loud explosions, and it was the sharp scent of cordite that made Angel realize that someone was shooting at it. It actually worked too, the bullets piercing its tough hide and spraying more white blood into the air. "How do I kill it?" Logan shouted, and Angel belatedly realized he was asking the question for the second time. "Oh, fuck it."

"No!" That shout was Giles, although it came too late, as there was the familiar noise of Logan's claws springing from his hands, and he lit into it, claws flashing as they sliced through air and revealed skin, chunks falling away as if the succubus was a Thanksgiving turkey being carved by a knife happy butcher.

The thing thrashed and reared back, retreating from the pain, but Logan collapsed to the floor even though it hadn't obviously hit him. Did it need to? Close proximity and physical contact with the succubus had pulled away enough of Logan's life force to knock him out. But on the plus side, the thing was more visible than ever, and Logan had cut off one of its legs just above the knee - a speedy retreat was no longer possible.

Bob grabbed Logan and pulled him away from danger, his eyes now burning like alien suns, the veins standing out in blue relief on his face. "You will listen to me," he demanded in his god voice, but the succubus kept backing down the hall. It could resist Bob? Well, it was made to be the ultimate parasite; perhaps resisting gods somehow became part of the package.

Giles shouted something, a spell, and a flash of light hit the succubus, making it shudder, while Xander - no, Doyle - raised a very sleek and scary looking automatic weapon and emptied a few more bullets into it. Angel grabbed one of the butt numbing plastic chairs and broke off one of its metal legs, throwing the rest of it aside. As it neared him, he jumped it and drove the jagged metal fragment into its side, making it screech and flail. He thought he could hold on to it, but the thing was so slick with blood he instantly lost his grip and went flying down the hall, only stopping when he hit the wall so hard he felt his ribs shatter, the weight of his body leaving an imprint in the drywall.

Bob had grabbed Logan’s face like he was going to kiss him, but that would have actually been less freaky than what actually happened. Power glowed bluely in Bob’s hands, and his eyes shot open as blue veins began crawling up Logan’s face, mimicking the ones on Bob’s face. Even Logan’s eyes started to glow a faint but obvious cobalt.

Logan - Bob? Some combination of the two? - then looked down the hall at the succubus and ran for it. The best turned and seemed to level itself for the charge, but at the last second Logan suddenly slid, as if trying for home base, and as he skidded underneath the succubus he jammed his claws into its belly. It screamed in pain as Logan tore into it, the Bob energy presumably protecting him from further draining of his life force, and as it tried to shake Logan off (no go - he’d dug his claws in) , it didn’t seem to notice Bob walking towards it, his body becoming lost beneath a violent blue energy field with every single step he took.

Bob seemed like he was all energy but in a vaguely humanoid form, his face almost gone beneath a veil of power that was honestly painful to look upon - it was like rubbing sea salt into your eyes. Angel had a slightly obscured view thanks to the fact that he was sitting on the floor, but even so his eyes were watering so much he might as well have been crying. Giles, Doyle, and Naomi had all raised their hands to shade their eyes, but the light was too strong - they had to turn away. Kier was too unconscious to care.

Logan stopped hacking away at the succubus from underneath and slid out from beneath it, getting to his feet and remaining in close proximity, even though Bob had reached out and touched the succubus, making it go eerily still. Logan stared at Bob and the succubus harmlessly and straight on, but blue energy still glowed faintly on his extended claws, and Angel had a feeling if he could see his eyes, they’d be blue. He wasn’t completely sure it was Logan, that he was conscious; he had a feeling that Bob was simply using him as his avatar, splitting his power in two halves.

Bob held the succubus’s head in his hands. “Time to go back,” Bob said, in a voice that wasn’t quite a voice, one felt more than heard. Then the light flared, a sun going supernova, and he had to look away. When he turned back, and the afterimages faded, Logan was standing where he last saw him, and so was Bob, totally back in his humanoid form, but the succubus was nowhere to be seen. Even its chopped off body parts and most of its blood was gone.

“Well, I bet that gave everyone in intensive care a bit of a shock,” Bob said lightly.

Angel stared levelly at him. “Do we even know who sent it and why?” His ribs ached, his leg ached, and he was fairly certain that standing up was beyond him.

“I have an idea, but it’s not something to be handled by the corporeal.”

Giles was still rubbing his eyes, presumably still a bit dazzled by the light show. “You’re saying a god sent this after us? Why?”

“That’s kinda what I’ve gotta figure out. But we don’t have an overabundance of friends, do we?” He was evading; that was quite obvious. But what was also obvious was if Bob didn’t want to tell them, they would never know - they couldn’t force it out of him. Bob gestured to Logan to come to him, and he did, moving almost robotically. “Can you hear me, Logan?”

“Yeah. What is it now?” Even unconscious, he still had a ‘tude. You either had to admire that or be supremely irritated by it, depending on which side of it you were on.

“I’m going to send you to my place. You get some rest; you’ll be fine when you wake up. Understand?”

“Yeah yeah yeah,” he grumbled, and then Bob teleported him away, although he remained behind himself.

Doyle slung the rifle over his shoulder, and admitted, “I don’t get it.”

“Logan lost consciousness when the succubus drained his life force,” Giles said, working it out even as he told him what happened. “Bob … well, for want of a better term, co-opted his body to use it. Logan hasn’t yet regained consciousness.”

“I’m sure he’ll understand,” Bob said. “He doesn’t like to miss a fight.”

“That still seems really creepy,” Naomi admitted.

Bob shrugged helplessly. “I know. But it seemed to be the obvious solution.” He sighed, signaling a topic change, then pasted on a beaming smile. “Okay, so who needs healing?”

That was actually a short list, but Angel figured that was probably a good thing.

*******

He could have made a big stink about it all, he could have set off every single goddamn alarm in the building, but he wasn’t really in the mood for foreplay. He just wanted to get this fucking over with.

Bob teleported directly into what the Wolfram and Hart toadies called “the white room”, the dimensional interface where the Senior Partners would occasionally deign to speak with the lessers. Bob materialized with chain mail over his shirt and leather pants, and as soon as he saw the black panther interface, he materialized a rather large bullwhip and cracked it at the cat avatar, making it jump. “Now, fuckers! Show yourself!”

The white room dissolved into that stuffy, old fashioned library, and the Senior Partner that appeared was once more in the guise of a plump, matronly woman in a Victorian style dress, this time made of forest green velvet and augmented with fussy layers of lace and tulle. Her featureless black eyes still took him in with great disdain. “Finally embracing sadomasochism, Bob?”

He let the whip dissolve into nothingness, but kept the chain mail. “Did you really think you could get away with this? I mean, this was incredibly fucking clumsy, even for a bunch of wankers like you.”

She materialized a pink fabric fan, which she used to waft non-existence sweat off her skin. “Am I supposed to know what you’re -”

“Stop!” He roared, and reached out and turned reality around them, making the backdrop twist from a staid library to a hellscape of volcanic black rock risen up like the discarded rib bones of mastodons and pools of burbling red lava reeking like demonic piss and giving off caustic waves of heat. “It wasn’t going to work! Killing them? Really? With a succubus? That left Angel and me out of the fray - you knew we’d come after you.”

She looked pretty pissed off, her face pinching sourly as she glanced around at their new backdrop, but any thoughts of lying quickly disappeared in the face of his rage. ”Kill you? Hardly. We simply wanted to keep you busy and out of our hair. Although I’m sure you’ll be shocked to hear it, we have more going on in our existence than you and your little band of hardy degenerates.”

“Bullshit,” he snapped, although he got the sense that she was actually being fairly truthful … well, to a small degree. The succubus wasn’t the be all and end all of their plan; it was a distraction. And didn’t he know from what? What else could it have been? How else did they know they’d be trying a soul transmigration spell? “Why did you take him?”

“Take who?”

“Play coy with me and I will drop you into an acid pit.”

She glared at him, the void of her eyes somehow managing to convey hate without a single genuine emotion in them. “We helped you with Aesma Daeva. Did you really think we’d do that for free? Out of the goodness of our hearts?”

Unbelievable. “Help? You did nothing! And oh, by the way, you weren’t helping me, you were helping yourselves, because you didn’t want Dave on this plane any more than I did.” He shook his head in disbelief, running a hand through his hair. “Why are you even attempting this bullshit? It’s lame, even for you. Give Xander back, and I won’t blow up every goddamn building you have from here to Portugal.”

She grinned suddenly, a savagely cold gesture. “No. You’re alone, Bob. You’re one being, cut off from its collective, and we are not. The Powers won’t go to war over a single Human soul, and you can annoy us, but you’re not much of a threat on your own. We’ve been more than patient with you, Bob, because of what you are, and who you represent, but don’t kid yourself. You’re a small fish.”

Bob crossed his arms over his chest and glowered at her. “So all of this meshugga was counting coup? Jesus, you guys must be desperate.”

“Insult away. You have our answer.”

“Fine. You won’t have any toadies anymore. Good for you.”

“And what does that mean?”

“Take one of mine, I’ll take thousands of yours. By the time I leave this building, it will be empty save for the few demons immune to me. They will know they’re on the wrong side and switch. This will happen in every single building you have in North America, and then I’ll spread out across the globe. Hell, I might even jump dimensions and fuck things up over there. I will keep doing it until you give Xander back or you run out of people.”

Her face sharpened until it seemed like she might turn into a shark. “You’d never do that, Bob. What about the free will you so love?”

“We’re gods. We don’t fight fair.” He let that sink in, and he could see when she began to believe him. He didn’t make idle threats, and he hoped that she knew that by now. Besides, if he co-opted the will of all Wolfram and Hart employees, he’d be doing them a favor - they made a horrible choice selling their souls away. After letting that settle a moment, he said, “I want him back now, or I start with the fifteenth floor.”

“It’s not that simple.”

“Yes it is.”

“No, it’s not. We may have taken his soul, but it’s no longer in our possession.”

He glared at her, hoping this was a joke, but the Senior Partners really didn’t have a sense of humor. “What the fuck did you do to him?”

She shifted nervously, pulling her skirts away from a lava pool that was threatening to light them on fire. “We do have … obligations …”

“Spill it.”

“Annwyn.”

Bob closed his eyes and exhaled as if punched in the stomach. The news just kept getting better and better, didn’t it? “What kind of deal do you have with Gwyn? I thought he was off the radar.”

“Mordred’s back in circulation. So’s he.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake! Didn’t they settle this already?”

“Apparently not. Can we go back now?”

Bob relinquished his hold on the landscape, and they popped right back into the stuffy library. The Partner fanned herself and sat on the arm of an overstuffed wing chair. Apparently lava pits didn’t agree with her delicate constitution. “Mordred had nothing to do with closing the Hellmouth,” he pointed out, although he had no idea why. Gods not only didn’t fight fair, but they were extraordinarily petty.

She shrugged, a movement of her shoulders that looked tectonic. “It doesn’t matter. He ‘s planning to do something to him. And before you ask, it isn’t clear what; we didn’t ask for details, and he didn’t supply them.”

“Plausible deniability.” That’s where you had to hate the whole “evil lawyer” aspect of all of this. He dry washed his face, and wondered how he was going to handle this one.