He felt the cold metal slice into his skin, followed by the warm flush of blood, but then she screamed behind him, the unearthly screech of a vampire being dusted as the knife fell away to the ground.

He slapped a hand over the wound in his throat, which was spreading warmth down the front of his shirt, and turned to see who had saved him perhaps a second too late.

Bren’s shock was so great, he wasn’t sure what he was seeing for a moment. Standing behind him, a broken branch in his hand, was Kier. “That was Raven, the bitch who turned me,” he explained. He looked closer at his throat wound, and frowned in concern. “Huh. That’s bleeding good, but it looks like it didn’t hit anything major.”

Okay. What was going on? “You set us up,” he pointed out.

He grimaced, almost rolling his eyes. “Yeah, they tracked me down and said if I did this they’d leave me alone. But I knew that was bullshit, and I figured that this Angel guy would be smart enough to know it was a trap, so maybe all these fuckers could get their stupid asses killed.” Kier looked around suspiciously. “He did know this was a trap, right?”

“We figured as much, yeah. So you double crossed us to double cross them?” He was trying to make sense of this in his head, but that didn’t sound right.

Kier looked confused, and while he was thinking about it, a vampire sprawled at his feet and hopped back up with a growl. Kier simply staked him in the back and dusted him while continuing to think, as if the whole thing was barely worth his notice. “Umm … I’m not sure that’s quite right … but something like that.”

“You couldn’t have dropped us a hint?”

He stared at him in disbelief. “I thought it was pretty obvious.”

“And you could be lying to save your own ass.”

Now he looked honestly perplexed. “I wasn’t lying to you, Bren. I do like you.”

Was that what was bothering him? He didn’t know. But now wasn’t the time to exchange mash notes, as the fight raged on around them, and he was nearly hit by a flying vampire, who landed hard on her back, her teeth broken and blood dribbling from a shredded lip. She got up, looked fearfully at her tormentors - it seemed the Sisters were playing volleyball with her (had no one ever told them not to play with their food?) - and ran off into the night, assuming discretion was the better part of getting your ass handed to you on a silver platter. It seemed the Sisters were now wearing chainmail shirts, which they presumably stripped off previous victims.

Kier attempted to look towards the house, but with the roiling crowd and the fact that many were on fire as well as the fact that there was a big gargoyle still using diving attacks, they didn’t have the best view. “Is Uli still alive?”

He had no idea. “I think so.”

“Good. I’m gonna kill that fat bastard,” Kier snarled, morphing into vamp face and diving into the crowd, heading towards the house.

He felt slightly dazed, but he found a knife on the ground and picked it up, not sure if it was his or Raven’s. Blood continued soaking into his shirt, dripped when he bent down, but it wasn’t gushing or spewing, so he was probably going to live. The scary thing - or maybe it was just the disappointing thing; he wasn’t sure - is that he was sorry he wasn’t going to die. He was just going to have to live with things and deal with them, whether he liked it or not.

He decided to pretend he was Saddiq (or Logan really - they had pretty much the same attitude about fighting: you fought until your enemy was gone, or you were gone, but either way you just kept digging yourself out of the hole or straight into the grave), and the first vamp that rushed him got the knife straight in the eye, making him stop with a startled noise, like he couldn’t quite believe what had just happened. He kicked him in the gut, sending the vamp back while also yanking the knife out of his eye socket with a sickening wet noise, and turned and slashed, catching another one straight across the face. He shut down his emotions and simply let his body fight, because it could, and it was better that way.

One threw a kick and he caught its leg, yanking him forward and kicking his other leg out from under him, sending him falling hard onto his back. Another threw a punch, but he caught her fist and twisted under it, snapping her arm and shoving her face first into the crowd. He had a little movie of moves playing in his mind - Logan, Saddiq, Angel, and just a tad of Jet Li - and his body could replicate the moves with great precision, although it varied depending on the angle he initially saw it from. But it was the good part about remembering every single fucking thing you ever saw, heard, or read.

Even over all the screaming, dusting, burning, and various battle noises (thuds, grunts, clashing steel), he though he heard a familiar reverse “whoomp”, and he looked to the front gates to see Rags had come back. He’d gotten rid of his shirt, though, revealing his small beer gut and the strange, intricate patterns tattooed all over his torso, some of them vines but most of them not. Rags pulled something off his back and kneeled down, so the mirror shield he brought with him was almost totally blocking the view of him. He could vaguely hear his somewhat jarring Cockney voice, but couldn’t quite make out what he was saying over the general din. Not that it mattered; he knew what he was doing.

It was easy to forget what Rags was. He seemed to be a chronic alcoholic, a strangely quiet and vaguely sad man with an almost indecipherable accent and a love of intricate tattoos, a gentle soul who claimed to be a priest and lived over a taco stand. It was easy to forget that Rags not only was a priest, but a very special one; a hierophant with an ability that made him devastatingly powerful. Maybe he was a Cockney drunk, an easily overlooked bit of L.A. eccentricity, but he could do something that almost no one else could do: he could talk to his gods, and they would actually listen. And his gods were extremely wrathful, and very protective of their followers.

Someone figured out what he was doing and what that mirror shield actually meant, and shouted, “Stop him! Stop that Persaid!” But they knew that might happen, and had all stayed near the front to form a protective barrier between Rags and the crowd. Helga swept the flamethrower back and forth, like she was watering a garden, and it kept the vampires at bay quite well while the rest of them started backing up, towards Rags.

The Sisters weren’t the only ones who thought of donning the enemy’s gear - Angel too was wearing a chainmail shirt, so the three of them looked like a bunch of Renfesters who had taken a seriously wrong turn on their way to the joust. Angel was bleeding from a cut cheek, but was now wielding the bloody machete that had probably done the damage before Angel ripped it out of the assailant’s hand and used it to chop his head off. Giles looked the worse for wear, as he had a rather nasty looking gash on his right upper arm, which was bleeding so much that he’d switched his sword to his left hand, a split lip, and his left eye was red and starting to go puffy, the warning signs of a future black eye. But he had to give the guy credit, as he was still hanging in there, and he was far from dead yet. Even the Sisters and Naomi looked a tad mussed; of them all, only Hel and her wall of fire were untouched. But, again, she had the flamethrower. The only thing that trumped that was! machine gun (and thankfully, nobody brought one of those).

Something started to happen, but it was hard to immediately quantify what. It was like the atmosphere started to change, a charge filling the air like ozone before a thunderstorm, and his hair stood on end while his skin prickled. From the look of shock and horror on the faces of the standing vampires, they felt it too, and they knew it was bad. Very, very bad.

“Run!” one shouted, and it sounded like the guy who had shouted the initial warning. But it was too late to run, and much of the crowd seemed confused, almost struck dumb, as though they didn’t have the merest inkling of what was about to happen.

They all fell even with Rags or got behind him, even Hel, and he saw, out of the corner of his eye, something manifest on Rags’s mirror shield. He knew he wasn’t supposed to look, but he couldn’t help but give it a sidelong glance. There were his gods, the beings of his half-heartedly adopted new religion, and he wasn’t quite prepared for what he saw. They were gorgeous, three beautiful women, so lovely they took his breath away, even though their eyes were closed and a thick black stripe was painted across each of their faces, covering their eyes. Their names popped into his head - Euryale the wanderer, Sthenno the warrior, and Medusa the ruler - but he didn’t know which was supposed to be which. Maybe Medusa was the one in front, and Sthenno and Euryale were standing behind her; after all, the one in front had bright green hair, brighter than Helga’s, while the one on the right had hair as red as blood, and the other had hair as black as space. And their hair looked lik! e hair, not snakes, but it was … moving. Not like in a breeze, but like it was getting restless; tendrils twined along the side of their necks, across their face, entangled in each other’s as the strands of hair reached out, groping like a blind man trying to feel his way around an unfamiliar room. He felt riveted to the spot, and so must have the vampires, as they all looked like they had frozen in their tracks, wanting to move but perfectly unable to.

Giles grabbed him and hissed, “Don’t look!” He physically turned him so they were both looking at a palm tree on the other side of the yard, and he couldn’t help but note how weak Giles’s grip was on the right side. He probably needed to get his arm looked at before he lost all ability to use it.

Something happened; it felt like a dam of tension had burst, and he closed his eyes as he knew the Gorgons must have opened theirs. There was a flash of light, not so much bright (although it was - it seemed to burn afterimages into his retinas, in spite of the fact that his eyes were closed) as something almost physical, a tangible burst of pressure, and then it all went away as quickly as it had occurred.

He opened his eyes almost reluctantly, although the sense of the charge was gone too. He turned, looking towards the house, and it was nothing but a field of ash, the lawn rendered a sooty moonscape. He hadn’t even heard them dust. Maybe they turned to stone and then dusted, crumbling like ancient statues too brittle to stand against gravity.

There was a body on the porch, though, and even from here he could tell it was Uli, the wooden shaft of an arrow sticking out of his heart. So he was Human, or just another form of demon? It could have been an accident, a shot that went wild … or it was simply meant to look that way. Was Kier one of the piles of ash? He wasn’t sure if he cared or not.

“So, those are the Gorgons,” Naomi said, in a deadpan voice that begged for sarcasm. “What exactly is it that happens when they open their eyes?”

“You die,” Giles replied grimly. Yeah, that was probably the most succinct version of it. At least if he ever got in a contest about whose god could kick the others gods’ ass, Bren was certain he would win quite easily.

Sylvia, still in gargoyle form, perched on the edge of the roof, looking down at the former battlefield. Bren thought she was surely too heavy for the roof and would crash inside, but somehow she didn’t. Maybe the roof was stronger than he thought.

Rags got to his feet, using the shield for support, and his knees cracked explosively as he straightened up. It seemed painful, but he just looked tired, sweat making strands of his dirty blond hair stick to his forehead. “It’s said they ‘ave all of eternity in their vision.”

Giles nodded. “Very poetic. What’s it supposed to mean?”

Rags rolled his shoulders expansively, a disinterested shrug. “I dunno. Most of belief is jus’ taken on faif.” He was pretty sure he said faith, but it sounded like faif.

The Sisters approached Angel, who looked at them warily, like a couple of stray dogs. “We -”

“- had - “

“ - a great - ”

“ - time. Let’s -”

“ - do it again - “

“ - soon.”

They then smiled, stereophonic grins of doom, and walked off into the night, so peppy they almost seemed to skip down the lane. After a moment, Bren found himself fighting another shudder. “I’ve said it before, but I’ll keep saying it until it stops being true: creepy, creepy, creepy.”

“I’m glad they never made it to Sunnydale,” Giles said.

Angel shrugged. “They prefer big cities. More people to play with.”

“Charming.”

Helga started towards the house, and said to Sylvia, “Will you get down from there? We ain’t done yet.”

They all turned to look at her, Giles almost wobbling on his feet, so Bren reached out to steady him. Angel scowled at her, wiping blood from his face. “They’re all dead if they didn’t run when they had the chance. I’m not really interested in hunting them down.”

“Neither am I. But Wolfram and Hart’s involved in this, aren’t they? Kill a million of their vampires and they wouldn’t give a fuck. The thing about vamps is you can always make more. But this is an expensive house on an expensive piece of property, and there’s probably lots of expensive shit inside. We burn this, and they will care; they will hurt. And we send a message to them that they can’t possibly misunderstand. Not only will we kill all the soldiers they send after you, but we’ll destroy their property as well, and it’s a hit to the wallet that will make them pause. Even bad guys need cash.”

There was an ice cold logic to that, one no one could dispute. Angel finally nodded and Hel continued walking towards the house as Sylvia took wing and flew off. She turned on the flamethrower and splashed flame over the front of the house, more than was honestly necessary to set it alight, and the thing began to burn brightly, catching as if it was made of flash paper and gasoline. For a while they stood there and watched it burn, the fire throwing their shadows and making them twist and turn like they were in pain.

It was a victory, but strangely it didn’t feel much like it.

*****

Bob had a clear idea what he wanted to do with Jeremy, but Logan wasn’t sure it was bad enough considering what he’d done. But he had nothing equivalent to add beyond beating the shit out of this fucker. He just kept thinking about the body Faith found behind the gas station, and Lucia drowning in her own blood as she held his hand tightly, like he was the only thing holding her to this reality. They deserved better than this … but he still didn’t know what. Nothing would bring them back, no matter what was done.

He stared down at him, his vision going blue, as he said in that god voice, “Your DNA is not in flux; you’re a normal Human. You have no powers whatsoever.” Jeremy sagged down to the ground, leaning against the back of the Navigator. It was like he was shrinking, becoming even more pathetic than before (if that was even possible). “But you’re gonna remember what you did, Jeremy. You’re gonna remember all the people you killed so you could live. You’re no better than a vampire.” He started to cry; no, blubber, actually. And Logan was pretty sure it was for himself, not other people, so he had to fight the urge to ram his head into the gas tank. Bob had better be right about the fallout. “Now that you’re Human, the Organization will want nothing to do with you, but the cops are gonna catch up with you eventually. So you’re gonna have to decide what to do with yourself, you miserable piece of shit. Time’s up, bub. What are you gonna do?”

Jeremy continued to sob, and Logan turned away, disgusted by him. Everything he had done, all those people he had killed, and he hadn’t done it because he was a psychopath - he’d done it because he was scared to die, no matter what his body kept telling him. He would’ve killed the world if it could have saved him, and he’d have never have spared a single thought to any of those he killed, because they didn’t matter. He had to survive, and that’s all there was to it. Logan almost would have preferred it if he were a psychopath; it would have made things simpler, cleaner. But he was just a selfish, cowardly fuck.

He finally noticed that he didn’t feel good. He felt kind of … weak. Weak and hollowed out, like his insides had been scooped out clean, the power blasting through him in such a way that there was almost nothing left. *Okay, we’re done,* Bob insisted. *Let’s get you out of here.*

*Fuck off.* But truth be told, he felt like he was going to pass out. He was a bit dizzy, and felt … weird. He couldn’t think of a way to describe it, and every time thoughts approached, they seemed to fly away. He couldn’t hold on to them, no matter how hard he tried.

*I think I’ve shagged you out. You’re conscious on will alone. You really gotta teach me how to do that, mate. Very few people can will themselves through unconsciousness.*

*Do you ever shut up?* The world was turning into liquid, growing fuzzy at the edges, while the pavement turned to gelatin beneath his feet. If he was somehow hanging on to consciousness like Bob had said, he could feel it sliding away beneath his fingers.

The world seemed to blink, and he found himself sitting in the back seat of the rental Jag again, making Faith and Marc start slightly, Faith uttering a small curse as she brought her fists up, as if ready to deck him in case he was an unwelcome guest. “Oh shit, you startled me,” she said, letting out a sigh of relief. She then stared at him, like maybe the top of his scalp was missing. “Logan, you’re bleeding from the ears.”

Marc glanced in the mirror, and sucked in a sharp breath. “Jumpin’ Jesus on a pogo stick, that looks nasty. Bro, you still got your brains in your head?”

“Ha bloody ha. ‘M fine, it’s over. We can go now.” He let his head loll against the seat, letting the world shimmer and waver, mirages in the heat. Maybe he was a heat image, a figment of a delirious imagination.

“Just like that?” Faith asked, shocked. “What did you do to him?”

“Nothin’. Bob made him a normal Human, and gave him the choice of what he’s gonna do with himself. He kinda thought that was best.” He sighed, although it almost sounded like the breath was being pulled out of him. “I’m gonna hafta sleep for a while, but I’ll be okay.” He couldn’t wait for confirmation, as his eyes closed of their own accord, and he heard vaguely as everything faded out around him, Faith asking, “Bob can do that?”

As if from down a long tunnel, he heard Marc reply, “He’s Bob. He can do whatever the fuck he wants.”

Logan felt like he was pitching forward, like maybe he wasn’t as stable in the car as he thought, but then he realized he couldn’t feel his body. He was just falling into an abyss, and it actually felt kind of enjoyable. But then again, it usually was; it was the landing that was the total bitch.

There wasn’t one, though. Just falling, and then the sense that he was floating in a warm darkness.

No, not darkness.

He opened his eyes and found himself staring up at a slightly overcast sky, the light muted to a gentle blue that seemed to be the visual equivalent of Prozac. He was in a dead man’s float in Bob’s swimming pool, the water so still and warm he could have been hovering. He looked around, hardly moving his head, and didn’t see Bob anywhere.

Bob was in the house. He knew that even before he heard the faint music of his stereo. Having had access to the power and some of Bob’s memories, he thought he understood him a bit better now. For example, he was playing “Judith”, the Perfect Circle song, which Bob had seemed to take on as his unofficial theme song. It was very curious since it was an extremely anti-organized religion song (if the singer’s angry tone didn’t convey that message, certainly him shouting “Fuck your god!” made it crystal clear), but now he could see why it appealed to Bob.

Bob really didn’t care much for his fellow gods. Oh, he liked some - Degei and Ganesha instantly came to mind, and then there were most of his divine ex-wives - but for the most part he found them arrogant and unconscionable, and the people who worshipped them he was generally flummoxed by. (Hence why he supposedly liked Buddhists - they didn’t worship any god.) If anybody dared to worship him, he’d probably hit them until they stopped. He had turned his back on the gods, and he didn’t want to be associated with them if he could at all avoid it; he preferred being known as a Belial demon.

And all of this seemed a little bitter since the gods turned their backs on him first, but once they were willing to welcome him back into the fold, he rejected them all the same. The gods were his colleagues, and like many people, he didn't like most of his colleagues (and the feeling was apparently mutual). To say Bob was weird didn’t even begin to cover it … and that’s probably what made him the perfect avatar for him. They were both too weird and had pasts too checkered to fit in with anyone else. It was an accident he was his avatar, right?

Bob wasn’t out here because he knew Logan was weak, and he also knew they’d probably argue. Bob didn’t want to argue with him in his current state, probably because he didn’t think it was fair. But didn’t he know that an argument might keep his mind off thinking about all the threads of reality he’d have to pull to make it so Mariko didn’t die? Bob couldn’t bring back the dead, but he could warp reality to the point where some things might not happen. How much would he have to unravel to undo the series of events that led to her death? It would take a lot of unraveling, but how much exactly? Where did he start?

No, he couldn’t think like that, and he mentally scolded himself for doing it, even though some part of his mind was continuing to attempt to calculate everything he’d need to do. He was tired, weak, and he needed to heal. So he cleared his mind as best he could and just concentrated on floating on the water, feeling lighter than he could ever remember feeling before. It was a strange kind of bliss; embracing the emptiness was an oddly soothing escape.

Everything else could wait. As soon as he was back up to strength, he’d kick Bob’s ass, and figure out what the hell he was going to do with all this power.

9

In spite of claims that they didn’t need a doctor, Bren and Giles ended up in a “demon” hospital anyways. (They occasionally treated Humans, but you had to know where they were, and most people didn’t.) Bob was a financial contributor to it, so as soon as Helga came in with them, they were treated like royalty. Helga barked orders and they obeyed, and Bren was sitting on a table in an exam room, waiting for his throat wound to be seen to, when he had a horrible realization: this is where Wesley was taken to when he died. Rags had told him about it. Did Giles know - did Angel? Probably not. But Helga knew; she’d saved Wesley’s corpse from being “recycled”.

He was treated by a doctor who smelled Human and looked it. She used what was basically some kind of “glue” to seal the wound, and told him he was lucky; a few more millimeters and he’d have needed stitches. A couple of centimeters more in depth, and he probably would have died.

He got off easy, but Giles didn’t. He’d had a deep sword wound in his arm, and he technically needed surgery but he wouldn’t have it. Giles settled on the resident spellcasters (this hospital had witches on staff - it was partially funny, and partially ingenious) to heal his arm. As it was, healing spells required a lot of power, so they decided on a minor one to repair muscles and tendons, while he was given stitches and some intravenous fluids. Angel wasn’t thrilled with it, but Giles was stubborn and didn’t want to be out of action for any length of time.

Rags was worried about him and got him home, although he nagged a bit. He reminded him to drink lots of fluids - “not alcoholic; tha’ doesn’t count” - and then, once he was satisfied he was in for the night, “whoomped” out of there, probably to the Way Station for a drink.

Bren decided to take a shower, wash the blood off of him, but found himself too tired to stand up, so he took a bath instead. He tried not to think about anything, and he thought he did a pretty good job, hearing nothing but a white noise hum in his head.

Until the Wu’s started arguing.

The Wu’s were his neighbors at the very end of the hall, and their marriage could be best described as “tempestuous”. They seemed to have about one big screaming fight a month, and they could keep it up at glass shattering volume for hours. Somebody usually called the cops on them, but this was a semi-bad neighborhood, and the cops rarely showed up. They just kept yelling at each other until they grew too hoarse, or someone stormed out, stomping down the hall all the way. He’d considered slipping the business card of Lionel Hutz, the demon lawyer who worked in Angel’s building, under their door, or a pamphlet in favor of divorce, but he hadn’t done it yet. Actually, if a couple managed to get along twenty nine days out of thirty, they were still doing better than he and Matt had managed.

(Matt - why the hell did he have to think about him now?)

Once out of the tub, he slipped on some sweat pants and stared at the slit in his throat in the mirror (you could barely see it now) for a few minutes, before suddenly catching himself thinking that he kind of looked like his mom, except for his red eyes.

He got a small, beer sized bottle of Bailey’s Irish Crème out of the fridge - what Rags didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him - and turned on his stereo to attempted to drown out the Wu’s. He put the CDs on shuffle and sat on the floor, pulling out a small cardboard box out from beneath his bed.

It was a box full of letters and handicrafts from his mother, Christmas cards and birthday cards (which, oddly enough, never came on time - she didn’t seem to remember when his birthday was, and usually settled on it being in February, when it was in fact in July), sometimes cards for other holidays or for no reason at all. Why had he saved all this stuff? He never looked at, but then again, he couldn’t throw them away either.

He started to sift through the letters, looking for a small clay thing that his mom had once made him (she said it was a cat, but it looked more like a frog), and he found himself singing along quietly with the CD that was fighting hard against the Wu’s (and pretty much losing).” I built you a home in my heart, with rotten wood it decayed from the start. ‘Cause you can’t find nothing at all, if there was nothing there all along.” The irony of what he was singing along with hit him after a moment, and he swigged down half the bottle of Bailey’s, enjoying the rush that chugging down the sickly sweet stuff brought on, especially combined with the pain medication he got at the hospital.

He still felt guilty, still like a monster, but he got it now. He and his mother had a biological tie, but beyond that they’d never had much else. Oh, he knew she probably loved him in her way, just as he had loved her in a kind of half-hearted way, but they were never able to fully connect. The most major roadblock was the drugs - maybe she didn’t really lose everything until she got into crack, but she’d never been a teetotaler; he knew at age three to avoid the bong water. But he was also half-demon … and she knew, didn’t she? She’d never said a single word, but he had the feeling she’d known there was something wrong with him from the beginning. She’d tried her best to love him, he was sure she did, but he was a living reminder of a really bad choice. It was hard to love the stone around your neck. But couldn’t she have ever mentioned it to him? A little “Hey, I think your dad was a demon”?

And now he was totally alone in the world. He’d always been alone, but he figured his mom was out there somewhere. But now he was truly alone. It was a cold, sick feeling.

A knock at the door startled him, nearly made him drop his bottle, and as he climbed up from the floor, he shouted somewhat belligerently, “Who is it?” He really wasn’t in the mood for company right now, and if it was Rags again, he wasn’t sure what he’d do.

After a moment’s hesitation, he heard, “It’s me, Kier.”

Oh, so he’d survived the Gorgons, huh? He must have been one of the smart ones who split. He kicked the box back under his bed and grabbed a shirt, pulling it on hastily as he went to the door and peered out the peephole. Yes, it was just Kier alone, currently looking down towards the Wu’s with a concerned expression, as if he thought fisticuffs or gunfire might break out at any second. It was possible, but there was no precedent for it.

He threw back the locks and opened the door, feeling completely pissed off with him. “How the hell did you find me?”

Kier looked at him with a clear eyed guilelessness that he just knew had to be an act. “You gave me your phone number, remember? I found your address in the online white pages.”

He groaned at his own stupidity, and made a mental note not to give bad guys his personal info. You’d think that would have been obvious, but no … “So why are you here?”

He shrugged somewhat sheepishly. “I felt I owed you an explanation, considering what happened last night. Can I come in? I keep thinking that a body’s gonna come flying from that apartment.”

Bren glared at him, not sure if he should laugh at his audacity or hit him. “That’s right, you can’t come in unless I invite you. Isn’t that a shame?”

Kier stepped forward and held out his hand. Bren took an automatic step back, and Kier waved his hand inside his apartment, his arm well beyond the door frame. “Um, actually no. I’m trying to be polite.”

“What?” That didn’t make sense! Vampires couldn’t come into a person’s place unless they were invited or the resident dead! Or - “Damn it! It’s ‘cause I’m half demon, right?”

He nodded, retracting his arm. “I think so, yeah. Sorry.”

“Oh, fuck me!” he snapped angrily, turning and stalking into his apartment. As an afterthought, he said, “Yeah, fine, come in. But remember what I am.”

It took Kier a moment to get it. “You mean demon hunter?”

“No, I mean lactose intolerant. What do you think?” He scowled at him, considering sitting down before reconsidering it. He remained standing, arms crossed over his chest, back to the wall so he could keep an eye on him. Kier came in, shutting the door gently and giving his place a visual once over. He suddenly remembered he hadn’t done his dishes for a couple of days, and then he rolled his eyes at himself . This guy was a vampire, one who set them up - who gave a fuck what he thought about his housekeeping?

Kier seemed to understand that he wasn’t comfortable, so he stuck to the other side of the room, looking over the stuff there. He glanced at his bookshelf and then looked at the dvd case on top of his cable box. “Hey, Unleashed. I always meant to see that. How is it?”

“Okay. I got a couple of moves from it.” Jet Li was the man. Was everyone absolutely positive he wasn’t a mutant? ‘Cause he had some seriously difficult moves. He could just imagine Jet and Logan in a pit against a hundred angry demons (or mutants - or both), and it just gave him a slight thrill of pleasure. Now that would be something to watch, a total fighting clinic - they could probably make a billion dollars on pay-per-view.

“Huh?”

“Nothing. So say what you’re gonna say, or attack me, whatever, I had a bad night and I’m in no mood to fuck around.”

“Attack you? If I wanted you dead, I’d have let Raven kill you then dusted her.”

That was a point, but he wasn’t about to concede it. “Get to your point. I don’t have all night, and I’m pretty sure you don’t either.”

He raised an eyebrow at that, giving him a smirk so sharp it looked painful. “You’re that angry at me? I guess I don’t blame you; I would be too. But you see, I’m kinda selfish, and I had real tunnel vision. I just wanted to get these guys so bad … it never occurred to me that there was a chance you guys wouldn’t see it for what it was.”

“A trap to kill us all? Yeah, we get those a lot. None of this excuses what you did. You couldn’t have said ‘Oh by the way, you know this is a trap and I’m a lying skank, right?’”

“Hey! Skank’s a bit uncalled for …”

“You’re not a vamp whore?”

He rolled his eyes and gave him a sour look. “Don’t call me that. I didn’t lie about the bite club, but I don’t like being called a whore. No, it’s not exactly high class work, but I do perform a sort of service, keeping those sad fetishists off the street and out of the way of moving trains. People like that don’t feel alive unless they’re staring big ugly death in the face. They get a thrill - a safe one - and go home happy. I don’t apologize for that.”

“And you get blood.”

He conceded that with a small shrug. “Nobody dies, so that’s in the plus column for me, right?”

Bren kept glaring at him. “Stop that.”

“Stop what?”

“I’ve dated a lot of guys like you. You’re totally arrogant, but you think you can somehow make it charming and cute. It’s not; so knock it off before a stake you with a chopstick.”

“Ouch. You don’t mince words, do you?”

He sighed, almost too tired to banter with him. “Look, I’m not accepting your apology, but I’ll make sure Angel doesn’t hunt you down and kill you for it. Okay? Is that what you wanted?”

Kier gave him a tired, sad smile. “If I say what I want, you won’t believe me.”

He threw his hands up in the air in disbelief. “God, I’m so fucking tired of people playing games with me! Tell me and get the fuck out!”

“I wasn’t lying that night at Syn, you know. I do like you. I got the sense you were as lost as I am.”

“What the fuck d’ya mean lost?” He was trying to ingratiate himself with him, wasn’t he? Why? He got what he wanted; the people who changed him and ruined his acting career were dead. So what else could he want? He didn’t work for Wolfram and Hart, did he?

Kier shrugged a single shoulder and glanced down at the carpet, almost embarrassed. It was a good act; he could have gone far as an actor. “Alone. You know, I was a poor Human, I know that now, but I think I’m a pretty good vampire. Which is sad, but what is worse is that I can’t really stand other vampires. They all seem so self-involved, and so … one note. ‘Wanna get someone to eat?’ It’s like they can’t think of anything else. I want something … more.”

“I think I should warn you at this point that I never bought that Anne Rice bullshit. There’s no such thing as a noble vampire.” Angel was just the exception that proved the rule, but he had a special set of circumstances. And the Sisters were probably influenced by Bob, although even in that case, they remained frighteningly evil - just evil on their side.

Kier nodded, finally looking him in the eye. “I’m not noble; I’m the opposite of noble. I’m just lonely, and I’d like to talk to someone who has more on their mind than their next meal.”

This was trap number two. He knew it, and yet he couldn’t quite figure out the end result of it. Was the point ingratiating himself in Angel’s inner circle? To what end? Sabotage? His curiosity was really piqued now. Kier was probably someone’s pawn, but whose? Although Wolfram and Hart was the prime suspects, there were more than a few other possibilities. There was one sure way to find out: play along. He was willing to take one for the team before, so why not now? Maybe he could finally be useful for something other than taking messages. (And maybe he could get him mind off of everything else …) He scoffed, still playing the skeptical angle. “That’s very nice. Would you like some violin accompaniment?”

He shook his head, presumably in disappointment. “Why don’t I come back some other time? Maybe when you’re less pissed off at me.”

Kier started walking back towards the door, but Bren had made up his mind. This guy was working for someone, and he was going to find out who, and why on earth they decided to target him as the weak link. (Because he was? No, he wasn’t, but he could see how some people might think that.) The thought that someone could be angling to take advantage of his obvious loneliness infuriated him, but the flush of heat through his system felt welcoming. He had something to do now besides feel sorry for himself.

He grabbed Kier by the arm and threw him against the wall. Kier managed to turn and hit the wall back first, but he stared at him with a mixture of incredulousness and curiosity. “What the fuck was that for?”

“So you want me, huh? Prove it.” he told him, and kissed him hard, a move that would have threatened to suffocate someone … except he was a vampire and didn’t need to breathe. He was ice cold, but his icy hands on his body made goosebumps rise on his skin as Kier kissed him back just as hard - oh yeah, he was a good actor - and tangled his fingers in his still damp hair.

If Kier wanted to play this game, so be it. He could use him to forget, to kill the pain, then stake the bastard as soon as he found out who he was working for and to what purpose.

He was a demon, after all. There was no reason he couldn’t be as ruthless as the rest of them.

To Be Continued ….