17

They all reunited at the demon hospital, which seemed like a sad commentary on everything, and Angel imagined that it was.

As always, they were reluctant to treat regular Humans, but then Helga pointed out that Logan was Bob’s avatar, and the staff couldn’t possibly move fast enough to help. Saddiq, Marcus, Scott, and Willow/Xander also received help in the wake of the great wave eager to help Logan. Angel sat with Willow in the corridor where rows of plastic chairs were set flush against one wall, where she ate a bag of jelly beans she found in Xander’s coat pocket, and looked on in wonder at the demons and Humans milling about in hospital scrubs. She didn’t realize places like this existed, although she admitted it made sense. She didn’t know what to do to bring Xander around, but she decided to stick around until he was back. She also had her coven back in Ireland conjure up some red quartz glasses, which she gave to Scott so he could actually open his eyes now. When he saw how badly injured Logan actually was - and he was shockingly pale, almost vampire pale - he grimaced, and didn’t ! make a smart assed remark.

Giles and the others came in, looking fairly well. And Angel got to tell them how the building seemed to collapse in on itself, just pancaked, before they were ten feet from it, which was why he and some of the others had plaster dust on them. But at least they escaped, which was something. Giles told him about the Morpyrous demon Nurse, and the quick resolution of her. Willow offered them all jelly beans, but only Bren took one.

The doctor - a female Persaid demon, with the name Pylon (Doctor Pylon? Why did Persaid demons insist on such inappropriate names?) - came out to tell them they were honestly puzzled by Logan’s physiological responses, and the fact that he had a bunch of metal in him, but they were giving him fluids and kind of hoping he’d recover on his own. At the moment, there was nothing they could do for his missing eye.

Bren pointed out that Bob could give him his eye back, like he’d given Xander his eye back, but they had to wait for him to show up. The problem with that was they had no idea when he was going to show up. He must have been successful since the Hellmouth closed without direct resistance, but he never said if he was coming back right afterwards. Everyone just assumed, but with Bob, you never could tell.

Oh hell - knowing him, he was probably just surfing somewhere.

***

It was a beautiful oasis, a small copse of date palms with long, wispy fronds that shaded them from the high yellow sun, surrounding a pool as silver as molten platinum, and as long as a hotel swimming pool.

It was a beautiful place, but warm, and in honor of that Bob wore nothing but board shorts, namely his bright blue ones with neon green and yellow clovers and horseshoes on it, the ones that clashed with absolutely everything. Just wearing shorts also allowed him to make sure he had reincorporated correctly, with all parts present and accounted for. Bas also helped him make sure of that, although she criticized his shorts. “Why do you insist on dressing like a court jester?” she wondered.

He would have taken offense if he didn’t resemble that remark. “I refuse to be taken seriously,” he told her. “I’ll be taken seriously when I’m dead.”

“That doesn’t make sense.”

“I know.” He grinned at her, and she just scowled at him. She was pretty when she scowled.

Her current form was Humanoid, her skin the exact hue of cinnamon (a deep reddish brown), her face mostly Human, although her eyes were definitely feline and a sort of bright amber color that you just didn’t encounter much in real life. Also her hair looked short and sleek, a fine sable color, but when you touched it you could feel that it was actually fur. It was strange, but quite nice when you got accustomed to it.

They were sitting by the pool … or no, she was, topless, wearing only a gold batik sarong that was an attractive contrast to her reddish-brown skin. He was laying down, his head on her thigh, and she stroked his hair as he stared up at the clear sapphire sky. This was Bas’s realm, a place he knew well. A gorgeous place to visit, but he couldn’t see living her - and she felt the same way about Earth, hence their split up. Bas may not have liked the realm, but at least she understood the enjoyment of having a physical form, however transiently. “I don’t see why you want to go back there,” she said with a sigh. She really wasn’t asking him to explain, as they’d already been over it; it was simply a rhetorical question now.

“Thanks for the save, sweetie. I owe you one.”

“One?” She stared down at him, her face blocking the view of the sky.

He grinned at her, in a way he knew she thought was charming, and yet also an incitement to general violence. “It’s metric.”

She tapped her fingernail/claw hard on his forehead, just to make a point. “You’re just being a smart ass so I’ll kick you out.”

“No, I’m just being a smart ass. You know I’m good at it.”

“Too good.” She looked off at the horizon, where her ziggurats and hanging gardens broke up the fields of golden sands. “They’re not worth it.”

He knew she was referring to Humans. “Oh hell hon, none of us are worth it when you get right down to it. That’s not the point.”

“No, the point is to piss off all the other gods, isn’t it?”

“I can’t reveal my trade secrets, sweets.”

She removed her leg out from underneath him suddenly, so his head hit the sand reasonably hard. “Ow.”

Bastet stared down at him, glaring, but not in a truly angry way. She was more annoyed than anything. “One day, the Powers could totally abandon you, and if they do, the others will come for you. I may not be there to save you.”

“I know.” He sat up, brushing sand out of his hair. “But that day probably won’t ever come. The Powers won’t totally cut the leash ‘cause they’re afraid of me. Or perhaps I should say what I represent.”

She cocked her head curiously. “What do you represent?”

“Anarchy. No one should ever have been able to break away from a group mind; no one should have had any sense of individuality. But I did it, and if I did, someone else could too. What will become of the Powers then? I’m sure they don’t want to find out. They need me around as an example of what happens if you don’t go along with the flow.” He smiled bitterly. “I’m the thing that should not be.”

She ruffled his hair. “I’m glad you are.”

“You’re only saying that because I owe you favors.”

Even though it was a joke, she grinned, showing off sharp feline teeth. “You bet.”

He stood and brushed sand off his shorts, shaking his head in mock disapproval. “You ex-wives are all the same.”

“There will always be a place for you here, you troublesome smart ass,” she said, with a certain amount of weary affection.

“Thanks. I’ll keep that in mind.” He reached down and took her hand, kissing the back of it in love and respect. She was a great lady; the Human race should have mourned the day she turned her back on them for good. But of course, they’d already forgotten about her, relegated her to other people’s history.

“They’re not worth it,” she sighed, aware this was an argument she couldn’t win.

Bob shrugged, and gave her a lazy smile. “Neither am I,” he admitted, then stepped outside of Bastet’s tropical paradise, and returned to his adopted home.

****

Angel was about to make an excuse to find a back room and get some sleep - the sun was up somewhere beyond these thick walls, he could feel it, and it was making him feel much more tired than he had any right to - when suddenly there were gasps in the front room, and Angel got a familiar sensation of power.

Well, finally!

Bob turned the corner from the lobby and came down the corridor, looking more rested and relaxed than he had before. “Bubbalehs! So, we slew the dragon again, eh?” He was wearing his usual leather pants and boots, but had adopted a green t-shirt that had printed on it: “I Lost My Car Keys In Leighton Buzzard”. It was rare he didn’t understand Bob’s shirts - he usually understood them but didn’t get them - but he was glad when it happened.

Marcus stood up from his chair. Everybody was here, filling the chairs, save for Logan, and that’s why Angel knew what Marc was going to say. “Logan needs your help.”

“Does he? What’s he done - ouch!” Bob suddenly exclaimed, putting a hand up to his left eye. “Man, what the fuck did he do to his eye?”

They all exchanged quizzical looks. But Angel figured that Bob must have reached out to Logan mentally, and did a kind of mental sense assessment, reaching into Logan‘s mind. Just because he didn’t have any power in him didn’t mean that the connection between them wasn’t still there. Becoming an avatar was a more or less permanent thing, as far as he understood it.

It was Scott that answered Bob’s question. “We don’t really know. He just lost it at some point.”

“Fabulous,” Bob sighed sarcastically. “That boy’s loonier than a wombat in underpants sometimes. Okay, I’ll go fix ‘im, but he’d better know this is the last time. Eyes don’t grow on trees.”

Willow looked at him, and whispered, “Wombat in underpants?”

Angel just shrugged. He didn’t get it either, but then again, he was glad he didn’t. This was one of those things he filed in the category “better off not knowing”.

As Bob walked past them, he paused and suddenly took a couple of steps back, so he was right in front of Willow. “Where’s Xander?” he wondered.

Willow grimaced, and it was funny in the sense that it was clearly a Willow expression, and yet it was Xander’s face showing it. “He passed out. I’d wake him up, but shouting doesn’t seem to work.”

“No he’s not,” Bob said, suddenly frowning, his eyes staring at a nowhere point just north of Angel’s shoulder.

Willow frowned to, in total befuddlement. “No he’s not what?”

Bob crouched down in front of her so he’d be closer to eye level, and asked, “Were you grabbed at some point? During the fight?”

She shook her head, and Angel suddenly had a bad feeling about this. What was Bob getting at? “No, the others were good at keeping the demons away from me.”

“I don’t mean by the demons. I mean did something grab you? A feeling, a sense of power?”

She considered the question carefully, biting her lip (well, Xander’s lip). “Yes, but I was channeling a lot of power.”

“Who did you invoke? Hecate? “

As Willow nodded, Giles shifted forward on his seat, and asked the question that was surely going through all their minds. “What’s wrong?”

Bob sighed and sat back on his haunches, rubbing his hands on the legs of his pants. “Xander’s gone. I think he was taken. The problem is, I gotta figure out who did it.”

Willow’s eyes widened. “Gone? What do you - you don’t mean dead, do you?”

“No, not at all. It’s just his soul got snatched. “ Bob stood up, scowling in thought. “Now why would Hecate grab a soul? Payment?”

“Hold on,” Willow exclaimed, jumping to her (Xander’s) feet. “You’re saying someone stole his soul right out of his body, and I never noticed?”

Bob shrugged with his hands. “You were casting a heavy spell. You probably could have gotten gut shot and you wouldn’t have noticed until it was all over.”

Angel watched Xander’s hands curl and clench, a nervous Willow gesture that still looked odd coming from him. Of course it wasn’t him anymore; his body was a shell that Willow just happened to be driving. “What happens if I leave his body before we get his soul back? I’m astral projecting, you know! I’m not really here! I mean, I am … but I’m not!”

“Depends on how it was removed and for what purpose,” Bob said, as casually as if discussing menu options. “He could be simply comatose, or a soulless murdering fiend, or he could just drop dead. Depends.”

Willow turned to him in wide eyed terror, and Angel wished he could say something comforting, but he had nothing. He should have known they got away too clean, too easy - they left someone behind, and they never even realized it.

Damn it, he knew something like this would happen. He knew he never should have let Xander join the team.

To Be Continued …..