10

They had to wait for Logan and Marcus to arrive before they could get underway, but luckily they didn’t have to wait too much longer, and once the pair of them arrived, they were brought up to speed pretty quickly. Logan seemed puzzled that Scott had been called in, but pretty much kept his comments to himself. Scott looked about as thrilled to have Marcus there, but what could he say about it?

Helga sat waiting, wondering if anyone else had caught what she was sure she had caught. Probably not; no one here knew Bob quite as well as she did.

Both the kids - Bren and Kier - looked shit scared, but the words “home for the criminally insane” had a tendency to do that. Giles was too much of an old pro to show how freaked out he was, and Naomi was a credit to her gender by acting dubious about it all, not scared, just curious about Bob’s sanity. Logan wondered if they didn’t need some more support, but Bob assured them the humanoid portal wouldn’t be too heavily guarded because Dave would want to keep it all “under the radar”, and the group left, trying to figure out if Naomi would fry Giles’s car wiring or not.

What Helga had figured out was Bob was pretty much guaranteeing their survival; he’d selected them to have the best chance of living through this. The rest of them would have to fight to do it, in a building that made “Night of the Living Dead” look like a Disney film. By sending them on a scary sounding mission, he had actually spared them the worst of it.

He wanted to give them time to reach Rosewood, so Bob suggested everyone have another drink, which led Scott to point out that going into a fight tanked wasn’t a good idea. “I don’t know about that,” Bob replied. “You’ll sober up quick in that place. It’s being transformed into the tenth circle of hell.”

“I thought there were only nine,” Marc said, proving he’d read Dante.

Bob considered his response carefully. “Technically, there’s forty thousand or so, if you count every single separate hell dimension. But there was no way Dante could have known that.”

“Forty thousand?” Scott repeated in disbelief. “You’re making that up.”

“Actually there’s probably more, depending on your definition of hell. If I said there’s more “bad” gods than good, would I break your heart?”

Scott scowled at him. “I don’t know. You seem like one of the bad ones, so I’m not surprised.”

Bob grabbed his chest and staggered back dramatically, feigning a heart attack. “Oh, you got me. How do I live..?”

Helga gave him a little push. “Knock it off, drama queen.”

Bob gave her an indignant look, but he was fighting down a smile, humor sparkling in his cobalt eyes. “Just because I enjoy being the center of attention doesn’t make me a drama queen. I’m just extra needy.”

She smiled at him and shook her head. Again, it was a good thing he was so loveable.

Willow and Xander argued briefly between themselves - Xander wanted an alcoholic drink, but Willow didn’t drink alcohol, so eventually Xander gave in and they had a coffee (like Scott) - before Bob said, “Wait twenty minutes, then head to Brentwood. They should be at Rosewood by then, and I should be in Dave’s dimension.”

“Can you beat him?” Helga asked, actually fairly certain she knew the answer.

He grimaced, but for once, he told the truth. “In a straight fight, no. But that’s why I’m making a stop before I confront him. So you’ll excuse me if I bugger off.”

“We can count on you to actually do your part, right?” Scott asked, a bit bitchily.

Bob smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “Pity about that rash.”

“What rash?” Scott asked, then scratched the back of his neck rather emphatically. “Damn it.”

Logan chuckled. “Remind me never to annoy you.”

“At least you’d never remember it if you did,” Bob replied cheerfully, giving his a suspicious wink. Before Logan could ask about that, Bob turned to Lia and said, “Why don’t you get Scott some calamine lotion?”

Lia stared back at him in bewildered disbelief. “What? Since when did I become a bloody nurse?”

“Please sweetheart?”

She sighed explosively and rolled her eyes, which Bob all but ignored. Scott kept scratching his neck, unaware that Bob had just given him the rash. Actually, the Boy Scout was lucky - if she had been Bob, she’d have given him crabs the size of crawfish.

Bob hugged her and gave her a goodbye kiss on the cheek, taking the opportunity to whisper in her ear, “Keep ‘em alive, love.”

“I’ll do my best,” she whispered back. “But I make no promises about the Boy Scout.”

He gave her an encouraging smile and a pat on the back. It seemed to say “casualties happen”, but maybe that was just wishful thinking on her part.

She had no idea where he was off to now, but she didn’t ask, because she thought it was probably for the best that she didn’t know. If he hadn’t done it already, it couldn’t be that bad.

Right?

*****

He could have just walked in the front door, but what was the fun in that?

Instead he materialized on the uppermost floor of Wolfram and Hart, just in front of the elevator, and he heard the alarm that went off the instant he solidified. Now, come on, what kind of welcome was that?

People fled from their offices, down the opposite end of the hall, and Bob stepped towards them, singing loudly, “My cock is much bigger than yours! My cock can walk right through the door!“

A ghost suddenly materialized several feet in front of him, a somewhat severely handsome Asian man in a crisp five thousand dollar suit. “Bob, we don’t know the meaning of this, but we’d rather not have any trouble.”

He grinned, not bothering to hide the humor in it. “What, you don’t like System of a Down?”

The ghost lawyer scowled at him. “You know what I mean.”

“I’m not here to cause trouble, Gavin me boy, I just want to speak to your masters.” The ghost looked vaguely surprised at the use of his name. “What, did you really think a ghost would be immune to me? Please. In fact, I could do a lot I bet they never told you.” He reached out and gabbed Gavin by the lapels, which startled him so much that he looked pale - even for a ghost.

“How the hell can you touch me?” he exclaimed, dropping his cool façade momentarily.

“Why wouldn’t I be able to touch you? I’m not entirely physical, after all - I’m a bit more than that.” He pulled Gavin closer, and said conspiratorially, "You know, Logan really is my avatar, so it's a good thing you didn't challenge him on it. As my avatar I consider him part of my family, and you do know what happens to you if you fuck with me and mine, don't you? You fuck with him in any way and I find out about it, I'm gonna bring this place down around your ears. Got it, mate?" He said the last word with heavy sarcasm, tightening his grip on his collar more than necessary. If he'd had a physical as opposed to spectral body, he would have choked.

His hazel eyes widened in alarm, although the professional evil lawyer guise quickly slammed down again as he tried to regain his composure. "No one wants to start the war again, Bob."

Bob let him go, giving him a slight shove back. "Good. Tell your bosses to keep that in mind. Now, are you gonna lead me to the White Room, or do I barge in uninvited?"

Gavin straightened his coat and moved his neck as if Bob had wrenched it. He hadn't even come close, but fine, whatever. Always had to claim whiplash. "If you know where it is, why bother with this charade?"

"Because I'm trying to be polite." He grinned, showing his teeth, a half smile that was inherently hostile. "Now, shall we?"

Gavin didn't look impressed, but underneath his cynical expression he was trying very hard not to freak out. Bob had the power here, all of it, and if he wanted to disincorporate him he could do it at any moment, and in a way that would preclude the Senior Partners from ever getting him back. This was all a mere formality, a dance, and Bob could end it at any time. It was really disturbing for a man used to having all the power on his side.

He pretended to think about it, and then led Bob to another elevator.

Once inside, Gavin reached above the bank of buttons, and put his hand through the panel like a good little ghost. But it was more than that; Bob could see the hidden button beneath the panel, the one leading to the "special" floor, the one that was simply a thin spot between dimensions, much like his in the back of the bar or at his Sydney home. Bob could have simply triggered the button himself, but seriously, where was the fun in that? Making Gavin squirm, Wolfram and Hart toady that he was, was funny.

Gavin slipped out of the elevator once the doors closed, leaving Bob to take the lift alone, which suited him fine.

The elevator opened on what seemed to be an endless, featureless white room, the temperature lukewarm against all expectations of cold. As soon as Bob stepped out onto the floor the elevator disappeared as if it had never been there at all. But again it was an illusion, and one that wasn't all that special. None of this was all that special.

He heard a low rumbling noise, and saw a large blank panther slink out of the whiteness, growling at him. He couldn't help but laugh. "Oh please, mate, save it for the punters." He reached out and touched one of the white walls, and twisted the scenario.

It wasn't all that hard, actually. One Senior Partner, one slightly depowered PTB - they were essentially evenly matched. With just a hard thought he changed the white room into the San Diego zoo, more specifically the old big cat habitat. The black panther avatar of the SP was now behind the black bars of a cage, looking out with an expression of almost Human surprise. Bob had changed his own wardrobe to one more “crocodile hunter“ like: loose khaki shirt, matching walking shorts, hiking boots, and a stupid ass pith helmet. "See, I got parlor tricks of my own."

He felt the illusion wrench away from him, and he let it go without a fight. He only wanted to prove a point, and he was certain he had.

The white room/San Diego Zoo suddenly became a rather stuffy and somewhat bland study, with overstuffed wing chairs and a red carpet with a loud pattern that suggested blood splatter. Bookcases full of books, ones with covers made of human skin and demon hide, ringed the walls, and standing in the middle of the room was a somewhat matronly woman with elegantly upswept brown hair, her heavy red velvet dress suggesting Victorian elegance without all the petticoats and corsets. "You are a low creature, aren't you?" the Senior Partner spat, crossing her arms across her ample bosom.

"You know me, no good convict born Ozzie surfer trash," he replied amicably, sure the SP wouldn't get the joke and wouldn't care anyways.

"You're violating the agreement by coming here, you know."

"I made no agreement with you, and you know the PTB's have precious little control over me. Not for lack of trying, bless 'em, but as I said, I'm trash."

She/it harrumphed, but it couldn't argue with him. "Why are you here, Bob?"

"Ah, down to business. We have a mutual enemy trying to break through to this plane, and I thought you might wanna give us a hand in tossing them out."

She/it snorted derisively. "Fight your own battles. We don't care."

"You will when I tell you its Dave."

She cocked her head to the side, her featureless black eyes giving nothing away. But she/it was thinking, and communicating with the rest of the Partners. He knew how it worked; he'd done this with the PTBs before. “Do you mean Aesma Daeva?”

“You know any other gods named Dave?”

Her/its features seemed to sharpen as she/it looked straight at him. “Why? Why does he come back now?”

Bob shrugged, aware such a Human gesture would really annoy the Partner. “No idea. Some bonehead accidentally opened a hole into his dimension, and I guess he decided he could use the amusement. But the long and short of it is, we’re completely fucked. He’s opening a gap as we speak, in an apartment in Brentwood, and he’s opened it just enough that he’s already influencing everyone there. And almost prevented my teleport when I went in there. He’s also let some Charunai through.”

She/it waved her hand dismissively. “Just sic some brain parasites on it.”

“I don’t do parasites. That’s more your kinda thing.”

She/it scowled at him, and he simply shoved his pith helmet back on his head, waiting for all of the Partners to come to a decision. “There are others you could go to.”

“Yeah, and there are others involved, but isn’t this your precious territory? I’ll be damned if me and my friends are gonna fight to defend your space. You want a foothold in this world? You want one right here, in L.A.? Earn your fucking keep.”

She/it glared at him through narrowed eyes. “You’d fight him anyways.”

“But we might lose. You know how powerful he is. Are you willing to risk it?”

Again the disgusted look, the frosty body language. But he knew they would cave, simply because Dave was a huge problem, one they didn’t want to deal with on their own. He was rage and he was madness, and he could make the Partner’s followers turn on them quite easily. Dave was a problem they didn’t need.

At least, if you couldn’t depend on someone’s good nature, you could depend on their desire not to lose their power.

11

It was hard to believe it was sunrise. In fact, it didn’t look like it at all.

Bob had said it wouldn’t be a factor, and yet Angel found it hard to believe, especially since he didn’t bother to explain why it wouldn’t be a problem. But out on the street, it became obvious.

The sunrise was blocked from view due to thick black and iron grey clouds, which blanketed the sky like it had been wrapped in cotton wool. The air was charged with ozone, and fat raindrops were not so much falling as spitting down in fits and spurts, blood warm and with an odd tinge of salt. The sun was up and out there - it was making his skin itch, the feeling of the looming, deathly sun - but not a single ray was getting through, nor was it likely to. “Now how did this happen?” Scott wondered, looking up. “It was clear when I got here.”

“Bob knows a lot of … people,” Helga said, totally unconcerned. “I’m sure he called in favors.”

“People as in gods?” Xander - or possibly Willow; at this point the line was blurring pretty fast. “Can we depend on them for help?”

Helga was forced to shrug and shake her head. “They all do their own thing. It’s hard to say. If Bob could depend on them, he wouldn’t need us.”

That was sad but probably true, and also kind of humbling. They were the last resort.

He hoped Naomi and Bren were okay. Giles could pretty well take care of himself, and he just didn’t care about Kier, as he still didn’t trust him completely. He just hoped that Kier didn’t pick now to do his backstabbing double crossing. Going to an insane asylum was never easy, but that had to be doubly true when you were pursuing an agent of some evil god.

When they reached Brentwood, thunder had finally started rumbling, but it was off in the distance, and the rain was pattering down in a slightly lackadaisical manner, as if the clouds could barely be bothered to spill their contents. Along with the quiet and seemingly empty block, it just increased the eeriness, and the humidity was quickly becoming stultifying. Even though he was dead and usually impervious to these sorts of things, Angel could feel it; the air was like a warm, wet towel across their faces. Uncomfortable was too mild a word for such a condition.

“Do we actually have a plan?” Scott asked.

“Not much point to one,” Helga replied. “They’ll be expecting us, and our plans are totally dependant on how they decide to respond.”

“I thought our plan was just kill ‘em all and get Willow and you up to the seventh floor,” Logan said.

Helga shrugged half-heartedly. “Well, that’s the meat of it. But there’ll probably be tweaks around the edges.”

“Kill them all?” Scott repeated with obvious distaste. “I thought they were already dead.”

“Well, yeah, but what else are you gonna call it?” Helga asked, giving him a funny but slightly severe look.

Scott had no answer for that. While you technically couldn’t “kill” the dead, it was somehow done every day. If you worried too much about the semantics, you had way too much time on your hands.

When they reached Sun Plaza, they found that the door was open. Not just unlocked - wide open, as if someone had propped it open for a moment to move their sofa out. Shadows pooled inside, and it was impossible even for him to make out if there was anything waiting for them.

Logan audibly sniffed, then reared back his head and lifted the back of his hand to his nose. “Son of a bitch.”

“Stinks, don’t it?” Xander/Willow commiserated.

“Worse,” Logan grumbled. “It smells like boiled blood, rancid meat, and burned skin.”

Angel had thought the scent had a bloody tinge - as a vampire, he could pick up the slightest hint of blood - but Logan had added layers to the description. It wasn’t that he was incorrect, it was just his own personal demon really didn’t give a shit about anything else.

“Are they burning people?” Scott asked, sounding appalled.

Helga scoffed. “They’ve gouged people’s eyes out with soup spoons. Burning would probably be the least thing they’ve done.”

“Fun,” Marcus said, pulling out two automatic handguns. They were cocked and ready to go. “Good thing you and I are wearing goggles, huh Scott?”

Scott didn’t reply to that, but no one expected him to.

“Anybody ahead of us?” Logan asked Marc. “I can’t single ‘em out by smell.”

Marc seemed to look up and down the building, and shook his head. “I’m not reading heat signatures, just some kinda nightmare infrared bleed up around the seventh floor. If you want my expert opinion, they’re all fucking zombies, ‘cause ain’t a single one of ‘em are registering as alive.”

“Not a total shock,” Angel said, although he was quietly relieved. He knew he hadn’t heard heartbeats, but he was still unsure about their actual state; the god could be fucking with his senses, like it seemed to fuck with everyone else’s sanity.

Logan popped his claws, which made Xander/Willow jump, and walked on inside the building, grumbling, “Last one in is a total fucking coward.”

“Hey now, that’s an insult to honest cowards,” Marc said, following him in. Being with Marc and Logan was sometimes like trailing a couple of wisecracking “buddy cops” in an action film, only they weren’t cops, this wasn’t a film, and they had a tendency to leave real carnage in their wake. The sad thing was this was often their selling point.

Inside the building it was still dark, and seemingly empty, although no one trusted it. Still they went up the staircase carefully, warily, the tension as bad as the threat of thunder outside. Finally on the second floor, they found people waiting for them; people with bloody eyes, people with weapons as varied and odd as baseball bats, kitchen knives, bookends, and machetes. Marcus sniped them, shooting out their knees or heads, mainly depending on the age of the “zombie”, while Logan plunged through the crowd, leveling the front of the group, while he, Helga, and Saddiq picked off the rest of crowd. Scott shot one or two, but mostly stayed out of it, as did Xander/Willow, who kept on the staircase. “You were right,” Xander said to himself … no, Willow said to Xander. Again, hard to separate the two.

The third floor was clear, but when they hit the fourth floor, people started jumping down at them from the upper level.

They attacked like demons, like crazed animals, falling down on them like air dropped commandoes, some with weapons, some not, crushing them, kicking, punching, and biting at anyone in their range. They fell by the dozens upon dozens, trying to swarm them like ants, and Angel could feel them pulling his hair, biting his arm, and only throwing an occasional punch in his midsection. Angel punched out randomly, kicked out, grabbed the occasional possessed person and threw them kicking and screaming over the railing. He wanted to rip their throats out, use his fangs to open a vein and see if there was any blood in them worth anything, but he didn’t, because he was fairly sure once he did he’d be gone and Angelus would be ascendant once more. Besides, this wasn’t exactly proper fighting; this was pure, desperate madness.

Scott got fed up and turned his visor up to some incredible level, because with a single blast he carved out a huge swath in the crowd, but he overestimated his power and punched through a wall and out the other side. Angel only knew he’d hit the outside because of the fresh air suddenly gusting through the building. It was welcome, but all it did was blow around the stale, bloody scent that seemed to cling to the back of their throats.

Marc shot some of the possessed as they fell down towards them, their heads exploding and showering them with gore, while Logan ripped through even more of them, painting the walls with strips and splatters of blood that marred the graffiti. Sid was still breaking back and necks, while Helga was using her machete to cleave through her portion of the people, splashing around even more blood. If it didn’t smell like a charnel house before, it did now.

Scott was tackled from behind and brought down, the crowd dog piling on him frantically, and as they all fought their way towards him, kicking, slashing, and shooting their way towards Scott, a red beam of energy erupted from the heart of the pile and people went flying, while the beam smashed through the ceiling. Angel and Logan reached him at the same time, just as debris started to come down - not only from the ceiling but from all the upper levels his beam had punched through - and Logan shouted, “It’s us, don’t shoot!” They each grabbed one of Scott’s arms and dragged him out of danger as the debris began pelting down in earnest, and Marcus laid down covering fire to keep what was left of the crowd back.

Scott had closed his eyes tight as they dragged him back to the stairs, but he instantly asked, “Where’s my visor? Someone took it.” He was bleeding from the corner of his mouth, and from deep fingernail scratches that crisscrossed his face, but he looked relatively okay otherwise.

Logan waded back through the fray, kicking aside chunks and pieces of dead bodies as well as debris, while Helga and Sid stood on the stairs leading up to the next level, clearly waiting for the rest of them to get a move on. Logan found something that he held up, but it wasn’t a visor more than it was a fragment of something black. “Uh, bad news. They broke it.”

“Is it salvageable?”

“Only if you’re willing to keep one eye shut.”

“Shit.”

Scott was forced to keep his eyes shut, meaning he was out of the fight for the time being. Xander/Willow draped his arm around Xander’s shoulders and helped the now blind Scott up the stairs, because there was no way they could leave him on his own in here. They were on the sixth floor riser when the gunshots started.

It wasn’t Marcus shooting - it was someone shooting at them. And it wasn’t handgun fire either. It was machine gun fire that made them all hit the floor as the bullets chewed up the wall behind them, punched through the railing and reduced it to splinters, and zinged over their heads like angry insects. “Holy shit, they’ve got Uzis,” Marc shouted, attempting to fire back blindly, but it was almost useless. He couldn’t quite get off a shot at a decent angle, and firing a single round as opposed to a dozen a second seemed like spitting in the ocean.

Sid stood, but Logan instantly yanked him down. “What the fuck are you doin’ kid?”

“I’m bulletproof,” Sid replied, staring at Logan as if he’d gone mad.

“Then why are you bleedin’?” Logan shouted back, pointing at Sid’s left arm.

Saddiq looked, and stared in what was clearly astonishment. There was a small but obvious hole through his arm, bleeding copiously, although luckily a vein hadn’t been severed. “How ..?” he wondered, suddenly looking like the very young man he was. “Do they have adamantium bullets?”

“Worse,” Xander/Willow said, and held up a perfectly formed silver plated bullet. The bullet shouldn’t have been perfectly formed; it should have been deformed from hitting an object, possibly even fragmented. But as Angel peered at the bullet, he saw there was a symbol etched on the side, one that almost looked like one of the runes Bob had carved on his body. “These are enchanted bullets.”

“What?” Scott asked, and nearly opened his eyes.

“They make those?” Marc asked, reloading one of his Glocks.

“You can if you want,” Xander/Willow replied, his facial expression betraying distaste at the very idea. “This symbol means they can’t be stopped; they’ll go through anything. They’re also indestructible.”

“What about adamantium?” Logan asked. Angel knew suddenly what Logan was planning to do.

Xander/Willow frowned in thought and shook his head at the same time. “I don’t know. It’s doubtful, but -”

“I’ll take out the guns,” Logan said. He started to stand up, but Angel grabbed him by the arm, and pointed out, “I’m already dead. It doesn’t matter to me.”

But the way Logan stared back at him, Angel realized quite suddenly that Logan was fighting his own inner demons just as hard as he was, maybe more so. There was something just behind Logan’s eyes, something dark and hard, a madness akin to the madness you could see in the eyes of the Sun Plaza people … if they still had eyes. It was so cold and so frightening - a look he hadn’t seen since the time Wolfram and Hart had brought out his “second” personality, the assassin - that Angel had to catch himself before he did a double take. Wasn‘t that gone? There was no way it could be back … right? “He’s a god of rage, right? I’m gonna show him what real rage is.”

“Logan … “ Scott said warningly. If there was more to it, he stopped before he could complete the thought.

It didn’t matter anyways; Angel had let Logan go. Better that Weapon X was turned on the possessed then turned on them.

Logan didn’t stand more than he sprung to his feet racing up the stairs two at a time, springing his claws as he moved, and he instantly became a focus for the gunfire. You could see the bullets slam straight through him, blood exploding out his back in a crimson mist, his body jolting with the shock, but he kept going, and Logan was on the seventh floor before he’d taken a dozen shots.

Logan ripped through the crowd of people like a thresher, screaming in inchoate, inarticulate rage, a noise that was chilling in its pure rage and pure madness. Heads flew and guns were shredded, and you could hear the sickening rip of flesh as he tore through them like they were nothing. There were at least two dozens, and those without guns still had knives and other bladed weapons - did one of them have Giles’s sword? - and there was a dull “thunk” as some were plunged into Logan, straight through his back, buried in his gut.

But he didn’t slow down. Angel had never seen him take this much damage - he was still visibly bleeding from the bullet holes that had punched through his torso and legs - but he was still screaming and still fighting like a rabid Berserker demon. He was being held up and propelled by his own rage. He hadn’t fought the madness at all; he’d embraced it whole heartedly, went to meet it half way.

Maybe Logan was right. Maybe he was just angry enough to make a god of rage choke on his own bile.

They kept trying to swamp him, but his claws moved so fast they were silver blurs, and they couldn’t do it; if they got within range, their limbs were hewn away, their heads neatly severed from their bodies, their torsos sliced in half. And he’d already moved on to others before the rest of their body could fall to the floor.

Even after all the guns were gone, Logan kept killing everything that moved. He was awash in blood, he looked like he was wearing nothing but red, strips of flesh and sinew hung from his claws, and he kicked in doors, going after possessed who were trying to rearm or hide from him. “Oh my god,” Xander/Willow gasped, holding a hand to his mouth. He looked slightly green, like he might vomit any second. Blood was trickling down the stairs towards them, a minor rivulet slowly becoming a creek.

“He’s gone,” Helga said, very matter of factly. “The madness has him.”

Marc looked at her, stunned. “Do you mean we have to take him down?”

Helga pulled a gun out of the back of her jeans, and handed it to Marc. “Adamantium bullets, but there’s only four. Aim for the head and don’t miss.” Amazing; she was prepared for this contingency. No wonder Bob trusted her so much.

“It won’t keep him down for long,” Marc replied, looking at the weapon in disbelief. He didn’t want to shoot Logan.

“It just needs to keep him down for a couple of seconds,” she replied, a stunningly cold look in her eye. “I’ll do the rest.”

What the hell was she planning to do?

As it turned out, they’d never know. They could feel the thuds of impossibly heavy footsteps, and they heard a wall crumble with impact, but they couldn’t see it. They didn’t see anything until the Charunai burst through the wall, holding Logan’s throat in one of his massive blue hands. But Logan was stabbing in his claws repeatedly into the Charunai’s big, thick head, and its eyes were already melting down its face in bloody streams. Logan’s face was flushing red from lack of air, his own left eye lost beneath a fresh gout of gushing blood, and he could have just sliced the Charunai’s arm off, but here was the frightening thing: he didn’t want to. He was so far gone he just wanted to hurt the Charunai as much as possible, make it suffer.

The Charunai made to fling Logan off the railing and down seven floors, but it was effectively blind now and overestimated its distance, so what was left of the railing crumbled as it ran into it, and Logan scissored his legs around the Charunai’s neck, still stabbing him through the face. The edge of the floor cracked as loudly as a splitting glacier, and the Charunai and Logan both toppled and fell down the stairwell, Logan still stabbing the guardian demon even as they plunged down into darkness.

The thud as they hit the ground somewhere on the first floor was tremendous; you could feel the stairs quake. But the eeriest thing was the sudden silence that followed afterwards, broken only by the dripping of blood and the soft noise of falling debris.

“Holy shit,” Sid finally whispered, speaking for all of them.

Marc stuck his head over the side and looked down the stairwell. Although it was far too dark to see, he could see in infrared - he could see Logan and Charunai by their body heat. “Can he survive all that?”

“Don’t worry about Logan,” Scott said flatly. He was sitting with his back against the wall at the top of the sixth floor stairwell, his eyes still closed tightly, but he had a very grim expression on his face, his jaw taut.   Maybe he haddn’t seen what had happened, but he’d heard it.  “He bought you time. Use it.”

He was right, of course. There appeared to be no one left alive or even partially intact on the seventh floor; there was now nothing standing between them and the nascent Hellmouth except vast pools of blood and scattered body parts. But it probably wouldn’t last for long.

Right - time to get to work, and hope the others had done their parts.