11

Was it disappointing or heartening that, no matter how old he got, he was still kid like in some ways?

No. Angel mentally corrected himself – not kid like, immature. That was probably more accurate. Kid like could be endearing, but immaturity never was.

He got Bren to call Willow and tell her what was going on. Faith gave him a look for that, and then said, “Ah, not on speaking terms, huh?” He was going to deny this – it wasn't that he wasn't on speaking terms with Buffy, it was just ... what the hell was there to say? They'd both gone on with their lives, and yes sure, he still loved her, but was that ever going to work? No. So part of him had simply decided “Why bother”. It seemed like so much pain, and there seemed to be no way to win. So he'd given up. How heroic. Well, he'd never claimed to be completely heroic. He wanted to be, but that was different.

He'd gone in his office for a moment to get some weapons – hide out, actually, but what was the difference? - and had just sat down behind his desk to steel himself when Willow appeared right in front of the couch. “You're so busy you can't call yourself?”

It was half teasing, a partial joke, but of course she knew. It was funny that poor Willow would end up the go between, but it made so much sense. She had a peacemaker tendency, which was why her temper could be frightening when she finally had enough. It may have been a cliché, but it really always was the quiet ones you had to watch out for.

So he briefed her on what was going on, and while she refrained from comment, her facial expressions shifted enough to let him know that she honestly thought this was all kinds of screwed up. Which he already knew, but it was good of everyone to be on the same page. Once he was done, she ran a hand through her shoulder length red hair, and said, “I hate god shit.”

“We all hate god shit.”

“I could do a locator spell! Find Giles. Just a sec.” She disappeared, and Angel had barely shifted in his chair before she reappeared, looking troubled.

“Didn't work?” he guessed.

She shook her head. “He's either being cloaked, or he's ... no, he's cloaked.”

Yeah, that's what he was hoping as well.

Willow still looked worried, lips twisted in a grimace of concern. “But if Giles can be cloaked, we're talking powerful magicks here.”

“Or god power.”

“Which may be slightly worse.”

“Can she help us?”

“Buffy? Yeah. But you two really need to get past this thing.”

He nodded, taking small comfort in the fact that Buffy wasn't completely past this thing either.

Willow disappeared to brief Buffy and bring her back, and he went back out to brief the others on the pending arrivals. At least they'd worked with Willow before.

He was just about done when there was a knock on the outside door, and Willow came in, with Buffy right behind her, and he wondered which one of them felt more awkward at that moment. It was hard to tell.

She looked remarkably unchanged since the last time he saw her. Oh, her hair was cut a bit differently and slightly more blonde, but she could still pass for nineteen if she absolutely had to. She was wearing black jeans, a drapey gold shirt, and a camel colored long coat, none of which was particularly weather appropriate for Southern California. Angel just started introducing everyone, to avoid the continuation of the awkwardness.

“Should we identify abilities?” Bren asked, as soon as introductions were done. “I mean, we know you're a Slayer and she's a witch, but you don't know anything about us.”

Buffy shrugged. “It might help.”

“That's what I thought. I'm half Brachen demon, I have an eidetic memory, and I seem to be a Chosen of the Gorgons, although all that really seems to get me is they'll avenge my death. Oh, and the tattoos. Whee.”

“Hon, that's kinda leaving stuff out,” Kier interjected.

“Brachen demon?” Buffy repeated. “Which one are those again?”

“Peaceful demons generally,” Willow reported cheerfully. “Kinda spikey and reptile-y, but not in a freaky way. But teal with red spikes, ugh, that so doesn't work. Anyways, it's why he has red eyes. Oh, and in Brachen mode, he's stronger than Human, and can take a beating.”

Buffy took that in like she was used to Willow going off like this. By now, she ought to be. “Good to know.” She then frowned and looked at Kier. “Did you just call him hon?”

Kier grinned at her. “We're butt buddies.”

Rogue laughed at that, and Bren gave Kier a dirty look. “You always do this to me in front of company.”

“What?” he claimed, laughing faintly. “I can't have a little fun shocking the hets?”

“Hey, Slayer here with a lesbian best friend,” she replied. “Not that shockable. So are you demon too?”

“Vampire,” Kier admitted. “But a good one. Good-ish. A bit of demon in me kept me from going completely ... what? Kill crazy? Anyways, apparently there was a cult of ex-Watchers who were hoping I'd be the male version of a Slayer or something like that. So we're probably distant cousins or something.”

She looked at Angel askance. “Is this true?”

He was forced to shrug. “That's a heavily abbreviated version, but it'll do for now.”

“Wow. The Watchers always turn out weirder than I thought.” She looked at Rogue. “Demon?”

She shook her head. “Mutant. If I touch you I'll absorb your life force and abilities, possibly to death if I don't let go. Doesn't work on all demons.”

To prove it, Kier touched her cheek. “Yeah, I'm dead, so no life force to steal.”

That made her grimace. “So I guess I ain't too useful against vamps.”

Buffy's brow furrowed as she seemed to be wracking her brain. “Mutants. Isn't there some mutant group or something?”

“The X-Men,” Saddiq said, and when she looked at him, he said, “She's one of them, codenamed Rogue, and I'm one of them too, codenamed Saracen. I have skin as strong as metal, and have been trained in the most deadly martial arts.”

“And you have an assload of pointy things,” she replied, gesturing at the bandoleers of knives across his chest, and the swords on his back. “Holy crap, how do you get through airport security?”

Saddiq looked at her blankly. “I don't fly commercial.”

“Sid was raised without humor,” Kier added. “We're trying to teach him how to have some, but it's a long upward slog.”

“Isn't his name Saddiq?”

“We call him Sid.”

“We couldn't call him Sad,” Rogue said.

“Wouldn't that be appropriate?” Saddiq countered.

Kier gave him a sympathetic look. “Probably, but we're trying not to hold it against you.”

"Is this an awesomely freaky group or what?" Faith exclaimed, with a modicum of cheer. "It's like the weirdest weirdies in La-La Land have all sifted into Angel's office."

"Hey," Bren said.

"It's a compliment! I'm including myself in this, even though I'm not here all the time."

"Where's Xander?" Buffy wondered. "I thought he was here."

Hadn't Willow told her? Angel frowned, and told her, "He disappeared with Giles, Marc, and the rest."

"Who's Marc?"

"Oh, he's a trip B," Faith said, taking up the explanation. He flashed her a grateful look. "He's another mutant, Scorpion, 'cause he's all poisonous and whatever, but he's a mercenary, and he has enough weapons to take over his own South American country. If he doesn't have the weapon for it, it probably doesn't exist. Funny as hell too; he's like the opposite of Sid."

Buffy raised her eyebrows at this. "Well, that sounds ... interesting. So you have no idea where they are?"

"Only that if they could've contacted us, they would've by now," Bren said glumly.

She sighed. "Okay. Angel, Will said you know a god. That true?"

"Bob."

She gave him a disbelieving look. "A god named Bob?"

"That's what he calls himself here. We don't know his actual name."

"Although he's told us he's been known as Kama and Awha the Maori storm god, but we're just taking his word for it," Bren admitted. "He's currently in a Belial demon form, and you know how they love to lie."

"Kama fits, though," Kier added. This was met by general nods of agreement.

"Kama?" Buffy asked.

"As in the Kama Sutra?" Willow exclaimed, surprised. At the nods, she actually blushed slightly. "Oh wow."

"So he could ... I can't even think of a way to say this," Buffy said, scrubbing a hand through her hair. "So what can he do besides that, and why isn't he here?"

"He comes and goes of his own accord," Angel replied, and realizing what he'd just said, added, "No pun intended. Presumably he's working on a plan, but he doesn't always tell us what they are."

"As for powers, pretty much limitless," Bren said, taking up the thread again. He was a loyal assistant, no doubt about that. "He could shut a whole city down with one word."

"The real bitch of it is he took Logan with him," Faith said. "We wouldn't have to worry about being outnumbered if we had him here."

"Logan?"

"Wolverine of the X-Men," Saddiq reported. "Accelerated healing factor, adamantium skeleton and claws, heightened senses, extensive combat training."

"And an attitude that could curdle cream at five hundred yards," Bren added, not without a weary type of affection.

"Don't forget a body to die for," Kier said.

Faith grinned wickedly. "Oh hell yeah. That's his best feature."

"He has claws?" Buffy repeated, and then seemed to turn her thoughts inward for a moment before gasping, "Holy shit. I know him!"

"You do?" Angel asked, surprised.

"Yeah! I met this weird guy at Wesley's funeral, kind of a muscle-y, hairy lumberjack type, and it seemed weird that he was there. I mean, he hardly seemed like a guy that would be Wesley's friend, right? And then like a week later, I was scanning YouTube, and they had this clip of the X-Men fighting, and there he was. I couldn't believe it, except, you know, who would copy that hair? Also, no one has muttonchops nowadays except renfesters and sex predators. I couldn't believe it. So does that explain how Wesley knew a mutant claw guy?"

Angel nodded. "They were unlikely friends, but they were. Probably due to their backgrounds."

"What does that mean?" she wondered.

Angel suddenly realized that Buffy probably didn't know Wesley was an abused child, and she had no way of knowing Logan spent half his life being abused by other people. Was it even his right to tell her?

Rogue rescued him from having to decide. "Rough life, shit happens, we've all been there. Now I hate to be rude, but it's startin' to look a bit dusky outside. Shouldn't we get goin'?"

Buffy let out a heavy sigh, and Angel finally noticed the tension in her shoulders. Was it due to being around him, or the fight to come? "Yeah, I guess so. Do we have a plan?"

"Fight to the last man," Saddiq said.

Faith rolled her eyes. "He's not big on subtlety either."

"I was thinking we could head down to Crestwood Cemetery," Angel said, glad to be talking about something other than his missing friends. "It's the largest one closest to us, and if vampires and zombies are going to start rising up, that would be the nexus point."

She nodded. "Sounds like a start. Any idea on how many we could be facing?"

"If the zombies and ghouls and ghosts of earlier today were any indication, much more than we'd expect."

"So not helpful, Angel."

"I know. But until we're in the middle of it, we really don't know what to expect. Someone stole a book of the dead and is erasing the names. Since this has never happened before, we don't actually know what the outcome will be."

"Except loads of unhappy dead people," Willow said.

"How many names are in a book?" Buffy asked.

Angel exchanged looks with everyone else in the office, hoping he wouldn't have to be the one to tell her, but it seemed like they were all counting on him to do it. Damn it. "Millions, possibly billions."

"Billions? With a b?" At his nod, she looked utterly crestfallen. "Even if I brought in all the rest of the girls, there's just no way we can win."

"We can't let vampires overrun the Earth," Saddiq said, once again helpfully stating the obvious.

"All we got on our side is that all the names aren't being erased at once," Faith interjected, for once trying to look on the bright side. "I mean, if there were a million ghouls released on the city today, there'd be nothing left but concrete foundations."

As bright sides went, that seemed to be a bit on the dim side.

Willow was going to transport them en masse to the cemetery, but before that, Rogue asked Faith if she could “borrow” some of her abilities. Would it work that way with a Slayer? No one knew, but Faith was game for it (perhaps that's why she asked Faith as opposed to Buffy – Faith still gave off her bad girl air, like she was up for anything), and let Rogue grab her arm, just to see what would happen. Nothing visibly happened beyond the usual – veins stood out on Faith's arm, crawling up towards her shoulder, and Faith visibly weakened – but nothing much else. But once Rogue broke the connection, she claimed to feel stronger, and she had a look in her eye that he attributed more to battle high Faith than herself, so it was was easy to see that yes, some of it must have taken.

They had to wait directly until sundown, which gave Faith some time to recover (she was a Slayer, so it didn't take long), and then Willow brought them all there before disappearing to get some of the other Slayers they had standing by.

Crestwood was large, but not one of the better cemeteries. The area they were in, beneath the denuded skeleton of a sickly spreading oak, had gravestones listing like rotten teeth in the soft earth, and the gentle slope beneath them seemed more like the ground settling than anything that had naturally occurred. It was probably best not to think about how it became this way.

The sky wasn't perfectly dark, it was a sort of rusty smog induced color, with enough light at the fringes to make Angel feel like his skin was itching on the inside, but it was annoying, nothing close to life threatening.

“This is nice and creepy,” Rogue noted, looking around.

Buffy shrugged. “I've been in creepier.”

“There was this one cemetery in Bucharest in 1902 that was the most disgusting thing I've ever seen,” Angel said. “Of course, that was before World War One, and oh god, the trenches were even worse -”

“Don't tell me!” Bren exclaimed hastily. In anticipation of the fight, he'd let his Brachen side out. “You know I remember everything, and I don't wanna remember that, thank you.”

“Sorry.”

“Oh, so that's what eidetic means,” Buffy muttered.

“Yeah, I didn't know that either,” Faith commiserated.

Willow returned with five other Slayers, none of whom Angel recognized, although Buffy hastily introduced them as Jade (brunette), Keely (blonde), Gisela (Spanish), Lawan (Thai), and Carys (mixed race, but spoke with such a heavy Welsh accent it was sort of hard to understand her). They all glared at him, Kier, and Bren like they wanted to stake them all, but Buffy pointed out they were good vamps (and demon) and not to be hurt. They listened to her, but kept their distance from them. Sid offered knives to anyone who wanted one, but every Slayer had her own stake (Buffy had an extra she gave to Rogue). Still, Faith took one. They formed a very loose circle that spread out across the cemetery, although stayed within each other's line of sight.

Angel smelled them first.

It was death, of course, but that odd dry scent of death that was typical of vampires. The sun was just a faint glow at the base of the horizon – the itch beneath his skin had faded to almost nothing – but here they came, smelling like tanned skin and grave dirt. He tried to get a direction, but couldn't.

“You getting this?” Kier asked.

Angel nodded. “Can't get a fix. You know where they're coming from?”

“Vamps?” Faith asked.

“You know why you're not getting a fix?” Bren asked, and he sounded nervous.

Looking around with his heightened night vision, Angel could see why his directional sense wasn't working.

They were everywhere.

It seemed impossible to go from nothing to everything in the space of seconds, but they weren't your typical vampires either. They weren't truly sired, or if they had been, they'd been dusted long ago and shouldn't have been able to come back. But now that death had rejected them, they had to come back in some form, and anyone touched by the supernatural was as liable to come back a vampire as a zombie (or a ghoul). It didn't make a lot of sense, but none of this did. Somebody was rewriting the rules of death, and these poor bastards couldn't rest in peace. The smooth but uneven ground had gaping holes in it, where the newly undead had dug themselves out. Like they all thought, they started coming towards them, the only living things in the place.

“What's the strategy here?” Sid asked, as he pulled out his swords.

“Kill 'em all, and let Bob sort them out,” Faith replied.

Yeah, that sounded as good a plan as any.

Angel had repaired his damaged staking rig, the ones he wore under the sleeves of his coat, but in this chaotic scrum it was nearly impossible to stake two at once. The vampires seemed content to ignore him (and Kier) and go for the living, but they made them pay attention by dusting them. It soon became apparent to Angel they were all being driven by a hyperactive feeding instinct, and he hoped they were all headed towards them and not out into the city, otherwise it would be a hideous bloodbath. Perhaps sensing the danger, Willow cast a spell that circled the cemetery with a ring of fire, and yet, just to prove how instinct was overriding any kind of sense, several vampires and zombies just walked right through the wall of flame, going up like Roman candles. You'd think bone stupid vampires would be a good thing, but not really – this only proved they had no limits, couldn't be scared off by anything. They'd just go until they couldn't go anymore.

They staked dozens, Rogue proving she did indeed have some Slayer moves, Sid showing off how ruthless he'd become while off with Marc by beheading several vampires at once, his swords whirling through the air like flying sawblades, and yet there was no cease in the inhuman tide. Angel slammed a stake through one vamp's chest and just twisted off a zombie's head like a bottle cap (it was a supremely rotted zombie – he had no idea how it was even standing up with mushy femurs), pausing briefly to look down at the sloping expanse of the cemetery. In the flickering shadows of the flames, he saw dozens upon dozens of bodies converging on them, much more than had been on the street that afternoon. There couldn't have been this many buried in the cemetery, so where were they all coming from?

The shrieks of the dusted was an almost constant noise now, he could taste their ashes on the wind, vampires were dying at about a dozen a second, and they weren't making any dent in the undead tide swelling towards them.

He wondered if he should warn the others that they were doomed, or if dying in ignorance really was bliss.