18

Giles seriously hoped his life didn’t start flashing before his eyes. There were some things he really didn’t need or want to remember.

Mostly he was just watching the Senior Partners talking with Ate. He couldn’t hear them, but he could see their lips moving, and he was trying to read them, but he wasn’t doing well. He didn’t think the words “banana” or “armadillo” would come up in their conversation. (Or at least he hoped not.) He was still trying to get the impetus to get up - he was probably dead in about a thousand different ways here - but he was just too weak to move. It was a combination of the spell being too draining and him being too bloody old. Oh shit, he hated getting old. It seemed unfair. Maybe he should have chased perpetual youth, even though everyone who did got screwed over in unimaginable ways. Still, brain melting would have been preferable to this awful waiting.

Suddenly the Senior Partner, in its strange “rich little girl going to a tea party” guise, turned to him and gave him a scathingly cold look from her empty eyes. “What are you up to?” she asked, although it sounded more like a demand.

Giles met her gaze coldly. “I’m building a scale model of the Eiffel Tower with camel hair paintbrushes. What the bloody hell do you think I’m doing?”

The little girl didn’t look amused, but then again, she never did. “You couldn’t have been traced here. How did they know?”

This was baffling. It might have been torture; he was so tired, it felt like it. “How does who know what?”

A handsome Asian man in an expensive tailored suit suddenly popped into existence slightly behind and to the right of the girl. From the way he vaguely shimmered, Giles guessed he was one of Wolfram and Hart’s ghost employees. “The boy has invoked the protections of the Gorgons,” he reported, not even glancing at Giles or Ate. “We can’t touch them as long as he’s in range.”

“Get him out of range.”

“He’s leading the group.”

The girl made a noise of disgust. “Human divinity shield. Disgusting.”

Invoking the Gorgons? Only Brendan could do that … oh, yes; only Brendan could. Angel was here; that’s who they were asking him about. But how did Angel and the others know he was here? “Oh come on,” Ate said. “Even you can do something about those stone faced bitches.”

The girl gave her an acrid glance. “You wouldn’t fight them when you were divine, Ate. So I suggest you shut your mouth.” Ate looked as if she had been slapped, but the girl turned back to the ghost and spared her no further attention. “The Gorgons won’t protect vampires. Angel and Kieran are vulnerable - target them.”

The Asian man looked down at where the floor would be, if there was one. “The intercom system is being flooded with loud music. It’s swamping all the security channels.”

“What? How?”

“It’s the Murder City Devils.”

“Who?”

“A band. That’s the music coming through the audio channels.”

The little girl scowled at the ghost. “I don’t care what’s playing. How did our combat magicians let this through?”

There was a long pause, the ghost still looking down at the nonexistent floor. “Electra has drained all the power; emergency back up systems now coming on." He paused briefly. "It’s now raining snakes from the ceiling, from the lobby to the eighth floor.”

"Degei," Giles muttered. The eyes of the Senior Partner flicked towards him, and somewhere in their dead, dark depths, a look of disgust flashed.

"You truck with death gods now, Ripper?  A very dangerous proposition."

"I had no contact with him at all," he told them honestly. "He's not my friend.  Although I understand he's really quite nice."

"What?" the Asian man exclaimed, still looking down at the white light of the floor. When he looked up at the Senior Partner, he seemed pained. "The entire security and magic staff is Morris dancing."

"What?" the Senior Partner exclaimed in horror as Giles laughed at the mental image that brought up. Did they have the little bells on their shoes? This made him laugh harder. The little girl gave him a disgusted look again, clearly blaming him for this outrage, but Giles had to admit that level of cruelty never would have occurred to him. Make people Morris dance? Abominable. Did the Wolfram and Hart people deserve that? Well, yes, probably. "Tell them to stop."

"They can't stop. They're not doing it voluntarily."

"How is this being done? Why aren't the protective wards working?"

The Asian man's shoulders suddenly sagged, as if under a tremendous weight. "There's now a message appearing on all the computer terminals and security monitors. You need to see it."

The little girl flicked her hand, as if swatting at a fly, and a nearly holographic image of a computer screen appeared. It was a pure black screen, and in green letters, a message appeared: Don't make me come up there. - Kisses, Bob.  At the end, a tiny little animation of a hula dancer wiggled her grass skirt at them.

The little girl got a very ugly look on her face. Her black eyes narrowed until they almost disappeared, and her hands clenched into tiny fists at her side. If she'd been human, she'd have probably turned crimson. "That insufferable -" she used a word that Giles' ears refused to hear, that sent a stabbing pain through the center of his brain. A god word, a type that humans - or demons - could never understand. They had their own language, and it was strangely lethal to all lesser beings. Even the ghost, already dead and intangible, flinched.

"It's a bluff. If he comes up here he's breaking the treaty -"

"The treaty only includes attack; there's nothing about proximity," the little girl snapped. "And if you haven't noticed, he's attacking the employees, not us. He can keep doing that all he wants. We attack the Powers lackeys, don't we? He could bring this building down and it wouldn't be classified as an attack, because it's just a physical object." She slapped the air with her hand, and the monitor disappeared. "Fucking asshole. Tell whoever's still left to stand down. Tell Angel we're releasing Giles to his custody, and he's to leave immediately and not return, him or any of his stupidity brigade. I want that fucking Gorgon chosen off my property as of five minutes ago."

The ghost looked uncertain and slightly queasy. "Yes ma'am." He disappeared as abruptly as he had arrived.

"Just like that?" Ate said, finally finding her voice. "You're giving up? Bob isn't even a full Power, he's a rogue -"

"Which makes him much more dangerous," the Senior Partner snapped, turning sharply to face her and glowering malevolently. It was such an evil look that Ate actually backed up a step. "The Powers stick to their treaties; they have no interest in reviving the war directly. But they don't control Bob as much as they think they do. He'd never have gotten his powers back otherwise. I'd rather face the Powers than him, because my glorious enemies are inherently predictable. But Bob? He should have been one of us. There's no telling what he'll do or when." She kicked at an invisible object on the floor and muttered, "Fucking Morris dancing. He's psychotic."

When the Senior Partner looked up, Giles noticed she was staring at him again. "He's not even in this dimension, Rupert. How did he know where to find you?"

That was an excellent question. His first thought was Logan had died and gained Bob's attention, so as soon as he rescued Logan, he came here for him ... but Logan would have been in the group with Angel, wouldn't he? He didn't see Logan missing a fight, certainly not against Wolfram and Hart, no matter what shape he was in. So what happened?

"Fucking Weapon X," the little girl cursed. "I knew we should have killed that bastard when we had a chance. Human filth."

"What's Weapon X?" Ate asked. She was ignored.

So Logan got Bob's attention, but sent him his way instead? Well, how about that? He owed Logan a drink next time he saw him.

The little girl stalked over to him, and leaned down, so she was staring him right in the eye. He could now see the darkness in her eyes was swirling, like little black holes speeded up a million times; a writhing, wriggling thing, hate given form and function. The longer he stared into the abyss of her eyes, the more nauseous and dizzy he felt. He bet if you stared long enough, you went mad. "Know this, Rupert. Bob is not a good guy; he'll never be a good guy. He's working with you now, but only because it suits him. He picked Weapon X as his avatar for a reason, and it's not a benign one. You don't pick a major league weapon like that if you have no use in mind for it."

"Yes, I imagine that was your reasoning for going after him first, right?"

She scowled at him, and the writhing in her eyes increased. His gut was twisting into a solid, aching knot. "You are pawns. You will always be pawns to gods in battles you will not understand. And on top of that, Rupert, you are damned."

He had known that for a very long time. Perhaps since he was born. You got a sense of these things sometimes, even if you couldn't express it. "But I'm not owned by you, so I suppose I'm ahead of the game."

The look in her eyes was pure rage, and he was sure he was going to be killed that very second, but there was a flash of light, and he suddenly found himself laying on a leather couch in a posh office, with incongruously loud rock music coming from somewhere near the desk. The door was kicked open, and Angel came in, closely followed by Bren, Kier, and Naomi. "Giles, are you okay?" Angel asked. He was holding a sword whose blade was painted black, green, and red from a variety of blood.

"Apparently. But I'm afraid I don't have the energy to stand just yet."

Kier and Xander came over and helped him up, propping him between the two of them. "You owe me ten bucks," the vampire said to Xander, who rolled his eyes. Kier told Giles, "He bet me you'd be knocked out when we found you."

"Did he?" He gave Xander a sour look.

"Oh, c'mon Giles," Xander protested. "You're always knocked out. So am I. Between the two of us, we should have constant concussions."

"Well, it's a good thing we have thicker than average skulls, isn't it?" Giles replied.

Xander started to agree, but then stopped and looked at him askance. "Was that an insult?"

“Of course not,” Giles lied. Xander stared at him for a long moment, probably aware he was lying but not sure what to do about it, and then Kier got them moving towards the door.

There were snakes, tiny, pretty, but reasonably lethal coral snakes slithering across the floor, but they were good enough to ignore them entirely. Giles didn’t see Bob anywhere, but there was never an implication that he was physically here, was there? Bob didn’t need to be here to cause unimaginable chaos in the Wolfram and Hart building?

He didn’t know that. Up until now, he’d always given the impression that he had to be here.

Giles suddenly wondered if the Senior Partners had been telling the truth about Bob.

****

Logan regained consciousness in time to see that Arba had almost totally reconstituted. Ah shit. This just wasn’t his day. Night. Whatever the fuck it was, it wasn’t his.

He could slice his head off again, but it only seemed to buy him a minute at best. Goddamn, this fucker just wouldn’t go down. Arba was even worse than him, and that was saying something.

But he knew how to beat him, didn’t he? Bob had told him how, whether he knew it or not.

Logan was still healing, he could feel the burn in his arms and legs and midsection, but he forced himself up to his feet, using the wall to help him. What he had to do now was go; get the fuck out of here. Just not too fast. He was prey, so he had to rabbit out of here and let the big bad wolf threaten to gobble him up.

He’d taken maybe a step away when he caught a familiar scent, one that really didn’t belong here, so he wasn’t too surprised when Kitty stepped out of the wall and grabbed his arm. “Come on,” she said, still breathing hard. She must have ran all the way. When she became physical, he could smell the fear in her sweat.

“Kid, what’re you doin’ here?”

“Rescuing you! Now let’s go, before -”

Logan heard a wet squelching noise, and saw Kitty eyes go wide looking over his shoulder, so he didn’t need to turn around to know what she was looking at. “Who’s your little friend?” Arba asked.

“Go,” Logan urged, and she started running again, hand gripping his arm and pulling him along. Normally he could run her over, but right now he was lucky to be walking. Arba caught up with them almost instantly, but his extended arm cut through them like empty air, momentarily flummoxing him. Kitty ran them through a rock wall, and once they were through the other side, Logan could hear him pounding the wall, breaking the rocks into gravel. They became solid, and while Kitty started to run, he grabbed her arm and tugged, stopping her.

She looked back at him in surprise. “What? We need to go.”

“We can’t get too far ahead of him. We need him to think he could catch us at any second.”

He could tell she was struggling very hard to be polite - was she Canadian? - but the look in her eye suggested he’d left most of his brains on the floor of the canyon. “What? Why?”

“Just trust me, kid, this is gonna work.”  At least he hoped so, or he was going to inadvertently kill a lot of people.