Kin of the Soul
Kin of the Soul
Slash: Angel/Xander, Angel/Spike
Rated: ADULT
banner by objectivelypink
This time Glorificus has to face the clan... and their allies.
( Part One ) ( Part Two ) ( Part Three ) ( Part Four ) ( Part Five ) ( Part Six ) ( Part Seven ) ( Part Eight ) ( Part Nine ) ( Part Ten ) ( Part Eleven ) ( Part Twelve ) ( Part Thirteen ) ( Part Fourteen ) (Part Fifteen ) ( Part Sixteen ) ( Part Seventeen ) ( Part Eighteen ) ( Part Nineteen ) ( Part Twenty) ( Part Twenty-One ) ( Part Twenty-Two ) ( Part Twenty-Three ) ( Part Twenty-Four ) ( Part Twenty-Five ) ( Part Twenty-six ) ( Part Twenty-Seven ) ( Part Twenty-eight ) ( Part Twenty-nine )( Part thirty ) ( Part Thirty-one ) ( Part Thirty-Two ) ( Part Thirty-Three ) ( Part Thirty four ) ( Part Thirty-five ) ( Part Thirty-Six ) ( Part Thirty-Seven ) ( Part Thirty-Eight ) ( Part Thirty-nine ) ( Part Forty ) ( Part Forty-one ) ( Part Forty-two ) ( Part Forty-three ) ( Part Forty-four ) ( Part Forty-five ) ( Part Forty-six ) ( Part Forty-Seven ) ( Part Forty-Eight ) ( Part 49 ) ( Part 50 ) ( Part 51 ) ( Part 52 ) ( Part 53 ) ( Part 54 ) ( Part 55 ) ( Part 56 ) ( Part 57 ) ( Part 58 ) ( Part 59 ) (Part 60)
Chapter 61
A figure ran behind him, and Xander snarled at the intruder.
“Hey, mister, I’m trying to help. You have to go back to the mansion,” Harmony complained. She had a cellphone in her hand, and she tripped as she tried to run at his side and dial at the same time. Xander ignored her. She wasn’t important.
“Spike! Spike, Xander is running, and Angel’s not answering his phone.”
There was a pause, and Xander leaped to the top of a low brick wall and paused for a second, listening to the night. Power. He could feel power running under his skin. Power from the land, rising like a mist, and power from the north.
“I know that!” Harmony complained with a whine. “But he’s really fast.”
She stopped at the bottom of the wall. “Come down here right now, mister. Spike’s pissed at you, and he wants to talk to you.”
Xander growled at Harmony, enjoying the little squeak she gave before he leaped down on the far side of the cemetery wall and starting running down the rows of gravestones lined up like soldiers.
“Xander!” Harmony yelled. He could tell from the grunting and scraping sounds that she was following, but he didn’t care. North. He had to get north.
“I’m trying!” Harmony cried out.
“Well, he’s not acting human!”
“That’s what I told him!”
Xander ignored Harmony’s one-sided conversation, all his attention focused forward. A vampire lurked behind a mausoleum crypt, and Xander took a second to snarl at the intruder. The vampire had a few years on him, but he just stared with wide eyes, not even trying to stop Xander.
“North, through Restful Days cemetery. Spike, he’s growling at strange vampires.”
“I did not!” she protested loudly after another pause. A hand brushed over Xander’s arm, and he threw it up to dislodge the alien touch. He wouldn’t be stopped. “Xander!” Harmony yelled in the sort of voice she might use if he wore stripes with a Hawaiian shirt.
“Spike, he isn’t listening.” That was a whine.
Now Xander could hear Spike’s voice through the tinny speaker in the microphone. “You bloody stop him or I’ll turn you into a pile of soddin’ dust.”
“I’m trying! He’s really fast.”
“You’re a bloody vampire. You’re faster. Now I don’t care if you have to sit on him, stop him!”
Harmony’s hands clawed at him, and Xander whirled around, snarling before he landed a punch in the middle of Harmony’s face. Her body flew back, hair going everywhere, and Xander had one brief flare of guilt before he turned and started heading north again.
“Bloody hell, was that him?” he heard through the phone, but then Xander started running, the sound of his heart drowning out everything else as he ran and ran. Power… he could taste it like a sour grape on his tongue, cold and slimy and bitter enough to make his lips curl back in disgust.
Xander heard the fight before he could see it, the heavy thump of flesh against flesh, the grunts of pain and the sharp cracks as things broke.
“Hey, that was my dress!” a loud voice complained. A familiar growl answered her. Xander came over the hill and found Angel, on one knee with a hand braced against the earth. A woman… a monster… in a red dress with a torn hem stood several feet in front of him, and all around were the broken bits that used to be a playground. The teeter totter lay in three long pieces, the merry-go-round had been knocked off its center, and four of the five swings were a tangle of chains lying on the ground.
Xander snarled as he saw the enemy, and he threw himself forward. There was a flicker of something in Angel, and his concentration slipped. The woman chose that moment to throw herself forward, her hand coming around in a swiping motion like some old Hollywood movie star. In other circumstances it would be comical gesture. It was a ridiculous open-handed woman-slap. What wasn't funny was that Angel flew six or seven feet to the side before crumpling to the dust. She might not have good fighting form, but she had power behind her hits.
Before his conscious mind could even point out the fact that anything that could take Angel down could take him down, Xander found his hands closing around her neck. The woman gazed at him with a sort of dismissive annoyance. Almost casually, she backhanded him. Xander could feel the force of her blow as his head snapped back. His left hand completely lost its grip, but with his right hand, he caught her hair even as his body flopped to the side. Closing his fist as tightly as he could, he pulled her down into the dust with him.
“How dare you,” she hissed. Shoving at him, she easily stood up again. However, Angel had time to recover. Xander watched as Angel tackled her from behind. Her arms flew out to the side as she landed face first on the ground, and for a second, it looked like Angel had really hurt her.
Angel stood up, a low growl still rumbling from his chest, and she lay on the ground with her arms flopped out to the sides. She looked like Harmony two seconds after Harmony had bothered Spike one too many times.
Then she sighed. Loudly. “Okay, people, this is not acceptable. I want my key.” Turning over slowly, she pulled her feet under her and brushed at her dress in annoyance. “Who has my key?” She demanded in the tone of voice that Cordelia had once used when looking for her cheerleaders after they had run off. The voice was equal parts annoyed and homicidal.
The woman climbed to her feet and glared first at Angel and then Xander. Xander could feel the growl rise in his own chest. She was enemy. She was power. He wanted to rip her to shreds and leave her bloody body in pieces scattered across the ground.
For the first time, she seemed to really look at them. “Well this is interesting. You’re new. Do you have my key?” When neither of them answered, she rolled her eyes. “Why do I even bother asking?” she said wearily. She started advancing slowly toward Angel, her hands reaching out for him. Something was wrong. She was going to do something, and Xander knew that in the pit of his stomach. Angel did too, because he started backing away, his hands coming up in a defensive posture.
“I dunna have your key, but if it's a key your wanting, I can find you plenty.” Xander knew that tone of voice. That was the tone of voice that Angelus had used to try and negotiate with Anyakana, which hadn't actually worked out all that well.
“I don't need plenty. I need one,” she said. She stopped, and for a half-second, Xander thought she was going to stamp her foot like a five-year old. “I need my key. I'm going to find where those monks put my key.” She reached out for Angel, but he jerked himself back out of range. Still not understanding exactly what this woman was trying to do, Xander picked up one of the long boards from the teeter totter. Angel spotted him and gave a small nod, and Xander slung the board as hard as he could. It was a huge chunk of wood, and it seemed to fly in slow motion straight toward Glory's head.
It hit with a dull thunking sound, and she stumbled forward. For a second, all of them froze. However, she didn't fall to the ground. With infinitely slow movement, she reached up and ran her fingers though her hair to straighten it out. Whatever she was, she wasn't human. Of course, being that she was a god that was kind of implied.
“Now you're just annoying me,” she said as she looked over at Xander. Hitting her in the head with a hundred pounds of solid wood had annoyed it. It was a little emasculating.
“That's funny I thought you were already annoyed,” Xander answered.
She narrowed her eyes, and now she started advancing toward Xander. Xander scrambled backwards. He might feel a murderous fury in his heart, but he had even more stark cold terror in there. She could kill him. He knew that for a fact.
“You best be leaving him alone,” Angel warned darkly, and that voice was all Angelus. Picking up one of the chains from a fallen swing, he started twirling it. The chain whistled as it spun through the air, and Glory stopped. Turning slightly, she angled her body so that she could look over Angel.
“Are you challenging me?”
Angelus smirked. That was a dangerous expression coming from him. Slowly, he looked her up and down, still swinging the chain. “Yes.” With that, he swung the chain at her. It caught her around the neck, and the momentum swung chain around until it wrapped around her. She gave a startled squeak, the sort that Harmony might, and then Angel jerked the chain. She flew forward, her feet leaving the ground.
Xander opened his mouth to call out a warning as her hand came up in a fist. However, before she could land the blow, Angelus had already darted around the other side of a tree. He jerked the chain again, and now Xander could see his plan. He was hoping to chain her to the tree. Xander ran and grabbed one of the other chains; however, before he could join the fight, Glory planted her heels in the ground and jerked back. The chain snapped, and broken links flew off. He could hear several of them making tinking noises as they hit the metal playground equipment.
“Now I'm really upset,” Glory complained as she ripped the chain off of her neck. She tried brushing her dress off, but it was stained and dirty and torn. Slowly, she looked up at them - first Angel and then Xander. Oh yeah, she planned to turn them into little bloody splotches on the ground. Bigger and scarier things than her head tried, though. Xander dropped into a crouch and glanced at Angel to see if he had a plan.
“Bloody hell, I can't let you to go anywhere, can I?” Spike bolted out of a car that had just pulled up to the curb, leaving the door open behind him.
“William,” Angel said with the sort of enthusiasm that suggested that the demon was getting to come out and play.
Spike broke stride for a split second, but he recovered quick enough. “Angel,” he offered. Most of the time, Spike was more likely to use “Peaches” or “Ducks” or even “Luv” when he talked to Angel, so Xander was guessing Spike knew he was dealing with the demon.
“So, is anyone invited to this fight?”
Xander had been so distracted by Spike that he hadn’t noticed Buffy and Riley getting out of the car. Riley had a big old gun in hand, and Buffy was twirling her favorite stake.
“You,” Glory said, and from the tone, she’d had more than one run-in with Buffy. Buffy usually left demons feeling a little cranky.
“Yep, me. I did warn you that if you didn’t get out of town I was going to slay you. I warned her, right?” Buffy said, turning to Riley for confirmation.
“You did,” Riley agreed, the perfect straight man for her act.
“I knew it,” Buffy said. “I mean, with all the college papers, sometimes I forget things, but I was almost certain that I had offered to kick your scrawny ass.”
Glory just gave a sniff. She might have had something nasty and witty to say, but Angel picked up the board that Xander had thrown earlier, and swung it like a bat. It caught Glory on the back and threw her forward. That probably wasn’t enough to hurt her, but Spike leaped in, meeting her face with his boot. Glory’s head snapped around, but before Spike could retreat, she’d punched him in the face. With a snarl he tumbled back and Buffy leaped in, trading kicks.
For a time, Spike and Buffy traded off the close-fighting with Angel landing some heavy hits when he saw an opening and Riley unloading two clips, and there must have been at least fifteen or twenty shots in each clip. However, despite all the firepower, Glory’s dress seemed more rumpled than she did. Xander moved in closer. He could see Buffy starting to tire, and Angel looked like he’d taken a lot of hits before the rest of them had even shown up. He was favoring one side, and he kept his right arm pulled in close, so Xander was guessing it was a big ‘no’ on him wearing the Gem of Amara. Idiot. Even Spike was starting to look a little frayed around the edges. Glory had caught his coat at one point, which had forced Spike to shrug out of it before she could pin him down. And yet, despite the fact that three of the strongest people on earth were pounding on her, she kept getting back up. She was definitely getting back up faster than the rest of them. Sheer stubbornness seemed to be the only thing keeping Spike in the fight. In fact, he’d gotten tossed into the remains of the merry-go-round, and he cursed as he struggled to get himself untangled from the twisted and broken bits.
Then Glory backhanded Buffy so hard that Buffy flew a good twenty feet backwards and Riley was still working to get a new clip in his gun. Seeing that no one else was in position to cover Riley, Xander lunged at Glory.
“M'fhear,” Angel bellowed in a very cranky voice.
Xander went for an ungraceful full-body tackle, but he did manage to take Glory to the ground before he rolled away. He was on his knees when something that felt like a jackhammer caught him in the stomach, and he flew backward. His body struggled for every breath. He felt hands grabbing at him, and Xander flailed for the two seconds it took him to realize that Angel was grabbing him, dragging him away from the fight while Spike rained Glory with a series of blindingly fast strikes. That lasted seconds before Glory backhanded Spike so hard that his whole body seemed to come unjointed as it flew in a jumble of limbs across the field. However, this time, Angel roared and charged straight at her. She met him with a fist, but that didn’t do more than take Angel to one knee before he started trading blows with her.
At one point, she got Angel down on the ground, and Xander moved closer, only to have a badly beaten Spike grab him by one arm. However, Riley stepped up and put a good twenty bullets right into Glory’s head. It didn’t stop her, but it sure made her cranky, and by the time she’d finished glaring at Riley, Angel was up again and Buffy had rejoined the fight. Both Angel and Buffy traded punches with her until Glory finally seemed to slow.
Just when Xander expected Angel to go in for the kill, Angel turned, his eyes searching for Xander. When he found Xander, he moved unsteadily closer. Xander shrugged Spike’s hands off and ran to Angel. Bones stuck out at odd angles in his right arm and he was limping so badly that when Xander reached him, Angel actually leaned his weight into Xander as if he couldn’t hold himself up one more second. “M’fhear,” Angel whispered. Xander could hear the pain and the fear and the exhaustion and the love all poured into that word.
“Angel.” Wrapping his arms around Angel’s waist, Xander held on tightly. As soon as Xander stopped shaking in fear, he was going to take the Gem of Amara and superglue it to Angel’s fucking finger.
“Bloody hell,” Spike breathed as the sounds of the fight stilled. Xander looked around Angel to see Buffy and Riley standing over a very human looking guy with feathered hair that had definitely come out of another decade.
“Ben?” Buffy asked softly.
“I… She’s too powerful. I can’t stop her.” The man on the ground sounded utterly anguished, and Xander looked around for Glory, but they were definitely one hellgod short of a hellgod.
“What…?” Xander didn’t get to finish.
“We found the bloody avatar, and it’s not Dawn,” Spike said. “Right then, kill him and be done with it,” Spike shouted at Buffy and Riley. Xander wasn’t all that surprised when both looked over at Spike without doing any killing. Spike was never going to understand the concept of moral dilemmas, that’s for sure.
“We don’t kill humans,” Buffy complained, and then she actually turned her back on Ben and started walking toward them. “Besides, we’re supposed to be chasing down Glory.”
Xander frowned and looked from Angel to Spike, but both vampires looked just as confused as he was. Riley actually held out a hand and helped this Ben up from the ground before he holstered his weapon and turned his back on him. Xander’s mouth fell open. However, Ben seemed to take it all in stride as he turned and ran toward the hill.
“He…. She…. But…. He…. Buffy!” Xander spluttered.
“What?” Buffy demanded. “Okay that was strange. Did anyone else think that was strange?”
“You letting the bad guy walk away, yeah, that’s much with the strange,” Xander complained.
Spike was even more upset as he glared at Riley. “You bloody tosser. I can't soddin’ believe you let him go. This is not a fucking Sunday School people.”
“What? Who?” Riley asked, clearly confused.
Xander opened his mouth, but this was too Twilight Zone, even for him.
“You will track that man down right now,” Angel just about growled. Xander wrapped his fingers around Angel's arm. He wasn't sure he wanted Angel tracking the guy down, not when Angel was this beat up.
“And do what?” Buffy asked with a raised eyebrow.
“Kill him,” Spike snapped when Angel didn’t answer. Actually, Angel was pretty much frozen. Xander could feel Angel's body stiffen, the muscles go hard as the soul and the demon locked each other inside so they could privately rage at each other about who owned the body. Since Xander was having some not-good feelings about the idea of killing the human who’d been stuck playing avatar for Glorificus, he could imagine Angel and Angelus weren’t exactly agreeing on how to handle this.
“Kill who?” Riley asked, and there was the Twilight Zone.
“Ben,” Spike snapped.
“Why would we kill Ben?” Buffy looked honestly confused.
Spike looked from Buffy to Riley for a second before turning to look at Xander.
Xander shifted so that he kept one arm around Angel and support his weight. “Hey, I’m morally questionable on the killing of Ben front, but I’m all in favor of tracking him down before Glory comes back,” Xander agreed.
“Glory? What does Ben have to do with Glory?” Buffy asked as she got that odd little wrinkle between her eyes. “Sometimes you don’t make all that much sense, Xander.”
“He’s probably just upset about Angel. Actually, both of you look worse for the wear,” Riley said with some sympathy as he looked from Spike to Angel. Xander could have told him that sympathy was not the right approach. Both vampires growled.
“Make that three of us. My hurts hurt,” Buffy complained softly. Riley slipped an arm around her and started urging her toward the car. “Xander, are you okay? I mean, she actually hit you.”
“I’m not exactly breakable,” Xander complained. This is why he’d left Sunnydale. It was like Buffy and Willow expected him to always be a fifteen year old boy bumbling through life. He could fight. True, he couldn’t fight as well as Angel and Spike, but that pretty much described 99.9% of the world. “Are we going to talk about the fact that Glory is living inside this Ben guy?”
Riley and Buffy both stopped and looked at him funny. “Ben from the hospital?” Buffy asked.
Angel growled softly and Spike muttered darkly as he went to grab his coat off the ground.
“Um, yeah… if that’s the Ben that just came popping out when you guys beat the snot out of Glory.”
“Ben is Glory?” Buffy looked honestly shocked. Spike might even call the expression gobsmacked.
It took Xander’s brain a second to translate the odd Twilight Zone conversation. “Yes. Now can we chase Ben down?”
The shock faded from Buffy’s face, only to be replaced with confusion. “Why?”
Xander might have kept going but Spike interrupted. “Don’t bother, pet. Someone’s mojo’ed her.”
“Who? Me? I am not mojoed. And that would be magically screwed with for those who aren’t used to Spike’s bad English,” Buffy translated for Riley as they headed for the car again.
“Oi, at least I know a noun from a bloody adjective, ya brainless….”
“Spike,” Angel said wearily. Spike went back to that under-his-breath muttering.
“Wait, they really don’t remember?” Xander asked softly.
Angel looked up at Buffy and Riley. They were still close, but neither of them seemed to be interested in the hill where Ben had run for his life. “They don’t,” Angel said wearily.
“We should have expected the bloody mojo,” Spike said wearily.
Riley glanced over his shoulder. “Does Glory have some sort of magical power you guys know about?”
“No fair keeping the good intel to yourself,” Buffy added.
“She… um….” Xander looked at Spike and Angel. Spike was already striding toward the hill, or maybe that was more of a plodding. He was definitely having some trouble walking. “She can disguise herself, stop people from remembering having seen her or her avatar,” Xander explained. Buffy and Riley had stopped their slow retreat to the car and both were looking at him with the sort of weary resignation he remembered from his research days in the library. That was the face you made when you figured out you were trying to kill something really big and hugely nasty as opposed to normal sized big and moderately nasty.
“That makes sense,” Riley finally agreed with a sigh. Xander bit his tongue before he blurted out the rest. Clearly if he told them that Ben was Glory, they were going to go all weirdly amnesiac on him again.
“Okay, I am so tired of that woman getting all the good powers,” Buffy said as she rubbed her neck. “Can I hit her really, really hard?”
“I think you just did, and she got away,” Riley said sympathetically.
“Hey, I'm just happy that it turned out that Glory's other half wasn't Dawn. That would've been big with the bad,” Xander added with a sort of fake enthusiasm. Right now, he was feeling anything but enthusiastic about this particular big bad.
“Dawn? Buffy pressed her lips into a thin line and pinned a Xander with a stare that might've killed a lesser man. However, Xander had been glared at by a lot of people, including Angel and Angelus and Spike and Cordelia. He was actually kind of getting used to it. “You thought Glory was Dawn?!” Buffy was passing furious and going straight into homicidal.
“Did I say that? I did not say that,” Xander hurried to defend himself. Angel had gone perfectly still and Spike turned around so he could watch from his spot on the hill. Buffy, however, was focused all on Xander, and that was not her happy face. “I implied it,” he admitted, “but I'm hoping we can sweep that under the rug for now.”
“And when were you planning on telling me this?”
“Pretty much never. I mean, she isn’t Glory, so, yeah, never.”
“Bloody hell, we don't work for you slayer.” Spike started limping back down the hill. “We take care of our own.”
Buffy advanced toward Spike, her finger jabbing in his direction as she left Riley’s side. “Understand this-- if by taking care of your own you plan to lay one finger on my sister, I'll turn you into a pile of dust.”
Just about the time it occurred to Xander that Buffy was definitely not joking, Angel came to life. He stepped up so that he was inches from Buffy’s face, and she fell back a step with a quick gasp. “You’ll na have the chance,” he snapped.
“Hey, I have an idea. Let's all play nice!” Xander said as he hurried to get between the two of them. Buffy had her arms bent as if ready for battle, and Riley inched closer, his hand resting on the butt of his weapon. “We're all friends here. We're friends that sometimes don't like each other, but that's kind of the way friendship goes sometimes,” Xander pointed out. “Buffy and Willow definitely didn't like me when I decided to call Giles a backstabbing two-faced librarian man, but we were still friends. And hey, we don't like her when she goes poking her finger in people's faces when she shouldn't. But we still like her in the general sense of we aren’t going to fight with her.” Xander talked as fast as he could. If Angel really decided to go for Buffy, Xander was not entirely sure how that was going to turn out, but he was pretty sure that Buffy wasn't going to win. They might both lose, but Buffy definitely wasn't going to win.
For a second, Xander was standing there with Angelus, all offense and power and homicidal urges. But then the body language shifted, the shoulders dropped and the hard lines of muscle relaxed somewhat and Angel was there in Angelus’ place.
“Buffy, don’t threaten family, not when I’m this angry and this injured,” Angel said softly. “It might not be the right choice or even a rational choice, but if you say the wrong thing when I’m this hurt and this in need of blood, we both might regret what happens.” Angel’s voice was soft, almost conciliatory, but Xander noticed that Angel wasn’t offering to back down or apologize.
“All of us are on edge,” Riley said as he brought a hand up to rest on Buffy’s shoulder. “Buffy is pretty injured, too, so I think we’re all a little irrational right now.”
Buffy had a stubborn expression on her face, but she didn’t say anything.
“I can give Wesley the location of a suckhouse, or we can request a blood supply from the base,” Riley offered. Xander had to admit that Riley had learned about dealing with offended vampires.
“We take care of our own, mate,” Spike said before Xander could ask for both.
With a nod, Riley accepted that and then he gave a small tug on Buffy’s arm. For a second, Buffy just stared at Angel and Xander, that worry line back on her face.
“Xander, I know you’re all superjuiced from the whole consort deal, but she hit you pretty hard. Have Wesley check that out, okay?” Buffy asked. The hard edge was gone from her voice, and Xander could almost feel the apology.
“Sure, Buff,” he agreed, ignoring the whole consort thing since he didn’t want to reopen that fight. She nodded and then she let Riley pull her back toward the car.