H.A.T. by Deacon Rayne, Book Two: Midnight, Chapter Six - To Serve and Protect
Summary: Like a stopper pulled, the retrieval of the Everstone has set loose a maelstrom of powers. Things not dared been mentioned in all the ages of the world, stir and awaken within their putrescent hives in answer to the Hellmouth’s call. Clawing their way free from the poisoned earth, they are driven towards a single goal - the capture of the Key and the destruction of all the world.
Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended.
Timeline: Immediately follows Book 1: Dusk
Rating: TV-14 (nothing worse than on the show)
Pairing/Characters: Buffy/Spike, Willow/Dusk(OC), Xander/Anya, Giles/Marlena(OC), Dawn, Faith, Angel, Dracula
Book One: Dusk (all chapters)
Previous chapter of Midnight
Banner created by edgehead73.
Hellmouth Ascendant Trilogy: Revamped Edition
Book Two:
Midnight
Chapter 6
To Serve and Protect
The police readied their weapons to fire.
“This is your last chance,” the amplified voice called out to the bloodied pair. “Surrender. NOW!”
The light from the police helicopter above bathed the street in white light, giving the scene a surreal glow. Buffy turned to her brother, putting a hand to her eyes to see him as the chopper’s light backlit him, blinding her.
“Any suggestions?” she asked, weary and afraid.
Alec nodded. “Just one,” he rasped quietly, his whole body a combination of numbing dread and pain from wounds too numerous to count.
Reaching deeply inside himself, he focused on the whirling darkness in the center of his heart; the blood that flowed through him howled in response, slick and hungry. Alec’s body went chill, then numb, as he opened his eyes which were now pools of swirling darkness. Buffy drew back instinctively as Alec threw his head back and howled, an eerie, low-pitched sound that rang on and on like a tolling bell for the dead.
Then the darkness answered him.
Every streetlight that cast a shadow, every neon light that threw a patch of darkness, even the shadows of the policemen, cast by the colored lights of their own cruisers, flooded the area answering the call and swirled around Alec, lifting him high into the air. Buffy gasped as Alec's clothes rippled around him, no longer cloth but the non-material of shadow.
The darkness lifted him up in a pillar of swirling cold blackness and, bringing his hands out before him, Alec lashed out and the pillar exploded into a wave of darkness washing over the policemen. Their screams were choked off midway as the thick cold tendrils of blackness pushed themselves down their throats, into their eyes and up their nostrils, choking, blinding and suffocating them. Blood flowed from jaws as teeth were shattered in violated mouths and nostrils bled from the forcible intrusion.
Buffy watched the scene in horror as the policemen flailed and gurgled.
“Stop it, you’re killing them!” she screamed up at Alec.
Alec, unheeding, brought his hand forward palm up, fingers tensed. The darkness hummed and tightened in response, bones began to crack as he slowly closed his fist.
“ALEC!” Buffy shrieked.
Alec started violently and released his hold on the darkness which fled instantly, free of the shackles of the shadowmancer’s will. He fell to the ground hard as the policemen retched and coughed, attempting to deal with the aftermath of the grotesque violation of their bodies. Buffy limped to her brother and helped him up, his eyelids fluttered and his eyes, now human, were glazed and feverish. He shivered and licked from his lips the cold sweat which was also coating his face.
“Run,” he croaked.
Buffy picked him up and rocketed toward an alley as the first of the police officers began to regain their bearings, clearly in a state of rage; a gunshot, followed by a spray of concrete fragments against Buffy’s back, informed her of that much as she looked past her shoulder at a good-sized hole that had manifested just above her in a wall.
Turning down an alley, she fled until her lungs burned and her veins pumped battery acid. Her crippled brother’s weight was like that of a cold corpse in her arms.
“Buffy… leave me,” he rasped.
Buffy stopped short in shock. “You can’t be serious,” she gaped at him.
Alec took her hand in his.
“I can hide myself and you need to tell Dad what’s happened,” he rasped.
Buffy shook her head vehemently. “Not going to happen,” she growled.
The sounds of dogs barking caused them both to look behind them; flashlight beams heralded the imminent arrival of the police.
“You have to go, Buffy. I can’t walk, but I can hide.” He gestured to a pile of refuse near a large puddle and a cyclone wire fence. “Put me there,” he croaked.
Buffy growled under her breath. “I just can’t leave you here-”
“Do as I say!” Alec snarled looking up into her eyes. “Please,” he added, his face softening as he reached up to touch his sister’s. She took his hand, sniffling.
“You’ve always been the strong one, Buffy. Just this once, let me be strong.”
Buffy clenched her eyes in denial as hot tears of pain seared down her face. She had heard those words before, when someone else she loved was preparing to die.
She almost didn’t notice it until it was on top of them - a snarling dog, mouth frothing, teeth bared and hungry, turned around the corner and charged. She threw a hand up to defend her brother, who in turn had snatched up a trash can lid and caught the beast across the head as it lunged for his sister’s throat. The dog yelped in pain and skidded to the pavement where it lay still. Buffy turned shocked eyes to her brother who tossed the now-bloody lid away and wiped away some of the dried blood and filth from his face.
“Go,” he whispered.
Buffy swallowed hard and nodded; grabbing a handful of fence she climbed up, over, and dropped to the other side as Alec leaned his head against the cold stone wall. She stuck her hand through the fence and he took it, grasping it white-knuckled.
“Don’t forget about me,” he whispered.
Buffy nodded. “We’re coming back for you,” she replied hoarsely.
The sounds of the approaching police were getting louder.
“Go!” Alec yelled and with a last look of burning pain Buffy fled, leaving her brother behind.
Alec watched her until she turned the corner and was out of sight before sagging against the wall, finally allowing the pain and fear he had been feeling all night to show. His hands shook as he rubbed himself, vainly attempting to banish the cold fear that lingered now in his heart; he’d almost killed those men… and he’d enjoyed it.
He heard it then, a high-pitched peal of laughter.
Alec whirled around. “Who’s there?” he demanded.
The laughter subsided slightly but the tone was one of unmistakably malicious amusement.
“Oh, you know me, Alec. You just won’t admit it yet,” Alec saw a flicker of movement from the corner of his eye and whirled around, but his now crippled body betrayed him and he fell hard to the ground, his head coming to rest by the large puddle, whose surface swirled with the polluted rainbow of toxic chemicals.
“But don’t worry, Alec. You will.”
Alec looked down at the pool of water from the corner of his eye, only to see a huge shape rise up from behind him. With a cry, he lashed his out arm, a sword appearing to replace his hand.
There was nothing.
“Drop the knife!” A voice demanded.
Alec turned and was blinded by an onslaught of bright beams emitting from several flashlights. He looked up the sword attached to his arm, the only thing in the alley which did not reflect any of the light, and brought it down to banish it.
He never heard the shot, only felt a hard impact in his shoulder, a loud CRACK, and suddenly he was lying on his back, bleeding profusely from his shoulder. Alec opened and closed his mouth in shock like a beached fish. Figures swam in and out of view. A hand descended, a weapon, a flash of pain, bones broke, more pain, more hands, more weapons. Alec couldn’t make sense of any of it. Dimly, he felt the blows rain upon him, a final blow came across his face, a flash of white, a spray of blood and then blessed darkness, followed by a lingering whisper.
“You will know me… Alec.”
Buffy watched in horror as the police first shot, then beat Alec savagely with their clubs. Her resolve had broken and she had turned back when she heard him cry out and arrived just in time to watch her brother’s assault. Biting her lip she banished the tears she felt coming. There would be no more tears.
There would now only be revenge.
“They picked the wrong family to screw with,” Buffy growled, the fires of hell burning in her eyes as she watched the police heft her brother’s gory body up and out of the alley.
Buffy hobbled down the labyrinthine alleyways, colliding into trashcans and tripping over mangy cats that shrieked and hissed at her. She cringed at all the noise and hoped that those pursuing her would not hear it and attack her.
Like they had Alec.
Buffy squeezed her eyes shut and dragged her now-broken nails against her palm, drawing blood and focusing on the pain instead of the grief. The sky opened up and a cold, foul-smelling rain drizzled down upon her. She lifted her face to it, hoping the rain would cool and cleanse her, but the polluted water merely streaked the blood and filth further down her face and body, offering a cold, clammy touch instead of comfort.
She rested against a rusted dumpster, swatting away a clutch of cockroaches and sagging against the soiled metal. Buffy brought her hands up and down her arms to stave off the cold that seeped deep into her. She was tired, desperately so. The Nightmare Realm had punished her more brutally than any other experience she could remember. Coupled with Alec’s bizarre assault on the police, their flight and her brother’s subsequent beating and capture, she was left in an exhausted ruin. She ran a shaking hand through her soiled hair, tearing and ripping at the snarls and tangles there; the pain was trivial in comparison and was barely felt through her fatigue and the cacophony of other injuries she had suffered. With a sigh, she reached up, grabbing hold of the rim of the dumpster, doing her best to ignore the wet, rotted feel of the metal.
The club came down hard on her already injured arm, eliciting a scream of pain from the girl. Buffy landed hard on the slick pavement, looking up in shock at the policeman that had somehow managed to sneak up on her.
“Do yourself a favor, missy, stay down,” the man chortled, grinning grotesquely.
In some part of Buffy’s agonized mind, she noted that the man still wore the trademark ‘law-enforcement’ sunglasses even though it was long since night.
The man raised his club up again and Buffy growled, swinging out a leg sweep, catching the man behind the kneecaps and causing his legs to fold up from under him. Buffy surged upward, running solely on rage and adrenaline, and smashed an elbow into the man’s throat. He gagged as his head fell in reflex. Buffy grabbed the man and slammed a fist hard into his gut. A loud WHOOSH signaled that the now gasping man’s lungs had deflated. Buffy followed up the combination with a punishing backhand, breaking his jaw and sending his sunglasses flying away from his bleeding face in pieces. Buffy turned to look and her blood turned to ice.
His eyes were lined with jaundice yellow, tinged with the red of madness. No sanity lurked in them and they were filled with an unthinking rage. He screamed, an odd sound to hear from a psychotic man with a broken jaw, and lashed out with his hand, now filled with some kind of device. Twin wires shot out and pierced the young slayer followed by a brain-melting blast of paralyzing electricity. Buffy couldn’t even scream as the muscles in her jaw locked up and her body collapsed. The insane man cackled as he continued to pump dose after dose of high-voltage agony into her torn body. Buffy jerked and whimpered as she felt her life begin to slip away from her.
The policeman only had time to blink as a bestial roar filled the air before he was flying through the air, his last memory before unconsciousness took him was a close up of a brick wall rushing up to meet him.
Strong hands gingerly lifted Buffy up. She felt cool hands clean her face and shield it from the rain.
“Buffy,” a strong voice called from somewhere.
The voice promised safety and protection. She opened her eyes weakly.
“Angel,” she croaked.
Angel held her to him, kissing her hair as Buffy sobbed in relief. Angel hefted her up into his arms and took off down the alley. Buffy rested against him, shaking and cold, but for the first time in what felt like a lifetime, she felt safe.
It was quickly shattered when a huge SWAT APC burst through the brick wall in front of them like it was wet tissue paper and barreled down towards them. Angel wasted no time. With a heft, leapt high into the air landing on a second story fire escape, and began to charge up the side of the black iron latticework. He quickly reached the top of the fire escape and realized he was trapped now at five stories up. He searched frantically for an alternative as the massive vehicle below rumbled towards them.
“Hold on to me,” he whispered harshly to Buffy, who only nodded as Angel braced his legs and launched them over the edge of the rail, still cradling Buffy.
He flew through the space separating two buildings and smashed apart the rusted metal rail of another fire escape. His feet almost shot out from under him when they made contact with the rain slicked metal. There was a terrifying moment of vertigo as he felt himself beginning to fall backwards down five stories, before he lashed out with his hand, catching a piece of metal. His hand was sliced open and he gasped in pain, but he held firm and dragged himself and Buffy back onto safety. Checking on Buffy, ensuring that she was all right, he was astonished to see her smiling weakly up at him.
“Nice one, Tarzan,” she whispered.
Angel cracked a smile and kissed her on the forehead gently before charging up the stairs, arriving on the roof.
The vampire paused a moment to peer down over the side of the building, they were now a good nine stories up in the air and the massive tank-machine was milling around beneath them. Angel smiled as he imagined the frustration of the people operating it.
With a roar of sound and an explosion of light, a helicopter burst up over the edge of the roof, blinding and deafening them. No words of warning were given as someone within the flying machine opened fire on them with an automatic weapon. Angel dashed along the rooftop, his feet being nipped at by high caliber weapon fire as the helicopter bent low and followed, nose nearly scraping the roof as the whirling blades sliced closer to the fleeing pair.
As Angel reached the edge, there was no hesitation as he soared through the air and landed hard on the rooftop beyond. He rolled, doing his best to absorb most of the impact, shielding Buffy. He turned his head, his brown eyes blinded by light as the helicopter gave chase. The machine gun opened up again and Angel fled with inhuman speed. The rounds from the weapon chewed up the roof, spitting hot shrapnel against Angel’s back and legs. He grimaced but continued to keep up a pace that would kill a human, staying just ahead of the swirling rotor blades. Angel could feel the droplets of water which the whirling blades splashed at him with each rotation. He reached the edge of this rooftop, leapt, landed on another, rolled to his feet and kept going.
Almost there, he thought to himself as he flew through the city air and rain.
He wiped at his face, surprised to find blood there from a bullet wound. Undeterred, he dashed forwards, leaping again to cross onto another building. A burst of pain in his knee caused him to stumble and he nearly didn’t make the jump as he realized that he had been shot. He threw his weight forward in mid-air and his momentum carried them both skidding across the rooftop. Buffy fell from his arms and proceeded to bounce across the concrete painfully. Angel crawled over to her, his knee a bloody ruin from a bullet that had caught him mid-air. He covered as much of her body as possible with his own, hoping to absorb as many bullets as his dead body could. The helicopter hovered over them, a single spotlight glaring at them balefully like a blinding eye. Angel heard the click-clack of the reloaded weapon. He squeezed his eyes shut, his last thought wondering what in hell had gone wrong.
And with a war cry, a ceiling hatch opened and Spike burst out like a peroxide blond explosion, leather duster whipping around him, brandishing a crackling electrical wire.
“JUMP!” he roared at Buffy and Angel as the helicopter began to veer away from this new threat.
Spike smashed the cockpit spotlight and jabbed the sparking wire into it as Angel scrambled painfully to his feet and scooped Buffy up. He limped to the edge of the roof. A blinding surge of light followed by an explosion knocked Angel and Buffy up and over the edge the roof, smoking as Spike and the helicopter jerked and sizzled.
Angel held Buffy to him, and as the ground rushed up to meet them both he whispered a prayer to anyone who would hear him that the plan worked.
There was a loud WHOOSH and then suddenly their plummet was jarred to a painful stop in mid-air. For a moment, confusion washed over Angel as he lay face down peering at the city several stories beneath them, yet they were no longer falling and had indeed landed on something quite firm, if not immediately visible. Then it dawned on him, he was resting inside the wings of a huge bird made of transparent crystal stone. The creature lifted its head up to examine the pair.
“Marlena sends her regards,” the creature murmured.
Angel just nodded tiredly. Another explosion of light on the rooftop caught his eye, and he turned to see Spike blasted clean off the roof and plummet toward the earth below like a shooting star.
“Spike!” Angel yelled out.
Then he saw the helicopter, sputtering and smoking, begin to fall to the earth.
“Hold on,” the bird growled.
Angel found purchase in the bird’s stony breast and clung to it desperately as the bird rolled over. The helicopter collided into a series of power lines and the whole thing went up in an explosion of fire and twisted metal. The bird screeched and gained speed, climbing high into the air to escape the fireball, its transparent body tinted by flame causing it to resemble nothing so much as a phoenix lifting high into the night. Angel gritted his teeth and he held on to Buffy and the bird with white knuckled tension until the sound of porcelain cracking filled his ears. The bird folded its wings over the couple as the fire overtook them. Angel gasped in horror as there was fire in every direction that he could see, separated only by the bird’s transparent body. With a final screech, the bird exploded up from the fireball and extended its wings, sailing high above the blaze. Angel sighed in relief.
“Angel?” a weak voice whispered.
Angel turned to its source. “Yeah, Buffy?”
“Are we underneath a giant diamond bird?”
“Yeah.”
“Are we still on fire?”
Angel shook his head. “No,” he assured her.
Buffy smiled. “Okay, good.” At which point she promptly fainted.
Angel chuckled and kissed her head as the pair soared away into the night.
The first thing that he was aware of was that his teeth were vibrating. The second thing he was aware of was that something was burning.
The third thing that he was aware of was that it was he who was burning.
Spike groaned and opened his eyes. If he’d had working lungs he would have coughed, the smell was unbelievable.
“Coming up, extra crispy, side of scorched flesh,” he mumbled and looked around painfully.
He was sitting in a broken windshield ten or so stories down from where he had been. The explosion had rocketed him into this car and the impact had managed to snap the car’s axle like a twig.
“Hope this guy has insurance,” he muttered as he took stock of his injuries.
His hands were a mass of burnt skin, his face felt a little crispy as well. Eyebrows were a distant memory apparently and his eyelashes had gone with them. His jacket was a fused mess of cloth, leather and bits of skin.
“Damn,” he swore, surveying his ruined garment. “Red better be able to magic up some thread and needlework here.”
He chuckled despite himself and looked around, then he laughed outright. The helicopter was a flaming ruin, suspended by a few high-tension electrical wires and cooked inside and out.
“Yeah, that’s right. Manchester United one, NYPD zero,” he muttered and hoisted himself out of the windshield, grimacing. “Bloody hell, I’m going to be picking glass out of my arse for weeks.”
Fishing through his pockets, he sighed in relief; his lighter and smokes were still intact. Lighting up, he took a deep drag and exhaled, attempting to swagger away.
“ ‘And more, much more than this, I did it my way…’ ”
Chuckling, the vampire’s singing faded into the air, leaving only the sound of burning metal and oncoming sirens.
Alec could dimly recall the sensation of being dragged none too gently by his under arms and deposited into something hard, most likely a chair. A burning light blasted into his face and his eyes opened of their own volition. They vainly tried to focus when a brutal punch across his face helped complete the task. His mouth throbbed and his teeth felt loose as the shadowmancer spat out a glob of blood and looked up past the light at his tormentors.
One of them was morbidly obese and cleaning his knuckles with a soiled white handkerchief, the other was razor blade thin with a hawkish face and piercing dark eyes. Alec felt a chill; he didn’t know which one was more terrifying, the fat man whose eyes informed all that he was clearly insane, or the thin man whose eyes said that he clearly wasn’t.
The air tasted thick and pasty, like sweat and unwashed men. An extra layer of cigarette smoke gelled up inside Alec’s mouth and he coughed at the rancid taste of the air. The smell was roughly in the same ballpark - sweat, rotting food, stale beer… and something else, something almost tantalizing. Alec’s eyes went wide and his blood went from chilled to ice, a sudden flashback to the house from Hell in the Nightmare Realm exploding in his mind like a diamond bullet shot into his forehead.
Violence. It was the scent of bestial, unthinking, violence.
“Killed a Rabbi, did you, kid,” the fat man asked, chuckling, jowls jiggling obscenely.
Alec glared up at him. The man must not have appreciated it because he crashed another blow across Alec’s face; the young man dimly felt the bones in his nose bend, then crack, then shatter as his vision filled with red. Alec coughed hard as the thin man smirked.
“I don’t believe he appreciated that, Eddie. Now say you’re sorry,” the thin man instructed.
Alec looked up at him, his words confirming his previous suspicions - the thin man wasn’t insane.
Which meant that he was purely evil.
Further hypotheses had to wait as the fat man wrapped his hand around Alec’s shattered nose and began to twist. The sound of cartilage cracking filled the room as Alec bit his lip until it bled to keep from screaming, tears filling his eyes.
“I’m very sorry, sir,” the fat man chortled, breathing stale onions and sweat into Alec’s face. He released the younger man, who gasped and choked, spitting up blood. The fat man grimaced.
“Christ. Friggin’ disgusting, I’m telling you,” he sneered.
Alec held up a hand in supplication.
“I don’t suppose a phone call would be a possibility,” he commented dryly.
Alec got a grim satisfaction in watching the fat man’s red face turn even redder as his eyebrows shot up to disappear in the greasy wrinkles of his forehead. The man stomped over to a telephone resting on a small desk, tore it out of the wall and proceeded to smash Alec upside the head with it.
Bright white light exploded in Alec’s head as he fell to the floor hard, his mind swimming with what was probably a concussion. He tried hard to clear it, trying to make sense of the situation as his father would.
What is going on? How is this happening? I’ve never seen anyone behave like this, let alone cops. Dimly, he wondered if his treatment constituted police brutality or if they had transcended into cruel and unusual torture.
A swift kick in the stomach banished any further musings as Alec folded up, or tried to as best he could with his crippled legs unresponsive.
“Get up, you freakin’ sicko!” the fat man roared down at him.
Alec chuckled at the pot/kettle irony of that comment despite himself, which only further enraged the man.
“Oh, you think that’s funny, do ya, punk?” he sneered before bringing a size eleven shoe down on Alec’s head.
The head in question bounced off the concrete floor; at this point he was seeing two of everything and working on three. He rolled over onto his back and, as the shoe came down again, Alec lashed out with a hand, correctly guessing which shoe was real and which was a hallucination brought upon by his multiple injuries. He twisted and shoved hard and with a wildebeest-like bellow of rage, the man went down with a colossal THUD. Alec snorted quietly and mentally gave himself a point.
Five greasy digits appeared on the desk as the fat man hauled himself up, the desk creaking in protest.
Strong desk, Alec thought wryly, then he began to worry as the fat man grinned, looking completely insane.
“Assaulting an officer of the law is a felony, you know,” he informed the brutalized man.
Alec just nodded. “Yeah, so is police brutality and physical torture, I hear,” he replied.
He looked over at the thin man who was casually watching, apparently enjoying the show quite a bit.
“Oh, you think you’re funny, do ya, punk?” the fat man snarled.
Alec looked up at him through swollen eyes and grinned.
"Working your way through ‘Dirty Harry’ movies.” Alec turned to the thin man and managed a wink through his swollen eyes. “I’m a big Eastwood fan.” He turned back to Eddie. “ ‘Course, hearing a two-bit pretender like you butcher it is really more painful than the beating,” he quipped lightly, determined to do his best to make things miserable for his captors. He vainly searched for even a tiny patch of darkness in the room to use against his tormentors but the force of the light had banished any hope.
A meaty hand grabbed onto his face, holding it in place as Eddie removed a can of mace from his belt.
Alec sighed. This is going to suck.
The man sprayed Alec’s eyes, prying open the swollen tissue to abuse his blood-tinged corneas with the blinding spray. Next it was forced up his shattered nose and sprayed, then down his throat. The man clamped a hand over Alec’s broken nose and bleeding mouth, grinding bones and suffocating him as Alec swooned from the pain, his face on fire, his blood screaming for air.
Help me… someone…
Angel had lost all sense of time as the bird flew over the cityscape, listening to the beating of the massive stone wings and the gentle whooshing of the wind that followed.
“We have arrived,” the bird rumbled. “The transition to the gypsy kingdom will be difficult for the breathing girl, blood-drinker.”
Angel bristled slightly at this but held his tongue.
“Do not awaken her,” the creature concluded, leaving little room for argument.
Angel tightened his grip on Buffy.
“What do you mean ‘difficult?” he asked as the bird began to climb higher into the air. “And why are we climbing?” the vampire continued, frustrated, then gaped as the bird turned over onto his back and dove screeching towards the ground.
“Oh, this is really fast!” he yelled out trying to hear himself over the roar of the wind as the bird folded its wings once again over the pair, creating an air-tight cocoon around them and changing himself into a diamond bullet.
The clouds parted revealing a large lake. Angel swallowed, hoping desperately that this was all part of some kind of plan and not the bird having a sudden psychotic break. With the sound of a class four tornado touching down into a wading pool, the bird shattered the surface of the water, dousing three joggers, two homeless men and a peanut vendor in a great deluge of water leaving them in soggy confusion.
The vampire gaped openly at the sight of all the rushing water around him. The bird had been right, even in the cocoon of his wings those who needed to breathe would be more than a little disconcerted by the claustrophobic feelings involved in being in a water-filled tunnel underground.
Of course, the fact that they were traveling at speeds that could suck the air out of a person’s lungs didn’t help matters.
With a final burst of water and a deafening screech, the bird exploded out of a water pipe and unfurled its wings, dousing the area with water. Angel looked around in surprised recognition; they had exited out into the aqueduct catwalk of the Spaarti tribal lair upon which they had fought the Khulghaani.
Several pairs of heads turned to regard the awesome spectacle of the huge diamond bird, its body shining prismatic rainbows caused by the mist of the crashing water as it finished its screeching call and perched onto the stone walk. Angel helped the still-unconscious Buffy into the waiting arms of several gypsies who gently laid her down and began to examine her wounds. With a yelp, the soaked vampire fell from his perch upon the indifferent bird’s chest, which looked down at him with infinite disdain. A sodden heap, Angel lifted his head to the sound of heavily sardonic clapping.
“Oh yeah, nice one, mate,” Spike commented wryly, smoking a cigarette and chortling his ass off.
Angel glared up at him balefully though he was glad to see the other vampire intact and unhurt from his fiery plummet.
“You see, Spike, that’s always been your problem. Most people have the decency to die after plummeting to earth in a fiery explosion,” Angel bit out.
Spike laughed and clapped his hands, his cigarette dangling between smirking lips.
“I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again - I’ve always been bad,” Spike quipped as he helped the soaked Angel to his feet. “Rough commute?” he asked wryly.
Angel nodded. “Lots of flying and diving at high speeds, bad combination. Way to take your time incidentally with that power line. I thought the plan was for you to already be waiting.”
Spike’s expression darkened as he casually opened his shirt.
“I got hung up,” he quipped.
Angel’s eyes widened. Embedded in Spike’s chest were no less than six slugs like tiny fists of lead protruding from his chest. The blond walked over to the prone Buffy as Angel whistled low, turning to face the pair.
“I take it you ran afoul our boys in blue?” Spike snorted as the gypsies that examined Buffy peeled her jacket off slowly. They swore quietly.
“Bloody Hell,” Spike whispered thickly.
Buffy’s body was a collection of slashes, bruises and obvious broken bones, all soaked in blood. Spike reared up to Angel.
“Why didn’t you soddin’ tell me she was this hurt?” he roared.
Angel looked just as aghast. “I didn’t know,” he replied.
“Out of the way!” a voice called out.
DeGanon shoved his way past everyone to see the battered Slayer. He crossed himself and whispered a prayer; as he put a hand to her brow she moaned, her eyelids fluttering.
“She has a fever and her wounds are numerous. Her sleep is sickened and filled with wounds from her battle.”
DeGanon hoisted the girl up as if she weighed nothing and carried her out towards the recovery room.
“Where is her brother?” the Gypsy lord demanded as they traveled hurriedly down the hall.
“Yeah, that’s what I’d like to know, too. Traded Red a guarantee on her boy’s safety provided she fix my coat. Where is the great idiot?” Spike’s tone betrayed his concern for his friend as Angel shrugged.
“I didn’t see them together; they must have gotten separated after we left them with the Rabbi.”
Spike growled in frustration and thrust his hands into the pockets of his jeans, puffing madly on his cigarette as DeGanon kicked open a large set of doors to a sea of concerned faces.
“Buffy!” Dawn cried out as she rushed to her sister’s battered body, limp and pale, as DeGanon laid her down upon a bed.
“Good lord,” Giles whispered, his face turning to ash as he regarded her. Her wounds were both grievous and too numerous to count.
Angel turned to Dawn. “Where are the others?”
Dawn tore her eyes from the mangled body of her sister.
“They’re sleeping, why-”
“Get them!” Angel ordered.
Dawn nodded and hurried away as DeGanon looked up to catch Giles’s eyes.
“We need clean water, bandages, and some of the poultice given to us by the Undying One,” he instructed the Watcher.
Giles nodded and hurried away as DeGanon turned to Spike.
“Help me undress her,” he ordered. Spike look taken aback.
“Hey, now, wait a minute…”
“Spike! Open wounds, filthy clothes, do the math,” Angel barked out.
Spike grimaced. “All right, all right.”
Quickly the three of them peeled the gory, filth-encrusted garments from her, Spike and Angel glaring at each other the whole time. DeGanon tossed the disgusting tatters to Angel.
“Burn those,” he instructed, then placed a clean sheet across her body just as Dawn came rushing back with Faith, Xander, Anya and Willow.
“Buffy!” Willow cried out in despair seeing her friend’s condition.
Xander rushed over to the Slayer.
“Buff! Can you hear me? Aw, geez. C’mon, Buffy, snap out of it,” he choked out, pushing her hair out of her face.
Anya gently put a hand on his shoulder, leading him away.
“She’s going to be fine. She’s Buffy, she’ll be fine…” Xander mumbled to himself over and over mantra-like. Anya could only nod and stroke Xander soothingly as Faith came to the older Slayer stricken.
“Buffy…” Faith whispered, her scarred face twisted in misery.
Willow gripped Faith’s hand in hers and squeezed Buffy’s blood-encrusted hand with white-knuckled intensity. Dawn kissed her sister on the forehead, weeping quietly.
“She’ll be okay, won’t she? “ She looked around and saw little hope in the faces. “Won’t she?!” chokingly.
Faith sighed. “D, it looks like someone beat the hell out of her and then carved her up like a turkey. There’s some serious damage, I don’t even think Shadowboy could heal…”
Faith’s voice trailed off as the identical thought entered everyone’s mind. Dawn’s face transformed itself from misery and grief to something that was too intense for words.
“Where’s Alec?” she gritted out tightly.
Alec coughed, his mouth so full of blood it choked him. He’d lost track of time since the beating, and there were no windows in the dank concrete room, so there was no way to see if this hellish night had transformed into a hellish morning.
Then again, mornings tend to suck regardless, he commented to himself wryly, chuckling.
Another sharp blow knocked him to the floor again; he didn’t even have the strength to moan anymore, let alone scream. He dimly saw now-familiar brown shoes walk towards him and he toyed with the idea of driving something sharp through the cop’s kneecap, just as he’d toyed with the idea all night. Every time, his blood surged and sang at the prospect of violence, and every time what was left of his cool logic reminded him that he had no way of getting out of here.
Not now that he was a cripple.
He choked back the shame, the humiliation of the situation, which hurt more than any of the blows.
A swift kick landed just beneath Alec’s waist. The young man gasped as tears leaked out of his eyes.
Well, maybe not, that last shot hurt more.
“Now, here’s what I can’t understand,” Eddie laughed and flipped over the paralyzed younger man, who looked up at him.
“What’s that, Eddie?” Alec asked him cordially, trying to retain some shreds of dignity, his inherited accent helping slightly.
Eddie pushed hard with the toe of his shoe on Alec’s shoulder, eliciting a groan.
“How is it that a limey punk like you can take getting your ass kicked so completely on top of getting a round in the shoulder?”
Alec cracked a grin. “Clean living, officer, and a healthy respect for the law. You should try it.”
Alec grinned as once again, the fat man reared up and took a meaty handful of shirt and skin, pulling out a few chest hairs, and smashed Alec atop the desk. Clumsily, he tore open Alec’s shirt as the wounded man laughed.
“What? No dinner and movie first?” he cracked dryly as Eddie tore away the shreds of cloth and jerked Alec’s shoulder up to the light, almost tearing the desk lamp out of the wall as he aimed the light at the boy’s flesh, the thin man coming up to peer curiously.
Where there was once a gaping bleeding hole, there was now only a lump of angry red flesh showing up flushed and crimson in the florescent light. Eddie gaped at Alec and even the thin man’s eyes widened. Alec met the pair’s shocked glance and weakly put a finger to his lips.
“Shhh, it’s a secret…” he rasped, his voice trailing off from a hiss to a throaty chuckle.
BAM! Eddie slammed a ham-sized fist into Alec’s stomach, causing a burst of blood to spurt out of his lips with such force as to splatter Eddie’s face as well as the ceiling.
“What are you?” Eddie cried out, clearly losing what little restraint and sanity he had, his lips frothing and his gut heaving rapidly in time with his great wheezing breaths.
“Wishing for a video camera and a jury of my peers,” Alec replied, feeling a slight sense of victory, clearly he was holding it together better than his captors.
Another blow landed and Alec felt something break inside and come loose.
So much for ‘holding it together’
The thin man peered frowning at Eddie’s face and Alec felt a slimmer of hope between punches that perhaps the thin man was finally disconcerted by his cohort's psychotic behavior.
The hope died right around when the thin man dabbed lightly at Eddie’s face and came back sniffing his fingers, frowning in puzzlement. Alec’s brain was too badly fogged with pain and fatigue to understand the action and he felt the crashing weight of despair weighing down on him threatening to break him.
There was a rap at the door. Alec strained, hoping against hope that perhaps not everyone in the station was a psychopath, but Eddie clamped a hand over Alec’s mouth, a difficult proposition as Alec’s badly broken nose and almost shattered jaw had swollen the tissue far beyond its normal size. The thin man answered it and conversed briefly for a few moments before returning.
“The gentlemen from explosives and ordinance have arrived,” he explained.
Eddie laughed, bringing his hand up off of Alec’s mouth.
“Terrific. How was our haul?”
The thin man smiled.
“And what happened to the guys that came with?”
The smile ran cold. Alec looked at them with as much shock he could manage.
“You killed cops? Your own?”
Eddie shrugged casually.
“If you want to make an omelet, you gotta break some eggs. The goodies we got in there will flush out your gypsy buddies like rats.”
Alec’s swollen eyes widened a little more and Eddie laughed at his fear and anguish.
“Yeah, that’s right, we know all about your little friends down in the pipes.” Eddie beamed at the thin man like a puppy dog begging for a treat, the thin man merely nodded and waved a hand dismissively.
Alec’s panicked and pain-fogged brain dimly registered the sheer regal disdain in the thin man’s face and gestures, not something you see in a psychotic civil servant.
I have to get out of here, I have to warn them.
Gritting his teeth, trying to ignore the pain that had him swimming in and out of unconsciousness, Alec tightened his fist, feeling the heat of bloodlust swim up through his body, dark and slick, and with it the cold steel that answered the call, filling the veins of his arm with quicksilver. Three small points of metal began to peek through the skin between his knuckles. Eddie was distracted and the thin man looked bored, the time to strike was now. With a burst of speed and desperation, he knocked Eddie’s hand away and with a roar…
…The door came flying open in an explosion of blond hair and fury. The thin man went down hard when a brutal chop caught him hard across the temple followed by a sharp knee to the groin that folded him up in an instant. Eddie’s mouth sagged open as he spun around, which knocked Alec to the floor, face down upon the concrete.
“Ow,” he commented mildly, muffled by the floor. He turned his head toward what was happening and was rewarded greatly.
Eddie was standing up, body stiff as a rod and vibrating hard, his mouth opening and closing like a gaping fish, drool spewing out of his mouth as the fat in his face and body jiggled madly. He dropped like a sack of lard revealing a small muscular woman holding something.
“Buffy?” Alec whispered weakly.
The woman gently turned him over. “Jesus Christ.”
It didn’t sound like Buffy. She was touching his face and she had put something back onto her belt. She took his pulse and checked his breathing; neither was doing really well.
Alec coughed and the woman wiped the blood from his mouth to keep him from choking. Her cool touch was like that of an angel and he nearly wept save the fact that he didn’t have the strength.
“I’m going to get you out of here,” the woman told him.
Alec couldn’t even acknowledge it. The woman hoisted Alec up, the light shining in her eyes briefly, bringing them into full view. Clearly this was a woman in her late twenties to early thirties.
The beam of light also blinded her and kept her from seeing the thin man rising smoothly to his feet and brandishing a switchblade.
(To be continued in chapter 7)
Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended.
Timeline: Immediately follows Book 1: Dusk
Rating: TV-14 (nothing worse than on the show)
Pairing/Characters: Buffy/Spike, Willow/Dusk(OC), Xander/Anya, Giles/Marlena(OC), Dawn, Faith, Angel, Dracula
Book One: Dusk (all chapters)
Previous chapter of Midnight
Banner created by edgehead73.
Hellmouth Ascendant Trilogy: Revamped Edition
Book Two:
Midnight
Chapter 6
To Serve and Protect
The police readied their weapons to fire.
“This is your last chance,” the amplified voice called out to the bloodied pair. “Surrender. NOW!”
The light from the police helicopter above bathed the street in white light, giving the scene a surreal glow. Buffy turned to her brother, putting a hand to her eyes to see him as the chopper’s light backlit him, blinding her.
“Any suggestions?” she asked, weary and afraid.
Alec nodded. “Just one,” he rasped quietly, his whole body a combination of numbing dread and pain from wounds too numerous to count.
Reaching deeply inside himself, he focused on the whirling darkness in the center of his heart; the blood that flowed through him howled in response, slick and hungry. Alec’s body went chill, then numb, as he opened his eyes which were now pools of swirling darkness. Buffy drew back instinctively as Alec threw his head back and howled, an eerie, low-pitched sound that rang on and on like a tolling bell for the dead.
Then the darkness answered him.
Every streetlight that cast a shadow, every neon light that threw a patch of darkness, even the shadows of the policemen, cast by the colored lights of their own cruisers, flooded the area answering the call and swirled around Alec, lifting him high into the air. Buffy gasped as Alec's clothes rippled around him, no longer cloth but the non-material of shadow.
The darkness lifted him up in a pillar of swirling cold blackness and, bringing his hands out before him, Alec lashed out and the pillar exploded into a wave of darkness washing over the policemen. Their screams were choked off midway as the thick cold tendrils of blackness pushed themselves down their throats, into their eyes and up their nostrils, choking, blinding and suffocating them. Blood flowed from jaws as teeth were shattered in violated mouths and nostrils bled from the forcible intrusion.
Buffy watched the scene in horror as the policemen flailed and gurgled.
“Stop it, you’re killing them!” she screamed up at Alec.
Alec, unheeding, brought his hand forward palm up, fingers tensed. The darkness hummed and tightened in response, bones began to crack as he slowly closed his fist.
“ALEC!” Buffy shrieked.
Alec started violently and released his hold on the darkness which fled instantly, free of the shackles of the shadowmancer’s will. He fell to the ground hard as the policemen retched and coughed, attempting to deal with the aftermath of the grotesque violation of their bodies. Buffy limped to her brother and helped him up, his eyelids fluttered and his eyes, now human, were glazed and feverish. He shivered and licked from his lips the cold sweat which was also coating his face.
“Run,” he croaked.
Buffy picked him up and rocketed toward an alley as the first of the police officers began to regain their bearings, clearly in a state of rage; a gunshot, followed by a spray of concrete fragments against Buffy’s back, informed her of that much as she looked past her shoulder at a good-sized hole that had manifested just above her in a wall.
Turning down an alley, she fled until her lungs burned and her veins pumped battery acid. Her crippled brother’s weight was like that of a cold corpse in her arms.
“Buffy… leave me,” he rasped.
Buffy stopped short in shock. “You can’t be serious,” she gaped at him.
Alec took her hand in his.
“I can hide myself and you need to tell Dad what’s happened,” he rasped.
Buffy shook her head vehemently. “Not going to happen,” she growled.
The sounds of dogs barking caused them both to look behind them; flashlight beams heralded the imminent arrival of the police.
“You have to go, Buffy. I can’t walk, but I can hide.” He gestured to a pile of refuse near a large puddle and a cyclone wire fence. “Put me there,” he croaked.
Buffy growled under her breath. “I just can’t leave you here-”
“Do as I say!” Alec snarled looking up into her eyes. “Please,” he added, his face softening as he reached up to touch his sister’s. She took his hand, sniffling.
“You’ve always been the strong one, Buffy. Just this once, let me be strong.”
Buffy clenched her eyes in denial as hot tears of pain seared down her face. She had heard those words before, when someone else she loved was preparing to die.
She almost didn’t notice it until it was on top of them - a snarling dog, mouth frothing, teeth bared and hungry, turned around the corner and charged. She threw a hand up to defend her brother, who in turn had snatched up a trash can lid and caught the beast across the head as it lunged for his sister’s throat. The dog yelped in pain and skidded to the pavement where it lay still. Buffy turned shocked eyes to her brother who tossed the now-bloody lid away and wiped away some of the dried blood and filth from his face.
“Go,” he whispered.
Buffy swallowed hard and nodded; grabbing a handful of fence she climbed up, over, and dropped to the other side as Alec leaned his head against the cold stone wall. She stuck her hand through the fence and he took it, grasping it white-knuckled.
“Don’t forget about me,” he whispered.
Buffy nodded. “We’re coming back for you,” she replied hoarsely.
The sounds of the approaching police were getting louder.
“Go!” Alec yelled and with a last look of burning pain Buffy fled, leaving her brother behind.
Alec watched her until she turned the corner and was out of sight before sagging against the wall, finally allowing the pain and fear he had been feeling all night to show. His hands shook as he rubbed himself, vainly attempting to banish the cold fear that lingered now in his heart; he’d almost killed those men… and he’d enjoyed it.
He heard it then, a high-pitched peal of laughter.
Alec whirled around. “Who’s there?” he demanded.
The laughter subsided slightly but the tone was one of unmistakably malicious amusement.
“Oh, you know me, Alec. You just won’t admit it yet,” Alec saw a flicker of movement from the corner of his eye and whirled around, but his now crippled body betrayed him and he fell hard to the ground, his head coming to rest by the large puddle, whose surface swirled with the polluted rainbow of toxic chemicals.
“But don’t worry, Alec. You will.”
Alec looked down at the pool of water from the corner of his eye, only to see a huge shape rise up from behind him. With a cry, he lashed his out arm, a sword appearing to replace his hand.
There was nothing.
“Drop the knife!” A voice demanded.
Alec turned and was blinded by an onslaught of bright beams emitting from several flashlights. He looked up the sword attached to his arm, the only thing in the alley which did not reflect any of the light, and brought it down to banish it.
He never heard the shot, only felt a hard impact in his shoulder, a loud CRACK, and suddenly he was lying on his back, bleeding profusely from his shoulder. Alec opened and closed his mouth in shock like a beached fish. Figures swam in and out of view. A hand descended, a weapon, a flash of pain, bones broke, more pain, more hands, more weapons. Alec couldn’t make sense of any of it. Dimly, he felt the blows rain upon him, a final blow came across his face, a flash of white, a spray of blood and then blessed darkness, followed by a lingering whisper.
“You will know me… Alec.”
Buffy watched in horror as the police first shot, then beat Alec savagely with their clubs. Her resolve had broken and she had turned back when she heard him cry out and arrived just in time to watch her brother’s assault. Biting her lip she banished the tears she felt coming. There would be no more tears.
There would now only be revenge.
“They picked the wrong family to screw with,” Buffy growled, the fires of hell burning in her eyes as she watched the police heft her brother’s gory body up and out of the alley.
Buffy hobbled down the labyrinthine alleyways, colliding into trashcans and tripping over mangy cats that shrieked and hissed at her. She cringed at all the noise and hoped that those pursuing her would not hear it and attack her.
Like they had Alec.
Buffy squeezed her eyes shut and dragged her now-broken nails against her palm, drawing blood and focusing on the pain instead of the grief. The sky opened up and a cold, foul-smelling rain drizzled down upon her. She lifted her face to it, hoping the rain would cool and cleanse her, but the polluted water merely streaked the blood and filth further down her face and body, offering a cold, clammy touch instead of comfort.
She rested against a rusted dumpster, swatting away a clutch of cockroaches and sagging against the soiled metal. Buffy brought her hands up and down her arms to stave off the cold that seeped deep into her. She was tired, desperately so. The Nightmare Realm had punished her more brutally than any other experience she could remember. Coupled with Alec’s bizarre assault on the police, their flight and her brother’s subsequent beating and capture, she was left in an exhausted ruin. She ran a shaking hand through her soiled hair, tearing and ripping at the snarls and tangles there; the pain was trivial in comparison and was barely felt through her fatigue and the cacophony of other injuries she had suffered. With a sigh, she reached up, grabbing hold of the rim of the dumpster, doing her best to ignore the wet, rotted feel of the metal.
The club came down hard on her already injured arm, eliciting a scream of pain from the girl. Buffy landed hard on the slick pavement, looking up in shock at the policeman that had somehow managed to sneak up on her.
“Do yourself a favor, missy, stay down,” the man chortled, grinning grotesquely.
In some part of Buffy’s agonized mind, she noted that the man still wore the trademark ‘law-enforcement’ sunglasses even though it was long since night.
The man raised his club up again and Buffy growled, swinging out a leg sweep, catching the man behind the kneecaps and causing his legs to fold up from under him. Buffy surged upward, running solely on rage and adrenaline, and smashed an elbow into the man’s throat. He gagged as his head fell in reflex. Buffy grabbed the man and slammed a fist hard into his gut. A loud WHOOSH signaled that the now gasping man’s lungs had deflated. Buffy followed up the combination with a punishing backhand, breaking his jaw and sending his sunglasses flying away from his bleeding face in pieces. Buffy turned to look and her blood turned to ice.
His eyes were lined with jaundice yellow, tinged with the red of madness. No sanity lurked in them and they were filled with an unthinking rage. He screamed, an odd sound to hear from a psychotic man with a broken jaw, and lashed out with his hand, now filled with some kind of device. Twin wires shot out and pierced the young slayer followed by a brain-melting blast of paralyzing electricity. Buffy couldn’t even scream as the muscles in her jaw locked up and her body collapsed. The insane man cackled as he continued to pump dose after dose of high-voltage agony into her torn body. Buffy jerked and whimpered as she felt her life begin to slip away from her.
The policeman only had time to blink as a bestial roar filled the air before he was flying through the air, his last memory before unconsciousness took him was a close up of a brick wall rushing up to meet him.
Strong hands gingerly lifted Buffy up. She felt cool hands clean her face and shield it from the rain.
“Buffy,” a strong voice called from somewhere.
The voice promised safety and protection. She opened her eyes weakly.
“Angel,” she croaked.
Angel held her to him, kissing her hair as Buffy sobbed in relief. Angel hefted her up into his arms and took off down the alley. Buffy rested against him, shaking and cold, but for the first time in what felt like a lifetime, she felt safe.
It was quickly shattered when a huge SWAT APC burst through the brick wall in front of them like it was wet tissue paper and barreled down towards them. Angel wasted no time. With a heft, leapt high into the air landing on a second story fire escape, and began to charge up the side of the black iron latticework. He quickly reached the top of the fire escape and realized he was trapped now at five stories up. He searched frantically for an alternative as the massive vehicle below rumbled towards them.
“Hold on to me,” he whispered harshly to Buffy, who only nodded as Angel braced his legs and launched them over the edge of the rail, still cradling Buffy.
He flew through the space separating two buildings and smashed apart the rusted metal rail of another fire escape. His feet almost shot out from under him when they made contact with the rain slicked metal. There was a terrifying moment of vertigo as he felt himself beginning to fall backwards down five stories, before he lashed out with his hand, catching a piece of metal. His hand was sliced open and he gasped in pain, but he held firm and dragged himself and Buffy back onto safety. Checking on Buffy, ensuring that she was all right, he was astonished to see her smiling weakly up at him.
“Nice one, Tarzan,” she whispered.
Angel cracked a smile and kissed her on the forehead gently before charging up the stairs, arriving on the roof.
The vampire paused a moment to peer down over the side of the building, they were now a good nine stories up in the air and the massive tank-machine was milling around beneath them. Angel smiled as he imagined the frustration of the people operating it.
With a roar of sound and an explosion of light, a helicopter burst up over the edge of the roof, blinding and deafening them. No words of warning were given as someone within the flying machine opened fire on them with an automatic weapon. Angel dashed along the rooftop, his feet being nipped at by high caliber weapon fire as the helicopter bent low and followed, nose nearly scraping the roof as the whirling blades sliced closer to the fleeing pair.
As Angel reached the edge, there was no hesitation as he soared through the air and landed hard on the rooftop beyond. He rolled, doing his best to absorb most of the impact, shielding Buffy. He turned his head, his brown eyes blinded by light as the helicopter gave chase. The machine gun opened up again and Angel fled with inhuman speed. The rounds from the weapon chewed up the roof, spitting hot shrapnel against Angel’s back and legs. He grimaced but continued to keep up a pace that would kill a human, staying just ahead of the swirling rotor blades. Angel could feel the droplets of water which the whirling blades splashed at him with each rotation. He reached the edge of this rooftop, leapt, landed on another, rolled to his feet and kept going.
Almost there, he thought to himself as he flew through the city air and rain.
He wiped at his face, surprised to find blood there from a bullet wound. Undeterred, he dashed forwards, leaping again to cross onto another building. A burst of pain in his knee caused him to stumble and he nearly didn’t make the jump as he realized that he had been shot. He threw his weight forward in mid-air and his momentum carried them both skidding across the rooftop. Buffy fell from his arms and proceeded to bounce across the concrete painfully. Angel crawled over to her, his knee a bloody ruin from a bullet that had caught him mid-air. He covered as much of her body as possible with his own, hoping to absorb as many bullets as his dead body could. The helicopter hovered over them, a single spotlight glaring at them balefully like a blinding eye. Angel heard the click-clack of the reloaded weapon. He squeezed his eyes shut, his last thought wondering what in hell had gone wrong.
And with a war cry, a ceiling hatch opened and Spike burst out like a peroxide blond explosion, leather duster whipping around him, brandishing a crackling electrical wire.
“JUMP!” he roared at Buffy and Angel as the helicopter began to veer away from this new threat.
Spike smashed the cockpit spotlight and jabbed the sparking wire into it as Angel scrambled painfully to his feet and scooped Buffy up. He limped to the edge of the roof. A blinding surge of light followed by an explosion knocked Angel and Buffy up and over the edge the roof, smoking as Spike and the helicopter jerked and sizzled.
Angel held Buffy to him, and as the ground rushed up to meet them both he whispered a prayer to anyone who would hear him that the plan worked.
There was a loud WHOOSH and then suddenly their plummet was jarred to a painful stop in mid-air. For a moment, confusion washed over Angel as he lay face down peering at the city several stories beneath them, yet they were no longer falling and had indeed landed on something quite firm, if not immediately visible. Then it dawned on him, he was resting inside the wings of a huge bird made of transparent crystal stone. The creature lifted its head up to examine the pair.
“Marlena sends her regards,” the creature murmured.
Angel just nodded tiredly. Another explosion of light on the rooftop caught his eye, and he turned to see Spike blasted clean off the roof and plummet toward the earth below like a shooting star.
“Spike!” Angel yelled out.
Then he saw the helicopter, sputtering and smoking, begin to fall to the earth.
“Hold on,” the bird growled.
Angel found purchase in the bird’s stony breast and clung to it desperately as the bird rolled over. The helicopter collided into a series of power lines and the whole thing went up in an explosion of fire and twisted metal. The bird screeched and gained speed, climbing high into the air to escape the fireball, its transparent body tinted by flame causing it to resemble nothing so much as a phoenix lifting high into the night. Angel gritted his teeth and he held on to Buffy and the bird with white knuckled tension until the sound of porcelain cracking filled his ears. The bird folded its wings over the couple as the fire overtook them. Angel gasped in horror as there was fire in every direction that he could see, separated only by the bird’s transparent body. With a final screech, the bird exploded up from the fireball and extended its wings, sailing high above the blaze. Angel sighed in relief.
“Angel?” a weak voice whispered.
Angel turned to its source. “Yeah, Buffy?”
“Are we underneath a giant diamond bird?”
“Yeah.”
“Are we still on fire?”
Angel shook his head. “No,” he assured her.
Buffy smiled. “Okay, good.” At which point she promptly fainted.
Angel chuckled and kissed her head as the pair soared away into the night.
The first thing that he was aware of was that his teeth were vibrating. The second thing he was aware of was that something was burning.
The third thing that he was aware of was that it was he who was burning.
Spike groaned and opened his eyes. If he’d had working lungs he would have coughed, the smell was unbelievable.
“Coming up, extra crispy, side of scorched flesh,” he mumbled and looked around painfully.
He was sitting in a broken windshield ten or so stories down from where he had been. The explosion had rocketed him into this car and the impact had managed to snap the car’s axle like a twig.
“Hope this guy has insurance,” he muttered as he took stock of his injuries.
His hands were a mass of burnt skin, his face felt a little crispy as well. Eyebrows were a distant memory apparently and his eyelashes had gone with them. His jacket was a fused mess of cloth, leather and bits of skin.
“Damn,” he swore, surveying his ruined garment. “Red better be able to magic up some thread and needlework here.”
He chuckled despite himself and looked around, then he laughed outright. The helicopter was a flaming ruin, suspended by a few high-tension electrical wires and cooked inside and out.
“Yeah, that’s right. Manchester United one, NYPD zero,” he muttered and hoisted himself out of the windshield, grimacing. “Bloody hell, I’m going to be picking glass out of my arse for weeks.”
Fishing through his pockets, he sighed in relief; his lighter and smokes were still intact. Lighting up, he took a deep drag and exhaled, attempting to swagger away.
“ ‘And more, much more than this, I did it my way…’ ”
Chuckling, the vampire’s singing faded into the air, leaving only the sound of burning metal and oncoming sirens.
Alec could dimly recall the sensation of being dragged none too gently by his under arms and deposited into something hard, most likely a chair. A burning light blasted into his face and his eyes opened of their own volition. They vainly tried to focus when a brutal punch across his face helped complete the task. His mouth throbbed and his teeth felt loose as the shadowmancer spat out a glob of blood and looked up past the light at his tormentors.
One of them was morbidly obese and cleaning his knuckles with a soiled white handkerchief, the other was razor blade thin with a hawkish face and piercing dark eyes. Alec felt a chill; he didn’t know which one was more terrifying, the fat man whose eyes informed all that he was clearly insane, or the thin man whose eyes said that he clearly wasn’t.
The air tasted thick and pasty, like sweat and unwashed men. An extra layer of cigarette smoke gelled up inside Alec’s mouth and he coughed at the rancid taste of the air. The smell was roughly in the same ballpark - sweat, rotting food, stale beer… and something else, something almost tantalizing. Alec’s eyes went wide and his blood went from chilled to ice, a sudden flashback to the house from Hell in the Nightmare Realm exploding in his mind like a diamond bullet shot into his forehead.
Violence. It was the scent of bestial, unthinking, violence.
“Killed a Rabbi, did you, kid,” the fat man asked, chuckling, jowls jiggling obscenely.
Alec glared up at him. The man must not have appreciated it because he crashed another blow across Alec’s face; the young man dimly felt the bones in his nose bend, then crack, then shatter as his vision filled with red. Alec coughed hard as the thin man smirked.
“I don’t believe he appreciated that, Eddie. Now say you’re sorry,” the thin man instructed.
Alec looked up at him, his words confirming his previous suspicions - the thin man wasn’t insane.
Which meant that he was purely evil.
Further hypotheses had to wait as the fat man wrapped his hand around Alec’s shattered nose and began to twist. The sound of cartilage cracking filled the room as Alec bit his lip until it bled to keep from screaming, tears filling his eyes.
“I’m very sorry, sir,” the fat man chortled, breathing stale onions and sweat into Alec’s face. He released the younger man, who gasped and choked, spitting up blood. The fat man grimaced.
“Christ. Friggin’ disgusting, I’m telling you,” he sneered.
Alec held up a hand in supplication.
“I don’t suppose a phone call would be a possibility,” he commented dryly.
Alec got a grim satisfaction in watching the fat man’s red face turn even redder as his eyebrows shot up to disappear in the greasy wrinkles of his forehead. The man stomped over to a telephone resting on a small desk, tore it out of the wall and proceeded to smash Alec upside the head with it.
Bright white light exploded in Alec’s head as he fell to the floor hard, his mind swimming with what was probably a concussion. He tried hard to clear it, trying to make sense of the situation as his father would.
What is going on? How is this happening? I’ve never seen anyone behave like this, let alone cops. Dimly, he wondered if his treatment constituted police brutality or if they had transcended into cruel and unusual torture.
A swift kick in the stomach banished any further musings as Alec folded up, or tried to as best he could with his crippled legs unresponsive.
“Get up, you freakin’ sicko!” the fat man roared down at him.
Alec chuckled at the pot/kettle irony of that comment despite himself, which only further enraged the man.
“Oh, you think that’s funny, do ya, punk?” he sneered before bringing a size eleven shoe down on Alec’s head.
The head in question bounced off the concrete floor; at this point he was seeing two of everything and working on three. He rolled over onto his back and, as the shoe came down again, Alec lashed out with a hand, correctly guessing which shoe was real and which was a hallucination brought upon by his multiple injuries. He twisted and shoved hard and with a wildebeest-like bellow of rage, the man went down with a colossal THUD. Alec snorted quietly and mentally gave himself a point.
Five greasy digits appeared on the desk as the fat man hauled himself up, the desk creaking in protest.
Strong desk, Alec thought wryly, then he began to worry as the fat man grinned, looking completely insane.
“Assaulting an officer of the law is a felony, you know,” he informed the brutalized man.
Alec just nodded. “Yeah, so is police brutality and physical torture, I hear,” he replied.
He looked over at the thin man who was casually watching, apparently enjoying the show quite a bit.
“Oh, you think you’re funny, do ya, punk?” the fat man snarled.
Alec looked up at him through swollen eyes and grinned.
"Working your way through ‘Dirty Harry’ movies.” Alec turned to the thin man and managed a wink through his swollen eyes. “I’m a big Eastwood fan.” He turned back to Eddie. “ ‘Course, hearing a two-bit pretender like you butcher it is really more painful than the beating,” he quipped lightly, determined to do his best to make things miserable for his captors. He vainly searched for even a tiny patch of darkness in the room to use against his tormentors but the force of the light had banished any hope.
A meaty hand grabbed onto his face, holding it in place as Eddie removed a can of mace from his belt.
Alec sighed. This is going to suck.
The man sprayed Alec’s eyes, prying open the swollen tissue to abuse his blood-tinged corneas with the blinding spray. Next it was forced up his shattered nose and sprayed, then down his throat. The man clamped a hand over Alec’s broken nose and bleeding mouth, grinding bones and suffocating him as Alec swooned from the pain, his face on fire, his blood screaming for air.
Help me… someone…
Angel had lost all sense of time as the bird flew over the cityscape, listening to the beating of the massive stone wings and the gentle whooshing of the wind that followed.
“We have arrived,” the bird rumbled. “The transition to the gypsy kingdom will be difficult for the breathing girl, blood-drinker.”
Angel bristled slightly at this but held his tongue.
“Do not awaken her,” the creature concluded, leaving little room for argument.
Angel tightened his grip on Buffy.
“What do you mean ‘difficult?” he asked as the bird began to climb higher into the air. “And why are we climbing?” the vampire continued, frustrated, then gaped as the bird turned over onto his back and dove screeching towards the ground.
“Oh, this is really fast!” he yelled out trying to hear himself over the roar of the wind as the bird folded its wings once again over the pair, creating an air-tight cocoon around them and changing himself into a diamond bullet.
The clouds parted revealing a large lake. Angel swallowed, hoping desperately that this was all part of some kind of plan and not the bird having a sudden psychotic break. With the sound of a class four tornado touching down into a wading pool, the bird shattered the surface of the water, dousing three joggers, two homeless men and a peanut vendor in a great deluge of water leaving them in soggy confusion.
The vampire gaped openly at the sight of all the rushing water around him. The bird had been right, even in the cocoon of his wings those who needed to breathe would be more than a little disconcerted by the claustrophobic feelings involved in being in a water-filled tunnel underground.
Of course, the fact that they were traveling at speeds that could suck the air out of a person’s lungs didn’t help matters.
With a final burst of water and a deafening screech, the bird exploded out of a water pipe and unfurled its wings, dousing the area with water. Angel looked around in surprised recognition; they had exited out into the aqueduct catwalk of the Spaarti tribal lair upon which they had fought the Khulghaani.
Several pairs of heads turned to regard the awesome spectacle of the huge diamond bird, its body shining prismatic rainbows caused by the mist of the crashing water as it finished its screeching call and perched onto the stone walk. Angel helped the still-unconscious Buffy into the waiting arms of several gypsies who gently laid her down and began to examine her wounds. With a yelp, the soaked vampire fell from his perch upon the indifferent bird’s chest, which looked down at him with infinite disdain. A sodden heap, Angel lifted his head to the sound of heavily sardonic clapping.
“Oh yeah, nice one, mate,” Spike commented wryly, smoking a cigarette and chortling his ass off.
Angel glared up at him balefully though he was glad to see the other vampire intact and unhurt from his fiery plummet.
“You see, Spike, that’s always been your problem. Most people have the decency to die after plummeting to earth in a fiery explosion,” Angel bit out.
Spike laughed and clapped his hands, his cigarette dangling between smirking lips.
“I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again - I’ve always been bad,” Spike quipped as he helped the soaked Angel to his feet. “Rough commute?” he asked wryly.
Angel nodded. “Lots of flying and diving at high speeds, bad combination. Way to take your time incidentally with that power line. I thought the plan was for you to already be waiting.”
Spike’s expression darkened as he casually opened his shirt.
“I got hung up,” he quipped.
Angel’s eyes widened. Embedded in Spike’s chest were no less than six slugs like tiny fists of lead protruding from his chest. The blond walked over to the prone Buffy as Angel whistled low, turning to face the pair.
“I take it you ran afoul our boys in blue?” Spike snorted as the gypsies that examined Buffy peeled her jacket off slowly. They swore quietly.
“Bloody Hell,” Spike whispered thickly.
Buffy’s body was a collection of slashes, bruises and obvious broken bones, all soaked in blood. Spike reared up to Angel.
“Why didn’t you soddin’ tell me she was this hurt?” he roared.
Angel looked just as aghast. “I didn’t know,” he replied.
“Out of the way!” a voice called out.
DeGanon shoved his way past everyone to see the battered Slayer. He crossed himself and whispered a prayer; as he put a hand to her brow she moaned, her eyelids fluttering.
“She has a fever and her wounds are numerous. Her sleep is sickened and filled with wounds from her battle.”
DeGanon hoisted the girl up as if she weighed nothing and carried her out towards the recovery room.
“Where is her brother?” the Gypsy lord demanded as they traveled hurriedly down the hall.
“Yeah, that’s what I’d like to know, too. Traded Red a guarantee on her boy’s safety provided she fix my coat. Where is the great idiot?” Spike’s tone betrayed his concern for his friend as Angel shrugged.
“I didn’t see them together; they must have gotten separated after we left them with the Rabbi.”
Spike growled in frustration and thrust his hands into the pockets of his jeans, puffing madly on his cigarette as DeGanon kicked open a large set of doors to a sea of concerned faces.
“Buffy!” Dawn cried out as she rushed to her sister’s battered body, limp and pale, as DeGanon laid her down upon a bed.
“Good lord,” Giles whispered, his face turning to ash as he regarded her. Her wounds were both grievous and too numerous to count.
Angel turned to Dawn. “Where are the others?”
Dawn tore her eyes from the mangled body of her sister.
“They’re sleeping, why-”
“Get them!” Angel ordered.
Dawn nodded and hurried away as DeGanon looked up to catch Giles’s eyes.
“We need clean water, bandages, and some of the poultice given to us by the Undying One,” he instructed the Watcher.
Giles nodded and hurried away as DeGanon turned to Spike.
“Help me undress her,” he ordered. Spike look taken aback.
“Hey, now, wait a minute…”
“Spike! Open wounds, filthy clothes, do the math,” Angel barked out.
Spike grimaced. “All right, all right.”
Quickly the three of them peeled the gory, filth-encrusted garments from her, Spike and Angel glaring at each other the whole time. DeGanon tossed the disgusting tatters to Angel.
“Burn those,” he instructed, then placed a clean sheet across her body just as Dawn came rushing back with Faith, Xander, Anya and Willow.
“Buffy!” Willow cried out in despair seeing her friend’s condition.
Xander rushed over to the Slayer.
“Buff! Can you hear me? Aw, geez. C’mon, Buffy, snap out of it,” he choked out, pushing her hair out of her face.
Anya gently put a hand on his shoulder, leading him away.
“She’s going to be fine. She’s Buffy, she’ll be fine…” Xander mumbled to himself over and over mantra-like. Anya could only nod and stroke Xander soothingly as Faith came to the older Slayer stricken.
“Buffy…” Faith whispered, her scarred face twisted in misery.
Willow gripped Faith’s hand in hers and squeezed Buffy’s blood-encrusted hand with white-knuckled intensity. Dawn kissed her sister on the forehead, weeping quietly.
“She’ll be okay, won’t she? “ She looked around and saw little hope in the faces. “Won’t she?!” chokingly.
Faith sighed. “D, it looks like someone beat the hell out of her and then carved her up like a turkey. There’s some serious damage, I don’t even think Shadowboy could heal…”
Faith’s voice trailed off as the identical thought entered everyone’s mind. Dawn’s face transformed itself from misery and grief to something that was too intense for words.
“Where’s Alec?” she gritted out tightly.
Alec coughed, his mouth so full of blood it choked him. He’d lost track of time since the beating, and there were no windows in the dank concrete room, so there was no way to see if this hellish night had transformed into a hellish morning.
Then again, mornings tend to suck regardless, he commented to himself wryly, chuckling.
Another sharp blow knocked him to the floor again; he didn’t even have the strength to moan anymore, let alone scream. He dimly saw now-familiar brown shoes walk towards him and he toyed with the idea of driving something sharp through the cop’s kneecap, just as he’d toyed with the idea all night. Every time, his blood surged and sang at the prospect of violence, and every time what was left of his cool logic reminded him that he had no way of getting out of here.
Not now that he was a cripple.
He choked back the shame, the humiliation of the situation, which hurt more than any of the blows.
A swift kick landed just beneath Alec’s waist. The young man gasped as tears leaked out of his eyes.
Well, maybe not, that last shot hurt more.
“Now, here’s what I can’t understand,” Eddie laughed and flipped over the paralyzed younger man, who looked up at him.
“What’s that, Eddie?” Alec asked him cordially, trying to retain some shreds of dignity, his inherited accent helping slightly.
Eddie pushed hard with the toe of his shoe on Alec’s shoulder, eliciting a groan.
“How is it that a limey punk like you can take getting your ass kicked so completely on top of getting a round in the shoulder?”
Alec cracked a grin. “Clean living, officer, and a healthy respect for the law. You should try it.”
Alec grinned as once again, the fat man reared up and took a meaty handful of shirt and skin, pulling out a few chest hairs, and smashed Alec atop the desk. Clumsily, he tore open Alec’s shirt as the wounded man laughed.
“What? No dinner and movie first?” he cracked dryly as Eddie tore away the shreds of cloth and jerked Alec’s shoulder up to the light, almost tearing the desk lamp out of the wall as he aimed the light at the boy’s flesh, the thin man coming up to peer curiously.
Where there was once a gaping bleeding hole, there was now only a lump of angry red flesh showing up flushed and crimson in the florescent light. Eddie gaped at Alec and even the thin man’s eyes widened. Alec met the pair’s shocked glance and weakly put a finger to his lips.
“Shhh, it’s a secret…” he rasped, his voice trailing off from a hiss to a throaty chuckle.
BAM! Eddie slammed a ham-sized fist into Alec’s stomach, causing a burst of blood to spurt out of his lips with such force as to splatter Eddie’s face as well as the ceiling.
“What are you?” Eddie cried out, clearly losing what little restraint and sanity he had, his lips frothing and his gut heaving rapidly in time with his great wheezing breaths.
“Wishing for a video camera and a jury of my peers,” Alec replied, feeling a slight sense of victory, clearly he was holding it together better than his captors.
Another blow landed and Alec felt something break inside and come loose.
So much for ‘holding it together’
The thin man peered frowning at Eddie’s face and Alec felt a slimmer of hope between punches that perhaps the thin man was finally disconcerted by his cohort's psychotic behavior.
The hope died right around when the thin man dabbed lightly at Eddie’s face and came back sniffing his fingers, frowning in puzzlement. Alec’s brain was too badly fogged with pain and fatigue to understand the action and he felt the crashing weight of despair weighing down on him threatening to break him.
There was a rap at the door. Alec strained, hoping against hope that perhaps not everyone in the station was a psychopath, but Eddie clamped a hand over Alec’s mouth, a difficult proposition as Alec’s badly broken nose and almost shattered jaw had swollen the tissue far beyond its normal size. The thin man answered it and conversed briefly for a few moments before returning.
“The gentlemen from explosives and ordinance have arrived,” he explained.
Eddie laughed, bringing his hand up off of Alec’s mouth.
“Terrific. How was our haul?”
The thin man smiled.
“And what happened to the guys that came with?”
The smile ran cold. Alec looked at them with as much shock he could manage.
“You killed cops? Your own?”
Eddie shrugged casually.
“If you want to make an omelet, you gotta break some eggs. The goodies we got in there will flush out your gypsy buddies like rats.”
Alec’s swollen eyes widened a little more and Eddie laughed at his fear and anguish.
“Yeah, that’s right, we know all about your little friends down in the pipes.” Eddie beamed at the thin man like a puppy dog begging for a treat, the thin man merely nodded and waved a hand dismissively.
Alec’s panicked and pain-fogged brain dimly registered the sheer regal disdain in the thin man’s face and gestures, not something you see in a psychotic civil servant.
I have to get out of here, I have to warn them.
Gritting his teeth, trying to ignore the pain that had him swimming in and out of unconsciousness, Alec tightened his fist, feeling the heat of bloodlust swim up through his body, dark and slick, and with it the cold steel that answered the call, filling the veins of his arm with quicksilver. Three small points of metal began to peek through the skin between his knuckles. Eddie was distracted and the thin man looked bored, the time to strike was now. With a burst of speed and desperation, he knocked Eddie’s hand away and with a roar…
…The door came flying open in an explosion of blond hair and fury. The thin man went down hard when a brutal chop caught him hard across the temple followed by a sharp knee to the groin that folded him up in an instant. Eddie’s mouth sagged open as he spun around, which knocked Alec to the floor, face down upon the concrete.
“Ow,” he commented mildly, muffled by the floor. He turned his head toward what was happening and was rewarded greatly.
Eddie was standing up, body stiff as a rod and vibrating hard, his mouth opening and closing like a gaping fish, drool spewing out of his mouth as the fat in his face and body jiggled madly. He dropped like a sack of lard revealing a small muscular woman holding something.
“Buffy?” Alec whispered weakly.
The woman gently turned him over. “Jesus Christ.”
It didn’t sound like Buffy. She was touching his face and she had put something back onto her belt. She took his pulse and checked his breathing; neither was doing really well.
Alec coughed and the woman wiped the blood from his mouth to keep him from choking. Her cool touch was like that of an angel and he nearly wept save the fact that he didn’t have the strength.
“I’m going to get you out of here,” the woman told him.
Alec couldn’t even acknowledge it. The woman hoisted Alec up, the light shining in her eyes briefly, bringing them into full view. Clearly this was a woman in her late twenties to early thirties.
The beam of light also blinded her and kept her from seeing the thin man rising smoothly to his feet and brandishing a switchblade.
(To be continued in chapter 7)