Virginia aimed the glowing green gemstone on her bracelet so that its peculiar radiance swept Gunn from head to toe, turned the 'beam' off somehow, and stared into the facet for a moment. "His wounds are all stitched up," she recapped. "The blood transfusion from Miss Kates is going smoothly, a perfect match, and once that's done we can set him up on a glucose IV. I don't see any other problems requiring medical attention." She looked up and smiled at me, Illyria, Spike, and Groo. "Charles should be noticeably improved in an hour or two, though as his 'doctor' I'm formally excusing him from fighting any more battles to the death for at least three days."
"He might not take to that well, Miss, considering we're in the middle of a war here," Spike put in. He had been partially patched up already himself... the bullet-like wounds bandaged and dressed with mint leaves and essence of icefruit, which have restorative effects on vampires. I'd been dressed up with some of the stuff myself.
"I'm sure that you can help me to persuade him," Virginia insisted. "He's done enough, and very nearly got himself killed."
"Well, we have a chance to rest and plan our next move, at least," I said. We had walked out into some kind of an informal conference room, conveniently enough. I turned to Groo first. "Grusehlagg, what the heck are you doing here? I thought you were going back to Pylea."
"I had thought of returning," Groo admitted, "but I had no place there, and knew not any way to go back. This land of yours seemed so vast and fascinating, that I began to explore it, seeking to help those in distress as I went."
"I met Groo in southern Idaho," Natasha put in. "Was trying to find a way to escort my 'potential' charge, Shannon, to Sunnydale California and Buffy Summers' protection. Harbingers and vampires were close on our trail, but..." she looked up at the tall warrior and smiled warmly at him. "He protected us all the way through to the very edge of town, and fought down thirty Bringers to give her a chance to make a break for it."
It suddenly occured to me that maybe Groo and Natasha were more than colleagues, or friends or whatever. "So, when Rupert Giles started up the council again, he put you on detatched duty? Why didn't he give you a slayer or three to train? I know that they're short on personnel right now."
"I didn't want one yet," she admitted. "I respect the hell out of Rupert Giles and wish him the best, but this new council he's building is turning against a lot of old tradition. I wanted to take a break for a few years and see what policy was by then. Also, by that time I'd found Aaron, and Groo and I kinda have our hands full with him."
I moved along. "And you're a direct link to the powers that be, except they communicate with words, instead of visions, right?" I asked Aaron.
"Yeah. Normally frustrating, cryptic words in rhyming couplets, but Nat can usually figure out what they're trying to tell me."
"And they told you that we were in trouble?" I asked. Nod. "How long ago?"
"Ohh... the first one came in sometime this morning," he said after a moment. "Took us all day to figure out who you were, where you were, and where you'd be by the time you needed our help."
"What, the message was about him, specifically?" Spike put in on cue, jerking a thumb in my direction. "Figures. Once again, Brood Boy catches a huge break from the Powers."
I was about to shout at him to cut it out, when, shockingly, Illyria cut in and saved me the trouble. "Enough!" the demon declared, staring at Spike with so much intensity that I could feel all the millions of her years in the weight of her regard; Spike actually squirmed underneath that powerful gaze. "They saved us all. that is what is important." And then she turned away from him.
"For now," Natasha commented. "Wolfram and Hart's Senior Partners aren't about to give up looking for you this easily, and they're probably still massing their horde of demons here in L.A. By the way, I've made a call to help for the council, but I haven't gotten back any answer. Not quite sure whether to expect one - word is that there are quite a few people who were upset about your deal with Wolfram and Hart, mister Angel."
"Yeah, yeah, I know," I said, remembering Andrew Wells' closing words at the end of the incident with the wild Slayer, Dana. Buffy had ordered Andrew to make sure that Dana didn't stay in my custody, and had dispatched a full dozen slayers to him as backup. Even considering our little unspoken pact about staying out of each other's affairs except in cases of dire need, that had been a clear signal that she didn't trust me any more.
"And we didn't realize at the time I made the call that things were anywhere near this serious," Natasha added. "I could try again... do you have a live phone in here Miss Bryce?"
"No," Virginia said. "No way to keep them from opening a hole in the scrying blanket. We can try putting you out through a portal, though I'd rather not do too much of that considering everyone who's after you."
"For now, I'd suggest dropping it," I suggested. "If the slayers want to come and help, they'll come. If not... we'll find some way of dealing with this ourselves."
"I hope so," Virginia muttered doubtfully.
I smiled my most confident smile and turned back to her. "Do you have any good information on the situation outside?"
"Not me personally, but just a second." She hit a small intercom button, and talked softly to someone... I couldn't make out the words. In just a few seconds someone new came in to meet with us... a Vegrar demon, chalky-gray skinned and square eared. "This is Mattasee, my star pupil."
"You run a magic school here, miss?" Spike exclaimed in surprise.
"Yes," Virginia agreed. "Pure white wizardry only, for no personal objectives. The sanctuary is really only an offshoot."
"Mattasee?" I asked the young demon... at least he didn't look very old by human standards. "What can you tell us about the state of wolfram and hart's campaign against us."
"Well, I can't accurately guess what types of creatures they've sent through the dimensional gateway," he was in a somewhat high and squeaky voice, "but there was a big rush of activity around 2:15 to 2:20 am, which then eased off, and regular activity from then for another twenty-five minutes. Since then, there's been no activity at all, but they are maintaining the aperture at maximum dilation, which would seem to indicate they anticipate the need for future transfers."
"2:45 am was about when they stopped?" Illyria confirmed. I wondered exactly when she had become so familiar with our time system... possibly after the time jumping stuff. "That was a few minutes after the explosives were detonated... significantly before we passed through the doorway to this habitat."
"Ever since you came in, we've been getting reports of a change of tactics from the horde," Mattasee continued. "No longer content with scouring the streets for you, they're storming through buildings, sewer systems... anywhere that might conceivably provide cover... for a hiding place like this one. They're starting around the spot where you took the doorway in and expanding erratically, so it's impossible to guess when they might reach here... but I wouldn't imagine we have much longer than 24 hours."
"Wait a second," I said, suddenly realizing a question I should have asked earlier. "This giant dimensional gateway that they used to bring the horde across... where is it?"
"Umm..." He stretched his hands apart, revealing an odd pattern of lights hanging in the air between, and peered at the lights intently. "Looks like... Hyperion hotel."
"What?"
"Old place, lay abandoned for years, until some nutcase vigilante started using it as a base a few years back," Mattasee continued blithely, obviously not realizing what kind of nutcase he was talking to. "Ground level, fairly central... I'd say the lobby floor."
"They were coming through right next door," I muttered, realizing it. "That was how they got there so quickly, and kept bringing in new kinds of troops." Something was starting to fall into place, but not completely. "I need to talk to Gunn about this, once he wakes up. Virginia, Mattasee... uh, Illyria too, I'd like you all there."
"I don't get to sit in?" Spike complained.
"You were there when we were at the Hyperion, Spike," I pointed out, and noticed that Mattasee was starting to clue in. "I don't expect you to have much to contribute, but you can watch if you like."
Someone called Virginia away at that point, and Mattasee went with her. "What's the deal with this Bryce lady?" Spike asked me in a low voice. "You know her, Charles knows her."
"This shell... I do not retain any memories of her from Fred," Illyria put in.
"It was before Fred met us," I told her. "She... well, the way it started was pretty complicated, actually. She was a wizard's daughter, and her father wanted to hire me on as her bodyguard. I was out of town on personal business, and the envoy the father had sent wouldn't take no for an answer, so Wesley pretended to me and took on the job in my place." I smiled slightly at the thought.
"No need to go into all the details, but she had a falling out with her father and ended up dating Wesley for several months before breaking it off. I had no idea that she was involved in this magic school/sanctuary stuff."
Spike nodded, and Illyria stepped away from us, towards Virginia, who had come back into the room. "Are you acquainted with a warlock named Cyvus Vail?"
Virginia's face took on a look of surprise first, and then disgust. "Unfortunately, yes. Pretty much the bottom ot the barrel, but he's quite influential. The people my father refused to do business with sometimes did business with him."
"Wesley's mission, tonight, was to eliminate Vail," Illyria said. "Unfortunately, he did not succeed in this task... we all underestimated the resources that the warlock had at his disposal. It was Vail who killed Wesley." A pause. "However, through Wesley's sacrifice, I was able to complete his mission. Vail is destroyed... I felt that you should have this information."
"Um, uh, th-thanks," Virginia stuttered. "I... I need to go, go do something else." She hurried back out again.
#
"The... the Hyperion lobby?" Gunn said. He did look a little stronger now, though the IV drip going into his arm made me feel weird. "I... didn't we do some bad-ass magic ritual there? I - I can't remember exactly what for..."
"I was worried about that," I told him. "You're under an enchantment, an enchantment that I negotiated as part of the deal with Wolfram and Hart. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but..."
"I am no longer completely under this enchantment," Illyria announced. "Well, I never was, truly, but I have recovered the memories of Winnifred Burkle that were affected by the dweomer."
"Really?" I thought a moment. "Of course - you were there when the Orlon window was broken. I guess I should have asked you about this outside, but I keep... forgetting that you have access to Fred's memories."
She nodded. "First, you cast a spell in the hotel lobby to travel to inter-dimensional space and consult with the Mesek-tet totum of Wolfram and Hart, while you were trying to rescue Connor from the quor'toth."
"Connor?" Gunn repeated. "That kid who Cyvus Vail was after to kill a demon for him?"
"You weren't even there then," I reminded him. "You were in the holding cell dimension when Cyvus went after Connor!"
"Hey, I caught up on office gossip after I got back," Gunn shot back.
"Later, a rift emerged there in the hotel lobby, through which Connor emerged, aged to sixteen earth years within the space of a few weeks, relative to this world's time flow," Illyria continued. "Cordelia Chase, serving as the host for the essence of the rogue Power that became known as Jasmine, was first seen in that lobby after Chase was taken to a higher plane of existence. And..." she frowned here. "When you returned from the dimension of the spider demons, bearing Jasmine's true name, did the portal you arrived in by any chance open in the Hyperion lobby?"
I nodded ruefully. "Yep."
"Then it seems clear that your own activities have built the Hyperion lobby into a dimensional hotspot location," she concluded. "Dark interdimensional rituals and incoming portals tend to have that effect - they charge the psychic 'batteries' available at a given location."
"Wait a second," Gunn broke in. "That contract you signed with Wolfram and Hart... did you read the fine print?"
"Ummm..." I hesitated. "I tried to, but there was really a lot of it..."
"Do you remember if there was anything about the hotel in it?"
Somehow that rang a bell. "I'm not sure... I kinda think so - but I have no idea what it was, I'm sorry."
"That's okay," he assured me. "But you might have signed some kind of rights over the hyperion hotspot over to them."
"This is all very interesting," Spike broke in. "But what does it mean for right now?"
I looked around at the others. "Not sure," Gunn admitted.
#
"I don't see that there's anything else useful to discuss in here at the moment," I said a little bit later, in the conference room. "We need to head out again, try to tackle the horde - at least to distract them or divert them. Only those strong enough to protect themselves well... so, that'd be me, Illyria, Spike, Groo..." I looked at Natasha, not wanting to discount her out of hand. "I'll take your word on whether you qualify."
"What about me?" Aaron piped up.
"I'll take Natasha and Groo's word, when it comes to you," I told him with a slight chuckle.
"You'd better stay in here, Aaron," Natasha told him with a slight sigh. "Wait for another message. And I'll be here with you."
"All right," Virginia said. "Any idea where you'd like to come out?"
"Somewhere in the city just beyond the army's point of progress," I said, "but in a different way than towards the haven. They're going to assume that we're trying to slow them down and will probably divert creature-power in whatever bearing we appear from."
"All right," Virginia said, and started checking the map.
"Remember, Angel," Natasha put in. "There's only an hour or two left to sunrise. Most of the creatures in that army will be able to operate all right during daylight, but you can't."
"I know the drill," I said in a low voice.
"Okay, I've got an exit spot for you," Virginia said, hurrying back. "Under the circumstances, I can't allow you to use the same doorway to go out and come back in - too much chance the enemy would discover it and figure out the right word to use to get in here."
"Why... why are you doing this, Virginia?" I said after a few moments. "Giving us haven is putting your entire operation here at risk - you had to know that."
She shrugged a little. "Because it's worth doing."
The four of us armed ourselves up, (except for Illyria, who still didn't believe in using foreign objects,) and Groo and I accepted some magical items that could be very useful, even if none of the artifacts that Virginia and Mattasee could spare were particularly powerful. (Spike was still on his 'no amulets' kick, which maybe isn't too surprising considering how the last one worked out.) Virginia gave us instructions for finding, activating, and using a few magic doorways that could return us to the haven - she'd shut down pretty much the entire system after we'd come through, knowing the chances were good that Wolfram and Hart's goons could have spotted a portal and reported it to a warlock, who could set about trying to divine the key term that would activate it.
"Oh by the way," Mattasee mentioned just as we were about to cross over. "There's activity on the gateway again. Just thought I should let you know about that." It wasn't good news, but I didn't really see how it changed our plan. Tried not to let Spike see I was getting nervous.
We emerged into a deserted apartment building courtyard, and followed the sounds of rampage and destruction. Didn't take too long to find about three dozen trolls, along with a couple of Xakanar demons and two of the shadow warriors. The trolls and demons were bashing holes into a couple of houses and other buildings, and also just digging down beneath the street at a point that seemed to be completely random. Down the block I could see that there were houses that had been reduced to rubble, and wondered if there had been people - families, still inside them at the time.
We attacked, instantly, and seemed to be doing pretty well. I was fencing with one of the shadow warriors, doing pretty well, and Illyria managed to take out the other one with a good sucker punch. Spike began to tangle with the Xakanar, while Groo did mop-up duty with the trolls and Illyria joined him as soon as she was done. Even when another Wolfram and Hart group joined in, including some ogres and a baboon demon, we seemed to be holding our own, and I was sure that we wouldn't need to worry about escaping and running away until a lot more reinforcements showed up.
Suddenly... the bad guys turned and ran off in the direction opposite from the one we had come from. "Do we chase them?" Spike called out.
"We've got momentum, why ruin it?" I called out, feeling the rush of battle still surging in my veins.
"Umm... excuse me, sweetie?" a new voice called out. I spun around her and recognized her instantly. "I called off the troops - thought it would be easier to have a nice quiet chat if you weren't fighting for your life."
"We were all getting by pretty well," I felt obliged to insist. "Lilah Morgan. What are you doing here?"
"Out on assignment again," the dead Wolfram and Hart lawyer reported glibly. "I'm in charge of this mission." She waved around, clearly indicating all of the evil creatures going about their business not far away.
"Looks like you haven't done too well on your assignment so far," Spike put in.
"I haven't killed any of you yet, I admit," she conceded, "but I have patience. You haven't inflicted many casualties on my troops - I hope you understand that. And we're quite prepared to search the entire city... levelling most of it along the way if we have to... to find the secret hideout where you disappeared to, and where you're keeping Charles. Soon enough, you'll have nowhere left to run to, and the final battle can begin again." She shrugged. "Of course, there is another option that I've come up with."
"What, we just hand ourselves over to spare the city?" I scoffed.
"No, I didn't think you'd go for that one," she said offhandedly. "But... well, first off, this is a revenge mission, and there's precious little profit in revence. Especially with the kind of overhead we're taking on. All that the Senior Partners really require at this point is a face-saver, Something that they can show to their friends and say 'yeah, we spared the fools' lives, but in exchange we got this.' I've spent all night researching what you have to offer, and would be able to offer without violating your ethics, that would satisfy them."
Was getting a bad feeling here... I didn't know anything that I could give up that would be important enough to be worth all of our lives, and I wasn't sure I wanted to give it to Lilah if I had something like that... but I had to admit I didn't see that we had the forces available to stop her plan either. "What is it?"
"The Tooth of Light."
Lilah couldn't have surprised me more if she had said she wanted to catch the Easter Bunny. "That... that doesn't exist! It was just a plot point in a fantasy sequence... how do you even know about it, anyway?"
Lilah smiled her big wide smile. "Oh, that is the interesting part! The Tooth is definitely real - it has nothing to do with the Beast, and couldn't have been used very well against him. But it's a real weapon, and you can show us the way to it, using your fantasy sequence as a guide. Somehow, Wo Pang's ritual dialed you into the true hiding place of the Tooth, and the defences that guard it. Why and how, we don't know."
"So, Angel fetches this weapon, and hands it over to you..."
"Probably to one of the knights of the order of Soron, or someone else I specify," Lilah corrected.
"...and then what happens?" Spike prompted.
"We let you live, we pull out of Los Angeles for the time being," Lilah told him. "My mission will be over. The Senior Partners will probably be starting to insert new agents back into the region, but that's out of my hands. I think I can promise that they won't target you again until the next time you interfere with your plans."
"You cannot offer her what she wants, Angel," Illyria opined. "The only reason she would make such an offer is if the weapon she speaks of is more valuable to the Wolf, the Ram, and the Hart than our deaths."
"Correction," Lilah said. "The tooth is more valuable than your deaths, minus the expense of actually getting you killed. But if you don't want to negotiate, that's fine. I'll come find you before I take the offer off the tabl... what the hell?"
I turned around cautiously, and saw a wimpy little guy in a suit walking up to us. "Miss Morgan, there's a new development," he said without introduction. "New players have shown up at the ruins of the branch office. Could be bad news for us if..."
"You idiot!" she screamed at him. "Couldn't you tell I was negotiating with the enemy?" She pointed at milquetoast boy, and he disappeared in a cloud of shimmering air. And then, like a blink, Lilah was gone too.
"We need to get back to the office," Spike pointed out. "As quickly as possible."
"We can't afford to go through the haven and back out," I decided.
"Was there anything that Virginia and her boy gave you that allows for quick travel?" Spike asked. "The law offices, or what's left of them, are on the other side of the horde's territory."
I checked through my pocket. "Nope, no luck." I wasn't even sure if Illyria had taken anything, but she didn't examine any items physically. (Probably if she had, she'd remember exactly what she had and so wouldn't need to consult them again.)
"Oh, I have something!" Groo said. Taking out a small figurine, he held it up in front of his face. "I summ-"
"Wait a sec..." I started, but too late, of course.
"-mon you!" Groo finished. With a soft bammph and a pop of light, a gigantic white bird was sitting there on the ground, between us. The figurine blew away as dust in the wind.
"A bird?" Illyria asked caustically.
"Why not?" I asked. "As long as it'll get us there, and quickly, I'd ride a giant wasp." I turned to Groo. "Do you know how to instruct it?"
"I think, since I am the one who commanded it forth, that all I need to is instruct it mentally," he replied.
"Well come on, everybody up!" Spike said a little dubiously. The avian apparition was large enough to have quite a bit of back to go around, and Groo ended up near the neck, (which seemed good, giving him plenty of visibility and proximity to the bird's head.) I sat behind him, with Spike and Illyria to each side of me, just behind the wings.
With a loud cry, the bird took off then, and headed south by southeast, in the direction I had pointed out for Groo. It didn't take long before we were six stories above the ground and travelling at what must have been a hundred and fifty miles an hour. "Not bad," I had to say, though I'm not sure any of the others could hear me over the wind.
"We've got trouble," Spike announced loudly, pointing ahead and to the right. It was still pretty dark, and the lights of the city didn't shine very bright up this high, but I could make out a shape in that direction. A sinuous shape, with large flapping wings.
"The dragon," I guessed. "Do you think it's spotted us yet?"
"It has," Illyria confirmed. How she could tell I didn't know, but I was starting to trust in her certainty.
"Try bearing to the left, Groo," I suggested, and the bird banked and turned. Things didn't look good though.
"It's not as fast as we are," Spike said, "but it can intercept us if we try to get to the offices."
"What about if we fly in a wide eastward arc," I suggested, waving to the left of us, "and lead it astray, then outrun it back?"
"Three problems with that," Spike decided. "One, it'll take too long. Two, the beastie might be too smart to take the bait. And three, we don't know how fast this birdy of ours can fly at top speed. The dragon might have greater endurance for a sustained chase, in which case we'd be in big trouble."
"Did anyone take distance-striking magic that would be effective against a fiend of that sort?" Groo suggested. (I guess they may have never had dragons in Pylea.)
"Oh hey, this might work," I said, coming up with a short brown stick. "Adjust course, fly in closer towards it Groo." The bird banked back to the right again, and I tried to judge well. Had to be within effective range, but not so close that the wyrm would breathe fire at us...
Now. With a quick jerk of my wrist, I activated the magic stick. A disturbance flew through the air, and frost began precipitating around the line in which the stick was aiming. The effect drove into the side of the dragon's chest, and it screamed, its wings frozen for an instant. It fell twenty feet before recovering, and we passed right above it as it flew around in a tight circle, puffing smoke furiously and making for a building that it could land on and rest up.
"Wand of cold?" Spike said, impressed.
"Something like that."
By the time we got to the ruins of the Wolfram and Hart offices, it wasn't hard to guess where the action was. Lilah had committed a lot of her best forces here, it seemed... the shadow warriors, blind assassins and what looked like highly trained ninja vampires. Groo had the bird land on a nearby outcropping of wreckage and we all jumped down, which apparently was a signal to the bird that its job was done and it disappeared in a puff of white smoke.
There were five people at the center of the fray, four girls and a man, protecting a sixth, a fallen comrade, and taking a beating themselves. Could it be? I pulled out the truesilver sword (which I was really starting to like,) slashed an assassin across the face, elbowed a ninja in the solar plexus, and then got a look at the girl who staked him through the heart while he was trying to get his bearings.
It was... her.
I couldn't believe that I was staring into Buffy Summers' face again. She seemed to be equally stunned to have encountered me like this. She looked good - a little more mature than when I'd last seen her. She'd done something to her hair, though I couldn't quite put my finger on what.
And then I realized that a shadow warrior was about to stab her from behind, and there was no time for anything but to grab her by both arms and fall backwards. The dark soldier in question staggered a little, finding no resistance where he had expected there to be a warm, solid, breathing body to push his rapier through, and as I hit the ground I fumbled for a throwing knife and tossed it towards the apparition's arm. Rapier went flying. Good enough for now.
Buffy turned over, saw how close the guy had been to her, and smiled sheepishly. "Heard you guys had gotten into a kind of trouble you couldn't deal with," she said, with a bit of an ironic tone in her voice. "Not sure I believe it at the moment."
I laughed a little myself, seeing the mirror image of my trip to Sunnydale last year developing. Natasha's message had gotten through, about my apocalypse, and she was offering to help if I wanted it.
"Better keep an open mind," I quipped. "Things are seriously dire, and you couldn't have shown up at a better mo- ment." Halfway through the last word, a tentacled, blue-hided demon lunged with two different heads at each of us, (out of at least six heads total,) and we both leapt up to continue the good fight. I took a firmer grip on my cutlass, Buffy caught an axe that someone tossed her (couldn't make out who,) and we each had to work quickly to keep arms or chunks of upper chest from getting bitten off.
"So... did you get the message from Natasha Devon?" I asked.
"Umm - yeah, actually, " hack, "but only en route." She still pronounced it 'ehnn rowwt'. "Willow saw a sign in the nether realm, said that you guys would need our help. We..."
All of a sudden, the demon did an about face and scampered away, its heads trailing behind almost comically. I turned around and looked, and all about us the other nasties were doing the same. "That's a bad sign," I muttered to Buffy.
"Spike!" she called out. Another bad sign. She hurried over to him. "I'm glad you're okay."
Spike smiled tightly. "Might want to have a look at Red," he murmured, gesturing Buffy over. I came along too.
Willow Rosenberg - Red - had been the fallen comrade I'd noticed right at the beginning. Looked like head trauma, possibly internal injuries - she wasn't in the best of shape. (Being totally unconscious rarely helps.)
I looked up from her to see who was here and deduct the ones that I had come with to see who was in Buffy's party. Faith, that was good, she was someone who I felt I could count on in apocalypse. Rupert Giles... we'd had our issues, but I felt pleased that he'd come... probably was wanting to make sure that Wesley was all right, since they'd been colleagues. I'd have to tell him, and Faith and Willow, that Wes was dead.
Two more girls - one of them, I realized with surprise, was Dana, the crazy girl that had given us a bit of a runaround here in LA, a few months ago. Training with Buffy or whoever seemed to be doing her good. The last one, maybe nineteen with dark long dark hair and subtly exotic features, was leaning over Willow's body worriedly. I didn't know her, but she, too, moved with the grace and strength of a Slayer, even when not in combat. All told, that made a small and deadly team of six - four Slayers, (two veteran and two newbies,) an experienced and competent Watcher, and one very smart and powerful witch.
There was a sound like a clap of thunder, and I looked up... we were surrounded by some kind of bubble - twenty feet away in all directions, and ten feet overhead, was a swirling mass of black, white, and every color in the rainbow. "What the blimy..." Spike muttered, and stepped towards it.
"No!" Illyria declared, striding forward imperiously, shoving Spike back, and moving carefully towards the barrier herself. She stopped well back and sniffed at it. "Chaos space," she announced, returning to the rest of us. "And it is beginning to contract around this place. None of us can pass through it and survive - not even me. Our only escape would be magic."
I nodded. "Disrupt it somehow? Break down the wall?"
"Too risky." She shook her head. "Flying bubbles of chaos could strike anyone in the area. I would recommend transport magic - teleportation or passing through an enchanted doorway. Anything that can convey us outside without physically passing through the chaos bubble."
"That would be Willow's specialty," Faith said. "But she isn't in shape to be doing any hocus pocus at the moment."
"Did we bring any teleport spells?" I asked Groo, though I was pretty sure I knew the answer. If any of us had, we'd probably have used them to get here, instead of taking flying time on the big bird. I started going through my pockets anyway.
"What are you doing?" the fourth slayer called out, and I turned to see what she was talking about. Illyria had knelt over Willow's body, pushing her friend away, and I could see a bright shining blue light that lasted for several seconds. It faded out, and Willow's head shook and her eyes opened.
"What is it... Fred?" I looked at Illyria, wondering how she'd react to that.
"Emm... no." She shook her head sadly. "Fred Burkle - is gone. I am Illyria."
"You... you infected her body!" Willow exclaimed.
Illyria nodded slowly. "I wasn't aware of it at the time."
Giles had hurried over to Willow by this point. "We are trapped in a bubble of chaos space and it is closing about us... we need an safe exit. Do you feel up to magic?"
Willow climbed to a sitting position. "I feel... great!" She looked around and spotted me. "Angel - where's your base of ops?"
"Ummm..." Nothing like being put on the spot. "There's a safe haven, but I'm actually not sure exactly where it is."
"Safer that way?" Faith wisecracked.
"What's your route in?" Giles asked. The swirling color around us did seem to be getting closer.
"Umm... there are a few deactivated magic doors around the city - I was given a string of glyphs to connect them up."
Willow's face lit up. "Read the symbols off to me." I repeated the formulae that Virginia had given me, (at the same time as she had told me how to represent them in graphic form.) When I was done she immediately started gesturing and mumbling under her breath.
"How did you help her?" I asked Illyria quietly. "Do you have your full powers back, or..."
Without a word, she presented me with a crystal - or what was left of one. Dull cloudy blue, slightly cracked. I peered at it, not quite sure what the point was. "The Bryce woman persuaded me to take one of her most powerful healing charms... just in case."
"Alright, chop chop!" Willow was calling out. I realized that there was a glowing white spot on the floor before her, and her Slayer friend and Buffy jumped down inside. One by one, as the chaos outside closed in, we all followed.
"Umm... okay, I didn't expect that." It was Virginia speaking, looking at the white circle of light floating about seven feet high in the reception foyer of her safe haven. "Angel... what's going... who are these..." She focused on Willow, who was the last to drop down through the hole, and it closed behind her. Apparently Virginia could see the power inside her at first glance. "You have done this?"
"Umm... yeah. Hope you don't mind us dropping in," Willow giggled nervously.
Virginia frowned slightly. "What's your coven?"
"Emm, no coven, exactly. Watcher."
"And a lone witch?" Mattasee asked. Willow nodded.
"Ummm... hi!" Buffy went over to Virginia. "Sorry about the intrusion. I'm Buffy Summers. Prime Slayer." She didn't say 'and you?' out loud, but somehow the look on her face and her body language conveyed it completely.
"Umm... my name is Virginia Bryce, I run a safe haven and wizardry school here. Nice to meet you, Miss Summers."
"Thanks." She shot a glance over at me, and then to Spike.
"Conference room free?" I asked Virginia.
"Except for your Miss Devon and young Andrew. Might get a little crowded with your rapidly growing retinue."
"Hey, we're not too proud to sit on the floor, are we?" Faith asked her friends.
But a card table and some folding chairs were brought in, and there were seats or perches for all. "So... what's the situation?" Buffy asked Spike and I once we were all settled.
"Well, we took out the key people of Wolfram and Hart's extended network here in the Los Angeles area, the Circle of the Black Thorn..." I started.
"...And now, they're moving earth, hell, and quite a few buildings to kill us for it," Spike finished. "You ran into some of the footsoldiers back there, not to mention that little 'chaos bubble' trap that was probably set for us."
"Okay," Buffy nodded, quickly coming to terms with the tactical realities. "So it's just a fight for survival now?"
"What about Gunn, and Wesley?" Faith broke in, clearly having done the math, and overheard (or known already) about Illyria and Fred.
I took a deep breath - this wouldn't be easy. "Wesley is dead. Gunn was badly wounded, but thanks to Virginia Bryce's help he's going to live... assuming that we can find a way to stop he Horde before they find this safe haven and kill everyone in it."
Buffy nodded... she had never really gotten along well with Wes, (having only known him in his 'pompus fool' phase before the reality of life outside the Ivory tower of watcher training had matured him and turned him into a man I was proud to call a friend...) and had never met Gunn - or Fred for that matter. "What's your plan?"
I looked over at Spike, and he made this grandly flamboyant wave to yield the question to me. "I... I'm not sure if we have one," I admitted. "We tried doing the attack and distract thing, but to be honest it didn't work very well, and I don't like the idea of going back to it."
"Yeah, we really don't have the numbers for that," Faith conceded.
"My instinct has always been to strike boldly for the heart," Buffy said. "How are they getting all of these guys here? I don't think there are that many hard-core demons on instant call to Wolfram and Hart in the whole state."
"Big-ass dimensional gateway," Spike jumped in with, beating me to the punch. "Lobby of the Hyperion hotel, wherever that is. One of Angel's old haunts, I think."
"Then our first objective is to close that door," Buffy said.
"I'd thought about that, but it seemed heavily risky," I admitted.
"Not to mention, there are still about a zillion demons that have already come through to deal with," Faith pointed out.
"If I had my full powers back, I know what I would do," Illyria announced suddenly. "I would 'omab' the gateway - deal with them all at once."
That threw me for a loop for a second... pretty much everyone else too. "Omab?" I asked after a bit.
"I think it's an ancient demonic word that has no equivalent in human languages," Giles put in. "To..." he struggled to find the meaning, looking at Illyria. "More than close, to negate the existence of the gate."
"Not exactly," Illyria frowned too, evidently having similar difficulties expressing the thought in our language. "Consequences are not undone, but if the gate were omabbed, it would become convoluted in its own claudication in such a way that for anything that has passed through the gate... the reality of such a thing would be subverted. It would not exist in this world; it would not be returned to the world from which it came. For any but one in a million such bodies, it would never again exist on any known world."
"So... you wrap up the gateway with a pretty pink bow on it," Spike summarized, "and all the demons and dragons and dark warriors and such... just disappear? One out of every million of them get thrown to some other dimension, and the rest... either marooned in the void between the dimensions, or totally annihilated, nobody knows which?" After a few seconds, Illyria nodded slowly. "Sounds bloody good to me!"
"But Illyria doesn't have her full powers back." That was Gunn's voice, and I turned around to see him leaning against the wall just inside the doorway. "That seems like a pretty big problem with the plan."
"How long have you been there?" I asked. "You should be resting."
"Hey, Miss Bryce said I can't fight no more," Gunn protested. "She didn't say nothin' about no war councils. Let a brother have a little fun!" He didn't protest too much when I led him over and sat him down in my own seat.
"Okay, um... I have a question," Willow said after a moment. "How did Illyria lose her full powers? Did she have them when she... was brought forth from the Deeper Well?"
"How did you know about that?" Gunn interrupted.
"I've known of the great demons of the Deeper Well, including Illyria for years," Willow explained simply. "I'm sorry that I wasn't able to help Fred when you tried to call for me... I wasn't exactly able to get to the phone at the time..."
"So we heard," Spike muttered, staring pointedly at Giles, who had been the one giving me the brush-off at the time.
"I would have helped if I could - you know that Fred meant the world to me," Willow continued. "But it was too late once I got word..."
"It was probably too late when we called you," I assured her, "and as hard as it was to accept at the time, I'm starting to believe that Illyria's arrival was meant to be. For our side."
Willow nodded slowly and turned to Illyria. "When I saw you back at the ruins, I was just surprised - I guess I hadn't realized that you would look so much like she does. Er, 'like she did,' I guess. So, to get back to the subject... your powers? When you returned to this earth?"
I looked over at Illyria, but she didn't seem in any hurry to answer the question. "We think she had most of them. But her full powers were destablizing... creating rifts in the timeline and threatening to go thermonuclear. Wesley designed a device to draw them away from her, to save her life and others."
"And what happened to the energy after it was drawn away?" Faith prompted.
"The device was never designed to store my energies," Illyria said. "They were bled off, into a hundred different worlds."
"Okay, so much for that idea," Faith said with a sigh.
"If your powers were that unstable," Buffy put in, "is it safe to charge you back up again?"
"Yes," Illyria declared firmly. "I would not need a power level as high as I was brought forth with, and would only need to contain it for a short while before concluding the mission. It is feasible... if we can isolate a sufficiently powerful locus of mystic energy." She chuckled hollowly. "A 'really good' power-up."
I was starting to get a feeling about this mission of Illyria's, but I'd wait for an opportunity to ask her about it alone. "Well, I made sure to juice up before I left, but..." Willow started, then broke off, staring intently at Illyria, waving a hand slightly. "I'm not sure we're... compatible."
"I would tend to agree with that conclusion," Illyria said softly.
"And I'm not sure if I could even provide the kind of energy you're talking about... any idea if you could explain the requirements?"
The ancient demon didn't reply to that for a long moment, cocking her head at odd intervals. "The operation would require a power source capable of generating a field strength of at least three hundred million Tarchons on the ancient Assyrian measurement system, somewhere in the frequency range of 'xhi' to 'gav', for a sustain period of at least eighteen seconds - a total energy of one point four times ten to the ninth dars..." She broke off, looking at Willow, who was staring back at her. "Are you familiar with this formal schema?"
"Umm..." Willow shook herself. "Yes, quite familiar. I confess I'm a little surprised that you're so familiar with the Assyrian nomenclature... that civilization developed thousands of years after you were consigned to the Deeper Well, didn't it?"
"I have familiarized myself with more recent developments," Illyria replied a little stiffly. "The Assyrian emphasis on quantification and categorization of mystic forces is quite intriguing... for mortal majik, that is." Willow smiled faintly at that.
"Well no, I wouldn't be able to fufill those requirements... not with that specific type of magical burst, or such an intensity in a relatively short period of time. You know us mortal majicians... we're built a little better for the long haul than short sprints."
"Disappointing, on this occasion," Illyria remarked neutrally.
"Well, what about some other source of power?" Buffy suggested.
"A plasma drake could do it," Natasha put in. "But they're disagreeable creatures, and more than a match for everyone in this room, no offense. Plus, even if we could subdue one, I'm not sure how you get one to give off a burst of mystic energy on cue, to such precise specifications. So... not feasible."
"Also, nearly extinct in all known planes of existence," piped up Mattasee, who was apparently kibitzing on the council.
"It is a little out of our way," Illyria brainstormed, "but the heart of the 'Boca del Infierna' might provide sufficient intensity to..."
"Your references are probably out of date," Giles interrupted. "The Hellmouth has shut itself down, since the ultimate battle of Sunnydale High and, er, well, Spike's seemingly last stand, one should say. I was down in the Sunnydale crater about three months ago, measuring mystic energies, and they were down to the same level as many minor loci in North America, even in the underground tunnels as close as I could get to the central co-ordinates. I'm sure they've only gone down further by now - I'd have picked up traces of a rebound even in England."
"Hmm. A pity," Illyria said softly. I saw Buffy gritting her teeth.
"Draining a Velerian talisman would do it I suppose," Willow muttered. "But they're only carried by Velerian sorcerers, and there aren't any of them left on Earth..."
"D'you suppose there are any of these sorcerers kickin' about in the realms that Wolfram and Hart is getting their army from, though?" Spike asked her with a cheeky grin.
"You mean... we somehow try to get Wolfram and Hart to bring a Velerian sorcerer across, complete with talisman... steal the talisman from him, and use it to entangle the gateway and subvert everybody who has passed through it... including the sorcerer himself?" Buffy weighed that. "Could work. But how do we convince them to bring a sorcerer like that across, that specific order and whatever?"
"And then, how do we find him, and get the talisman away from him without giving him a chance to destroy or drain it completely?" Willow put in.
"Not to mention fighting our way through to the gateway at the very heart of Wolfram and Hart's forces and giving Illyria enough time to get the job done," I chimed in. "Anyone else have any problems with this plan?"
Surprisingly enough, Illyria volunteered again. "I am no longer certain that I have the skill or knowledge to manipulate a gateway claudication with sufficient precision. The mathematical expertise of Fred Burkle will be helpful, but I require a comparable fund of mystic experience to draw upon."
Willow shook her head quickly. "That isn't my specialty."
"Nor mine," Giles volunteered. "Beings of lore from a thousand different worlds, yes, I would venture to consider myself an expert. But the actual ways and means of contructing passageways between planes of reality..." He shook his head slowly.
"A pity," she repeated, cocking her head. "There is only one mortal I have known to posess the experience I require: Wesley Windham-Pryce."