Disclaimer: See Part 1 Chapter 1
SHADOWED SOULS Part 4
Chapter 7Gradually, Angel noticed that the rust-coloured trail became less twisting and continued for longer periods in straighter lines, and mentioned this to Wesley, who admitted that it probably was significant. "With luck we're homing in on their bolt-hole. They might have believed themselves so successful in throwing off pursuit that they're getting careless about laying a false trail."
Angel nodded, glancing at his watch again, which incredibly claimed that twelve hours had passed since he and Wesley had entered the portal though if Wesley were right, as far as Buffy and the others were concerned, they'd entered barely a second ago. He frowned – he himself didn't feel tired or hungry, though of course that meant very little. Human physiology operated on a basic "system of three" – humans could survive three weeks without food, three days without water, and three minutes without air – whereas vampires could comfortably last several days without feeling the need for sleep or even hunger.
However, Wesley didn't evince any sign of hunger or fatigue either. Presumably the fact that Time didn't exist on the Ghost Roads meant that besides the traveller not ageing, they also never got any hungrier or more tired than they had been when they stepped through a portal to get here? But in that case, shouldn't Angel's wristwatch have stopped the instant he was on the Ghost Roads, or did the mystical forces not apply when it came to inanimate –
His superb eyesight automatically scanning ahead, Angel hissed involuntarily as he saw a large, green-skinned biped striding towards them on the same Ghost Road. A chill slithered down his spine: Ethros. The words of the aged nun to himself back in the case of the possessed boy Ryan echoed, "'the Ethros is even more dangerous than you.'" Her words were true; the Ethros were one of the few demon species that vampires feared, and even powerful vampires like the Master and Kakistos had made it a point to avoid them.
"Wesley," Angel warned, allowing his fangs to erupt.
"Yes, I see it." Wesley said without concern.
"You do recognise it?" Angel demanded with a hint of asperity.
"The Ethros can't harm us…nor can we injure it." Wesley added dryly taking in Angel's protruding fangs.
"Really, considering we're about to have a major invasion of personal space, are you sure?" Angel challenged.
"Angel, I'm sure. No traveller can be forced off, or onto, a Ghost Road. You have to choose to leave, or to get on, nor can any traveller suffer physical harm from another. Every traveller, as long as they remain on a Ghost Road, is by that very fact rendered both immortal and invulnerable."
The Ethros slowed when it saw them and it bared impressively pointed teeth, but it made no attempt to attack, which it would have done in the real world; instead, they sort of sidled past each other with the Ethros and Angel exchanging malevolent looks. However, as they reached the point of closest proximity, Angel felt a sort of strange invisible pressure against his skin, like he'd felt before, back on that submarine in World War II…unhappy memories…but something told Angel that if he tried to attack the Ethros that invisible pressure would act like a Star Trek force field and protect the demon.
He scowled after the demon, something about it nagging at him as Wesley, with an obvious glare, continued to walk on at a faster pace that clearly said he wasn't in the mood to stick around for Angel's macho posturing.
"Waterloo!" Angel exclaimed as they walked through yet another dimension that was heavy on primeval jungle and light on sentient life.
"What?"
"I've just realised. The Battle of Waterloo was in 1815 –"
"While I'm pleasantly surprised by your knowledge of broader history –"
"What knowledge? I was there. I'm talking about that Ethros. I've just realised what was bugging me about it – what it was wearing was considered hopelessly old-fashioned in demonic haut couture even back then. How long has it been walking the Ghost Roads?"
"Impossible to say, but probably centuries, possibly millennia. Walking the Ghost Roads – assuming you manage to both survive the experience and remain sane – is probably a sure fire way of beating your enemies. The theory is that you just wait until everyone who wants to kill you is dead, then re-emerge as your own great-great-whatever…"
"And in practice?"
"Like I said – not only surviving but also not going nuts in the process."
"Wonderful."
"No, not really."
"That hair, that manly stubble. If I swung that way, I'd go for Wes myself!"
Angel jumped as his own sneering words suddenly cut across their current conversation and his heart sank as they found themselves walking past the huge "Imax-screen" images of the past yet again, only this time from LA not Sunnydale. This had happened last year - Angelus was in his cage, taunting Fred and Wesley on the stairs; relief swept over Angel as he realised that Connor was not in the image; the last thing he needed right now was for them to see Connor and have Wesley turn and demand to know, with understandable astonishment, who was that strange kid, and why was he calling you 'dad'?
He winced as Angelus burst out of the hotel to catch Wesley and Faith off guard, grasping the Englishman effortlessly, despite him being the new harder, colder, honed and toned Wesley, not the nerd of yore; Angelus taunting Faith to attack him before he could snap Wesley's neck. Both Angel and Wesley unconsciously began to walk faster, instinctively seeking to leave this reality behind, although the telltale pooling of the rust-trail into a "puddle" showed that the Oligarchs had paused here…
Though - had they seen what Angel saw? The dark vampire frowned. The Oligarchs hadn't travelled the Ghost Roads as he and Wesley were doing, rather they'd leap-frogged in 'hops' from dimension to dimension, though they had left a mystical "fingerprint" trail behind that someone on the Ghost Roads could follow. But if every portal opened at a completely random place/time on a completely random Ghost Road, and each Ghost Road meandered without plan through an entirely chance set of dimensions and realities, then it would be impossible to know what the Oligarchs had witnessed and vice versa. There was nothing to say that they had seen the same things or even the same dimension that that Angel and Wesley were seeing –
The ear-splitting crash jerked Angel's attention back to the scenes he was trying not to look at, but he stopped dead as Wesley ducked under Angelus's blow and lashed out with a snap-kick that sent the vampire staggering back.
Angel stared at the fight – this had never happened; Angelus had battled Faith, finally defeating the Dark Slayer – or not, for it had been a deliberate plan by her and Wesley to drug him with Orpheus, a plan that had worked perfectly, though it nearly killed Faith in the process.
"Ignore it." Wesley's voice was a rasp, his eyes haunted with things too terrible to speak.
"Wes', this didn't happen." Angel resisted the Englishman's attempts to pull him along by the simple expedient of refusing to move – Wesley was a lot more athletic and dangerous now than he'd ever been, but Angel's unnatural vampire strength was still far more than that of any human.
Angel watched in astonishment – he knew from five years of personal experience that Wesley Wyndham-Pryce was both a ferocious and very skilled fighter, something that had long led him to suspect Wesley's initial "clumsy nerd" attributes when Angel and Cordy had met up with the ex-Watcher in LA were nothing more than a camouflaging smoke-screen designed to appease whatever local 'Alpha male' was beating his chest that Wesley W-P was an insignificant bunny rabbit not even worth noticing. What was that old saying about the quiet one always being more dangerous that the one yelling and bellowing? In this fight that had never occurred, Wesley was certainly taking it to Angelus with vigour.
For five minutes chaos reigned as Wesley gradually worked his way towards the exit of the warehouse complex, giving Angelus some nasty blows. Then another vampire suddenly jumped out of the shadows, hitting Wesley broadside and sending him flying to collide with Angelus, the trio going down in a tangled heap of flailing limbs. The new vampire's triumphant screech to Angelus that he had "got the human for him" ended in a shriek of pain as Wesley, pinned between the two undead, slapped a cross against the younger vampire's cheek while simultaneously trying to drive a stake into his chest. He missed the heart but the screeching vampire surged up and scrabbled away clutching his cheek, while Wesley dove the other way and Angelus surged up like a shark from the ocean.
Furiously Angelus wrenched out the stake, causing the vampire to give another yelp of pain that was never completed as Angelus drove the stake directly into his heart and he exploded into a cloud of dust. Lunging forward, Angelus grabbed Wesley by the hair of his scalp with one fist, pulling back the Englishman's head with that arm as the other helped to hold the Englishman, whose gasping breath bespoke at least one broken rib. Wesley gripped Angelus's forearm with both hands, but the vampire was impossibly stronger.
"No." Wesley's arm was a bar across Angel's body as the vampire prepared to launch himself forward.
"I have to –"
"No." Wesley moved in front of him and gripped Angel's forearms with both hands tightly, his eyes black with anguish. "This isn't real."
Behind the watcher, Imax-lite ran on as Angelus lowered his head, trying to hold the squirming ex-Watcher still, biting his neck and then jerking away with a curse as one-handed Wesley did the cross thing to his face. He yelped and loosened his hold as Wesley played Angelus' own game and sank his teeth deep into the nearest available vampire anatomy – Angelus' arm. Wesley lunged forward in a smooth roll as Angelus flinched back, but the Englishman's broken ribs weren't up to the task; he failed as he tried to get to his feet and Angelus wasn't anywhere near incapacitated.
The vampire repeated his previous action, this time wrenching the cross out of Wesley's hand. Instead of feeding, Angelus tore at his own wrist with his teeth and then bent his head and bit into Wesley's neck again, tearing the skin as the ex-Watcher kicked and writhed. Angelus gulped the blood eagerly as Wesley's struggles lessened, raising his wrist and pressing it against the Englishman's mouth, but Wesley twisted his head away, pressing his lips tightly together.
"Damn ye, ye'll feed!" Angelus' Irish accent broke through in his rage, and he brutally held the Englishman immobile, shoving his torn wrist between Wesley's lips with a pressure that forced the Englishman to open his mouth or have his jaw break. Involuntarily Wesley breathed in, gagging and choking as the blood entered his mouth, and with a snarl, Angelus bit deeper, greedily gulping the blood like a child eating chocolate. Slowly Wesley stopped struggling, and suddenly he slumped in Angelus's grasp, his eyes wide and sightless.
"No no no nono." Angel shook his violently from side to side, rejecting what he was seeing – this was madness, this hadn't happened, this had – only existed in Angel's darkest dreams, the dreams where Angelus could assert himself and indulge in his daydreams, not Angel's…
Another loud crash echoed in the warehouse and Angelus's head jerked up. Charles Gunn's voice, and Faith's - searchers, trying to find the vampire, unaware of the murdered Englishman…and so they would remain, until it was too late. Placing the Englishman's body over his shoulder in a classic fireman's lift, Angelus leaped up to a catwalk with superhuman strength, exiting the warehouse before the searchers were aware that he had ever been there.
Lightly as though unencumbered, the monster carried the dead Englishman back to a small, shabby one-bed open plan apartment whose blood-spattered walls told eloquently what had happened to it's original resident, dropping Wesley's body on the bed like a sack of potatoes, before going to the bathroom and cleaning himself off, whistling cheerfully.
Redressing himself, Angelus entered the main room, just as the body on the bed twitched. Pushing himself from his sprawled position, the vampire that had been Wesley Wyndham-Pryce looked at his Sire solemnly for a moment, and then smiled. Rising from the bed, Wesley made for the door.
"I didn't say you could leave." Angelus' tone was soft but dangerous.
"Trust me, you'll like what I have in mind." Wesley responded coolly, not appearing fazed by the implicit threat in his Sire's voice.
"I'd better." But Angelus smiled at his latest child's strength. "Lead on, MacDuff."
Angel could only watch, held back by Wesley – the real Wesley – as the two vampires left the dingy apartment, the vampire Wesley talking to Angelus in a tone too low for even Angel to pick up, but which made the evil vampire laugh aloud and throw an arm round Wesley's shoulders. Angel was aware of the ferocity of grip with which his Wesley was holding him back from leaving the Ghost Roads; Wesley's eyes were sunken black pools in a putty-grey face – he knows what's coming next, Angel thought abruptly, somehow he knows where they're going and what they're going to do…
The Hyperion loomed and Angelus slowed his pace so he walked a few steps behind Wesley, so totally cloaked by the shadows of the deep night that he might have dissolved into the air itself. Both vampires, with Wesley ahead, simply walked up the path into the hotel – it was a public building, and Angel as the 'resident' didn't count as he was already dead. Wesley stood atop the steps, barely two feet away from Gunn, Lorne, Lilah and Fred as they gathered at the entrance, his face sombre, the pump-action shotgun resting on one shoulder.
"Damn." Gunn commented on seeing Wesley's unsmiling face.
"Indeed." Wesley moved so fast none of them even saw it – even as he broke Gunn's neck, the pump action shotgun was fired full blast into Lorne's torso, tossing the green demon back onto the stairs. Neither Lilah nor Fred even had time to blink or even register what was happening. Lunging forward to grab Lilah to him with one powerful arm, Angelus snatched up the sword falling from the hand of Gunn's still collapsing corpse and decapitated Lorne with one savage stroke, ensuring real death for the demon since his body was mutilated.
"Congratulations, Lilah, you're about to become my boy's toy." Angelus laughed as he sank his fangs into Lilah's throat.
Still with that faint British reserved smile, Wesley smashed his fist into Fred's face, knocking her to the lobby floor in a stunned heap. Ensuring he had forced Lilah to accept sufficient blood to Sire her, Angelus made himself comfortable on the steps grasping her corpse as Wesley brutally raped and tortured Winifred Burkle to death.
Angel gave a sobbing breath as the Ghost Road was suddenly in a dimension that strongly resembled Pylea. Beside him, Wesley was shaking, fine tremors wracking his body, but no tears fell down his cheeks. Dragging in a rasping breath, Wesley looked at his own watch. "We haven't got all night – the Oligarchs might jump dimensions again, or even discover we're here looking for them."
"You didn't – I could have – I would have saved you!" yelled Angel, sending Wesley staggering back with a wild shove borne of grief and horror.
"It wasn't real!" Wesley shouted back savagely. "Forget being the superhero for once, and focus!"
"But –!" Angel began to exclaim.
Suddenly looking exhausted, Wesley rasped, "Angel, wake up and smell the O Neg! Haven't you heard what I've been saying? Why do you think the Ghost Roads are so fearsomely dangerous if no traveller upon them can be physically harmed?"
Angel hesitated, opening his mouth and closing it again; when he'd accompanied Wes' on this trip, right from the very beginning, he'd always thought of "dangers" in terms of real injury or literal attack, like tangling with that Ethros back there. Once Wesley had explained that the Ethros couldn't hurt them, Angel had privately begun to assume that the Ghost Roads' legendary terror was exaggerated.
Accurately discerning Angel's thoughts, Wesley ground out, "The Ghost Roads are so terribly dangerous because while they can't destroy you, they can get you to destroy yourself. What would you have done if I hadn't been here?
"Attacked Angelus." Angel said promptly, before thinking for a second and adding hesitantly, "Left the Ghost Road…"
"Exactly, where you would instantly have been open to attack and the effects of Time. The Ghost Roads show what was, what is and what may be, but they can also show you your deepest fantasy and your worst nightmare. Let me ask you – if you'd seen a dimension where Cordelia lived but Angel was killed…"
There was a pregnant pause and Wesley raised an eyebrow.
"I would have been tempted to go – and stay." Angel admitted heavily.
"Get it through your head, Angel." Wesley lectured sternly. "What we are currently standing on is far more dangerous than an Ethros demon, far more of a threat to you than Holtz ever was."
"But…how can you be sure it wasn't real." Angel almost wailed in anguish.
Wesley looked away for a moment, his expression bleak. "Because that was my nightmare. That Angelus wouldn't simply kill me, but turn me instead. I knew if that if he did, I could simply walk brazenly into the Hyperion, none of the others would suspect a thing until it was far too late. It was part of Angelus' plan to turn me into a vampire, wasn't it?" Wesley's tone made the last sentence more of a statement than a question.
"Yes." Angel conceded flatly. Wesley had all the attributes Angelus considered desirable in a Sireling: highly intelligent, courageous and a skilled fighter but also cunning, a good strategist – and possessing a deep streak of ruthlessness, that 'dark river of the heart' that so few had. "Do you…dream it a lot?"
"No so much. It depends…when Illyria killed Fred, there were a bad few weeks – we both know how close to the edge I was during that time. Before Willow restored your soul it was nightly. Now, not really." Wesley shrugged and then prompted, "Angel we really have to go."
They moved on, but now their gait had become more of an urgent stride than a measured walk – Angel had no desire to be here a second longer than he had to, and once this caper was over, he never intended to go near a Ghost Road again even if he lived ten thousand years instead of just a century!
Unseen by Wesley ahead of him, he shivered. He hadn't really understood – no, he hadn't truly accepted - the dangerousness of the Ghost Roads, until now. Like Lorne was always complaining about Pyleans, his view of 'real' danger was physical – the sharp axe, not the enraged or disturbed mind, or a slanderous tongue tearing apart friendships.
When those images had started playing, he'd been uncomfortable and irritated – rather than rehashing past events, why couldn't the Ghost Roads show something useful – like what Lindsey MacDonald was up to now, or the evil lawyer's past machinations or future schemes. Something that Angel could have worked with…right now, he was immensely grateful that the Ghost Roads hadn't done any such thing.
If I'd ever tried this on my own…I'd never have made it. The knowledge was humbling but inescapable; he would have either given into temptation to remain in a dimension where Cordy had lived…or where he and Buffy could walk in the sun…or else he would have reacted with instinctive emotion to a fake scenario like the brutal one they'd just witnessed, borne of Wesley's nightmares, and dived straight off the Ghost Roads into who knew what…
Continued in Chapter 8© 2006 & 2010 The Cat's Whiskers
