A Union of Souls, Chapter Twenty-Two
Doyle's supposition was wrong. They did not exit the sewers immediately inside of Cordovan's gates; they exited them outside the gates, across the street. Getting through the gates and past the gate guards, both human, was not that difficult. Doyle played the lost drunk while Angel and Rupert incapacitated both men.
It was getting inside the house that had Rupert Giles a bit worried.
Apparently, the prospect worried the Irishman as well. Hovering in the shadows closest to the front door, he shifted from foot to foot a bit anxiously. His light eyes darted in different directions, always returning to stare questioningly at Angel's back. "Well?"
"Well, what?" Angel snapped.
"Do you have a plan, man, or are we just going to stand out here and pretend to be shrubbery all night?"
"I have a plan."
"And that would be?"
"Watch my back." With those words, the vampire leapt up onto the front landing and delivered a sound kick to the front door. The door shook under the weight of vampiric strength and swung inward with a loud pop and groan. Immediately, flood-lights filled the yard, swooping and shining on every tree and bush while a cacophony of sirens and noise filled the air.
Doyle shrugged at Rupert as he hefted a stake and joined Angel on the landing. "I guess we're *not* going with the subtle approach."
"No," The former Watcher brought his crossbow to bear, "I suppose we're not."
The first two vampires to charge in their direction became dust in the blinking of an eye. Almost faster than Rupert's eyes could register, Angel's arms shot out to his sides and those finely sharpened stakes shot out from beneath the sleeves of his leather coat. Too late, the vampires registered what was happening; too late they tried to stop and slow. Cries of surprise and pain filled the air before their bodies turned to gray ash and floated to the ground.
"Giles!" Doyle shouted.
With that warning, Rupert turned, aimed, and fired. The vampire stumbled to a halt and then predictably turned to dust. He noticed motion out of the corner of his eye, and swung around, using the crossbow as a club. It smacked loudly across the face of whatever demon creature had been approaching him, sending it stumbling backwards.
Well, the crossbow could be good for something even if it wasn't loaded.
"Don't fight them!" Angel cried out. It was an odd command to give when he considered that the vampire was surrounded by three figures — and doing precisely that. "Break through!"
Break through indeed. Of course, he saw the logic of Angel's plan. They could stand in the marble tiled foyer for the remainder of the evening and continue to fight off every single guard that Cordovan sent their way. It would still not help them find Ami, nor help them rescue the girl. The problem, however, with breaking through Cordovan's forces was that they didn't know where to break through. They had no way of knowing where in this house the girl was being held.
Rupert turned and swung the crossbow again. Left, then right, then left again for good measure. He lifted his foot and delivered a solid kick to the creature's sternum — at least he assumed it was the beast's sternum; judgement was difficult based on the number of red and blue scales and bony protrusions — knocking said creature from its feet and sending it sailing at least four feet in the other direction. Luckily for him, the demon's fall was broken by a glass table.
"I don't think he'll be getting up anymore," Rupert muttered.
"Giles, man, this way!"
He turned, following the sound of Doyle's voice and faltered. The voice belonged to the Irishman. The clothes belonged to the Irishman. The red eyes and scaly face covered with spines did *not* belong to Doyle.
"It's all right. It's Doyle. He's stronger in his demon form." Angel stepped up to his side, nudging him along. The vampire had a bloody gash down his shirt, but he looked no worse for wear. The fact that he had not transformed into his demon visage meant that things weren't as bad as they could be.
"This is your demon form?" Rupert asked the half-man/half-demon with no small amount of curiosity.
"Yeah, I know. It's not a face that the girls love." Rupert did not miss the self-loathing he heard in the half-demon's voice, and it explained Doyle's discomfort with revealing his half-demon nature. It was an interesting idea to consider, a half-demon that found its demon half repellant — but it was an examination that Rupert Giles would have to find time for on another day. Tonight's concern was finding, and rescuing Ami, before she became enslaved to an evil priestess.
"Are you certain that Ami's down this way?" Rupert asked as Angel made quick work of twisting the neck of some other kind of demon. The crunch of bone echoed loudly in the narrow hallway.
Doyle nodded. "I can smell her."
"Smell her?"
"Brachen demon," Angel explained. "He's got a good sense of smell."
They met up with the second wave of the defense forces at the top of a flight of stairs. The demons and vampires spilled up the staircase, preventing them from charging down. There were more of them, and these were more vicious. A good indication if there ever was one that Ami's rescue squad — vampire, half-demon, and former Watcher — were headed in the proper direction.
Roughly yanking the knife that had been intended to kill Rupert, from the chest of a now dead demon, and tossing the body from the top of his, Rupert pushed himself disgustedly to his feet. He hefted the blade, decided that he liked it, despite the greenish grayish ichor that was sticking to it. It was definitely more usable than an unloaded crossbow.
"You do realize —" Rupert blocked a punch from the left with his arm and shoved the creature back a few paces, " — that they're going to keep coming up and —" he brought the knife to bear, only to have his attack blocked by the demon, " — we're never going to go —" He feinted, dodged and cut a messy swath across the monster's abdomen, wincing as it howled in pain, "—down."
"I thought of that. I have it covered." Angel grabbed the last of their assailants, a vampire, by the throat and tossed it back the way it had come. Then with a loud roar and a growl, the vampire threw himself down the narrow staircase after it.
Doyle's red eyes flickered from Rupert to the stairs and back again. "I hate it when he says that."
Rupert blinked at the staircase with mild surprise. "He does this often?"
"He likes to make an entrance."
"I can see that." Rupert retrieved the crossbow from its strap on his back and began quickly re-loading it. "Is Ami—"
"Down there? Oh yeah. Watch my back."
Then, the demon disappeared down the staircase in much the same fashion that the vampire had.
"I'll walk if you don't mind," Rupert commented to no one in particular. He sighed, and giving a quick prayer to the first god of battle that leapt to mind, he began to descend the darkened staircase.
The scene that greeted him when he emerged from darkness into light was something reminiscent of a bad horror movie. Only, Rupert Giles realized that it was not a bad horror movie at all — this was real life.
The room had been made into a casting chamber. Magickal glyphs and sigils covered the walls, the floors, the tall pillars. Some were black — done in charcoal, some were pastel — done in chalk, and some were deep reddish brown — done in blood. Some were protective, protection for the caster, Rupert recognized. A few were glowing white or blue, but so many more were glowing bright orange and red.
In the very center of all of this, an altar had been created. Ami lay in the center of it, to all appearances dead. She was still, incredibly still, her hands folded neatly on her abdomen, her eyes open and fixed on some point that no one in the room could see. The only hint that she was alive was the faint and occasional rise of her chest beneath the sheet that covered her, the faint motions of her mouth as though she spoke to whatever it was she saw in her mind's eye. Magickal sigils were painted over all the parts of her body. Her forehead, her cheeks, her arms, her shoulders. The red sigils on — and around her — were glowing more brightly than any other in the room.
The undercurrents of magick sweeping through the chamber were so strong that he had to take a moment, closing his eyes and whispering his own prayers of protection, to avoid being caught up and carried in the storm.
When he opened his eyes again, he took in more details of the room, his Watcher trained eyes taking them in quickly. The spell-caster, Giselle, who would have struck him as a beautiful woman if he had not registered the darkness of her intentions, stood directly beside Ami's makeshift bed. She held an Orb of Thessulah in her faintly glowing hands, and her lips moved in a slow cadence. Rupert checked his watch. Time. They still had time, but not very much of it.
His eyes lingered briefly on the Orb of Thessulah. The object was used only in spells where the soul was needed to be captured from the ether and held — or when the soul needed to be held before entering the ether — or forced somewhere else. Rupert had only seen one other spell which required one in recent times; that had been the spell which cursed Angel and gave the vampire the one thing no other vampire had: a soul. It was a powerful object and it's importance and significance was not to be ignored.
At this moment, the Orb was not glowing, meaning that Ami's soul was housed in her body, but that could change at any moment.
They would have to move quickly.
Quickly, his eyes roamed, checking on the progress of his allies. Angel and Doyle had made a pretty mess of things, piles of dust and a few dead demons lay in various places. But it was clear that their good fortune was beginning to run out. They had finally encountered the thick of Cordovan's forces, and the fight was well-matched. The room that had once been an unfinished basement, had now become a battle-zone, with the life and freedom of a young girl the ultimate prize.
Angel, his human mask dissolved and replaced with bony ridges along his cranium and menacing yellow eyes, was holding his own against another vampire. The two circled and attacked, circled and attacked, almost as if they were dancing and not fighting. The half-demon was not fairing so well.
Raising his crossbow, Rupert took aim and shot one of the Irishman's assailants squarely between the shoulder blades. It howled and turned, glowing red eyes fixed on the him. With a shake of its spiked head, it charged towards the staircase.
Rupert braced himself to meet the beast.
The attack never came. A figure rose up out of nowhere, backhanding the creature to the floor. Attacking while it was down, the figure straddled the monster's chest, plunging two fingers into the creature's eye sockets. The demon creature shrilled and trembled, its entire body convulsing until it lay dead.
Standing and wiping his hands on his pants, the figure turned and smiled at Rupert. He indicated his eyes with two fingers. "Kopor. The eyes. That's where they're vulnerable."
"Whistler."
"I'll watch your back. You just figure out some way to get those magickal wardings around the kid down so that we can get to her."
"What — Why —" Rupert's words froze in his throat as he received the answer to the question he was preparing to ask. He watched as one of the demons fighting Doyle stumbled backwards, its foot landing between two of the glowing orange sigils closest to Ami's altar. It tossed its head back and screamed in sheer agony, an ear-splitting, earth-shattering scream so full of pain and terror that it made Rupert's blood ice over with fear and horror. While logically he knew that it lasted only a few seconds, it seemed to go on forever as the demon was slowly burned away into nothingness.
"Right. Wardings. Down," Rupert managed to stumble out when he could reason again. He moved on instinct, his hands and mind on remote as he reached into the bag carrying The Kelsior, an ancient magick text. He made a note to thank Angel later — when they were out of this — for his foresight.
Rupert Giles threw himself into one of the things he did best. He began skimming the book, translating as quickly as he could, in an effort to find a spell to remove the warding. He forced himself to remain focused on the book, not on Angel or Doyle. Even when he heard the yell of pain that he recognized as Angel's. Even when Whistler went down, grappling with a demon.
"Watcher! Hurry it up! We're running out of time!" Whistler hissed.
"You think that I am not aware of that?" Rupert snapped in return. "These things take time, translation, understanding. I can't just cast any spell —"
"Shit." Whistler's word was accompanied by another one of those horrific screams that Rupert could not ignore. His head jerked upwards, following in the direction of the demon's gaze — and the world began to move in slow motion.
He took in all of the details at once. Doyle, standing a few paces from the glowing sigils, terror clearly readable even on his demonic visage. The creature Doyle had been wrestling with, standing beyond the sigils, slowly dissolving into nonexistence. But that was not the reason that his heart clenched in his breast. That was not the reason that all fighting, and all time stopped.
The creature Doyle had thrown into the sigils had bumped against the caster. The Orb of Thessulah, glowing bright yellow with magick — and Ami's soul — flew from the woman's hands, arcing upwards and outwards in a perfect half-circle before it began it's terrifyingly fast descent towards the floor.
"It can't break," Whistler whispered frantically.
Rupert's eyes remained pinned on the Orb. It could not break. It could not break. That would kill the girl.
The Orb drew closer to the floor. . .
. . . and was caught in a single hand.
Rupert felt his heart beat again. His eyes clamored up the figure, the hand, the leather clad arm, and he allowed himself to breathe again when he realized that Angel held the Orb.
In the distance a clock chimed.
Ten o' clock. One chime.
Giselle raised her hands and began to cast.
Two chimes.
She could still cast the spell without the Orb.
Three chimes.
She could still cast the spell without the Orb.
Four chimes.
"Angel! She may cast without the Orb in her possession!"
Five.
From where he lay on the floor, holding the precious glowing object in his hand, the vampire's golden eyes met his. Knowledge and sadness flickered there.
Six.
"Watcher! You have to do something now. Counter-spell!" Whistler yelled at him. The demon yelled because as Giselle gathered the flows of magick around her, a wind began whipping through the room. It tore at their hair, their faces, their clothes.
Seven.
"Angel, man, we have to do something!"
Eight.
The vampire raised the Orb in his hand, his eyes closing in resolve.
"Anything but that!"
"It will kill her!"
"He knows," Rupert whispered more to himself than anyone else.
Nine.
"He knows."
The vampire's hand came down, slamming the Orb against the floor, shattering it into a million shards.
Ten.
As the Orb shattered, the wind wailed and whipped up frantically, throwing Rupert back against the stairs. A bright, blinding light buckled up from where the Orb shattered, growing brighter and brighter with each passing moment until it was too bright to stare look at any longer.
Rupert averted his eyes, feeling the light on his skin. It burned. It lashed at him like a thousand whips, like fine sand in a sand storm. Screams echoed in the chamber, the same agony and pained screams of death that he heard earlier, only now they were ten times stronger. They were ten times more painful, ten times more gut-tearing.
If he had cared any at all, he would have been embarrassed that he lost his dinner over the side of the stairs.
He tried to drag himself away, but he was caught in the center of the storm as was everyone else.
He was forced to ride it out.
It was over as quickly as it had begun.
Sudden stillness and silence descended on the room, the light vanishing in the blinking of an eye.
One single, agony filled scream hung in the air and then, clutching her head, Giselle fell limply to the floor besides Ami's altar.
Ami.
Despite the bitter taste in his mouth, the weakness in his knees, Rupert knew that he had to get to the girl. The sigils no longer glowed, their magick having been somehow — inexplicably — rendered harmless in that last backlash. He wove unsteadily to the altar, only Doyle, who stood closer, made it there before him.
Settled back into his human features, and looking like a man who had been beaten within an inch of his life, he stared up at the former Watcher in shock. His fingers rested on Ami's neck and his mouth moved silently a few times before he could manage to stutter out the words. "She's alive. I don't know how, but she's alive."
Rupert checked for himself. There was a pulse. It was faint and weak, and her skin was far too cold for his comfort, but she was indeed alive. He breathed a sigh of relief; he didn't think that he could have handled the guilt of her death — even if it had been to save her from a fate worse than death.
"Angel?" Rupert asked. "The rest of Cordovan's forces?"
"Destroyed, most of them," Whistler knelt on the floor besides the vampire's still form. "That magick — it destroyed all the ones who weren't smart enough to look away or get down low."
"How's Angel?" Doyle prompted. Then paused, his eyes roving to the very still figure of the woman lying still on the ground. "Giselle."
"Forget about her. She can't harm us right now. She can't harm anyone right now." Rupert was all business again. They had what they came for. Ami was alive and she was whole. If Doyle and Angel wanted to take up a battle with Cordovan and Giselle, they would have future opportunities to do it. He scooped Ami's unmoving form into his arms, turning to see the demon struggling to lift the unconscious vampire to his feet. "I assume you know a different path out of here?"
"Is he dead?" Doyle asked, his voice covered with fear, his eyes on Angel.
"Is he dust?" Whistler grunted in response. "I just don't like the idea of leaving him here to get staked, you know? I didn't pull him out of the sewers for nothing. Help me out, here and we can all get the hell out of this place."