DR2: The Cross of Changes, book III

by Nick Midian

Broderick Egoyan has carefully chosen the right moment to strike, when friends are against friends and all trust seems about to vanish between Slayerettes and Archangels. It’s right when you think things couldn’t get worse that they get worse.

7. Part 7 of 10

DR2 - The Cross of Changes by Nick Midian, Book III, part 7 of 10
Written by Nick Midian

Content beta-reading and storyline suggestions by Duncan

English grammar, spelling, slang, Highlander continuity and general
corrections by Theo

French slang, content beta-reading and storyline suggestions by Mash

French slang by Alan


EMAIL: jcaballero@euskalnet.net

SPOILERS: For Buffy the Vampire Slayer: 3rd season, BUT no Xander/Willow
kissing and no Lover's Walk (welcome to the wonderful State of Denial,
Land of 'Shippiness). Hmmm, I've messed with the third season's timeline
to accommodate it to my necessities. Let's just say that 'Band Candy'
happened a lot later than it did, around the first days of February, OK?

For Highlander: None really, the characters of the TV series and films are
only tangentially mentioned. You just need to know the basics of
Highlander-style immortality, BUT I've always thought that whole
'Immortals have no parents and are found in a little basket' is a... um,
the Spanish word for it is 'chorrada', so let's just ignore it, OK?

KEYWORDS: Romance, Angst, Action-adventure, Violence, Alternate Universe,
Crossover.

RATING: PG-13 with some mild R parts for violence and sexual innuendo.

DISCLAIMER: This story has been written with no intention of profit,
merely for the pleasure of writing and sharing it.

The concept and characters of BTVS (Buffy, Angel, Cordelia, Xander,
Willow, Oz, Giles, Joyce, Spike, Drusilla, Snyder, Faith, Harmony, Lyle
Gorch, Quentin Travers and the rest) are intellectual and legal property
of Joss Whedon, Warner Brothers, Mutant Enemy, etc. Also, the concept of
Highlander and the characters mentioned here (Duncan MacLeod, Amanda
Darieux, Richie Ryan, Joe Dawson and the Society of Watchers) are the
property of Panzer-Davis and Rysher Entertainment.

Michael Deveraux, Rachel Curran, Crystal Parker, Kyle White Owl, Robert
Coltrane, Elvis the Dog, Broderick Egoyan, Damon Frost, Mr. Smith, the
World Committee for Civil Defense and the rest are my own creation.

All the songs and lyrics here are used without permission, they are
copyright of their respective rights owners.

AUTHOR'S NOTES: Please, understand that English is not my native language,
so any grammatical or spelling errors are my fault, not of any one of my
wonderful beta-readers. If you're thinking of sending any flames, please
be kind with me. I'm a grown man, but I still can cry like a child,
believe me.

SUMMARY: Broderick Egoyan has carefully chosen the right moment to strike,
when friends are against friends and all trust seems about to vanish
between Slayerettes and Archangels. It's right when you think things
couldn't get worse that they get worse.

And now, on with the show. Fasten your seat belts ladies and gentlemen,
because it's going to be a long, hard and jumpy ride...

~~~~~~

The cast for Book III

Nicholas Brendon as Xander Harris
Charisma Carpenter as Cordelia Chase

Sarah Michelle Gellar as Buffy Summers
David Boreanaz as Angel
Alyson Hannigan as Willow Rosenberg
Seth Green as Daniel 'Oz' Osborne
Anthony Stewart Head as Rupert Giles
Kristine Sutherland as Joyce Summers

Matthew Perry as Michael Deveraux
Paula Trickey as Rachel Curran
James Marsters as Spike
Nikki Cox as Crystal Parker
David James Elliott as Kyle White Owl
Elvis the Dog as Himself

Eliza Dushku as Faith Adams
Donald Sutherland as The Old Chess Player, Broderick Egoyan
Sebastian Spence as Damon Frost
Avery Brooks as Mr. Smith

Amy Chance as Aphrodesia
Persia White as Aura

Alan Rickman as Conrad Swann
Wesley Snipes as Talon Pantera
Dennis Rodman as Rush Pantera
Tom Berenger as Colonel Cabbot Ashe
Michael Ironside as The Sergeant
Benjamin Bratt as Santero
Trevor Goddar as Backlash
Dolph Lundgren as Havoc
Rob Rowland as Chopper
Jake Busey as Sniper
Shaquille O'Neal as Beast
Matthew Ferguson as Chip

Bill Paxton as Major Stephen Marsden, USAF
Tom Sizemore as Master Sergeant Ricky Perkins, USAF
John Leguizamo as Airman First Class Charlie Martinelli, USAF
Mario Lopez as Airman First Class Alonso 'Bear' Vasquez, USAF
Patrick Labyorteaux as Sergeant Edwin Walters, USAF

Richard Dean Anderson as Col. Jack O'Neill, USAF
Michael Shanks as Dr. Daniel Jackson
Amanda Tapping as Maj. Samantha Carter, USAF
Christopher Judge as Teal'c
Don S. Davis as Gen. George Hammond, USAF
Teryl Rothery as Dr. Janet Fraiser
Tom McBeath as Col. Harry Mayborne, USAF
Peter Deluise as Airman Shepard, USAF

with

Kevin Spacey as Robert Coltrane
Nicholas Lea as Jonah Whalls

and

Catherine Zeta-Jones as the Lady in Red


~~~~~~



Although he was far from being a mage, Giles had read and studied enough
books on magic to consider himself erudite on the matter. That way, when
he saw what the warlock was doing and the first signs of the spell he was
casting made the soft hairs on the nape of his neck stand up, he knew what
he had to do, and that he had very little time to do it.

Letting the gun he had taken away from the Scandinavian mercenary fall to
the floor, the British Watcher stood up to his feet. Struggling with the
handcuffs still binding his wrists, he jumped on the bed and rolled over
it, grabbing one of the edges of the wide mattress on his way.

Giles yanked at it with all the strength he could find in his bruised body
and, ignoring the piercing pain in his broken finger, he practically
ripped the mattress off of the bedsprings as he jumped over Cordelia's
body.

He covered her with his own body, and let the mattress fall over their
combined figures as a makeshift shield.

"Don't move!" he told the young brunette, pinning her to the floor with
his weight. Obeying him, Cordelia snuggled into his protecting embrace,
reaching out to grab the mattress herself and help Giles to keep it into
place.

The mystical shock-wave came out the warlock's figure at that very moment,
a flaming tornado that hit everything around him, making everything that
wasn't nailed to the floor fly away and crash against the walls as it was
engulfed into a flaming ball of blue fire.

The French doors leading to the small balcony blew up into a thousand
small fragments of glass and wood. The naked bedsprings were ripped from
the floor and spun around in the air, twisting and snapping as the metal
folded apparently of its own volition before heavily landing back on the
ground.

The lamp hanging from the ceiling over the warlock danced madly under the
blow of the overheated wind, casting eerie shadows on the walls as the two
small bedside lamps crashed against them, one of them miraculously landing
with its lightbulb intact and still switched on.

In a second, everything was turned into a broken mess. That is, everything
but the two mercenaries still lying on the floor.

As he saw the blue blast coming to him at the speed of sound, Santero
instinctively raised his arms to cover his face as he adopted a fetal
posture to minimize the impact of the shock-wave against his body.

But, contrary to what he expected, the only thing he felt when the ball of
blue energy reached his body was a soft and warm breeze flowing over his
figure, and blowing his clothes and dark hair.

Surprised, the Hispanic mercenary uncovered his face and looked around. He
found much to his own amazement that both Havoc and himself seemed
completely unharmed, when practically the rest of the room had been hit by
a tropical hurricane. "What the...?"

Neither Giles nor Cordelia had the luck of being protected from the magic
blast, as the two mercenaries seemed to be.

The shock wave impacted against the mattress, hitting them with the force
of a pile-driver, pushing them back against the nearest wall. Their lungs
were suffocated because of the overheated air of the room, and the cotton
surface of the mattress was being licked by tongues of blue fire.

Their entangled bodies slid over the carpeted floor, until Giles' back
crashed against the wall with a dull thud. He had to fight to stay
conscious, letting a moan of pain escape his lips as Cordelia quickly got
out of his awkward embrace and kicked away the mattress, making it land on
its burning surface so the flames were suffocated against the floor before
they completely engulfed it.

"Are you alright?" she asked the Watcher with worry as she helped him to
his feet.

Giles grunted, awkwardly bringing his handcuffed hands up to check the
bump forming on the back of his head, right where he had banged it against
the wall. "I won't lie to you, I've known better days."

Then, thinking the same thought, the two of them turned their heads around
to look at the one-eyed warlock, still floating in the middle of the room.
He smiled to them, tilting his head to one side as Cordelia raised the
Glock to aim at him again.

"Well, well, it seems that the little lady can't learn the lesson. Haven't
we done this before?"

The brunette young woman half-closed her eyes, staring hard at the
warlock, and then shook her head softly. "No," she whispered raggedly,
"this is new."

Cordelia lifted the gun over the warlock's head, aiming directly at the
lamp hanging from the ceiling over him and fired only once.

Caught by surprise, Swann lifted his one working eye and looked in
open-mouthed astonishment as Cordelia's bullet severed the wire that held
up the metallic lamp. It fell on him heavily, crashing him to the ground
in the middle of an explosion of golden electric sparks and sharp glass
fragments.

"Wow," Giles whispered, arching his brow as he looked at the warlock's
slumped figure over Cordelia's shoulder, "i-it's the only thing I can
think of saying."

As the warlock tried to stand up, shaking his head weakly, a trace of
blood came out from the open wound on his temple and stained the whole
side of his face.

Leaving Giles' side, Cordelia jumped over him and retrieved the
almost-forgotten cross from the floor, turning on her heel immediately
afterwards. She was about to jump over Swann's body again when she stopped
dead, biting her lower lip.

"This is for ruining my friend's bedroom," she growled, savagely kicking
the fallen man on the floor, right in his kidneys. "I helped to decorate
it!"

Arching his brow in wonder, and thinking something along the lines of
'some things never change', Giles reached out for the brunette and
practically dragged her away from the fallen man's figure to the door of
the bedroom.

He kept nervously eyeing how Santero was struggling to retrieve his lost
rifle, trying to take it out from the remains of the shredded bed.
"Cordelia! We have to get out of here!"

Nodding, and after kicking Swann once more for good measure, Cordelia and
Giles started to run towards the door with the intention of getting the
hell away from there as fast a possible.

But, even before they had taken a couple of steps, Swann waved weakly with
his hand and the door closed by itself, in front of their eyes with a hard
slap.

With a grunt, Santero yanked at his rifle and finally freed it from the
metallic grasp of the bedsprings, immediately shouldering it and firing a
short burst of bullets that tore large pieces of plaster and wood from the
wall beside the door. It rendered the Watcher and the former cheerleader
as quiet as a couple of scared mice.

"Quiet!" he shouted with angered voice as he laboriously got up, sliding
his back up the wall. "And you... drop that pistol, bitch!"

Closing her hazel eyes and clenching her teeth together to silence a
curse, Cordelia let out a long and tired sigh and dropped the Glock to the
carpeted floor, where it bounced softly until it remained still, with its
butt slightly leaned against the instep of her bare right feet.

"And now?" she asked softly, raising her arms in defeat.

"Now you turn around," Santero told her as Swann slowly got up and he
carefully shook Havoc with his foot, bringing him out of his state of
unconsciousness. The Scandinavian man grunted in annoyance, and Santero
kicked him painfully with the point of his boot, fully waking him up.

"What?" Cordelia asked out loud, with mild amusement. "I thought that a
coward like you would be accustomed to shooting women in the back."

The Hispanic mercenary took a step forward, ready to strike her with the
butt of his rifle when the one-eyed warlock grabbed him by the shoulder,
keeping him from doing so.

"What!?!" Santero roared, rudely shrugging his hand away.

As he carefully wiped the bleeding wound on his temple with his linen
handkerchief, Swann gave him an annoyed look. "I don't know what is more
pathetic, the fact that she thinks that she can make you snap with a
single insult, or the fact that she's right! I should have let you go,
just to see what she was going to do."

"As if you've done better," the mercenary growled at him. Nevertheless he
kept his distance from the brunette and the middle-aged man, covering them
with his HK carbine.

"Any other bright ideas, Calamity Jane?" Giles asked her with a whisper.

The brunette sent him a sideways glare and was about to shake her head
when something caught her attention. A movement, a distorted reflection on
the polished golden surface of the cross she was still holding. She smiled
and steeled herself, trying to ignore the weakness of her legs.

"Can we reach an agreement here, or is it too late for that, gentlemen?"
she asked their captors over her shoulder, displaying her most charming
smile, the same one that turned every male's bones into rubber.

Both Santero and Swann raised similar eyebrows full of incredulity, but
the warlock was the one to speak first. "Do you even have anything to
negotiate with, young lady?"

Without turning completely around, Cordelia waved the du Lac Cross softly.
"Well, I still have this."

The Hispanic mercenary snorted with sarcastic amusement, and shouldered
his rifle. "Not for long, perra."

The brunette frowned softly, and then looked at them with an expression
that went quickly from disappointment to boredom. "Oh, then I guess I'll
have to play the ace up my sleeve."

The one-eyed warlock frowned slightly, and shook his head in mild
confusion before smiling coldly at her. "I'm afraid I haven't seen enough
TV, dear. What are you talking about?"

"I guess she's talking about me," said a growling voice behind the warlock
and the mercenary, startling both of them.

The unlikely pair turned around in a flash, only to find themselves
practically face to face with an impossibly large werewolf perched on the
metallic banister of the balcony.

The light of the moon outlined his figure, shining against the dark
exterior through the broken frame of window. His hairy body was crouched
in a predatory posture, as he held himself in equilibrium only with the
aid of his feet and rear talons.

The mythic animal smiled dangerously, showing them two rows of long, sharp
and pointed canines. "But I prefer to think of myself as the wild card."



~~~~~~



The first thing about the werewolf that got Giles' attention was the fact
that the soft hair covering his whole body was of a reddish-brown color,
that was completely different from the dark gray one he was accustomed to.

And it covered practically all of his body, falling down in long and
soft-looking locks where it was more abundant on his forearms, the upper
side of his back and bare chest. Everywhere except on top of his lupine
head, where it proudly displayed a tuft of blue-dyed hair.

He was larger than usual, too. Although it was difficult to calculate
because he was still crouched down, Giles estimated that he had to be at
least seven feet tall, with broad shoulders and bulging muscles that had
to be powerful enough to classify him as a massive machine of destruction.

Still, his semi-human features were clearly Oz's ones; when the werewolf
tilted his large head to one side and his snout parted into a diabolically
dangerous smile, the British Watcher caught the glimpse of gold coming
from one of his pointed wolfish ears almost on top of his head.

He realized that it was a debt to the three earrings the young man used to
wear in said ear.

This was Oz, after all. Or so it seemed, because Giles was starting to
wonder if it wasn't him who had gone into another, completely different
universe without noticing.

"You're late," Cordelia told him scornfully, seemingly not impressed at
all by her friend's new appearance. "What kept you?"

Ignoring the mercenaries and the warlock as if they weren't there, Oz
directed his golden eyes to the brunette young woman, the smirk that
resembled an evil grin never leaving his thin wolfish lips. "Had a problem
with the moon. But everything is under control now."

He looked back at Swann and Santero, and his mouth parted in an impossibly
long and hungry smile that displayed his long canines proudly. His whole
face seemed to melt and change, as his mouth transformed into a sharp
snout and his features turned even more lupine.

"Everything is sooo cool..." he growled.

"Well, what now?" the one-eyed warlock asked with a bored expression,
turning around to look at the brunette, seemingly accepting her as the one
at charge.

Cordelia shrugged softly. "Either we have a deal, or we stick to plan B."

"Plan B?"

She nodded. "We start killing each other like crazy."

For a second, the silence was as thick as a brick wall and it seemed that
there was nothing other than the magnetic embrace of his only blue eye
boring into her hazel ones. Then, Swann smiled and nodded softly. "Plan B
it is, then."

And, in a whisper, they all were moving again.

The warlock turned around as he lifted his joined hands and aimed with
them at the werewolf, a blue glow enveloping his body. Beside him, Santero
shouldered his rifle and opened automatic fire, sending a burning cloud of
lead against Giles and Cordelia.

His Scandinavian partner, who had apparently succeeded in recovering his
wits, dived for his forgotten pistol and raised its massive barrel to aim
at the brunette and her middle-aged companion.

Santero's HK G36K roared much in the same way that its owner was doing,
and the air of the room was once more filled with the pungent scent of
burnt cordite as his weapon ejected a wave of empty golden shells.

The blue glow seemed to solidify around Swann, forming what looked like a
trapezoidal glass armor around him. As a blue beam of energy erupted from
his linked hands in search for the werewolf's head, Oz simply jumped
towards him, his flexed and powerful legs boosting him effortlessly into
the room.

A growl escaped his lips as he flipped in the air, letting the shining ray
pass below his moving figure. He spun around and landed on the warlock's
chest like the wrath of God itself, the impact of his bare feet pushing
him to the floor as the glass breastplate of his magic armor shattered
into a intricate web of cracks.

Cordelia, moving at a speed and precision that surprised even herself,
pushed her discarded Glock with the instep of her foot, making it jump up
and grabbing it smoothly by its grip in mid-air as she spun around and
placed her right foot on Giles' figure.

Pushing him away from the firing range of the Hispanic mercenary and
propelling herself back and away with the same movement, the brunette
Amazon spun in the air, firing twice against Santero as she dodged his
shots before landing on the semi-burnt mattress of Giles' bed.

Her bullets hit Santero's rifle right on the frame, on its firing
mechanism, ripping sparks from its metallic surface and making the
mercenary recoil in surprise.

Pushed away by Cordelia, Giles' back collided against the wall and he
asked himself whether it was 'Englishman Bashing Day' or something.

"Giles!" the brunette called his attention as she unexpectedly turned her
gun towards him. "Hands up!"

Acting merely on instinct, Giles obeyed her, lifting his handcuffed hands
over his head and closing his eyes with dread. Closing her left eye and
aiming carefully in a heartbeat, she pulled the trigger only once, and the
bullet hit the chain of the handcuffs, breaking it with a spark and
freeing the Watcher's hands.

"Aagh!!" he exclaimed, shaking his hands. "That hurt!"

Roaring and with a flood of foam spraying out his jaws, Oz slashed madly
at the warlock's mystical helmet with his razor-sharp claws, ripping
sparks from it and discovering that the magic glass was as shock-resistant
as steel.

Growling, and pinning him to the floor with the weight of his massive
body, Oz brought his right fist back and plunged it down, smashing the
plate covering it and shattering it into a web of cracks.

As the red-haired werewolf raised his fist for a second strike, Swann
managed to take his left arm out from under Oz's figure and introduce it
between their bodies. The glass melted and rearranged seemingly by its own
volition, the straight plates covering his arm enlarging and transforming
into a long curved blade.

Slashing wildly, the warlock opened a long wound along Oz's chest that
started to bleed immediately, red drops raining down and splattering the
surface of his glowing armor.

The werewolf wailed in pain and leaned backwards, trying to dodge the arcs
traced by the glass blade. This allowed Swann to extricate his legs from
beneath Oz's figure, and place them on his chest to push him away. Then,
pushing against the carpet with his shoulder-blades, he flipped himself to
his feet.

Stumbling backwards, Oz traced the open slash on his chest with the clawed
index finger of his right hand and brought it to his wet snout, carefully
sniffing at it. Then, allowing his body to go slightly back to his human
form, just enough so he could speak, he licked his blood-stained
fingertip.

"Not bad," Oz growled with a mildly amused smile. "Enhanced strength and
speed?"

"And a few other things," the warlock returned his smile, adopting a
fighting stance and making the right arm of his glowing armor turn into a
refracted twin of his left blade.

Softly, as if the armor was made of water, the cracks covering its
breastplate and helmet rearranged together and disappeared. "Want to play,
doggie?"

Oz smiled once again, nodding softly. "I love to play."

The werewolf jumped forward without warning, his features changing back to
full lupine form in mid-jump, and his clawed hands captured the warlock's
wrists, keeping the blades away from his body as his left leg emerged like
a missile, hitting him in the chin.

If Swann hadn't been wearing the magic glass armor, Oz was sure that his
blow would have ripped his head off his shoulders.

Letting his risen leg fall like an axe, the werewolf hit the warlock on
the shoulder, crackling his armor once again, and forcing him to make an
effort not to fall to his knees.

Without freeing his grasp on his wrists and keeping his left leg leaned on
his shoulder, Oz raised his right one, leaning it the same way on Swann's
free shoulder. Capturing his head between his thighs, the werewolf let
himself fall down on his back and flipped the warlock's body over him,
launching his armored form against the near wall.

Smoothly spinning like a winch and standing up, werewolf Oz blew an errant
red lock out of his golden eyes and smiled widely, showing his sharp
fangs. "I love to play."

Once she had freed Giles, Cordelia noticed the huge blonde man moving
beside her and rolled over her shoulder, making the bedsprings creak as
she spun around and raised her semiautomatic pistol.

She found herself face to face with the Scandinavian mercenary. Or, more
precisely, with the huge muzzle of his Desert Eagle, as she leaned her
Glock on the man's chin. Not even thinking about it, Cordelia pulled the
trigger.

And her gun clicked empty.

"Oh, rats!" she exclaimed, looking at her useless pistol with annoyance
before throwing it away.

Havoc chuckled amusedly and cocked up his Desert Eagle, leaning the wide
exit-hole on her forehead. "Any famous last words?"

Cordelia sent him a hard stare that carried enough venom to kill a herd of
African elephants.

"Yeah, screw you!" she exclaimed, suddenly letting herself fall to her
back at the same time that she grabbed his gun-wrist and, digging her
nails onto his tender flesh, lifted her legs and entangled her smooth legs
around his arm, effectively trapping it.

With a cat-like growl, the brunette twisted his hand painfully and his
shot was lost over her head, ripping a large chunk of masonite from the
ceiling.

Flexing her right leg over his shoulder, Cordelia kicked him hard across
the face repeatedly, not less than five times before pushing him away from
her and, disentangling her legs from his arm, rolling over her back into a
standing position.

Havoc shook his head to clear it, and leaned back in time to dodge
Cordelia's foot, as the former cheerleader attacked him with a crescent
kick.

"Shouldn't you be in school or something?" he growled with annoyance as he
blocked her next blow.

"I already graduated, buddy," she told him as she spun around and hit him
with a devastating high kick. "And with straight A's!"

Santero fought with the firing mechanism of his rifle, fumbling with it
until he discovered that the young brunette's shots had folded the carcass
enveloping it, rendering the weapon useless.

Stifling a curse, the Hispanic mercenary threw the HK aside. With his eyes
nailed onto Cordelia's dancing figure as she thrust and parried with his
partner, the two of them immersed in furious hand-to-hand combat, he took
a fan-knife from the pocket of his jacket and bared its sharp blade with a
flourished movement of his hand.

"Time to end this," he whispered, moving towards Cordelia unprotected
back.

Or he would have done so, if Giles hadn't grabbed him by the shoulder,
making him turn around.

"Dance with me first, please," the British Watcher told him before
smashing his face with a hard punch.

Santero staggered back with an open-mouthed expression before charging
back against the Watcher, tracing short slashes and stabs with his knife
that Giles dodged one by one, leaning to one side and the other.

"Is this all you can do?" Giles asked the mercenary, capturing his wrist
when he tried to stab his throat and twisting his hand as he ignored the
pain of his broken little finger. "I'm not impressed at all, young man."

"Oh, please," Santero said, as he slammed his elbow against Giles' face.
"Don't patronize me, viejo."

Shaking his head and spitting a mix of blood and saliva without releasing
the Hispanic man's arm, Giles kneed him in the gut and quickly hacked with
the edge of his hand at his unprotected throat.

"Still unimpressed," he spat at him before punching him again.

With a roar, werewolf Oz charged like a freight train against the armored
warlock, tackling him and lifting his frame on his shoulder as he dragged
him against the closed door of the ample bedroom.

Screaming in rage and uselessly hitting the werewolf's broad back with his
armored fists, Swann heard more than felt when his back collided with the
door.

This one exploded into wooden splinters and their entangled frames fell
down the stairs leading to the lower floor, rolling down in a shapeless
bulk and grunting as their bodies painfully hit the edges of the steps and
finally crashed into Giles' living-room, smashing his coffee table.

Before the warlock could recuperate, Oz quickly gained the upper hand and
pinned his body to the ground, his bent knee firmly anchored on the small
of his back as he grabbed him by the back of his glass helmet. He lifted
his head from the floor, only to smash it down with all his strength.

Growling, and ignoring the yelps of pain coming from the human, the
werewolf repeated his action, savagely pounding his glass-covered face
against the wooden floor. Until it finally yielded, and shattered into a
thousand fragments that, once abandoned the helmet's frame, turned into
rivulets of blue smoke that vanished into the air.

Spinning him around, Oz grabbed him by the breast-plate and effortlessly
lifted him off the floor, crashing him against the near wall. Bringing his
clawed fist back, the werewolf got ready to mangle his unprotected face
with a devastating punch.

Swann, twin traces of blood coming out the corner of his lips and the
wound opened on his temple, couldn't do anything more than to look back at
him, his lonely blue eye shining with a mix of fury and fear.

"Go ahead, if you have the guts," he challenged the werewolf as he slowly
moved his right hand by his side, drawing a complex symbol in the air with
his fingers and trying that the whole action passed unnoticed at Oz's
yellow eyes.

But there were very few things that could pass unnoticed to his sharp
senses. The silent noise of his bone-joints and the tendons, the swift
movement of the air sliding over them and, above all, the pungent smell of
the man's sweat.

The warlock was scared. And that idea made Oz feel surprisingly close to
being really pleased.

Moving so fast that Swann didn't see what he was doing until it was too
late, the werewolf released his breast plate and, capturing his moving
hand, twisted it until, shattering the glowing armor with his mighty
grasp.

Oz snorted disdainfully, his wet nostrils flaring and he relaxed his
fisted hand, which was still ready to deliver a killing blow.

"Nah," he growled, "too easy."

He punched the warlock right in the middle of his face, quick and strong
but still merciful. He controlled the force of the blow so it would leave
the one-eyed man unconscious but wouldn't kill him, no matter what his
primal impulses were telling him to do, no matter how much he actually
wanted to savor the taste of his flesh.

He was a werewolf, but still... he wasn't a monster.

Swann's head jerked backwards under the impact of his fist and the back of
the warlock's skull banged against the wall, his glass armor shattering
into pieces and leaving a rounded imprint on the wall. Then, rolling up
his only blue eye until it was completely white, he fell forward on Oz's
muscled arms.

Yielding under the pressure of one particular primal impulse, the
red-haired werewolf grabbed him before he fell completely to the ground.
As the glowing glass armor dissolved into a cloud of blue steam, he
effortlessly lifted the warlock's limp body over his head, flexing his
powerful muscles.

He let his head fall backwards and howled his victory, the walls trembling
under the thunder of his roar.

Meanwhile, on the second floor, Cordelia was proverbially starting to
sweat bullets to remain intact in her particular fight with the
white-blonde man who, although obviously less quick and agile than her,
seemed to have the resistance and capacity to absorb blows of a rhino.

The brunette had lost count of the times she had side-kicked him, and the
man remained as whole and unfazed as if he was made of concrete instead of
flesh and bone.

She was even beginning to get cramps, and every inch of her body hurt like
hell. Cordelia knew that she had to do something, and do it pretty fast,
or the man would have the upper hand in the fight, and she doubted he
would be as merciful or concerned about taking human lives as she herself
had been with the warlock before.

"Are you getting tired, baby?" Havoc said, reading her mind.

Too tired to even answer with a wisecrack, Cordelia grunted and dodged a
hard right that went in search of her head.

Letting out a sigh of tiredness, she spun around her left leg and tried to
hit him on his shoulder with a high kick. But the man read her intentions
and raised his arm, blocking her strike and capturing her leg.

"Shit," she whispered.

Smiling cruelly, Havoc reached out and grabbed her by her slender neck,
raising her much lighter body from the floor and slamming her back against
the wall as his grasp tightened, closing her windpipe and choking the air
out of her lungs.

Leaning closer to her, so close in fact that when he spoke to her his lips
grazed her own, the Scandinavian mercenary snorted.

"You know?" he asked her. "It's a shame we don't have enough time, because
I would love to check if you're also a cat in the sack."

Struggling inside his large hand's grasp to breathe some fresh air,
Cordelia hit him with her knees, trying to find a weak point under his
ribs as Rachel has taught her to do. The man grunted and grimaced, but the
strength of his hand didn't weaken around her throat.

Soon, Cordelia's eyes rolled up and her vision started to blur, as her
empty lungs burned for lack of air. Raising her arms, she grabbed the
man's forearm and dug her nails on the fabric of his jacket.

"Stop fighting it," the man told her with a half smile, "this is the end,
bitch."

Something creaked inside Cordelia's neck and, as she bit the inside of her
cheek, concentrating on the pain not to fall unconscious, a thread of
blood came out the corner of her mouth, sliding down her chin.

Then, she brought her hands to the man's face and pushed him with all her
remaining strength, her sharp nails scratching his skin and her thumbs
pressing his eyes into his skull's sockets.

Havoc screamed in sudden pain and freed her before she could implode his
eyeballs, recoiling away from her and holding his face as blood started to
flow from the open wounds caused by Cordelia's nails.

The brunette felt to the floor, coughing heavily and holding her strangled
neck as she fought to recover her breathing rhythm.

"Motherfucking bitch!!" the Scandinavian mercenary roared at her, his
sight covered by a red veil of blood. "You've blinded me!!"

Letting out an animalistic roar of rage, Cordelia stood up and run to him,
closing the short space that separated them with fast steps. She was a
meter from him when she began a crescent kick, her right leg going up like
a lightning bolt.

"Do!!" she shouted, as her bare foot crashed against his chin, making his
head bend backwards.

"Not!!" Landing smoothly, the brunette spun around in a flash and
practically buried her foot into the man's stomach, making him fold over.

"Call!!" Grabbing him by the short strands of his white-blonde hair, she
kneed him in the face, turning his nose into a bleeding resemblance of a
potato.

"Me!!" As the mercenary staggered back, holding his face, Cordelia kicked
him brutally in the balls, eliciting an agonizing moan from his mouth.

"Bitch!!" she finally shouted, jumping in the air and tracing out a
demolishing spinning kick that hit the Scandinavian mercenary in the side
of his head, and sent his large frame spinning in the air like a twister
before painfully landing onto the broken remains of Giles' bed.

Cordelia fell to her bare feet, and had to make a strong effort not to
sink to the floor. She was beyond exhausted, she was completely drained;
her body full of bruises and cuts, her clothes torn and ruined and her
lungs still aching as if she was breathing liquid fire.

But, in spite of all that, when she looked down at Havoc's defeated form
as the much bigger man fought to remain conscious, she couldn't help but
smile and felt the fire of the victory starting to pump into her system.

Now, if Valentino would make combat clothes, she could even get accustomed
to this.

With his armed hand still captured in Giles' grasp, Santero brought his
other fist back, ready to deliver a hard punch to the older man's face.
But when he did so, his fist was blocked by the Watcher's open hand, which
he immediately closed, effectively rendering his two hands useless.

Far from letting this discourage him, the Hispanic mercenary launched
himself forward and head-butted the middle-aged man, eliciting a moan of
pain from him and making him stagger back.

Feeling the grasp of his hands weakening, Santero leaned his right foot
flat on the Watcher's stomach and pushed him away, freeing himself. Giles
fell to the floor on his behind, still a little dazed by the younger man's
last strike.

As he saw him turning his blade down to a stabbing position and launching
himself over him, the Watcher searched the floor with his hand, blindly
looking for something he could use as a weapon.

Almost of their own volition, his fingers closed around something hard and
cold, something that, when he yanked at it and swung around to avoid the
mercenary's stab, fell surprisingly heavy on his hand.

He saw a flash of gold and then he hit the blade hand of the man, ripping
the fan-knife from it. The cross. It was the same one that they'd come
searching for. The same one that was causing all this madness. The du Lac
Cross.

Santero dived for his weapon and Giles raised the cross over his head as
he stood up to his knees. Taking a hold of the knife, the mercenary turned
around and stabbed the air with it, searching for his middle-aged
opponent's gut as he raised his other arm to protect his head from the
make-shift mace as it fell to his head.

Seeing this, Giles moved one of his hands away from the cross and captured
the man's upcoming hand, grabbing him by the wrist just as the sharp point
of the blade opened its way through the thick layers of tweed and pierced
his skin.

Santero stopped the Watcher's strike with his forearm, grunting in pain at
the hard impact, and grabbed the cross, fighting with the older man for
its possession.

With the blade one inch deep inside his flesh, Giles felt a stinging pain,
but he refused to let the man's hand go as the mercenary kept on pushing
with all his strength, trying to finish his stab once and for all.

Fighting on their knees with barely inches separating their faces, trying
to stop each other, they locked eyes, Giles' deep green orbs boring into
the mercenary's dark brown ones with quiet and silent fury.

There was a moment of absolute silence, in which they measured each other
for the very first time as only two persons fighting for their lives can
do.

Santero looked into his green eyes and saw his determination, hard as
steel, his untamable spirit and the strength of his beliefs fueling him to
the very limits of human resistance.

This man would go to the end of the world for those beliefs, he would kill
or even die for them.

And that was what differentiated them and which, in the end, decided the
result of the fight.

Pushing with all his strength, Giles extracted the blade from his side,
stained with his blood, and pulled back the man's hand, struggling with
him in a deadly arm-wrestle.

The mercenary grunted, and then changed his tactics. Instead of pushing,
Santero yanked hardly and freed his wrist from the Watcher's hand. Then,
with a grunt, he stabbed forward again, this time with so much strength
that Giles knew he wouldn't be able to block the strike.

And that was when Cordelia entered the equation.

Appearing out of nowhere right after defeating Havoc, the former
cheerleader ran towards them from the Hispanic mercenary's back and let
herself fall to her knees, skidding on them until she practically crashed
against his broad back.

Reaching out with her hand, the brunette captured the mercenary's
still-high arm, as she surrounded his neck with her other hand and started
to strangle him.

With his eyes wide open in surprise, Giles raised his hand and took a hold
on the man's armed limb and, as he and Cordelia tried to disarm him, he
struggled to take the cross away from him.

But still, Santero seemed to be as stubborn as the two of them and refused
to let it go.

"Just drop it, you pillock!" the Watcher grunted, pushing his arm away.

"Y una mierda," the mercenary growled in ragged Spanish, applying even
more pressure on his attack, bringing the blade dangerously close to
Giles' features.

"Damn," Cordelia whispered, her tired arms too weak to be nothing more
than a psychological help, "what kind of food do you eat? Power bars or
something?"

With a roar, Santero stood up fueled by a burst of pure rage, bringing
both Cordelia and Giles with him and spun around, finally ripping the
cross from Giles' hand and throwing the middle-aged Watcher away.

Giles landed with a dull thud on the hard floor. The golden cross flew
away, spinning madly in the air and bouncing on the carpeted floor until
it stopped right at Havoc's feet.

Hanging from Santero's neck, Cordelia let out a squeak of surprise as the
mercenary stood up and flipped her over his shoulder, freeing his neck and
making her land painfully on her back on the hard floor.

The brunette saw stars and squirmed in pain, while the Hispanic man fell
on her, holding the blade for a deadly stab.

At the last possible second, Giles jumped back into the fight and grabbed
Santero's arm, keeping him from harming the young woman.

"Cordelia," he whispered weakly at her, "get out of here. Now!"

Cordelia tried to answer him with a no, but she wasn't able because
Santero's hand closed around her already-sore throat, once more choking
the air out of her lungs. This time, with her strength and resistance
reduced to practically zero, she knew that she wouldn't be able to resist
it.

Without freeing his armed wrist, Giles desperately punched the mercenary's
broad back, hitting him with his closed fist and with his elbow, but it
was like hitting a brick wall. "Let her go, you bastard!!"

Santero, pained but fanatically resolved to keep them out of the game,
only smiled, ignoring the British man's feeble attempts at bringing him
down, and kept on pressing his hand down, bringing the sharp blade closer
and closer to Cordelia's chest.

The brunette moaned in pain, struggling to find a way out but unable to
tear her hazel eyes away from the shining blade of the knife. Ten inches.
Nine inches. Eight inches. Slowly, without pause. Seven. Six. Five...

And then Santero's jacket opened and she saw it. The Hispanic mercenary's
sidearm, neatly holstered and hanging upside-down from her point of view,
under his left arm.

Using the very last remains of her adrenaline reserves, Cordelia brought
her right leg up and kicked the mercenary in the face, stunning him for a
second so short that it seemed nonexistent; but which was long enough for
her to reach into his jacket, and grab his semiautomatic pistol.

Yanking at it blindly, Cordelia drew it out from its holster and leaned
its muzzle on the mercenary's chest, praying to God that it had a bullet
loaded in the chamber.

A moment of peace. Brown eyes reflected on hazel ones. The sound of a
ragged exhalation. And so much hate, so intense that it could be felt into
the air like a miasma of sticky fog.

"Bitch," Santero simply said to her, his voice full of venom and his
spittle splattering her face.

Cordelia pulled the trigger.



~~~~~~



Beneath the front wheel of his bike the asphalt was nothing more than a
dark blur of movement as the powerful Yamaha brought him closer and closer
to his destination. Xander felt the full strength of the wind in his face,
which was only covered by a pair of expensive Hobbie Milazzo sunglasses to
protect his eyes from the sun's effect.

He wasn't very sure if the roar that was filling his ears was because of
the action of the powerful 4-cylinder engine, or his own blood pumping a
wild storm inside his veins.

He knew that what he was doing, barely keeping a fraction of his attention
on the handling of the mechanical beast between his legs, was almost
suicidal.

But the truth was, that he couldn't reunite the dispersed fragments of his
mind enough to do anything more than to keep on riding in auto mode. Giles
kidnapped. Buffy and Willow hurt.

And Cordelia... well, better not to even go there, he could drive himself
crazy if he started trying to figure what was going on.

The only thing he was sure of, almost fanatically convinced, was that
everything that had happened in the last few days was linked. Faith. The
confrontation with Buffy. And now this...

It just couldn't be a coincidence and, although he couldn't figure how it
was all related, he was sure that he had to find out. Or their lives, his
friends', his family's would be in much more danger than what they already
were.

"Alexander?" Crystal's gentle voice came from the headphone inside his
right hear, barely audible over the wind's howl and the roar of the
engine. "Can you hear me?"

Sighing and handling the bike only with his right hand, Xander reached to
his right ear and adjusted the electronic device, trying to improve the
hearing. He dared to take a short look over his shoulder and found that
the tall Texan's cherry-red Pathfinder was only a couple of yards behind
the taillight of his Yamaha, moving at top speed.

"Affirmative. I hear you, Cris," he said, turning his sunglass-covered
eyes to the dark road. He had to make an effort to remember that he hadn't
had to shout to make the red-haired witch hear him. "What's up?"

"We just had a call from Rachel," she told him, and her guarded tone spoke
volumes in Xander's ears, telling him that the news wasn't good. "They're
heading to the hospital."

Xander clenched his teeth together and cursed under his breath, wishing he
had a wall at hand to punch.

"Willow?" he asked succinctly, managing to keep his tone controlled and
professional.

"Yes," the witch spoke succinctly. "Some kind of magical attack, Rachel is
not sure. Xander..."

"I know, I know," he whispered, his heart breaking with the decision he
was suddenly facing.

Crystal would be of great help taking care of Willow's wounds if they were
in fact of supernatural origin, but if there was a mage or any other kind
of practitioner of the magic arts amongst the attackers, her aid would be
even more needed there.

Once more, like a hundred times before since he'd accepted the command of
the team, he had to choose between his heart and his duty. And, like in
all those times, he knew there was no possible choice.

"What's our ETA to Giles' house?" he asked.

"Seven minutes," Kyle's voice informed him, making himself heard for the
first time. "Six if you start ignoring the traffic lights."

Six minutes. It seemed like a whole lifetime to the young vampire.

"OK, we'll stick to the plan and hope that it won't take us very long.
However, I want you ready to get to the hospital as soon as I tell you so,
do you copy me, Cris?"

"I do, Alexander," she said, as formally as always, "you just say the
word."

"Five minutes, boss," Kyle announced.

Xander clenched his teeth even tighter and crouched behind the handlebars,
wishing he could make the bike go even faster just with the mere strength
of his will.



~~~~~~



They came into the duplex apartment without knocking, moving in a silence
so absolute that it seemed unnatural as they moved along the narrow
entrance and into the living room without exchanging a single word.

They just didn't need them, between these two brothers they were more of
an impediment than an advantage.

Nevertheless, no matter how silent they seemed to be, the red-haired
werewolf had noticed their presence even before they got close to the main
room of the apartment. And it hadn't been with his ears, not even with his
sharp nose, not with any one of his physical senses.

It had been something deep inside him, a primal sixth sense that was older
than human civilization had made the hair on his back stand up and had
produced a growl from his throat that was menacing and frightened at the
same time.

Very slowly, as the two black men entered into the ample living room and
separated, starting to walk around the red-haired werewolf, Oz carefully
dropped Swann's still-unconscious form to the floor and crouched down into
a defensive posture, eyeing them warily and growling all the way.

He saw his own reflection in the men's sunglasses and sniffed cautiously
at their direction, baring his fangs at them in a truly animalistic style.

Cats. They smelled like cats. Perverse. Dangerous. Astute.

He didn't like cats. Not at all.

"Doggie, doggie," the taller man whispered at him, letting out a
high-pitched guffaw that sounded like the one of a hyena. "Doggie, doggie,
doggie..."

Werewolf Oz growled at him. The man hissed, his teeth so white that they
seemed fake, artificial. Across the room, almost at Oz's back, the shorter
man, tilted his head to one side and hissed exactly like his brother had
done, his teeth as white, the same tendrils of saliva joining his upper
and lower jaw. He spread out his arms, curling his hands into twisted
claws.

Oz looked at him with blazing yellow eyes and bit the empty air in a
menacing demonstration, the clasping sound caused by the closing of his
mighty jaws thundering in the dim darkness of the room.

"Young you are," the shorter man, the one with the leather clothes and the
Maori-like tattoos said with a strange growling accent. "Weak. For this
not prepared. Should go now."

"Stay," the taller, hair-colored man retorted in a begging tone, as he
licked his lips mockingly. "Me hungry. Tender you look. Oh, please, stay."

Tilting his large head to one side, Oz snorted and allowed his features to
melt back to a semi-human state so he could speak. "Are the two of you
part of a Yoda revival, or is it just that you failed English grammar in
high school?"

The two strangers hissed at the same time and Oz shook his head, letting
out a sigh. "Guess they're not Star Wars fans."

Talon and Rush looked at each other and the shorter and older man nodded
imperceptibly, giving a sign to his brother. They moved in perfect
synchrony, advancing towards the semi-turned werewolf with movements so
fast and smooth that they seemed made of water, their arms extended and
their hands curved into claws.

Seeing this, Oz stood up at the same time that he morphed back to his most
lupine self, only to discover that, no matter how fast he was, they were
even faster.

The red-haired werewolf felt a burning pain in his chest and back as the
two strangers slashed them at the same time, their nails, hard and sharp
as talons, ripping his thick-haired skin and drawing his blood.

He only was able to perceive a flash of white out of the corner of his
eye, as he saw the edged smile of the taller man when he passed by his
side in a blur of movement. But he could have sworn his mouth was full of
pointed fangs, smaller but much more pointer than his own.

Oz swung his arms around, trying to hit them, but his clawed fists only
hit empty air again and again as the two strangers moved around him like a
couple of ghosts, slashing him, cutting him with their claws and opening
bleeding wounds on his flesh.

The werewolf roared in rage and pain, madly swinging his arms around and
shaking every time that one of them stroked him. He was trapped and, in
spite of the red veil covering his eyes and clouding his mind, he knew it.

"Good doggie, pretty doggie, wanna play, doggie?" Rush sang amusedly, as
his talons drew bloody lines on the werewolf's body. "Chase the ball,
doggie! Get it!"

"No!" Oz roared as he jumped in the air and grabbed the lamp hanging from
the ceiling, praying for it to withstand his massive weight, and suddenly
opened his legs spread wide, spinning around and kicking both men in their
faces at the same time, throwing them away. "Get you this!!"

Feeling the lamp yielding under his weight, Oz released it and fell to his
bare feet as the two strangers flipped into the air. Leaning on opposite
walls, they launched themselves back against him with an agility that
seemed physically impossible.

This time, however, Oz was ready and he grabbed the taller, hair-colored
man by his throat, making him spin around and crashing his body against
his brother's upcoming one.

Talon was sent tumbling against the larger couch and he ended up on it
with so much force, that the impact knocked the piece of furniture around.
Oz, never releasing his grip on the taller man's neck, pushed him back and
roughly slammed him against the wall.

Oz hit his face with a punch, making his nose explode and ripping his
mirror-sunglasses off his eyes. Rush snarled at him, struggling to get
free but the werewolf only increased the strength of his grip on the black
man's neck, ignoring the burning pain that crossed his body when he
slashed madly at him with his sharp claws.

Then he noticed his eyes. Deep jade-green irises with elongated pupils,
like the ones of a feline. In front of his eyes, as he still struggled
inside his grasp, Rush started to change, his features morphing as if his
flesh was melted wax.

Pointy ears that retreated to the top of his head as pitch black, short
and velvety fur sprouted out of every squared inch of his dark skin. A
nose that flattened before coming out when his mouth became a round snout,
its color changing to a pinky shade that was almost ridiculous in the
middle of that, suddenly feline, face.

The muscles on his body, already hard and built enough to be taken in
consideration, tensed and hardened, expanding under his furry skin and Oz
was able to feel the tendons on his neck becoming steel wires under his
hand.

Growling, the young werewolf banged the stranger's head against the wall
with enough force to dig a hole in the plaster.

But it only seemed to get Rush even angrier than what he was, as he
redoubled his efforts, madly slashing at Oz with his elongated claws.

Ignoring the pain and the taste of his own blood on his lips when the man
cut him across the face, leaving three parallel lines of blood in it, Oz
tightened his grasp and yanked violently at him.

He dragged his struggling body across the whole length of the room, until
he crashed him against the opposite wall, making the whole room tremble
with the impact.

At his back, a growling purr was heard that made him turn around with a
meaningful roar of warning, still holding the tall, turning man by his
neck. Talon leaped out from behind the overturned couch and landed
smoothly over it into a crouched predatory posture, his features as
changed as his brother's, his eyes blazing the same green fire full of
venom and hate.

With an thundering feline roar, Talon jumped over Oz and the young
werewolf had to let Rush go, raising his arms to protect himself as the
shorter man landed on him, twisting and struggling with him like a cat.

Pushed backwards and to the floor with the force of the impact, Oz felt
the man's claws digging on his shoulders as he scratched his furry abdomen
with his rear talons, the boots he had been wearing seemingly vanished.

Everything was reduced to a blur of movement, to twisted and entangled
bodies as the werewolf and the feline-man rolled on the floor, neither of
them inclined to let the other go. Slashing at each other with their
respective sets of claws, biting each other, the metallic taste and smell
of the warm blood driving them crazy with bloodlust.

They struggled on the floor, roaring, growling, biting, ripping and
slashing until, finally, Rush came out of his state of
semi-unconsciousness. As Oz pinned his brother to the floor, ready to
smash his face with his clawed hand, he jumped on the werewolf's back with
a loud hiss, savagely digging his claws and talons on his flesh.

The werewolf howled in pain and promptly stood up, shaking and trying to
shrug his attacker off his back, madly slashing the empty air with his
powerful arms. But Rush was firmly nailed to him, and the hold of his
sharp claws on Oz's flesh didn't weaken.

Far from that; the feline-man seized his chance and, as the werewolf tried
to reach out for him and howled in pain, he sunk his pointed fangs on the
exposed area of Oz's shoulder.

A crunching sound was heard as his flesh broke and a spray of blood
erupted from the wound, followed by a thick flood that ran down the
werewolf's shoulder, drenching the curly red hair of his chest and back.

Oz's scream thundered in the air, a surprisingly perfect mix of human and
animal pain and he fell to his knees, the force quickly leaving his
supernatural body.

The feline-man leaped off of his back, his thin animal lips twisted into
the parody of a grin, the werewolf's blood staining his whole snout. Oz
leaned with his hands on the floor, fighting to remain conscious as he
felt his features melting back to a semi-human form by themselves.

He raised his still-yellow eyes and saw how the two brothers moved around
him slowly, crawling on the floor on his hands and foot like tigers
circling an exhausted prey, getting ready to launch themselves into the
final, mortal attack.

With his lungs burning from the effort that was breathing and his mind
numbed by the pain and the buzzing sensation of all his nerve endings
screaming, Oz thought that the only thing he could do was to crouch down
in a corner.

And, like an agonized animal, wait for the end.

Talon hissed at him menacingly, and Rush let out his hyena-like laugh. And
then, both of them moved in a flash, their fangs and claws shining white
in the dim darkness of the room.



~~~~~~



"This is Daddy Goose, here. Do you read me, Receptor Team? Backlash?
Havoc? Do you hear me, guys?"

After not obtaining any response from his partners on the fifth attempt,
Chopper mumbled a colorful curse under his breath and switched the
communications system, passing it to internal mode so he could speak with
Sniper, in the rear section of the Huey helicopter.

"Hold onto something, Snip, we're going to go down," he informed his
partner, his voice clear through the microphone in spite of the batting
sound of the rotors.

"Still no news from the ground?" the red-haired mercenary asked with his
cold voice, as always devoid of any emotion. Sometimes, Chopper wondered
if he truly was a man or, instead, some kind of cold-blooded cyborg.

"Nothing, man," the pilot said, lowering the nose of the helicopter and
diving down. The surface of Sunnydale came closer, the dark buildings
getting bigger in front of the chopper's windshield. "The positional
signal is still active, but I'm not getting any verbal response to my
calls."

"Those inconsiderate bastards..."

Chopper chuckled under his breath, and shook his head. "Have a look down
there with the infra-red, OK? I'd like to have a first-hand impression
before calling the Colonel with the bad news."

"Sure thing," Sniper grunted, connecting the infra-red system monitors.
After a short and skillful manipulation of the controls, the mercenary
clicked with his tongue and let out a whistle.

Chopper frowned, looking down to the dark and apparently peaceful street
beneath them. "What happened?"

"Something that you're not going to like, buddy," Sniper said with a
smile, the eerie green glow of the monitor reflected on his edged,
weasel-like features. "Not at all..."



~~~~~~



Backlash opened his eyes with a groan, his head pounding with what felt
like the mother of all hangovers. Then, when he managed to stand up to
what resembled minimally a straight posture and could finally look around
and place himself, he grunted again.

Wishing that the intense pain in his head, was indeed caused by a long
night of wrestling with alcohol.

And not because some brunette bitch had knocked the living daylights out
of him with his own weapon.

Bloody hell, he was going to pay for that, and he knew it. Looking
outside, noticing that the night had already fallen and that there was no
trace of his partners or the one-eyed warlock, Backlash let out a curse
and grabbed the walkie-talkie from the dashboard as he opened the door and
got out of the black Humvee.

"Daddy Goose?" he barked at the speaker as he circled the vehicle and
opened the trunk. He patted under his jacket, and noticed that his gun had
vanished from its holster.

"That bloody bitch..." he growled, grabbing a Mini-Uzi from the weapons
rack inside the trunk and checking its clip. "Chopper!! Where are you,
mate?"

"Me?" the pilot's voice came out of the speaker, carrying a good dose of
anger. "Where the hell have you been, man? And what's happening down
there? The colonel is going to skin everybody alive if something goes
wrong!"

Clenching his teeth together, Backlash chambered a round in the compact
submachine-gun and started crossing the street towards the apartment
block.

"He'll have to wait his turn," he whispered, "because I get to go first."



~~~~~~



The roar of the gunshot was surprisingly quiet in Cordelia's ears, almost
non-existent. Her whole attention was centered on the man's face, on the
look in his dark eyes and the spark that the explosion of the gunpowder
made shine in them.

So much so that she barely noticed anything else, not the sound, not even
the wet sensation when some tiny wet drops fell on her face, coming from
the man.

A pungent cloud of smoke, the metallic sound of the heavy slide going back
and ejecting the empty case, which flew in the air spinning madly, and
then those same dark eyes widened in shock and horror.

Santero stood up, releasing the brunette's neck, and shrugged the
middle-aged British man away, annoyed at his obstruction. Giles just let
him go, falling at his young friend's side. He panted lightly, and looked
with dread at the Hispanic mercenary as he staggered backwards, touching
the chest of his black T-shirt with his fingertips.

The gun wavered in Cordelia's hands, as she was shaken by the rush of
adrenaline inside her veins, but remained aiming at him at every moment as
he looked down at his own stained fingers.

A large spot, darker than the black cotton of the man's T-shirt, was
quickly drenching his chest but, in his fingers that same fluid was a
furious red.

As the knife slipped out of his fingers and fell to the floor, Santero
opened and closed his mouth like a fish out of water and looked at the
prone, shaken young woman and her older companion, a strange maniacal
smile coming to his lips.

"A brunette in a miniskirt," he whispered with amazement, shaking his
head. "Bloody unbeli..."

His back collided against the near wall and his voice died into a
meaningless gurgle as his body slowly sank down to the carpeted floor, a
thick gush of blood flooding out the corner of his mouth.

His head fell down, awkwardly tilted to one side. His eyes lost any trace
of life, remaining hard and empty like two pieces of smoked glass.

Very slowly, Cordelia turned around so she could look straight at him, the
Beretta in her hand never stopping to aim at his, she realized, now
lifeless body. The sensations that ran through her body at that very
moment were so strong, so intense and, above all, so different, that she
wasn't able to assimilate them all.

A voice, so far away inside the depths of her mind that she almost didn't
hear it, told her that she was in state of shock.

She had killed a man. She had committed murder. The word, like a wave of
nausea, repeated inside her mind ad infinitum. Killer. She was a killer.

"He's not turning into dust," she babbled incoherently, looking at Giles
for assistance. "Why isn't he turning into dust?"

Swallowing down a thick knot in his throat, Giles stood up and came closer
to her, reaching out to take the wavering gun from her hands.

"He isn't a vampire," he told her softly, in what he hoped would be a
comforting tone. "H-he isn't going to turn into ashes, my dear."

"But... but... the blood..." she whispered, unable to take her wide hazel
eyes away from the mercenary's dead body. "There's so much blood..."

"I know, I know," he whispered comfortingly to her, placing the gun into
the waist of his trousers and enveloping the young brunette into his arms.
He gently spun her around so her back was to the corpse, and the young
woman did nothing to stop or help him doing so.

She was still except for the slight tremble that ran through her body,
making the older man think of her as a leaf about to fall. "Everything is
going to be alright, OK? Don't look at him anymore, just don't look at
him." Giles said.

Fighting the tears that threatened to come to her eyes, Cordelia hid her
face in Giles' chest and allowed the older man to take her fully into his
arms, as he traced out soothing paths on her back.

"Oh, what a touching scene," a voice said behind them in that moment.

Looking over Cordelia's shoulder, Giles cursed under his breath when he
saw Havoc across the room, aiming at them with his huge gun. The mercenary
was leaning heavily against the wall and holding his side, cringing in
pain with every breath he took, and the middle-aged Watcher guessed that
Cordelia must have at least cracked a pair of his ribs.

As he looked at the still form of his partner, Havoc bit his own lip and
shook his head, closing his eyes for a brief moment to center himself,
trying to ignore the piercing buzz inside his head and the pain of his
body, erasing them with rage and hate.

Hell, he was going to rip them into pieces.

"Don't move, don't do anything at all," the Scandinavian man panted,
taking his hand away from his wounded side to wipe a trace of blood from
the corner of his mouth and pointing at Giles with his gun. "Now you, kick
that cross over here."

Giles, still hugging Cordelia with her back towards the mercenary, looked
down at her and found that she was looking back at him, her hazel eyes
still misted but now serene and full of determination.

She nodded softly and, slowly and imperceptibly started to move her hand
from Giles' waist, bringing it in between their bodies.

Slowly reaching out with his foot and never releasing the brunette, the
Watcher kicked the fallen cross weakly, making it skid over the carpeted
floor until it stopped half-way to the wounded mercenary's figure.

"Couldn't you have kicked it a little more strongly?" Havoc asked with
annoyance, as he took a step towards the artifact and leaned down to
retrieve it.

At that very moment, as the blonde man took his eyes away from them for
the briefest moment, Giles and Cordelia started to act, their movements
surprisingly fluid and precise considering their state of distress, both
physical and emotional.

As the young brunette grabbed the 9mm gun she had taken from Santero and
drew it out from Giles' waistband, the former librarian took her fully
into his arms. He lifted her slender frame off the floor and spun around,
so his own body would be between Cordelia's and the mercenary.

Her hand emerged from under Giles' left arm, carrying the black Beretta
Brigadier, and as Giles practically dragged on his arms towards the broken
remains of the door and just when Havoc's hand closed around the larger
arm of the du Lac Cross, she opened fire.

Without thinking. Without feeling. Without even considering again what she
was doing.

She pulled the trigger madly, spraying hot lead without really aiming with
any precision as the Scandinavian mercenary grabbed the fallen cross and
rolled around on the floor, dodging the shots as best as he could and
returning fire.

Cordelia's bullets impacted all around her target's moving body, ripping
large chunks of wood, sharp splinters and dusty clouds of burn fabric from
the carpet. Havoc, firing as wildly as her, emptied his Desert Eagle
against their moving figures, more worried about covering himself than
shooting them down.

Nevertheless, no matter how uncontrolled his shots were, the .50 caliber
bullets passed dangerously close to Giles and Cordelia, hitting the frame
of the door around them. Covering their entangled bodies with a falling
rain of wooden splinters, that scratched their skins.

The middle-aged Watcher moved on impulse and, almost flying, carried his
young protégé across the hallway and into the momentary safety of the
adjacent bathroom.

"Oh, bloody hell!!" Giles exclaimed in pain, when they crashed down onto
the cold porcelain floor and he banged his head on the edge of the toilet.
"This is going too far!"

Scrambling awkwardly from under his heavy body, Cordelia crawled on her
hands and knees to the door and, covering herself behind the frame, took a
quick look outside. Her range of vision was limited and she wasn't able to
distinguish the mercenary, but she guessed he had to be still in the
bedroom.

Immediately, she realized that if he tried to come out the room by the
door she could shoot him down easily, without any real effort.

The problem was, that she wasn't sure if she would make herself do it.

Cordelia took a deep breath, and closed her hazel eyes for the briefest
second, clenching her teeth together until she started to feel pain in her
jaws from the effort.

=Life or death,= she told herself. =You or them. There's no other option.=

Was this what Xander thought every time he'd had to take that same
decision? Had he felt that same cold void in the pit of his stomach that
she was feeling right now? Had he been as scared as she was?

"Cordelia..." Giles whispered at her back, leaning his hand on her
shoulder and shaking her.

The young brunette yelped in surprise, caught completely off-guard and
spun around in a flash, the muzzle of her Beretta barely at two inches
from Giles' brow.

"Good God, Giles!!" she yelled angrily at the man, as she retreated back
against the wall and move the pistol away. "Don't ever do that again!!"

Sighing and wiping the blood and sweat from his forehead, Giles shook his
head. "This has gone too far," he insisted. "We have to get out of here,
the sooner the better."

"And what do we do about him?" she asked, signaling to the room across the
hallway with a soft shake of her tousled head. "He has the cross."

The Watcher sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. "To the hell with
it," he growled finally. "We'll think on how to get it back later. First
things first, and the most important thing now is to get out of here
alive."

Cordelia shook her head in denial, stubborn as only her could be. "We
can't let them win."

"This is not a competition, Cordelia," Giles told her sternly. "And even
if it was, there's no silver medal for second place."

She couldn't help but let a cocky grin cross her lips and, as she rose
with her back sliding up the door's frame, she shook her head. "That's my
motto, Giles. Second place winner is first place loser."

Before he could do anything to stop her, the young brunette stepped out of
the bathroom, the gun firm and sure in her hands as she crossed the
hallway with two fast steps and leaned back against the wall, right by the
broken frame of the door.

Cursing under his breath, Giles stood up and followed her, all the way
wondering why he hadn't followed his childhood fantasy and become a
fighter pilot. He was sure it would have been a way more relaxing
existence.

"And now?" he asked softly to her in a low voice.

Leaning her index finger in the trigger, Cordelia dared to take a quick
look inside. "Oh, shit!" she exclaimed, quickly getting into the room.

"What?" Giles asked again with worry, following her closely. She didn't
answer him, but it wasn't really necessary as he quickly realized what was
going on.

The broken bed. The folded and snapped bedsprings. All the contents of his
safe-box scatted around the room as if it had been hit by a tornado.

The still-bleeding corpse of the Hispanic mercenary, the smell of cordite
from the gunshots. And the ozone from the magic lingering in the air...
and nothing more.

No trace of the tall blonde man, vanished into the dim semi-darkness of
the bedroom like a ghost.

And, above all, no trace of the du Lac Cross.

"Shit," Cordelia growled again in an unladylike way and, before Giles
could prevent it, she turned around, running down the stairs, taking the
steps two at a time.



~~~~~~



Grunting with the effort, Havoc finished climbing down the drain pipe and
took a short jump, landing on the fresh earth of the garden beneath the
balcony with a soft thump.

He took only a second to lean against the wall and breathe deeply, shaking
his pained head.

Santero was dead, killed by a former cheerleader. =Too damn ironic to be a
hallucination, and at the same time, too surreal to be true.=

Bringing out his huge pistol, the Scandinavian mercenary turned around and
started to run away in a fast jog. He felt the short arms of the cross,
which he held in the waistband of his trousers, digging uncomfortably into
the flesh of his side.

He rounded the whole building and came to the front side of the apartment
complex, all the way looking around himself with nervous eyes, checking
that no one saw or followed him.

Havoc wondered what he was going to tell the Colonel, and what his
superior's reaction would be. He wasn't sure, but he knew it wouldn't be a
good one.

Colonel Ashe had never been famous for his mercy, his understanding or his
ability to let slide the mistakes of the people under his command.

The idea of running away as fast as he could crossed his mind, but he knew
that action would be as smart as putting the muzzle of a loaded gun
against his own temple and pulling the trigger.

Finally locating the bulk of the black Humvee across the street, Havoc
quickly walked to it and opened the passenger's door. "Backlash! Where the
hell are you..."

His voiced died on his lips and he closed his eyes tightly, grimacing and
releasing a loud curse. "Damn it!" he shouted with rage, as he punched the
edge of the vehicle's door with his massive fist.

The interior of the military truck was completely empty, with no trace of
his Australian partner. Havoc turned around and looked back at the
entrance of the building.

Shaking his head, the mercenary took the stolen cross from his waistband
and threw it onto the back seat, covering it with blanket before starting
to run to the apartment complex as fast as his tired legs allowed him.



~~~~~~



When they were at less than a meter from his crouched-down figure, both
Panteras reached out with his arm for his brother's extended one.

Grabbing each other by the wrist, the two semi-turned feline men formed a
makeshift bar of flesh, that made Oz think of the way people used to dance
the limbo.

=The difference,= the young werewolf realized when they finally reached
him and the make-shift bar of flesh and bone hit him in the throat, =is
that this one seems ten times harder than pure steel.=

As he flew backwards and landed painfully on the broken remains of Giles'
coffee table, sliding then onto the floor until he crashed against one of
the overturned sofas, all that he was able to think was that he was losing
the fight.

He was doing it pretty badly too, and Giles was going to spend a small
fortune just to replace his broken furniture.

Then, Rush jumped onto him, painfully choking the air out of his lungs. As
he pinned his body down with his clawed hands and feet, the black, furry
man looked down at him, a smug snarl on his thin feline lips as he tilted
his head to one side and released his hyena-like laughter.

"Doggie's down!" he exclaimed amusedly. "Doggie can't play anymore!" Then,
he turned his head around and looked at his brother over his shoulder.
"Talon, the doggie wounded is. With him what do I do?"

Standing up to his full height, Talon flashed a fanged grin that was
curiously devoid of any real amusement. "What you do with wounded animals,
Rush. Don't let him suffer."

Rush let his head fall back and released a new, unnerving guffaw that
sounded almost as if he was running out of breath. "Do you hear that,
doggie? We don't let you-"

He never finished the sentence as Oz, who had been getting angrier and
angrier with each passing second, to the point that his own blood was
boiling inside his veins, released a thundering roar.

One that made the walls tremble as his clawed right hand emerged with the
speed and the strength of a heaven-sent lightning bolt, slashing the
feline man across his face.

Well, 'slashing' was actually an euphemism as Oz's elongated claws dug
into the tender flesh at the end of his jaws and then ripped off
practically all of the left side of the man's face, exposing his inner
tissues and muscles.

Blood spurted everywhere, and Rush went spinning in the air as he wailed
in pain.

"Rush!" Talon's scream thundered, as he saw his brother crashing down to
the floor like a ton of bricks.

"Talon! Talon!" the tall man cried childishly, awkwardly holding the
horrible wound on his face, blood gushing out from it and flowing between
his fingers, drenching his velvet fur and strange clothes. "Hurts! Hurts
very much!"

The werewolf stood up slowly, a growl escaping his thin lupine snout as he
scratched the wooden floor with his rear talons as he place himself with
his back towards the nearest window. Oz howled a blood-chilling cry and
settled his flaming yellow eyes on the two brothers, getting their
attention.

"Bastard!" Talon roared, charging against him in rage. "You are dead!!"

Oz didn't move an inch to elude the upcoming beast, he stood his ground
firmly with his powerful legs slightly flexed and steeled himself. Getting
ready, as Talon took off and crossed the remaining distance with a mighty
jump, his arms extended like wings, ready to strike with his sharp claws.

Then, as the black man fell down on him, slashing madly and roaring, Oz
grabbed him with a bear hug and spun around, carrying him as he pushed
against the floor with his feet.

Adding his own energy to the feline man's momentum, the werewolf abandoned
the floor and flew to the window at his back, crashing against it with all
the force of their entangled bodies.

They fell outside in the middle of a rain of broken glasses and wooden
splinters, breaking away from each other as they rolled on the muddy grass
and tried to stand up. Still crouched down predatorily, they locked gazes,
wolfish yellow boring into feline green and vice versa.

Then, roaring at the same time, they launched themselves against each
other once again.



~~~~~~



As the two raging supernatural beasts crashed through the window, the main
door of the apartment burst open from a powerful kick. Backlash came into
the living room, wielding his compact Mini-Uzi and moving it from one side
to the other, aiming at nothing and everything at the same time.

"C'mon, bloody freakos!" he shouted, his nostrils flaring and the veins in
his neck swelled in rage. "C'mere and lemme kick yer bloody arses!!"

The whole effect of his furious entrance was spoiled by the fact, that all
his 's' sounds came out in a whistle through the holes left in his mouth
by the broken teeth.

He saw Rush's figure leaned against the wall, holding half of his face,
and immediately recognized him from the briefing session at the mansion.

"Hey, what's up, man?" the mercenary called his attention. "Are you
alright?"

Turning around, the feline man hissed at him as he uncovered his face,
showing him the horrible wound, his long fangs standing up against the
swollen and torn tissue and velvet fur of his face, now cranky and spiked
out with the blood.

"Oh!! Holymotherfuckingjesus!!" Backlash yelled, recoiling in shock and
fear as he aimed at the beast-man with his weapon, which was trembling in
his hand.

But, before he even had the chance to think about pulling the trigger, a
noise made him instinctively turn around.

He had to blink twice as an apparition from the very depths of Hell, much
more scary than the wounded beast-man, made her entrance into the room,
taking the steps two at a time as she climbed down the stairs from the
second floor.

Tousled, wild raven-dark hair, scratched and bruised face, wearing a torn
black miniskirt and an equally battered white blouse, barefoot and with
blazing, angry hazel eyes, Cordelia Chase was so beautiful that the
Australian mercenary was rendered breathless for a second.

Just until he saw how she was raising the semi-automatic in her hand to
aim at him.

"Aaaaaahhhh!!!" Backlash shouted in rage, lifting his own weapon and
pulling the trigger as he ran back to the entrance.

A burst of fire and burning lead erupted from the Mini-Uzi. The
uncontrolled impacts of the bullets rained all around Cordelia, tearing
the staircase apart and enveloping the young brunette into a cloud of
wooden splinters as she jumped smoothly over the banister.

Returning fire without really taking aim at all, she landed heavily in
Giles' office, right onto his cluttered desk.

"Damn!" she cursed, rolling over all the Watcher's paperwork and falling
behind the protection offered by the huge desk. "Is everybody invited to
this party or what!?!"

Without daring to show her head, Cordelia raised her hand and fired her
gun wildly, her gunshots ripping chunks of wood and plaster from the
doorframe Backlash was using for cover.

"I'm going to kill you, bitch!" The Australian man shouted practically on
the edge of hysteria as he fired short, uncontrolled burst of bullets
against Cordelia's cover. "I'm going to kill you all!! I'm going to-"

A hand fell on his shoulder and he released a girly scream, turning around
with wide open, panicked eyes as he waved nervously with his automatic
weapon.

Havoc grabbed his gun-wrist and pushed it away before his partner could
accidentally blow his brains out.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" he asked with annoyance.

"Havoc! Mate!" Backlash laughed nervously, looking at the tall
Scandinavian man as if he was a godsend. "You're here! Where were you?"

"Out there," he growled as he fired a couple of shots against the desk to
cover themselves, "wondering where you'd gotten your sorry Aussie ass to."

"Wha-what are you doing?" Backlash asked, when his partner grabbed him by
the shoulder and started to drag him to the door.

Havoc waited for a couple of seconds to answer him, not speaking until
they were out of the building and walking toward the parked Humvee. "We're
getting outta here, we've finished with this madness."

The Australian man frowned deeply, looking around in confusion. "And the
rest? Santero? The others?"

"Santero's dead," Havoc said sternly. "And the others can go screw
themselves in Hell, for all I care."

He opened the door and motioned for his partner to get into the car, but
the shorter mercenary remained motionless, looking at him with shocked
expression.

"What?!?" Havoc demanded. "Santero? Dead?"

"Yes! Dead! As in without life! As in with a goddamn bullet through the
middle of his chest, OK!?!" Havoc grabbed him by the shoulder again and
shook his partner, trying to get him out of his trance of incredulity.
"Can you just snap out of it and get into the bloody car? We gotta go!"

Violently shrugging his hand away, Backlash stabbed him with furious eyes
and an angry expression. They looked at each other and, for a second, it
seemed that they were going to jump at each other's throats.

Then, finally, the Australian mercenary shook his head and got into the
car, sitting down behind the steering wheel as his partner imitated him in
silence, getting into the back seat.

Havoc took the blanket away and grabbed the golden cross, showing it to
his partner as he started the engine. "We have what we were looking for,
OK? Mission accomplished, now get us outta here, mate."

"They're going to pay for this," Backlash growled under his breath,
shaking his head in stubborn denial as he drove the huge vehicle into the
road. "We'll make them pay for Santero."

"Sure thing," Havoc whispered, nervously looking at the building's
entrance through the window, only relaxing when he didn't see anybody
coming out to chase them. "But now just drive us back to the base, OK? You
just take us home."

Clenching his teeth together, Backlash drove away from the building,
gaining more and more speed until he saw something through the windshield,
the flash of some upcoming vehicles' headlights turning the corner at the
end of the street and getting closer to them.

"What's that?" he asked his partner.

Looking over his shoulder, Havoc cursed under his breath. "The
reinforcements."

"A little late, don't you think?" the Australian man asked, with a spark
of amusement on his voice. "We already have the bloody cross."

"Not our reinforcements, bonehead," his partner hissed at him, "their
reinforcements."

Backlash's eyes opened wide in realization and he released the same curse
of his partner. "Oh, shit. What do I do?"

As Havoc leaned back on his seat and grabbed a huge sports-bag from the
floor, zipping it open, he sent a hard stare to the back of his partner's
neck. "Just go through them," he growled, bringing out a massive
multi-round grenade launcher from the back.

Backlash looked at his partner through the rearview mirror, and couldn't
help but smile smugly as the Scandinavian man loaded the weapon and rolled
down the window, leaning out of it.

"Time to spread some havoc," he whispered, grinning edgily and slamming
his foot down on the gas pedal.



~~~~~~




To be continued...