A/N: Chapters 1-4 reposted 7/17/04.

Chapter Two: Anger

Connor stood in front of his bedroom window, staring out into the night. His father was out there somewhere, fighting whatever army the Senior Partners had called up, and Connor wasn't at his side.

They were going to destroy him. Connor shook his head at the thought, then started pacing back and forth in the small space between the window and his bedroom door. He'd said that very thing to Angel, just after the vampire had managed to finish off Hamilton, arguing that he should stay with him. Angel's reply had been, "As long as you're okay, they can't."

How was I supposed to argue with that? he thought, angry at himself for having given in, and at Angel for playing the guilt card to begin with. Perhaps in his other life, he wouldn't have fallen for it - but then again, in his other life, he wouldn't have cared that Angel was facing certain death in the first place. But how was he supposed to just sit here and ignore what was happening? What kind of a son would he be, to let his father go up against impossible odds with only a couple of humans and another vampire for back-up?

My parents raised me better than that, Connor thought, then snorted at the irony. His parents hadn't raised him at all; their memories of him were as false as that sister of Buffy's Cordy had told him about. His life here wasn't real, as much as he loved his Mom and Dad. This was his father's dream for him, not his. He was supposed to be there, in the thick of the battle, defending the righteous against the enemy that opposed them.

His father had taught him that, too. His first father, that is: Holtz. The one who had taught him how to survive, how to track, and how to kill. He had put those lessons to use against Sahjhan, and again to save Angel's life when Hamilton was seconds away from staking him. It was time to use them again, no matter what Angel said. He couldn't be true to the man he was, the man all his fathers had made him, and not go back to help.

Connor turned and strode purposefully toward the door.

Buffy pushed down harder on the gas pedal, accelerating through the nighttime landscape of Los Angeles. A sense of unease was building steadily in her veins, feeding off of the urgent feeling left over from the last round of Slayer dreams. It had taken them a little while to identify just which of the many alleys in the world had been the setting for the upcoming show, and she was beginning to worry that they were going to be too late.

There just hadn't been enough warning. What were the PTBs trying to pull? All over the globe, for the last 24 hours, young Slayers had awakened screaming - but before that, not a peep. What, did they have to wait until the bad guys actually started with the moving and shaking before giving their own side any useful information? Because last minute plane tickets - not cheap. Even with the Council's resources.

"Left at the next light," Willow spoke up, looking up from the map to give her the next step in the directions. "And after that ... Uh, Buffy, that light isn't ... Buffy!"

The redheaded witch grabbed at the edges of her seat with panicked hands as Buffy ignored the light's color and sped through the intersection, taking the corner at speed and thanking God it wasn't rush hour. She'd finally made the effort to learn how to drive during her 'working vacation' in Rome, but she didn't think she was up to the task of dodging through daytime traffic.

Bodies thumped around in the back as she straightened out the van's course, and swearing drifted forward from the contingent of supernaturally gifted females packed into the bench seats like sardines.

"Sorry!" She tossed the lie back over her shoulder to them, then glanced over to meet Willow's worried gaze. "Tell me we're almost there, Will."

Willow swallowed, and looked forward again. "Just a few more turns. We're nearly ..."

She cut herself off in mid-sentence as a sudden disturbance in the air obscured the street a block ahead of them, half filling the space between sidewalks with a gray sort of swirling ... nothing. "Buffy, I don't like the looks of this."

"Neither do I," The Slayer replied, and jammed on the brakes as hard as she could. "I think this is as close as we're going to get."

The van screeched to a halt several yards short of the nebulous obstruction, and behind them Buffy heard several other sets of tires complaining as the other Council-rented vehicles followed her lead. "Make for the Hyperion," she yelled to the others, then flung the driver's door open and leaped to the ground.

She didn't stop to take the keys from the ignition - honestly, she didn't think anyone was going to be stupid enough to try to steal it just now, and they might need to leave in a hurry. Nor did she rush to help the others out of the back; they were big girls, and could let themselves out on their own. Instead, she hurled herself toward the forming portal - at least, she assumed it was a portal - hoping to get around it in time to reach Angel's crew before the onslaught.

Who did she think she was fooling? She wanted to reach Spike. She wanted to yell at the sonofabitch for never telling her he was alive, and for not calling her when Team Angel made their plans for the latest end-of-the-world scenario. She wanted to slap him for every time someone had doubted her today, asking, "Are we sure it wasn't just a nightmare? I mean, Spike was in it, and we know he died in Sunnydale." She wanted to deck him for telling Andrew not to tell her about him back in January, and to kiss him for trying to find her in Rome last week even if he had only been there because of business. She wanted to cup those sharp cheekbones with her hands while she told him that yes, she really had meant it. But most of all, she wanted to be there to save him, to make sure there would still be an opportunity for the rest of it.

She didn't make it to the portal in time. With an earthshaking howl, a horde of gnarly armored demons began pouring out of thin air, heading away from her in a hurry. They looked a lot like those Urks - Orcs? - whatever - from that really long movie with the cute elf, and half of them were carrying weapons. She came to a reluctant halt then, knowing that she would never get past them now without stopping to fight at least a few and that it would be stupid to do so alone.

"Goddess!" Willow gasped behind her as something flew out above the horde, something with a long sinuous neck and fire blazing from its nostrils.

"Is that a dragon?" Kennedy added, astonishment in her voice. "How are we supposed to kill that? Slayers don't come with wings."

"But they do come with crossbows," Buffy reminded her, and turned to her best friend. "Can you close the portal, Will? We're lucky they haven't seen us yet - we're going to have to swarm them from behind, and we can't do that if we're worrying about falling through to their world."

"Gimme a second," Willow answered, then braced her feet and extended her hands upward to the darkened sky. She began calling out to various deities and other sources of power, but Buffy didn't pay attention to the details. As long as it got the job done, she didn't much care; she just wanted to be there, and this had to come first.

An unseen wind flirted with Willow's hair, blowing a few red strands into the witch's eyes, then gusted stronger as a bright light seemed to bleed out from the roots, bleaching it all white. It still scared Buffy sometimes to see her friend wielding so much power, but ever since her summer with the coven and the relapse when she had turned herself into Warren, she seemed to have kept a firm handle on it. Willow controlled the magic now; it didn't control her. And that, Buffy could trust in.

The Scythe sang in her hands as Willow's efforts began to have an effect. The PTBs must have finally deigned to answer their prayers; the portal narrowed, then began to flicker in and out, and finally vanished with a roar that Buffy could barely hear over the shouts of the demons. "Good job, Willow!" she yelled, then lifted the Scythe overhead in a gesture to the girls behind her. "Let's get to work!"

Illyria stood over the unconscious form of the one called Charles, swinging an axe captured from a fallen foe at the horde of demons coming toward her. She had slain many enemies already; the blade of her weapon was slick with their multi-hued blood, and their corpses littered the alley around her.

The two half-breeds - Spike and Angel - had disappeared into the crowd several minutes ago, but she could still hear them yelling and the occasional body flew through the air to hint at their location. She was grateful that they still lived; Wesley had cared for them, even if she did not, and her grief for him still pulsed uncontrollably within her.

She growled in frustration. How could it continue to affect her this way? She was Illyria! He had been nothing but a weak, primitive human, not even worthy to kiss the ground she walked upon had he existed in the days of her magnificence. These feelings, these emotions he had caused to grow within her were less than useless; they distracted her and impaired her judgment.

Illyria dismissed the matter from her mind and took refuge in the violence, decapitating, gutting, or otherwise mutilating anything unfortunate enough to get within reach. None of these minor demons were a match for her individually, but there were so very many of them; she dared not let them swarm her. She refused to be vanquished by such pestilential slime. Let the Wolf, Ram and Hart come to face her without such intermediaries; she would not settle for anything less.

An inhuman scream split the air somewhere above her and to her left. Illyria looked up just in time to see the dragon's broken form come crashing to the ground, igniting several lesser beings in its death throes. Protruding from its corpse were several short lengths of wood -- arrows, she thought, identifying them from Fred's encyclopedic memory of human weapons. Their appearance was baffling to her; neither of the vampires had been carrying crossbows, and Charles still lay unmoving behind her.

The origin of the arrows became obvious when several small, human forms began dropping from the rooftops around them, armed with a variety of weaponry. "So, what's this all about?" one of them yelled, a female with short blonde hair. "You threw a party and didn't invite me?"

"We didn't want to drag you into it!" one of the half-breeds yelled in return. "This our problem, not Slayer business!"

"It sure looks like Slayer business to me," the blonde replied, laying about her with an edged weapon that sang to Illyria of power nearly as old as her own. "What were you trying to do, commit suicide?"

A Slayer? Illyria growled in renewed anger at the presence of the corrupted human, a wielder of borrowed power whose progenitors in her time had been far more trouble than they had any right to be. If the vampire had counted such as she among his allies, why had he not called her in earlier? Where the Slayer was, there were always magic users, attempting to control her. Had it truly been necessary for Wesley to die?

An abnormally large demon loomed up before her, distracting her from her questions. Illyria swung the axe at its knees, putting all of her considerable force into the blow, and had the satisfaction of seeing it topple to the earth, bellowing in pain. There would be time for questions later. There was still work to be done.

TBC (2/5)