"Are you sure that Wolfram & Hart don't have any ghost detectors in the building? It's not like they didn't know about me before, when I wasn't solid... before." Spike seemed restless. Wesley could sympathise, for there was an inherent weirdness to being inside the building again. They had all come here to work, mostly for different reasons; had all come to regret it, again for all manner of reasons; and had all wound up damaged by the experience. Wesley hated the sight of the building; hated the grandiose lobby, and the big flight of stairs; the jaunty reception area, where humans and demons were entertained before being shown to their lawyers. The offices possessed a corrupting influence, that still seemed tangible even now that he himself was not.

"They shouldn't know that we're here. We have no physical presence, and if I've got this right, we shouldn't be visible." They were standing in the lobby, testing their invisibility by waiting to see if they were noticed. There were psychics on staff after all - people who really did stand a chance of realising that there were ghosts in the building. Psychics, magic spells, magical barriers - any number of alarms and failsafes that protected the staff, the building, and the priceless items in the vaults. Nobody said anything, though. No urgent bells rang; no security guards shouted out bellicose warnings. Spike even wandered deliberately into the path of several bustling lawyers and their secretaries, but nobody looked surprised, or swerved out of his way, or even blinked at his sudden appearance. They just walked straight through him, and showed no realisation that they had done so. In the end both men were satisfied, although neither of them was even remotely relaxed.

"Horrible place." Spike kept looking about him suspiciously, with a particular wariness, apparently, towards the floor. "Being non-corporeal around here wasn't a whole lot of fun. Psycho bloody ghosts trying to suck me into hell."

"He's gone now, Spike."

"The scars run deep, you know. I'm traumatised."

"See a psychiatrist. Either that or go back to the hotel." Wesley was not in the mood to be sympathetic. This place had enough metaphorical demons in it to make him just as uneasy as Spike. "You knew where we were coming."

"Yeah." Spike was beginning to wonder why he had volunteered. In recent years he had become quite the team player, and at times like this it bothered him greatly. Life had been a lot easier when he had never volunteered for anything. Oh for the days before his soul came back - before the chip that had started this whole, bothersome business. At times he even regretted ever having heard of Sunnydale. "You okay?"

"Me?" It never ceased to surprise Wesley when Spike had one of his thoughtful moments. It was somewhat off-putting. Even Angel, the eternal good guy, didn't tend to think of other people's feelings as often as did Spike. He certainly never gauged their state of mind as accurately, if at all. "Yes, I'm alright." And trying not to think about Fred, falling into Lorne's arms at the top of those stairs. Trying not to think about the office upstairs where she kissed me for the first time. The office where the memory of her sent me mad. He shrugged, and smiled without much conviction. "I'm fine. Can't say that I'm happy to be back, though."

"Tell me about it." Spike's sharp eyes scanned the massive lobby. "Okay. Where are we making for?"

"The vaults. They're protected by magical spells that will prevent us from walking in, but I can probably handle those."

"Probably?" Spike looked distinctly unhappy. "Great. What happens if you can't?"

"If I don't get the spell right, and we walk into the vault... I don't know. Possibly we'll be atomised. I can't really say, never having tried it."

"You're a pretty encouraging bloke, you know that?"

"I'm not here for pep talks, Spike." Wesley ran a map of the building through his mind, hoping that the new offices were as similar to the old ones as they appeared to be. "Stick close now, and keep your eyes peeled. The ordinary employees won't know we're here, but I don't know about the unordinary ones. Or the clients. Or the Senior Partners, if they happen to be around. They'll certainly know that we're here, if they happen to look - and if anybody is going to be pissed off at us, it'll be them."

"Ain't that the truth." For intangible beings that nobody ever seemed to have seen, let alone spoken to directly, the Senior Partners were an inescapable part of life within the firm. Their presence hung over everything, with the very real threat of menace. Nobody knew who or what the Senior Partners were. Nobody knew where they came from, how old they were, or if they even had a physical form when upon the Earth. They had chosen intermediaries in the past, as strange as they themselves, but that was all. No direct contact, with anybody it seemed. Spike was of the opinion that intermediaries were hugely preferable to a personal audience, and had no wish to be summoned to meet with the Senior Partners himself. Somehow being dead and a ghost was no reason to suppose that he was free from the threat of harm from such beings. If indeed they were beings. He was happy never finding out. "Which vault are we heading for?" he asked eventually, anxious to get this over with as soon as possible. Wesley shrugged.

"There are several. I know which one I put it in, and since everything else appears to be the same, we should try that one first. It could have been put downstairs in the big vault though, and if so that will present a problem. It's a tough nut to crack."

"Great. Well lead on then." Spike looked about at the various creatures milling around them. "I don't know how long this invisibility thing can last. I'm used to being seen. Usually everybody can see us."

"Just don't think yourself visible." Wesley led the way up the stairs at a run, unhappy about using his ghostly powers to transport himself around a building where spells might be in place to prevent such things. "And try not to touch anything. The last thing that'll help us is if bits and pieces suddenly appear to be moving themselves around."

"I'm not a bloody idiot, you know." Spike followed him up the stairs, running straight through an enthusiastic looking young intern in the process. "You figured out how we're going to get the generator out of the building, yet?"

"One thing at a time, Spike. I don't know how we're going to get it out of the vault, yet."

"More fool me for asking." The vampire caught up with the Watcher, running alongside him up the last of the steps. "We heading for your office?"

"To the vault in what used to be my office, yes. That's where I put the generator. Aladdin's Cave, Fred called it. There's a lot of stuff in there that I'd like to take with us. Carvings, statues, books, scrolls."

"Fascinating, I'm sure." Spike was not particularly enamoured of old relics. Wesley smiled faintly.

"And a golden idol with ruby eyes. Worth a fortune. Several fortunes."

"We could take that with us." Relics might not be interesting, but priceless ones had a definite appeal - even if one technically had no further use for money.

"One look into its eyes and death is instantaneous. Proximity to it, once it's out of its lead lined box, causes insanity, blindness and bloodlust." Wesley smirked at the vampire's crestfallen expression. "It's evil, Spike. That's why Wolfram & Hart have it."

"All the same - I'm sure we could find somebody to fence it to." They reached the door of Wesley's office, and Spike slowed to a virtual standstill. "Think they've got themselves a new you?"

"Could be." Taking a deep breath that wasn't really a deep breath at all, Wesley stepped through the door and into the room beyond. The familiarity of the place was a shock, even though he had been expecting it. The building really had been replaced exactly. Even the furniture was the same, although the pieces that had been damaged during his lifetime no longer held their scars. He almost went to examine the desk, to see if it still bore the scratches from the time when Illyria had thrown it, and him, against the wall. Spike's emergence from the door brought his mind back to the issue at hand, though, and he headed instead for the wall that hid the vault. It was easy enough to walk through it, into the corridor beyond, where voice-activated inner doors, protected by many different passwords, kept so many fascinating relics safe from thieving fingers. Not that that had kept one such relic from the hands of the cyborg facsimile of Roger Wyndam-Pryce, but a vault was only ever as secure as the man who kept watch over it. Wesley remembered that day only too well, and once again cursed the place for its many unpleasant memories. Too much had gone on in this damnable building - far too much - and far too much of it remained, inexorably, a part of him. It all made it extremely hard to concentrate.

"Now what?" asked Spike, looking about with interest. He had never been in here before, never having had any particular interest for the eclectic collection of bric-a-brac in the Wolfram & Hart vaults. He certainly had never paid any particular mind to those pieces that Wesley chose to keep close by him, for Spike could not help but be dismissive of the Watcher and his interests. Unless Lilah counted as an interest, he mused to himself. He was definitely anything but dismissive of her. But then she wasn't a dusty old thing that was stored on a shelf. At least as far as he knew.

"Now we walk through the wall and see if the generator is still in there." Wesley sounded properly enthusiastic, and motivated to the full, but didn't actually take a step forward. Spike rolled his eyes.

"What's keeping you then?"

"Like I said." The Watcher eyed the vault walls with obvious suspicion. "If we walk in there we'll be hit by a supernatural barrier."

"Which will kill us?"

"You do know that you're already dead, don't you." Wesley looked exasperated. "No, it'll... well yes, technically I suppose it'll kill us. Atomise us, or..." He shrugged. "I told you, I'm not clear on the details. It's just something that I remember reading in the old book templates. I called up a building schematic when we first came to work here."

"You would." It was Spike's turn to regard the walls with suspicion. "Okay. You said something before about using spells to get in. You can do that, right?"

"In theory." Wesley was beginning to look like a clockwork toy that needed another wind. He had been acting on pure adrenalin since first getting the idea of retrieving the Mutari generator, but now the adrenalin was beginning to wear out. Always supposing that it had ever existed in the first place. In the strictest sense, ghosts weren't supposed to produce adrenalin - but then in the strictest sense ghosts weren't supposed to do a lot of the things that they did. Spike, unable to restrain himself, slapped his fellow ghost on the back of the head.

"In theory!"

"Ow." Glowering, Wesley rubbed the back of his head. "Yes, in theory. I've never been killed, brought back as a ghost, and then obliterated by supernatural means before. It's not something I do every weekday and twice on Saturdays."

"And there's no call for sarcasm." Spike approached the nearest wall. "How many vaults are there here? There's, what, nine doors?"

"Nine doors, nine vaults. I always used this one here, and had the door fixed up to respond to a certain password spoken by my voice only. I'd very much doubt that either the password or my voice count for much now, but if the generator is still up here, I'd guess that this is the vault it's in. The entire building has likely been replaced by magical means, so everything will have remained exactly where it was before the roof caved in."

"Yeah. Unless somebody's come in here, and thought: 'Well that bloke Pryce turned out to be a right lousy employee, so maybe we'd better see what he's been squirreling away up here. Oh look, there's that Mutari generator. Let's put that downstairs. That'll piss him off if he ever comes back here as a ghost to steal it'."

"Shut up, Spike." Wesley ran a hand through his hair, obviously trying to focus. "Alright. The vaults are protected by spells designed to prevent entry by supernatural means. That means that I can either circumvent them, or cancel them out."

"And for those of us who don't speak Stiff-Arsed Watcher?"

"I can either sneak past the spell or kill it." Wesley nodded. "Killing it would be safer for us, but not necessarily for anybody else in the long run. I don't want to leave the vault vulnerable. We may not owe Wolfram & Hart any favours, and there's a lot of stuff in their vaults that I'd rather they didn't have - but that doesn't mean that I want a lot of other people to have it instead. Things could get messy."

"Hell of a one for procrastinating, aren't you, Perce." Spike folded his arms, regarding his companion with an expression of obvious anticipation. "Come on. Magic. Before somebody realises we're in the building."

"Yes, that's sort of the drawback." Wesley was rubbing his hands together and flexing his fingers, apparently warming up for the sorcery. Spike put out a stiff arm, catching his fellow ghost on the chest.

"Drawback?"

"Yes. It's impossible to perform magic in the building without somebody knowing about it. Ghosts might not set off the sensors, but spells certainly will. We lose our element of surprise with the first 'hocus-pocus'. Metaphorically speaking, of course. I've never actually used 'hocus-pocus' in a spell."

"Yeah. Metaphorically speaking. Course." Spike looked even paler than usual. "So what'll happen then - in theory - when you do your thing? We get into the vault, get the generator... and how long before the hordes of hell are called down upon us?"

"Hordes of hell? It'll probably just be security."

"Yeah, but given what most of the security guards look like around here, I stand by my earlier exaggeration. How long?"

"From the alarm sounding? Three minutes perhaps. Enough for us to get inside, and see whether or not the generator is in here."

"But not to get out of here; find a way to make a solid generator walk through walls alongside us; get out of the building; and put enough space between it and us that we won't suddenly be boomeranged right back here before you can say: 'This is a bloody stupid plan, Wesley!'." Spike fumbled for one of his cigarettes. "Next time I volunteer for something, shoot me."

"I wouldn't light up in here, Spike. There are smoke alarms and a very sensitive sprinkler system to help protect the artefacts. Even if nobody notices my magic, you setting off the fire alert system is sure to make at least half the building realise that there's something going on."

"Oh, brilliant." The vampire threw the unlit cigarette at his companion. "I resign as your glamorous assistant, Percy. From here on in, you can do it all yourself."

"I was under the impression that I was, anyway." Wesley turned his back. "Now shut up. I've got magic to do."

"Yeah, 'cause it's always a good idea to bring down the hordes of hell on your head."

"If they're less argumentative than you, Spike, they're welcome." Beginning to frown in concentration, Wesley spread his fingers and closed his eyes. "Now shut up. If I don't concentrate we'll be obliterated by the barriers long before your hordes of hell come pounding on the door."

"Yeah. Great." Rolling his eyes heavenward, Spike turned away and began to pace. It looked distinctly as though there was heroic stuff about to occur, and as far as he was concerned, that was Angel's department. Let the wuss with the silly hair come here and get obliterated by supernatural barriers, or captured by the ravening hordes of hell. Spike would rather put his feet up and see if there was anything on TV. Behind him, though, Wesley was already underway with his spell, and it was patently too late to be worried about the details. The vampire turned, watching with an ironic eye. The chanting was all very familiar - he had seen Willow do such things in the past. Latin, of course, half of which he could understand, with a sprinkling of some other language underneath. Sparks, in a paintbox of colours, flickering from Wesley's fingertips, and crackling about on the surface of the wall - that was new. Spike didn't remember seeing anything like that from Willow before. It was almost attractive. Wesley took a step back, shaking his head as though momentarily stunned, then spat out a stream of guttural words and began to advance. His frame shimmered and sparked like the lights that danced on the wall, then with a blur of blue light, he vanished into the vault. Spike frowned.

"What'll it look like if you get obliterated by supernatural barriers?" he asked loudly. There was no answer. "Percy? If you made it, shout. If you didn't... you're a stupid sod."

"Just get in here, Spike." Wesley's voice came clearly from the other side of the wall, and the vampire scowled. Everybody was always ordering him around. He hurried through the wall as quickly as he could, and tried not to think about supernatural barriers, and whatever it was that they might do to him if the spell failed. A moment later he was through the wall, and in a metal room lined with shelves and cubby holes.

"I didn't hear any alarms going off," he said, somewhat optimistically. "Maybe they didn't notice your hoo-dah."

"Oh, they noticed it. This is Wolfram & Hart we're dealing with, not Shyster Associates." Wesley was turning in circles, staring about at the collected treasures. There were carved idols, beautiful and hideous; scrolls he had pored over during eager after-hours study, before life at Wolfram & Hart had become too much; there were jars bearing the ashes of long dead demons; priceless vases decorated with ancient lettering telling the tales of forgotten heroes; and everywhere there were weapons. Swords, spears, daggers, halberks, lances, muskets and boomerangs, not a single one of them ordinary and unadorned. The decoration was beautiful; stylised and random; simple and ornate; reserved and bold - Spike might have stopped to marvel, had he not been counting under his breath all the time, thinking about the three minute estimate that Wesley had made, and wondering how long it would be before they were found here together. Where the hell was that bloody generator?

"There it is!" Wesley was scrambling over, and for the most part through, a pile of boxes at one side of the room; crates, new-looking, and still unopened, that made his brain sing with possibilities. What had he ordered, during those last days? He had been out of his mind so much of the time that he didn't remember; couldn't imagine what those boxes might contain. Now was not really the time to think about it, though, and it certainly was not the time to find out. Instead he reached up past them, to the shelf where the Mutari generator stood. His hands passed straight through both shelf and generator, and he scowled. "Damn it!"

"Yeah, because that wasn't predictable." Spike scrambled over to join him, fetching down the chunky piece of machinery with the minimum of fuss. "Now what? Can you open the door?"

"Spike, if I could open the door, would we have come through the wall? Given what it took to make it safe?" Wesley scratched his head, looking from the generator to the wall and back again. "There's a way to do this."

"In under eighty seconds?"

"Hmm?" The Watcher clearly was not paying full attention, and Spike swore under his breath.

"Eighty seconds. Screw that: seventy-five. That's how long it is until your three minutes are up. After that we've got security to worry about, and I'm not betting on invisibility helping us out much."

"Invisibility." Wesley looked up at him and frowned. "That might work."

"Invisibility? We can stop people seeing us, Wes - although maybe I should remind you that that's pretty unreliable - but what do we do with the big chunk of alien machinery? If it's floating around on its own, people are going to notice something."

"What? No, I didn't mean that." Wesley was pacing urgently, obviously thinking hard. "You talking about invisibility made me think of something, that's all." He frowned. "And it's not alien machinery. Unless, of course, you take 'alien' at its most basic definition, and"

"Forty seconds, Wes. Go ahead and waste time. It's not like we don't have buckets of it or anything..."

"Yes. Of course." The frown came back to Wesley's face, concentration showing powerfully in his focused blue eyes. "Hold it out. Right out, at arms length."

"If you're going to do something complicated, I want to know about it. I don't want your aim going all wobbly, so you wind up doing something weird to my arms."

"My aim is never 'wobbly'." For a second years of character development fell away, and Wesley sounded as superior and insufferable as he had in the days before he and Spike had ever met. An instant later the moment had gone, and Wesley's eyes were warm again. "Invisibility is one of the traits of ghosthood. Some of the time, anyway. Well what's another?"

"Wasting time?" asked Spike, who was beginning to despair. Wesley glared at him.

"Transportation. We can go wherever we want, instantaneously. I think I can make the generator do that. A short distance only, perhaps, but I can get it out of here."

"Very nice. Now I can hear footsteps. Can we get the bloody hell out of here!"

"Footsteps?" Wesley, apparently, was surprised by the notion that there might be guards on the way, and Spike seriously considered hitting him. Not that it would help, but it would certainly make him feel a little better. He settled for growling obscenities under his breath, and hoping that, if they were about to get consigned to some ghastly level of hell for being caught in the vault, he might at least get to see Wesley sent there first. That would give him some small measure of satisfaction; some small degree of vindication.

"Hold the generator still." Absent-minded professorisms gone, Wesley was a sorcerer again, hands outstretched, fingers glowing with blue light. Spike's eyes widened, and holding the infernal machine at arm's length, he tried not to cringe too noticeably. If there was one thing more worrying than having a spell aimed at your chest, it was having it aimed by Wesley Wyndam-Pryce. He might be a perfectly competent magician, but he inspired all the confidence of a drunkard behind the wheel of a juggernaut.

"I hope you know what you're doing, Pryce." Doing his best not to quake, Spike watched the glowing fingers twitch. Again he heard Latin; again he heard a smattering of languages that he couldn't recognise or understand; then there was a bright, bright flash of red and white, and he was standing once again in Wesley's old office. The generator was still in his hands, and he blinked in surprise - surprise and not a little new respect. He saw something else, though, and for some reason couldn't help a small smile.

"That went better than expected." Wesley wiped sweat from his eyes. "Come on. There's a back door hidden in the wall. It might give us a good head start."

"It went a little too well if you ask me." Spike looked around at the office, which was now stacked full of the entire contents of the vault. The scrolls, the idols, the crates, the vases - all lay around them, lining the walls, and effectively blocking the hidden entrance to the office's secret escape route. Wesley looked annoyed.

"Blast."

"Blast! Can we walk through the door, or are there supernatural barriers there as well?" Spike was momentarily distracted by the rattling of heavy hands on the door knob, then ran over to the place where a false wall hid the tunnel. Wesley shook his head.

"I don't think I can teleport the generator again so soon. It took a lot out of me just then."

"Yeah. Not surprising, since you decided to bring all the rest of this junk with us as well!" The door rattled furiously once again, and Spike spat more obscenities under his breath. "Brilliant. You know, I always wanted to end my days in some punishment dimension, being torn six ways from Sunday by the Senior Partners' pet hell beasts."

"You might be about to get lucky then." Wesley looked nervously over towards the door. "Okay. Think Angel."

"You what?"

"Think Angel. When I'm caught in a difficult situation, sometimes it helps to imagine what Angel would do." Inspiration, though, was apparently not in abundance tonight. Spike scowled.

"Angel would glower broodily, look all dramatic in that daft bloody coat of his, and fight his way through the enemy without getting so much as a hair out of place. Then he'd go back to the hotel, and Cordelia would patch up his injuries and tell him how sodding heroic he is. Why the bloody hell would you want to take a leaf out of Tall Dark And Boring's book?"

"Because he always gets out alive." Wesley's eyes strayed back to the door, which was rocking dangerously on its hinges. Spike shot him a disparaging look.

"Despite him being dead since 1753?"

"Get out, Spike. Drop the generator and get out of here. You can do it without too many difficulties if you leave that thing behind. Wolfram & Hart will probably know by now that you were here, but once you're back at the hotel they won't be able to touch you."

"Yeah? And what'll you do?" Spike was fond of insulting Wesley and his abilities, but he couldn't help respecting somebody who was prepared to stay behind. The Watcher shrugged.

"Fight my way out?"

"With your famous ghostly handguns I suppose?"

"I was planning on my ghostly shotgun, actually. It's got a bit more clout."

"Yeah, but Wolfram & Hart know that you've got it. If they know by now that I'm here, they know that you're here too - and don't forget that your buddy-buddy Lilah knows all about your guns. That means the rest of the firm does too. And don't go trying to insist that she'd never tell. Course she bloody would."

"You think they might be prepared?" Wesley looked rather unnerved by the suggestion. "That's hardly fair."

"The odds are supposed to be stacked against the heroes, mate. You should know that by now."

"Yes..." The door gave another violent wobble, and almost burst from its hinges. "They're quite enthusiastic, aren't they."

"Positively frenetic."

"That door is going to cave in any second now."

"Looks like it."

"You're not leaving then?"

"No." Spike set the generator down on Wesley's desk, then picked up the nearest sword from one of the piles of weapons that had been magicked out of the vault. "Not yet, anyway. If what comes through that door is anything other than security men, I'm out of here. Humans I can handle. Ravening hordes of hell and I leg it."

"Fair enough." The door gave another almighty leap. "Ready?"

"I'm ready, yeah. I can actually pick the weapons up." Spike brandished the sword, managing to look not remotely threatening. "Are you ready?"

"I think so." There was suddenly a gun in each hand, apparently plucked from the ether, and bringing with them a new, steely glint to their bearer's eyes. A second later the door burst open, and the room filled with sizeable men - all dressed in heavy body armour. Wesley winced. "Though on the other hand..."

Suddenly things didn't look so good.

xxxxxxxxxx

"I take it we're visible now, then," queried Spike, as the six security guards fanned out around them. The biggest guard, whom Wesley seemed to remember was called Saul, levelled a gun straight at the blond vampire.

"Very visible," he mocked. Spike raised an eyebrow.

"You know we're ghosts, right?"

"Yeah." Saul didn't seem too bothered. As he came closer, Spike could see that the gun he held didn't seem quite right. It wasn't the ordinary weapon brandished by guards elsewhere; it was longer, more sleek, and seemed to have some kind of attachment. Whatever it was, it looked like a glowing green light bulb fixed beneath the barrel.

"Come quietly," Saul spoke with absolute confidence in his ability to get what he wanted. Nearby Wesley lowered his own guns, and they disappeared from his hands.

"Very sensible." The guard standing nearest to him flashed his own weapon. "We were issued with these as soon as the alarm sounded. They fire an energy charge that'll disrupt your energy field almost completely. I'm told it's not pleasant."

"Translation?" asked Spike. Wesley answered him without taking his eyes off the guard who had just spoken.

"Think of it as a temporary exorcism," he supplied, voice quiet, cool and steady. Saul laughed.

"So give it up and come with us. There's a lot of people who want to talk to you." He looked around at the room and its jumbled contents. "Just what was it that you were after, anyway?"

"This and that." Spike easily matched Saul's confidence and swagger. "Wes here thought he'd left his car keys on his desk, and personally I always feel that you can't have enough gruesome carvings decorating a home."

"You came here to steal something." As though a switch had been thrown, Saul was no longer all swagger and thuggishness. He spoke with ice and authority, for all the world as though he were suddenly the mouthpiece of some other, disparate being. "What did you come here to steal?"

"Why not ask us yourself?" Advancing slowly, Wesley was watching the guard with curious eyes. "Why use this poor sod's voice instead of your own?"

"Very clever, Mr Pryce." Saul's eyes snapped over to stare at him, though they did so without life; without spark. The security guard seemed nothing more than a vessel now. "Do you know who I am?"

"I have an idea." Wesley circled the guard cautiously, rather expecting to be shot by one of the others. "Why the human skin?"

"You don't expect to see any of us in our natural form, Mr Pryce? Nobody on Earth ever does that. We have many forms, many servants, many go-betweens - but none see us. Death opens some doors, but not all."

"Fair enough." Very, very slowly, Wesley began to back over towards Spike. The vampire felt like backing away too, but he stood his ground, sword in hand, until Wesley was standing beside him. He scowled then, and gave the sword a quick brandish.

"Senior Partner?" he asked. Wesley shrugged.

"Looks like it."

"So are we screwed?"

"Very likely."

"Right." Spike eyed Saul's body, which was now smiling sardonically. Whoever or whatever was inside it would do anything to find out why they were here - he knew that as soon as he saw the curl of the unfortunate guard's lip. "So do we give in?"

"I should." Saul took a step forward, and the rest of the guards followed suit. If they were bothered by their leader's sudden possession, they gave no sign of it. Rather, they converged around him now as though ready to display their loyalty. Spike looked back at Wesley.

"Are we allowed to kill them?" he asked. Wesley's eyes were hard.

"We may have no choice. You ready?"

"Ready for what?" There was no answer, and with no idea of what Wesley meant, Spike began to panic. "Ready for what!"

"To fight." Wesley's fingers twitched once. There were no sparks this time, no glow, and no mumbled words of an audible spell, but Spike could feel a crackle in the air. Saul began to growl. Wesley gave the slightest, tightest smile - and at once, like creatures come to life, the weapons strewn about the floor leapt into the air.

"Alright!" Utterly delighted, Spike fell back a few paces, watching the weapons leap and dance. One or two of the guards fired their guns, but the weapons fired light rather than bullets, and the suddenly scything swords, the hacking axes, jabbing spears and spinning daggers deflected the beams more or less by accident. Only Saul stood his ground then, showing a disdain for the weapons that only a man possessed by an inhuman power could show. He didn't flinch when a knife nicked his elbow, but the other guards did, turning immediately to flee for the door. Saul's jaw tightened, ad with a wave of one, stiff arm, he caused the door to slam shut. The guards piled into one another, fighting to make the door open, but getting nowhere at all.

"Will you kill them, Mr Pryce?" Saul was smiling again, expression arch. Wesley showed no reaction, but the weapons, unconcerned for the welfare of potentially innocent human guards seemed to renew their assault. The muskets clubbed at Saul, the other guards tried using their guns to fight back against the slashing swords. There were daggers stabbing at their ankles, and halberks hurling themselves at the closed door. One of the guards began to jabber in terror.

"They'll all die." Saul, still oblivious to the weapons threatening him on all fronts, stared fixedly at Wesley. "Do you want to kill them all?"

"They made the choice when they took the job." Wesley's eyes were cold. A sword slashed at Saul's arm, and an axe buried itself in someone's unprotected leg. Spike winced at the sight more than Wesley did, as the guard fell back against the wall, trying to protect his head from the deluge of apparently maddened knives. The other guards were all firing their guns now, shooting pointless beams of light at the rain of enchanted weapons, blasting helplessly at anything that moved. Once or twice they tried to shoot at Wesley or Spike, but always to no avail. Only Saul remained still, refusing to move, blood running down his arms and his head, and dribbling down the sides of his shoes. Wesley had no idea how many times the man had been hit, whilst making no effort to defend himself. Whatever it was that now possessed Saul, he had no care for physical injuries, nor yet for the body he controlled. If he was hoping to shame Wesley into calling off the attack, though, he was trying his psychological tricks on the wrong man. He seemed to realise that in the end, when a second guard went down under the assault; when fists hammered at the door from the other side, and Wesley gave no reaction; when the secret door at the other side of the room burst open in a shower of dislodged obstacles, and many of the weapons swerved away to attack the new arrivals. Whatever Wesley was feeling, he was not afraid to use his potentially deadly force against the woefully under-protected humans. A tiny smile showed on his face when Saul's expression changed to one of sudden, absolute rage; but by then, such was the mad skittering of the weapons, it was hard to see anything at all.

"We have to get out of here." Impressed by the display and the distraction, Spike was nonetheless still grounded in reality. Wesley's powers might be keeping them from getting shot, but they were not assisting in any escape; not getting them and the generator out of the building. This was a stop gap, and as far as Spike could see, a dangerously temporary one. Why shouldn't somebody at Wolfram & Hart find a way to counteract the spell? Spin a new one? End it all with a lucky shot that made it through the barrage undeflected? It had to happen sooner or later. That something would happen was inevitable.

It came with a new wave from the secret door - four or five men with swords, who fought back against the airborne weaponry. Wesley's magical arsenal had no real direction, and the enchanted swords could not neatly parry and thrust. Again and again they were smashed to the ground; again and again the heavy axes were slowed, or swerved from their mark. Then came more men, with axes of their own, with shields; one with a massive shotgun that blasted several weapons to pieces. Spike tried brandishing his own sword anew, but no matter how satisfying a weapon three feet of sharp blade could be, it was missing that essential something when ranged against an increasingly active enemy. He shot an urgent glance over at Wesley.

"Any ideas?"

"Just fight." The strain was showing on Wesley's face; he was throwing more bric-a-brac against the enemy now. Vases hurled themselves across the room; idols leapt about the floor, or flung themselves like hammers. Books spun this way and that, chopped out of the air by the security guards, in a rain of tattered paper. Seconds later a beam of light from one of the doctored guns hit the desk just inches from Spike's leg. He flinched.

"Bloody hell!"

"Run for it, Spike." Wesley seemed unwilling or unable to take his eyes off Saul, and he spat the words out from between clenched teeth. Spike shook his head.

"On my own?"

"If we both go, this stuff will be hidden where we'll never find it. I won't take the risk on Lox not finding it either." Very slowly, Wesley raised his hands a little way, each one now glowing with a powerful blue light. A ball of fire was in each hand, spherical and growing in size. "When I throw these, run."

"Wes..."

"Angel can't lose two of us." For a second the sharp blue eyes flickered across to Spike, then snapped back to Saul. Saul's own eyes had narrowed, and almost immediately he began to walk forward. There were knives stuck all over him now, and wounds from swords and axes ran his blood onto the floor, but he showed no discomfort or distress. He was like a corpse reanimated, and gave no reaction when a sizeable book bound in leather and wood slammed into the side of his head. He merely carried on advancing, and left bloodied footprints in his wake.

"Get ready, Spike." The balls of light in Wesley's hands were now too bright to look at, white and blue and still growing in size. Spike didn't protest any longer. He knew now that there was no point - that Wesley wouldn't listen to him anyway. He thought about finding Angel, finding Gunn, finding anybody who might be of use, and getting them back here, but didn't really believe that he could do so in time. A second later Wesley threw the balls of fire, the room erupted into a stinging blaze of bright blue light, and for the first time in a long while, Spike was glad that he was a ghost - that the magical force knocking guards over backwards, and blinding Saul with upswept spatters of his own blood, could have no effect on him. When the explosive force had died away, the room was left flooded with a brighter light than before, whiter now, and enough to make Spike want to close his eyes.

"Come on, Pryce!" He grabbed Wesley's arm. "Forget all this. Leave. We'll worry about Lox another time."

"You're mine, Pryce!" Saul's voice was guttural, inhuman, his walk the lumbering lurch of a zombie as he came closer. Spike was quite certain that, had he had any, his blood would have run cold.

"Wesley! Come on!" He pulled on the arm, refraining from using his vastly superior vampire strength only through respect for the other man. "We have got to get out of here. Now stop your damn light show tricks. I can hardly see a bloody thing!"

"No more tricks." Wesley ducked as a beam of light from one of the guns shot past him. "Not my light. Too bright, too white. This is"

"You're not leaving here." Saul made a grab for Wesley, but his hand went straight through the ghost. He seemed to have forgotten his gun, or perhaps had decided that the fight was now too personal for such weapons. Wesley took a step back, and began fumbling for the Mutari generator.

"So that's it." Saul seemed more confused than triumphant. "All this for that? Well you won't leave here with it."

"He can't bloody pick it up, so that's pretty much a given." Spike took the device himself. "Wes, we can't walk through walls with this, and there's no way we're getting through either of these doors just now."

"We may not have to." Wesley was turning away, but Saul grabbed for him again, and this time his hand caught the ghost's elbow. Wesley looked over at him with pity mingled with the shock in his eyes. So Saul - the real Saul - had finally died, his injuries at last too great. Only the force possessing him kept him up now - not that it mattered much, when his fingers were gripping hard, and an inhuman strength was dragging Wesley closer into a vicious hold. Spike clubbed at Saul's hand with the generator; clubbed at his arms and his back, and finally tore Wesley away through sheer brute force. They both stumbled away, shrinking back from more deadly beams of light, more attacking guards, and the constant threat of Saul's inexorable advance.

"The window." Wesley gave Spike a push. "Just get to the window."

"No!" Saul came faster, reaching out once again. Spike smashed his hands away with the generator.

"What bloody good is the window" he began, but Wesley gave him another hard shove, and finally giving in to the pressure, Spike began to run. Only then did he notice that it was the window that was the source of the bright light - a white radiance that filled the glass. There was a figure just visible through it. A white, glowing figure standing in thin air on the other side of the window. Spike felt a rush of hope and relief. Behind him, Saul was reaching out for Wesley again, and a beam of light hit the wall far too close to both ghosts for comfort. There was far less airborne weaponry now - too little for Spike's liking - and Saul was getting closer, and the beams of light more numerous, and Spike was running for the window and not really sure what would happen when he reached it.

"Can we fly?" he yelled at Wesley, even as he was leaping into the air and hurtling towards the glass. Just millimetres ahead of Saul's grasping fingers, Wesley choked back an unexpected laugh.

"Does it matter!" He was leaping then too, and the white light was getting brighter, and Saul's fingers were brushing Wesley's arm - and then the glass in the window was gone, and the ghosts and the generator were passing easily through the gap. Alarms were ringing, and warning lights were flashing, and Cordelia was looking distinctly less than impressed, and all that Spike could think about was how the hell he was supposed to not fall when he was holding a very real, very solid metal generator. He got his answer when he realised that he was falling, and that Wesley was too, and that they were an unsettlingly great distance above an extremely uninviting sidewalk. In a white hot blaze of light they fell, until the floor of the hotel lobby stopped them with a sudden, powerful jolt, and the blistering light slid quietly away. Impressed, delighted, and extremely relieved, Spike grinned in childish glee.

"That was bloody fantastic!" he cheered, with considerable satisfaction. By the looks on their faces, though, Cordelia and Angel were rather less pleased. Spike was unmoved by their seriousness. An eleventh hour magical flight from an enemy's lair was something to be celebrated in his opinion, even if Angel was looking as sour as a barrel full of lemons. He was a killjoy; that was his problem. Some people just didn't deserve excitement.

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"Wes, are you sure this is a good idea?" Eyeing the Mutari generator with distaste, Angel flashed his friend an unhappy look. "At least it was safe at Wolfram & Hart. We don't have anything like the security here to keep it from being stolen."

"I'm sure that Cordelia can find somewhere for it. Probably somewhere far better than Wolfram & Hart's various vaults." Wesley was caught between defensiveness, and conviction in his own actions. "Look, Angel, I know on the face of it, it seems foolhardy..."

"Foolhardy? No, Wes. Foolhardy would be walking into Wolfram & Hart to get it in the first place." Angel shook his head. "What the hell got into you? We discuss things. You're not supposed to go off on your own anymore."

"Yes Angel. Coming from you that makes perfect sense. After all, you've never gone off on your own and done something dangerous." This time Wesley held his gaze, and Angel was reminded, somewhat uncomfortably, of the years of change. There were times when he still treated the Watcher as though he were that same, unconfident man who was clumsy in fights and crumbled all too easily under pressure. At such time those level, cool blue eyes were rather unsettling. He nodded.

"Yeah, okay. So maybe sometimes I go off on my own..." Cordelia shot him a sharp glance and he capitulated. "Alright. So it's double standards. But I know my own abilities, and I worry about myself far less. And at the end of the day I'm the boss here, so" Again Cordelia shot him a sharp glance, and he scowled. "Sort of the boss. I'm... boss in a sense of... It's my hotel!"

"Yeah. Great leadership there, boss." Spike folded his arms looking testy. "Look, Percy here made a judgement call, and it happens to be one that I agreed with. We got the information from Illyria, we couldn't make you listen, and Percy had a point when he said that we'd be better off going in without you. You'd have set the alarms ringing all over the place, whereas we... well, as it happens set the alarms ringing all over the place. But silent alarms, at least at first. Which is progress."

"Spike..." Angel wasn't really in the mood for arguing with his old associate just now, but Spike, as always, didn't care.

"Stuff it, Angel. Eventually Lox was going to get this generator. He must have thought he could do it. His whole plan rests on it. If he thought he could get it from Wolfram & Hart, we couldn't take the risk of leaving it there."

"So instead we bring it here." Angel sighed. "Well, it's done now. It's here. Cordy?"

"I can maybe hide it in another dimension, I guess." She sounded typically vague. "I mean, I know I can hide the TV remote in another dimension, when Gunn's all set on watching the football, so I should be able to do the same thing with this."

"Great." Angel picked it up and handed it to her, ignoring her scowl. "In the meantime, I suppose we should have another talk with Lox."

"He's not going to admit to anything." Dumping the generator on the reception counter, Cordelia looked for something to wipe her hands on. "He acted like our best friend before. Why would he change just because we've found another reason to be suspicious? His story will be good."

"Maybe because he'll be telling the truth?" Angel was beginning to suspect that he sounded like a fool for still giving Lox the benefit of the doubt, but he wasn't yet ready to throw himself wholesale into a story told by Illyria. "Can we really believe all of this stuff? Using Illyria to take over a demon empire? It's all... kinda farfetched."

"Which bit of it?" asked Spike facetiously. "The dead vampire turned proto-angel trying to protect the world, or the dead magician turned ghost who's just stolen a piece of demon equipment from a firm of evil lawyers run by monsters?"

"Shut up, Spike." Angel's tone was deadpan, but his eyes showed that his patience was running rather thin. Cordelia smiled, though.

"I don't know Illyria as well as you do, Angel," she said gently, "though I was watching most of your dealings with her. But what reason would she have to lie?"

"Know her? I don't know her. Wesley spent practically every waking hour with her - and he had a lot of waking hours back then - and I doubt he'd claim to know her." Angel shook his head. "I just don't trust her."

"I do." Wesley spoke quietly now, though whether that was because the subject had turned to Illyria, or just because he was having one of his more retiring moments, Angel wouldn't have liked to guess. "There's nothing to distrust, Angel. She has no reason ever to lie. Don't forget what she is. Even without the powers we took from her with the generator, she's still more powerful than most creatures on this Earth - and she believes herself to be many times more powerful than that. She holds us in very low regard. She gives us no more thought than we give to the microscopic creatures that surround us. We're less than that to her. She has no reason to lie."

"Yeah." Angel nodded slowly, accepting the point. He knew that Illyria was everything Wesley said and more; it was just not in his nature to accept the word of a demon he did not know or truly understand. Her being amongst them in the first place was reason enough for him to distrust her; and the means by which she had come to be amongst them only deepened that distrust. If Wesley himself was prepared to look beyond that, though... He sighed. "Alright. Forget confronting Lox. We'll let on that the generator is here, and then see what happens. If he comes here to get it, we can grab him, and maybe prove to Lorne that Lox isn't the good guy he makes himself out to be. I'm sorry, but I'm not going to just take Lox out. I won't trust Illyria that much, and I won't hurt Lorne like that."

"Okay." Wesley nodded. "Fine. So how are you going to spread the word?"

"I'll go to Haven." Angel looked extremely uncomfortable. "Lorne won't mind me dropping by, and he'll probably like hearing about what we've been up to. If he's with Lox, so much the better." He sighed wearily. "I hate using Lorne that way, but it seems like the best way to get the message across without arousing anybody's suspicions."

"Hey, don't look so low. Lorne will understand." Spike sounded confident, but Angel was far less so. He shook his head.

"Lorne won't understand. Not really. Do you think he cares about who gets control of the Sebassis Empire? I'm not even sure why we do. It's not like Lox will ever be the instrument of Wolfram & Hart that Sebassis was. Lox isn't going to join any shadowy organisations like the Black Thorn, or co-operate with the Senior Partners. He's not the type. I'd guess that's why Lilah's been put onto this case; Wolfram & Hart don't want somebody like Lox getting too big for himself when they know that they can't really control him. Well maybe we should be hoping that he does get too big for himself."

"I'd agree, perhaps, if he hadn't set his sights on using Illyria." Wesley was looking at Angel with obvious sympathy. "You know what could happen if she gets even a part of her original powers back. Lox is a fanatic, Angel. He might be nicer than Sebassis, but I'd doubt that he's any more trustworthy. He wants his people to be powerful, and he'll stop at nothing to push their agenda. For all his nice smiles and his charisma, he's really little more than a racist."

"He doesn't like other demons, I don't like other demons." Angel shrugged. "It's hard to paint him in that bad a light, Wes, but you're right about not letting him use Illyria. Beyond that, I'd rather see the Sebassis Empire get split up among a whole lot of demons, and weakened in the process; but if it has to go to one leader... we won't see a better one than Lox."

"So maybe we can persuade him to do this without Illyria? Maybe he'll listen to reason about what will happen if he tries to give her back her powers?" Cordelia looked back to the generator, lying innocently beside her. "Surely he doesn't want to see Los Angeles get blown off the map?"

"He probably thinks he can control how much of her powers she gets." Wesley joined her beside the device, eyeing it with distaste. "And of course it's possible that he doesn't know the full danger anyway. If he only knows about her original powers, and the generator itself, from listening to her talk, he might not appreciate the risks. She's unlikely to have mentioned that bit. He won't listen, though, if you try to tell him the truth."

"You think he's that blinkered?" asked Angel. Wesley nodded.

"He's famous for it. He's convinced Lorne, I suppose, but then Lorne is famous for seeing the good in everybody. Lox is working for him because that night-club is likely to be raking in the money. Even demons need money, especially if they have agendas that they want to promote. If he didn't need that, he wouldn't even give Lorne the time of day."

"He's a good actor, then," observed Spike. It was Angel's turn to nod.

"Very good."

"He does what he has to do to help make his people stronger. That's all that he cares about." Wesley managed to lift the generator, brandishing it like the weapon it could all too easily become. "Try to tell him the truth, Angel, and you'll see. He won't listen to you. I'm not even sure why he listened to Illyria. Possibly he didn't. Possibly she's not the one who told him about all of this. It probably doesn't matter one way or another."

"If I've put the whatsit in another dimension, does it matter anyway?" asked Cordelia. Angel smiled sadly.

"If the 'whatsit' can get put in another dimension, it can get taken out again. If it's hidden it can always be found. If it's destroyed, the powers it sucked out still exist, and there might still be a way to get them back to Illyria... There's no way to be sure that Lox can't go through with his plan - beyond convincing him to abandon it - unless we take him out of the picture." The situation was clearly distasteful to him. "At the very least, this is leading to a confrontation, and I'd rather have it over sooner than later." He sighed, looking very much as though he would rather be doing something else. "And so I'd better not put it off any longer. Get that generator somewhere safe, Cordy. As safe as can be, anyway. I'll get over to Haven right away."

"I'm sorry, Angel." Wesley wasn't looking at him directly, but the Watcher's face was still visible. He looked tired and regretful, and clearly still considered Illyria, and everything about her, to be his personal responsibility. Angel nodded.

"So am I." This would likely take some serious explaining to Lorne, once it was all over, and he only hoped that he would be given the chance to get that explaining done. With a sorry smile and a slow step, he headed for the door. It was better to get this done before he changed his mind.

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