Part Twelve
The kids walked without making a sound, each one of them carrying a sword that had been given to them more as a last resort than anything else. If any attackers managed to get through the combined forces of Angel, Spike, Lindsey, and even Illyria, then no one had any confidence that a trio of adolescents with much in the way of enthusiasm but little in the way of appreciable skill would be able to hold them off. Lindsey glanced over his shoulder at the trio whenever his position as one corner of the rough square of protection surrounding them allowed him to do so. An and Fideo were gripping one another's hands so tightly that it was a wonder they were not cracking one another's knuckles. Both of their faces were intent with the weight of the secret conversations taking place between them. Meanwhile, An had solved the problem of maintaining contact with both Alexei and her sword at the same time by looping her arm through Alexei's and holding the sword out stiffly in front of her. It was not the wisest position for her to maintain if all hell should break loose around them, and Lindsey sincerely hoped that it would not come to that.
Lindsey glanced back at Illyria, who was bringing up the rear with Spike and staring at the back of the kids' heads with a fixed expression that was making Lindsey feel as if it was dangerous for him to look away. Every now and again she would glance towards Spike, her expression softening into something that Lindsey would even call confusion, but always her gaze would bounce towards the trio again within seconds. Lindsey reluctantly turned back around before he allowed himself to be blindsided by a demon or ran into a pole or something. He was not sure which of those would be the more embarrassing option.
"Hell of a lady you have there," Lindsey said to Angel in a low voice and swore that he felt Illyria's gaze twitch against the back of his neck.
Angel only glanced over his shoulder for a second, but Lindsey saw the subtle tightening of his face before he could tuck it away again behind the calm marble mask that Lindsey was beginning to hate. "She has her own unique talents," Angel said. "And you didn't know the person who was in the body before."
Lindsey's memories of Winifred Burkle came down to a half-dozen glances and the humorlessly derisive reports carried back to him by Eve, so he supposed that Angel had him on that score. He glanced back once more at the homicidal blue crayon trailing along behind them and wondered at what sort of bond he have to share with a person before he could prefer even that pale ghost to the one who had been there before. Then again, he has also been one of the driving forces behind midwifing Darla's glorious rebirth, so maybe he shouldn't be the one to go casting stones.
"Can you get us to the portal?" Lindsey asked Angel, not daring to raise his voice above a whisper even though the street was as deserted as one in a spaghetti Western just before the bullets began to fly. The moment that he had stepped outside of the apartment building at the site of the last fight, he had been mobbed. Tonight, he had yet to see so much as a stray cat. The city felt changed to Lindsey in a way that he was not certain he could give proper voice to, except that it was making his skin crawl so hard that it was in danger of sliding off and falling in a puddle around his feet. He had spent five years of his life able to pick out the outline of the Wolfram and Hart offices from the horizon at a glance, knew its location in the city by heart. A year and a half before he would have laughed in the face of anyone who would have told him that he could be so deeply unsettled by its absence. But, Lindsey reflected, a year and a half before the world had still been merely changing and not yet changed, and he had still had some scrap of solid ground left under his feet.
Lindsey blinked and swore that the city was pulsing around him, had to be, because there were deep indigo bruises coiling in the air between the buildings that was making them seem to shiver and shake. They should not be there, there was no way that they could be there, unless the city had done some serious restructuring since he had walked about the previous evening. Maybe there was a reason for there being no demons in attendance, as the laws of nature were becoming as elastic and sticky as warm taffy; maybe the demons were onto something.
"Why, Lindsey," Angel finally responded in a drawling voice that Lindsey did not like at all. It made him think that if he were to look over he would see eyes that were blazing gold rather than coffee-dark. "Haven't you figured it out yet? Get this close, and the portal finds you." He made a soft sound that Lindsey hoped was not one of amusement.
"We've got company," Spike said sharply from behind them. Illyria uttered an oath in a language whose prayer books had long since turned to dust. Lindsey thought that he heard something about 'filth' before An's scream overshadowed it. The air was filled with the rushing of wings.
"Get your sword up!" Angel yelled at Lindsey, an unnecessary order. Lindsey was already three steps ahead of him and had been ever since he heard the sound of the wings, those goddamned wings. If they ever got this city back to normal, Lindsey hesitated to think about what he would do at the sound of a flock of pigeons taking off. The sword twisted in his hand as his muscles seemed to take on a life of their own, dipping up and reflecting a sullen orange glare from the remains of a building. A shadow blotted out the glare and sent Lindsey ducking away before his brain had a chance to catch up with him. The instinct saved his life.
A hawk-like black talon closed on the air where Lindsey had been standing less than a breath before, drawing a shudder from him so strong that it nearly threw him down to his knees. The Guardian hissed from its hovering point in the air, four wings beating furiously in tandem and sulphur-yellow eyes glaring at Lindsey in a way that left him with now doubt that he was being recognized. The sound of the monster's fangs rasping against each other was like knives being sharpened as he wheeled around for another try. Lindsey stumbled back and felt his shoulders collide with Angel's own. He could feel the dippings of twistings of Angel's sword reflected in his own blade.
Angel turned his head so that he was speaking directly into Lindsey's ear. "Protect them," Angel ordered, throwing out his free hand to indicate the kids, who were standing and watching the goings-on with stricken expressions. A second Guardian dipped low, aiming for attack, and then wound up coming even lower still as Angel's sword too of two of its wings at one blow and brought it screaming to the ground. A blue streak of motion darted towards, and there was a cracking noise as the Guardian's neck was broken so hard that the head was almost torn from the body. Illyria darted away again.
Lindsey nodded, hoping that Angle would be able to see the gesture from his peripheral vision, and turned to rush across the yards of distance separating him from the kids. How much of the attack was motivated in order to take Lindsey back to his proper place and how much by a desire to protect the necrotic new order of things Lindsey could not say, and he did not have the time to ponder. A dark shadow filled the air over his head and he ducked, thrusting the sword up like he would any other talisman to ward off evil. It was close enough to the truth, as the sudden weight which reverberated down the blade and into his arms told him that he had struck something far more substantial than empty night. The Guardian screamed in a high, shrill voice of dying, thrashing wildly. Blood the color of squid's ink spurted down the blade and onto Lindsey's hands.
The weight of the beast coming down to earth jerked Lindsey off of his feet and very nearly took his arms out of their sockets. He refused to let go of the sword in spite of the scalding-hot stickiness covering both the blade and his hands, allowing himself to be pulled along with the Guardian as it struck the ground with a meaty thwapping sound. Lindsey used his continuing momentum to jerk his sword free and roll back to his feet with an adrenaline-fueled grace that would have left him proud in other circumstances.
Lindsey only paused to survey the corpse of hell's own pit bull for a moment before he spun away to face the next in a long line of threats, twitching away as a set of claws clicked shut close enough to his head to ruffle his hair in the breeze. This explained why the lesser demons were nowhere in attendance, at the very least, though an eerie sense of sliding still crossed across his skin. It was as if the very nature of reality was experiencing a labor pang before ejecting a new and even bloodier version of itself and Lindsey's human sense were only now struggling to catch up. The sight of An, Alexei, and Fideo standing and staring up at the sky with expressions of awe and even rapture did little to banish these thoughts back to the far, dark corners of Lindsey's mind where they belonged. Neither did the sly voice which whispered that Lindsey had felt these birth pangs before, oh, he knew them so very well, and he knew exactly where he was going if they were allowed to keep growing unmolested. This second realization Lindsey forced away for the sake of protecting his own sanity for a little while longer, but the first he dealt with by yelling at the kids in a voice that would have made a drill sergeant proud, "Get your damned sword up!"
Alexei flinched and looked around at Lindsey with wide, unfocused eyes like a person who had just woken up from a deep sleep and was not sure which reality he preferred yet. The other two did not so much as flinch. A Guardian swooped low, screaming out its victory cry, and Alexei's sword moved so fast that Lindsey did not think that the boy was even aware of it. A long line opened up in the Guardian's side, exposing white ribcage and the blue-gray bulge of entrails. The monster screamed and dipped away, but not before its claws had flown out in a move so fast that it made the flick of Alexei's sword look like a child playing soldier.
The boy's sunglasses were knocked away from his face and went skittering across the pavement. For one second Lindsey was horrified to see that the milky-white cast which covered the boy's eyes was actually glowing, and the faint silver light which crept out from beneath An's and Fideo's glasses would suggest that theirs were doing the same. Only for a second and maybe less, as by that point all of Lindsey's capacity for horror was being directed towards the wound which had been opened up on Alexei's face from the corner of his eye to the center of his chin. They boy's shirt was drenched in scarlet within seconds.
Lindsey lunged forward and was unable to remember later if he killed anything along the way, except to note as he reached Alexei that he was covered in more blood than he by rights should have been. He was terrified that he would reach the boy only to find his eye rendered into a mutilated and unrecognizable pulp, as there was so much blood covering Alexei's face that Lindsey could not from a distance tell how much damage had been done. An and Fideo had not moved and continued to stare at the violence around them with moonstruck expressions.
"What in the bloody hell is wrong with them?" Spike had long since given up any pretense of humanity. His voice when he spoke was nearly obliterated beneath the weight of his growl, and when he killed a Guardian his eyes were gleaming as yellow as the monster's own.
"I don't know!" Lindsey yelled back. He did not dare set down his sword but ran his free hand over Alexei's face instead, saying the boy's name over and over again as he wiped away as much of the blood as he was able. Lindsey's hand was encased in a scarlet glove up to his elbow in less than a minute, and he had no idea how Alexei was managing to stay on his feet. "Alexei!" Lindsey was beginning to give serious thought to leaning back and slapping him when Alexei blinked, shuddered, and turned his head to stare at Lindsey with a slow trickle of recognition coming back into his expression.
"I'm bleeding," Alexei said to Lindsey, slowly and as if he were imparting a great truth that he had spent a long time turning over in his mind before he was able to render a judgment on it. His eye had not been destroyed, at least. Lindsey could see its silver glow blazing stronger than ever out of the mess that had been made out of the rest of the boy's face. Lindsey was not sure that this was any better, as he was beginning to get the feeling that Alexei's eye would have continued to shine even if it had been pulled form its socket and crushed into unrecognizability, like the body of a firefly.
"Yeah, kid," Lindsey said cautiously. "You sure are." He paused to deliver a glancing blow to a Guardian who was skirting a little too close in the air above them. "So why don't you just-"
"I really should stop that," Alexei interrupted, and closed his eyes. The air seemed first to dance and then to shiver. Lindsey once again got the impression of reality shuddering, of old giving way before new. When it had settled again, the torrent of blood running down from Alexei's face had become a trickle. As Lindsey watched, the jagged edges of the wound then pressed themselves together, being held by a line of stitches that he could not see. Alexei opened his eyes again and gave Lindsey a beatific smile that made every inch of his body go cold in the span of time between one breath and the next.
"We can hear it singing," An drifted up to his elbow and whispered. She pulled her sunglasses away from her face slowly, as a sleepwalker might. Her eyes were wide and startled; beneath the silvery-white glaze that covered them Lindsey could see that her pupils were dilated to enormous proportions. "Oh, God, it's horrible." An influx of sudden tears choked her voice and made her sound as if she was going to be sick.
"The rest of its tunes aren't much better." Lindsey snapped his mouth closed as the buildings across the street began to shudder and there came the unmistakable sound of scales rubbing against brick. The small hairs on Lindsey's body all stood at attention as one. He did not need to turn to know what color they eyes peering out at him would be.
Angel paused long enough to glance over Lindsey's shoulder for him. His face became set and grim within seconds. When this vampire had come to be called the one with the angelic face, Lindsey thought, the ones who named him had surely meant the avenging kind. "Get the kids to the portal," Angel ordered, making a quick and mostly futile effort to shake blood and bits of flesh off of his blade. He was so covered in gore across the rest of his body that it hardly made a difference. "Illyria!" She paused in the middle of an energetic dismemberment long enough to look at him. "You still holding a grudge about losing your kingdom? The people who replaced it are that way." Angel jerked his thumb in the direction of the bloated purple spider hanging only a short distance away.
A smile broke out across Illyria's face. She dragged her arm across her face to wipe the excess blood away and said, "Excellent." Illyria rose to her feet and was starting forward when Angel cupped her elbow.
"Those kids have a better chance of stopping the chaos than you do."
Illyria pulled her arm out of Angel's grip rather more tolerantly than Lindsey thought she would have before he had died and the world had changed. "I remain my own ruler. Your orders are meaningless to me."
"But you still know that I'm right." Illyria made a sniffing noise that Angel apparently chose to take as assent. He turned back towards Lindsey. "Get them there."
Lindsey gestured towards the waiting hulk behind him. "Soul eater." There was more concern bleeding into his voice than he intended, and Angel and Lindsey both blinked in the wake of it.
Angel's smile was small, taut, and glittering with knives across its entire surface. "I promise I'll kick the entire way down."
Lindsey nodded and leaned over to seize An's free hand in his own. Both sets of fingers were slick with a mixture of blood and sweat. "Let's go meet your destiny, kiddo. I hope you read those tea leaves right." He tugged her over to where an impatient Illyria was waiting for them, and like iron filings to a magnet Alexei and Fideo trailed along behind her.
"Oh!" An kept saying in a startled voice as Lindsey's fingers tightened around her fingers to the point of turning his knuckles white. "Oh! Oh!" It took Lindsey several seconds to realize that she must be reading his memories, and only a second beyond that to realize that he did not care. If it ended this nightmare once and for all then let her have it all, from the moment that he had learned what real deprivation was to his first adolescent fantasy about wealth to the point when he had signed on the dotted line and realized how much of the rest was fueled by pure and unfettered power. Let her have it and damn it all to hell, and him along with it if that's what An really wanted, if that was what it took to bring a halt to all of this.
"I will kill them for you," Illyria said as Lindsey reached her with his homicidal ducklings in tow. Spike was still fighting alongside Angel. Illyria looked over at them with an expression that Lindsey would have interpreted as worry if it had appeared on any other face before she reached up and pulled a Guardian from the sky with the same ease with which Lindsey might have done to the same with a sparrow. The force with which it struck the ground buckled the sidewalk. Lindsey leaped backwards to avoid being splattered. Illyria did not bother to move but touched her stomach briefly afterwards, like a person experiencing nausea. Lindsey wondered if maybe he was giving her too much credit with that one.
"Thanks," Lindsey said to Illyria, who inclined her chin downwards in acknowledgment. An switched to gripping Lindsey's hand fiercely in her own rather than passively allowing herself to be led at that moment. Her eyes had begun to glow with such a bright light that they looked as if they had been plucked out and replaced with silver dollars instead. Lindsey thought that it was even possible that she was feeding off of him. He shocked himself and, if the twitch that ran through her was any indication, An as well by thinking that if it got the world back it might even an acceptable sacrifice. "Lead the way."
An eerie smile passed over Illyria's face. Lindsey thought that there were traces of Fred in that smile. That made it worse as her bright blue replacement turned and loped swiftly away. Lindsey had to break into an sprint in order to keep up, dragging An along with him and hearing Alexei and Fideo clattering along on the sidewalk behind her as they struggled to keep up. He thought that Illyria was probably modulating her pace so as not to leave them completely behind. Lindsey was grateful for it, as his day of rest had left him feeling more or less like a human being again, but within minutes spears were being driven into his side and his lungs were burning as if he were forcing them to breathe gelatin rather than real air.
It was not him, or at the very least it was not only him. The air itself that surrounded him was once again taking on a thick, pregnant feeling, potential only waiting for reality to be torn away so that it could begin to work again. Lindsey knew this feeling well. He had experienced it firsthand in the interminable months and years that ran together in a blur of dreams every time that he had managed to sleep since being pulled out of it. He fought to hold back the gibbering panic that had hooked its claws in at the base of his spine and was struggling now to make its way upwards to take control.
Tethered to him by the iron grip that their hands were maintaining on one another, An made a small moaning sound. If anything, her hold on Lindsey tightened even further afterwards, until his hand began to ache. She sounded like a dog panting beside him, a sound that was echoed by Alexei and Fideo only a few paces behind, and her eyes were now glowing so brightly that they could serve as headlamps in the gloom. The light that she threw off made Lindsey think of nuclear waste. He shivered before he could stop himself and then told himself that he did not need to now what was fueling that glow, any more than he needed to know what caused the faint smile which crossed An's face in its reflected glory.
A scream rolled out from the air above him. Lindsey twitched out of his reverie, stared up at the sky, and swore explosively in the split-second before he was forced to act. He yelled an inarticulate warning at Illyria and watched her spin around before he hurled himself backwards. Lindsey released An and shoved her towards Alexei and Fideo. The three of them went down in a confused tangle of limbs, while the silver glow coming from their eyes never wavered.
Lindsey struck the cement with his back only a few yards away from where the biggest Guardian that he had ever seen came slamming down to the cement. Lindsey put up his arm to prevent himself from being blinded and felt blood running down his biceps from the reopened cuts on his elbows. The Guardian's head snapped around at the fresh scent, its nostrils fluttering and sending out plumes of sulphur every time that it exhaled. It was the pit bull, and with every twitch of its body the monster made it clear that Lindsey was nothing more than a can of Alpo. Lindsey pulled his legs back under him until he had settled into an uneasy crouch and readjusted his sweaty grip on the sword. He kept his movements slow and soft so as not to startle the monster, even though it continued to watch every move that he made. Let the gliding movements be a way to re-center himself, then, and to regain control over a heart that seemed determined to leap into his throat with every beat. The smell of sulphur was thick and rank.
"Illyria!" Lindsey yelled for help as the Guardian lunged forward in a blur of speed that defied the human eye to follow. Oh, but Lindsey already had so much experience in dealing with these monsters. He probably knew their moves better than they did. "Come on, you bastard, come on," Lindsey whispered, and dropped his crouch to roll hard to the left.
The Guardian moved swiftly to cope with its prey's change in direction, its claws scrabbling wildly across the cement and leaving deep grooves in the cement, but it still wound up having to slow its course in order to turn. That was all that Lindsey needed. He scrambled back up to his feet, whipped the sword around in a position that more closely resembled a spear, and let the monster's own momentum impale it through the neck. The clip that the Guardian was moving at drove the blade through the flesh almost to the hilt. The blood that poured forth still steamed.
Lindsey pulled his lips back from his teeth and refused to let his grip on the sword waver, even as the blood scalded his hands and as he was driven back across the street by a beast that had been weaned on death and so refused to give in to its own easily. The Guardian snaked its head out to its full length and thrashed its head from side to side, emitting a high whistling noise that may have been a scream. Lindsey thought that his sword was now resting in the monster's trachea. He set his teeth until the noise of their grinding was the loudest sound in his head and felt himself skidding backwards against the pavement. Lindsey rolled with the Guardian's throes as well as he was able, realizing that to take the stubborn course and hold his ground would at best result in a pair of broken arms and might even end with limbs being ripped from their sockets. Hell would still freeze over, though-and he was willing to admit that this was a distinct possibility-before he let go of that sword.
"Illyria!" Lindsey yelled again, his voice cracking on the last syllable as the air grew thick and slimy in his throat. Magic at its very most tangible, and every bit as deadly and elegant in the right hands as the sword that Lindsey refused to relinquish. There were pragmatic reasons for the darkest rituals being performed by creatures that had long since shed off the need to breathe, if they could properly be said to have it in the first place.
Lindsey did not number among those creatures. He did his best to ignore the growing heaviness in his lungs, the panic that alternately screamed and pleaded that the best thing to do was run while he had the chance. A few struggling breaths helped him to hold onto his calm. He was alive, his heart was still beating in his chest, and as long as those things held true then he could not be claimed. Lindsey tried once more to yell for help and fell into a coughing fit instead as the air became more like struggling to breathe underwater with every passing second.
The Guardian snaked its head out to the full length allowed by the blade that Lindsey was struggling so hard to maintain his grip on. Lindsey was blasted with damp, sulphurous air and was made extremely glad that the ability to breathe fire did not number among the Guardian's talents. He was never again going to doubt anyone who told him that smell was the strongest sense tied to memory, not with the hard knots of gooseflesh which were rising up over every available inch of his skin.
Lindsey's grip slipped in the blood and the sweat covering the handle of his sword, and he came very close to amputating several of his own fingers. No creature could fight forever with three feet of steel slammed through their throat, but the Guardian was giving it a damned good try all the same. It bared its teeth at Lindsey through the ghastly spikes that protected its face from injury.
Lindsey did not have the spare air to yell for Illyria to get her ass back from wherever she had run off to, so he focused instead on struggling to keep enough oxygen circulating through his lungs to maintain consciousness and on his face well enough to remain in the fight. Meanwhile, he swore that if he ever saw Angel again the two of them were going to have to have a chat about what constituted reliable backup. He twisted the sword, hard, and the Guardian screamed. Now it was Lindsey's turn to bare his teeth into something that almost managed to be a smile.
His legs were just beginning to wobble on him when Illyria came back into his field of vision so quickly that Lindsey's eye could barely follow her. There was quite a bit of red and inky-black mixed in among the blue, testament that at the very least she had not been having a picnic while she was missing. Lindsey supposed that he could forgive her, then, especially as Illyria's foot struck against the Guardian's neck with a force so great that it was difficult to believe that it could have come from Fred Burkle's tiny body. All three of them were snapped to the side as one tangled creature. Lindsey was not carried along the whole way, though; the blade caught upon the Guardian's spine and with an audible snapping sound went no further. The noise of the sword breaking was accompanied by a wet gurgle as the Guardian's throat was torn up wide and gaping.
Lindsey staggered to his feet and backed up a few steps with the remains of the sword in his hand, watching as Illyria tumbled to the cement with the finally dying Guardian. She scrambled back quickly to avoid the panicky fluttering of its wings. The Guardian twisted its head around, seeking an enemy that it could at least reach, and if Illyria had not twisted at the last moment one of the spikes protruding from the monster's muzzle would have destroyed her eyes.
Lindsey was not one to argue with sudden inspiration when it came to him. He lunged forward while the Guardian was still caught up in its blue distraction, ducking a blow that would have split his face from chin to hairline, and forced the remainder of the sword past the protective spikes and as deeply into the Guardian's eye as he could manage. Maybe it couldn't exactly be called a sword any longer, but it made a damned fine dagger.
The Guardian wheeled back around on him, screaming, but it was not nearly as fast as it had once been. Lindsey was already leaping out of the way long before the moment came when he would have been in real danger. One good lunge was all that the monster could manage before it fell back down to the street, panting and staring at him with the eye that was left. Illyria used the lull to scramble out from the chaos of rapidly beating wings and came without a word to stand by Lindsey's side. They stood without speaking for several moments, watching as the pool of steaming black blood around the Guardian's head grew larger and its struggles finally ceased. Lindsey noticed that Illyria had a deep, jagged wound across her collarbone that was already beginning to cease bleeding. Not from her tussle with the Guardian less than a minute before, then.
"It grows," Illyria said suddenly. Lindsey knew that she was not referring to the cooling corpse of the Guardian. "It moves."
"And it never did that before?" Lindsey's voice sounded harsh to his own ears, as if he had spent the night drinking whiskey, but it was becoming easier to breathe. After what Illyria had told him, this was only half the comfort that it should have been.
Illyria shook her head. Pieces of her hair swung into the bloody mess that had been made out of her clavicle and stayed there. "Never. Not before they came."
Lindsey was less surprised than he supposed he should have been. The trio had been written in prophecy since before this scheme had been more than a gleam in a Senior Partner's eye. It made sense that whatever forces wrote these things were at least going to aim high.
Lindsey turned towards the place where he had shoved An when the situation had started to turn ugly, intending to rouse her out of her stupor long enough to get to the portal and finish the business that they had started. He replaced her name with a creative bout of swearing when he saw only empty pavement instead.
"They were gone when I returned," Illyria said from behind his shoulder. Lindsey spun on her. Something on his face must have offended her, because a deep and defensive line appeared between her eyes. "It is not my duty to watch over them for you," she snapped.
Arguing with angry former gods did not rank high on Lindsey's list of wise things to do. He ran his hands through his hair and grimaced at the equal-opportunity mess that had been ground all the way into his scalp before he turned back to the place where An, Alexei, and Fideo had last been. A few quarter-sized drops of blood were the only proof that they had been there at all. "They could be anywhere."
Illyria made a huffing noise. Lindsey had the feeling that every human she came into contact with was subject to that 'you are too stupid to live, but I will allow it because I'm feeling generous' stare from her from time to time. He didn't waste time in being offended. "Where would you go, if you were designed for one purpose only and finally found yourself close enough to finish it?"
"Right." Lindsey turned back around to face her. "How do you feel about killing a very large amount of demons in a very small amount of time?"
Illyria stared at him and then, bit by bit, split her lips into a smile.
All around them, the air was growing thick again.
End Part Twelve