Chapter 1
The rain began to drizzle from the dark night sky and Angel cursed quietly. This was the last thing he needed. The rain would wash away the sent and that's all he had to go on now; the scent of her blood. He walked slowly, worried he might miss some small sign of her whereabouts. It had been hours since she had died but the creature had dragged her along, almost as if he was playing with him. The voice in his head that said this was a trap had gone from a whisper to a scream, but he had no choice but to follow. They had spent months tracking this thing. Fourteen kills in three months, all horribly mutilated and their eyes and teeth gone as well as most of their blood. He had also lost four of his best fighters. That's why he was out here alone on this dark, depressing night. He couldn't risk anyone else. There had been a lot of fuss about his decision of course. His team had a tendency to get a little overprotective of him. But in truth he had missed this, missed the simplicity of the hunt. His life had gotten increasingly complicated the past decade and lately he had seriously begun to fear he was losing his mind.
A police-siren roared passed him and he swiftly stepped into the shadows. The NYPD had been very nervous about the presence of him and his team lately. Over the years they had developed a delicate balance with the police but the trust he had acquired had been badly damaged the past months. A detective, that turned out to be a demon, had spent a great deal of time making it look like Angel had something to do with the murders. Unfortunately he managed to kill himself before they had a chance to ask why. A nagging feeling told him it all connected somehow but he couldn't put the pieces together yet. Suddenly the scent hit him like a sledgehammer and he froze. She was close. He inhaled deeply and turned his head slowly to locate a direction. Then he heard it; a snarl and a strange swooshing sound that came from an alley across the street. He made the distance in three long leaps then stopped dead at the edge of the alley. As he peered around the corner he could see something moving around at the end and he knew instinctively this was the creature he had been hunting. Careful not to make a sound he drew the sharp sword he had been shielding under his long coat. Even though every muscle in his body ached for a fight he forced himself to move slowly. He had been chasing this thing too long to make any mistakes now.
As he moved in quietly, avoiding the thrash and debris scattered on the ground, he spotted the large creature furiously hunched over its kill. It was wearing a ragged coat and the hood was pulled over its head, covering its face. He tried to get as close as possible before he was detected and there was just a few feet between them when the creature slowly rose. There was no time to think. Without hesitation Angel unleashed his mass of muscles on the large predator but as his sword passed into the creature's body it felt as if it penetrated nothing but air. He pulled back and shifted uneasily. Something was terribly wrong here. The creature had now risen to his full length, which was considerably taller than him, and it turned unhurriedly. There was no sound and Angel had to fight an urge to run. When the creature finally faced him he heard himself gasp in shock. He thought he had seen everything by now but this was definitely new. Instead of a face in the normal sense there was a black hole with a vortex spinning faster and faster inside. As he felt the vortex sucking him in he cursed his own stupidity. This is what he got for giving in to his inner nature! He should have listened to his friends and stayed away.
As the vortex drew him closer and closer he desperately tried to grab on to something that could keep him from vanishing into the creature. As his fingers hopelessly reached for the drainpipe there was only one thought spinning around in his mind; he could not die now. They needed him. A booming noise rose from deep within the creature and suddenly the vortex slowed down and a voice whispered in an eerie, seductive tone,
"Angelus. Angelus!" The voice cut right through his mind and he was pinned down by an invisible force. "Angelus, we're waiting for you." The voice tugged at his memory, he knew he had heard it somewhere before. The creature grew taller and taller in front of him as it went on, "Come join us, Angelus. We're waiting..."
The last words echoed in the narrow space of the alley and Angel fought hard to break free. Suddenly the creature began to convulse, thrashing this way and that. It started spinning faster and faster, becoming engulfed by its own vortex. A bright flash of light temporarily blinded him and he fell to the ground. When he could see again the creature was gone.
Kaya fingered one of her knifes nervously. The thought of him out there alone, fighting God knows what, made her hearts beat so fast she was sure the others could see them through her blouse. But Steve kept staring at the computer in his lap and Toy had his focus on the street outside the car window. Steve's computer had told them that this creature was somewhere in this neighborhood but that's about as much as their super expensive techno-gadget could do for them. For the rest they had to count on luck. For all their calm expression though she knew the guys were as worried as she was. Before Angel had set out on his private hunt they had done just about anything to stop him and if she thought there was a chain strong enough to hold him she would have tied him up herself. But their boss could be very stubborn when he wanted to. Normally she would never question his judgment but since that little Slayer tramp ran off seven months ago he had gotten increasingly erratic. She had only known Angel for a little more than a year and she had never met the Slayer but from the stories she had heard their relationship had been anything but healthy. But it wasn't until she disappeared that she realized how big an influence the Slayer really was. There had been a lot of sleepless nights lately when she had tried to understand Angel and to figure out why he did what he did. But maybe it was because she was only half human that she just couldn't understand how someone as powerful and strong as Angel could let himself be so weakened by a woman. Especially one with a ridiculous name like Buffy. The very concept of a warrior with the name Buffy seemed to her to be a contradiction in itself.
Suddenly the driver hit the breaks and the car came to a screeching halt. Through her window she could see a bright flash of light coming from an alley not far from where they were and with pounding hearts she threw the door open. She could still remember with vivid clarity how Angel had charged through the gates of her prison and torn off the chains restraining her like they were made of paper. Her father had kept her in chains since he had stolen her away from her mother at the age of three. For almost a hundred years he had told her she was a freak, unclean and beyond salvation. He would make her kill to feed for his own amusement. And sometimes when he had parties he used to bring her out of her dungeon and paraded her around like a joke and they would all laugh. She had her mother's body and for some reason that had been fine when her parents had mated but a daughter in human form was the ugliest thing imaginable. She had her fathers eyes though, and his physic. Two hearts, three lungs and a metabolism that made her look like twenty when she was close to a hundred. But Angel had rescued her from eternal imprisonment and torture and brought her here instead. For that she would always owe him but more than that she cared about him in ways she had never thought possible. It wasn't until he had looked her in the eyes with an expression of total sincerity and told her that she was beautiful that she actually believed it. Believed that her slender body, long black hair and those big lumps on her chest where not a joke. She had cried like a baby against his chest that night and the memory still brought color to her cheeks. But he never spoke of it again or gave as much as a hint that he intended to take advantage. A true gentleman. But now her hero was in the worst sort of danger and all she could do was hope he was still alive.
When she reached the alley she looked around frantically. Toy was close behind her and when she stopped he almost crashed into her. He tried to go around her, to rush in, the way he always did but she grabbed his shirt and held him back. He gave her an angry stare but she ignored him and focused on the alley. It was dark and all she could see was vague shapes and shadows. Suddenly something moved towards them and she instinctively reached for a knife. Then she saw Angel stumble out of the darkness and she exhaled with relief, realizing she had been holding her breath.
"Hey, what the hell happened, boss?" Toy blurted out. "Did you get him?" As usual Toy took no notice to Angel's obvious exhaustion and Kaya could have slapped him but she didn't want to cause more problems. Angel on the other hand just stared vacantly in front of him as if they weren't even there. His eyes were filled with a kind of dread she had never seen in him before and the thought that there was something out there that even scared Angel made her tremble all over.
"Angel, what's wrong?" she asked fearfully, making her voice as soft as she could. But he walked past her without answering.
When they had gotten to the car he walked past it without noticing so she gently put her hand on his arm. To her astonishment he flinched as if her hand had burnt him. He threw her a look of anger and resentment, things she had never seen in his eyes before. She stared up at him in bewilderment. What had happened to him? He regained his posture seconds later, even managed a small, apologetic smile.
"I'm sorry, Kaya." he said, putting a comforting hand on her shoulder. "I'm not sure what happened exactly, but I think the creature is gone, whatever it was." He paused for a moment, his face unreadable. When he spoke again his voice was almost a whisper. "I need to be alone for a while." He hesitated, hung his head, eyeing the pavement and avoiding her eyes. Then he added quietly, "I'll see you tomorrow." She could feel him wrestling with something but she wasn't sure what to do. She knew what it was like to have a demon within, even though hers had never been quite as homicidal as Angel's. But she understood the hard reality he had to face everyday, needing to redeem what he had once been and keep the demon from surfacing again, knowing all too well what could happen if it did. But ever since Buffy had vanished that night in Washington, his internal struggle seemed to get harder every day. And tonight for the first time, she feared he might one day lose the battle with the demon within. She fought the sense of growing horror, as she watched him slowly walk away into the night without another word.
Angel pulled his black coat closer around him. Not that the cold bothered him, it was more a feeble attempt to soothe the raging torrent of thoughts racing through his mind. It didn't really work though. The voice kept ringing in his ears. He knew he had heard it before but he also knew that the memory was tied in with images he had spent the better part of two centuries trying to forget. He hunched his shoulders, sending out a clear message to anyone who was watching that he was in no mood to talk. All the things that had made him fall in love with this city over the years, the streetlights glittering against the night sky, the blinking neon-signs, the cheerful sounds of people laughing and singing, none of that seemed to penetrate the darkness in his mind tonight. At least it had stopped raining.
In the months after Dawn's death everyone had done their own research separately, trying to discover who had set them up and why. At first the answers they had found seemed so unlikely, unthinkable, preposterous even, that neither of them had wanted to admit it could be true. It wasn't until Xander had snapped and gone into a ranting tirade in his office one day that he had decided to get the others together on a conference call to compare notes. As it turned out they had all found different pieces of the puzzle and when they put it all together it became far more frightening than any of them had expected.
The legend, or at least they had assumed it had been a legend, stated that before the existence of mankind Gods and demons fought for position of earth. In a massive showdown the Gods were trapped and forced to surrender. But before the demons could lure them of their powers, the Gods infused a crystal with all their might and then trusted a brave knight to hide it. The knight honored his mission and the crystal stayed hidden for thousands of generations. Then one day an old sorcerer by the name of Tam unearthed the crystal and set about to unlock its secrets. When he understood that the crystal could give its owner powers of the Gods, to rule over heaven and earth, life and death in this dimension and beyond, he initially meant to return it to safety. But eventually human greed took over and he decided to use it for his own purposes. According to the legend the sorcerer did gain access to the powers within the crystal but it didn't take long before he was overpowered by his new abilities and went mad. He brought drought, ice and tidal waves in his wake and killed almost all of mankind in the process. After that the story ended and there were no known accounts of what happened to the crystal. Until now.
Rumors in the dark whispered that a powerful demon had found this crystal. And according to calculations done by the High Priestess in the coven where Willow practiced, the exact star-alignments to evoke the powers of the crystal would be in place soon. It only happened every few hundred years and it was a small window of opportunity. There where allegedly only two ways to tap into its powers, either one did it in a parallel dimension, which would be far riskier but also provide more power, or it was done in a very exact location somewhere on earth, although no one seemed to be able to figure out exactly where. But it was the parallel dimension that had gotten everyone so freaked out. There were strong indications that hundreds of high level demons had disappeared in the last year. Not dead but simply vanished, leaving their minions to run around aimlessly. The rumor was that the demons had been summoned to a parallel dimension where a powerful demon called Dacq'ilion attempted to use the crystal to become God.
Spike was the one that had brought the final peace of the puzzle to the table; the whereabouts of an amulet that, if used properly, would give the location of the entrance to this parallel dimension. When it became clear that reaching this dimension in time might be the only way to stop the demons gaining control over the worlds and heavens, Spike had insisted he should be the one to go and retrieve it from the demon nest in the deepest jungles of South America. Xander had then insisted, with equal fervor, that he should go too. And Giles suggested that they call Riley, now a decorated General in charge of his own special security force, for backup.
Willow had tried to contact Buffy but no one had much hope she would respond. Initially he was supposed to go to South America as well but just as he had been ready to leave the killings had begun. It had been decided that he better stay and take care of it, leaving Spike, Xander and Riley to venture the jungle without him. It was obviously a trap to keep him from going but he had to trust that Spike could handle this without him. He had rarely failed before. At least Xander was there to keep him from getting sidetracked.
Lost in his own brooding, it took a while before he noticed the scruffy looking guy that followed closely behind him. Suddenly the man darted passed him, turned quickly and stuck a small blade under his chin.
"Give me your money or I'll kill you!" the man hissed angrily, displaying all the telltale signs of a drug addict bordering on withdrawal. Angel looked at the man calmly. He almost felt like laughing. Almost. With vampire speed and strength it took less than a second to disarm the man, twisting his arm behind his back. He was in no mood to argue tonight so he simply whispered calmly into the man's ear,
"Walk away you fool, or I'll make your worst nightmare come to life." He squeezed the man's arm a little tighter, just to make a point. Then he heard the crack and the man began to scream with pain. He let him go, appalled by his own actions. He hadn't planed to break the man's arm, just get him to leave him alone. Now he stood there staring as the man ran away like the Devil was after him. He closed his eyes for a moment, trying to regain control over his emotions. He hadn't meant to hurt him, it was just that he hadn't fought humans in so long, he had forgotten how easily they break. He really hadn't meant it!
He started walking again, this time picking up the pace a bit. He wanted to get home. Hide. Forget. He tried to focus on the things around him; people in their fancy dresses going to some party somewhere, the half-naked prostitutes huddling in street-corners, occasional police cars going by. It didn't really work though. He could still feel the smell of the man's fear. It triggered something deep within him and he clenched his fists. This couldn't be happening. The voice kept taunting him, encouraging him to let go, to set the demon free. He wouldn't of course if he could help it, but that thing inside him was getting stronger, he could feel it. Ever since the moment he saw Buffy leaning over the bloody remains of Dawn he had found it increasingly difficult to live with the pain. He knew he had to atone for all the horrors he had caused in his past but as much as he tried he always felt that he caused as much pain now as ever before. He had lost Dawn and it had hurt Buffy in ways he didn't have words for, and it was tearing him apart. He should have protected her and he had failed. Knowing Buffy was in pain was worse than his own pain, in fact it was even worse than any hell dimension he had ever been to. And that was the problem. If he surrendered to his demon half the pain, the guilt, the fear, would all go away. He would be free. He didn't deserve that kind of peace, but he wasn't sure how much longer he could hold on.
With all the emotional turmoil tearing through him he didn't recognize it at first, the subtle tapping at the back of his mind. When he noticed it, he almost put his fist in the wall next to him. This was the last thing he needed, especially tonight of all nights.
"What do you want?" he shot the question through his mind, not bothering to hide the irritation he felt.
"Wow, did I catch you at a bad time?" It was Willow's voice, deep inside his head. This was her way of communicating when she felt it was urgent and she wanted to make sure no one else could eavesdrop. He hated it though.
"Just get to the point, will you." He toned down his anger a bit. Willow was a friend. His mood tonight wasn't her fault. Her voice was warm but hesitant when she answered him.
"I...we need you here. Soon. As in now." He sighed heavily. He should have known.
"Have they found the amulet?"
"Not yet, but they will. They have to." She hesitated again, as if she was afraid to give too much away. "We think we have found a way to kill Dacq'ilion. But we need you." He stopped short and a grin found its way to his lips. It felt right somehow, as if this was what he had been waiting for all his life.
"I'll be there." Strangely enough though, that answer didn't seem to make her particularly happy.
"Good." was all she said before she left his mind. He could feel her leaving and shook off the sense of sadness she had left behind. He picked up his cell-phone from his coat pocket and pressed the speed dial.
"Kaya, get the plane ready. We're leaving for Austria. Tonight."