Xander backed into a corner of the museum as six of the ugliest things he had ever seen came lurching over the floor toward him. He whispered a prayer to anything that would listen to get him out of the corner he had worked himself into, and cried out as one took a swipe at him.
“How’d you guess that as soon as I leave Sunnydale behind, something else comes to make me wish I’d never left?” Xander spoke of his incident in Oxnard, a small town…
Town?! His mind screamed at him. Town?! That wasn’t a town! It doesn’t even classify as a hamlet it’s so damn small!
… just outside of Sunnydale. His car had literally fallen apart, with a deciding final thump as the engine block chose to rust free of its bolts. He had spent the next month working as a barman and odd-job man at ‘The Fabulous Ladies Nightclub’ until fate decided that Xander Harris had not been it’s scapegoat enough, and dumped him with having to fill in for one of the male strippers who phoned in sick. At least it had been a morale boost to his fragile manhood with all the money he had had shoved into whatever the hell that flimsy piece of material they supposedly called a g-string he had got…
Focus! His mind again reminded him, as one of the birds… things… goats? Took another swing at him. Shut the hell up and FOCUS!
“OK, OK…” muttered Xander.
He looked up as the stained glass ceiling of the central roof of the museum suddenly shattered. The beasts that had been tormenting him took to their wings as the roof came showering down, and all zoomed toward the large hole.
The next thing Xander knew, a white haired man in a long dark red coat came through the window head first, with no safety harness. He seemed in no rush to meet the floor however; as he calmly fired shots out of two pistols, one black, one white, taking whatever the hell those things were down with one or two shots apiece.
The monsters screamed as they fell from the air, and began to dissolve, slowly at first, but gaining in speed until there was no sign of them left.
Xander looked to where the madman should now be pancake on the floor to see that he had not yet landed, and was still falling head first, albeit at a speed that indicated he had a levitation spell or something.
As he got to within five feet of the floor, he suddenly twisted his body in mid air and the spell was broken. He handed on both feet, and bent at the knees, until his right touched the floor. He was resting his head on his left knee and his pistol barrels on the floor either side of his feet.
Xander stepped forward, to thank him, and make sure he was alright. “Uh… are you OK?” he asked tentatively.
The white haired mans head shot up, and both of his pistols were instantly pointed at Xander. “Who are you?” he asked with no pleasantries.
Xander back-pedalled rapidly, but the man followed keeping a set distance between them. “Er… Xander Harris, most recently of Oxnard, in sunny California. And you don’t want to know what happened there. His mouth went into overdrive, rambling any and all things he could think of to stop from being shot.
Quirking an eyebrow, the man turned away, holstering his twin pistols as he did. “Why are you here, now?”
“I was just passing through, though this place might be interesting for a while… road trip, you know…”
“You come to a Museum of Ancient Mythology and Demonology for fun? Are you nuts?”
Xander pulled a face. “I had a… friend… who was very into this stuff, kind of got me interested.”
“No. You would be interested anyway, I think.” The man turned back. “I’m Dante.”
Xander nodded, and extended his hand. “You already know mine; Xander.”
Dante looked at Xander's hand, and shook his head. “I don’t do the handshake thing.”
Xander pulled his hand back uncertainly. “Oh… right.”
Dante walked over to a display case. It happened to be the one that Xander was looking at just as the demons… monsters… had attacked him. “I wonder what they want this for?” he said to himself quietly.
Xander stood next to him and looked down at the case. It contained a very fine sword, at least as long as he was tall. You would have to be a giant of a man just to lift it, never mind use it effectively. “What is it?” asked Xander with awe.
Dante looked at him. “I gave this sword to the museum… it has too many bad memories…”
“Great, but that doesn’t answer my question.”
Dante narrowed his eyes, and for a second, Xander wondered if he had overstepped the mark. Then Dante smiled slowly. “It’s my sword… or my old one anyway. It also belonged to my father. I should have known not to leave it visible to the world…”
“So…” Xander began, but stopped as Dante brought his fist down on the case, and the tempered glass shattered like it was fine crystal dropped on the floor. Dante gripped the blade, and lifted it out. Xander gripped his wrist, examining his hand, frightened that he had damaged it badly.
“Are you crazy?” he asked, before looking down at Dante’s hand. It was closing up, blood flowing back into the wound, flesh knitting and skin finally closing like it had never been broken. “Whoa!” Xander backed off, “what are you?”
Dante looked unconcerned. “Nothing of importance.”
Xander pressed the point. “Nothing I know heals that fast except…” he paled “…a vampire.” He looked suspicious. “You not a vamp, are you? ‘Cause if you are, I know the Slayer!”
Dante looked amused, and shook his head. “I’m not a vampire.” He looked at the sword, and swung it over his shoulder, into a scabbard on his back. “I’m something much, much more powerful… the difference is, I hunt what no one else can… I hunt my own kind…”
“So you’re a demon? And a demon hunter?” Xander shook his head, “That has to suck.”
Dante fixed him with a dirty look. “Please. Half demon. My mother was mortal, just like…” he trailed off.
“Just like what?” asked Xander, curiosity peaked.
“I was going to say, just like you father… well, your biological one, at any rate…”
“Hey!” exclaimed Xander, “How’d you know that!?”
Dante turned away. “Doesn’t matter.”
Suddenly spinning round, Dante took out his white pistol and aimed it at Xander.
“Hey! What’d I do?” he shouted, holding up his hands, and back-pedalling.
Dante looked to the side and fired. The bullet passed by Xander's ear and buried itself into the wall, after boring through another demon that was sneaking up on Xander, intent on a quick meal.
Xander turned round, and saw the corpse. “Uh… thanks?” he said weakly.
Dante spun again, and whipped out his second pistol. With arms pointing sideways in opposite directions, Dante ran forward, firing like a madman as monsters came out of the walls. They carried large scythes, and cackled maniacally.
Xander stood frozen, until one zoned in on him, at which point he started running, with a scythe swinging back and forward behind him, inches from his heels. It might have been comic if it wasn’t so terrifying.
Dante turned at the shriek of terror. “Run, Xander! And don’t look back!” Xander took his advice, and Dante tracked the demon floating after Xander with both pistols, bringing it down with three well-placed shots. He continued to do this until all the strange floaty things were just a memory. Xander panted to a halt when he realise that Dante had stopped firing.
“Thanks, man. What were they? All of those things for that matter?”
Dante shook his head. “The first things were Blood Goats… like to eat human flesh, they think it tastes nice. The second things were Sin Scythes… Ghosts with a real taste for cutting things up… strange… they shouldn’t be together…”
Xander just looked confused, “Well, regardless, I think we’d better get out of here, yeah?”
Dante tapped his pistols against his thighs. “I suppose. Got anywhere to go?”
Xander pulled a face. “Not really… I… uh, used up my welcome at a friends…”
Dante sighed. “That’s always the way, isn’t it? Come on, you can come back to my detective agency…”
“You’re a detective?” asked Xander. “I find that very hard to believe…”
Dante turned to look at him, but continued walking. “It’s better than announcing to the world that you’re a demon hunter. You’d be locked up in a matter of minutes, in a straight jacket. And only… special… people come to me for help. Those who know what the score is…”
Xander nodded. “Right. Of course. How else could you get away with it?”
Dante smirked, and Xander got the distinct impression that two little horns would grow out of his head, and a tail suddenly appear. “I have my ways…”
Xander stepped into Dante’s ‘Devil Never Cry’ agency, and Dante followed him in, closing the door and hanging up his coat in a hook by the door. With the coat off, Xander could see the twin thigh holsters of his pistols.
Dante followed his gaze down. “I expect you are either looking at my guns, or your checking out my crotch. If it’s the second, please don’t… I’m not that sort of half-demon.” He struggled to keep a straight face, and only the glint in his eyes showed his humour.
Xander pulled a face. “I can’t believe you said that… I was looking at your guns… why is one black and one white?”
Dante pulled both. He held the black pistol up, and spoke, “this is Ebony,” he held up the second, and both he and Xander spoke simultaneously, “and Ivory…”
Dante frowned. “How did you know that?”
Xander shrugged. “Educated guess.”
“Oh.” Dante turned at the sound of the door opening. “Ah… yes…” he waved at the door, and the body just walking through. “Hi, Trish.”
Trish was a beautiful lithe blonde woman, who seemed to have a dress sense similar to the strippers at the ‘Fabulous Ladies Night Club’. In other words, leather. And not a lot of it. Her hair went down below her waist. She turned to smirk at Dante, but her expression turned to one of shock, and then horror as she looked at Xander. She recovered admirably, but too slowly, and hitched a thumb at Xander as she spoke to Dante.
“You know who, and what… he is, right?” Her voice was pitched low, and Xander saw her lips move, but heard no words. This message was meant for Dante only.
Dante nodded, and smiled. “Good to see you, Trish. What brings you to my humble abode?”
Trish looked suspicious, but shrugged it off. If Dante didn’t believe him a threat, then who was she to argue? The son of Sparda at the very least should be able to identify a potential enemy. “You know me, Dante… just came by to annoy you.”
Dante tilted his head to the side. “I take it this time, however, that you wont ride into my home on a motorbike, then proceed to throw it at me?”
Trish snorted. “Oh, please, once was enough! I don’t have enough money to keep writing off bikes every time I visit!”
Xander looked distinctly uncomfortable. “Uh… should I leave?”
Dante pulled a face, and apologised. “I’m sorry, Xander. This is Trish,” he indicated the blonde, “and Trish, this is Xander…”
Trish smiled, but didn’t move. “Hello.”
“Hi.” Said Xander nervously. Usually, only Buffy affected him this much.
“Right,” shouted Dante, spinning to face his desk, “now we’ve got the introductions out of the way, who wants to help me clean the ol’ place?”
“Damn bloody women…” mumbled Xander as he ran a rag over the desk, “always manage to get out of the work…” he picked up a book, and walked over to the shelves to put it in a space. As soon as he had, the book next to it seemed to fly out for no apparent reason. It landed on the floor by his feet, and lay open about halfway through.
“Now the books are out to get me too…” Xander cursed silently and picked up the book. He was about to slam it shut, when he noticed the page it was on.
“What’s this?” asked Xander, and sat at Dante’s desk, beginning to read…
The Devil-Knights were the elite of the army of Hell.
They existed only to serve the Demon-Princes and Lords that ruled the various levels of Hell, and they did this well.
They numbered seven, one for each level of Hell: Sparda; the guardian of the First, Kerin; the destroyer of Worlds, Dewer; the assassin of Minds, Zerde; lord of Murder, Ghian; bringer of Darkness, Xepto; the only ‘female’ Devil-Knight, and one further, unnamed in any texts. It is said that to so much as think the name brings the Knight into the mind of the scholar, bringing ruin to the world, as the Knights Avatar is born.
Arguably, the greatest Devil-Knight was Sparda, called the Traitor. He turned on his race to protect those known as humans, and to protect their world that was about to be destroyed by the influence of a nearby Hell dimension.
Mundus, the Lord of the First Hell brought a price upon Sparda’s head at his betrayal. His very soul would be flayed from his unnatural body and tormented in the deepest pits. None ever succeeded in capturing or killing him, until he finally died defending his adopted world.
However, Sparda’s story does not end there, for he begat a son on a mortal woman, one with whom he had fallen is ‘love’. His son was named Dante, and wields his father’s powers to defend once more the world. Due to her child’s unnatural parentage, Dante’s mother died in childbirth; her demon spawn son killing her even as he first lived.
Xander closed the book, and put it back on the shelf even as he heard Dante and Trish come back in through the front door of ‘Devil Never Cry’.
Dante walked through the doorway of his study, and raised an eyebrow. “You did a good job, Xander. Want a full time job as caretaker?”
Xander looked wide-eyed in horror. “No thank you! It’s not fair that I got left to do all this, while you and Trish went out.”
Dante shrugged. “Well, it was that, or me do it myself, and that, I am afraid, is something I do all to often. So, since you were new, I got you to do it.” He grinned. “I got some food, if you want…”
Xander's head snapped up. “Food? All is forgiven, bringer of food!”
The two walked out to where Trish was pouring tubs of what looked like noodles into bowls. Several other plates and bowls sat around, already full of several different items.
Dante looked vaguely guilty. “I don’t really know what you like, so I got a bit of everything…”
Xander eyed the feast with an enthusiastic eye. “A bit?! It looks like you bought half of every takeout you stopped at!”
Dante shrugged. “Yeah, well… it’s not like I can’t afford it…”
Xander stared at the feast. Pizza, Chinese, Indian, Italian, Thai, and the good old favourites, McDonalds and KFC.
“Come on, Xander,” said Dante as he slapped him on the back, “it wont get eaten if you don’t stop drooling and help…”
They sat down, and all three stuck in. Dante went for a bit of everything, while Xander started methodically on the nearest thing to him, before moving on to the next. Trish merely picked at some Pizza, while watching with an expression close to shock as Xander demolished everything in his path…
“Ah…” Xander leaned back into his chair and patted his stomach. “I needed that…”
“Yes…” said Dante dryly as he surveyed the empty plates, and emptier bowls and boxes. “I can see that you did…”
Xander looked vaguely guilty. “I’m sorry, Dante, it’s just… it’s been nearly a month since I had anything more than a very light breakfast as the only meal in the day. And I got into the habit of eating as much as I could when I could very young…” Xander's expression darkened, and for a moment, Dante though he was going to see exactly what he didn’t want to.
Trish looked at Xander with a pitying expression. “Do you want to talk about it?” she asked gently.
“No.” Xander said flatly. “And you can take that look off your face. I don’t want anyone’s pity.”
“Sorry…” Trish sounded taken aback.
Dante stood. “Well, now you two have successfully killed the atmosphere in here, I suggest we retire to the Trophy Room…”
Trish nodded, and Xander merely stood and followed the two as they walked into a room he had never been in before…
Two minutes later saw Xander exit in the opposite direction that he had entered the door to the ‘Trophy Room’. He had a hand over his mouth, and was trying desperately not to be sick.
The ‘Trophy Room’ as Dante had called it was lined with the skulls of some of the demons he had killed, and in some cases, the bones themselves had enough of their demonic powers left to talk, or moan, or cackle… whatever.
It freaked him out to see a skull watching him move round the room, offering comment on the other skulls on the wall, and insults directed at Dante, Trish and Xander himself.
Dante stepped out, and laid a hand on Xander's back as he tried valiantly to control his stomach. “It always gets people that way at first, Xander. Trust me, you’ll get used to it…”
“I wouldn’t have been that freaked if you’d have given me a bit of warning.” Said Xander accusingly.
Dante grinned. “Well, that was part of the challenge, you see, Xander. I was, and still am, I suppose, going to offer you a job…”
“A job?” asked Xander with no slight amount of suspicion.
“Yes. A job. I want you to help me… at least when I ask you to.”
Xander shook his head. “Uhuh… I have a life… and I want to live it!”
Dante sighed. “You have a life, Xander, but now those demons have seen you with me, you wont have one much longer unless I teach you. You’ll be a sitting duck out by yourself.”
“I can run. I’m good at running.”
“I expect you are…” Something in the boys stance told Dante that, indeed, he was very good at running, “you certainly seemed to be in the Museum. But those things never tire, Xander. And you will. Sooner or later, one of them will get you.” Dante pulled a face. “Urg… I didn’t want to do it like this…” He held out a hand to Xander. “It comes down to this, Xander Harris: will you help me; because it is the right thing to do?”
Xander closed his eyes and prayed. He finally sighed, and opened his eyes once more.
“Yes.”
With that one word, Xander’s life was to be changed forever…
Dante walked slowly through the door of the ‘Devil Never Cry’ detective agency. In the past year, his partner had shown he had fear of only one thing- well, OK, two things- Going back home, and failing when he said he would do something. The second had got him into a lot of trouble with the things they fought, but for some strange reason, he always came out of it stronger, faster, more prepared for the next challenge.
That was one of the mysteries of Xander Harris.
Dante smiled despite him mood when he saw Xander sitting in his chair, spinning a pistol round his finger like the old westerns that he liked to watch so much. Dante had called him on his love of the, often terrible, films one day, and Xander had just replied, “The good guy always wins… I like the films because that isn’t how it is in real life…” with that, he trailed off and went into one of his regular fits of depression. And they were pretty regular. It would be for any variety of reasons: someone he hadn’t managed to save, a devil he hadn’t killed fast enough. The choice that wasn’t really; his inability to return home. Any and all of these caused a bout, and they lasted an indeterminate amount of time- usually until the next job.
Since that fateful day in the museum, Dante had often wished he had not offered Xander the job he had, but looking back, right this minute, he was also glad that he had.
It wasn’t only because he sensed Xander’s loneliness, it was also something he had felt from inside the boy… no, he corrected himself shaking his head: man. Both Dante and Trish had sensed the power in Xander. One both of them held… and neither of them wanted. But it wasn’t a choice they could have made. It was made for them by history, and by their parent’s very nature. Surely there must be others about?
Xander looked up as Dante slammed the door. “What’s up, boss?” he asked with a listless tone.
Dante shrugged, feigning nonchalance. “Nothing much, the old job completed… gave that guy his little orb back… and got a new one. Some guy named Terrance Quentin… or something like that…”
“Quentin? Where have I heard that name before?” wondered Xander aloud.
“Don’t know, don’t care, my friend.” Dante shrugged of his coat and flung it haphazardly onto an empty chair nearby.
Xander holstered his gun, and clicked his fingers. “I know! That idiot in the Watchers Council! Oh, man! Tell me you didn’t accept a job from Quentin Travers?”
“OK…” nodded Dante, fighting a grin. “I didn’t accept a job from Quentin Travers.”
“Thank God…” Xander slumped in his chair, and put his feet on the desk.
“Even though I really did.”
Dante said it so carelessly, that for a second, it didn’t filter into Xander's mind. When it did, he nearly exploded. He flew out of the chair, knocking it over in the process, and looked angrily at Dante. “You didn’t?!”
Dante looked at him coolly. “I did. He even paid in advance.”
Xander walked over to a wall, and started to bang his head against it. “Great. That means he doesn’t expect us to come back, and he wants a clean conscience. Although with that guy, I’m amazed his conscience was ever clean.”
Dante walked over and patted Xander's shoulder. “Easy, Xand… you’ll give yourself a headache… besides… it’s done. We head to Cutler, Maine, to pick up a package and a person, and then to Seattle for a book, and finally to sunny California.”
“Let me guess, just to make my life complete, we have to go to Sunnydale, don’t we?”
Dante winced, but nodded, and then realised Xander wouldn’t have seen that. “Yeah.”
“Is Trish goin’ with us?” At least if she was there, there would be more moral support than with Dante. He was a bit of a joker, but had otherwise become quieter over the period of Xander's knowing him.
“She might… we’ve got to see if her job finishes. If it does, she’ll rendezvous with us at Seattle, if not, then we go it alone.”
“I should be glad our last job gave us some new equipment and tools, shouldn’t I? I mean, I don’t fancy Sunnydale with just a gun… that would be suicide, even with the hyped up rounds you pump in these things…”
Dante grinned, and pulled out Ebony. “Hey, these baby’s will take out any demon at 50 yards!”
“Yeah… I’m just worried about Buffy and Willow…” Xander dropped the subject like a hot coal as he mentioned the names of those left behind for the first time since he met Dante or Trish. “…Face it… I’m just scared…”
Dante holstered Ebony, and walked off to his office, aware that Xander had just let slip something he didn’t wish to. Being a half-devil taught tact, if nothing else. “Hey, Xander, I would only be concerned for you if you weren’t…”
That night, Xander dreamed about his first mission with Dante, the one where he had got his sword… and a whole lot more trouble than even he needed...
Xander walked next to Dante, a long dark green coat hiding his form from those who watched the two of them. He had been training hard, but still nowhere near matched Dante’s proficiency with weapons or acrobatics. Dante told him constantly that it would come with time and practice, but Xander wasn’t sure he believed him. His longish hair had been cut, and now did not flop in his eyes if he looked down. He asked Dante once how he managed to keep his hair that immaculate all the time, and what his secret was… Dante just laughed and told Xander he would find out eventually, and when he did, he would wish that he hadn’t.
The two of them had come to Irenais Island, a small island off the coast of some larger island, two thousand miles from anywhere else. It was one of the most desolate places Xander had ever seen, and he told Dante so.
“You’ll get used to it, kid.” Was Dante’s reply, “It’s the influence of the demons and devils that have got too much of a foothold in our reality…”
Xander shook off the feeling of discomfort he had from the moment he set foot on the small isle, and followed the man who had so much faith in him.
Dante and Xander quickly came to a large mansion, seemingly carved out of the solid rock of the hillside. The main door creaked open slowly as they approached, and Dante stopped for a moment.
“Xander… this reeks of something bad. If you have any second thoughts, any at all, I won’t hold them against you. I just want you to know, if we go in… we might not come out…”
“Dante.” Xander's voice was hard, and certain. “I said I would come with you. I’m not backing out now.”
“OK, Xander, it’s your funeral.” Dante pulled Ivory out of his thigh holster. “Take this… you might need it.”
Xander looked at the gun, and took it with a nod. “Thanks… I know how much this gun means to you. Both of them.”
“Just… don’t loose it, OK?” Dante chuckled, and walked through the door.
Xander followed, the sense of foreboding increasing with every step he took…
“Xander! Behind you!” Dante’s call made Xander spin into a crouch, raising the pistol even as he moved. A marionette was slowly approaching him from behind, its spastic movements belying the poor control its devil had over the inanimate wood.
Xander calmly shot it with Ivory, until the puppet fell to the floor of the room and began to disintegrate.
Dante himself was occupied with three of them, while he shot two; he whipped out Alastor, his sword, and hit the third with a sweeping hit.
The marionette was sent reeling as the powerful strike knocked it backwards, giving Dante enough time to finish the other two off with further well placed shots from Ebony. With those out of the way, Dante returned his attention to the remaining marionette.
Gripping Alastor with both hands, Dante brought the blade up in a powerful strike, lifting the marionette off its feet and crashing it into the ceiling high above. Stepping calmly below the falling enemy, he held his sword high, causing the marionette to impale itself as it fell. Flicking the no longer animated puppet from his blade, he went to stand by Xander, who was staring at the spot where his marionette had dissolved.
“It was dead, Xander,” said Dante, “it was just possessed by a devil…”
Xander shook his head. “It’s not that… it’s just… how can a wooden puppet be so lethal? One, ONE, almost got me! And you took on three!”
Dante didn’t know quite what to say. “I… when I first faced one, I was like you are, frightened, and none to weary. But its gets easier. The fact that they are trying to kill you helps matters considerably. I always want to survive. To do that, they have to be banished. The only way to do that is to kill their corporeal form… cause the ethereal devil sure ain’t gonna come out to play…”
“How can you be so cool?” asked Xander with an unknown emotion running through him.
“Practice.” Answered Dante simply. He turned suddenly, and stared at the wall for a long second.
“What?” asked Xander.
Dante pulled Alastor once more. “More are coming…” he said, before swinging for a shadow that had coalesced from the wall.
The battle, again, was joined…
Xander and Dante looked at the statue, wielding a large sword with, seemingly, astounding grace.
“What do we do now?” asked Xander.
Dante looked at him, and then gestured him forward. “I’ve got a blade I like. It won’t bite… but it might sting a bit as it bonds to you, so be careful.”
“Right.” Said Xander, and stepped forward. The statue glowed as he approached, and the nearer he got, the more the glow intensified, until both Dante and Xander were forced to look away.
Still Xander approached.
The statue began to shake, until the sword suddenly flew from the hands holding it, and spun through the air. Xander sidestepped the blade that was spiralling toward him, and gripped it as it went past. Righting the blade, he tested its weight, marvelling at the blade and its craftsmanship.
“It has almost no weight…” he whispered. “It feels like a feather…”
“It will, to those that it chooses,” said Dante, “to those it doesn’t, they will barely be able to pick it up, let alone use it as an effective weapon…”
“How can it… argh!” Xander fell to the floor, clutching the blade to him, writhing in agony on the stone in front of the statue.
At the cry, Dante looked about warily, in case any devils decided to see what was making the sound.
Xander abruptly stopped, and levered himself up from the floor using the blade as a cane. “Woah… what a rush…” he murmured to himself. Dante smiled. His introduction to a new weapon was somewhat more painful. It killed him.
“As I was saying, before I was so rudely interrupted,” Xander stared purposefully at the blade in his hand, “how can it do that?”
Dante shrugged. “How the hell should I know? All I know is, it’s very useful when someone tries to kill you with your own blade…”
Xander frowned, and Dante grinned at him.
“What do you want to call it?” Dante asked.
Xander looked to the blade. He ran a hand down the edge, and brought it away with a cut on his palm. He wiped the wound on the flat of the blade, and then watched the wound as it closed up of its own accord.
“This writing,” he said, indicating the runes now appeared on the blade because of the blood, “spells ‘Ragnarok’ the blades original name. It seems fitting, that after all these years, the sword should bear its own name once more…”
Xander looked up, with a confused expression n his face. “What was I saying? And why does my hand hurt so damn much?”
Dante looked at him with concern on his face. “You don’t remember?”
“No. Should I?” asked Xander.
“Xander… you just cut your hand on the blade, and wiped blood on it. Letters appeared, and you read them out… you said it read ‘Ragnarok’ or something like that. Then your hand healed in seconds…”
Xander looked at his hand. “It doesn’t even hurt any more…” he whispered. Looking up, with more strength in his voice, he said, “Yes… something told me to name the blade ‘Ragnarok’…”
Dante looked at the blade with a worried expression. “Maybe it isn’t safe, Xander… do you think you should leave it behind?”
Xander's expression at that suggestion told Dante all he needed to know about what would happen if he tried to forcibly remove the blade from Xander's possession.
“No.” Xander's tone left no room for argument. “Ragnarok, the Doom of the Gods, has an owner once more…”
Dante had the distinct feeling that something bad would come of this. When and where, he could not tell… but something bad was going to happen, and he was going to be there to see it didn’t kill his young friend…
“Xander, there it is… the Memory Stone!” Dante looked across the large hall, less the hall and more the B-52 hangar in its dimensions, with his eyes fixed on their target, a small and unassuming jewel placed on an equally unassuming pedestal.
“So go get it, Acrobat…” returned Xander. “I’m not going all the way over there…” A sudden squeal behind them made them turn around, and Xander to change his mind. “OK, so maybe I am…” he took off running, drawing Ragnarok as he went, spinning the blade through a Blood Goat that got too close for comfort. The demon spawn went spiralling for the rafters, screaming in torment at the sudden severing of its arm.
Dante was close on his heels, somersaulting and jumping as he shot at random targets that got into his field of vision. He landed on top of a large lizard like creature, and leapt into the air as he shot downwards at its head. Seeming to gain purchase in mid air, he put his feet together once more and pushed off of nothing, gaining extra height that he quickly put to good use in taking out as many of the airborne enemies as possible.
Landing awkwardly, Dante cursed as his ankle buckled underneath him and he rolled to a stop on the floor with a big spider leering down at him.
The spider-like monster was a good ten feet long, and had a leg span of at least forty feet. The face scrunched up, almost as if it was laughing.
It was.
“So, Son of Sparda,” came a voice not unlike an earthquake. “You have come to face me once more…” he flicked a look at Xander with one of his eight eyes. “And what is this? You have brought more treats for me? Well, I’ll certainly dine well tonight!”
Dante fixed the spider with a hateful gaze. “You’ll not ‘dine’ on either of us, Phantom!”
“Oh, Son of Sparda? Is that so?” Phantom reared up and batted at Dante with one leg, which Dante leapt nimbly over and brought Alastor down upon. Phantom screamed in pain as the sword cut at his limb, causing the walls of the hall to shake, and backed up.
Xander rushed over to help, but Dante waved him back. “Get the Memory Stone! This is my fight!”
“Not if it gets you killed!” shouted back Xander.
“It won’t. I’m better than that…” Dante sounded calm, in control of the situation. His ankle no longer bothered him, whether he was ignoring it, or that it had healed was uncertain, at least to Xander.
Dante snapped him back to reality. “Get the Stone!”
Xander ran for the pedestal, and the Memory Stone.
Phantom reeled as Dante swiped him again with Alastor. The blade crackled with lightning as it struck the spider demon, and the blow shook the foundations. Dante backed off and prepared for what he knew would be a painful retaliatory strike.
Phantom did not disappoint. The blow he delivered to Dante sent him flying into a wall, several metres away, and knocked him senseless for a few seconds.
Xander saw Dante slump to the floor, and hurriedly pocketed the Memory Stone. Turning back, he drew Ragnarok from its sheath, and flung it with all his strength at the huge volcanic spider monster that was closing on his friend.
Phantom reared up as he closed on the stupefied form of Dante, and uncoiled his tail. Standing tall against the rest of his body, it lashed about, ready to strike…
Ragnarok cut through the air, thrumming as it did, and cut cleanly through the tip of Phantom’s tail. The appendage retracted quickly, with the spider turning to see who had dared to attack it. The severed end of the devils tail landed on the floor and melted through the stone, leaving a large hole with burning lava eating away at its edges.
Xander stood on the edge of the raised dais that the Memory Stone pedestal had stood on, and waved the demon toward him…
Dante returned to consciousness to see Phantom, his dear arch-nemesis, closing fast on Xander with murder clear in its body language. The legs pounded the ground, smashing the foot think marble slabs that had been laid as tiles on the floor of the hall, and enchantment burned thick and hot around it.
Xander stood with no expression directly in its line of sight, and drew Ivory like he had been born with a gun in his hand. He fired almost casually at the beast, and flipped suddenly out of the way, a somersault that even Dante would be proud of, to the side of the charging Phantom spider.
Phantom was moving too fast for it to change direction, momentum carrying it onward into the pedestal, and then skidding further into the far wall of the hall. The wall caved in around it, and daylight could be seen from inside the room. Dante breathed a sigh, and Xander brought his sights back to bear on the now partially buried form, and kept firing.
Dante joined him a second later when he saw the pile shift slightly. He knew what that meant. Phantom had survived. And he was not going to be happy…
Ragnarok stood embedded in the marble floor, like the sword in the stone of Arthurian legend, and raged. It could not get to its chosen bearer. Tiny tremors began in the blade, increasing until the slab of marble in which it was driven shook in sympathy to the vibrations.
Then the marble began to crumble.
Ragnarok broke free and began the flight back to its master… straight through anything in the way…
Dante ducked instinctively as he felt something brush past his hair, and looked up in time to see Xander's blade, the self named Ragnarok, flashing through the air like it had wings.
“It time to end this…” he growled to himself. “Before Phantom manages to kill Xander.”
The air around Dante warped and shifted as his demonic nature asserted itself, bringing out his stronger form. Hair darkened and lengthened in seconds, skin blackened and eyes burned an angry red colour. Talons formed from fingertips, but not long enough to prevent manual manipulation. Dark, devilish, near bat-like wings grew slowly from shoulder blades. Finally, almost as an afterthought, small horns grew from his forehead. Sensing his master’s surge in power, Alastor unleashed his full capabilities, lightning playing up and down the blade freely, the energy contained within each crackling bolt enough to power LA for a month.
“Phantom!” Dante called in challenge.
As the spider turned to see the new threat, Xander backed off and got out of the way. He didn’t know who the new horned guy was, but if he had issues with the thing he was fighting, that was fine by him. Let them kill themselves. Just don’t let them kill him.
Phantom allowed a malevolent grin to appear on its face. “Choose to fight me in your natural form, Son of Sparda? So be it…”
Dante drew Alastor, and moved forward so quickly it appeared almost as if he was stationary. He cleaved through a limb that was aimed for him, and ducked under another. “I will not be dying here, today, Phantom…” he cut through another leg, an avoided the spray of demonic lava that poured from the wound. Somersaulting over another attack, Dante landed in front of Phantom, and stabbed it in the face with his sword.
As the spider flailed about, it six remaining legs working hard to keep it stable, Dante leapt into the air, and sent himself higher than he ever had before. Gripping his sword with both hands, he aimed the blade down, and let himself drop.
The blade cut through the demonic skin of the Phantom, and severed its connection with the material plane. As it demonic power began to ebb, the spider simply began to dissolve.
A final chilling warning echoed around the hall. “I will be back, Son of Sparda… you can be sure of that…”
Dante slumped to the ground, the victory having cost him more than he would care to admit…
Xander approached the demon kneeling before him with his sword raised to defend himself. “What have you done with Dante?” he asked with unnecessary force.
Dante, still in his devil form, stood wearily. “I have done nothing with him. He is still here.”
Xander cast his eyes about quickly. “Where? I don’t see him.”
Dante shook his head. “He stands in front of you, Xander… watch.”
The devil in front of Xander began to glow slightly. Then the glow receded and it began to loose its demonic form. The horns shrunk and vanished, the wings did likewise, with the tears in the fabric of his coat mending of their own free will. Skin lightened back to the colour skin should be, instead of a scorched colour, and the talons became hands once again. As his face began to return, Dante stepped forward; ignoring the danger posed by Xander's sword, and clasped Xander's head with both hands. Xander stared wide-eyed, transfixed, as the demon standing in front of him slowly became Dante, his devil-hunting friend. The final change occurred, as Dante’s hair returned to the pure shock of white it had been, and at last, Xander looked into the eyes of his friend.
“How… how did you do that?” he asked with no small degree of fear.
Dante shrugged. “Its part of my nature. My father, as you probably found out when you read that grimoire of mine,” Dante sounded amused rather than angry, “was Sparda, one of the seven ‘Devil-Knights’ of Hell. Its what comes when you have supernatural parents. Or one, at least…”
“How can you be so flip about it?”
“Because I can,” snapped Dante. He sighed, and began to apologise. “I’m sorry. It’s always a strain, returning to human form. Its so easy… everything is so easy… as a demon. Sometimes I forget what I should be…”
Xander sheathed Ragnarok, and placed a hand on Dante’s shoulder. Squeezing gently, he nodded. “I might not understand fully, Dante, but I will try…”
“Thank you…” breathed Dante, and then a new urgency entered his movements, and his voice. “You have the Stone?”
Xander nodded sharply, once, before reaching in his pocket for the Stone. “Yep. I tell you, when that spider thing took you out, and headed for me… I was close to cacking my pants, man. I have never seen something that big, move so damn fast…”
“Welcome to the world of the supernatural, my friend. Where nothing is as it should be…” Dante took the proffered Stone from Xander's hand, and wrapped it in a cloth. Then he handed it back. “You look after it. Most of the devil’s we encounter on the way out should be aiming at me.”
“Right,” Xander said, “you know, I feel like I should be in an episode of the ‘Twilight Zone’…”
When Dante frowned, Xander shrugged. “Guess you’re not a TV buff then, eh?”
“Hardly ever watch it, myself,” said Dante. “Its mostly Trish when she drops in.”
“Your loss, man, your loss…”
The two walked out of the hole left by Phantoms attack on Xander. Dante leapt nimbly down the damaged rock, while Xander picked his way down more carefully.
Reaching the roadway back to the main gate of the mansion, the two turned in the direction of the dock, and bantered lightly as the sun rose, and morning once again protected the world from the darkness…
Xander shifted in his sleep, and rolled over out of the bed he was sleeping in. "Dante?" He called, and then turned over and began to push himself to his feet.
A few seconds later, Dante appeared, looking blearily at the now wide-awake Xander. "What?" He asked, sleep making his voice heavy, and fatigue making his mind slower to wake than usual.
"When do we leave?" asked Xander, getting to his feet.
"What?"
Xander repeated what he had said, slowly stroking his fingers down four thin scars on his cheek, "When do we leave?"
"For where?" asked Dante, still not completely awake.
Xander just fixed him with a look. "For Sunnydale, Dante..."
Dante looked up, "Oh..." he said, with a frown on his face. "Tomorrow, if you’re ready. But I told you, first Maine, then Seattle. Then we head to Sunnydale. So you have a bit of time yet..."
Xander nodded. "Thanks. Just time to get... some stuff sorted, then."
Dante looked suspiciously at Xander. "Stuff? What stuff?"
Xander shrugged. "Not a lot..." he grinned. "I have this feeling that if I turn up with a sentient sword, my 'friends' will ask some... uncomfortable questions. I wont leave it behind, but I'll need somewhere to keep it hidden."
Xander turned his back to Dante, and shrugged on a shirt, plain white, except for several strange patterns on the cuffs, intertwining images that wrapped around the edge of the sleeve.
"How are we going? I take it we wont be flying if we have to pick items up... too many questions, even with the stuff in diplomatic bags..."
Dante nodded. They had tried that method once, and had succeeded in getting stuck in an airport for nearly ten hours while security checked them out. Security didn’t expect guys not in suits to be diplomats, apparently. Not a lot of help when devil-chasing. "We'll be driving. Well, you'll be driving, I'll be sleeping, and making sure that our package doesn't do anything strange. That Travers guy freaked me out a bit..."
Xander nodded, and walked out of the door of his room, picking his green trench coat off a hook as he did. "I know what you mean man... it's almost as bad as meeting Ethan Rayne. Damn... do all Watchers take courses in 'how to be a weird as possible?'"
"Beats me, Xand..." muttered Dante, as he headed back to his room in Xander's wake. He could get a couple more hours sleep before duty called.
Xander's voice floated back to him from the entrance to Devil Never Cry. "I'm just going out for a while, Dante! Be back in a few..."
"Yeah, right." Called back Dante. "Just don't make me come rescue you like last time..." With that, he collapsed unconscious onto his bed once again.
Dante and Xander once more approached a small island, this time one off the coast of Indonesia. The plane ride had been a bitch, and both were still suffering from the effects of jet lag. The boat ride hadn’t been much better, as it was only just pulling into the tiny little jetty that served the island. It was nearly seven hours behind schedule, and Dante was beginning to chafe at the bit on such a small craft.
Xander, on the other hand, was using the time productively, trying to sleep off the plane trip, and get himself ready physically and mentally for what they could face this time. He still had the borrowed gun from Dante, Ivory; strapped to his hip, and he now had a sword to accompany that weapon, which was in a sheath on his back, under his dark green coat. Ragnarok, as the blade had named itself, was certainly a powerful force for Xander to wield, but he couldn’t just set it down now he had picked it up. It seemed to bond to his mind, telling him in advance what was going to happen. It wasn’t major foresight, being at most only a few fractions of a second, but it was usually enough to let him defend himself against an opponent that would otherwise kill him. What worried him about it was the bloodlust he seemed to work into when injured. The slightest scrape brought out a mad edge, throwing himself in without regard for what would happen. At least he came out alive when he did that… usually. Once, he had died, and it had only been by Dante having a strange glowing orb that had returned him to life.
Dante privately wondered, however, if Xander might not have returned from the grave- so to speak- by his own methods anyway. Something rang wrong about the boy; both he and Trish had detected it… as had the sword he now wielded so surely.
Dante groaned, and said a few harsh words to the Captain in Bahasa, the local language, who gibbered back that he could not go any faster, and if Dante didn’t leave off, he would just turn around. The island was bad luck, and the few island inhabitants that had gotten off the island spoke of the horrors committed by the ones not lucky enough to do so, and left stuck on with the demons and devils that had suddenly appeared one day. Many terrors, and disgusting things that Dante didn’t even want to believe were possible, despite the fact he knew they were…
A few hours later, Dante and Xander stood on the jetty, watching the boat retreat into the sunset. Dante had arranged with the man to come back at midday and retrieve them- he had paid a healthy sum of money to get him to agree to it, but he had this sneaking suspicion that the boat would not be back, and that the island would have to provide some other means of getting off.
“Ready, Xander?” Dante asked, with no emotion in his voice.
Xander pulled Ivory, and frowned. “Yeah… but I don’t think that guy is gonna come back…”
Dante turned to him. “I’ll let you in on a secret: neither do I. He’s got the money, why would he want to risk his life a second time? And from the stories I got from some of the villagers that lived here… there would be no guarantee that the two people he picked up would be, firstly, us… and secondly, human…”
Xander nodded.
Dante stepped forward, off of the jetty. “Oh, and by the way… I hope you don’t have a weak stomach… the gestation period of some demon spawn is low enough that some of them will be ‘born’ soon… it’s not going to be pretty. If you have any qualms, fire, and keep right on firing until the thing is nothing more than ragged flesh… and even then, sometimes it’ll still come after you…”
“Thank you for that wonderful image, Dante…” replied Xander dryly; “I’ll remember that speech for the rest of my life now…”
Dante turned, and his eyes showed the hard look he always got when hunting. “Good. If your frightened, or you remember that, it may keep you alive.” His voice offered no comfort, and Xander was left with a chill up his spine. This was not merely serious… this was deadly…
It would stay with him for as long as he remembered the island he was now on…
“Duck, Xander!”
Xander ducked at Dante’s cry, and flung himself to the ground as a large winged beast flapped by almost lazily overhead. Xander knew that it would have dived on him if he had not hit the ground, but the creature was an air elemental, and could not risk the possibility of touching the ground. Even slight contact with another element would cause the creature to go up in flames. They even varied in colour, depending on how powerful the elemental was, and what element it was aligned to.
Pulling Ivory, Xander sighted at the retreating form of the elemental, and increased pressure on the trigger.
As the elemental swooped behind a pillar, Xander released the gentle squeeze he had maintained on the trigger, and cursed quietly to himself. As the elemental came around for another pass at him, he smiled and fired at it.
The bullets from the weapon carved into the unnatural flesh of the creature and tore out the other side. As tears from the piercing bullets appeared in it wings, the elemental struggled vainly to maintain its height, but the force of gravity slowly pulled it down.
As soon as one foot touch the ground, a bright blue flame travelled up the length of its leg from where it had made contact with the floor. It slowly worked its way over the body of the elemental, until it was engulfed in the flames, at which point it began to burn fully. Pale skin charred as the flames ate away, to leave exposed flesh, then merely bones.
Then nothing, as the bones themselves burned up.
Xander looked at where seconds before, there had been an enemy, and then hurriedly rolled out of the way as he felt another fly past him. This one turned in the air much quicker than the other had, folded it wings, and dived at Xander, even though he was near prone on the floor. It seemed to have no fear of death.
As it flew, Xander fired, but was shocked to see the elemental dodge quickly to the side, avoiding the bullet by mere inches. He fell back as its hand, tipped with vile claws, reached for him.
He cried out in a surprised voice as it ripped his pistol from his grip, and then batted its powerful wings once, reversing its direction of flight and escaping. With his pistol in its grasp.
“Hey!” Xander shouted, causing Dante to look round in surprise at the sound, “That’s mine!” he chased after the elemental, and dodged round the enemies he faced on the ground, twisting and turning as he went.
Dante watched in shock, as Xander's sword seemed to leap into his grasp without his reaching for it. Almost as if the sword knew it was needed. Xander spun round a marionette that was standing between him and his target, and as he reached it back, swung the Ragnarok round in an arc that cut cleanly through the puppets middle, ending its usefulness to the devil that empowered it, and causing it to fall to the floor in a heap.
Xander never even looked round.
Dante blocked an attack from his one remaining opponent, and hit it twice, followed by an uppercut with his blade that sent it crashing into the ceiling and back down again. Then he returned to watching Xander.
The elemental dodged round behind a pillar, and turned to fly to the left with a deft flap of its wings. Xander went round the other side of the pillar and put one foot on the stone, launching himself into a sideways somersault with arms and legs spread open, and coat flapping as he went. He landed on the elementals back as it went past, and gripped on, dropping his blade while he did so. Dante couldn’t decide whether the loss of his sword was accidental or deliberate. Given the blades apparent dislike of being separated from its bearer, Dante would have suspected the former.
The elemental shrieked at the sudden increase in weight, and sagged toward the ground. Beating its wings wildly to gain as much height as possible, it began a spiral upwards that carried Xander with it to the rafters. It right hand still carried the pistol that it had taken from Xander.
Reaching for the gun with his right hand, Xander felt his grip slipping, and shifted slightly, causing the elemental to give a piercing scream that nearly shattered his eardrums.
“Give…” Xander shouted at the elemental, “That…” he reached again for the pistol, and succeeded in getting a grip on it, “Back!” he tore the gun from the elementals grasp, and holstered it. Not one chance of losing it again. He cried out when the elemental reach back with both arms and raked him with its claws down both each cheek, leaving four bloody tracks down each side of his face.
“Son of a bitch! That hurt!” looking down, Xander saw the floor several dozen feet below him. While a fall like that might not kill him, it would certainly break more than a few bones. And then the devils and villagers of the island would then finish him off.
Xander changed his grip on the elemental, grabbing first one wing, then another, and holding them to the creature’s sides.
The elemental, with the loss of its wings, plummeted to the ground. Xander kept hold as it fell, making sure it was underneath him when they landed.
Both Xander, and the elemental landed hard. Dante heard Xander's ribs crack as he hit the floor, and saw the elemental underneath him sag as his weight crushed it into the ground.
Then, as with all elemental creatures that encountered an opposing element, it burst into flames.
With Xander on top of it. The magical flames didn’t ignite his clothes, but they certainly burnt his skin. He rolled over onto his back, and moaned in pain.
Dante rushed over to him and knelt by his side. “Damn, Xander…” Dante whispered, “don’t do things like that…”
He looked down at his… partner. That was the only word that could be used. Who else came into situations this crazy with him, and survived? Well, Trish… OK, but Trish worked for herself, and herself first and foremost. She only helped if it was in her own best interests.
Looking at Xander's face, Dante winced. Both his face and his hands were badly burned, skin peeling off and lightly charred flesh oozing whatever it was that lightly charred flesh oozed. His hands were slightly open, and bone showed through ragged remnants of skin on the palms. Four cuts down each cheek burned angrily, and Dante knew that they had been caused by the elemental. Dante pulled Xander's coat open, and forgoing niceties, ripped open his shirt as well, popping buttons off as if they were nothing.
Xander groaned at the movement, and tried to roll away. Dante pinned his shoulders, and spoke to him sternly. “Xander. Xander!” He slapped him, and then hurriedly wiped his hand on his coat to get the blood off. “You’ve got who knows how many broken ribs… if you roll over, you could puncture a lung…” He added under his breath, “…If you haven’t already…”
Xander moaned, but nodded slowly.
“Damn it…” Dante muttered. “I’m no doctor…”
Xander coughed heavily, and blood bubbles appeared at the side of his mouth, quickly popping and causing blood to run down to reach his jaw line.
Dante looked at him. “Xander! Xander! You’re gonna be fine, Xand… just you wait… you’ll be fine!” Dante watched Xander blink once, slowly, then shake his head.
Damn, thought Dante, this kid knows he’s screwed…and so do I… I can’t help him, I don’t know how…
As Xander's head lolled to the side, facing away from Dante, Dante thought that maybe, just for a second, he had seen Xander's eyes flash. When Xander began to roll over, despite Dante’s instructions not to, Dante merely sat back on his haunches.
Xander rolled over onto his chest, and winced at the pain in his ribs. Then he began to lever himself upright, and finally climbed to his feet. Staggering over to where his sword lay forgotten, Xander picked it up and gripped it tightly.
Dante felt a chill enter the air, and turned to see several new devils coming through the walls. Knowing that if he didn’t take care of them, Xander wouldn’t need anything other than a funeral director, and someone to consecrate the ground, he charged toward the new arrivals.
Xander could look after himself.
Xander fell to his knees as the pain became overwhelming, both from his face and hands, and his ribs. To top it all, another feeling was gnawing at the pit of his stomach, one that whispered, one that cajoled, one that told him both things wonderful and things horrific, neither of which he wanted to know.
Ragnarok, his sword, nuzzled the back of his mind, kick-starting his adrenal glands and causing a rush of hormones to block the pain he was feeling. It didn’t last long, however, as with blood running into his eyes, he turned his head to see Dante fighting with half a dozen various spectres, Sin Scissors, Sin Scythes, Ghosts, and Wraiths.
The blood lust of his blade burned strong, goading him into fighting when both knew he would not survive. Xander turned back, and felt his head flop forward as a new rush of pain hit him.
Forcing himself upright, Xander stood up, placing one foot next to the other, and reversed his grip on his blade, pointing the tip at the floor, which he then rested it upon. As the pain intensified once more, Xander felt the whispering in the back of his mind turn to insistence. It was accept or die, and under the circumstances, Xander didn’t particularly like dying.
He accepted.
He felt the eagerness of Ragnarok once again enter him, and give an almost satisfied feeling to him as he accepted.
The pain ceased as Xander… changed.
Muscle and height were added, bulking Xander up and making him stand a good eight feet tall from the shoulder. Charred skin healed, becoming its natural colour, which then quickly darkened again to reach jet-black. Short brown hair grew out to shoulder length and lightened to near dazzling white. His nose flattened in, and disappeared, leaving an expanse of empty skin where it had been. Hands with long fingers grew longer, becoming talons, and curling completely around the grip of his sword. Deep brown eyes turned completely black, and then the pupils began to glow green in a way it looked as if his eyes had emerald fire burning within them. All his teeth lengthened and sharpened, but did not poke out of his mouth; it was only shown when Xander opened his mouth to roar. Two streamlined black wings burst out of his back, dark green veins pulsing as they did so, and flapped once, airing, before furling up once more and vanishing. A row of small horns, less than an inch each, began to grow from between his second and third knuckle on each hand, before continuing down the outside of his forearm and ending at his elbow. Four more, two on each shoulder began to appear, and lengthened until they suddenly stopped as they began to curve toward his head, all four or five inches in length.
Xander stamped on the ground, and reversed the Ragnarok in his grip as he did. The burst of pleasure from the blade was inexpressible, and a deep roar exploded out of his mouth, announcing to the world that something… someone… had just come of age…
Dante heard a roar from where Xander had last been, but didn’t have time to look round. The six opponents he was facing didn’t want to cooperate. As fast as he attacked one, it became insubstantial to avoid his blade, while the others attacked. If he shifted his target, the same thing happened.
As much as Dante hated to admit it, he was being worn down…
Xander, in what Dante had once referred to as a ‘Devil Triggered’ state, heard a cry from behind him, and turned to see Dante collapse onto his knees on the floor. A wraith flew away from his back, showing to Xander how Dante had been hurt. When a wraith flew through a human body, it brought with it an indescribable feeling of unnatural cold as the body’s life… the person’s very soul… was sucked out by the wraith. While Xander knew that it wouldn’t kill a half devil, it would still hurt them if they were not in their devil form.
The other spectres used the chance to attack, all charging for the prone man at once. Xander's eyes flashed brighter as he broke into a run, and finally, tens of yards away, launched himself off his feet and felt his wings burst from his back and keep him aloft, flying mere inches from the ground at speeds he never thought possible.
Xander took the Ragnarok through one spectre, and then rolled on his back and through another as he flew past. Dante recovered sufficiently to block the attack of one of the Sin Scissors, and whipped his sword through it in a counter that showed absolutely no mercy. As if their opponents would have given them any…
Dante, panting hard and shivering at the cold still clinging to him, raised his head slowly to look at his saviour. His sword dropped from numb fingers as he kept looking up…
And up…
And up.
Standing nine feet tall easily, Dante’s saviour was clearly an incredibly powerful devil. Either the blade in its hand had betrayed its previous bearer, and Xander was dead, or the monstrous form in front of him was Xander.
“Oh… my…”
Those were the only words Dante could form from the shock he felt. Then, as the devil looked down at him, with an expression that showed bloodlust clearly, and even a degree of madness, it began to change.
Seconds later, Xander knelt by him, with a worried look on his face, watching Dante’s struggling attempts to warm up.
“Dante, are you gonna be alright? Those things got you good.”
Dante reached for his sword once more, and using it like a cane, levered himself to his feet, and shook himself. “Yeah… I’ll be fine, I’ve just got to warm up a bit…”
“You sure?” asked Xander.
“Yeah,” replied Dante. “Look… um… how did you do that?”
Xander shrugged. “Do you mean the trigger bit?”
Dante shook his head. “No. That I know how you did, although I wasn’t sure if I had read you correctly. With the past few missions, and your distinct refusal to DT, I was wondering if you would ever…”
Xander turned away. “Whoa… Dante… cut down on the babble, man, you’re worse than Willow!” He turned back, his face serious. “So what did you mean then?”
“You were badly hurt, weren’t you? You had I don’t know how many broken ribs…”
“…Nine…” interjected Xander.
Dante scowled, but continued, “and had major burns on your hands and face from that elemental burning up, not to mention the claw marks…”
“…Third degree burns…” muttered Xander.
“And then you come along as a form I thought I would never see…” Dante trailed off, and Xander frowned, remembering previous conversations and random comments that Dante had made over the time they had known each other.
“You knew, didn’t you, Dante? That I could do this?” tears appeared at the corners of his eyes. “What have I become?” he asked weakly.
Dante, finally warming up, sheathed Alastor and walked over to the pool of blood remaining on the ground. “You have ‘become’ nothing, Xander. You are the same person that you were when you were born, and the same person you were when I met you. You are even the same person now that you were when you were ‘Triggered’.”
Xander wheeled on him angrily. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Dante turned, anger rising to meet Xander's. “What?! And have you knowing that you were going to be hunted for what you are? Not only by humans, but by your own kind as well? I offered you a job because I want to keep an eye on you! You met Trish. Well, when I first met her, she was being controlled by one of the devil Lords! The knowledge of what she was, drilled into her since she was born, made her susceptible to his influence. The world can’t afford things like that happening too often!” He swallowed, and looked down at his feet ashamed at is outburst. “Sorry.”
Xander shrugged. “No, it’s alright, I needed that. I’ve just been replaying memories of your little hints in my head… Trish knew what I was as well, didn’t she?”
Dante nodded.
“And your comment in the Museum, ‘you would be interested anyway…’ it all makes sense. Your mother was human, but you didn’t mention mine… you mentioned my father… my real… father…” Xander trailed off.
Dante nodded again.
“So… and I’m probably gonna regret this… who was my ‘mother’?”
Dante pulled a face. “Ah… well… if you remember the grimoire, you should have a good idea…”
Xander frowned, but cast his mind back. “It was Xepto, wasn’t it? ‘The only female Devil-Knight…’”
Dante nodded sadly. “Yeah.”
“At least I know, now. Thanks…”
“Don’t mention it…” sighed Dante, “I should have told you sooner.”
Xander shook his head. “No… you were only trying to keep me safe. That’s honourable, even if the exact method isn’t. But why were you so shocked to see me like that?”
Dante shrugged, and started to walk off, with Xander following a few feet behind. “I don’t know. I… knew… in my instincts who your mother was, so I shouldn’t have been surprised at the family resemblance… but I was. Xepto was a strange one. I met her once, when I was very young. She was coming after my father… another of those ‘death or honour’ things that Devils and demons are so fond of… according to some sources…and these are millennia old, mind you, the Oriental religions twisted it somewhat into ‘honour in death’ when they had a Hellmouth stationed there…”
Xander choked on his tongue. “…Did you… did you say, ‘Hellmouth?’”
Dante looked back, “Yeah, why?”
Xander shook his head, “uh… no reason. Tell me more…”
“Well… Xepto was… rather distinctive. She stood about… yeah, nine feet tall, maybe a little under… and, well basically, didn’t have a nose. She was third in their number, although none of the others except Sparda ever admitted it, right behind him and the ‘nameless’… guess there’s chauvinism even in Hell, eh?” He laughed quietly. “I still don’t quite know why she went after him, but who knows, he’s dead now… but she isn’t…”
“Dante, we’d better get out of here. I… can feel them coming…”
Dante nodded. “So can I. They’re a bit far away yet, but it’s probably advisable. The villagers are coming this time… and I don’t like killing people. Devils; fine, demons; fine… there are practically an infinite number of them. People… even possessed ones… only six billion or so. We’ll talk about this when we get back, maybe Trish can help a bit.”
Xander raised an eyebrow.
Dante grimaced, “OK, maybe she’ll only make it worse. Xander…”
Xander stopped to look at him.
“…Don’t DT too often. You’ll… get to like the power it gives you.” Dante’s serious look drilled the importance of the statement into Xander. “You won’t want to return.”
Xander nodded once, and the two ran out the door, towards their goal, and away from their nightmares…
Xander cried out in agony as something hit him in the face. He flew backwards; to impact on the wall of the small room they were in. Dante ducked an attack by one of his opponents, and ran to his side.
“Dante! What the hell was that?” said Xander through clenched teeth.
Dante looked about the room, and took stock quickly of the devils present. He looked back, and blinked. “I don’t know. Nothing here should have been able to do that.”
A cold wind swept through the room, chilling the two fighters to their cores. As Dante helped Xander up, he fixed his eyes on one spot on the wall. A painting was hanging where he looked, but he could feel something… else there also.
“Xander!” Dante called as he leapt clumsily over a scythe blade and brought his own blade in turn crashing down on the Death Scythe.
“Yeah?” called back Xander as he vaulted off a wall and landed behind an Auromancer who was occupied firing at Dante, and took its head off with one deft swing.
“Knock the picture down!”
Xander looked round the room, and saw at least half a dozen large paintings, and numerous smaller ones. “Which one?” he shouted back as he stepped round an attack from a Fetish before shooting it in what could broadly be called a face with Ivory.
Dante pulled a small knife from his pocket, and threw it at the picture. It embedded in the frame and vibrated slowly. “That one!” he dodged a bolt of plasma from one enemy, and shouted again.
“Xander! Toss me Ivory!”
Xander looked to the gun in his hand, and threw it at Dante in a high arc that curved above the battle on the ground. Dante followed its path with his eyes, and bounced off of a Marionettes head before running several steps up the wall and launching himself off in a twisting somersault that left him in the air inches above Ivory’s flight path.
As Dante’s fist closed round the grip of the pistol, he let Alastor drop and whipped out Ebony. Still in mid air, feet above his head and coat flapping as his fall slowed, Dante began to pick off the nearer enemies. Demons fell as the magical bullets ripped through, only to continue on and embed themselves in the next. Dante, realising his fall had taken him too close to the ground to end the right way up, merely let Ebony and Ivory slide out of his hands just before he landed in a handstand just to the side of where his sword had fallen. Balancing on one hand, he gripped Alastor, and pushed himself off of his hands, and flipped through the air before bringing Alastor down on the single remaining devil. The creatures frozen body shattered as the sword cleaved through, showering the room with small fragments of mystical ice.
Xander breathed a sigh of relief as he realised that battle had ended for a while.
Dante walked over to where Ebony and Ivory had fallen and holstered them. “Are you gonna look at the picture then?” he asked with a hint of amusement.
Xander looked to the picture, still with the small knife in the frame, and grinned sheepishly. “Oh… yeah, right…” he walked over and lifted the large painting down from its position on the wall. A dark recess stared back at him.
Xander looked to Dante in question. “Shall we?”
Dante nodded. “Lets.” He drew his pistols. “Do you want to go first or shall I?”
Xander shrugged. “I don’t mind. I can feel… something… from here, but it doesn’t feel evil. More just… pissed off.”
“I’ll go first then.” Said Dante, and matched actions to words, leaping nimbly up to the ledge behind the painting and hunching over to fit in the hole. “Pretty dark…” he muttered as he entered. That was the last comment he made for a short while…
Xander pulled the knife from the picture frame and climbed up behind Dante.
Dante and Xander spent an hour or so crawling through the narrow hole, which had quickly narrowed after the entrance to the point where neither could walk, and both had to go along on hands and knees.
Dante was the first out into a large cave. It had glyphs and pictograms all over the walls, depicting the horrors of devils and demons. The drawings seemed to writhe, as if they were alive.
In the middle of the cave, stood a pedestal that had a blue field surrounding it. The field was so bright, neither Dante nor Xander could see what was on the pedestal.
“What do we do now, O omnipotent one?” asked Xander.
Dante shrugged. “I don’t know! What do you want to do?”
Xander looked round at the walls of the cave, and shuddered. “Get the hell out of here.”
Dante smirked. “Get the hell out of dodge: check.”
As the two turned away, the field fell and an unearthly roar was heard in the cavern. Both Dante and Xander froze, backs to what they were sure was about to kill them.
“Great.” Said Dante. “Him. Again.”
Xander turned slightly. He saw what they were about to fight, and brought his eyes back to Dante. “You do realise that we are about to fight someone standing…”
Dante finished for him, cutting off what Xander was going to say, and replacing it with his own. “…There like he owns the joint. I know.” He sighed, and called over his shoulder. “What do you want now, Angelo?”
Angelo just growled, and leapt from the pedestal. While Dante faced off with Angelo, or whatever the hell his name was, Xander’s eyes were fixed on the pedestal. Two pistols rested on the platform, both in harnesses.
“Nice…” he whispered to himself. Dreamily, he began to step towards them.
Not even Dante's shout for assistance brought him out of his stupor as he picked up the pistols, and racking back the slides, brought them up either side of his head.
Fingers gently squeezing on the triggers, Xander stood and watched Dante being batted round the room as if he were an annoying insect. Dante finally rolled to a stop after one particularly vicious kick from Angelo and looked up to see Xander watching him. A peaceful look was on his face.
But there was something wrong with the picture. Because Xander had two new guns. And both were pointed at his own head…
Angelo landed a heavy kick between Dante's legs, and the half devil curled up in pain as he flew through the air. With one hand clutching his groin, Dante rolled to a stop by Xander's side. His pain was gone as he saw Xander begin to gently squeeze the triggers of the pistols.
“NO! Xander!” Dante gripped his arms, trying to drag his arms down from his head. Xander did not so much as budge an inch.
Dante cursed, and ducked behind Xander as he realised that Angelo was probably closing in. He was right. Angelo landed a punch just as Dante ducked round Xander. It missed Dante, but caught Xander full in the face, flinging him off of his feet and sending the two guns skittering away across the rough floor of the cavern.
Dante turned back to Angelo. “Y’know… I never thought I would ever thank you for anything… but I was wrong.” His eyes widened as Angelo pulled back again and caught him in the chest, a blow that made something go <snap> as it connected.
As his collarbone snapped, Dante felt the devil in him surging for dominance. Through the pain, he let it have its way…
Xander lay on the floor, dazed and hurt. Memories flashed through his mind, and his eyes widened as he remembered just how close he was to seeing how much damage two bullets could do to his cranium.
Turning his head, he saw the two pistols lying on the floor, metres away. Crawling over to them, he felt something edge into his mind. It was trying to say something… no… it was trying to… apologise?
Dante, in his devil form, and Angelo were fighting each other to a standstill. Somewhere in the course of the fight, both had decided that fists just weren’t cutting it, and swords had appeared in their hands.
As fast as one struck, his opponent blocked. Dante was fighting with a slight handicap, his collarbone was still broken, and he could not afford the time he would need to heal.
But still, he held his own against Angelo, two enemies perfectly balanced in their abilities and methods.
Dante finally blocked one attack that left Angelo painfully open, and took the opportunity. As his sword whipped toward the Dark Knights head, he simply teleported out of the way, across to the other side of the cavern.
Dante came out of Devil Trigger for a short time, and cursed loudly. “You’re not starting to do that again, are you?!” he spun his sword. “You know that’s cheating!”
Across the chamber, Angelo merely smiled disconcertingly at him.
Xander picked the two pistols up once more, and was surprised by the surge of emotion coming from an inanimate object. Memories burned their way into his mind, visual, tactile, aural and emotional. Thousands of years in a few seconds.
None of them stayed. It was just a way of apologising.
The guns had been forged by a devil hunter aeons ago on a world destroyed by them before the earth was even cooling down from it initial formation. Their master had died at the hands of what he was fighting, and as such, they had an irrational hatred of demons and devils. When they first felt Xander, and even Dante, the only part they could feel was the Devil-Knight blood. After being held ‘captive’ for the past few millennia by the devils, and particularly Nelo Angelo, they wanted revenge… and Xander was the nearest target.
Xander shook his head as his vision swum back into the cavern, instead of fields covered with the blood of innocents, stone monuments bathed in the blood of those that worshipped there. Adults killed as useless pests, children mutilated and tortured for perverse rituals.
Xander's eyes widened, and his breathing rate increased. “That…” he said, “I didn’t want to know.”
A mental shrug was his only response.
Xander looked for Dante, and found him the other side of the cavern in his devil state, fighting Angelo to a standstill. Neither looked to be winning. Both looked to be loosing slowly, and neither knew it.
Xander ran over to them, and stopped as he saw Angelo begin a strike that would finish the fight as soon as it landed…
“NO!” Xander screamed, “Dante! Look out!”
Dante caught the blade on its way down, but the sheer strength of the blow forced his block down. As he felt his arms falling, Dante rolled backwards out of the path of the blow. Xander saw his opening.
Raising the two pistols, he aimed at Angelo and opened fire.
The bullets burned down their paths. Erupting out of the muzzles of the barrels, they cut their way through the air toward Angelo.
The first bullet blew a chunk of Angelo’s armour off, and the rest followed suit. As more poured toward the seven foot tall Demon-Knight, he collapsed onto his knees.
Seconds later, he simply vanished.
Xander stopped firing in shock, and looked around suspiciously. “Where’d he go?” he asked no one in particular.
Dante answered. “He has this annoying habit of teleporting out when he gets too badly hurt. Whatever those pistols fire, its damn heavy stuff. My pistols don’t touch him.”
“But he’s just a demon… how can he do that?”
Dante shrugged painfully, and growled, “Devil-Lords must like the son-of-a-bitch.”
“You’re shoulder alright?”
Dante rolled his shoulder in display. “Should be… maybe a few hours more and it’ll be back in working order again.”
Xander felt he needed to bring up the topic that had been bugging him for most of the last day. “I think we were set up, Dante.”
Dante nodded slowly. “Yeah… I’m beginning to come to that conclusion too…”
“Who asked us to do this job anyway?” asked Xander.
Pulling a face, Dante pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket. “Let’s see…” he handed the paper to Xander. “It’s anonymous, as you can see. I usually follow these up as most of the time they are the worst ones… and its right, but I think this place has been corrupted a lot longer than a few weeks… the level of corruption here indicates years of influence…”
“So… what are we going to do?”
Dante took back the piece of paper, and folded it up as it went back in his pocket. “We’re going to have to total the island. Its not as bad as it sounds… but the only way out of here if we do will be going though whatever level of Hell the portal originated at.” He sighed heavily. “And that ain’t easy… even for me. You think the stuff we saw going on here is bad… just wait until you get into Hell… it’s a million times worse.”
“Can’t we swim?”
Dante raised an eyebrow. “Oh, yeah, great. We swim… what, three hundred miles… with all our clothes and weapons? Don’t make me laugh.”
Xander looked sheepish. “Um… sorry… guess that was a bit dumb.”
“Who knows, we might even meet your mother…” Dante's expression showed Xander that this was the last thing that they wanted to do.
“Thanks for that, Dante. Now I have something on my ‘To Do’ list.”
“What, you mean like ‘To Do: Meet Mother, Die-when-she-sees-I’m-helping-Dante’?” Dante quipped.
Xander sighed. “Whatever.” As he holstered his two new pistols, Dante spoke.
“What the hell were you doing there, Xander? Trying to commit suicide?”
Xander shook his head. “They’re… sentient, Dante. And after being trapped by demons for a few hundred centuries, they were out for revenge. And I was the nearest target.”
“Do you think they’re safe?”
Xander shook his head again. “No.” On Dante’s look, he continued, “they’re guns for Christ’ sake! Of course they’re not safe! But I don’t think they will try anything weird again…”
“How can you be sure?” Dante pressed the issue, like a wound you couldn’t leave alone.
“We…” Xander hunted for a semi-appropriate phrase, “…came to an understanding…”
Dante frowned, but decided that Xander could look after himself for the most part, and nimbly jumped up a rocky incline. “Coming?” He asked over his shoulder.
Xander touched the pommel of Ragnarok for good luck, and followed Dante down a narrow staircase that lead deeper into the island.
Rubbing his face with one hand, Xander thought of all the boasting that he could do when he got back to Sunnydale… if he ever went back. He could see it now:
“Hey, Buffy, I visited Angel’s little side trip after his ‘wild side’ episode. It’s all he said it was!”
“Oh, and by the way, I’m half Devil! Ain’t that nice?”
“I also have a sentient sword named after the Doom of the Gods, and two pistols that nearly killed me when I found them! Aren’t I lucky?”
Xander snorted, causing Dante to look round in question, until he saw the expression on Xander's face.
“Xander.” Dante spoken in a low whisper, barely audible over the whistling sound that filled the chamber. The sound emanated from an organic looking mound in the centre of the room.
Dante fixed Xander with a look. “That, my friend, is the mouth of Hell.”
Xander looked at it critically. “It’s… different…”
“From what?” asked Dante.
“From the Hellmouth under my old school.” Xander said it with such calm that Dante nearly missed the import of the sentence.
“You had a Hellmouth under your school?!”
“Yeah.” Said Xander. “It was just a great big hole in the ground.”
Dante didn’t say anything. He just stepped casually toward the slowly pulsating mouth. When he reached the middle, he simply sunk into the ground.
Xander looked at where Dante had been seconds before. “OK… guess that was the introduction… now it’s my turn…”
As he stepped forward, Xander heard the sound of hundreds of footsteps coming from the stairway. “Great. Now I don’t have a choice… it’s jump into Hell voluntarily, or get turned into bloody pulp by the villagers…”
Nervously stepping on the pulsing flesh, Xander cried out as he vanished from the room…
Xander shook his head as he sat on the bus, trying to stop his memories at that point. What both he and Dante had done in Hell, he did not want to remember. Neither of them had good memories of that escape, nor the things he had seen were sooner forgotten…
Realising that the person opposite him on the bus was staring fixedly at his right arm, Xander looked down to see that his green coat had flapped slightly, uncovering one of his pistols. He drew his coat over the weapon, and gave the woman a hard stare, saying quite clearly, ‘You Did Not See That, Did You?’
She shook her head and looked away as Xander shut his eyes again. It was another three miles to where he wanted to be…
Not for the first time, he wondered to himself. Why didn’t I just get a motorbike? It would so much easier to get around… I’m sick and tired of going on the buses…
Testimony of Informant: Carlotta Virchese:
“Dante? What do you want with Dante? He’s a no good puke! I’m the one you want for jobs like that! …Oh… sorry… self-advertising, you know…”
“That guy is as cold as ice… you could thrust him into the biggest fire fight in the world, and he wouldn’t bat an eyelid. Next up, he’s the only person who’d walk out alive…”
“Yeah, Enzo’s right, if Dante don’t like a job, he just won’t take it. Crazy, totally off his rocker. He turned down a job that paid nearly five mil once, and all because the guy who walked in and offered it wore a pink tie…”
“Six months ago? Yeah, he disappeared for a while. We all thought he finally bought it in one of his crazy stunts. Who in their right mind goes all sword wielding on a guy charging at you with an M249 SAW? Well, OK, Dante, that’s who. Took the guy out too… shit, he is one crazy bastard…”
Xander casually walked into the bar. It was a large building, with three levels. The main bar was on the top floor, and the function rooms were below. It was a strange layout, but one that seemed to work. The clientele loved it.
He usual spot in the corner of the bar was empty, and Dante had the barman on ‘friendly terms’, which meant that he had saved his daughter from some devils a while back. God only knew what the girl was doing going there, but then again…
This friendship extended to Xander. Or at least, it did once Dante explained politely that Xander was his partner, and no, he would not get drunk. All right, maybe ‘politely’ was the wrong word… but there wasn’t a better one.
“Hello, Xander,” said the barman, “what do you want tonight?”
Xander looked up from examining the wood of the bar where he was sitting. “Oh… right… order a drink, I suppose.” He sighed. “I’ll have a pint thanks, Charlie.”
Charlie nodded and moved over next to the draught pumps, where he placed a pint glass and began to fill it. As he finished, he came over and began to talk quietly. “You know, I’m glad one of you came in tonight… we had this odd guy come in earlier, asking about you and Dante…” he shook his head on Xander’s alarmed look. “Don’t worry, I didn’t tell him anything. But I thought you would want to know. Short guy, light brown hair, glasses, bit of a squint. Immaculate suit. He was odd because the best dressed customers we get here are you and Dante… and the rest, well…” He just looked around at the rest of the bar.
Xander nodded, digesting the information, and laid a five-dollar bill on the bar for his drink. “Thanks, Charlie, we appreciate your… discretion.”
Charlie smiled warmly. “Think nothing of it, lad, it’s the least I can do for Dante.”
Xander smiled back, and raised his pint to his lips. As it touched, he froze, and his eyes widened. Quickly draining it, he stood and raised an eyebrow at Charlie. He nodded, but looked confused. Xander quickly made his way over to the largest biker in the bar, and pressed three fifties onto the table in front of him.
“Do me a favour, Jawbreaker?” he said. “The next three guys that walk into the bar: see that they have to be stretchered out…”
Jawbreaker nodded, and slid the fifties into his leathers. “OK, kid. One order of triple hospitalisation coming up.”
Xander disappeared down the back stairs just as the suit and two friends walked through the front entrance. “Find Harris.” Ordered the suit.
Jawbreaker stood as one of the goons walked past him. Sliding his chair backwards into the path of the goon, he then swept his elbow around and landed a heavy blow to the back of the man’s head. Man and chair collapsed into a heap of broken furniture. The other man, seeing his partner hit the floor, headed over to Jawbreaker and swung at him.
This was the cue for the entire bar to erupt in a fight.
Xander ran down the stairs like a man possessed. He saw the bottom of the stairs and leapt the last ten or so steps. Landing in the storage room at the back of the bar, Xander steadied himself and launched himself at the rear security door. It gave way easily, and Xander found himself in the alley that ran along the back of the bar.
He turned suddenly at the sound of a shout. Seeing three people running for him pointing, he took off in the opposite direction, muttering to himself as he went.
“Why is my life never simple?”
Voices echoed behind him.
“Get him!”
“I can’t, he’s too fast!”
“Fool! He’s just got a head start!”
Xander accelerated, as the voices got stronger. Ducking round a corner, he hugged close to one wall, and quickly whipped round another corner as soon as he could. The men were still chasing him, but could not see him right now.
Xander ran right at one of the claustrophobically tight alley walls, and took three running steps up it. Then he pushed off and twisted his body, bringing his feet to the other wall and doing the same thing. Realising as he twisted that he had ran out of wall to run up, Xander continued his twisting somersault to land with his feet shoulder width apart on the roof of the bar.
Crouching, he looked cautiously over the edge, and saw the three men looking around for him in vain.
None of them thought of looking up.
“He’s gone!”
“Where could he go?”
“How the hell should I know? I’m not a damn demon hunter!”
Demon Hunter? Thought Xander. Is that what they think we are? Demons?
“He must be a demon! Only demons can disappear like the mists!”
Actually, thought Xander, there are quite a lot a spells that allow the caster to disappear like they think I have… but why disabuse them?
Xander stood, and intending to make a quiet getaway, started toward the other side of the building. He could roof hop for a few hundred yards, and once safely out of range, get the hell out of the area.
It was a good idea.
It was just a shame fate had other plans.
As Xander stood, a loose tile under his foot began to slide. Xander managed to rescue himself, but the tile fell down into the alley where the men were. It smashed loudly.
The shouts of the three alerted their friends all around the bar, if the slate hadn’t.
“He’s on the roof! He’s on the roof!”
“Damn it…” murmured Xander, before stepping away from another slipping tile.
“There’s no way up there.” Said one voice. Xander looked over the edge too see the speaker. It was the suit. “We must wait him out, or get a helicopter in.”
“Chopper. If we wait too long, he’ll just find a way out of here…”
The suit voice came again. “Yes, but the boss may not like the use of resources for capture of just one…”
“Who gives a damn? When they are alone, they’re vulnerable! Trying to get both at the same time is a good attempt at suicide!”
“Very well.” Xander heard a radio crackle to life. “Hawkeye One, come in. We want recon of the area. Find the bastard.”
Xander closed his eyes and prayed.
Less than a quarter of an hour later, Xander heard the low thrum of helicopter blades cutting the air.
He pulled out a small mobile phone, one that Dante insisted that he carry at all times. He had never been more grateful for Dante’s sometimes-bossy attitude. He keyed in the number and waited as the portable encryption key synchronised with its counterpart on Dante’s phone.
The phone rang.
And rang.
And rang.
And finally, just as he was about to hang up, the answer phone cut in. Dante’s severe tone cut across the connection. “This is the Devil Never Cry Detective Agency, leave your name, number and problem, and I’ll get back to you…”
Xander swore quietly. “Dante,” he said forcefully into the phone. “Pick the damn phone up. I’m in serious shit. And I’m in it up to my neck.”
Xander's keen eyes could now see the helicopter, a black camouflage design, with a silent rotor system for covert operations. It was using it, but Xander could still hear the slight sound. It had, as any Doom nut would tell you, a big frickin’ gun on the front, and a spotlight either side. Neither of the spotlights was on yet.
Finally, after an age, Dante picked up. “Didn’t I tell you to be careful?” his near teasing tone came over the line.
Xander cut him off. “I don’t have time for that! I have some goons down here with military equipment, specifically, one chopper, big, dark, and with a huge gun.”
“Get out of there…” said Dante as if it was obvious.
“Well, duh!” hissed Xander. “But it’s a bit hard, there’s loads of them! And they’re after us both. So don’t come to my rescue. I’ll get out alone.”
Dante sounded… hurt. “OK, Xander. I trust you. Got your weapons?”
Xander nodded, then gave verbal acknowledgement. “Yeah, both pistols, but I haven’t got Ragnarok. Too big for the bus, you know?”
Dante laughed quietly. “Xander,” he said seriously, “we have got to get you a bike…”
Xander didn’t reply, and hit ‘end’ on the phone. The chopper had just turned its spotlights on.
Xander pulled both of his pistols. They hadn’t caught him yet, and they hadn’t found him yet. Aiming carefully at the two spotlights, he fired…
“We’re under fire! We’re under fire!” yelled the helicopter pilot as the first spotlight exploded in a shower of sparks. Hr pulled back on the stick hard, killing forward momentum, and then wrenched it to the right, backing the chopper and slammed his foot into the pedal, spinning the vehicle crazily on its axis.
The second spotlight exploded with the same shower of sparks as the first, and suddenly the area was dark once again, the powerful searchlights destroyed.
Xander fired once more, and an almighty grinding sound began to emanate from the rotor.
The pilot cursed over the comm. “He’s hit the rotor! What the hell is that guy shooting?!”
The calm voice of the suit came back. “I do not know. Maybe we had better find out…” he added, almost as an afterthought, “Hawkeye One, return to base. You’re no use to us if you’re having flight troubles.”
Xander smiled to himself as he saw the helicopter bank away and head back the way it came, albeit a lot more noisily than it had arrived. Through sheer blind luck, one of his rounds had found the noise dampener… or maybe the angle control… that had an influence in rotor noise too, didn’t it?
“Now to get out of here…” he whispered.
The building to the side of the bar was an apartment complex, taller than the bar, and with lots of small windows. Xander looked up at the roof, and realised that there was no way he would be able to get up there without some serious help. Most of the windows had light on inside. That meant people were home, and awake…
He noticed a window on the second floor was open, and the light was out. A short drop, and he was home free.
Unfortunately, as it so often does, fate intervened again. As Xander slipped silently through the window, a loud scream shattered the silence.
Xander turned around to see two people in a large bed, one male, and one female. Both were naked.
The woman continued screaming and pulled the sheet up to cover her. Regrettably, this meant that the sheet was pulled away from the man, leaving him leaned up in the bed, looking bewildered and completely exposed.
“Uh… just checking the window frames…” said Xander weakly. “Um… bye.”
He ran through the door opposite, and down a short hallway to the front door of the apartment. Opening the door, he entered the main second floor hall and ran to the stairs.
As he reached the landing, he heard heavy footsteps pounding up the stairs, and shouts from the men that were chasing him.
“Damn it…” he muttered, and ran for the third floor.
“He’s a floor ahead of us!” echoes up the stairs.
“I know! Catch him!”
Xander didn’t want to know what they wanted, and he didn’t want to find out, either. He increased his speed until he reached the top floor of the apartment building.
Xander stopped as he reached the edge of the roof, and turned back to face his pursuers.
The three that were running up the stairs after him stopped as they saw Xander reach the roof, at bay.
He was trapped.
They spread out, and started forward. “Why don’t you come with us, mate? You’ve led us a merry chase, I’ll give you that… but now its time to pay the piper. And you will pay the piper…”
Xander took one menacing step toward them, and they stopped dead. An evil smile appeared on Xander's face, and he brushed his coat back, like the western gun fighters from tens of decades ago.
The men’s eyes widened as they realised that they were the targets.
A loud, imperious voice sounded over the wind. “What do I pay you for? Kill him!”
The men started forward again, and Xander realised with a sinking feeling that he couldn’t shoot them… they were human. He could do nothing more than defend himself.
The first threw a punch that Xander ducked with uncanny ease. The next tried to leg-sweep him, but again, Xander merely dodged the strike. The third caught him on his blindside, and Xander had no choice but to block it directly. As the leg swung past, Xander caught it and drew it up, before bringing his elbow down hard into the knee.
A sickening crunching noise, accompanied by the man’s agonised scream told of the injury. The man collapsed onto the floor, clutching his ruined leg, with tears running down his face from the pain.
While Xander was busy with the third, the first two had regrouped. While the first kept Xander's attention, the second tried to tackle him. Xander flung him off like an irritating nuisance, and the man screamed as he went over the side of the building. Xander looked cautiously over the edge and saw the man land solidly on the roof of the bar. As long as he didn’t move, he wouldn’t fall off.
Seeing his two compatriots down, the first man gained a healthy respect for Xander's abilities. He maintained a constant distance between him and Xander, never letting Xander get close enough to hit him.
Xander fumed. This guy wasn’t playing. “OK, fine, I’ve had enough of you bastards… if you want to stay away, do it, I don’t care…” with that, he pulled a pistol and shot the man in the shoulder.
As the man fell to the ground, eyes tightly closed against the pain, tears being squeezed out, Xander re-holstered the pistol. He heard the voice of the suit behind him.
“Mr. Harris, you are… more impressive than I had been led to believe. Truly, I thought that Dante did all the work.”
“Well,” said Xander. “Now you know different.”
“Indeed.” The suit nodded. “Let us see… Alexander Harris, age 18, parents, biological; dead, parents, foster; alive, drunkards. Current occupation: should I put down demon hunter, or perhaps; Demon itself?”
Xander didn’t show how deeply this little reeling off of his information had affected him. “Since you know so much about me, why don’t you tell me who you are?”
The suit laughed. “My dear Mr. Harris… I am unimportant. But if it makes you feel better, you may call me… sir.”
Xander shook his head. “I don’t think so, buddy.”
“You will come with me, Mr. Harris, whether you like it or not.” With this simple statement, he began stalking toward Xander.
Xander shook his head, and pulled out both pistols again. “Not one more step.”
“Oh, Mr. Harris, you wont shoot… an unarmed… man? Will you?”
“That depends,” said Xander, “on whether he is really a man or not…”
As the suit charged forward, Xander fired wide, his arc of bullets spraying as he spun away from the attack and countered. Bringing the butt of one pistol down on the back of the man’s head, Xander watched as the suit fell to the ground.
The suit rolled onto his back. “So… you’re just going to kill me? A human?”
Xander shook his head. “No. Not just kill you.” He fired at the suits legs.
As the bullets tore through, the suit did not even wince, let alone scream. His face was set in a rictus of hate as Xander stood over him.
Xander passed judgement.
“Devils…” he said quietly.
“Never…” he said even more softly, looking down.
“CRY!” He shouted the word, and closed his eyes as he squeezed the triggers, both pistols pointed at the creature’s head.
Xander looked down at the body of the man he had just killed. He hoped to God that Dante was right when he gave him that piece of information, because he did not want a man’s death on his conscience.
He stood watching as the dead man suddenly convulsed, every muscle in his body seeming to contract at once. His eyes widened in shock and revulsion as the truth was revealed.
The man…
…wasn’t a man at all.
He was a demon. Xander breathed out in relief. Killing demons didn’t matter. There were more than enough to go around.
Xander watched with a sort of sick fascination as the man writhed on the ground. From the human shape he had taken, some basic changes occurred. His arms lengthened, but not to a great degree. His legs got shorter, stubbier, and the knee joints turned back on themselves with an audible snapping sound. The face became more pointed, the nose becoming more pronounced as it turned into a snout. Skin darkened and began to turn a mottled green as scales developed. With a ripping noise, a thick tail erupted from the back, and quickly grew to five or more feet long.
Xander stared at the lizard in a torn and bloody business suit. “That’s…” he couldn’t finish the sentence.
He heard a gasp from behind him, as he saw one of the mercenaries, the one he shot in the shoulder, staring fixedly at the body of his employer. “I was working for one of them?” he asked in a shocked voice.
Xander answered him. “Yeah. You were.”
“But…” he looked up at Xander. “He said you were wanted… that we would be doing the world a favour…” he paused. “And the money wasn’t bad either…”
“Well,” said Xander, sitting down on the flat roof a few feet away from the man, “you would, in a way… Hell would have been one step closer.”
The mercenary turned to face Xander properly, dragging his eyes away from the corpse. “You mean… you… fight those things?”
Xander shrugged. “I’m not the only one… but yeah.”
“Wow.”
Xander looked up and then quickly stood. “The cops are on their way.” He pulled a pistol again, before shrugging apologetically. “Sorry about this…” he said, and stepped forward, clubbing the man around the back of the head. He slumped down, unconscious.
Xander stepped away, and quickly vanished into the night.
Dante was sitting at is desk when Xander got back, looking from the door to the phone and back again. Alastor was laid across his desk and Ebony and Ivory were resting on each other next to it.
“Hi, honey, I’m home!” called Xander with mock happiness as he walked through the doorway.
Dante leapt out of his seat and walked over to him. “You OK?” he asked without preamble.
Xander nodded slowly. “Yeah. The guy who was after me wasn’t a person.”
“You mean, he was a devil?” asked Dante.
“I’m not sure…” said Xander as he stripped off his coat and began to field strip his pistols on Dante's desk. When he was satisfied they were alright, he put them back together just as quickly. “…he wasn’t human, I know that much. And he didn’t Cry.”
“So you killed him… it?”
“Yeah. It wouldn’t have stopped. And whoever he works for wont stop anyway.”
“What was it?”
“It looked like a lizard. But until I killed it, it looked human.” Xander frowned on Dante's suddenly nervous look. “What?”
Dante sighed, and walked back over to his desk, before yanking open a drawer and pulling a strange object out. It was covered in cloth, and quite large.
Carefully lifting the cloth off of the item, he revealed what was inside. Before he touched it, however, he reached back inside the drawer and slipped a pair of fine gloves onto his hands.
“What are you doing?” asked Xander as he walked over.
Dante looked up. “I’m about to do some reading.” He said as if it was obvious.
The item was a book.
“Now leave me alone… we have eighteen hours before we have to leave for Maine, and I don’t want to leave this book here if this is happening.”
“Can’t we take it with us?” asked Xander, “and why are you wearing gloves?”
Dante looked up. “No, we can’t take it with us. In eighteen hours, it goes in a fire, and believe me, the flames wont be red… they’ll be black.” He looked at his hands. “As for the gloves… I don’t feel like touching human skin. Is that OK with you?”
Xander winced, but didn’t reply.
“Dante?”
“Hmm?” answered Dante without looking up from his book.
“Its time to go.”
“Oh. Right.” Dante shut the book with a snap, and then wrapped it up again in the cloth.
“I thought you were going to burn that?” asked Xander.
“I am.” Answered Dante simply. “But it wont burn easily.”
Xander watched as his partner and friend soaked the cloth with lighter fluid, and then looked at it thought fully for a few seconds. “Wouldn’t it be easier to soak the pages?”
Dante shrugged. “Yeah, but I don’t what the writing to run. If the ink gets anywhere other than on the book, God only knows what will happen, and even he might not…”
Xander looked at Dante with a ‘huh?’ expression. “Pardon me?”
Dante grimaced. “If the ink gets on the stones of the hearth, the stones themselves will become infected with the evil contained in this book. Do you know how hard it is to burn stone? Can’t be done. It’ll liquefy at best, and contaminate everything it touches.”
“Oh.” Xander was silent for a few seconds. “What is the book, then?”
“Its exact name is lost in the mists… like so much other stuff these days. I swear scholars deliberately loose stuff to be able to say ‘it is lost in the mist of time, but…’” he grinned sheepishly. It was an eternal sore point with the half-devil. He sighed on Xander's look. “OK, alright… OK.” He looked Xander in the eyes. “It’s called the Codex Mortis. A more evil book you will not find, even the Necronomicon. ‘Cause I have a copy of that over there.” He pointed to the bookshelf. “This is the only copy of the Mortis ever written. Ever.”
He threw the book in the fire.
Standing back, Dante and Xander stood impassively as the book began to incinerate slowly.
“You know everything in that book now?” asked Xander with a degree of awe.
Dante shrugged. “Most of it. The bits I can’t remember are either unimportant or will come back to me eventually. It’s always the way.”
“Yeah,” Xander nodded in understanding. “The few things I did remember in exams at school I always knew more about after I walked out of the exam hall.
“It’s the fourth law of the universe, Xander,” said Dante looking at the book dully. “Stress either makes you remember or forget. For most people, its forget.”
Xander raised an eyebrow. “Wasn’t the fourth law ‘it ain’t paranoia if it’s justified’?”
Dante didn’t reply. He was watching the book with wary eyes.
Dante turned quickly to look at Xander as he landed heavily on the floor. “Trigger. Now.”
Xander felt the surge within him, and closed his eyes against the sudden height shift, as he became his darker form.
When he had opened them again, he saw Dante likewise Triggered and facing a large contingent of devils and demons. They were watching the two of them with a sort of detached interest. The sort a large group uses when they have two people they don’t know suddenly appear when unexpected and they knew that a load more reinforcements were near if the two did anything funny.
Dante shrugged apologetically at them, and spoke. “Hi, guys.”
“Where did you two come from?” questioned the tallest of the demons there.
“And him,” the demon gestured at Xander. “Why does he look like that? Xepto has never taken a lover as long as she has been alive.”
“Well that’s where you’re wrong.” Said Dante sarcastically. He turned to Xander, and drew his sword as he did so. Xander stepped back, beginning to draw his own blade. “Sorry, kid.” Dante sounded genuinely remorseful.
With that, Dante spun and decapitated five of the group with one swing. Xander quickly moved forward and thrust, taking one demon through the throat, before tearing out the blade and ramming it home in the ribcage of the last remaining one, instantly silencing the start of its scream for help.
Dante looked appreciative. “And that, boys and girls, is how to do that!”
Xander merely raised an eyebrow at him. Before he could de-Trigger, Dante turned to him and warned him not to. “Don’t, Xander. There is a reason why only demon and devils survive in hell. We are not here on a vacation; we need to get out of here. If any demon sees us in human form, the game’s up. Stay like that. It’s the only way.”
Xander's voice came to Dante, sounding surprisingly nasal for someone who didn’t have one. It was still low, and made the ground feel as if it were shaking, however. “Fine. But remember one thing: I can’t cope with this for long. I can already feel the power pulling at what little control I have. If we’re here for more than a few hours, I will have to return for a short while to regain my willpower.”
“Xander,” said Dante with absolute conviction, “we will be lucky if we get out of here inside the next decade. At least, back on earth… but when in Devil form, physical time has no meaning. If… when… we get back, you’ll look the same as you did when we left.”
He turned away with one final command.
“Sheath your sword. No reason to make anyone think we’re looking for a fight.”
Dante and Xander watched as the book began to singe. Black sparks leapt from the cover as it caught alight, and the flames themselves seemed to twist and writhe as if alive.
Dante stepped back, and gripped Xander's wrist drawing him back also. Xander threw a questioning glance to Dante at the move, but remained silent.
The book was burning properly now, flames licking over its surface and slowly eating their way through. Xander stood with awe plainly written on his features as the fire lost its colour, the tongues of flame becoming black.
Just black.
OK, he admitted to himself, so the black does actually have different shades within it, like the edges are more sort of charcoal while the centre, which should technically be blue is um… not there, its so black.
The cover had been burned completely away now, and the pages began to curl as the fine beaten skin was engulfed.
“Now the fun begins…” whispered Dante.
“Huh?” asked Xander.
“Watch…” breathed Dante almost reverently, “and learn…”
The flames twisted around again, and faces began to appear in the fire. Xander watched at the tortured faces screaming in pain and agony, as if actual people were in the fire instead of an evil book. Faces displayed in a monochrome picture, which constantly flickered and wavered as the air currents played and the flames took on a will of their own.
“Oh, God…” murmured Xander in horror. Nothing he had seen or much less done in hell were this painful. But he did have a biased view. Dante had deliberately steered clear of the most gruesome parts of hell, knowing full well that a devil wouldn’t loose his lunch, but Xander, and even Dante himself, just might.
A last few pages were remaining in the fire now, and the book seemed to make one last desperate attempt to reach ‘freedom’. The flames engulfed the whole fireplace, licking up the brickwork and whole images forming in the tongues of fire. People, with outstretched arms, calling in supplication for aid to save them from what happened centuries before.
Xander took a faltering step forward, and Dante roughly gripped his shoulder.
“It’s OK, man,” said Xander, “I just want a closer look.”
Dante shook his head and pulled Xander back, despite the struggle from the younger man. “No. It’s too dangerous. We’re too close as it is.”
Xander's eyes flashed at Dante. “Let me GO!” he screamed suddenly and wrenched his shoulder free.
The books last attempt was in vain, however, for as soon as Xander was free, the last of the flames began to die slowly, shrinking and becoming less and less as Xander stepped forward.
Dante let him. He was in almost no danger now, as the book had burned completely. Xander looked up to see Dante looking at him with wary eyes. “All better now?” Dante asked with caution.
Xander breathed, and nodded his head slightly. “Yeah. I guess. It… was controlling me…”
Dante patted Xander on the shoulder. “It was the souls of each and every person that died to make that book. The people who had the flesh flayed off their bones when they were still alive and conscious of every little tear, the people who had their still beating hearts ripped from their bodies as ink-wells. Each word was written with a different persons blood, Xander. The combined souls, trapped for millennia in eternal torment at the hands of the monster who wrote the book are very powerful when they all try to get one person to do one thing.”
“So… why did they pick me? Why not you?”
“I do not know. I would imagine that it is because I am older than you, or stronger… or maybe even that you have simply too much compassion for others. You always leap in if someone is in trouble. You never look first to see if your actions will end up killing you…”
“Compassion.” Said Xander flatly. “Right. Show less compassion: check.”
Dante laughed quietly. “It is not something you can simply turn off, Xander. It is part of who you are. And a part that I do not think you should stop using.”
“So… you want me to end up doing something foolish? Jump in without thinking?”
Dante rolled his eyes and turned away. “Did I say that? No.” he sighed. “I merely think that you could think your actions over better occasionally.”
“So, I sit and think things out every time I go into a fight?”
Dante shot Xander a hard look. “This isn’t getting anywhere.” He spun, and leaned against his desk as he faced Xander once more. “Did I ever tell you about a theory a man I once met had? It was this: if a man believes in Heaven, but not in Hell, it doesn’t matter how much evil that man does, how much of a bastard he is…” Dante paused for effect, “…he will not go to Hell.”
“That’s not fair…” said Xander.
“Ah! But there’s more!” said Dante. “If another man believes only in Hell, and not in Heaven, he can be the nicest guy on the planet, do good deeds every day of his life, hell, he could even get a Beatification while still alive, and that’s damn near impossible, but no matter how much good he does…” Dante leaned into Xander's face, causing eye contact even if Xander didn’t want it, “…he will only go to Hell.”
“That sucks,” said Xander, “but what has it got to do with anything?”
“Just this, Xander. There is one thing that you can do to really make a difference in this world, especially now that you know what you are… but you must always remember one thing, and one thing above all others: you cannot save everyone in the world from their own personal demons. Someone, somewhere, will slip, and that is that. Its called free will.”
Xander snarled at Dante, still maintaining eye contact. “I can try.” He spat, with emotion surging through his voice and his posture.
The words echoed in Dante's mind as Xander stalked out of the room.
“That boy is going to kill us both…” he whispered to the now dark room.
Dante walked in the door of the warehouse office. Xander followed, a bit more subdued since his encounter with the book’s souls. It had taken them only a few hours to get to Cutler, Maine, but both were feeling the drive in their bones. The car was too damn small, and Xander had told Dante so repeatedly during the drive. How the hell were they meant to get one, maybe another two people into that tiny thing?
“We have a package to pick up. For Mr. Smythe.”
“Have you got any ID on you, sir? And if you are not Mr. Smythe, I am afraid that we cannot let you retrieve the package.”
Dante nodded, and pulled out a wallet. He flipped it open, and dropped it on the desk in front of the clerk. “It enough ID for you?”
The clerk looked the wallet over, and nodded, before putting a clipboard down on the desk in front of Dante. “Would you sign this, please sir? For our records?”
“Certainly.” Dante scribbled a random signature down on the form, and took the offered package. “Thank you.”
As the two, Dante and Xander exited the office, Xander looked across at Dante with a frown. “Aren’t you going to open it?”
“Nah…” Dante shrugged. “Told not to. By Travers and everything…”
“Don’t remind me.” Muttered Xander. “You’ll make me regret coming on this little trip. I’d have preferred devil hunting with Trish.”
Dante slipped the package into the boot of the car when they reached it, and turned to Xander with a slight smile on his face. “No you wouldn’t, and you know it. She teases you mercilessly.”
Xander merely rolled his eyes and got into the passenger side. “Yeah. I know. You think that she’d have got tired of it by now.”
“Xander, as long as you’re you, Trish will continue to tease. It’s her nature.”
Xander's witty retort was lost as Dante suddenly slammed the car into gear and shot out of the warehouse car parking facilities, fishtailing the car as he turned the corner. “Next stop: Nathan.”
“My… God…” breathed Xander.
Dante shot him a hard look. “Don’t even think of mentioning him down here, Xander. That is a one-way ticket to seeing the big boss. And that, you really don’t want to do.”
Dante looked at where Xander was transfixed. “But I must admit, you are right.”
“How can that even be possible?” murmured Xander with a combination of awe and revulsion.
“Lots of things are possible when you’re dead, kid, and even when you’re alive, down in hell, the physical rules are suspended. They can even be bent, if not necessarily broken, for a devil in the material plane.”
“I…” Xander choked. “I can’t allow that to happen, Dante. I just can’t.” he was slowly being drawn forward, eyes locked with the man that was being tortured. Dante saw the begging in his eyes, but hardened himself to it.
Dante had to grip Xander as hard as he could. “Xander,” he hissed into the taller devil’s ear, “you do that, and we are never getting out of here…”
“But… I can’t leave him…” whispered Xander almost to himself.
Dante lost all patience suddenly. He cuffed Xander hard round the face, and then quickly gripped his hand, trying not to show how much it had hurt. Xander turned to look at Dante with surprise and betrayal burning in his eyes.
“Xander.” Dante’s voice left no room for argument. “You can do nothing for him. It was his choices in life that brought him here. We are not here to free every soul from torment. We are here only, only because there was no other way to escape from that damned Island. Our job, our job, is to save the people we can who aren’t dead yet. We could spend eternity here, and not free even a fraction of the souls in torment. I should know.” He took an angry breath, preparing himself for what he was about to reveal. “Neither of my parents would be anywhere other than here. My father because Devils cannot go to heaven, and my mother simply because she loved, and was loved by a devil. Think about it. She spent her life, and now she spends eternity here, because she loved. And you think some petty murderer deserves reprieve.” He snarled, and Xander suddenly felt like Dante was the nine-foot tall devil and he was but a few inches tall. “You free him, and if we survive, I’ll hunt you both down and kill you.”
Xander swallowed hard, and turned away from the man with the pleading eyes. “Lets get out of here…” he whispered hoarsely.
It was raining.
Not soft rain. This was the type that didn’t just land gently on your clothes, then soak through and make you wish that you were at home in the warm and dry. Oh no. This rain pounded on every available surface, a staccato drum roll that never ended, it seemed to be saying, ‘buddy, if you thought the flood in the bible was bad, damn, you ain’t seen nothing yet…’ and it had the power to prove it. It rumbled on the pier, and sounded like an earthquake in the ears of everyone who heard it. Overflowing from gutters and pouring off roofs as if each molecule was in a race to reach the ground first. It had long since soaked the two people walking on the pier through, matting their hair to their heads, but neither attempted to shield himself from the element gone mad. Both new it would be futile.
Dante and Xander walked onto the pier to see a ship bobbing up and down in the rough and quickly swelling waters. Both could see that the ship itself had seen better days, and the captain was obviously more worried about the amount of green lining his pockets than looking after an otherwise seaworthy craft.
A burly man with a short scruffy beard eyed the two of them with distaste as they walked toward the ship, and blocked their way as they attempted to walk up the gangplank.
“What’s your business here, boys?” he asked with a voice gruff from too much salt and even more shouting.
Dante pulled out a letter, and waved it at the man who snatched it out of the air and read it carefully, eyes squinting at the words, as if they might change unless he watched them carefully.
Finally, he pulled his head back and thrust out the letter, handing it back to Dante.
“Right. You the pickup for Nathan, then.” He coughed. “I’ll be glad to see the back of him, I’ll tell ya that for nowt…”
A cultured voice echoed over the deck behind them. “And I would have you know, Jenkins, that I will be equally glad to see Terra Firma after this rat infested, mobile dung skip.”
Xander and Dante turned to the voice, and Dante watched in shocked silence as Xander charged forward and pinned the man with as much force as possible to the door he had just exited from.
The man exclaimed in pain. “Oh! I say! Can’t you American types master any self-control? The Watchers Council will take this matter very seriously if you do not let me go right this instant!” He was red faced, from a combination of Xander's arm over his neck and anger at being treated in such a way.
Xander growled out to Dante, “I don’t know who on earth this guy should be, but he isn’t who he says he is! This is Ethan Rayne, Dante!” He turned his face back to the Chaos mage. “And I promised myself that I’d get even with you…”
In between choking, the man slowly reached into his pocket and pulled out a small device. As it touched Xander's ribs, he was flung backwards and landed with a loud <clang> against a container ready for unloading. He fell to the deck and lay there, groaning.
The man brushed himself down carefully, making sure not to miss a single piece of lint, paying no attention to the pouring rain. “Now then…” he said in a overly friendly tone, “maybe we can put this unpleasant episode behind us and deal with the matter at hand.” He walked over to Xander, and pulled him to his feet. Before Xander could attack him again, he spoke.
“I am not Ethan Rayne, young man. I am Nathan, the man you were instructed to pick up. It is unfortunate, however, that you have run afoul of my twin. It means trust between the two of us will be something that has to be earned, rather than accepted from the word go.”
Xander scowled, but nodded.
“Excellent.” Nathan Rayne nodded to himself, and smiled disarmingly at Xander. “I hope that our job will be complete soon… however, I would like to state for the record, Dante:” he turned to address the named man, “I wish to fly home. While I get both Sea- and Air- sick, airsickness lasts a far shorter time…” humour danced in his eyes for a second, before an impenetrable wall slammed down on his emotions.
Xander couldn’t help but laugh quietly at the flip comment. Hey, it was true.
“Shall we depart, gentlemen?” asked Nathan as he stepped carefully down the gangplank. “I fear that we must get to Sunnydale as soon as possible. It will not be necessary to head to Seattle first, I have everything I need right here…”
Dante followed the man, and Xander followed him. Dante spoke, “we were going to meet up with another of our associates in Seattle… just in case we need backup.”
Nathan turned to Dante. “Oh, come now, for a man of your… obvious… talents, this should be easy.”
Dante couldn’t help but feel a cold shiver run down his back at that comment. It implied that the Council knew a lot more than they were telling. This did not bode well…
At least they did not seem to know about Xander.
Yet.
“Where are we looking for again, Dante?” Xander asked as he scanned the buildings to either side of the road they were driving down.
Dante rolled his eyes as he drove, but answered again. “You, Xander, are looking for a small restaurant called ‘Min Ho Duck’s All-Night Eatery’”
He saw the strange look that the words gathered him. “What? The guys unhinged, even by our standards. But I helped him out a while back…”
“What did you do, give him a lobotomy?” muttered Nathan, but both Xander and Dante acted like they hadn’t heard it, although they had.
For a few minutes more, they drove in silence, only broken by the noise of the cars around them.
Xander pointed suddenly to the side of the road. “There!”
“Good eye, Xander.” Said Dante as he twisted the steering wheel, and with a complete disregard for either his passengers or the other traffic, made a sharp u-turn and pulled up outside the front of the small fronted restaurant.
The three began to get out, but Dante turned and pointed Ebony nonchalantly a Nathan. “Nuh uh. You, buddy, stay right here.”
Nathan looked daggers at him. “You may try to set me up. It will not be the first time for something like that.”
Dante scowled. “I’ve never even seen you before, idiot.” He sighed. “Look, just pretend that we had the argument and that I won. It’ll be less painful for you in the long run.”
Nathan leaned forward. “And if I don’t?”
Dante grinned evilly. “Then we’ll just see how well you rock with us with a bullet through each knee.”
With that, he got out of the car and hit the ‘lock’ button on the key-chain dongle. If Nathan tried to get out, the car alarm would go off.
He made sure his back was to the car. “Come on, Xand… lets go meet Trish.”
Xander nodded silently, and show one last distrustful look at the Ethan Rayne look-alike.
That was just too freaky. One a Chaos mage, one a Watcher.
Damn, the family reunions must be interesting…
Nathan sat in the car. He knew full well that if he tried to get out, the alarm would go off, and as he didn’t realise that Dante had rented the car, he didn’t know that it would do something else.
Like blow up.
He pulled out a small mobile phone, and looked at it with distaste.
“The things I do for King and Country…”
Dialling a number from memory, Nathan held it up to his ear. When the other end picked up, he spoke into the microphone.
“I am encountering more resistance from Mr. Dante than anticipated. We may have to use… alternative methods of persuasion. Please upload the files to my laptop as soon as possible. We also have another Devil, possibly female, and one that… I’m not quite certain of. If you could get me the files on him too, it would be most helpful. His name is Alexander Harris.”
The phone snapped shut, and Nathan opened his briefcase.
As he opened the lid of a laptop, a command prompt blinked at him slowly. He scowled at the computer, as if it had done him a mortal wrong, and then watched as a progress indicator crept its way to 100.
He pressed a few buttons, and swore in the quiet of the car.
It was worse than he thought.
Dante and Xander walked through the entrance, and a short Chinese man walked up to them, with a slight bounce to his step. He smiled, and turned away, heading toward the back of the restaurant. He gestured for both of them to follow him.
Xander took lead, while Dante looked around at the new décor. “You’ve certainly done something special to this place since I was last here, Min… it looks like one high class place…” he smiled lopsidedly. “Shame about the name.”
Min made a windmill motion with his hand, to indicate that Xander and Dante should precede him through the door he was standing by. Xander ran his hand through his soaking wet hair, spraying the area around him and stepped through.
Trish sat behind a small table, her long hair tied back in a braid, which was hung forward over her shoulder. She stood as Xander entered, and held a finger up to her lips with a devilish look on her face.
“Nice hairstyle…” smirked Xander before he nodded, and blocked Dante’s vision while Trish moved round the table to the wall.
Dante stepped into the room and was met by two hands covering his eyes. “Guess who?” a seductive voice asked quietly in his ear.
Dante smiled. “Well…” he said, “right now, I’m just praying that it isn’t Xander…”
Xander’s voice floated across the room, his eyes locked with Trish’s. “Funny, Dante.”
Dante’s grin widened. “So, given that Xander can’t throw his voice, and it’s coming from over there,” he waved his hand to Xander's approximate location, “it just has to be Trish.”
He reached backwards, and ran his hands over Trish's hips and waist. Finally, he turned to face her. As he did so, her arms stayed where they were, and finally tightened round his neck as he leaned in.
Then he pulled back.
Trish looked at him, disappointed. “Aww…”
Dante shook his head. “Sorry, Trish, but we have more important things to worry about now. Like the watchers Council; for example. Trish,” he locked eyes with her, deadly serious, “they know about me, and possibly you. So it can’t be long before they find out about Xander.”
“Wonderful.” Trish replied sarcastically. “And how much do they know, exactly?”
“I don’t know. To ask that would be admitting what I am, and frankly, around them, I really don’t want to solidify any of their ideas.”
Trish looked thoughtful. “So what are we going to do?”
Dante turned to face Xander. “Me and Xander are going with Nathan to Sunnydale. I don’t want you to come with us, even though you’ve finished the job…”
“Actually,” said Trish, “I haven’t finished. The next lead takes me to Sunnydale anyway. Someone stole a scroll from the Library of the Ancients in Cairo. They were spotted boarding a plane for LA, and the tail I put on her when she arrived says she’s currently in Sunnydale.” Her face took on a vengeful look. “I want that bitch! No one throws me out of a seventeen storey window!”
Dante wisely kept silent. Xander wasn’t quite so sensible. “She threw you out of a seventeen storey window?! How the hell did she do that? She catch you by surprise or something?”
Trish rounded on Xander, and for a second, Xander realised that he should have kept quiet. Then he shrugged. What’s done is done.
Trish quietly seethed, and then finally took a deep breath. “Yes!” She admitted forcefully, “OK, yes! She caught me by surprise! She stuck me full of so much damn venom it would have taken out a blue whale!”
She hit the table. “And I want to get her back!”
Dante stood silent through the tirade. “Is she human?” He asked quietly.
Trish calmed slightly. “No. Not unless humans have succeeded in making skin that doesn’t burn in an inferno that even forced me out.”
“OK,” nodded, Dante, “I was just checking. I know how you get when you’re like this.”
Trish scowled, but nodded.
Xander stepped toward the door. “Hadn’t we better get a move on, Dante? Don’t want Nathan to get nervous.” He grinned.
Dante nodded, and turned to Trish before speaking. “You’ll have to make your own way to Sunnydale. And be prepared for damage control if something goes wrong.”
Trish nodded. “Right.”
Xander fixed her with a stare. “And when you meet my friends, don’t let them know I’m back in town. I want to tell them myself.”
“When?” both Dante and Trish asked at the same time.
Xander shook his head. “Look, when your in Sunnydale, the only things certain are vampires, apocalypses, and running into the Scooby gang when you don’t want to.”
“But I don’t even know what they look like!” protested Trish, “What, I’m going to go around telling everyone I meet, ‘Xander’s back in town!’”
“No,” said Xander levelly, “they are the ones you’ll run into if your chasing a Big Bad in Sunnydale. It’s a given. They’re the only ones crazy enough to be out at night…”
“Oh…”
Xander turned away through the door. “Forget it.”
Dante smiled at Trish. “See you in a few…”
“Yeah, Dante. But this isn’t looking as good any more…”
Xander sat in the front seat of the hired car, looking out of the window at the world with an expression similar to a cat when it isn’t hungry and it’s just seen its owner. In other words: bored.
Nathan was sitting in the back, bitching about the distinct lack of legroom, and Dante was busy trying to carve up an eighteen-wheeler.
Finally, Xander looked round at Dante with annoyance. “Do you think you could stop trying to kill us before we actually get to Sunnydale? It’s gonna be bad enough there as it is!”
Dante pulled a face, but acquiesced. “Alright, Xan.”
Xander nodded, and turned back to the window.
As his mind wondered, he thought back to the last conversation he had ever had with his friends in Sunnydale…
“Xander, why do you have to go on this ‘road trip’ anyway?” Buffy said with irritation in her voice.
Xander sighed, but his smile remained on his face. “I just… want to get away from all this for a while, Buffy. I’ve had enough of life on the Hellmouth for a few months, and I want to see the sites. Preferably while still alive and breathing.”
Buffy put her hands on her hips. Normally, this would be cue for Xander to start drooling, but today, he was feeling put upon, and couldn’t have cared less. “And so you’re gonna leave us shorthanded on the Hellmouth.” Her volume increased. “If anything major comes along, I hope you’re happy, because we probably wont be around to much longer!”
Xander spun to face her, an alien feeling in the pit of his stomach. “What is this, all of a sudden, Buffy?! Less than six months ago you were telling me to have a real life, that ‘we don’t want you getting hurt’ and a lot of other crap that was designed to push me away!” he stepped dangerously close to the Slayer’s personal space. “Well, next time you decide who’s useless around here, check your facts first! You would all be dead…” His mind overpowered his anger for a few fractions of a second, and bit down on the rest of the sentence. No point in telling them if they didn’t know. Why spoil their delusions?
“Dead what, Xander?” Buffy was practically toe to toe with him now, before snarling at him, “you know what? I was right once… you are useless!”
Xander backed off, his anger subsiding as words left Buffy’s lips that she would never be able to take back. “Forget it.” He said angrily. Then he began to walk away. “You know what? Just forget everything. You can finish patrol by yourself tonight, Slayer…” He snarled the word, almost under his breath, “I’m sure you don’t need me getting in your way…”
With that, he turned and nearly ran off.
Xander arrived at his basement in less than a quarter of an hour. He looked down at his phone to see the message light blinking. He rolled his eyes, but hit the ‘play’ button anyway.
Willow’s angry voice came over the speaker, losing some of its venom over the tinny electronics, but still plainly out for vengeance. [Xander, it’s Willow. I just want to know what you said to Buffy to get her so wound up that she is now crying in our dorm room! I want you to come here and apologise! Right now mister!]
The machine beeped, and Giles voice came on. [Xander.] His tone was severe. [I am uncertain whether I should involve myself in matters such as this, but I wish to know what you said to Buffy. She was none too coherent over the telephone.]
Xander slapped his forehead with his hand in a theatrical fashion. “It only happened a quarter of an hour ago! How can she get this stuff around so fast, but conveniently forget about Angel for weeks?”
Deciding that now was as good a time as any, Xander began to take pictures and posters off the wall and peel carefully taped plastic bags off of the back. He emptied all the bags onto his bed, and began to count.
“Hmm… coupla grand… enough to get me far enough away for comfort… but not to let me never come back. Damn.” He opened his wardrobe, and picked a claw hammer up from the bottom. “I don’t have any choice.”
He knelt by his carpet, and flicked it up. Working quickly, he levered up one of the creaky floorboards, and reached underneath. When he pulled his arm out, he had a medium sized wooden box in his hand. He opened it, and it creaked in protest. Two lovingly wrapped first edition comics came out first, followed by some slightly less valuable ones, that weren’t in such good condition. In the bottom, was more money. He quickly tipped that onto the bed as well, and returned the comics to the box.
“Fifteen hundred more…” Xander mused quietly to himself. “I should be OK. And I’ve got Uncle Rory’s car, so I don’t have to worry about that…”
Xander returned his room to the state that it had been before, and sat on his bed. The problem with living in a house with two alcoholics that didn’t work was this: any money that was easily found quickly got converted into a bottle. And almost as swiftly, an empty bottle. Even possessions got pawned every now and again. He had learnt that lesson well after one of his prized comics went missing when he was younger.
Now he just had to hope that none of the Scooby gang would come hunting for his apology. Because it wasn’t going to happen.
With money secreted in every pocket he had, and even tucked into the sides of his socks, and the torn lining of a jacket, Xander packed what he thought he would need. Get, while the getting was good, said his mind, and he agreed.
Minutes later, he pinned a short note to the basement door with the only thing he could find available, a paring knife, and walked out to his car. As he turned the ignition, he spoke to the world.
“Goodbye, Sunnydale.”
Xander and Cordelia stood in the broom cupboard of the old high school, wrapped in a passionate embrace. Not even the smells of cleaning agents and mildewed fibres could put them off. Xander ran his hands slowly through Cordelia’s hair as she licked his neck with raw passion fully evident.
“God… Cordy… you’re killing me here…” whispered Xander in her ear.
Cordelia smiled into his skin, and replied in between kisses to the skin on his neck. “Not yet, but I will be…” she suckled hard on the junction between neck and shoulder, and Xander cried out in pain at the sudden increase in suction. He pulled back violently, to see Cordelia’s face twist into that of a vampire, and a hungry one, at that.
Xander screamed, and was through the closet door before Cordelia could even get another word out. He shut the door, and leaned back on it. “This isn’t happening… this isn’t happening…” He repeated it like a mantra, trying to convince his brain, which knew damn well that it was happening.
Cordelia’s arms burst through the door, either side of Xander's head, and wrapped about his neck lovingly. “Come back, lover…” Cordelia whispered through the wood, “and I’ll show you a real good time…”
She pulled her arms back for a fraction of a second, to open the door, and that was all the opportunity Xander needed. He took off down the corridor like a bat out of hell, rounding a corner at top speed, and crashing into a line of lockers that stood between him and the wall. The echoes of the falling lockers rattled in his mind, even as he forced himself to his feet and carried on.
Round the next corner, who should he run into but Buffy, innocently putting some books into her locker. Xander skidded to a halt as he reached her, stopping inches away from bowling her over like a skittle.
Buffy turned to look at him. “Whoa, Xander! Slow down! You nearly had us both over there!”
Xander stood with his hands on his knees, catching his breath. When he stood up properly, he apologised, and told her what happened. “Um… sorry. I… er… I’m running from Cordy. Um… she’s a vamp…”
Buffy giggled, and stepped closer. “Well, I always told you that she was a bloodsucking bitch. Maybe finally you listened to me…” As she spoke, Buffy continued to edge her mouth closer to Xander, until she had captured his mouth in a fiery kiss.
Xander stood dumbstruck for a second, before snapping to his senses and pulling away. This was difficult, as Buffy’s mouth followed his as it moved.
“Uh… Buffy… not that I’m complaIIIINing…” his voice went up an octave as Buffy began to lick his throat, “…but I wasn’t kidding about Cordelia being a vamp.”
Buffy pulled back slightly, looking hurt. “And that’s such a bad thing, Xander?” she asked through lust swollen lips. As she leaned in again, Xander took a step back, and was just in time to see Buffy’s face as it slid into the ridged form of a vampire.
“Buffy…” he whispered sadly, and then took off again as Buffy took a seductive step toward him.
Halfway down the next corridor, Xander nearly jumped out of his skin as a confused voice came from a room to his left. “Xander?” said the voice, “What’s going on?”
Xander looked through the door, and froze in shock. “Aims?” he took a step inside, “Amy? Is that you?”
Amy sat on the teacher’s desk, hugging herself against the cold in the room. Well, the cold in the room for her, as she had no clothes on. She looked down at herself. “What happened, Xander? The last thing I remember is casting that love spell for you…” She licked her lips slowly. “And then…” she looked up, with an indescribable look in her eyes.
Xander stepped back as Amy advanced. “Uh… Amy… you’re naked…”
Amy continued to stalk forward. “That makes it one less person to get undressed, then…” she smiled seductively, and began to step round Xander, blocking his exit. As he realised this, he made a beeline for the door, and got through it just in time to avoid a lunge from the just vamping out Amy.
“Come back, Xander! I want you!” Amy’s call sounded down the hallway as Xander sped off.
Xander bowled Willow over as he rounded the next corner, and the two of them sat on the floor looking at each other.
“What?! Xander?” Willow was thoroughly confused. “What are you running from?”
Xander looked up, and pulled himself and Willow to their feet. “Cordelia’s a vampire. So’s Buffy. And so is the de-ratted Amy.” As if to prove his point, Cordelia and Buffy stepped round the corner together, with twin smiles on their faces.
“Come now, Xander…” both said together, “it will hurt so much less if you stop trying to get away…” Amy stepped out of the classroom, still naked, and with an angry look on her features. “If you hadn’t run, it might have been fun. Since you did, now it has to be far less quick, hon.”
Willow squeaked in terror, and grabbed Xander's hand. “Come on! The library! We can hole up in there!”
The two turned a fled, three angry vampiric versions of their friends hot on their tails.
Willow pulled Xander up short just before they entered the library. “Just once…” she murmured to herself, and leaned in to kiss him passionately.
Xander pulled back in shock as Willow began to slide down his jaw to his neck, and screamed in renewed terror as Willow’s vamped features leered at him. “Just a little bite, Xan… then it’ll all be over…”
Xander fell backwards through the Library doors. “Giles! Giles!” He called out, “they’re all vampires!”
Giles stepped out of his office, “Who are… oh, my!”
Amy, Buffy, Cordelia and Willow all stood in the doorway, eyes fixed on Xander. Who was scrambling along the floor, trying to get away while keeping his eyes on the girls.
Giles shouted at him, “Quick, Xander! Round here!”
Xander gratefully rushed behind the counter, and stood by Giles.
A laugh echoed out of the stacks, and Xander jumped. “Who? What? Angelus?”
The laughter ceased, and a voice spoke. “Why does every vampire related act have to be related to Angelus in your mind, Xander? Can’t you give someone else the credit for a change?”
Xander stared at the stacks, as a shadowy figure emerged, and smiled evilly down at him.
Xander choked on his tongue. “Miss… Miss Calendar? I thought you… you were dead…”
Jenny Calendar laughed, and everyone else in the room joined in. “Oh… I am dead, Xander… as is everyone else in the room. Except you, of course… and you will be joining us soon enough…”
Xander took a frightened step back, and Giles behind him. “Don’t struggle, Xander…” said Giles from behind him, “it’s better that way…”
As Xander turned in horror to see the face of Giles, twisted and brutalised by the vampire features displayed so proudly, he found himself being flung through the air. As he landed, with all of his friends standing around him, laughing at his fate, he closed his eyes and screamed…
Dante found himself being flung across the room as his partner screamed and writhed on his bed.
He had woken up about ten minutes ago, to see Xander writhing around, mumbling in his sleep. This escalated to the point where he put his hand through the wooden headboard, and left a sizable dent in the wall. Fortunately, Nathan was in a different room of the hotel and unable to see this display.
As Dante forced himself out of his bed, and over the other side of the room to pin Xander down, and even try to wake him up, Xander's moans became shouts and screams of terror. Dante slapped Xander gently to wake him, and got no response.
“Xander! Xander, wake up!” Dante was now fighting a loosing battle to keep Xander's hands away from his guns. “XANDER!” Dante pulled back and drove an open-handed pile driver into Xander jaw, which did no more than the gentle slap had. Then, Dante found himself flung across the room as Xander's fist connected hard with his face.
Too dazed to do anything other than slump against the wall, Dante watched mutely as Xander continued his internal struggle.
His hands found his pistols, and he suddenly catapulted out of the bed, eye wide, but unseeing. He stopped, pinning Dante to the wall and grinding a pistol into his left eye. Dante tried to turn his face away from the pain, but the second pistol found his temple, pinning his head in place.
All Dante could do was watch, with one eye the rifling of a pistol, and with the other, the steadily tightening finger round the trigger of the gun which held his future.
“Xander…” Dante’s own voice shocked him, with the flatness and utter lack of emotion present.
The wide, unseeing eyes widened further, but a flicker of something was present in the depths.
“Xander…” Dante spoke again, putting all the force he could into the word.
Xander's eyes flickered once, then closed and opened. Dante heard a deep, shuddering sigh, and realised that both of them had been holding their breath. Then, Dante saw the finger round the trigger loosen, and the hand go slack.
The two pistols clattered to the floor, and Xander took another shuddering breath.
“Dante…” Xander's voice was unnaturally loud in the sudden silence. “I’m sorry…”
Both sank to the floor, Dante with his back to the wall, and Xander seeming to find purchase on thin air to lean back on.
“Just… just tell me what all that was about, someday, Xander…”
Xander looked up at his mentor and partner. He nodded sadly.
It had been so real…
Dante, Xander and Nathan had arrived at Sunnydale the evening before, and had checked into the nearest hotel. Dante would have just checked into the cheapest one possible, and Xander wouldn’t have minded, as long as he didn’t get… that room, but Nathan complained.
“I refuse to base our operations in a cesspit! That hotel is totally disgusting, and I vehemently object to it even being suggested!”
Dante fixed the Watcher with a piercing stare. “Well, it’s this, or you’re paying. I am not going to pay for you living it up!”
Nathan stared at the white haired man for a few seconds, before turned around and stalking off back toward the car. “Very well!” He called back, “but make sure that I am well satisfied with your performance! Or else there will be… consequences…”
Xander, who was standing next to Dante, frowned. “Consequences? What’s he talking about, Dante?”
“Don’t worry about it, Xander. I have it a strange feeling that there will be ‘consequences’ even if we do exactly what he wants…”
Xander looked at the retreating back of the Watcher. “Why do I feel like I should have killed him when I had the chance?”
Dante snorted. “He doesn’t leave you full of confidence in the Council, does he?”
Xander began to follow Nathan. “More than Travers does. I wish you’d never taken this job.”
Dante looked back longingly at the decrepit hotel. “Why do I have the feeling that he’s gonna take us right into the middle of Sunnydale? And why do I have the sneaking suspicion that he’s setting us up?”
Buffy and Willow walked slowly down the high street of Sunnydale, window-shopping in their afternoon off. Buffy was hanging on the arm of her new boyfriend, Riley, while Willow walked at their side with a sulky look on her face.
Riley glanced over to her. “Um… you know, Willow…” he started nervously, “you shouldn’t be so hung up over one guy… lots of men run off after someone else. You’re not the first chick it’s happened to…”
Willow looked over at him, but the shining innocence and near gormlessness present in his expression made her bite down on the scathing response she was going to deliver.
Buffy squeezed Riley’s arm gently in warning. To the unknowing soldier, it felt like his arm was being crushed by a Boa constrictor. ‘Gentle’ for the Slayer, was full out assault for everyone else. Buffy looked up as he looked down, and whispered in his ear. “Now, Riley, that wasn’t a great idea, you know. Willow likes to be left alone when she’s unhappy…”
While Willow and Buffy looked through the window of a clothes store, seeing a large sign proclaiming ‘Up To 60% Off!’ Riley was facing the street, watching the traffic and the people going about their everyday tasks. He shook his head slowly. If only these people knew what lurks in the shadows, in the night itself… even Buffy and Willow have no idea what is going on in this town…
How wrong could he be?
Riley focussed on two men standing on the corner, having a conversation. One with near black hair and dressed in a dark green full length coat, who was facing away from him; and the second, a man with shockingly white hair and dressed in a deep red coat with the same cut as the other. Riley’s mouth moved before he could stop himself, “Wow! I like the coat…”
Both Buffy and Willow turned surprised, to see Riley staring at two people across the street, rather than at the coat the two girls were looking at. Willow snapped out, “It wouldn’t suit you…” harsher than she intended, and winced as Buffy shot her a look.
The two girls focussed on the two men once more, and Willow couldn’t stop a quiet, “eep…” as the one in green turned his head slightly to the right.
Willow grabbed Buffy’s arm tightly, and pointed at him. “Xander! That’s Xander!”
Buffy looked over, but the man had turned his head back to his friend again. “I think you’re seeing things, Wills… that isn’t Xander…”
The man in green walked off, never facing the trio again, leaving his friend alone on the street. Willow looked over at him. “Can we at least go ask him who his friend was?”
Buffy shook her head. “Sure, Wills. He might not like it though…”
Willow set her jaw determinedly. “I don’t care. I want to know who the Xander look-alike was!”
Dante sighed as Xander walked off. Xander had spotted his ‘friends’ across the street, and after finishing the business they had with the shop, made himself scarce. That left Dante to try to divert the interrogators.
Willow was the first to reach him, mouth already in full flow of babble. He fixed her with a hard stare, and Willow slowly fell silent.
“Yes?” Dante asked with a tone so clipped and hard that it left no doubt in Willow’s mind that he could have killed her on the spot.
Buffy and Riley were very near now, and Buffy fixed Dante with her own stare, and said, “Well, you couldn’t try to be a little more friendly, could you? Or don’t you do the friendship thing?”
Dante ignored her question. “What do you want?” he asked.
Buffy started, “well, we’d like to know why you’re such a…” Willow cut her off quickly, before Buffy could put her foot in it.
“We’d like to know who your friend was…” she continued on Dante’s look, “uh… if you don’t mind, I mean he looked like someone who’s a friend of ours…” she continued despite Buffy’s ferocious look, “and we’d kind of like to know who he is so that it won’t gnaw at us for the next few days, making us wonder what’s happened to him…”
Dante held a hand up. “Slow down, breath…”
Willow stopped, and took a breath.
Dante continued, “Not that it’s any of your business, but he’s my partner…” he brushed his coat back slightly, to reveal the butt of a black pistol. Buffy and Willow took a step back, but Riley had to stop himself for going for his Initiative communicator. Something about this guy screamed ‘danger’ at full volume.
Dante pulled his coat forward again. “So, if you’ll excuse me…”
Buffy stepped forward and grabbed his wrist, squeezing hard. “Wait, who are you? What are you in Sunnydale for?”
Dante looked down pointedly at her hand on his wrist, and Buffy withdrew it self-consciously. “I’m terribly sorry… my card…” He reached into his coat and pulled out a small card. He looked at it before handing it to Buffy.
She took it, and Dante walked off in the same direction as his unknown ‘partner’.
Buffy looked down at the card in shock as Willow and Riley crowded round to see it. Buffy had squeezed his wrist hard enough to shatter the bone, but he had not even so much as felt it. Something was up.
The card was plain and unassuming. The single colour logo in the corner was a stylish affair with a woman in full profile, holding two guns above her head, all in blood red. The three words in a strange text sent shivers down Buffy’s spine, but the two underneath that eased her fears somewhat.
The card read: Devil Never Cry
Detective Agency
There was no name, no number, and no address.
Buffy pocketed the card. She would show Giles later.
Dante met Xander back at the hotel, an upmarket effort that was all fake marble and immaculately dressed bellhops. Dante hated places like that. He felt as if even the lowest little bugger there was sneering at him every time he so much as moved.
Upon entering the room he shared with Xander, he noticed Nathan and Xander had taken up the lounge area, covering the table with books and manuscripts. A laptop computer sat on one corner of the desk, and Xander sat tapping away at the keys. Dante walked past him to see a real life version of ‘uplink’ being played as Xander hacked the information they needed.
“Isn’t that a bit dangerous?” asked Dante.
Xander threw him a withering look. “Please.” He said with scorn, “I hung out with the worlds greatest hacker for nearly my whole life… some stuff just rubs off on you.”
Dante shrugged; after all, in the end, they could just make themselves scarce if anything went wrong, and continued past into the bedroom.
Entering, Dante saw the carefully manoeuvred bed to disguise the dent in the wall, and the pillows arranged to cover the hole in the headboard. It was fortunate that Nathan had not been here for Xander's little breakdown… but Dante couldn’t help but wonder if these were going to continue if Xander stayed on the Hellmouth.
He was beginning to share Xander's misgivings about this otherwise simple assignment. But for totally different reasons…
“I’m telling you, Giles, this guy has to be evil! There was just this weird vibe from him…” Buffy paced the room nervously, looking at the door regularly as if she expected someone to come bursting through at any second.
Giles was sitting in his favourite easy chair, cleaning his glasses while watching Buffy wear a path in his carpet. “Yes, well… I am afraid, Buffy, that without more conclusive evidence, we cannot accost an honest citizen and declare him a demon.”
“But you saw his card, Giles! Granted, he’s a detective, but I’ve never heard of a ‘Devil Never Cry’ detective agency!”
Giles pulled a face at his charges attitude. He had heard of a ‘Devil Never Cry’ detective agency, all too well, in fact. He knew Dante personally. He shook his head slightly at his delusion. Maybe not personally but he did know him. Certainly of him. The most feared and respected demon hunter in the world, capable of walking into situations without harm that even a Slayer would not walk into without dying. All with those twin pistols of his… and that sword.
He cleared his throat, and pushed his glasses back onto his nose. “Well, I am afraid also, Buffy, that Dante might not take too kindly to you butting your nose into his business. There is a reason he works alone, and I have nothing but the utmost respect for the man, and his methods.”
Riley chose to interject a piece of information that Buffy seemed to have forgotten. “Um… when we questioned him Giles, he said that the man we were asking him about was his partner.”
Giles fixed Buffy with a piercing stare. “And you chose not to tell me this why?” he asked.
Willow replied, both Riley and Buffy wincing. “His partner looked like Xander, Giles.”
“You are sure?” quizzed Giles.
Willow looked down, then back up again, meeting Giles eyes. “Well… not entirely… I was the only one who saw him, you see, and well…” She trailed off.
“So you could have just been seeing what you wanted to see?”
“I… suppose so…” finished Willow limply.
Giles stood up and headed for his kitchen. “Very well. I suggest that you leave Dante alone, Buffy. He doesn’t like people pushing into his business. That is one lesson I hope you don’t have to learn the hard way…” he poured himself a cup of tea. “Of course, I will endeavour to talk to him myself… see what he wants here… for you can be certain of one thing; all of you… if Dante has come to Sunnydale, it is because something immeasurably bad is going to happen.”
With that warning to all of them, he headed upstairs, allowing them to let themselves out.
Riley walked through the campus grounds on the way back to Lowell House. He pulled out a small radio, and spoke into it tersely. “Be on the lookout for a man with white hair and dressed in a red full length coat. I have a feeling that he is dangerous, and Professor Walsh may be interested in him.” The radio crackled, and Riley listened for a second.
“Yes,” he said, “it appears that he has a partner and they may both be HST’s…”
One word came clearly over the radio. “Understood.”
Riley sighed and glanced around him. A pang of hunger struck him, and he shook his head. “I know the food at Lowell isn’t much, but damn, it’s better than Buffy’s cooking…”
Dante and Xander walked down the main path of Resting View cemetery, one Xander didn’t recognise. But with the number of cemeteries that got spawned in Sunnydale, he wasn’t completely surprised that one had opened since he left. A bit more work for Buffy to do, and less for him to worry about when he wasn’t there.
Unfortunately for him, at that second, he was there. And so were several vampires and a Slayer.
At the sound of the battle, both Xander and Dante took off in the direction of the sound. Xander slowed as he saw Buffy fighting, but sped back up as Dante cast a look back that plainly said ‘if you don’t help, you’ll be next…’
All Xander could do was shout a warning to Dante. “Don’t DT!”
Dante nodded to the shout even as he decapitated a vampire with a lightning fast swing of Alastor, saving Buffy from having a sudden case of sucking neck wound. Xander stood back from the fray, drawing both of his pistols and opening up on targets of opportunity. Three vampires died before they realised the biggest threat lay in the guns.
As the vampires turned to Xander, Buffy followed their course, and came face to face with a person she thought she would never see again. She stopped in mid stake, and stared at the green-coated figure that was cutting a swathe through the vampires.
“Xander?” she asked, half incredulous and half frightened.
“What?!” he asked more harshly than he intended.
“Is that… is that you?”
Xander fired one last shot at a vampire that was fleeing, causing the bloodsucker to dust as he ran, and turned to look at her. “I don’t know. You tell me.” He turned and walked away.
Buffy looked at Dante, who shrugged and followed his partner.
Buffy stood in the middle of the group of dust piles that showed the location of her fight. Her eyes were locked on the place where Xander had vanished into the darkness of the night, and they unfocussed as she stood there unmoving.
“…Xander?” Buffy asked weakly.
The Initiative was on patrol. Riley led the crack 1st team on a hunt for the red-coated man. Professor Walsh had authorised the use of deadly force, being sure that it was a person that the brass had been hearing rumours about for months. If it was, not just the Initiative, but she herself would score major points with the various senators they needed to convince about the actual uses of the 314 project.
Riley led Forrest and Graham through the underbrush near one of the cemeteries in the neighbourhood, while three others did the same the other side of town.
For the tenth time in the same number of minutes, Forrest checked the charge on his tazer, and scowled at the unfairness of the world. He had had to cancel a date with a really hot brunette, and with the way she had reacted when he had called her to explain, there would be no second chances.
“Damn it! Why did this guy have to turn up tonight, of all nights?” He muttered.
Graham shushed him, and smirked at his friend’s misfortune. “Unlucky, buddy…” he whispered before Riley shushed him in turn.
The three marines hid behind a bush as their target and another man walked past. They were in the middle of a heated argument, and not fully paying attention to the area around them. Riley shook his head. In Sunnydale, that was fatal… but then again, if the red coated man was as powerful as Walsh suspected, they wouldn’t have any trouble.
“I don’t… I didn’t want to meet them!” Said the first, dressed in green.
“So, you what? Wanted to leave her to the demons?” said the one in red in a fit of rage.
“She would have deserved it!”
“No Slayer, ever, deserves being turned!” returned Dante, “and you know full well that any vampire worth his salt will turn a Slayer… if only to have one as powerful as that as his childe!”
“When I left, she called me useless!” screamed Xander, before calming slightly “I just saved her pitiful life! Like I have done so many times before! I’m sick of this… this… contempt for my abilities by my so called ‘friends’!”
“I wont leave an innocent to be hurt, Xander. And I thought that you held to the same ideals.” Dante sneered at him. “It looks like I was wrong.”
Xander opened his mouth, but no sounds came out. The words Dante had just spoken rang painfully in his soul, tearing him up inside. Finally, he spoke, his voice coming out barely above a whisper. “You know what? I can’t handle this right now… I’ll see you back at the hotel.” The final words stuck in his throat, but Xander eventually forced them out. “Be careful, Dante.”
A momentary flash of regret showed in Dante's eyes, before he nodded and turned away. “See you in an hour or so.”
Riley watched as the man in green walked off after a bitter exchange of words. He didn’t know what a ‘Slayer’ was, but he figured the research department could figure it out.
“Ready?” he whispered to Forrest and Graham.
“Sir.” They both echoed at the same time.
Riley sighted along his tazer at the man in red. “Fire.” He whispered.
As lightning played over the unprepared Dante's body, he collapsed to the ground, his muscles contracting and relaxing as the nerves overloaded, causing him to jerk spastically on the dirt beneath him.
Forrest ran over, and injected him with a sedative. “Get the HST recovery teams in here now.” He said, “I don’t know how long this will keep him out…”
Walsh looked at the security monitors displaying their new visitor.
“He is certainly a lively one…” she mused quietly to herself.
A panel operator by her side heard her comment, “Yes, Ma’am.”
Walsh turned away. “Have him fully sedated and examined. Open him up if you have to, but don’t kill him.”
A scientist nodded, and went to perform the ordered operation.
Xander and Nathan sat in the hotel room, with Nathan looking in amusement at Xander's discomfort.
“You said that you had an argument about methods,” said Nathan, “so why are you so worried? He’s probably staying in a different hotel to get some rest away from us both.”
Xander shook his head. “No. Dante wouldn’t do that. He knows how dangerous it is in this town, and just how much trouble can come. Something’s happened.”
Nathan shrugged. “Well, if it has, it will be safer to do it in daylight. Get some sleep, or at least some rest, boy. Dante can take care of himself.”
Xander gnashed his teeth, but nodded and headed for his bed. The last thing Nathan saw was Xander stripping out of his coat as the door was kicked shut.
Dante woke up in pain.
His head hurt, his muscles ached and he felt like he had the mother of all hangovers. Then the past night came back to him.
“Who were those guys?” he asked himself.
A feminine voice answered his question. “You mean these bloody wankers that captured you? Seem to be researchin’ on us or something…”
Dante frowned. “Uh… thanks for the info. How do we get out of here?”
The voice now sounded incredulous. “Get out? You don’t get out, it’s that simple. And even if you did, they’ve stuck a chip in you’re ‘ead to stop you from bitin’ people…” the voice sounded pissed off and whiny now, “or they did me!”
Dante took a shot in the dark. “Are you a vampire?”
The voice laughed. “That’s right, kick a girl when she’s dead…”
“But I’m not.”
“Don’t matter to them, buddy. If you’re hostile, you’re a target.”
“But I’m not a hostile.”
“Oh, come on, pull the other one, lover, its got bells on! If they got you, you’re a hostile! At least to them…”
“Whatever…” said Dante, effectively ending the conversation.
He walked over to the camera mounted in the wall, and jabbed a finger hard into the lens. It shattered as the half-devils finger forced its way through, cutting of the video feed in his cell. He pulled his hand back as the electrical current burnt it. After the tazers, he was going to be wary of electricity for a while.
“Now how do I get out of here?” Dante wondered aloud.
Xander marched through the streets of Sunnydale, guns loaded and sword ready, seeking vengeance. Dante hadn’t come back, and it was looking increasingly grim. He had an idea that he had gone back to help Buffy, but still; he couldn’t be sure. Nevertheless, it was a place to start.
After Hell, and several missions that would have made any of the group loose their lunches before the really vile things even began had hardened him to the point where he was no longer the useless baggage the he had been when he left the company of Sunnydale.
Now he was strong, tough and very angry. His final words with Dante were not the sort of thing he wished to remember as his last conversation with him if something went wrong. His conscience wouldn’t be able to take it. Too much was spent reanalysing his final moments with Buffy, and if his decision had been the right one.
So, he planned on scouring all the graveyards in Sunnydale until he found Buffy and the rest. And the cardboard hero, too. That would be a big bonus.
The entire Scooby gang were on patrol that night. Buffy had insisted. All except Riley were there, because he was with the Commandos, and neither group knew about the other yet.
Buffy was on point with Spike, with Willow, Tara and Giles bringing up the rear. Buffy held a stake in each hand, while Spike went bare knuckle against anything he fought. Willow and Tara simply used their Wicca skills, and Giles was the group’s non-magical artillery with a crossbow. All carried the normal cross and holy water… except Spike, for obvious reasons.
They had covered three cemeteries, and had not encountered one vampire yet. Whoever, or whatever, this Dante was, he wasn’t messing about…
Nathan smiled into the book he was holding. If Dante had have been there, he would have shit bricks. Nathan, a Research Watcher, was holding the Codex Mortis in his bare hands. The Watchers, for some inexplicable reason, thought they were immune to curses in languages that they couldn’t understand. Well… it was more ignorance if truth were told… they couldn’t figure out what something meant, so they ignored it. Simple, really.
Nathan’s eyes flashed darkly as he turned a page, revealing the summoning in all its glory…
That half-devil and his unknowing partner were about to get a shock…
A vampire stepped out of the shadows into Xander's path. “Where are you going, buddy?” the vampire asked with a sneer.
Xander stopped, and waited until the vampires had completely surrounded him. “Well, buddy,” he mirrored the vampires own words and tone back at him, “it looks like I’m going nowhere.”
The vamp laughed. “You know, you’re right. You are so right!” he took a threatening step forward. “I need a new coat. Get ‘im, boys!”
Xander rolled his eyes. “You need to try some new lines… do you have any idea how many times I’ve heard that?”
The vampires as a group paused for a second. This wasn’t the way it was supposed to go… the victim was supposed to scream and beg for their lives. Or mercy, at least. They weren’t supposed to offer cheeky defiance. As far as the vampires were concerned, that was against the rules.
The leader tried his hardest to inspire fear. “What are you? Frickin’ crazy? We’re vampires! We’re gonna kill you!”
Xander held a hand to his mouth in mock fright. “Oh no! You’re gonna kill me!” He started running in a circle waving his hands around in the air inside the ring of vamps. “Help me! Somebody save me! Please! Save me!”
Xander pulled up short of the leading vampire. “Right.” His tone turned deadly; “now we have that over with, lets get on with it, shall we?” he pulled a gun, and fired at the kneecap of a vamp to his right.
The vamp went down screaming; “It burns! It burns!”
Xander levelled the gun at the leader. “Care to try?” He fired before the vampire could even move its mouth, let alone say anything. Dust accompanied the gentle gust of the wind a fraction of a second later.
One of the vampires at his back caught on and charged. “You’ll die a painful death, human!”
Xander spun with the vamps charge, whipping it round the back of the head with the butt of the pistol as he did so, and made a noise in his throat, akin to a game show failure buzzer. “Ehuh… wrong again, dusty.”
The pistol fired once more.
Some of the smarter members of the gang had now decided that it might be in their own best interests if they weren’t in that area when Xander noticed them. One took off; running as fast as it’s undead legs could carry it.
Its friends tightened the circle around Xander some more. It was now beginning to get far too close for comfort in the engagement, and Xander dropped his pistol while drawing the Ragnarok. Seven vampires now remained, and Xander was of a mind to lower that number slightly.
One swing took three through the middle, cutting them cleanly in half as he spun away.
“It’s too open here…” muttered Xander, “no way to pull any real stunts… and someone might see me DT.”
Another vampire had its arm taken off at the elbow as it tried to claw him.
“No.” said Xander flatly. “That’s not allowed.”
The three remaining looked at each other, and one sidled off from the other two. The two together charged, one aiming high and the other low. Xander cut off the low one with a sweep of Ragnarok, and turned his head as the vampire’s fist headed for his jaw. It was worked around badly, but Xander had come a long way from Angel’s seeming betrayal so long ago… it seemed like decades.
His retaliatory strike took the vamp in the face, pulverising its nose and spraying blood everywhere. Drawing the blade of his sword up, Xander split the unfortunate vamp from crotch to neck.
The single vamp left looked around. If all of his gang had been taken down in a few seconds, how could he, only one, kill him? It turned and ran.
Xander stared after the back of the retreating vamp. “Now, that wasn’t very friendly, was it?” he asked to himself. “You didn’t stay to play. And me with all these cool toys, too…” Xander sighed, “can’t have everything…”
Ragnarok flew like a boomerang from his hand, spinning in the air and heading for the vampire. As it caught the cursed creature, the blade cut cleanly through its neck, dusting it instantly.
As the spinning blade reached Xander's outstretched hand, he breathed slowly and moved to retrieve his pistol.
Xander stood, in the middle of the cemetery, holding his sword in his right hand, and one of his pistols in his left, when a sudden warning came from the blade.
Look out.
Xander stepped sideways to feel a crossbow bolt whip past his arm. If he had stood where he was, it would have surely impaled him.
Turned round, Xander saw the people he wished he couldn’t, and heard an uncertain voice say his name:
“Xander?”
“Xander?”
Xander turned round. “So not what I wanted to see…” he muttered to himself.
He noticed Willow and another girl chanting quietly as he looked at the group. He raised his voice. “You can stop that right now, Willow.”
Willow stumbled to a stop in the middle of her spell. She swallowed hard.
Spike and Buffy were moving to either side of Xander, in preparation for an attack. They had all seen what he had done to the last vampire. Now they knew where that terrified one had come from that kept babbling about the ‘Devil’.
“Bugger me…” whispered Spike almost reverently.
Xander pulled a face. “Un… no thanks, bleached wonder.”
Giles stood next to Willow and the other girl. He still had the crossbow levelled at Xander, but it did not have a bolt in it any longer.
Xander smirked at the watcher. “Don’t you think you had better reload that?” he pointed to the crossbow.
Giles raised the crossbow slightly, to show Xander the underside. “That wont be necessary.”
Xander whistled. “I bet that catches a few vamps by surprise, huh?”
Giles nodded, but did not smile.
Buffy took a step forward, and began to speak. “What the Hell happened here, Xander?! You took out all those vampires by yourself?” She looked around what had been the battle arena.
Xander simply nodded.
“And what the hell do you think you’re doing back in Sunnydale after the way you left?!”
Xander fixed Buffy with a hard stare. “My job.” He looked at the group as a whole, before turning back to Buffy. “Unlike you, I go where my job takes me… I don’t run away.”
Xander saw the hurt shine in the Slayers eyes, and mentally drew up one on his scoreboard. He looked at Spike, and only Giles surprise crossbow and Buffy being far too close to the vampire stopped him from shooting him as soon as he saw him. “I see you’ve sided with the enemy, Buffy…” he swallowed before the next words came out, “or are you fucking him too? Or is that still to come?”
Buffy's eyes widened in surprise and anger. She stepped forward, and slapped him as hard as she could. “You bastard!”
“Maybe…” Xander replied. That wouldn’t need one on the scoreboard. That would need fifty.
Spike spoke up. “Look ‘ere, mate, you can’t just come back after all you’ve done an’ expect us to welcome you back with open arms…”
Xander cut him off. “I don’t know why you William the Bloody, would be welcoming anyone back. And unless you want…” his arm moved so fast it was a blur, and suddenly a pistol was inches away from Spikes forehead, “to be going to dinner parties in a dustbuster, I would shut the Hell up!”
Spike spoke clearly, but he sounded uncertain. “Guns don’t work on vampires.”
“Oh, that’s right…” Xander sounded sorry for a second, before he looked down at the dusty ground. “It seemed to work fine on them. I don’t know Spike do you want to find out?”
Giles spoke quickly. “That will be quite enough, all of you!” He turned to Buffy and Spike. “I think that you should patrol further, while the rest of us explain exactly what’s happened since Xander left.” The first priority was to get Buffy a safe distance away, so that she didn’t automatically go into ‘kill first, don’t bother asking questions’ mode.
Willow added accusingly, “and Xander can tell us what he’s been doing.”
Spike nodded, but Buffy continued to cast suspicious glances back to Xander as she moved away into the deeper graveyard.
Tara looked warily at this new ‘friend’. She seemed to be the only person who had seen Buffy slap him, as no one had reacted but her slight ‘ulp’. When Buffy released that slap, Xander’s head had not so much as twitched under the assault.
Giles turned to Xander and asked tiredly, “What was that all about?”
“Buffy! Vampire!” Giles aimed his crossbow at the rapidly approaching vamp as he shouted a warning.
“Got it!” Buffy replied before tackling the fleeing vampire to the ground. She looked at it hard, and smacked it round the face before she asked primly, “Care to tell me where you’re going in such a hurry?”
The vampire looked up at the Slayer with wide, scared eyes. “I got no beef with you, Slayer! Let me go before the Devil kills me!”
Buffy sat back on the vamps stomach. “Devil?” She looked at Giles enquiringly.
Giles shrugged. He didn’t know everything.
“What devil?” asked Buffy as she raised her hand to cuff the vamp again.
The vamp raised its hands to protect its head. “I don’t know! I don’t know nothin’! I swear!”
Spike leaned over to Buffy’s ear. “I think ‘e’s tellin’ the truth, pet… I ain’t never seen a vamp this scared by anything other than a Slayer…”
Buffy pushed herself off of the vamp. “OK, you can go… just make sure I never catch you feeding off of people, or this temporary truce will end.”
The vampire nodded in terrified thanks as it scrambled to its feet and beat a hasty retreat.
“I think that we had best investigate, Buffy…” Giles said before anyone had got over the shock of seeing a vamp run for its unlife.
Buffy nodded. “Yeah. I haven’t seen a vamp that spooked since…” she pondered a second before finishing lamely, “I haven’t seen a vamp that spooked.”
The group made their way alone the path the way the vampire had come, and turned a corner protected by trees to come into a clearing in the graveyard.
A lone man, dressed in a dark green full-length coat, with short hair. Almost as if it had been spiky at one point, but had grown out too far to do it properly. In his left hand was held a pistol, which he slowly slipped away under his coat, and in his right, a large sword, almost as large as he was tall. Around him was spread the dust and debris of what Buffy estimated to be nine vampires, and he turned slowly to survey the scene, the light caught a few of his features.
Buffy sucked in a gasp of shock. “Oh my God…” she whispered.
Giles simply pulled the trigger on his crossbow, his eyes wide as a shadow from his past played back in his mind.
Buffy looked round in shock to see who had fired before turning back to see that the man had moved, and was unharmed. She spoke louder,
“Xander?”
Xander shrugged. “Don’t ask me. Ask Spike.”
Giles sucked some air in. “Ah… yes, of course. You wouldn’t know, would you?”
“Know what, Giles? That’s Buffy’s running with Mr. Undead and Fangy again? Why would that surprise me?”
Giles shot Xander a look of distinct distaste. “Actually, she is currently involved with a young man named Riley…”
Xander raised an eyebrow. “The one…”
“…that you met in the street, yes. Do I notice some of Dante's dress sense rubbing off of you, my boy?”
Xander smirked. “Possibly. He is my boss, after all…”
“Why? If I remember, Dante has some rather… extreme methods.”
Xander looked uncomfortable. “We… have some mutual abilities that each felt the other could use…”
Giles frowned, but didn’t follow that line of questioning. He had a far more important thing to ask. “Has his… carelessness about odds rubbed off too?” Giles thought for a second, and answered before Xander could, with a hint of amusement in his voice. “Oh, no… you already had that, didn’t you?”
“Thank you, Giles…” said Xander dryly.
Willow spoke up. “Um… why are you back, Xander? Do you realise that Buffy’s still after your skull for a Christmas decoration? Probably even more so since that crack about Spike…”
Xander shook his head. “First things first: what happened to Spike to suddenly make you trust him?”
Willow replied, “well, not so much trust him, as tolerate him. You see… some government agency took him and implanted a chip into him that means he can’t hurt people…”
Xander's eyes widened. “Oh… that’s bad.”
Giles looked shocked for a second. “I would have thought that Spike not hurting people was a good thing, surely?”
“What about when the ‘government’ gets better? Or if they have another use for it? I can’t see them spending money on what a lot of people would consider a black hole of cash unless they can use it as a weapon…”
Xander's eyes widened suddenly as he thought of something.
“Oh no. Giles,” he turned to the watcher. “I’ll explain later, but the reason I’m out solo is that Dante's gone missing. I need to find him. If the government have captured vampires, what’s to stop them from capturing a…” Xander brought himself up short before he revealed what Dante was. If none of them knew, it wouldn’t matter, and if they did, then they didn’t need to be told.
“Stop them from capturing a what, Xander?” asked Willow.
“I’ll tell you later…”
Tara stepped forward to ask a question, having been silent since that moment. “I… um… I don’t k…know if any of you n… noticed, but when…X…x…x…”
“Xander.” Said Xander flatly. Willow glared at him for cutting Tara off.
“Xander…” Tara managed to get out, “got hit by Buffy… she really put all her weight into it. S… shouldn’t your head be about fifty feet from the r… rest of your body?”
Xander looked away. The others looked at him expectantly. “I’ll explain it later. I need to find Dante!”
Giles nodded. “I agree. If Dante is missing, it cannot bode well… but you will explain. Everything.”
Xander said nothing, but his eyes asked Giles silently, ‘How do you know? How much do you know?’
Trish stepped off the plane, and growled to herself at the unfairness of the world. It seemed that whenever a job was going well recently, suddenly the fickle bastard known as ‘fate’ stepped in a messed it all up.
It seemed the woman she was tracking, and had a serious case of a need for vengeance against was running her around. No sooner had she arrived in Sunnydale, to discover that the woman, travelling under the alias of ‘Abigail Horowitz’ had left but a few moments before bound for Los Angeles International and some dead end town in the ass end of nowhere in Britain.
It wasn’t so much Britain that got to Trish, as the running around. The fact that Britain was the main base of operations of the Watchers Council didn’t help matters either, as they were not her favourite people.
But what really stung, however, was that she wasn’t getting paid. That was correct. Her employer had been assassinated a few days before, and Trish was steaming. She couldn’t up and leave… not after what that bitch had done to her in Egypt. It was personal, and Trish was always the first person to say ‘personal is the same as important’.
As she got to the terminal, Trish spotted three men standing near the exit. It was obvious that they were waiting for someone.
Trish watched warily as she neared them, and was unsurprised when two peeled off to flank her. Unknown to her, the third followed at a discreet distance.
“What do you want?” asked Trish, “and before you think it, I don’t give to charity…”
The man on her left smiled. “That is the last thing we would want, isn’t it my dear? No, we came to give you a warning…”
“I’m not your dear. And what would this alleged warning be about?”
“The Council takes a dim view of creatures such as you following our members. Make sure that we do not see it happen again.”
“Oh, now I’ve been told so nicely, you can be assured; you wont.”
“Wont what?” asked the Councilman.
Trish smiled. There was little, if any humour in the expression. “Let you see me, of course.”
The Watcher didn’t gather the full import of Trish’s words. “Be sure that we don’t.”
The three vanished into the crowds. Trish sighed, and pulled out a cell phone. What were the council up to now? Dante in Sunnydale, and a shakedown in Britain for Trish. What was next? What were they doing?
Dante stood back as two soldiers and a scientist entered his cell. The scientist smiled disarmingly. “You have an appointment, my friend.”
“What if I don’t want to go?” asked Dante suspiciously.
The scientist held a hand up as the two soldiers raised their weapons menacingly. “Then these… gentlemen… will be forced to neutralise you.”
Dante nodded. He might as well play along. “OK. I’m game. Where are we going?”
The scientist held up a syringe. “Ah… you see; we need you unconscious. But you seem to be cooperative.”
The scientist stepped forward, and raised the syringe. As it neared his neck, Dante reached up with the speed of a viper and twisted it away. “I don’t think so. If it was going to simple… I’d go along. Since you seem to want to hurt me… well, I don’t take to things hurting me very well…”
The two grunts raised their weapons, but Dante spun the scientist in front of him, creating a human shield. “I’m out of here…”
The first soldier shook his head. “Not without a fight.” He stepped back and hit a button on the wall by the side of him. Immediately, the lights dimmed and became red. An alarm began, resonating down the corridors and alerting all on the facility that something was wrong.
Seconds later, steel blast doors began to close over the containment area, sealing all of the experiments and captured creatures in.
The second soldier looked round. “Uh… that wasn’t part of the plan, right?” he looked back and Dante, frightened and continued, “I mean… I didn’t sign up to die at some monsters hands…”
The first stood behind the second a little way. “Just do your job, Eric.”
“Yeah, but what is the job?”
Dante smirked at the two. “What are you going to do now? Shoot me? I don’t think you’re boss will like that…”
Eric nodded. “He’s right, Sam.”
Sam hissed at him. “Shut up, man!”
Dante nodded, and smiled disarmingly. “You know, maybe you captured the wrong person?”
“No way. You were seen killing vamps. That means that you have the potential to be an HST.”
“An HS what?” asked Dante confused, before mumbling to himself, “wouldn’t killing the vamps mean I was one their side?”
“Hostile Sub… ah, no! You’re not gonna get any secrets out of us!”
Dante rolled his eyes. “I don’t want any secrets. I just want out. Now, are you gonna let me, or do I have to do it the hard way?” In the back of Dante’s mind, a voice spoke: yeah, the hard way for you… because they’re human.
“We wont let you out.”
“Fine.” Dante sighed. “I don’t want to do this, but you leave me no choice. Where are my weapons?”
“We’re not gonna tell you anything!”
“Oh, I’m terribly sorry.” Dante felt a tug at his consciousness, as Alastor made its presence know to its bearer once again. “Can I guess? Let me see… maybe the armoury?”
The wary and surprised looks from the two soldiers told him he was right. But he knew that already.
“And that is… two levels up? About a hundred metres in…” Dante turned and pointed, “that… direction.”
The two soldiers gripped their weapons that little but tighter as Dante turned back.
“Oh, I’ve had enough of this. I am going now. But know this: I want my weapons back.”
Dante vanished.
Eric looked over at Sam. “Where’d he go?”
Sam looked around quickly. “Damned if I…” He collapsed to the floor.
Eric swiftly joined him as Dante reappeared behind him, brushing imaginary dust off of the shoulder of his jacket, and fiddling with a medallion round his neck. “Now to get out of here.”
“Will you not give me a straight answer?!” Buffy nearly exploded at Giles as he stood there mutely accepting her verbal barrage.
Xander smirked in the corner. “He knows Dante, Buffy. And trust me, after Dante, nothing any Slayer could do would scare him…”
“What!?” Buffy practically screeched, “what have you gotten yourself into this time Xander?! More trouble that we have to help you out from?”
Xander's eyes, which had been full of merriment seconds before, suddenly became cold and lifeless. “No, Buffy. I no longer hide from my problems. And well, lets just say that the day Dante cares about something as trivial as odds… Satan will be going to work on a snowplough.” He smirked at the irate Slayer. Besides, he thought, one of his favourite holiday spots is the Swiss Alps…
Buffy gave both Xander and Giles a death glare, and stalked off.
Willow looked nervous for a second, before speaking. “Dawn will be glad to see you again, Xander. I can’t wait to tell her you’re back! Joyce will be pleased as well!”
Xander frowned at Giles. “Who’s Dawn?”
Willow and Tara both stared in shock, while Giles removed his glasses and began to polish then industriously. Willow stammered a disbelieving question, “you… you don’t know who, DAWN is?”
Xander turned to his ‘oldest’ friend. “No.” He frowned. “I thought that would be obvious…”
Willow was mute with shock, while Tara answered for her. “Um… Dawn is Buffy’s sister. Younger sister.”
“Since when did that happen?” Xander grinned at Giles. “Did you do a ‘band candy’ again and get horizontal with Mrs. Summers?”
Giles gaped for a second, before polishing his glasses so vigorously Xander thought he would wear the glass out. “No! No, of course not! Like I would do any such thing…” He seemed to realise that he was digging himself two holes at once, and tried to fill one in. “Not that Joyce isn’t an attractive woman, as she is, but…” He trailed off as he realised that as he filled one in, the other got deeper.
“That’s it, Giles,” smirked Xander; “lets see if we can’t get both your feet in your mouth at once…”
Willow recovered the power of speech. “Xander… Dawn is nearly fourteen… she’s not a baby. And she’s had a crush on you since she met you when Buffy moved to Sunnydale.”
Xander held up his hands. “Whoa! I’m really sure that when Joyce and Buffy moved to Sunnydale, it was only the two of them! No third person stuff! And I’ve certainly never had a fourteen year old crushing on me!” Unless we count you, when we were fourteen…
“We all thought it was cute when we found a notepad with ‘Mrs. Dawn Harris’ scrawled on every single page a few years ago.” Willow looked at Xander as if he was going strange, “don’t you remember?”
Xander squeaked. “Remember what?! That this isn’t Mexico?! Last time anyone checked, jailbait in this state was still eighteen! I mean, I know good ol’ California’s liberal, but I don’t think that they’ve changed that much!”
Willow sighed patiently, but Xander could tell her patience was running out. “No… that notebook.”
“What notebook?” asked Xander.
Willow ground her teeth and gave him her ‘resolve face’. “The notebook with ‘Dawn Harris’ written in it.”
Xander ignored her. “When did this Dawn… show up?”
Giles looked uncomfortable. “Uh… she’s always been here, Xander…”
Xander spun round on the balls of his feet. “No! No, she hasn’t always been here Xander!” He jabbed a finger at Giles. “How long have I been gone?!”
Giles shook his head. “Uh… well… er… I don’t know… I’d… have to check…”
“Willow?” asked Xander.
Willow shrugged. “I don’t know… none of us really talked about you, because Buffy got so wound up if anyone even mentioned you… about… uh…”
Giles picked up a diary, and flicked through about a dozen pages. “You have been gone for one year, two months, one week, three days, seven hours and three minutes…”
Xander stared at Giles in shock. “Do you write everything down at the exact time it happens?” he asked incredulously.
“Not everything,” said Giles, “just the important things.”
“It feels like a century…” murmured Xander. “Oh, wait… it is.” He spoke louder. “Thanks, Giles.”
“What for?” asked the ex-Watcher confused.
“For thinking I’m important.”
Giles had the good grace to look embarrassed. “Uh… it… its nothing I assure you.”
Xander rolled his eyes, but he knew what Giles was trying to say.
“Sooo…” drawled Xander, “when do I get to meet this… Dawn…?”
Buffy, who had remained silent for a while, spoke. “You don’t.”
“What?!” asked Willow, Tara and Giles at once.
“You heard me.” Said Buffy angrily. “He doesn’t see her. She doesn’t even know he’s here, and it stays that way. As soon as your ‘job’ is finished, Xander, get out of Sunnydale.”
“But… but…” Willow stuttered incoherently for a few seconds. “But why not?! And why does he have to leave?! He’s only just got back to us!”
Buffy almost snarled at the mute statue Xander had become. “Because.” She said.
Xander nodded. “Slayer.” He stalked out of the room they were gathered in, and the group heard a door slam as an angry Xander went out into the night.
Willow looked at Buffy accusingly. “Now look what you’ve done!”
Buffy turned on the redhead and spoke in a low and dangerous tone. “If I ever see him in Sunnydale after the week is out… I will kill him.”
Tara looked to the door uncertainly. “He’s… out in Sunnydale at dark… shouldn’t we go after him?”
Buffy shook her head in the negative. “No. He doesn’t deserve our help.” She stared each person in the room down, daring them to disagree with her.
Giles looked speculatively at his young blonde charge. “I think it is more likely that we will have to protect the vampires and demons from him, rather than the other way around…”
Nathan smiled, and the book in his hands seemed to writhe in his grasp. “Excellent…” he whispered. “Those fools in the Council have no ken of what I will release onto the world…”
Darkness hovered about him as he flicked through further pages of the Codex Mortis.
“And that foolish Half-devil and his ‘partner’ will merely be fuel for the fire I will create.”
He picked up a small knife, and drawing a line across his wrist, let the blood fall onto the book. “Inaudax… Iudicium… Ignis…”
Blood vanished as it touched the pages of the book, and the cut on Nathan's wrist healed as if it had never been there.
Nathan looked hesitantly at his wrist. “The change takes seven hundred and seventy seven minutes…” he read out loud. “the changed must have absolutely no access to sunlight, lest the transformation be interrupted.” He sucked in a pained breath as something changed. “Do not be alarmed at the pain, for once complete, nothing shall harm the bearer of the Power again…”
Nathan looked up; already the look in his eyes was changing. But the change was most pronounced from the cut on his wrist. It burned, not like fire, but like pure, untainted cold itself. He held he breath and poked the flesh around the cut experimentally. It did not even move to his probing.
His mouth moved of its own accord, no longer powered by his will alone, but by another.
“It is time.”
Mundus looked up from his work as he felt a shift in the scheme of things. A servant rushed to see what ailed one of the Lords of Hell.
When asked, Mundus simply replied, "It is coming."
Dante ducted behind a desk as bullets ricocheted around him. He had managed to get out of the containment area, through skill and stealth, and he had to admit quietly to himself, mostly by luck.
He even managed to get to the armoury and secure Alastor, alongside Ebony and Ivory, but then found himself trapped in the secured area.
He could escape, or he could break his rules about killing humans.
What a choice.
Xander was stalking angrily down the pavement, berating himself on why he thought anything would be different this time around. Buffy had a boyfriend, and a group of people who would die for her, and she also now apparently had a younger sister.
He was deeply engrossed in his own self-deprecation that he didn't acknowledge a scream from an alleyway until it sounded for a second time. Then he took off running.
Xander didn't know what was going to happen, so drew one of his pistols and Ragnarok, before coming to a halt in the mouth of the alley and laughed his head off.
A young teenager, probably no more than fifteen, was winning against a small group of vampires. The vampires didn't seem too pleased about this, but the girl wasn't giving them much of a choice.
She sprayed one in the face with a squirt of what appeared to be holy water via a small water pistol, from the way the vampire screamed at its sudden application, and thrust a cross into the face of another. The third, the apparent smart thinker of the group, hung back, frightened to get too close.
It had its back to Xander, who snuck up behind it and wrapped an arm around its neck before shooting it through the heart with his gun. Watching this display was certainly improving Xander's mood. The girl could most assuredly take care of herself.
The vamp that now had cross burns on his face, cut his losses and ran. Unfortunately for him, it was straight into the waiting Xander.
"Hi." Said Xander quietly as the vamp stopped uncertainly. His deathly quiet voice was easily audible over all the other noises in the alley. He raised his pistol.
"Bullets don't work on." The vampire never got a chance to finish what he was saying because Xander shot him.
"Don't they?" Xander asked belatedly, confused. "You know, I rather think they do."
The girl chose that second to thrust the bottom of her cross into the vampire's heart, dusting it. She breathed a sigh of relief.
Then she noticed Xander. "I know the Slayer!" she called out in alarm at the still form in front of her, silhouetted, by the streetlight flooding into the alley from behind him.
"Easy." said Xander. "I wont hurt you."
"But what's your definition of hurt?" she asked suspiciously.
"Any form of physical or mental pain, including scraped knees and twisted ankles, but excluding hickeys. they're just marking territory." Xander stopped, and smirked.
"You could have helped." She said accusingly.
Xander frowned. "Why? You were doing fine! Besides, I did help." He gestured to the two piles of dust at his feet.
"What are you?" asked the girl. "Who are you?"
"Me? I'm nothing, and nobody. I don't matter. But I rather think that you do. to some parents somewhere and possibly some siblings." He motioned with his arm. "So home you go."
"Um." the Girl didn't seem to like that topic too much, "you haven't even told me your name."
"That's not important."
"It is to me." the girl said. "I'm Dawn."
Xander's eyes suddenly became haunted. "Summers?"
Dawn looked frightened for a second. "Yeah. That's right."
"Sister of Buffy 'I'm right and you're wrong' Summers?"
Dawn frowned at the insult to her sister, but it was right. She said dryly, but with a hint of a giggle, "Unfortunately."
"Do both of us a favour. Don't tell her you met me."
"Who are you?"
Xander sighed. He had to tell the truth. "Alexander Harris."
"Xander?!" Dawn practically screamed at him. "Oh my God!" She flung herself at him bodily. "What happened? You just vanished on us! On me!"
Xander was at a loss for words. "Well. uh. you see I. um. had this little. fight. with your sister." he swallowed and tried to breath in. "Could you. let go of me, please?"
"Fight?" Dawn looked more dangerous than Buffy in one of her, 'kill first, don't bother with questions' moods.
"Yeah." Xander said weakly.
"And that's why you left?"
"Yeah."
Dawn scowled. "Oooo. I'm gonna get her. she lied to me!"
Xander whipped his head up suddenly and stiffened. He spoke slowly and carefully, and Dawn was more than a little frightened at the sudden change in her hero. "Dawn. Get to where you need to be." He turned out of her embrace, drawing Ragnarok as he went. "Now."
"But." Dawn started.
"NOW!" Xander roared at her. "Don't stop, and don't look back! GO! NOW!"
Dawn ran, but looked back to see Xander swing at a shadow that suddenly coalesced out of the wall of the alleyway.
Another appeared behind him. "XANDER!" Dawn screamed.
Xander spun at Dawn's shout of his name in time to see a Death Scythe aiming for his head.
Ducking, Xander extended his free hand and used it as a pivot on the ground of the alleyway. Fighting ethereal creatures is no fun, especially as you can't use your own mass against them, or sucker punch them when they aren't looking.
Xander lashed out with Ragnarok, and succeeded in catching a Death Scythe with the tip. The creature quickly retreated into the wall, allowing its companions to concentrate on Xander, who was currently trying to ignore the clamour of three sentient weapons in his mind. All of them wanted a go, and only one was able to release the blood lust it felt.
Dawn screamed again as winged beasts began to descend out of the sky, flapping their way to the already outnumbered Xander, and looking worse than the things he was already fighting. Dawn took a stumbling step backwards in terror as a manhole cover shifted to the side and small monkey like creatures began to pour out.
As much as he hated to admit it, the sheer volume of enemies that began to swamp him was overwhelming Xander. Taking a leaf from Dante's book of tricks, he sent Ragnarok spinning away, cutting into more than a dozen of the creatures as it went, and drew his twin pistols.
The cacophony of shots began to echo in the alleyway as Xander fired at anything that moved. The mystical bullets did equal damage to the corporeal and ethereal creatures, scything though their ranks and despatching many.
Xander turned suddenly at a scream from the street. He couldn't allow innocents to be hurt by the creatures that were attacking him.
The street had three people standing in it. Well, one standing, and two running as fast as they could. Dawn stood in the middle of the almost deserted street as a young couple ran away as fast as they could.
"I thought I told you to run!?" Shouted Xander as he shot another of the monkey like things.
Dawn shrugged, and tried to look appropriately guilty.
Seeing their targets attention on something other than them, one of the Blood Goats took this to mean that she meant a lot to the half-Devil, and flew toward her.
Xander's eyes widened with relief as he saw one of this opponents flying away. Until, that is, he saw its new target.
"DAWN!" Xander screamed, "get down!"
Dawn dropped to the road, and felt talons tear at her back as the winged beast pulled up from its near suicidal dive at her. As Xander neared her, she asked him far more calmly than she felt, "what the hell is that thing?"
"It's a Blood Goat. I wont go into the reasons now. and hopefully not ever, but. LOOK OUT!"
Xander fired a few more rounds at the Blood Goat, before rolling to his feet and pulling Dawn up after him.
"You any good at running?" he asked her.
Dawn shook her head. "Not really."
Xander's face was deadly serious, but the look in his eyes, despite the situation, was joking. "Then you better learn. Fast."
Xander took off down the street, half pulling, half dragging Dawn after him.
Dante pulled himself out of a manhole exit from the sewer to flop onto the road and sigh in relief. God knows why a black op like that had an emergency exit into the sewers, but who was he to reason why? All he wanted to do was escape, which, thanks to the sewer system, was easier than it first appeared. The he twisted his head round and got to his feet in a crouch at the sound of running feet. He was still technically a fugitive, after all.
Then he noticed who one of them was.
Xander Harris.
"Xander?" he shouted, "what's going on?"
Xander did a double take as he saw Dante crouched in the road, and them ducked as a circular saw like weapon came for his head. "I don't know where the Hell you've been, man, but I'm glad you're back!"
"I got. distracted by some unwanted friends." Dante started, but Xander shook his head and cut him off.
"Later! We've got bigger things to worry about right now."
Dante shrugged, before pulling Ebony and firing at a Mortfinis that got too close. "Where the hell have all these things come from?"
Xander shrugged, and thrust Dawn into Dante's arms. He spoke to Dawn. "Get to wherever you'll be safe. Dante'll look after you." He turned back to the tidal wave of monsters that were quickly approaching.
Dawn looked at Xander's back. "But."
Dante shook his head, and pulled her away from the flood. "Come on. Where do you want to be?"
"But." Dawn said again, before slouching slightly and giving up. "I few streets down, on the corner. The Magic Box."
Dante nodded. "Xander! I'll meet you there!"
Xander turned as he fired a shot, and shook his head. "No way, I'm not welcome there."
Dawn looked at him in surprise and anger. "You'll be killed if you fight all of those things!"
"Better than having all of you die when they break into the Magic Box, kiddo. These things aren't like vampires. They don't need an invitation." He dodged another strike from a Terreofinis, and somersaulted over a slash from a Death Scythe.
"GO!" Xander's order was not to be argued with, even from the man that was, technically, his employer.
Dante scooped Dawn up in his arms, and took off. Dawn struggled in his grip, and Dante fixed her with a glare. "If you want to die by those things, fine, keep struggling. If, on the other hand, you want to live. stop squirming so damn much!"
Dawn stilled.
As he turned a corner, Dante risked a look back. Xander looked round at that instant, and their eyes met. Understanding and sorrow showed in their eyes at the last words they spoke, and Dante shivered as Xander dodged a strike without even seeing it.
Dawn looked over his shoulder. "What?! What's going on?!"
Dante sighed. "Nothing." He nodded to Xander, and vanished from his sight with Dawn.
Dante felt the flash of power as Xander Triggered out in the open, and lowered his head. He whispered to himself, "I'm sorry."
Dante vanished round the corner after his head nod, and Xander turned all of his attention to the fight. Seeing the tides of devils he was facing, he closed his eyes for a fraction of a second and released the power.
For the first time since his return to the Hellmouth, Xander let the darker side of his nature free. It revelled in the release it was given, and changed his physical form before the eyes of any onlookers. Not that there were.
Muscle and height were added, quickly making Xander stand at nine feet tall. Lightly tanned skin paled, before darkening in microseconds to jet-black. Medium length brown hair grew out to shoulder length and lightened to painfully bright white. His nose flattened in, and disappeared, leaving an expanse of empty skin where it had been. Hands with long fingers grew longer, becoming talons, and curling completely around his twin pistols. Deep brown eyes turned completely black, and then the pupils began to glow green; in a way it looked as if his eyes had emerald fire burning within them. All his teeth lengthened and sharpened, and Xander threw his head back to roar. Two streamlined black wings burst out of his back, dark green veins pulsing as they did so, and flapped once, airing, before furling up once more and vanishing. Finally, skin grew lumpy in places, and parted to reveal small horns, which formed armour of a sort.
Ragnarok raged at its uselessness, and of its own accord, flew from its sheath and embedded itself in the chest of a large demonic wolf that had been preparing to leap.
Then Xander moved. Devils fell to his guns and his blade as by will alone he controlled the forces that would have given even Dante pause. Sparda may have been the blade wielded by his father, but Ragnarok was not named the Doom of the Gods for nothing.
Nathan writhed as his body changed further. Finally, he screamed in agony as his flesh split open and more limbs appeared. Muscles moved under the skin, changing where they were attached and how they moved, before calming again.
This was not what was meant to happen. Nathan looked down at his hands. all six of them. Two were those he had before, still normal, human, except for the sickly grey colouring that now tinged them. The others were not so much arms and hands as spiny appendages. They ended in vicious looking hooks.
Nathan passed through the threshold of pain that any mortal creature could withstand, and still did not pass out.
A voice spoke in his mind. this is the deal you invoked, little human. Now take form as my servant. and destroy those annoying half-devils before they destroy you!
Phantom smashed his way out of the hotel, destroying half of the building as it did so, and feeling a disturbance a short way off, thundered in the direction it came from.
Margaret Walsh walked purposefully into the room that no others were allowed into.
314.
It was time to use what they had to end this threat once and for all. Adam would destroy any and all demons it encountered; including that 'Slayer' that was popular myth among the vampires and demons in the area known as Sunnydale.
She pressed a button on the computer keyboard on the desk, and watched as a wall slid up to reveal the Adam charging and repair centre. Truth be told, it was only for the initial construction of the demonic hybrid, as it was self-repairing and, hopefully at least- almost totally invulnerable.
Walsh stepped over to a keyhole in the wall, behind a glass box that was meant as protection for it, and smashed the glass. She extracted a key from her pocket, and pushed it purposefully into the hole.
Then, with a quiet, <click> the key was turned.
Adam felt a surge of power go through its circuits, and stepped off of the pedestal that he had been on.
It looked round the room, and it's gaze settled on Margaret Walsh. "You're wish, Mother?"
Walsh looked proudly at her 'first born'. Her prototype; her triumph. She gave it an order. One that, in hindsight, was terribly broad, and terribly lethal. But as they say, hindsight is always 20/20.
"Kill everything."
Adam took a moment to digest this order. "You are certain, Mother?"
Walsh looked angrily at Adam. "Yes! I am sure! I gave you an order! Now carry it out!"
Adam looked sorrowfully at his mother. "As you wish."
Margaret Walsh died before the first scream could be uttered.
Dante hammered on the door of the shop that his passenger had indicated so hard that its hinges protested at the strain. He heard a noise from inside, and an irate blonde girl that looked none too happy yanked the door open.
"What the hell do you want?!" she screamed at him.
Dante swung Dawn off of his back and thrust her into the blonde. "Take her."
Buffy almost dropped Dawn she was so surprised, and turned back to see the man getting ready to run.
Dawn hissed as Buffy hugged the cuts on her back, and pulled away. Buffy's eyes widened as she saw the gouges in Dawn's back, and grabbed Dante's arm hard, and squeezed with all the Slayer strength she could muster. "What did you do to Dawn?"
Dante turned back to her, with murder in his eyes. "If you don't let go, my partner could die. And that might make me break my cardinal rule."
"Oh, and what is that?" asked Buffy sarcastically.
"Don't kill humans." Dante deadpanned. He wrenched his arm free. "Now get off me!"
Buffy went to grab him again, and discovered a pistol pressed against her temple.
"What are you gonna do? Shoot me?" she sneered.
Giles stepped out of the back of the shop. "What is taking so long, Buf." he saw Dante, and the obviously near murderous Slayer in a standoff, "oh my."
Dante looked up. "Ripper! Can't say that its good to see you, but could you get this crazy bitch to back down?"
"Buffy, go back in with Dawn." Giles voice held no room for argument.
"But." began Buffy.
"Go in."
"But."
Giles lost his temper. "Bloody GO IN! NOW!"
Buffy shot both Dante and Giles a mutinous look, but finally acquiesced.
Dante drew his second pistol. "Thanks. Got to go save my partner."
"Xander?" asked Giles.
Dante looked back, surprised. "Yeah."
Giles reached behind the counter. He drew out a wicked looking axe, then knocked a box to the floor and extracted an old six-shooter. "What are we waiting for?"
Dante turned and ran. "Nothing."
Giles marvelled at the sheer speed that Dante put behind his movements, and followed at a slower pace. It was not deliberate, but Giles wasn't as young as he used to be.
If truth were told; if it wasn't such an unfair fight, Xander would have been having the time of his life.
He ducked, dodged and weaved, raining death on any that dared get near enough to him to pose a threat. Normally, he would also pick off a few of the longer-range devils, but if he concentrated on one of them long enough to kill it, the nearer things would have torn him to shreds.
He ducked suddenly as a bolt of energy went over his head. "Great." he growled, "Plasma's. just to make the day complete."
His wings appeared and beat against the air once, taking him into the sky, and away from the landlocked beasts. Blood Goats followed his path, and clamoured with each other for the first strike.
Xander hovered in the air, his wings holding him easily as he waited; the short respite from battle fraying his already weakened nerves.
"Come on, you bastards. don't keep me waiting now."
Almost as he was praying wound happen, three of them started for him at once.
Then, the strangest thing he even saw occurred. Two simply fell from the sky, and hit the ground with sickening crunches. The third, having lost its support, chickened out of the direct attack and wheeled off, to join the rest of its brood. Xander aimed and picked it from the sky with graceful ease.
Xander spun in his hover as he heard the deafening roar of a classic pistol from the earth below. The next thing he knew was pain as the bullet tore through the delicate membranes of his right wing.
The ground suddenly zoomed up to meet him, and Xander hit the tarmac of the road with a roar that shook the roofs for miles around, and made the children and parents o Sunnydale both, wish they were far, far away at that moment.
Giles arrived panting at what had to be an open burial site that had overflowed. He spotted Dante wading in with his usual lack of respect for odds, and the masses of small creatures that swamped him in.
Then he looked up.
Xander hovered above the battlefield, in full Devil form, watching a group of even more ugly demons. Giles took aim down the sights of his antique revolver, and fired. He had never encountered a demon yet that enjoyed an encounter with his 'special' rounds.
He gave a satisfied smile as he saw the bullet tear through the wing of the beast, and it tumbled to the ground. Then his eyes widened as Dante gave an inarticulate cry, followed by a stream of curses at him.
"No, you bloody fool!" Dante screamed, "that's Xander! You just shot Xander!"
Giles didn't have time to think of his mistake as suddenly he became a target for a clear third of the demons that Dante was engaging.
Giles muttered under his breath, "oh, bollocks."
Dawn stood in the back room of the Magic Box, and tried to fend off Buffy's verbal assault.
"What on earth did you think you were doing out in Sunnydale at night? Shooting the breeze?"
Dawn shrugged, and winced as the gesture pulled at the cuts on her back. "Actually, I was coming to see you. but I was staking a few vamps on the way."
She got exactly the reaction she was hoping for as Buffy's eyes widened. "I told you not to fight anything! To come and call me! I'm the Slayer, not any of you! And not you, especially, Dawn!"
Willow looked up from inspecting Dawn's back. "Um. Dawn. what did this?"
Dawn pulled a face, "Some really ugly thing that looked like a mutated goat. Xander called it a Blood Goat."
Buffy spun round, fixing Dawn with an angry look. "Xander?" she asked dangerously. "You talked to Xander?"
Dawn shrugged again. "Not so much talked, as got rescued by."
Buffy disappeared into the small side room where the weapons were stored. "I 'm going to find him. What the hell does he think he's doing, endangering my sister?!"
"He didn't."
Buffy cut her off. "Quiet, Dawn. Don't argue with me." She walked purposefully out of the shop, a large axe in her hands.
Dante turned at a sound behind him, and ended up face to face with Phantom.
"Don't you ever die?" Dante asked, exasperated.
Phantom appeared to chuckle, and then pushed two of his legs into the tarmac, causing it to crack and break. "Of course not, Son of Sparda. especially when there are so many prepared to serve the Dark Lord with both their Souls, and their Bodies."
Out of the corner of his eye, Dante saw Giles drawing a bead on the huge spider monster. "Ripper! No!"
Giles fired, Dante's warning coming a second too late, and his eyes widened as the bullet simply sparked off of the carapace protecting Mundus' servant.
Phantom turned. "Ah. so you have brought another to the game, have you, Son of Sparda? I shall enjoy feasting on his soul."
Dante calmly fired a shot at Phantom, to draw its attention again. "Not in this life, you wont. Or in the afterlife, either. Face it, Phantom. you're old news."
Phantom seemed vaguely amused. "Indeed?" the spider hunkered down to the ground. "Perhaps you should check on your comrade, Son of Sparda?"
Xander landed on the ground, and was instantly swamped by the hordes of devils that were gunning for him. Each and every one broke off from Dante and Giles to rush Xander, who put up only a token resistance.
Neither Giles nor Dante could help him, however, they each had their own problems to worry about...
Adam stood in the dark of the sewer, his exit for operations from the Initiative base. He could smell someone else here, though. It was a smell that he had noticed one other time... in the confinement area of the base. He smiled to himself as a thought struck him.
He could use this to blame the death of his mother on that creature... one he did not have any data on, and only had the barest outline of knowledge about.
Adam spun as a splash drew his attention away from his internal thoughts and to the area around him. A vampire was skulking through the sewer, and Adam felt his programming take over.
"Vampire. Halt."
The vampire stopped, but more out of curiosity than because it was ordered. "You wot, mate?"
"Halt." Adam said again, as he approached.
The vampire, a thin bleached blonde male, looked at him with raised eyebrows. "Wot are you s'posed to be then? Robocop?"
"I am Adam."
"Yeah, right. And bloody Eve is round 'ere somew'ere... stop takin' the piss, mate!"
Adam seemed to dither for a second. "You are a viable target, but you are not alive. Last given order conflicts with Protocols... ignore protocols in favour of direct order..."
"Wot the bloody 'ell you goin' on about?"
Adam nodded to the vampire. "I was programmed to kill demons, but my last order was to 'Kill Everything'. Since you do not have a heartbeat, you cannot be considered 'alive'. Therefore, it is not required of me to kill you. Seek parameters: live prey."
Spike smiled widely. "You only seek out things with an 'eartbeat?" Then he grinned maliciously. "Come with me, mate... I've got jus' the targit for you..."
Dante turned and ran from the uninvited form of Phantom in front of him. Hearing the demonic beast charge after him, Dante headed for the nearest wall, which happened to be a shop named 'Good Memories', which purported to sell old CD's and LP's from any artist imaginable.
Dante put one foot on the wall, and pushed off, twisting in the air as he went, to land behind the monstrous form of the spider like demon. "You just don't learn, do you?" he asked with a shake of his head.
Phantom skidded to a halt inches away from demolishing the wall, and its features split in what Dante hoped was a grin. It was too damned ugly to be anything else. Phantom scratched its head with one leg. "Oh, I don't know, Son of Sparda... you don't seem to be paying too much attention to anything, now..."
Dante spun as he heard a noise behind him. "What the hell is this place? Grand Central Station for demons?!"
His pistols whipped up and seemed to fire faster than mechanically possible. Then he holstered them and drew Alastor as they had no effect on his target. "Can't you take a hint, Angelo?!"
Giles looked around amazed at the number of enemies, and suddenly vastly more powerful ones that were coming at them, seemingly from all directions.
This was bad.
Very bad.
Giles hurriedly reloaded his revolver, and cursed at the top of his lungs, "what the bloody hell is this!? A convention?!"
Angelo remained silent, his eyes locked on Dante's. Phantom answered, its voice making the ground itself tremble. "Oh, very possibly, Mr. Giles. or should I call you 'ripper'?"
Compound eyes flickered as Phantom watched the man, who had run into a fight he had no hope of winning. Giles snarled, and for a second, the Phantom could see why he had been named Ripper in his past.
"You, demon, can call me 'sir'!" spat Giles, before aiming carefully. The pistol bucked once, twice and Giles watched.
The first bullet hit off target by a fraction of an inch, and ricocheted off like it was nothing more than a bothersome insect.
The second, however, found its mark. It drilled into the eye, and Phantom reeled back in pain, demonic lava spraying from the wound, before growling something at the impudent upstart who had enough of a death wish to fight him.
"For that, you will die a painful death at the hand of my master..."
Phantom charged, and Giles avoided the gigantic spider only by a lucky dive. Then, as he dodged again, he found himself between the proverbial 'rock and a hard place', as his back met a wall.
"Nowhere left to run, little human?" crowed Phantom.
A voice came from behind him. "No. He just knows to let someone else play tag for a while."
Phantom wheeled in surprise as the human form of Xander stood, bleeding slightly from a couple a wounds, but otherwise unhurt, behind him. "Impossible!" roared Phantom. "You should be dead!"
Xander smirked. "Never trust what a Devil shows you, Phantom. Its often what they want you to see."
He pulled out his twin pistols. "Ready?" Xander asked rhetorically.
Phantom stamped the ground in preparation.
Xander narrowed his eyes. "Then... LET'S ROCK!"
Dante and Angelo were engaged in a classical example of the fencers' art, but with the rubber tips and padding taken off. Each parried and riposted the others attacks, moving around with speed and agility unmatched by any swordsmen in the world.
Angelo's superior strength began to tell, as he ground his blade along the edge of Dante's, and locked them at the hilt.
Then he proceeded to kick Dante in the groin. Not exactly playing fair, but whatever works, right?
Dante folded with a moan, and seconds too late, realised his mistake. Underneath his helm, Angelo smiled viciously, and raised his blade for the final strike. Dante watched the blade arc in the air, and rolled with the cleaving blow, wincing as it cut into his shoulder, but at least he hadn't lost his life. As he dove out of the way, he brought his sword round, the tip touching the tarmac of the road briefly in its travels, and bouncing up to catch Angelo a glancing blow to his ankle.
As Dante staggered to his feet, inching away from Angelo while the taller fighter healed, he winced and stood up slowly, facing his nemesis.
"Do you have any idea how much that hurts?!" He seemed to calm down for a second, before he raised his sword and it pulled on his injured shoulder. "And how much this coat cost!? I'm going to make you eat that damned sword, brother or not!"
Angelo paused, and his head tilted to the side, as if he was thinking. Slowly, the helm slid away from his face, exposing his features. Quietly, he asked, "why?"
The battle of Xander near them, his fight against Phantom faded into the background, Giles too, went unnoticed as he stood by, watching the exchange between the two.
Dante glared at him, and tried to get back his rapidly waning anger. "Because you. you became that!" Dante spat. "I know mother died, but you, you! You dishonour her memory by serving the very cause of her death!"
"I was..." Angelo paused. "I..."
"You were what, Angelo?" asked Dante harshly.
Angelo looked up at the heavens. "I am sorry, mother..." he whispered.
Dante exploded. "No! Wrong direction, asshole! Try looking in the blackest pit of Hell, where the Traitors go!"
"She... she's in Hell?" Angelo asked weakly.
"How do you think she gave us birth?! She mated with a devil, brother..." Dante sneered, "and if you failed to notice, devils don't go to Heaven!"
"You're... you're... wrong." Angelo's own voice sounded weak, trying to convince himself.
"Go ask you're master, apprentice." Dante whispered harshly.
Angelo vanished with an anguished scream.
Buffy marched down the street, nearing the end of the road and turned into the next one. The sight that met her eyes made her stop suddenly in her tracks in shock.
Giles, the unknown man and another... the one in the green coat, [Xander], he traitorous mind provided for her, were fighting for their lives against a huge spider-like monster.
Giles fell backwards as the spider swiped ineffectually at him, and was relieved to see Dante drawing it away with gunfire, at least for the time being.
Xander was in a world of his own, fighting alongside Dante and Giles, but not relying on either of them. Aware of his surroundings, but detached from the same. He could feel the battlefield, each and every imperfection in the road; the individual molecules that went into make up each and every thing around him. The beating hearts of Dante and Giles...
...and another.
Buffy.
"Time to show her she doesn't know what she's talking about," Xander whispered. "There are worse things in both Hell and Heaven than Vampires..."
Phantom snapped at Xander as he approached, but he dodged every attempted strike. Ragnarok danced in the air, light glinting off the blades edge as it cleaved through its target.
A powerful middle limb arched out of nowhere, trying to attack from a side that Xander was not adequately protecting. He skidded under it, and flattened out against the ground as the skid took him underneath Phantom.
This was going to hurt.
Dante saw his intended sortie, and screamed at him, "Xander! No!" running toward the inevitable, both Dante and Xander knew he would be too late. Giles stood watching the unfolding scene, knowing that truly for once, he was so far out of his depth he was lucky to have survived. Buffy stood a few steps behind him, the axe she had wielded so forcefully in the charge here touching the ground, barely being held by limp fingers.
Phantom had so far seemed almost impervious to harm from either Dante's or Xander's normal attacks, and both were becoming desperate to end this as soon as possible.
Xander launched Ragnarok up into Phantoms unprotected belly with both hands, embedding it to the hilt, and forcing it further.
The whole sword vanished inside the monster, Xander's hand following it, and quickly his arm. As the burning of the lava hit his exposed skin, he Triggered involuntarily, forcing the blade deeper still with his change.
Mundus, aware of his new servants failure, called Phantom back to the Hell he had come from.
...
...
With Xander along for the ride...
"NOOOO!!" Dante's scream rent the air, the sounds carrying for miles, and continuing in people's ears long after Dante had become silent.
Giles and Buffy stood shell-shocked, unable to fully comprehend what had happened. They watched, in awe as Dante Triggered involuntarily, his pain becoming a physical thing that battered their minds as he took to the air and spiralled into the sky.
Then he, too, was gone.