The Ravages Of Hell

FIC: Ravages Of Hell (2/?)

“My Princess?” Angel forced himself to relax at the Pylean’s approach, confident in his ability to restrain Groo with or without his son’s assistance. Besides, he doubted that the demon\human hybrid would attack him. At least until after he’d explained. “What happened to her?”

Where to begin? “You see, Cordelia’s visions -.” He was interrupted by the ringing of his phone. “Sorry I’ll have to take this.” Grateful for the interruption he picked the receiver up. “Hello. Angel & Son Investigations. How can I-.”

“& Son? Gotta say, I didn’t see that coming!”

Angel gaped at the unexpectedly familiar voice, so shocked that it took him a few seconds to respond. “Lorne?” a rare smile slowly spread across his face. “It’s been a long-.”

“No time!” Lorne’s voice was suddenly brittle with fear. “You need to get out of your office now!”

The urgency in his long-lost friend’s voice compelled him to surge to his feet. “Everyone out now!” Connor’s mouth opened in a question and then the front window exploded, knocking them all to the ground with its force and showering them with glass. Over the roaring in his ears, he heard a cold voice. “The vampire’s the priority, but kill them all.”

* * *

“How long until we get there?”

“Ten minutes ma’am,” John Staham replied, risking a look into the rear-view mirror at his passenger. Man, the brunette was a looker, a brunette in her early twenties, her lithe, athletic body only emphasised by her eye-boggling PVC catsuit.

“There’s an extra hundred if you make it in five,” the client ordered. Irritation flickered across the beauty’s face. “And keep your damn eyes on the road.”

“Yes ma’am!” he exclaimed before obeying. As he turned back he heard the woman mutter ‘damn conscience’ under her breath.

* * *

“Any idea why Control wants us back in NY?” Riley had to shout to be heard over the roar of the transport plane’s engines.

“No idea,” his wife winced as the back of her head banged against the plane. “But the message was urgent.”

“Yeah,” Finn agreed. They’d done emergency pick-ups like this before. But on each occasion it had been to quell an urgent and major demonic uprising. The thought of one in the middle of the Big Apple made his stomach hollow with fear. “Guess we’ll find out soon.”

“Guess we will,” Graham put in.

* * *

Faith glanced at her watch, peering through the club’s murky darkness to its illuminated dial. “Two-forty-five.” It was three hours, a dozen dances, and eight beers since they’d saved the hostages, but she was still buzzing. What she needed now was a really good-.

Reminding herself that she was worth more than that, she glanced at her companions, a trio of frat-boys. “Sorry boys,” she drawled. “A girl needs her beauty sleep. Been fun.”

She started to rise only for one of the college boys to grab hold of her hand. “Hey now Faye,” the kid leered. “We’ve been buying you drinks for hours babe. Time to settle the bill.”

Jesus, Faith rolled her eyes, the fucker couldn’t even get her name right. “You’ve got the wrong girl.” She firmly removed the man’s hand from her arm. The man opened his mouth, but something in her eyes stopped him from speaking. Satisfied, she turned and sauntered out of the sweltering club.

She’d barely gotten two blocks when she heard a trio of footsteps following her. Faith smirked, they probably thought they were gonna to have a little fun with the poor defenceless girl. “Boy are they in for a surprise.” Noting a fire escape just above, she leapt up, and nimbly clambered onto the landing. She watched as the heedless trio walked on underneath her. Her eyes narrowed as she noticed two things.

Firstly they weren’t the frat boys. And second they weren’t human. “Great,” she hissed. “Just great.”

* * *

“Have you called Giles yet?”

Kennedy cast her girl-friend a worried look. The red-head was curled up in a shaking ball on their bed, her face ashen-grey. It had taken the Wicca a good five minutes to stop throwing up and her an hour to get her the normally twenty minutes’ walk home. “Yeah,” she replied, “but Andrew says he’s out of the office -.”

“Try his cell!”

Kennedy started at her girl-friend’s almost snarl. “I have. No signal. Baby,” she walked over to her girl-friend and stroked her hair off her sweat-soaked brow. “What did you see?”

“The end of the world.” Willow moaned. “Get us booked on a London flight, we need to get back to HQ fast.”

* * *

“Get down!” The moment she saw the jet-black, tinted helicopter with its two machine-gun wielding thugs hanging off it, Buffy tipped the table over, sending glasses and plates shattering to the ground, before launching herself at her sister, grabbing Dawn around the waist, and powering her to the floor. Looking up, she saw the Immortal and her fellow Slayer rapidly following suit.

Others in the fourth floor restaurant weren’t as lucky. Bullets tore through the air, ripping through hard-up waitresses and wealthy patrons alike, death the final equalizer. Their bullet-ridden bodies crashed to the carpet, its plush light-blue material rapidly turning red. Buffy tore her eyes from the massacre to stare in horror at a wide-eyed Dawn. “What. Is. Going. On. Here?” she screamed over the constant roar of their attackers’ weapons.

“We were rousting Antonio’s,” Buffy glared at her sister’s Slayer escorts, they were meant to be keeping the former key out of trouble, not taking her to Rome’s answer to Willy’s. “While we were there, this Cvuthla demon told us there’s an open contract out on you, Angel, and Faith!”

“Angel!” Buffy’s heart missed a beat at the vampire’s name. “Does he know?”

“Oh for god’s sake!” Dawn’s face contorted in anger. “Can we not obsess over your ex for once? How are we,” Dawn ducked as a splinter flew off the table protecting them, “going to get out of this?”

Buffy peered around, her lungs clogging with the cordite in the air. She had to admit she was stumped. Machine-gun toting maniacs weren’t exactly what she was used to. “I don’t kno-,” she grimaced as she noticed something, the beginnings of an idea germinating in her mind.

* * *

Rona and Vi leapt off the ledge to the cavern twenty feet below while Xander joined Amy in taking the less direct route – hurrying down the stone steps. Xander scowled as they were confronted by a scythe-wielding demon. After ducking beneath its weapon-swing, Xander thrust his sword deep into the monster’s thickly muscled thigh.

Blood jetted out of the wound, covering his previously gleaming blade in an murky grey. The beast howled before coming at him with another slash at his neck.

“Damn!” Xander squatted further down to avoid the attack. “Just great!” he groused when doing so caused his blade to slip out of his grip. Thinking quickly, he scurried backwards, careful to keep himself between the demon and Amy.

Its lipless mouth parted in a menacing sneer, the monster charged. Xander quickly reached into his jacket and pulled out his S&W .44, a going away present from G-Man, and placed a trio of bullets into the beast’s thick chest. The revolver’s booming retort made his ears ring, but also had the effect of knocking his adversary on his ass.

Almost immediately the monster began to rise. Hurrying forward, Xander dragged his sword out of the creature’s thigh and beheaded it. Body bathed in sweat and chest heaving, he looked around to see if either of his Slayers needed any help.

Instead he saw Rona dropping the last of the demons. Xander raised a wry eyebrow. Seven demons between the two of them in the time it took him to kill one. A man would have to be a complete idiot to get sexist around them. “Wish they didn’t stamp on my manliness quite so much,” he muttered. He groaned inwardly at Vi and Rona’s stereo grins. They’d heard him, and knowing Slayers as he did, they wouldn’t let him forget it.

Turning, he saw Amy was levitating the book out of its surrounding pentagram, a grimace of effort on the Wiccan’s face. Which kinda got him to thinking. In the past eighteen months he’d seen Amy do far more powerful spells that this with much less apparent effort. Which meant there had to be something else going on.

He waited until the witch had lowered the book to the ground beside her before speaking. “That looked to be hard work,” he commented, careful to keep any hint of criticism out of his voice. He’d learnt the hard way that Wiccas didn’t react well to it.

The scathing look Amy sent his way indicated he hadn’t been quite careful enough. “I also had to cast a protective cleansing spell to ensure my magic wasn’t corrupted by the pentagram,” his fellow Sunnydaler explained before crouching down to pick up the heavy text. “Oh no.”

Xander groaned at Amy’s gasp. That did not sound good. After exchanging worried looks with his Slayers, he spoke. “What’s up?”

Amy’s expression was haunted. “We need to get England now.”

* * *

“Oh my lord.” Giles’ hushed voice rang through the eireely silent cottage. His palms sweaty, mouth dry, and heart pounding, he stepped over the threshold. Skin prickling, he halted in the narrow hallway, some instinct telling him to draw the MI5 licensed gun he carried in a shoulder holster. Taking a rattling breath, he stepped towards the living room door, opened it, and stepped through.

And right into hell.

The limbless corpses of women he’d been proud to consider his mentors were scattered around the floor, their blood soaking the carpet and the once comfortably traditional furniture, and the stench of death hanging heavy in the air. Bile rose in his throat as he noted that the faces of all the corpses shared the same terrified expressions. Shaking his head, he turned towards the door, intent on getting the hell out of the cottage.

The blood drained from his face when he saw the unmistakably demonic writings scribbled all over the walls. He recognised some but not all of the languages and dialects, although in his shocked state he couldn’t concentrate enough to translate it. Dazed, he stumbled out of the house, dropped to his knees and vomited into a near-by flower pot. Once he’d finished throwing up, he reached a shaking hand into his jacket’s inner pocket, pulled out his mobile, and hurried dialled the Watchers’ HQ. “Andrew,” he rasped, his throat rough from vomiting. “I need a clean-up team at the Devon Cove, psychics, Watchers, translators, Slayers, and Mages. Hurry!” After hanging up the phone, he allowed the tears to flow.

* * *

“You off to Angel?” his business partner asked.

Lorne nodded at the pink-haired former guitarist that fate had sent his way some eighteen months ago in need of guidance. “Back to the unbeating bosom of Angelcakes,” he confirmed. He didn’t want to do it, but the vision was pretty clear. And visceral.

Although that just might have been the part where his former boss got his hands on him. “Oh goody,” he muttered. This was going to be less fun than a Vanilla Ice comeback tour.

“I guess we’ll go by car?”

“I sort of stand out at air -,” Lorne’s head snapped towards his best friend. “You’re coming with me?”

Oz shrugged, his face wearing its usual stoic expression. “I like to save the world between paying gigs. Call it a hobby.”

Lorne beamed. Maybe this wasn’t going to be as bad as he thought. “Let’s pack.”