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Angel, Spike, Faith and Xander stood before the police station with Willow in the lead, the redhead’s face washed in an eerie green glow.

A glow that was shining near blindingly bright as they stood before the squat four-story building.

Willow peered at the building, then back at the glowing badge before nodding and stuffing it into her back pocket. The sudden darkness felt oppressive, plumes of steam rose from the mouths of those that breathed. Those that did not remained cold and unmoving.

“All right. So, we know the plan?” Faith asked.

Spike nodded. “Make with the death, Terminator-Style,” he replied grinning despite himself.

Faith sighed; she wasn’t much of a tactician and this head on approach was the only thing she could come up with on such short notice.

“The others are getting the car, right?” Angel asked quietly.

Faith nodded. “We’re in, we’re out. Hit the place running and get out fast.”

“Sounds great,” Xander commented darkly.

Faith turned on him. “You got a better idea, X, let’s hear it,” she bit out.

Xander glared at her. “As a matter of fact…”

His voice trailed off as he spotted something over her shoulder that made his face light up.

“…Yes! Yes, I do!” he exclaimed and raced to the parking lot.

The rest followed, all looking puzzled.

A large black van, more of a truck actually, was wedged up onto the sidewalk, the letters ‘E.O.D.’ printed in yellow across it. Faith frowned as Xander struggled with the door lock excitedly.

“What is it?” she asked.

“Department of Explosives and Ordinance Disposal.” Xander turned to look at Faith. “They get the toys SWAT doesn’t,” he finished.

He growled in frustration, pulling hard on the doors.

“Except I can’t get them open,” he finished dejectedly.

Spike snorted. “Move!” he snarled.

Pushing the boy aside, he took both handles in his hands and twisted hard, the metal tearing apart as he ripped the doors open.

Two uniformed men tumbled from the truck to the pavement with a sickening crack. Willow yelped in fear as their dead eyes stared up at her. Horrified and yet oddly fascinated, she knelt down to peer into their eyes. If she concentrated, she could almost see the moment of their deaths in their eyes.

Angel knelt down to examine the cause of their deaths, a set of bullet holes in their foreheads.

“Shot by a small caliber weapon, possibly a .38”

“Police issue?” Spike queried, letting himself be shoved aside by Xander, who climbed into the back of the van excitedly.

“Yeah, could be,” Angel replied grimly.

Faith frowned. “They’re killing their own? What the hell is going on?” she asked.

“Yee-haw!” Xander cried out.

The rest turned to see Xander crawl out of the truck with a large satchel, which he handed to Spike, and some sort of monstrous cannon cradled in his arms.

“What the hell is that?” Faith asked.

Xander began examining the weapon.

“This is a tear gas grenade launcher, the technical name escapes me at the moment.” He displayed the weapon. “They used one of these in ‘Terminator 2’, the drum here holds several tear gas canisters,” he explained.

Angel nodded. “Or phosphorus rounds. I met some vampire hunters in Chicago way back when. Used to hot load these things and use them to burn up vampires, called it ‘Dragonsbreath’.”

Xander nodded.

“Yeah, well, I figured someone can cut the power and then we put a few of these through the windows, make it nice and uncomfortable in there, and get Dusk out.”

“Except that the windows have bars on them,” Faith pointed out.

Xander turned and looked, his shoulders sagging in defeat as he took in the wire box bars over all the windows.

“I can take care of that,” Willow told them quietly, shaking off her morbid obsession with the two dead men and standing up.

Faith looked at her; she knew the witch was powerful but she’d been acting kind of weird lately.

“Ohhh-kay, no problem, but that still leaves us stumbling around in the dark coughing up our lungs,” the Slayer informed Xander.

The young man grinned.

“You’re right, it would leave us stumbling around in the dark coughing our brains out.”

Faith got it instantly and she turned, as did Willow and Xander.

“What?” Spike asked.

Angel had already gotten the idea.



“Okay, so the blue wire here connects to the main fuses,” Xander murmured.

He was staring hard at the wire schematic etched into the back of the fuse cover of the police station power box, trying to determine which wires would result in a total blackout for the station when severed. He removed a pocket knife from his jacket, unfolded it, and carefully placed the edge of the blade against a green and yellow wire. He cast a final look at the schematic.

“Ohhh-kay, here we go,” he breathed and carefully, with agonizing slowness, drew his knife across the wire. It split apart and was severed.

Nothing happened.

“Uhhh… huh,” Xander frowned, looking once more at the schematic and the lights still on within the station. “Okay, that wasn’t it,” he frowned again.

Spike sighed. “One side!” he roared.

Xander hurriedly backed away as Spike reached into his jacket, removed his flask, and took a long pull of the contents.

“Oh shi-!” Xander cried out as Spike leaned in and spewed a mouthful of alcohol into the exposed wiring.

The whole box went up in an explosion of sparks, and within seconds, a large fire had burst into existence within the nest of wires. The scent of melted plastic filled the air as Xander tried to shield himself from the sparks and flames. Spike, paying no heed to them whatsoever, poured the remaining alcohol over the flames, causing them to shoot high into the air.

“Burn, baby, burn!” he cried out joyfully, making large whooshing gestures with his arms, grinning madly before capping his flask. He turned to the cowering boy and looked wholly demonic with his game face in place, grinning madly reflected in the firelight.

“Now, why is it I have to keep sacrificing my hooch to save this bloke’s ass?” he asked dryly, then clapped Xander on the shoulder.

“It’s Ouchie Time!” he yelled and dragged the stunned man away from the now-flaming ruin of the fuse box.



Viisq had never known pain before, never known fear. The blade, the bullet, the fist and claw and fang, these things could not hurt it.

But as it was propelled through the window of the interrogation room that it had spent hours torturing the young man in, it knew pain.

And as its blank, alien eyes took in the specter of the blood-covered Alec – floating six inches above the floor at the head of a vast wave of darkness stretching in all directions, hungry and black, coming for it – Viisq knew fear.

It tried to scramble away from the horrific apparition as a set of darkness tendrils wrapped themselves tightly around its legs, dragging it back into the dark room and the cold promise of oblivion that it contained. Viisq willed the flesh in his hips to part and, with a wet tearing sound, Viisq’s legs were pulled off and devoured voraciously by the dark.

Alec advanced on the simpering creature; his eyes were filled with darkness, devoid of any light, humanity or mercy, much like Viisq’s.

Viisq was snatched up by the darkness and bound in it over and over again; the creature wailed in terror, its inhuman voice shrieking at such a pitch to shatter glass before darkness forced itself down its throat, silencing it. Only its eyes remained uncovered, though even there the darkness crept along the edge of its eye sockets, like a cancer.

Alec brought the creature to eye level with him; it was a novel experience since being crippled had previously prohibited such a feat.

“Die now,” Alec rasped in a hollow, stony voice.

The darkness tightened around the creature.

Suddenly, the sounds of boots on floors, of men rushing, filled the air. Rifles were aimed and shotguns cocked. Alec turned his black eyes to spy a half-dozen men with weapons aimed. Viisq would have smiled if it could; he was still, after all, the master of these puppets and they would come to his call whether it was actually spoken or no.

“Kill him,” Viisq’s voice slithered through their numbed minds, long since reshaped into slaves by the Fleshdancer.

They raised their weapons… and the lights promptly went out and the entire station was shrouded in darkness.

Completely.



“All right, Red, you’re on,” Faith instructed, taking the sudden and total lack of light within the station as indicative of step one’s success.

Willow nodded as Spike and Xander rejoined the group. Angel tossed the satchel to the young man.

“Nice toys,” the vampire commented.

Xander nodded and set the satchel back down.

“Yeah, well, you never know when they’ll come in handy,” he quipped as he hefted the tear gas gun and took aim.

Willow began to chant; the numbing spell had taken a lot out of her but this next one had to be done. She raised her hands before her and, tapping that well of strength that came from love and concern for Alec, she closed her eyes and focused.

It began as a low hum, then a soda can near them flatted into a disk, people winced as their fillings began to throb and ache, car alarms went off, electrical wires began to sway crazily.

And with a screech of tortured metal and exploding stone, each and every grate was pried off the windows and hurled away. Spike whistled long and low.

“That bank job in Mexico would have gone a lot better with that trick,” he commented dryly.

Xander couldn’t comment; he was too busy trying to keep his fillings in his teeth and the gun in his hand.

“Now for the big finish,” Willow gasped out.

With a heave, the EOD van lifted clean off the ground and was hurled through the front door. The impact was like a small bomb as the van tore through the concrete of the entrance and left a trail of devastation well into the building.

“GO!” Faith cried out.

Xander needed no further prompting as he felt the gun go slack again as Willow went limp and fell into Faith’s waiting arms. Angel took off towards the debris that had been the front entrance as Xander fired round after round into the windows, covering first the bottom windows, then the second and third floors with near perfect aim.

“All those years playing Duck Hunt have finally paid off,” he commented as the last round of tear gas was shot into the building.

Faith only nodded as she passed off the exhausted witch into her best friend’s arms. Xander dropped the gun and lowered Willow to rest against a car door as Faith turned to Spike.

“Ready?” she asked.

Spike grinned. “Willing and able, love. Let’s do it,” he replied.

Faith tore ahead with Spike following, and stopped at the base of the wall.

“Alley oop!” she yelled.

Spike ran at the Slayer as she crouched low, hands cupped.

“God save the Queen!” Spike cried out as he put his foot in her palm.

With a grunt she heaved with every ounce of her Slayer strength and he flew up into the air. In mid air, the vampire braced his foot against the wall and pushed up and off, and with a loud crash, plowed through the fourth story window.

Spike landed and rolled across the linoleum floor. He stood up and shook off the glass, his vampire face peering out the window in amazement.

“Strong lass. Wonder what she’s like in bed…” he mused.

A meaty hand landed on his shoulder. Spike wasted no time, twisting the hand until he heard bones crack. Using it as leverage, he propelled a police officer hard into a wall; the man slumped to the ground as Spike grinned at the violence and the utter lack of chip-induced pain following it.

“Best present I’ve ever gotten.”

Turning, he dashed into the dark smoke-filled hallway, searching for his friend.



Viisq took advantage of the sudden darkness, liquefying his body and exploding out of the gap in the shadowy cocoon, splashing against Alec’s face and adhering to it with oozy tenacity. His concentration broken, Alec fell hard to the floor as Viisq smothered him. The other police officers were stumbling around blindly, coughing and choking on the tear gas that had somehow manifested out of nowhere.

Viisq felt a surge of triumph flow through its inhuman mind. This human was strong and possessed strange and disturbing powers, but in the end it was only human and thus susceptible to the myriad of flaws they inherit, including the need for oxygen.

Viisq forced its slimy essence down the young man’s throat, choking him, strangling him. It worked its way down, searching for the heart so that it may tear it out of his chest and be done with it.

But then something went wrong.

There was no heart to be found. Instead, the darkness within the boy found Viisq. Found him and then began to draw him deeper into the body, and with a surge of horror that rocked Viisq to its very core, it realize what was happening. No longer was he suffocating the boy.

Now the boy was… was eating him.

Viisq struggled to get away from this… abomination, this monster that somehow was more powerful than it.

Viisq tried to reach the boy's mind but the mind, like the body, was clouded in hungry darkness and could not be reached. Viisq clawed and wailed, trying to ooze and slither away, but it could not as the boy devoured it.

Suddenly, strong hands jerked the boy up, and with a gasping retch, Alec choked and vomited Viisq out of his body, gulping in great mouthfuls of air, his whole body reeling with horror. Viisq took no time in making good its escape and slithered across the floor, up a sink, and down the drain.

Angel hoisted Alec up and looked at him, his vampire eyes seeing quite clearly in the dark.

“Christ,” he muttered.

His alter ego, Angelus, prided himself on his torture techniques, but even he would be hard pressed to match the tapestry of suffering that had been etched onto the lad.

“Angel?” Alec croaked.

Angel nodded. “Yeah, it’s me, can you walk?” he asked.

Alec swallowed against the bitter taste in his mouth that had nothing to with the demon he had just tried to eat.

“No,” he replied.

Angel didn’t like the way that sounded but it would have to wait. Taking the damp rag he had had the foresight to bring with him, Angel wrapped it around the ruin of Alec’s nose and mouth.

“Here, try to breath through this,” the vampire instructed.

Alec grabbed his hand.

“There’s… a woman… inside there, she’s hurt. Needs help,” he croaked.

Angel nodded and, wrapping the man’s arm across his shoulders, carried him back towards a ruined room. He closed the door and braced a chair against it. Snatching up a table, he pressed it flush against a broken window that faced the hallway in an attempt to keep the tear gas out.

Finished with that, he went through the room, methodically tearing down metal grates and smashing open the windows that they covered. Cool night air filled the room, sucking out the tear gas. Angel knelt down by a slight form, crumbled upon the floor and turned it over. His eyes went wide with shock.

“Kate?” he breathed.

Kate opened her eyes and looked up at him.

“Christ, I transfer all the way to New York and I still can’t get rid of you,” she rasped weakly, coughing.

Angel examined her wound, gently removing her hand. It didn’t look too bad, none of her vitals were pierced, but she had lost a lot of blood and would need medical attention.

“Can you walk?” he asked her.

She nodded as he helped to her feet.

“Better than your friend can at any rate, I assume you’re here for him and not just stopping by for a chat?” she asked.

Angel nodded. “Yeah, well, something like that. Kate, what happened here?” he asked her intently.

She shook her head.

“I don’t know. I’m out undercover for a few weeks, I come back and everyone’s gone berserk.”

“It was Viisq,” Alec rasped. “Some kind of… demon-thing, took control of them and made them crazy,” he explained weakly.

Angel nodded.

“Yeah, we heard, DeGanon filled us in a bit. They’re called ‘Dahaka’ or more commonly ‘Fleshdancers.”

Alec coughed and nodded, bringing his arms across his chest as if to keep himself from shaking to pieces.

“Yeah, that fits,” he commented, gesturing to a strange lump on the floor.

Angel turned it over, revealing the mutilated face of the thin cop.

“Cute,” he commented darkly, tossing the thing away, then turned back to the two injured people.

“We gotta get out of here. Kate, I’ll help you, you help Alec, all right?”

Kate nodded. “Yeah, yeah, just like old times,” she commented.

Alec turned to her. “Do you know each other?” he asked.

Angel helped brace Kate as she pulled Alec to his feet and braced him against her.

“I tried to kill him a few times,” she commented.

Alec nodded, cracking his first smile in what felt like a lifetime.

“Ah, so you’ve dated.”



Spike knocked aside what had to be the twelfth cop in less than ten minutes. True, the beatings were making him feel better, though he missed being able to feel the pain of blows received. Quite unlike the pain of that thrice-damned chip, the ache from receiving and giving out a good beating was strangely invigorating. Reminded you that you were alive.

Well, sort of, he amended to himself silently, grinning.

As much fun as this was, he really did want to find Alec. He was gravely concerned about his friend. A group of no less than six police officers, their eyes streaming but still fixed upon him, came barreling down at him from the other end of the smoke filled hallway, batons held high, screaming in fury.

Spike grinned.

Oh well, back to it then.

“Step up, ladies,” he called out, then dove into them with glee.



Angel, Kate, and Alec hobbled down the hallway; the two that needed oxygen passed the wet rag back and forth.

“Angel, next time soak this thing in ether, it’ll make this whole rescuing bit that much more pleasant,” Alec commented.

“Everyone’s a critic,” Angel replied.

He turned to address them when some kind of huge shape lunged at him. Angel knocked it aside without conscious thought; the man plowed past them and collided hard into a wall, wailing in pain. Alec’s eyes widened.

It was Eddie.

The fat man peered at them, his face a mask of blood and tears, his eyes red and filled with unthinking rage.

“You!” Alec hissed, his voice filled with death.

Angel looked back between the fat man and Alec, and put two and two together. Carefully, he helped brace Alec against the wall and set down Kate, who tugged at his shoulder.

“What are you doing?” she asked insistently.

“A favor,” he replied.

He gently wrapped Alec’s arm over his own shoulder and hoisted him towards Eddie, who snarled and spit at them both, coughing too hard to mount any kind of assault or even defense.

“Do what you have to do,” Angel said quietly.

Alec looked at Eddie, the man that had spent hours torturing him. Without even thinking, his hand became a long blade. Kate watched in shock as Angel steered Alec towards the coughing, snarling man.

Alec looked at Eddie for a second, Eddie looked back. There was nothing in his eyes, only hatred.

With a scream of rage and pain so bestial it made Angel wince, Alec lunged forward and buried the blade all the way into the man, so deep that the tip burst from his back and scraped the wall behind him. Eddie gasped as he looked down, uncomprehending, at the wound and the dark blood pumping out of it.

“DIE!!!!!!” Alec was trembling violently, held up only by the blade impaling his tormentor.

Eddie looked up at Alec’s eyes and Alec watched the fat man’s cheeks jiggle, tears streaming down his face. Alec screamed again and twisted the blade hard, tearing it out of him, causing Eddie’s blood to spray his face and body even as he fell painfully, rolling over onto his back.

The fat man’s eyes locked in shock and pain and fear before he crumpled to the ground beside Alec. For a moment, as they lay there, Eddie’s blood spilled out and flowing around Alec gave him the appearance of him making a snow angel in deep red snow. In the blood of his enemy, Alec looked somehow… content.

Angel shook the grisly image from his head and carefully helped the young man up. Kate spoke quietly as Angel helped her up, shocked by what she had seen.

“Here, we need to get out of here, this way is the stairway,” she choked out, her lungs handling the tear gas about as well as everyone else’s.

“Let’s do it,” Angel told them, his voice firm and full of purpose.

Carrying Kate, who was carrying Alec, the vampire headed down the long hallway beyond which lay a door clearly marked ‘Exit’. The red letters of the exit sign, though blackened by loss of power, still seemed to shine like a thousand suns, each one promising relief and sanctuary.

The hallway opened up into a wide space filled with desks and phones, dominated by a large trophy case which was filled with civic awards and other such memorabilia, proclaiming that, in normal times, this police station was filled with exceptional men and women who were protectors of the peace rather than psychopaths.

It was Kate, idly peering at the mirrored backing of the trophy case, studying Angel’s lack of reflection, who saw them first.

The next few moments became a blur. Kate shoved Alec away. He stumbled and fell to the floor back in the hallway. Angel whirled around as the men, who had on gas masks, came up from their hiding places behind the desks, weapons bared, aimed and firing.

The bullets tore through them both; Angel roared in agony as they tore apart his dead body, shredding his clothing and shattering bone. Alec watched in horror as Angel fell, blasted backwards through the window and into a three story drop.

There was an odd whimper followed by a strange thump, and Alec tore his eyes from Angel to see what it was.

Kate sank to her knees, her blond hair matted in blood; her blood. Her blue-green eyes were wide and she looked at Alec, whom she had now given her life for.

Their eyes met. Kate’s looked shocked more than anything; she looked so surprised.

And then she pitched forward, her now-sightless eyes facing nothing.

Ever again.

“NO!” Alec screamed a wail of rage and pain at Kate’s senseless death.

The cops, their weapons still smoking, rose up and prodded her body. Then they turned their weapons on him.

Alec had never seen someone he’d cared for cut down. It did something to him, opened some flood gate and sundered some last thread of restraint, of self control.

He rose to his feet, once again the blackness inside him and all around him filling him and spilling out. The men fired their guns at him and for each bullet that flew from their guns, a tiny tendril of darkness lashed out faster than the eye could see and sliced them apart.

The darkness supporting him, Alec raised his arms above him like some kind of dark god. A lattice work of shadowy darkness formed behind him, creating some kind of horrible web that supported his shattered body six feet off the ground. Purple lightening crackled all along his body and the web, the tendrils snaking along the floor, over the ceiling, up and down the walls. The police officers backed away, this chthonic sight finally making an impact within their broken minds.

It was too little, far too late. Without a word, Alec, his skin taking on a demonic bluish tinge, raised his hand…

…and pointed.





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