by Various
“Is there anything about the sun not coming up?”
“Well, they’re calling it a heavy layer of debris, probably caused by a passing comet, that’s temporarily preventing the sun’s rays from reaching Earth,” said Lorne, “which doesn’t explain the fact that I can see stars twinkling over the New York skyline.”
He heard Wesley muttering something about it being after nine A.M. in New York. “Yes, kids, it’s morning in America,” said Lorne. “What do you know about this?”
“It’s…complicated.”
“I’ll be right over.”
Cordelia sighed in relief when the computer successfully booted up. “You know, if someone around here would cough up a few bucks to get DSL, we’d never have to turn this thing off. Wouldn’t have had to call Lorne,” she said archly to Angel.
“Don’t even have the bucks to get a replacement TV,” Angel replied. “What’s going on?”
“Man, the crazies are out tonight,” said Gunn, leaning over Cordelia’s shoulders. “Lot of end-of-the-world cults having one big celebration.”
“They may not be so crazy after all, if what Serena is telling us is true,” said Angel. He turned around just in time to see the beautiful young woman sink onto the ottoman, and was by her side in an instant.
“You’re shaking,” he said. She turned her oval face up to his and for the first time he saw the exhaustion in her eyes. “When was the last time you ate?”
“I don’t eat,” she murmured.
Angel looked at her, his eyes narrowing.
“Hey,” said Cordelia, turning to glare at her. “Now that’s just not healthy. Anorexia is so not cool.”
Suddenly Serena looked frightened. “I mean I—” She closed her mouth with an audible click.
Despite an almost overwhelming desire to protect and shelter this woman, Angel felt suspicion gnawing the back of his mind. He wanted desperately to believe her story, but suppose she was one of the bad guys? There was something about her that was not quite right, that was more than human…or maybe less than human.
He reached and grabbed the baby before she could react. Serena uttered a soft cry that almost broke his heart, but Angel held the baby close.
“You don’t eat, huh?” he asked. “Do you sleep? Or breathe? You’re perfect, Serena. Too perfect. I don’t think you’re even human.”
“Please,” she cried, falling to her knees and reaching out to him imploringly. “Please keep the baby safe.”
“Angel—,” began Wesley.
“You guys must know something I don’t,” said Lorne, opening the door and running lightly down the steps. “Women never get on their knees and beg for me.”
“Lorne, what is she?”
“She’s a fetching little minx, that’s for sure. Oh, you mean if she’s a demon or something?” Gallantly Lorne reached down to Serena and eased her up. “Come on, sweetheart. Can you sing for me?”
Oddly, the words relaxed her. Her face eased into a radiant smile. “I sing all the time. At least, I did….”
He smiled reassuringly at her. “Like the Phantom said to Christine, sing for me, my angel of music.”
Serena closed her eyes. Of course, she had the longest lashes Angel had ever seen. Her full red lips parted and a sweet, pure sound issued forth.
No one moved. Angel felt tears welling in his eyes and wiped at them clumsily. He couldn’t understand a word of the song, but it moved in his blood, along his nerves, into his heart and brain like the sweetest caress imaginable. All was well, and all would be well, and he was loved and cherished and worthy and precious….
Gently, slowly, as though it hurt him to do so, Lorne extended a green finger and placed it on Serena’s lips, silencing her haunting, breathtaking song.
“So, what is she?” asked Gunn, his voice oddly hoarse. “Some kind of siren?”
Lorne took a deep, steadying breath. “Oh, no, my friends. She’s no demon. She’s exactly the opposite.”
The blood from the latest victim, a young woman whose sweet nature made her flesh succulent, ran down Kansa’s jaws. A long, forked tongue crept out to catch every drop. He was not used to eating so frequently, but he found he enjoyed it. It was hard staying in this dimension, but the human flesh he and his group needed to consume every hour kept them anchored and strong.
The fact that this girl had been a witch made her even tastier. He extended a claw to pick out a chunk of flesh that had gotten caught between two fangs.
The pleasant moment of satiety was disturbed by Irina. She floated over to him, her soaked chemise clinging to her, her hair plastered to her skull, her face green with decay. He frowned. The rusalka is such a wet blanket. He smiled at his unintentional pun.
“Time grows short,” the demon-ghost of a drowned Russian girl chided him. “We have less than four hours before we are forced back to our realm.”
The pair of kappas leaped agilely over the carcass to sit on either side. Of necessity, the monkey demons of Japan had superb balance. Their power resided in the magickal fluid cradled in the indentation of their skulls. Perhaps it was because their brains were short-changed in order to make room for their magick, but Kansa found them incredibly stupid. Now they just sat and grinned at him, tongues lolling. Idiots. There were much smarter demons in Shinto folklore, but he had to admit, when they could focus, the kappas were powerful.
“We need to keep up our strength,” Kansa said to Irina. “Eight of us have already faded back to whence we came for lack of sustenance. And yet I see some bones left,” he said reprovingly, looking around at the others, a veritable United Nations of demons from every culture on the planet. “Someone’s not being a good member of the Clean Plate Club.”
“You think this is just a lark,” Irina snarled. Of all of them, she alone could not be physically harmed by the mighty Kansa. “We have had over twenty of Earth’s hours to catch a girl and a baby, and yet here we are. Perhaps someone else should lead this group.”
Kansa snarled, rising to his full height of nearly twenty feet. Everyone but Irina quailed. “Do you think that this is as easy as drowning a leering peasant boy?”
“I know it’s something you haven’t been able to do,” Irina retorted, her red eyes blazing.
The other demons, from the nagas to the trolls to the imps, froze in shock. No one ever, ever mentioned Kansa’s famous failure. Kansa, too, went very still. He saw fear finally flicker in the rusalka’s eyes.
“You will not speak of this,” he said in a low voice of warning.
“And if I do?” Her voice was high with fear, though her words were defiant.
“We made him a human,” said Kansa. “We can do the same to you.” He stepped forward to where she hovered in midair. “And you will be delicious.”
She cringed back and flew upward. Satisfied, Kansa grunted. He grabbed the remaining bones, crunched them down in a few bites, and nodded to himself.
The being of Good—no one could bring themselves to call her an “angel,” so they’d come up with this less-knee-jerk-reaction term—gazed curiously at a ham and cheese on rye. She picked up the pickle with long, slender fingers, then glanced over at Wesley, who’d prepared the snack.
“You, uh, put it in your mouth,” he said.
Cordelia snorted.
“You should tell us everything if you want us to be able to help you,” said Angel. Serena paused, confused.
“If I put things in my mouth, I will not be able to speak,” she pointed out.
“Ooh, such good table manners,” said Fred. “Not talking with your mouth full, I mean. But I guess you would have good table manners, wouldn’t you, if you were an ang—” She flushed and didn’t finish the word.
“Angel’s right,” said Wesley, having no difficulty uttering the term when it was used to describe a vampire with a soul. “Perhaps you’d better talk to us first and eat afterwards.”
Serena lowered the pickle. “Very well. Anything to save him. He must be saved.”
�
��Or big ol’ eternal darkness will descend, we got that part,” said Cordelia. “But you kind of left out the ‘I’m a divine being of good’ part.”
“I’m only a guardian,” said Serena. “To protect him. He’s the precious one. I suppose I might as well tell you everything, since you already know so much.” She looked at them each in turn, and then said, “He’s the sun.”
“Whose son?”
“No, not son, Sun.” They stared at her, still not comprehending. Serena sighed. “The sun in the sky. He’s the God.”
“He’s God?” squeaked Cordelia, staring with new respect at the infant cradled in Fred’s arms.
“I am not explaining myself well,” said Serena.
“I believe I’m beginning to understand,” said Wesley. “In many religions, the sun is viewed as male, and the moon as female. Of course, Amateratsu, in Japanese mythos, is the sun, and she is—”
“Wes,” said Gunn.
“Oh, sorry. As I was saying, many cultures see divinity as male and female, and all things of nature fall onto one side or the other. Fire is male, water is female. The sun is male, the moon is female; day is male, night female; the sky is male, the earth is female; and so on. Hence the term ‘Mother Earth.’ And nearly every culture has some kind of festival of light held around the darkest time of the year, like Hanukkah and Yule. Even the birthday of Jesus Christ was determined to be around this time of year, as Christ was supposedly the light of the world.”
“Pick up the pace, Wes,” said Cordelia. “The night is passing.” She made a face. “At least we hope it’s passing.”
Wesley adjusted his spectacles. “So this night is considered the birthday of the God. According to the Celtic wheel of the year, the God’s growth establishes the seasons. In spring he’s a youth, summer a man, in the fall he’s a willing sacrifice—”
“Whoa, whoa, you lost me here,” said Gunn. “Somebody’s gonna kill this little tyke around Labor Day?”
“Early August, actually,” said Serena, appearing completely composed as she uttered the words. “Lammas, or Lughnasad. He is a willing sacrifice, dying as the crops are harvested to ensure bounty for the people through the long winter. He is born again at Yule, and the cycle continues.” She smiled softly. “As it ever has been, and ever shall be.”
The baby cooed and waved his tiny, curled hands.
“Too bad I can’t get in touch with Willow,” said Cordelia. “She knows all this witchy stuff.”
“I do too,” said Angel, surprising them. “Hey, I’m Irish. I remember dancing at Lughnasad. The old ways aren’t entirely gone.” He smiled fondly, remembering. “And at Beltane, dancing around the bonfire with the women who were…” He came back to the present, coughed, and ducked his head. “Anyway, the celebrations of the Wheel of the Year haven’t been forgotten.”
“Quite,” said Wesley, a touch disapprovingly. “According to folklore, the God is not alone in the Wheel of the Year. He is born of the Goddess, grows to manhood, um…joins with his beloved, dies, enters Her womb, and is reborn. The Goddess is eternal, but the God is born, dies, and is continually reborn.”
“What I don’t get is that—don’t mean to be disrespecting you here, Serena—this Wheel of the Year thing is pretty much symbolic, right? If the God is in the sun and in fire and in the crops and stuff, then he’s not out cruising on Saturday nights, know what I mean?” said Gunn.
“You are correct, Charles,” said Serena. “But the demons have found a way to make him take on human flesh.”
“And if he’s human,” said Fred softly, “he can be killed.”
“And if he is killed,” said Serena solemnly, “your world will have no sun.”
They stared at her in silence, waiting for her to continue. “I have been fleeing them since the first turn of midnight, heading ever westward. Since I am as mortal now as the Sun Child, I have had to use your clumsy means of transportation. I have only been able to stay ahead of them because they are forced to make a sacrifice in each time zone, within an hour after midnight.” Her eyes welled with tears. “The loss of life…it is hard to bear, but if I stopped and helped, more would die.”
She wiped her eyes and looked at Angel pleadingly. “We know of you, Angel. Though I misunderstood your name.”
“The Powers That Be connection, huh?” asked Cordelia.
Serena nodded. “I do not have the strength to keep running, and this is where the land gives way to sea. I had to make a stand here. And they will come for him.”
“So, what are we going to do?” asked Fred. She clearly expected answers, and when none came forth, her small face crumpled.
“Look,” said Gunn, somewhat desperately, “we’ve been in tight situations before. It’s just a handful of demons, right Serena? And we’ve just got to stall them until midnight, that the deal?”
Serena shook her head. “Kansa is the leader. He has managed to liberate at least one demon for every culture as Time presses forward.”
“And he’s been doing it for, what, twenty hours?” said Cordelia. “You do the math.” She flopped back in her chair. “Well, at least it can’t get any worse.”
“Kansa,” mused Wesley, frowning. “Why do I know that name….” He hurried to a stack of ancient textspiled carelessly on the floor next to the Yellow Pages and a pile of Snickers wrappers. “Oh, dear.”
“Man, I hate it when he says that,” said Gunn.
“Kansa is an ancient Indian demon-king,” said Wesley. “When Lord Krishna was born—Krishna being an incarnation of Vishnu, who is—”
“The God,” said Angel, looking at the infant.
“Right. When Krishna was born, Kansa tried to kill him.” He kept rifling. “He was tricked and Krishna survived. Kansa sent six demons to kill Krishna, and they all failed. Legend has it that Kansa will never stop until he succeeds.”
“So it’s like a personal thing,” said Fred.
“It’s worse,” said Lorne. “We’ve won the demon lottery, kids, but I’d rather see Ed McMahon with an oversized check than this character and his fan club. Going to be hard to keep little Sun Guy safe.”
“I think I know what to do,” said Angel.
They waited on the deserted beach, which was hardly more than a small spit of land surrounded on two sides by sheer, rocky cliffs and on the third side by water. When the sea was rough, this little beach would disappear altogether, swallowed by the angry ocean. Angel and his friends waited impatiently for the boat to appear.
“Let’s run through this again,” said Cordelia.
“It’s simple. The guy that owns the boat owes me a favor,” said Gunn. “The demons expected that Serena would have to make a stand here in L.A. So we get her out of L.A.”
“Where’s the boatman going to take her?” asked Fred.
“Don’t know,” said Gunn, “and the less we know the better.”
“Wish he’d hurry up and get here,” Cordelia complained. “This wind is starting to bite.”
“Not as badly as we will,” came a deep, rumbling voice.
They turned to see shadows milling on the cliff above them, scurrying down along its sides, scampering along the small stretch of beach toward them.
“Damn it!” cried Gunn. He reached for the stack of weapons they had brought just in case, but Lorne was faster. Hissing, the green-skinned Host seized Gunn and yanked his arms behind his back, trussing him up like a calf with a length of rope he’d hidden in his coat.
Wesley dived for the weapons as well, but Angel was there first, his face twisted into its vampire visage. Grabbing Wesley, he slammed him viciously against the cliffside. Wesley’s eyes rolled back in his head and he went limp. Angel dropped him like a discarded toy.
Both Fred and Cordelia had managed to grab weapons. Fred aimed a crossbow at Angel, then gasped as she realized that she had neglected to put a bolt in its groove. Bravely she swung the empty weapon at the vampire, who clutched it and forced her back and down with it.
“You tricked u
s!” screamed Cordelia, charging at Angel with a broadsword too big for her to wield effectively. Angel easily sidestepped her clumsy blow, and Lorne grabbed her and shoved her face down into the sand. He sat on her until she ceased struggling. The betrayal had seemingly broken Fred, who huddled up next to the flailing Gunn and buried her face in her hands.
Quick as a snake, Angel turned to the one remaining person. Serena clutched the baby to her breast and stared at him. “We trusted you!” she cried.
“I’m sorry,” said Angel, “I really am. But we’re demons, Lorne and I. In the end, that’s all we are. Give me the baby and I’ll let you go.”
“Never!” she shrieked, then turned and plunged into the water. Angel splashed after her, grabbing the baby with one hand and holding Serena down into the water with effortless ease. She struggled, splashed, and rose up at him with a strength he hadn’t expected. He shook her off, then struck her, turning his attention back to the horde of demons leering down upon them.
Still, the baby made no sound. Clutching it, Angel called, “Which of you is Kansa? I deliver the baby only to him!”
One of the nightmare silhouettes straightened. Angel blinked as the creature rose and kept rising, until its twisted shape stood fully erect. The thing was at least twenty feet tall. He could distinguish horns and tusks and claws, but it was the eyes that captivated him: red, glowing eyes, like the embers of a dying fire.
“I am Kansa, King of Demons. Give to me what is rightfully mine, and you will be spared.”
“Mighty generous of you, but I think I’ll take my finder’s fee first.” Angel lifted the child to his mouth. Deftly, using a single razor-sharp canine, he sliced a thin line along the baby’s soft, small neck. Blood hit his tongue, and it was so sweet, so pure, that his knees almost buckled. It was all he could do not to bury his fangs in the infant’s throat and drain him dry.
The single jolt of pain, though, did what he wanted it to do. This infant, the sun incarnate, had never known pain in his entire brief life as a human baby. The cut made his small chest heave, then the little God began to cry in terror and pain, wailing, as all hurt children do, for his mother.
