Out of the Madhouse

by Christopher Golden

  “No trolls,” Oz said, lowering the business end of his cousin’s cast-off baseball bat onto his instep.

  “No trolls,” Angel agreed.

  Willow slumped, put down her own baseball bat, and said, “This is bad.”

  “Yes, it is.” Angel sighed.

  There were trolls somewhere, and they were terrorizing Sunnydale. Although with the town’s usual sense of denial, no one but the three of them acknowledged that the entire Nieto family—Mama, Papa, grandmother, and little José—had most likely been carried off by a band of ugly, hairy creatures camped out under the bridge by Highway 17. The description of the “kidnappers” on TV was merely “short-statured and dangerous.”

  “And all we can do to get them to show is insult them?” Oz queried.

  “Better than confronting them in their lairs.” Angel shrugged. “It worked last time.” He pointed to the baseball bats. “Then Xander wailed the tar out of them.”

  “We’re troll-less,” Willow said.

  “Hence, tar-less,” Oz added.

  “Maybe we could go after the Tatzelwurm instead,” Willow suggested brightly. “Or . . . ooh, Springheel Jack, though I’d really like to pass on that guy.” She made a face.

  “How about the Kraken?” Oz suggested. In unison, Angel and Willow raised questioning eyebrows and shook their heads. “Yeah,” Oz said, an earnest expression on his face. “We don’t want to hog all the good monsters. We should leave some for Buffy.”

  * * *

  Though he tried not to show it as they continued to drive around Sunnydale, Angel shared Willow’s concern. An increasing number of supernatural beings had popped up in Sunnydale, and he, Willow, and Oz were quickly reaching their limit as to how much they could do to keep the creatures from causing trouble.

  Trouble defined as the entire Nieto family still missing, as well as two toddlers and several high school students, and a number of family pets butchered. Also, six serious fires and the destruction of another building, this one blamed on a badly cracked foundation illegally allowed to pass inspection by a corrupt building inspector.

  Not to mention the very large, very poisonous plague of spiders they had managed to thwart—in that case, by strategically setting some fires of their own.

  As well as the shadow of a huge toad—easily as large as Buffy’s house—which had outrun them and somehow evaded all of Willow’s spells.

  Then, of course, there were the men in long coats who kept popping up, and who, if left to their own devices, might manage to kill each other off, sparing Angel the chore. It seemed fairly obvious they were behind this influx of bad karma.

  The confusion and the destruction reminded him of his old life, when he had run with his sire, Darla. Or even more recently, when he had lost his soul for the second time and reveled in trying to destroy the world himself.

  He didn’t appreciate such reminders.

  But where once he might have thrown back his head and laughed, now he was very, very worried. Willow had cast a general binding spell, which, he was sure, was impeding even more dark forces from invading the town. But those which had already found some way into Sunnydale had not been “covered” by that spell, and she had been forced to use that same spell again and again, sealing off holes in the wall that separated their world from another.

  Just to be safe, they had begun a regular patrol of the sites where breaches had already occurred, hoping to keep ahead of any potential problems. Part of this route was the area just down the street from the Bronze where they’d first run into Springheel Jack. The three of them got out there and walked around for several minutes before returning to the car.

  They had just reached the Gilesmobile. Angel was about to suggest that Oz might like a turn at the wheel when a movement across the street caught his attention. Keeping his demeanor casual and unconcerned, he slid his glance toward the shadowed corner.

  A man in a long coat was watching them. One of them. From his silhouette in the beams of an oncoming car, he looked to be holding a cell phone. As he stepped out of the sweep of the headlights, he raised his hand, and for one startled moment, Angel thought the man was waving at him.

  Then he realized the wave was a signal to someone across the street. Angel’s side of the street. Without turning his head, Angel glanced in the same direction.

  Several yards beyond Giles’s Citroen there was an alley. In Angel’s significant experience, people didn’t generally hide in an alley without a damn good reason.

  “Willow,” Angel said softly, unsure if she could even hear him.

  But she did. Silently, she came up beside him. Angel heartily approved. She might not be the Slayer, but she’d spent enough time around Buffy and Giles that she certainly had the street smarts to hold her own.

  “Some of our friends, up ahead,” he murmured. “Take the keys”—he slipped them into her pocket—“and get in the car. Oz, too.”

  “Hey, man,” Oz protested under his breath as he caught up with them. “We can help.”

  “Start the car,” Angel continued, “drive up to that alley. I’m going in there. With any luck, I’ll be coming back out with company.”

  “Gulp,” Willow said.

  Her boyfriend looked satisfied, as though pleased he wasn’t being cut out of the action. Angel understood. He liked feeling useful, too.

  “Make sure the back door on the passenger side’s unlocked,” Angel added. “And that the other one is locked.”

  “Gotcha,” Willow murmured.

  “And you may have to ward off some magick.” He gestured to Oz’s guitar case. “Maybe put on those scapulars.”

  “Check,” Oz said.

  Willow unlocked the passenger side and slid in. Oz went around to the other side and did the same.

  While they were doing that, Angel tore up the street and sprinted into the alley.

  * * *

  A large group of men, perhaps a dozen, emerged from hiding places and raced across the street. They were headed directly for the alley. Oz started the engine and looked at Willow. “Plan B?”

  Angel was strong, and he was a vampire, but he looked to be outnumbered. Especially if there was magick added to the equation. Willow put on her resolve face and said, “We drive into the alley.”

  “My thinking also.”

  Oz floored it, because in Giles’s car, there was no other way to make the car move forward. It lurched unsteadily, like a bedridden invalid trying to get out of bed, then picked up speed—relatively speaking—and staggered down the street.

  Willow screamed as a man flung himself at her window, pounding on it. He was thin, with olive skin, and his face was contorted with rage.

  Without a moment’s hesitation, Oz cranked the wheel to the right, effectively knocking the man backward. He lost his grip on the car and stumbled back, going down hard on the pavement.

  The car putted forward.

  And stalled.

  The man was up almost instantly. He stared after them and balled his fists. When he opened them, glowing spheres of green energy swirled above his palms. Sudden as cannon fire, the spheres rocketed toward Giles’s car.

  “Oz!” Willow cried. “Abandon ship!”

  “What?” He looked over his right shoulder. “Oh.”

  He tore the key from the ignition and jumped out of the car at the same time as Willow. The magick spheres rocked the car, shattering the rear windshield, but that was all. Whatever their intention had been, killing the car wasn’t a priority. Willow looked up and saw that two new crackling green spheres had replaced the others. She shouted her boyfriend’s name.

  Then she narrowed her eyes and focused. Giles’s warning about not using spells she hadn’t prepared was fresh in her mind, but against this magick, she couldn’t think of anything to do but respond in kind.

  Which was when Oz came around from the side of the car and jumped the guy. With a knee to the gut and then a hard uppercut to the jaw, Oz took the sorcerer down. The man crumbled to the pavemen
t with a grunt.

  Willow raised her eyebrows. “Cool,” she said, sounding something like Oz.

  * * *

  Angel was already on top of the building by the time the first of the attackers raced into the alley. Crouching, he counted at least twenty long-coated thugs—some of them sorcerers, if Buffy and Xander’s assessment of them had been correct—stumbling over one another as they filled the alley and looked around for him.

  “Dando, the runestone,” someone called.

  One of the thugs withdrew a small red pouch from his pocket.

  “Cast a spell for the finding of a vampire,” a man said, shouldering his way through the crowd. He was bald; one of his eyes was milky white.

  “Yes, Brother Lupo,” the one called Dando replied.

  “If he is not found,” Lupo went on, “one of you will die in his stead.”

  His followers looked at each other gravely. Angel would have liked the luxury of a smile, but he kept his attention riveted on the group.

  There was a sudden squeal of tires at the end of the alley. Half a second later, the Gilesmobile shot into the narrow space, clipping a couple of the men as the others scattered.

  “No!” Lupo cried. “Do not run!”

  Police sirens pierced the night, growing closer by the heartbeat as the men picked up speed.

  “Bastardi!” Lupo shrieked.

  Angel nodded to himself, filing away this little tidbit of information: in all likelihood, Lupo was Italian.

  Oz and Willow popped out of the car. Willow was waving her hands and chanting a spell of protection.

  Angel climbed down some pipes on the exterior of the building and dropped to the car. The sirens were getting closer.

  Behind the car were the two men Oz had taken out. Angel ran to them. One was unconscious. The other was trying to crawl away.

  “Help me get them in the car,” Angel called to Oz.

  Oz grabbed the wrists of the conscious man. He was dark-skinned, with long, gray hair and a strange scar in the indentation of his cheek. He glared up at them and said, “I will kill you with my magick,” and his eyes began to glow a sickly yellow.

  “Oh, Will,” Oz called.

  Nervously, Willow began to chant something, she wasn’t even certain it would work.

  Then Angel reached around Oz and punched the man in the side of the head. He slackened and went limp.

  “Better safe than sorry,” Angel said. He gestured toward the other end of the alley. “From the sound of things, the police are going to be here any second. Let’s get these guys in the car. One in the backseat with me, one in the trunk.”

  Willow found the latch for the trunk, which she had to hold open for them because it kept threatening to close. They put the other man in there. He was older than the one Angel had knocked out.

  As Oz helped Angel dump the other man on the floor, he drawled, “Looks like we culled the herd, Willow. Took out their oldest and slowest.”

  “Great,” Willow said anxiously. “I’m not so crazy about sitting in a car with a couple of magick users, even if they are unconscious, old, or slow.”

  “We’ll take them to the mansion,” Angel said.

  “So much for checking the binding sites.” Willow sighed. “So many bad thingies, so little time.”

  Angel flashed her a sympathetic look. “Maybe we’re about to figure out how they all got here. In which case, we can get rid of them.”

  Willow nodded at him.

  * * *

  As Oz drove to the mansion, he thought about the bad guys in the car, sure, but he was focused on Willow, and the problems she was having with her parents, and his certainty that some of those problems came from her being with him. Not for the first time, it occurred to him that the Dingoes might really go places. Might actually make it. In which case, where did that leave your friendly neighborhood teenage werewolf on the nights of the full moon?

  “Oz?” Willow asked. “Are you okay?”

  He smiled at her. “I’m with you.”

  When Willow smiled, she had the cutest dimples. “You’re just saying that, ’cause you’re hoping I’ll put on my Eskimo costume for you.” That was what she had been wearing when Oz had first noticed her.

  “It makes me crazy,” he agreed.

  From the backseat came the sound of a fist making contact with flesh. Willow jerked.

  Angel said, “Sorry. Didn’t mean to interrupt.”

  Oz patted Willow’s knee. “Sorcerers first. Then the Eskimo costume.”

  * * *

  Willow estimated it was just after dawn, though with the way Angel had the house shuttered, there was really no way to tell. No sunlight, for obvious reasons.

  She pushed herself against the space between the wall and Angel’s strange stone fireplace and shuddered. The two men were tied to chairs, and they looked bruised and frightened. No wonder, with Angel in full vamp face, beating the crap out of them.

  She didn’t think she could take any more. She wasn’t sure they could, either.

  Oz held her hand tightly. Neither spoke. Oz looked a bit green, too, but a little steadier than she. He hadn’t really been one of the Slayerettes when Angel had turned bad again, back into Angelus. He hadn’t seen his cruelty. But Oz had seen what Angelus had done to Giles when he had tortured him for the secret to sending every single non-demon on the face of the planet straight to Hell. They all knew what Angel was capable of. The difference was, once upon a time Willow had been on the receiving end of that savagery.

  Suddenly Angel looked straight at Willow. He said, “Willow, I know. But would you rather they were doing something like this to Buffy?”

  She swallowed and cast down her gaze. Maybe she didn’t have what it took to be a good Slayerette anymore. She would kill for Buffy. Had killed for Buffy, in fact. But this was . . . sickening.

  Angel picked up the mangled hand of an older man, one of their attackers. Three of his fingers were broken. His face was torn and bleeding, his nose was pulped. His lip was split deeply and he’d lost several teeth. What was worse, however, were the wounds where Angel had used his own hands to tear into the man’s back and chest and abdomen.

  “A few more minutes of this, and I think I might have to get out the chainsaw,” Angel said grimly.

  He didn’t smile. Willow wasn’t sure if she wanted it to be a joke or not, wasn’t sure what was worse: the idea that he might do it, or that he would find it amusing.

  Suddenly, Angel held the man’s left arm in his two powerful hands, and swiftly snapped the arm, breaking the bone, shattering the elbow. The man screamed.

  “Please,” the older man whimpered. “Stop.”

  Willow felt tears begin to burn her eyes.

  “Don’t be a fool, Kukoff,” the other man said. “Il Maestro will kill you.”

  Kukoff laughed grimly. “Brother Isimo, we’re dead already. Even if we say nothing, Lupo will kill us for Il Maestro. If this vampire doesn’t kill us first.” He looked up at Angel, his chin jutting proudly.

  “We are the Sons of Entropy,” he declared. “Harbingers of chaos. Agents of the apocalypse.”

  Angel crouched by the one called Kukoff, staring into his bruised and split and bleeding face. His nostrils flared and his lip curled back as he said, “That’s quite a résumé. What the hell are you doing in Sunnydale?”

  Brother Kukoff hung his head in shame. “Il Maestro does not reveal all of his plans to his acolytes. We are but one small part of his plan. A plan you can’t even imagine. Chaos will come, fool, and even the vampires will have to bow to the Kings of Chaos, the Sons of Entropy.”

  “What plan?” Angel growled.

  Willow looked away, burying her face in the crook of Oz’s arm.

  The one called Brother Isimo spit on Kukoff, who, in his turn, laughed at Angel.

  “I’m . . . I’m not afraid to die,” Kukoff said.

  Angel snarled, yellow eyes blazing. He reached out quickly and grabbed the man’s broken arm . . . and twisted. K
ukoff screamed so loud that Willow’s ears hurt, and now she was silently weeping on Oz. He held her more tightly, and she knew that he wasn’t looking either.

  “Wake up!” Angel snapped, and there was a slap.

  Willow realized that Kukoff must have fainted from the agony. He spat blood as he awoke a moment later, and Angel growled low in his chest.

  “I never said I was going to kill you,” Angel whispered, just loud enough for them all to hear. “I’m not nice enough to do that.”

  “We are . . .” Kukoff began.

  “Traitor!” Isimo shrieked.

  Angel gave him a backhand that shut him up for a moment.

  “We are nothing,” Kukoff said. “A secondary force, sent to fulfill one small part of Il Maestro’s plan. The plan is known in full only to Il Maestro, but when it is complete, chaos will flood the world.”

  “Like . . . Hell?” Oz asked tentatively.

  “No, ignorant fool,” Kukoff said, though his voice was weak. “Demons would destroy Earth. The reign of chaos will throw evolution and culture back a thousand years. Two thousand years. The abominations of nature will walk the earth once more, the children of chaos. And the Sons of Entropy will be kings.”

  Willow stared at the monklike man for a moment. Something was clicking inside her head, conversations she’d had with Giles and things that she’d read during her research. These things he was so guardedly referring to, they sounded just like the kinds of things that were locked up in the . . .

  “Oh, God,” she whispered.

  “What is it?” Oz asked anxiously.

  “The Gatehouse,” she said, her voice tinged with horror. “They’re going to take it over, or . . . or blow it up or something.”

  Angel slapped Kukoff in the head. Blood spattered the floor. “What’s this?” he demanded. “What are you guys planning for the Gatehouse?”

  “I do not know,” Kukoff said, eyes fluttering, barely able to stay conscious save for the pressure Angel was applying to his broken arm. “It is the key, that is what Il Maestro claims. We are to claim it. The time is right, now. The Gatekeeper is failing quickly, and we have had his son Jacques, his only heir . . . removed.”