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Disclaimer: Characters from Buffy the Vampire Slayer are property of Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, Kuzui Enterprises, Sandollar Television, the WB, and UPN.

Part II

Though Angel had feared that even the brief delay would allow the roving Ptarmiiki to travel beyond the reach of his senses, a quarter-mile of swift movement along their last projected course brought him — and Xander — to the point where he could detect them again. It helped that the furry demonlings were themselves making no particular attempt at speed; even so, following them on their cross-boundary course presented certain problems.

Simply put, the smaller creatures could slip through spaces that Angel would have to go around or over, all without losing their trail or making sufficient noise to alert them. His strength and nimbleness were easily equal to the task, but Xander’s weren’t, nor could Angel have carried him quietly even if both had been willing to make the attempt.

After the fifth long detour in as many blocks, Angel was half-crazy with frustration. The boy never quit, he had to admit that much, but it was a clumsy and noisy and ceaselessly-carping refusal to quit. While some of that was doubtless due to the liquor’s remaining influence, the realization did nothing to put Angel in a more tolerant frame of mind. He wanted to throttle the boy … and that was the soul side of him.

Finally he’d had enough. “Look,” he snapped, “either pipe down or I’m calling this off. We’ll lose them anyway if you don’t shut up. Can you do that? Can you, for ten minutes, just keep your mouth still?”

“Still now,” Xander announced solemnly. “Observe the no moving of the lips.” And they went on, with Angel pointedly focused straight ahead, where he wouldn’t be able to see the jeering light in the boy’s eyes.

They were out of the residential streets now, and passing through one of the several city parks, perhaps the one where Xander’s dead-and-turned former friend had shown her true face and gone for him. It was easier now to follow the scuttling pack along a direct course, and trickier to do so without being detected. Angel let himself fall back another hundred feet, trusting his predator’s senses to follow them even at this safer remove. Xander, beside him, moved with markedly less grace but with marginally passable stealth. Ahead was a playground, like the one where Angel had stopped Drusilla from preying on the seemingly luckless child, long months ago: dim shadows of swings, a tall slide, a teeter-totter, the geodesic latticework of a jungle gym. Forward, Angel automatically swerving to carry them around the pea-gravel (noisier than walking on grass) that surfaced the play-area —

He had an instant’s forenotice as a shift of breeze carried him the ambushers’ scent, but their rush was simultaneous with his bark of warning. He darted to intercept them, prevent them from reaching Xander, but they were going at the boy from three directions, and with a dismayed squawk Xander jinked away from them, into the gravel and toward the play-structures. Angel followed, striking out at the ratlike warriors and swearing inwardly. They were so short, he was used to fighting things his own size or greater, bending to reach them with hand-techniques would slow him too much and so he was essentially limited to kicks, they chittered and jabbed at him with flint-tipped spears and here came the rest of them! Those must have gone ahead to draw out the pair stalking them, leaving the others to spring the trap, Angel cleared them with a long leap and landed beside Xander, turned to face his pursuers —

There was a wet, sharp coughing sound, and instinct twitched him aside as something streaked past him. “Get away from here!” he shouted to Xander. “Get to the trees, find something to use as a weapon —!” A second cough, he was already in the air in a twisting evasion, something splatt!ed against his shoe, again he landed next to Xander. Balked and furious, he seized the boy to throw him in the direction he had commanded. He was more than strong enough but he must have been off-balance somehow, his foot turned beneath him and the two of them lurched to the side, scrambling to regain their balance on the treacherous gravel. Another rush with the threatening spears drove them inside the framework of the jungle gym; as Angel paused for the barest moment to collect his breath, Xander caught one of the spears and wrenched it away from its owner with a yip of triumph, and swung around to counterattack.

There was only one of Xander, and dozens of the Ptarmiiki, but he had a longer reach and was jumping around like a jack-in-the-box, thrusting through the metal bars in all directions, a surprise burst of jerky, frenzied assault. He drove them back, to Angel’s instantly hidden astonishment … and, when they retreated, almost knocked himself unconscious as he straightened up and slammed his head against one of the upper bars.

“Ow!” Xander said. “Ow, ow, owww!” He rubbed his head gingerly, looked around at the Ptarmiiki, who had withdrawn into a ring surrounding the jungle gym, and announced, “Crap.”

“You should have gone for the trees, like I told you,” Angel said sourly. He studied the Ptarmiiki, and assessed his and Xander’s situation without happiness. Hemmed in, outnumbered, movement hampered, only the one weapon … This was not promising. Still, give him a second to catch his breath …

Hold on. Catch his breath?

“Yeah, well, you shoulda known about the Rat Pack skulking in the bushes,” Xander was saying. He raked his undead companion with a disdainful gaze. “Wanna give orders, you gotta have the juice to back it up. Am I getting through here? ’cause the big brooding act may make Buffy all swoony, but it’s not doing the least little bit for me.”

“We may have a problem here,” Angel said.

“Ya think?!” Xander gestured wildly at the diminutive demons encircling them. “We’re the featured attraction at the Little Big Horn. Oh, yeah, I’d call it a problem, all right.”

Angel looked down at where the unseen missile had struck his foot; there was a wet, slimy stain on the shoe, shimmering faintly phosphorescent in the light of the low moon. The leather had blanched and roughened, and some of the liquid had soaked into his sock. “Oh,” Angel said.

“What?” Xander asked.

Angel took a few experimental steps. The weakness that had hampered him unexpectedly was greater, and there was something more. “It burns,” Angel observed, looking down again at the stained shoe. “I didn’t even notice at first, but it’s getting worse.”

Xander’s eyebrows went up. “Hello? Are we operating on the same planet here? We’re facing off against Willard’s nastier cousins, the ones with a serious ’roid habit, and you’re complaining about athlete’s foot for the undead?”

Again the urgent wish to just smack the boy until that mouth stopped working. Angel quelled it with the ease of long habit. “All right,” he said. “In one way, this business isn’t as bad as we thought. In another way, it’s worse.”

Xander laughed, sharp and mirthless. “And the wonderful just never stops coming. Okay, go ahead, hit me.”

Love to, Angel thought. Aloud he said, “First of all, I don’t think we have to worry about the Ptarmiiki posing a serious threat to anybody but us. The things they were … I guess you’d say ‘shooting’ at us, those are secretions from sub-sentient grubs they use for pheromone marking. They’re laying out a scent trail, trying to attract a hive queen.”

“Hold on, let me make sure I’ve got this.” A wide grin was spreading across Xander’s face. “You’re telling me you just got tagged by a demon loogie?”

“From what I’ve heard, this kind of thing doesn’t happen very often,” Angel went on evenly. “Probably these are refugees from the losing side of a swarm war, with their queen killed by another hive. The odds are heavy against them being able to get a replacement, and without one, they’ll die out before long.”

“Demon loogie,” Xander repeated, visibly savoring the sound of the words. “Yeah, I bet Buffy’ll really think that’s romantic. So what’s the downside?”

“It’s affecting me,” Angel told him. “What they hit me with. Absorbed through my skin somehow. I feel … weak, slow. I don’t know how much worse it will get, but I’m afraid that, before much longer, you’ll be better able to fight them than I will.”

Xander thought about that. “So, the bad news is, I’m probably going to die. The good news, it looks like they’ll take you out while they’re at it.” He hefted the flint-tipped spear, eyed the bristling swarm that was, so far, still holding its distance. “Not exactly the sunny side of the street, but hey, I’ll take whatever little bubbles of cheer I can get.”

“No.” Angel shook his head. “I’m not going to let anything happen to you. We need some kind of plan, some way to get you out of this.”

“I’m all over the ‘Let’s Keep Xander Alive’ movement, but how do we do that?” Xander hooked a thumb toward the watching ring around them. “These guys don’t look like they’re going anywhere soon. And if they decide to come in after us … well, they can move around inside this thing easier and quicker than we can.” His expression became quizzical. “What do they want us for, anyway? Stock up the larders in case they can flag down a new Queen Mama?”

“Maybe,” Angel said. “The pheromone tag might do double duty, immobilizing prey and sending out signals that this is an open hive. Or maybe we caught their attention too close to their warrens, and they’re instinctively reacting against a threat to their home territory.” He eyed the steel lattice surrounding them. “I think we should climb.”

Xander looked up; the top of the jungle-gym frame was no more than five feet above their heads. “What for? Not much of anywhere for us to go.”

“You were right,” Angel told him. “We can’t maneuver in here as well as they can. For us, it’s too enclosed.” He indicated the framework all around them. “But if we make them climb up after us, they won’t have the speed advantage any more. In fact, with our longer arms and legs, we should be able to move faster than they can. At least, you probably could.”

After a few seconds’ consideration, Xander nodded. “Good thinking. Or is this even a new idea? Did you maybe play a rollicking little game of Clean Out Kindergarten with Drusilla some night, back in the Bad Old Days? ’Cause you never know when one of those classic massacres will be good for a much-needed brain boost.”

“Can you just let it go for awhile?” Angel asked, long-pent annoyance finally escaping. “I know we’ve got issues between us, but can you save them for sometime when we’re not having to work so hard at staying alive?”

“I’m trying to stay alive,” Xander corrected sharply. “You jumped off that train so long ago, they didn’t even have trains yet.”

Any retort Angel might have been tempted to make was abandoned as the pack charged them again. Xander dodged back deeper into the tangle of bars, thrusting with the captured spear and kicking out at the Ptarmiiki who pressed him from the sides. Angel climbed, forcing himself upward with trembling muscles. Flint points pierced his legs and scored along his ribs, but he had endured far worse; he hauled himself up out of their reach, shifted heavily to the side, and stretched his hand down to catch Xander by the collar. Xander let out a strangled protest as he was pulled off the ground, and Angel heaved him up into the higher bars with a desperate expenditure of his waning strength.

The Ptarmiiki chittered in frustration and fury at seeing their prey ascend beyond attacking range, and Angel sagged in the bars, his lungs heaving with useless reflex. “They’ll come up after us in a minute,” he gasped to Xander. “We need to get higher.”

They went higher, moving up to the top of the structure. Twice Xander lost hold of the spear, but managed to catch it again before it fell. Angel moved more slowly, cautious as he continued to weaken. At last they perched atop the framework; Xander glanced down at the warrior pack milling beneath them, and said, “Don’t expect me to thank you for pulling me up.”

“You needn’t worry,” Angel replied. “I’m not about to waste my time looking for thanks from you.”

Xander shifted sideways, studying Angel in the moonlight. “So explain something to me,” he said. “Buffy’s seventeen, and you’re two hundred and … lots more years old. How’s that not pedophilia?”

Angel let out a long sigh. “Do you seriously want to have that conversation, here, now?”

“We got anything else to talk about?” Xander asked pointedly. “Now, I know you mixed it up with Dru and Darla for yea long, which automatically means necrophilia … Just how many philias do The Lonely Ones get into, anyhow?”

And that definitely was a conversation that wouldn’t be happening. “Buffy is a grown woman. For most of human history, a female her age would have had two or three children already.”

“Not by a guy a dozen times her age, especially when the guy in question is — let me put this delicately — a walking corpse.” Xander shook his head. “Seriously, how do you delude yourself into thinking that you with Buffy is anything but a gross perversion of the natural order? I mean, look at it. Her Slayer, you vampire. Her really young, you really old. Her alive, you totally way not. All of it. How?”

“Those are big things,” Angel admitted. “But they’re not the only things.”

“Let me guess,” Xander scoffed. “Trooo luvvv.”

Angel nodded. “Yes. Exactly. I love her. Nothing else matters. All the rest of it … it’s just details.”

“Details. Right.” Xander laughed crazily. “It’s the details that kill ya.”

“Right now, it’s the Ptarmiiki.” Angel pointed. “They’re coming up.”

The bristly warriors clambered up the bars in waves, and for some minutes there was no time for talk. Xander scrambled around inside the metal framework, stabbing and striking with the spear, shifting constantly to keep himself above the Ptarmiiki. Angel used both hands to hold himself in place, kicked with his feet, watched for weak spots in the manic defense Xander was maintaining and moved to try and cover them. Three times, warriors reached the top level only to be swept squealing to the gravel below; the fall wasn’t far enough to incapacitate or even injure them, and they scuttled back to the attack. This was indeed better than fighting at ground level, and Xander was giving an unexpectedly good account of himself (quite a bit more than Angel was doing, under the circumstances) … but the Ptarmiiki kept coming, and Xander couldn’t be everywhere.

The tide turned with a spear-thrust; Angel had kicked a series of warriors out and down, still working to fill the occasional gap in Xander’s defense, but the last one in line was off to the side, and as Angel turned to address the threat, the chipped point went in below his ribs, angling upward to drive deep into his chest —

— on the right side. The pain was enormous, but the injury itself less debilitating than the poison Angel had already absorbed, a punctured lung being primarily an annoyance to someone who didn’t need to breathe. Angel caught the spear-shaft to prevent its being withdrawn, kicked its wielder away, and then tore the point from his chest.

Now he and Xander each had a weapon.

Despite more than two years now of combat experience, Xander was a relative neophyte with piercing tools, besides which he had been stretched too thin to give any opponent more than an instant’s attention; he had killed a few, but most he had wounded slightly or just knocked away for a moment. Angel’s familiarity with close-in slaughter was centuries deep, however, and even in his weakness he could easily control the light spear. He killed seven in quick order — and Xander got another while the rest responded to this sudden new peril — before the Ptarmiiki withdrew to huddle below them on the gravel of the playground.

Angel looked up to find Xander favoring him with that reckless, loopy grin. “Not too shabby,” Xander observed. “Keep it up, and I’ll let you be my sidekick.” Into the night around them, he called, “Hey, Sunnydale! Give it up for the newest super-team: the White Knight —” The grin swung back to Angel, deepening nastily. “— and Deadboy.”

So, he remembered. Not just the scene at the hospital, but the words Angelus had used to taunt him.

“We gave them something to think about,” Angel said, looking down at the creatures clustered below them. “Not that they actually think, but they have layers of hive instinct, and their instincts may be starting to tell them that we’re too costly for prey.”

That abrupt liquid cough sounded again from below, and Xander flinched as a tennis-ball-sized globule sailed past him. “Whoa! And now we know why ‘vampire’ and ‘umpire’ are totally different words. ’Cause, holy phlegm-bullets, Pulseless Wonder, were you ever off on that call.”

Angel gathered himself, his eyes assessing the formation and disposition of the remaining Ptarmiiki. “It looks like you were right,” he told Xander. “They’re wanting to mark us and carry us back to the warren, a living buffet to win the favor of a prospective queen. It must be finally penetrating to them that the stuff didn’t fully paralyze me. Now they’re trying it on you.”

Xander opened his mouth, either to question the statement or to challenge it, but Angel forestalled him by drawing back his arm and launching his spear down into the mass of warriors. There was an ear-splitting screech, and then an enraged chorus of chittering from the others.

“We’re in luck,” Angel said to Xander. “Almost straight down, less than a dozen feet away … not a hard shot to make, plus I may be getting some of my strength back.”

Xander was unimpressed. “Brilliant tactics. You killed one of them, and threw away half our weapons to do it. Should I give you the medal now, or you want to wait till I can work up a scroll to go with it?” He shook his head, and added, “Dumb-ass.”

“I split open the tagging-grub, and killed the warrior holding it.” Angel stretched his arms, worked his shoulders; yes, his strength was beginning to return. Another fifteen minutes, twenty, he would be able to fight effectively again —

Movement below them, and he snapped his hand out to Xander, commanding, “Give me your spear.”

“What?” Xander pulled the weapon back. “No way! That’s the only thing that’s been keeping us alive, I’m not letting you toss this one away —”

“They have another tagging-grub,” Angel said, harsh and insistent. “There shouldn’t have been more than one, but they have another, they almost took me out with the first one and now they seem to be targeting you, give me your spear!”

“Wh… what if they’ve got more that we don’t know about?” Xander asked, clearly uncertain but far from convinced. “Or what if you just miss?”

“Then we’re dead. But we’re dead if we sit here and let them pick us off.” Angel locked eyes with the boy. “The spear, Xander. Now.” He hesitated, hating the necessity, then he said it. “Please.”

It felt like forever: the tipping-point of fate, the moment that would decide everything. An eternity that stretched out over almost three seconds … and then Xander passed over the second spear, and Angel snatched it and hurled it down in a single eye-blurring instant, and the Ptarmiiki’s shrieks of fury erupted again.

Though he spoke softly, Xander’s voice nonetheless carried through the tumult below. “So I’m guessing that means you got their spare hockmeister?”

“I got it,” Angel confirmed.

“Okay, then, what’s their next move?” Xander drew a shaky breath. “And let the answer to that not be, ‘They haul up Slimer Number Three and commence firing.’ ”

Angel shook his head. “That seems to have been their last one. And it doesn’t look like they can decide what to do now.” His smile was faint but satisfied. “The disadvantage of a hive mind. Without a queen, they only have so many instinctive protocols they can apply. We hit them with more complications than they could handle.”

“So that’s it?” Xander asked. “We just wait them out, let them lose interest and wander off?”

Angel flexed his fingers, shifted his legs on the bars, drew meaningless air in and out of his lungs. Assessing his fitness, the damage he had taken versus the recovery his supernatural physiology was effecting. He was still far below his normal capacity; it would be hours before he healed completely, and most of a day before he was back to full strength.

Xander was right. They should wait. But it was still that kind of night, and — though he no longer let his demon rule any part of him — it and he were agreed right now on the need for some hot, bloody, cathartic violence.

“Stay here,” he told Xander. “They can’t reach you quickly, and they’ll be too busy to try. Yell if you have problems … but I don’t really see that happening.”

Then he jumped, pushing out away from the jungle gym to land in the gravel below, and swung to face the surviving Ptarmiiki as they charged him in a squealing wave.
 

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