![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cornerofmadnessThis is the other story that is messed up on Forever fandom. sigh. I need to get back to finishing this some day. It's a father and son learn to live with each other journey centering (naturally) on Angel and Connor It's too big for one post so here's the first two chapters
LEANING ON THE EDGE OF E
By D.M. Evans
Disclaimer - Not mine, never have been, never will be. I’m just grateful to Mr. Whedon et al for the chance to play in his sandbox. All lyrics included belong to The Cure
Rating - R for violence
Timeline - Immediately after Not Fade Away.
Summary - Connor joins his father in the battle against the demon horde and they learn what it means to be father and son
Author’s Note #1 - This is written for Crazy Girl Mary’s cd challenge. http://www.geocities.com/crazy_girl_mary/mychallenges.htm. You need to use ALL the songs on one album. I chose The Cure’s disintegration album.
Author’s Note #2 - For this we’re going to pretend that Angel didn’t immediately go into the alley after he sent off Connor. We’re going with the theory there was a bit of a time gap.
Author’s Note #3 - Thanks to SJ and Kat for the various beta’s on this.
CHAPTER ONE - Closedown
I'm running out of time
I'm out of step and closing down
And never sleep for wanting hours
The Cure - Closedown
I cast a hateful glance down at the gas gauge of my Nova. It was leaning on the edge of E. I’d never make it back to the Hyperion. I was stranded on I-15, wondering how far into the desert I really was. It was hard to tell. At least my family would be safe. It had taken everything I had to convince them we had to get the hell out of L.A. They didn’t want to believe me, and I didn’t wait for them to. I started throwing clothes in the back of Dad’s vehicle sans luggage. They had to have thought I was deranged, and they weren’t far from wrong.
I should have gotten them out of town yesterday but like an idiot I hadn’t. The moment Angel walked into the coffee shop, I had known something bad was going to happen. I even joked about it later when I tried to save his ass. The end of the world, it wasn’t funny then. It was less funny now. Nothing between my father and me had ever been funny. Still, I should never have waited a day to get the Reilly’s out of town but the truth was, they never even crossed my mind until too late.
I really tried to go back to my life after killing Sahjahn but I knew it was doomed. Filling out internship papers like I was going to have a real life, who was I kidding? Even before Angel walked in, I knew my ersatz happy family would come to an end. It would have to. As grateful as I was for what my father tried to do, it was doomed to failure. No one was going to let me stay out of this life, if not Vail then someone else. I hadn’t been wrong about that.
As I tore through the house, my false parents picked up on my panic. They helped me pack. My sister got in my Nova with me while Mom and Dad were in Dad’s car and the Reilly family pointed both vehicles eastwardly and took off for Las Vegas. I think even they knew something really was wrong, the air crackling with it. I had waited too long. I shouldn’t have gone back to help Angel before seeing to their safety but it was the only thing on my mind at the time. Even when he threw me out, telling me no one could destroy him so long as I was alive, I hadn’t wanted to go. Only then did I even remember that I had a new family who still thought I was theirs, who loved me and I couldn’t let them die.
The downpour was another sign of trouble. It didn’t rain like that in southern California, or so said Connor Reilly. Plain old Connor nee Steven Holtz didn’t know about that sort of thing, but he knew trouble when he felt it riding on the air. We were maybe a sixty miles out of town when the sky darkened overhead. My sister’s screams were still echoing in my ears. Guess she learned fast that dragons existed outside of Lord of the Rings. Even I hadn’t been prepared for the dragon that was coming up fast behind our cars with other winged demons in tow.
Angel might have sent me out of town but he must have been gambling on his enemies not knowing about me or at least being unable to find me. Wrong again, Dad. If we continued to flee, I knew we’d all die in the cars. I had to make a stand. I forced my parents over and I shoved my sister into my parents’ car. I kissed her goodbye, and told them all I’d meet them at the Luxor. Dad Number Three did a lot of business in Vegas and the Luxor comped him rooms. They didn’t want to go without me, but finally they believed me about the creatures being after me.
They had seen me survive getting run down, witnessed me beating up demons before. I promised them I’d be all right, a pretty hollow promise since I was weaponless and flying back down I-15 trying to lead the demons away from the Reillys and to get back to my real family at the Hyperion. Was I already too late? No, somehow I knew Angel wasn’t dead. I’d feel it. Of that, I was sure. I just wished I didn’t feel so terribly sick to my stomach about not ever seeing the Reillys again. If I died, they’d be devastated and quite frankly, even though I know it was a spell that made me love them, I still felt it.
I forgot, however, one important detail in my mad flight. The stupid gas gauge in the Nova had a tendency to stick. As I was trying to outrun the dragon, the needle came unstuck and was now on empty. The Nova shuddered to a stop and I had bailed. What the hell was I going to do now? I was stranded in the desert, even if the dragon didn’t eat me. As it swooped low, I saw it had a rider.
I picked up a hefty rock from the roadside and when the dragon flew by, I winged it. The rider cried out as I knocked him from his saddle just behind the thing’s neck. I was on him before he knew what was happening, stunned from the fall. My foot went straight through the thing’s head. As I was hopping around trying to extract my foot from its head, blood seeping into my shoes, the dragon wheeled around and its tail thumped down like something from Jurassic Park. It bent my Nova in two.
“Damn it! That was a cool car!” I picked up the fallen demon’s sword and crossbow then showed the flying demons why the demons of Quor-Toth called me the Destroyer.
These guys were barely a challenge. I don’t think they were expecting me to be a threat. Maybe they knew Angel had nullified my life. Connor Reilly would have been easy pickings. Angel and Holtz’s blue-eyed boy wasn’t easy prey for anyone. The dragon seemed to be the smartest of the bunch. It tried to cut and run.
I raced after it, remembering now, feeling my own strength, how well I could jump. I caught the stirrups of the saddle and swung Legolas-like up into the saddle. The dragon tried to swing its head around to get me but the saddle was place so I was out of bite range. I clung to the creature.
Great, you idiot. Now what? The dragon answered my mental question. I was wrong. It wasn’t smart. It was very stupid. It was carrying me back towards L.A. Two to one, it was taking me to the fight there, right back to Angel. It was where I wanted to go. But would I be too late? When did the battle come to Angel? Immediately after he threw me out? If so, it was two hours later and I was probably going to be way too late to help him. Dad might be alive now but if he’d been fighting all this time, he’d be exhausted. Maybe he had already won. Maybe I was going to my death. Maybe nothing I did would matter. I had to believe it would or else I’d be lost.
That aside, it was damn cool to be flying by dragon back. One last question, how the hell do I get down?
CHAPTER TWO - Plainsong
(dedicated to Masquerade for her birthday)
"I think it's dark and it looks like rain" you said
"and the wind is blowing like it's the end of the
world" you said "and it's so cold it's like the
cold if you were dead" and then you smiled for
a second.
Plainsong - The Cure
My thighs were beginning to hurt. The saddle structure on the dragon’s neck was more for someone with much longer legs than me and I wasn’t used to straddling anything for this long. I was very glad Father had forced me to stand, squat and otherwise contort myself and hold the position for hours. Funny, I still thought of Holtz as my father and I guess he really had been for most of my life. That’s where Dad made a huge mistake with me. Like it or not, Holtz raised me and Angel should have accepted him as my adoptive father instead of villianizing him. That hurt me and I was too naive then to understand the depths of Angel’s pain. I got it now.
Still, thinking of Holtz now was a good thing. I needed to be the man he shaped me into. Connor Reilly couldn’t handle flying on dragon back into battle so I put him in a box. I hadn’t been entirely truthful with Angel when showed up at that coffee house. My past wasn’t like a dream. It was real and it was terrifying sometimes and I tried hard to compartmentalize it all. I had lied to him because I knew it was what Dad wanted to hear. He had sacrificed so much for me and I knew that, appreciated it. I should have told him better how I felt about that. Maybe I shouldn’t have lied because eventually I would have been caught in that lie. I was slowly going under ever since the fight with Sahjhan but I was too proud, too damned determined to do it on my own. Besides, Angel had cut me loose. He wanted me to have my normal life and I was trying to honor that. We both should have known that I could never have gone back to perfectly normal, totally sweet and dull Lawrence and Colleen Reilly. My old life was bound to find me and I couldn’t live with it if the horrors of my life killed them. They were innocents.
I took my hands off the reins and blew on them. My fingers were numb from the cold of being this high in the sky, going this fast, not to mention the blinding rain. The lights of L.A. twinkled ahead. I hadn’t ever realized just how big the city was. I mean the Reilly me knew how L.A. was a bunch of smaller towns all cobbled together into a metropolis but it hadn’t ever been real before now. How was I going to even find them in all of this? I had ideas where Dad and the others might be but how to find it when the city looked so different from up here? Maybe the dragon would home in on its own kind.
Then I remembered my first day here, how I knew without being told Angel was my father. I felt it. There was a bond there. I knew when he tracked me through L.A. those first days of his return. I had felt him watching me. Could I sense him now? I cleared my mind and tried to concentrate. Nothing. This was stupid. Who did I think I was? Spider-Man? Then there was a tickling in my chest. Guess I did have a spidey sense after all. I yanked on the reins making the dragon wheel about. The creature seemed to be drifting but once I got it on the trail, going towards what I was assuming, no praying, was my father, the dragon picked up speed.
As we dropped closer to the ground, I got my bearings. We had to be close now. I could hear the sounds of the battle. Soon enough I could smell it, the metallic tang of blood that coated the inside of my throat, in spite of the hard rain. That alone told me how much blood had been spilled. There were dead bodies everywhere, including another dragon looking like a downed plane.
I forced my dragon into a dive. I could see them all clearly now, well Angel at any rate. I didn’t see Wesley or Lorne. The ancient demon in Fred’s body was amazing to watch as she cut a bloody swath. What had Dad called her? Illyria? That didn’t matter. What did matter was that they were overwhelmed. “Oh Jaysus, there’s no winning this,” I whispered, letting little Catholic Connor Reilly peep out when I saw this enormous thing that looked like a three-faced Ent with brambles that it could be fired like porcupine quills. It was crawling from a crack between dimensions. I recognized what interdimensional travel looked like. I’ve torn my way through dimensions once but I had no idea how to close something like this. I wish I did. For once, I longed for magic to catch that thing mid-manifestation and tear it in two. Even on Quor-Toth, I hadn’t seen anything as horrific as this thing that seemed to be part plant and part animal, each of its faces a different animal. I think I knew where they came up with Wolf, Ram and Hart.
I spotted Dad, sword and shield in hand. He looked so tired, so close to dropping and yet he went on. Angel had to know he was going to die here but he didn’t care. He had told me as much. So long as I escaped, he would live on. Oh, he was gonna be pissed to see me. A large creature with knobby horns that could have walked off the set of The Lord of the Rings was bearing down on Angel’s back. Aragorn was about to get whacked by an orc. Oh, great, there comes Reilly again. Who made me a Rings geek? If Angel was Aragorn, who was I? Anyone but Frodo. I guess I’m Legalos. I was built like and elf and boy did that ever suck.
Angel was going to get cut down right before my eyes because he didn’t see the orc. He was too busy slaying whatever the hell it was he was hacking to bits. He couldn’t hear me screaming over the melee. I dug my heels into the dragon and it dived until we were skimming the roadway. I beheaded the orc in one smooth swing of my sword. Angel felt the dragon coming up behind him. He whirled with that sword and nearly tagged me. His eyes opened wide as I forced the dragon into a climb. I gave him a little wave and a smirk.
The dragon tried to climb higher. It obviously didn’t like being hemmed in by the buildings. I looked to see what else I could do with the dragon before dismounting and killing it. The blond vampire was just ahead, flagging me down. He jumped aside and pointed. I couldn’t tell what he was trying to convey so I turned the dragon around for a better look. The vampire was pulling something out from under a corpse pile. Oh hell, it was Gunn. Either he had crawled under the pile of bodies or had been hidden there. He looked dead himself. The blond picked him up and held him overhead.
I understood what he wanted. I forced the dragon down lower and the vampire tossed Gunn to me. It was like catching a nearly two hundred pound sack of eels. Gunn was so slick with blood I nearly dropped him. Cradling him to me, I yanked hard on the reins and the dragon climbed. I turned it away from the fighting and sent it winging along the rooftops looking for a medical helipad. Thank God, Reilly was an action movie geek so I knew what I was looking for.
Of course, the hospital crew were hardly expecting a dragon to land on their roof. The security guard just stood there, gun out, shaking too hard to shoot. I lowered Gunn to ground in a heap. It was then I saw one of his legs looked chewed to the bone and he had tied his belt over his thigh like a tourniquet. A young woman in blue scrubs ran out to get him, her eyes never leaving the dragon. I made it take off again, screaming down at them, “His name is Charles Gunn!”
Would anyone still be alive when I got back? Dad was...well, as alive as he ever was. I could still feel him. I swooped along the city blocks on my borrowed wings. Didn’t this monster ever tire? The dragon whipped along taking us precariously close to Three-Face, obviously seeing it as an ally. That’s when the brambly three-faced Ent provided it was not just scary ugly, it was smart. It realized the dragon was under the enemy’s control and those huge thorns came flying our way. I tried to make the dragon wheel away. All I succeeded in doing was get its bulk between me and a thorn. The dragon died with a scream that threatened to make my ears bleed. It folded up and spun in out of control. Oh, shit!
I tried to time my leap from the creature’s back. I had to jump off before I was really ready to because it had flipped over and would have crushed me. I fell about four stories, twisting mid-air. I had made jumps like this before but I knew it was going to hurt because the grounds was nothing but hunks of building, torn up road and corpses. I wasn’t wrong. It felt like my head had torn off with the impact and I went sprawling, landing in a pile of gore. Choking on it, I felt hands on me. I nearly gutted the person hauling me up then realized it was Angel.
“What are you doing here? I told you to go,” he snapped and thrust his sword over my head, killing the thing coming up behind me.
“Did you miss my really cool arrival on dragon-back?” Sometimes I think Dad’s brain has been dead a little too long.
His lips skinned back off those terrible fangs of his. “They came after you.”
“They knew I’m your son. I led the demons away from the Reillys.” I twisted to the side and speared another incoming demon with my sworwwd. “Do we have a plan?”
“Yeah, don’t die,” Angel said, his voice laced with dark humor.
“Got it.”
It didn’t take long before Dad and I were back to back trying to keep each other from getting pulled under. I saw the blond vampire, what the hell was his name? Spike? Fighting back to back with Illyria. There were still too many of the demons. We would go down under the sheer numbers of them. Dad was moving like I had never seen him do before, faster, more acrobatic. Even I couldn’t keep up, though I tried.
In the middle of this horror, my mind flipped back to the first time I had fought back to back with him in that club. How ironic was it he was fighting to save Justine? I had told myself at the time I had fought with him just to learn his style so I could kill him more easily but deep down I had enjoyed it. Holtz had seen us later in that alleyway while we played and even he didn’t believe me that it was all just so I could best Angel later. It had hurt. I wasn’t supposed to like being with Angel but even back then a part of me did. The connection tugged at me. When we fought, I felt like I had known him all my life.
I felt it now, which made dying worse. I was on the threshold of finally understanding myself, understanding him and I would die before it happened. My arm was beginning to hurt as I hacked through tissue and bone. I could go on for a lot longer but in the end it wouldn’t matter. Angel was beginning to slow. We were all bleeding. Spike seemed ready to drop, but Illyria was still kicking ass like nothing I had ever seen. Swords kept shattering over her. Right now, I would have liked that ability, bleeding as I was from a couple dozen shallow slashes. The rain was threatening to drown us. My clothing was matted to me.
“Angel, that is one of the elder-demons.” Illyria pointed at Three-Face. “We must slay it.”
“Does that stop the others?” Spike panted, his shoulders drooping.
“Does it matter?” Angel replied, shaking out his arms.
“Shit. I thought that Drogyn wanker said all the old ones were locked away,” Spike groaned and I had no idea what in the hell he was talking about.
“That’s right, you missed Mayor Wilkins. It’s wishful thinking.” Angel turned to Illyria. “Illyria, do you know how to defeat it?”
“That one can be defeated by turning its own power against it but I do not know how that is accomplished,” Illyria said, looking furious with herself.
I barely got my sword up to block as some nameless demon tried to cut me down. “Dad, your new-found speed, you got that after you took blood from that guy who was tossing us around like dolls. What did he say?”
Angel’s ridged brow furrowed worse. “He was connected to the Wolf, Ram and Hart.”
“You got to drink super-powered blood and you didn’t think to share,” Spike said. “If we don’t all die, I’m killing you.”
“You may get your wish, Spike. If I contain the power, it has to be drained out somehow,” Dad said grimly, nodding at Three-Face. “Forget the minions. Let’s take the fight to the big guy.”
Angel and Illyria took point with me and Spike moving in their wake. The demons didn’t put up as much of a fight as one might expect but only because they realized there was just as much fun to have if they headed into the city after easier prey. I was so thankful I got my parents and sister out of here. I might die here tonight but at least they’d be safe...until the demons spread. Maybe the Slayers would show up and take care of them. We could use Faith right about now.
The elder demon had fully manifested and it was taller than the damn Hyperion. For a ludicrous moment I thought it should look like the Sta-Puff Marshmallow Man. Okay, if I live, I’m finding the person who made my new memories and I was kicking his ass for making me a geek. We slaughtered our way to the thing’s...could you call those things feet? We all just stared for a moment.
I craned my neck up. “Um, Dad, how the hell do we poison this thing?”
“I have no idea. Illyria?” Angel looked at the demoness.
“I do not know.”
“We’d better bloody well think of something fast,” Spike said. “I think it sees us.”
“Look at the place where the three heads join,” I said. “It’s all armored heavy there like it’s protecting something.”
“We need to get higher up, get a clearer view,” Angel said and leapt up. He caught the window sills of the Hyperion, scaling it fast.
“Just great. Let’s get closer to the three giant mouths,” Spike groaned but he followed Dad up.
Illyria and I did as well. My clothing was starting to raise blisters on my flesh because it was so soaked through with rain and sticking to me. Just great. I most assuredly didn’t want to chuck my pants and fight in my tighty-whiteys but if my clothing got more constrictive I might not have a choice. If I die wearing only my underpants, I sure as hell hope no one finds my body. My thighs were burning by the time I got to the top.
The elder-demon knew we were there. Luckily it was slow and its projectile thorns so big we could easily dodge the first barrage. I saw what I was hoping to find. Inside that circle of bone-plated armor or whatever the hell it was, was a pulsating purplish thing. It was the only soft looking part of the creature. I pointed.
“I see it, Connor.” Angel shook his head. “It had best be the Achilles heel.”
“Guess that means Blue, me, and the kid have to distract the heads and arms while you do your thing,” Spike said. “I call the wolf.”
He leapt at the wolfish head with a loud, almost joyful shout. I figured if he had to go out, he wanted it to be in a blaze of glory. Not a bad idea really. Before I could make my jump at the elder-demon, Angel snagged me, crushing me to his chest.
“Just remember I love you,” he whispered then tossed me at the monster.
Great, I got the hart with its thrashing antlers. Dad and Illyria had made their attacks. I couldn’t watch them. The hart head was snapping at me with very un-deer-like teeth. I used the horns like a gymnastic bar and hurtled myself feet first at it. I felt teeth crack under my strong kick. The elder-demon screamed and snarled at me in a language I didn’t stand a prayer of understanding. I swung back on those antlers and on the return swing I buried my sword in its eye. My arm was swallowed up to the shoulder. As I tried to fight my way back out of the jelly gushing out of the destroyed orb, I saw Angel was on his knees above the pulsating brain-thing. He slit his own throat, letting the supernaturally powered blood drip into the thing.
The elder-demon bellowed and my breath caught. This wouldn’t kill my father. It couldn’t, could it? It wasn’t like he was cutting deep enough to sever his own head. He’d survive it, right? Not if the elder-demon got a hold of him. A brambly arm-like thing raised up aiming to grab Angel. I swung my blade in a fury, taking several blows to whack the hand off. The elder-demon started shuddering and I was hoping the poison was taking effect.
Something grabbed me. Damn, I forgot this thing had several other hands. I thought it was going to hurl me to the ground but it must have seen me fall from the dragon’s back and realized that wouldn’t stop me. Before I could twist free, the thing impaled me like a butterfly on a pin on one of its antlers. The pain was blinding but even as the hand move past me reaching for Angel, I snared it with my legs. Brambly things penetrated my flesh, tearing it, but I couldn’t let go now. I could see the antler shoving out of my chest just under my collar bone. That meant it missed my spine and heart. It felt like a bus had parked on my chest. Blood bubbled out of my mouth. The lung, I was bleeding into my lungs and if I let go now, it would reach Dad and stop him.
I couldn’t see Spike but Illyria was tearing off more of the arms from this thing. Was Dad’s neck already starting to heal? I thought maybe it was. The elder-demon shuddered harder now making the antler twist inside me. I bit my lips trying not to scream. If Angel knew I was hurt, he’d stop what he was doing. I couldn’t allow that. He had to finish this thing off. I was secondary to that. Something in my leg tore and the arm lurched forward. I squeezed my legs together harder, stopping the forward momentum. The pain nearly rendered me unconscious.
I stabbed upward with my sword, feeling my body slipping as the antler sliced upward in my flesh. Blood was pouring out my nose now. I was drowning in it but my sword caught the thing’s neck. Ichor fountained down on me. Suddenly we were falling like a chainsawed redwood. We crashed into the Hyperion. I was tossed free as the dying demon hit ground. I heard Angel calling our names. Spike and Illyria answered him. I tried but the only sound was a gurgle.
“Connor?” Angel screamed. “Where are you?”
I tried to get up and somehow managed it. My body fought to heal itself but I didn’t know if it could. I had never been damaged this badly before. This felt very much like the end. I felt hands on me but I could barely see. Everything was fuzzing out. “Dad?” I managed to get out around the blood.
“Oh, God! You hang on, Connor. Don’t you dare die on me, damn it,” Angel was saying. I was off my feet before I knew what was happening, cradled in his arms. “You’re going to be fine.”
“This way, Angel.” I heard Spike calling.
Angel ran with me and I tried to hold onto consciousness. The sounds of fighting died away. Suddenly I was being slid inside a car. Angel got in beside me, dragging me back against his chest. “Can you hot wire this thing, Spike?”
“Almost there.”
I heard the engine roar to life and we sped off. Were there any roads open? What had happened to the demon hoards?
“You don’t die, Connor. I’m not going to let you,” Angel was babbling now, stroking my hair.
The pain was receding as a numbness spread through me. I caught his hand. “Reillys...” I whispered.
“Shush, don’t talk,” he said.
“Luxor...Vegas...only call them...when I’m dead,” I said, I think. I wasn’t sure if I was making any sense. I didn’t want Angel to scare my parents if I was going to recover. Something warm hit my face, like rain. Angel was crying all over me, his face back to being human.
“Illyria, we could use that selective time altering you do,” he snapped.
I didn’t know if she was obeying or if she even could. “Love you, Dad,” I rasped out then my eyes widened as I thought I saw someone joining us in the back seat. “Oh, mom. You’re here.” I heard Angel sob and Mother smiled then the darkness came.
LEANING ON THE EDGE OF E
By D.M. Evans
Disclaimer - Not mine, never have been, never will be. I’m just grateful to Mr. Whedon et al for the chance to play in his sandbox. All lyrics included belong to The Cure
Rating - R for violence
Timeline - Immediately after Not Fade Away.
Summary - Connor joins his father in the battle against the demon horde and they learn what it means to be father and son
Author’s Note #1 - This is written for Crazy Girl Mary’s cd challenge. http://www.geocities.com/crazy_girl_mary/mychallenges.htm. You need to use ALL the songs on one album. I chose The Cure’s disintegration album.
Author’s Note #2 - For this we’re going to pretend that Angel didn’t immediately go into the alley after he sent off Connor. We’re going with the theory there was a bit of a time gap.
Author’s Note #3 - Thanks to SJ and Kat for the various beta’s on this.
CHAPTER ONE - Closedown
I'm running out of time
I'm out of step and closing down
And never sleep for wanting hours
The Cure - Closedown
I cast a hateful glance down at the gas gauge of my Nova. It was leaning on the edge of E. I’d never make it back to the Hyperion. I was stranded on I-15, wondering how far into the desert I really was. It was hard to tell. At least my family would be safe. It had taken everything I had to convince them we had to get the hell out of L.A. They didn’t want to believe me, and I didn’t wait for them to. I started throwing clothes in the back of Dad’s vehicle sans luggage. They had to have thought I was deranged, and they weren’t far from wrong.
I should have gotten them out of town yesterday but like an idiot I hadn’t. The moment Angel walked into the coffee shop, I had known something bad was going to happen. I even joked about it later when I tried to save his ass. The end of the world, it wasn’t funny then. It was less funny now. Nothing between my father and me had ever been funny. Still, I should never have waited a day to get the Reilly’s out of town but the truth was, they never even crossed my mind until too late.
I really tried to go back to my life after killing Sahjahn but I knew it was doomed. Filling out internship papers like I was going to have a real life, who was I kidding? Even before Angel walked in, I knew my ersatz happy family would come to an end. It would have to. As grateful as I was for what my father tried to do, it was doomed to failure. No one was going to let me stay out of this life, if not Vail then someone else. I hadn’t been wrong about that.
As I tore through the house, my false parents picked up on my panic. They helped me pack. My sister got in my Nova with me while Mom and Dad were in Dad’s car and the Reilly family pointed both vehicles eastwardly and took off for Las Vegas. I think even they knew something really was wrong, the air crackling with it. I had waited too long. I shouldn’t have gone back to help Angel before seeing to their safety but it was the only thing on my mind at the time. Even when he threw me out, telling me no one could destroy him so long as I was alive, I hadn’t wanted to go. Only then did I even remember that I had a new family who still thought I was theirs, who loved me and I couldn’t let them die.
The downpour was another sign of trouble. It didn’t rain like that in southern California, or so said Connor Reilly. Plain old Connor nee Steven Holtz didn’t know about that sort of thing, but he knew trouble when he felt it riding on the air. We were maybe a sixty miles out of town when the sky darkened overhead. My sister’s screams were still echoing in my ears. Guess she learned fast that dragons existed outside of Lord of the Rings. Even I hadn’t been prepared for the dragon that was coming up fast behind our cars with other winged demons in tow.
Angel might have sent me out of town but he must have been gambling on his enemies not knowing about me or at least being unable to find me. Wrong again, Dad. If we continued to flee, I knew we’d all die in the cars. I had to make a stand. I forced my parents over and I shoved my sister into my parents’ car. I kissed her goodbye, and told them all I’d meet them at the Luxor. Dad Number Three did a lot of business in Vegas and the Luxor comped him rooms. They didn’t want to go without me, but finally they believed me about the creatures being after me.
They had seen me survive getting run down, witnessed me beating up demons before. I promised them I’d be all right, a pretty hollow promise since I was weaponless and flying back down I-15 trying to lead the demons away from the Reillys and to get back to my real family at the Hyperion. Was I already too late? No, somehow I knew Angel wasn’t dead. I’d feel it. Of that, I was sure. I just wished I didn’t feel so terribly sick to my stomach about not ever seeing the Reillys again. If I died, they’d be devastated and quite frankly, even though I know it was a spell that made me love them, I still felt it.
I forgot, however, one important detail in my mad flight. The stupid gas gauge in the Nova had a tendency to stick. As I was trying to outrun the dragon, the needle came unstuck and was now on empty. The Nova shuddered to a stop and I had bailed. What the hell was I going to do now? I was stranded in the desert, even if the dragon didn’t eat me. As it swooped low, I saw it had a rider.
I picked up a hefty rock from the roadside and when the dragon flew by, I winged it. The rider cried out as I knocked him from his saddle just behind the thing’s neck. I was on him before he knew what was happening, stunned from the fall. My foot went straight through the thing’s head. As I was hopping around trying to extract my foot from its head, blood seeping into my shoes, the dragon wheeled around and its tail thumped down like something from Jurassic Park. It bent my Nova in two.
“Damn it! That was a cool car!” I picked up the fallen demon’s sword and crossbow then showed the flying demons why the demons of Quor-Toth called me the Destroyer.
These guys were barely a challenge. I don’t think they were expecting me to be a threat. Maybe they knew Angel had nullified my life. Connor Reilly would have been easy pickings. Angel and Holtz’s blue-eyed boy wasn’t easy prey for anyone. The dragon seemed to be the smartest of the bunch. It tried to cut and run.
I raced after it, remembering now, feeling my own strength, how well I could jump. I caught the stirrups of the saddle and swung Legolas-like up into the saddle. The dragon tried to swing its head around to get me but the saddle was place so I was out of bite range. I clung to the creature.
Great, you idiot. Now what? The dragon answered my mental question. I was wrong. It wasn’t smart. It was very stupid. It was carrying me back towards L.A. Two to one, it was taking me to the fight there, right back to Angel. It was where I wanted to go. But would I be too late? When did the battle come to Angel? Immediately after he threw me out? If so, it was two hours later and I was probably going to be way too late to help him. Dad might be alive now but if he’d been fighting all this time, he’d be exhausted. Maybe he had already won. Maybe I was going to my death. Maybe nothing I did would matter. I had to believe it would or else I’d be lost.
That aside, it was damn cool to be flying by dragon back. One last question, how the hell do I get down?
CHAPTER TWO - Plainsong
(dedicated to Masquerade for her birthday)
"I think it's dark and it looks like rain" you said
"and the wind is blowing like it's the end of the
world" you said "and it's so cold it's like the
cold if you were dead" and then you smiled for
a second.
Plainsong - The Cure
My thighs were beginning to hurt. The saddle structure on the dragon’s neck was more for someone with much longer legs than me and I wasn’t used to straddling anything for this long. I was very glad Father had forced me to stand, squat and otherwise contort myself and hold the position for hours. Funny, I still thought of Holtz as my father and I guess he really had been for most of my life. That’s where Dad made a huge mistake with me. Like it or not, Holtz raised me and Angel should have accepted him as my adoptive father instead of villianizing him. That hurt me and I was too naive then to understand the depths of Angel’s pain. I got it now.
Still, thinking of Holtz now was a good thing. I needed to be the man he shaped me into. Connor Reilly couldn’t handle flying on dragon back into battle so I put him in a box. I hadn’t been entirely truthful with Angel when showed up at that coffee house. My past wasn’t like a dream. It was real and it was terrifying sometimes and I tried hard to compartmentalize it all. I had lied to him because I knew it was what Dad wanted to hear. He had sacrificed so much for me and I knew that, appreciated it. I should have told him better how I felt about that. Maybe I shouldn’t have lied because eventually I would have been caught in that lie. I was slowly going under ever since the fight with Sahjhan but I was too proud, too damned determined to do it on my own. Besides, Angel had cut me loose. He wanted me to have my normal life and I was trying to honor that. We both should have known that I could never have gone back to perfectly normal, totally sweet and dull Lawrence and Colleen Reilly. My old life was bound to find me and I couldn’t live with it if the horrors of my life killed them. They were innocents.
I took my hands off the reins and blew on them. My fingers were numb from the cold of being this high in the sky, going this fast, not to mention the blinding rain. The lights of L.A. twinkled ahead. I hadn’t ever realized just how big the city was. I mean the Reilly me knew how L.A. was a bunch of smaller towns all cobbled together into a metropolis but it hadn’t ever been real before now. How was I going to even find them in all of this? I had ideas where Dad and the others might be but how to find it when the city looked so different from up here? Maybe the dragon would home in on its own kind.
Then I remembered my first day here, how I knew without being told Angel was my father. I felt it. There was a bond there. I knew when he tracked me through L.A. those first days of his return. I had felt him watching me. Could I sense him now? I cleared my mind and tried to concentrate. Nothing. This was stupid. Who did I think I was? Spider-Man? Then there was a tickling in my chest. Guess I did have a spidey sense after all. I yanked on the reins making the dragon wheel about. The creature seemed to be drifting but once I got it on the trail, going towards what I was assuming, no praying, was my father, the dragon picked up speed.
As we dropped closer to the ground, I got my bearings. We had to be close now. I could hear the sounds of the battle. Soon enough I could smell it, the metallic tang of blood that coated the inside of my throat, in spite of the hard rain. That alone told me how much blood had been spilled. There were dead bodies everywhere, including another dragon looking like a downed plane.
I forced my dragon into a dive. I could see them all clearly now, well Angel at any rate. I didn’t see Wesley or Lorne. The ancient demon in Fred’s body was amazing to watch as she cut a bloody swath. What had Dad called her? Illyria? That didn’t matter. What did matter was that they were overwhelmed. “Oh Jaysus, there’s no winning this,” I whispered, letting little Catholic Connor Reilly peep out when I saw this enormous thing that looked like a three-faced Ent with brambles that it could be fired like porcupine quills. It was crawling from a crack between dimensions. I recognized what interdimensional travel looked like. I’ve torn my way through dimensions once but I had no idea how to close something like this. I wish I did. For once, I longed for magic to catch that thing mid-manifestation and tear it in two. Even on Quor-Toth, I hadn’t seen anything as horrific as this thing that seemed to be part plant and part animal, each of its faces a different animal. I think I knew where they came up with Wolf, Ram and Hart.
I spotted Dad, sword and shield in hand. He looked so tired, so close to dropping and yet he went on. Angel had to know he was going to die here but he didn’t care. He had told me as much. So long as I escaped, he would live on. Oh, he was gonna be pissed to see me. A large creature with knobby horns that could have walked off the set of The Lord of the Rings was bearing down on Angel’s back. Aragorn was about to get whacked by an orc. Oh, great, there comes Reilly again. Who made me a Rings geek? If Angel was Aragorn, who was I? Anyone but Frodo. I guess I’m Legalos. I was built like and elf and boy did that ever suck.
Angel was going to get cut down right before my eyes because he didn’t see the orc. He was too busy slaying whatever the hell it was he was hacking to bits. He couldn’t hear me screaming over the melee. I dug my heels into the dragon and it dived until we were skimming the roadway. I beheaded the orc in one smooth swing of my sword. Angel felt the dragon coming up behind him. He whirled with that sword and nearly tagged me. His eyes opened wide as I forced the dragon into a climb. I gave him a little wave and a smirk.
The dragon tried to climb higher. It obviously didn’t like being hemmed in by the buildings. I looked to see what else I could do with the dragon before dismounting and killing it. The blond vampire was just ahead, flagging me down. He jumped aside and pointed. I couldn’t tell what he was trying to convey so I turned the dragon around for a better look. The vampire was pulling something out from under a corpse pile. Oh hell, it was Gunn. Either he had crawled under the pile of bodies or had been hidden there. He looked dead himself. The blond picked him up and held him overhead.
I understood what he wanted. I forced the dragon down lower and the vampire tossed Gunn to me. It was like catching a nearly two hundred pound sack of eels. Gunn was so slick with blood I nearly dropped him. Cradling him to me, I yanked hard on the reins and the dragon climbed. I turned it away from the fighting and sent it winging along the rooftops looking for a medical helipad. Thank God, Reilly was an action movie geek so I knew what I was looking for.
Of course, the hospital crew were hardly expecting a dragon to land on their roof. The security guard just stood there, gun out, shaking too hard to shoot. I lowered Gunn to ground in a heap. It was then I saw one of his legs looked chewed to the bone and he had tied his belt over his thigh like a tourniquet. A young woman in blue scrubs ran out to get him, her eyes never leaving the dragon. I made it take off again, screaming down at them, “His name is Charles Gunn!”
Would anyone still be alive when I got back? Dad was...well, as alive as he ever was. I could still feel him. I swooped along the city blocks on my borrowed wings. Didn’t this monster ever tire? The dragon whipped along taking us precariously close to Three-Face, obviously seeing it as an ally. That’s when the brambly three-faced Ent provided it was not just scary ugly, it was smart. It realized the dragon was under the enemy’s control and those huge thorns came flying our way. I tried to make the dragon wheel away. All I succeeded in doing was get its bulk between me and a thorn. The dragon died with a scream that threatened to make my ears bleed. It folded up and spun in out of control. Oh, shit!
I tried to time my leap from the creature’s back. I had to jump off before I was really ready to because it had flipped over and would have crushed me. I fell about four stories, twisting mid-air. I had made jumps like this before but I knew it was going to hurt because the grounds was nothing but hunks of building, torn up road and corpses. I wasn’t wrong. It felt like my head had torn off with the impact and I went sprawling, landing in a pile of gore. Choking on it, I felt hands on me. I nearly gutted the person hauling me up then realized it was Angel.
“What are you doing here? I told you to go,” he snapped and thrust his sword over my head, killing the thing coming up behind me.
“Did you miss my really cool arrival on dragon-back?” Sometimes I think Dad’s brain has been dead a little too long.
His lips skinned back off those terrible fangs of his. “They came after you.”
“They knew I’m your son. I led the demons away from the Reillys.” I twisted to the side and speared another incoming demon with my sworwwd. “Do we have a plan?”
“Yeah, don’t die,” Angel said, his voice laced with dark humor.
“Got it.”
It didn’t take long before Dad and I were back to back trying to keep each other from getting pulled under. I saw the blond vampire, what the hell was his name? Spike? Fighting back to back with Illyria. There were still too many of the demons. We would go down under the sheer numbers of them. Dad was moving like I had never seen him do before, faster, more acrobatic. Even I couldn’t keep up, though I tried.
In the middle of this horror, my mind flipped back to the first time I had fought back to back with him in that club. How ironic was it he was fighting to save Justine? I had told myself at the time I had fought with him just to learn his style so I could kill him more easily but deep down I had enjoyed it. Holtz had seen us later in that alleyway while we played and even he didn’t believe me that it was all just so I could best Angel later. It had hurt. I wasn’t supposed to like being with Angel but even back then a part of me did. The connection tugged at me. When we fought, I felt like I had known him all my life.
I felt it now, which made dying worse. I was on the threshold of finally understanding myself, understanding him and I would die before it happened. My arm was beginning to hurt as I hacked through tissue and bone. I could go on for a lot longer but in the end it wouldn’t matter. Angel was beginning to slow. We were all bleeding. Spike seemed ready to drop, but Illyria was still kicking ass like nothing I had ever seen. Swords kept shattering over her. Right now, I would have liked that ability, bleeding as I was from a couple dozen shallow slashes. The rain was threatening to drown us. My clothing was matted to me.
“Angel, that is one of the elder-demons.” Illyria pointed at Three-Face. “We must slay it.”
“Does that stop the others?” Spike panted, his shoulders drooping.
“Does it matter?” Angel replied, shaking out his arms.
“Shit. I thought that Drogyn wanker said all the old ones were locked away,” Spike groaned and I had no idea what in the hell he was talking about.
“That’s right, you missed Mayor Wilkins. It’s wishful thinking.” Angel turned to Illyria. “Illyria, do you know how to defeat it?”
“That one can be defeated by turning its own power against it but I do not know how that is accomplished,” Illyria said, looking furious with herself.
I barely got my sword up to block as some nameless demon tried to cut me down. “Dad, your new-found speed, you got that after you took blood from that guy who was tossing us around like dolls. What did he say?”
Angel’s ridged brow furrowed worse. “He was connected to the Wolf, Ram and Hart.”
“You got to drink super-powered blood and you didn’t think to share,” Spike said. “If we don’t all die, I’m killing you.”
“You may get your wish, Spike. If I contain the power, it has to be drained out somehow,” Dad said grimly, nodding at Three-Face. “Forget the minions. Let’s take the fight to the big guy.”
Angel and Illyria took point with me and Spike moving in their wake. The demons didn’t put up as much of a fight as one might expect but only because they realized there was just as much fun to have if they headed into the city after easier prey. I was so thankful I got my parents and sister out of here. I might die here tonight but at least they’d be safe...until the demons spread. Maybe the Slayers would show up and take care of them. We could use Faith right about now.
The elder demon had fully manifested and it was taller than the damn Hyperion. For a ludicrous moment I thought it should look like the Sta-Puff Marshmallow Man. Okay, if I live, I’m finding the person who made my new memories and I was kicking his ass for making me a geek. We slaughtered our way to the thing’s...could you call those things feet? We all just stared for a moment.
I craned my neck up. “Um, Dad, how the hell do we poison this thing?”
“I have no idea. Illyria?” Angel looked at the demoness.
“I do not know.”
“We’d better bloody well think of something fast,” Spike said. “I think it sees us.”
“Look at the place where the three heads join,” I said. “It’s all armored heavy there like it’s protecting something.”
“We need to get higher up, get a clearer view,” Angel said and leapt up. He caught the window sills of the Hyperion, scaling it fast.
“Just great. Let’s get closer to the three giant mouths,” Spike groaned but he followed Dad up.
Illyria and I did as well. My clothing was starting to raise blisters on my flesh because it was so soaked through with rain and sticking to me. Just great. I most assuredly didn’t want to chuck my pants and fight in my tighty-whiteys but if my clothing got more constrictive I might not have a choice. If I die wearing only my underpants, I sure as hell hope no one finds my body. My thighs were burning by the time I got to the top.
The elder-demon knew we were there. Luckily it was slow and its projectile thorns so big we could easily dodge the first barrage. I saw what I was hoping to find. Inside that circle of bone-plated armor or whatever the hell it was, was a pulsating purplish thing. It was the only soft looking part of the creature. I pointed.
“I see it, Connor.” Angel shook his head. “It had best be the Achilles heel.”
“Guess that means Blue, me, and the kid have to distract the heads and arms while you do your thing,” Spike said. “I call the wolf.”
He leapt at the wolfish head with a loud, almost joyful shout. I figured if he had to go out, he wanted it to be in a blaze of glory. Not a bad idea really. Before I could make my jump at the elder-demon, Angel snagged me, crushing me to his chest.
“Just remember I love you,” he whispered then tossed me at the monster.
Great, I got the hart with its thrashing antlers. Dad and Illyria had made their attacks. I couldn’t watch them. The hart head was snapping at me with very un-deer-like teeth. I used the horns like a gymnastic bar and hurtled myself feet first at it. I felt teeth crack under my strong kick. The elder-demon screamed and snarled at me in a language I didn’t stand a prayer of understanding. I swung back on those antlers and on the return swing I buried my sword in its eye. My arm was swallowed up to the shoulder. As I tried to fight my way back out of the jelly gushing out of the destroyed orb, I saw Angel was on his knees above the pulsating brain-thing. He slit his own throat, letting the supernaturally powered blood drip into the thing.
The elder-demon bellowed and my breath caught. This wouldn’t kill my father. It couldn’t, could it? It wasn’t like he was cutting deep enough to sever his own head. He’d survive it, right? Not if the elder-demon got a hold of him. A brambly arm-like thing raised up aiming to grab Angel. I swung my blade in a fury, taking several blows to whack the hand off. The elder-demon started shuddering and I was hoping the poison was taking effect.
Something grabbed me. Damn, I forgot this thing had several other hands. I thought it was going to hurl me to the ground but it must have seen me fall from the dragon’s back and realized that wouldn’t stop me. Before I could twist free, the thing impaled me like a butterfly on a pin on one of its antlers. The pain was blinding but even as the hand move past me reaching for Angel, I snared it with my legs. Brambly things penetrated my flesh, tearing it, but I couldn’t let go now. I could see the antler shoving out of my chest just under my collar bone. That meant it missed my spine and heart. It felt like a bus had parked on my chest. Blood bubbled out of my mouth. The lung, I was bleeding into my lungs and if I let go now, it would reach Dad and stop him.
I couldn’t see Spike but Illyria was tearing off more of the arms from this thing. Was Dad’s neck already starting to heal? I thought maybe it was. The elder-demon shuddered harder now making the antler twist inside me. I bit my lips trying not to scream. If Angel knew I was hurt, he’d stop what he was doing. I couldn’t allow that. He had to finish this thing off. I was secondary to that. Something in my leg tore and the arm lurched forward. I squeezed my legs together harder, stopping the forward momentum. The pain nearly rendered me unconscious.
I stabbed upward with my sword, feeling my body slipping as the antler sliced upward in my flesh. Blood was pouring out my nose now. I was drowning in it but my sword caught the thing’s neck. Ichor fountained down on me. Suddenly we were falling like a chainsawed redwood. We crashed into the Hyperion. I was tossed free as the dying demon hit ground. I heard Angel calling our names. Spike and Illyria answered him. I tried but the only sound was a gurgle.
“Connor?” Angel screamed. “Where are you?”
I tried to get up and somehow managed it. My body fought to heal itself but I didn’t know if it could. I had never been damaged this badly before. This felt very much like the end. I felt hands on me but I could barely see. Everything was fuzzing out. “Dad?” I managed to get out around the blood.
“Oh, God! You hang on, Connor. Don’t you dare die on me, damn it,” Angel was saying. I was off my feet before I knew what was happening, cradled in his arms. “You’re going to be fine.”
“This way, Angel.” I heard Spike calling.
Angel ran with me and I tried to hold onto consciousness. The sounds of fighting died away. Suddenly I was being slid inside a car. Angel got in beside me, dragging me back against his chest. “Can you hot wire this thing, Spike?”
“Almost there.”
I heard the engine roar to life and we sped off. Were there any roads open? What had happened to the demon hoards?
“You don’t die, Connor. I’m not going to let you,” Angel was babbling now, stroking my hair.
The pain was receding as a numbness spread through me. I caught his hand. “Reillys...” I whispered.
“Shush, don’t talk,” he said.
“Luxor...Vegas...only call them...when I’m dead,” I said, I think. I wasn’t sure if I was making any sense. I didn’t want Angel to scare my parents if I was going to recover. Something warm hit my face, like rain. Angel was crying all over me, his face back to being human.
“Illyria, we could use that selective time altering you do,” he snapped.
I didn’t know if she was obeying or if she even could. “Love you, Dad,” I rasped out then my eyes widened as I thought I saw someone joining us in the back seat. “Oh, mom. You’re here.” I heard Angel sob and Mother smiled then the darkness came.
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}