The clash of metal on metal rang around the pastel yellow walls. Wesley felt the muscles of his face stretch to a shape not experienced in all too long a time as he blocked, parried and slashed, his breath already coming in quick, harsh gulps that he tried to control, exertion no longer a familiar feeling and giddiness making his head spin. But the moves still came; instinctive, smooth, skilled. With practise... with practise, maybe he could bring back into them the strength and balance that illness and lassitude had robbed.
He blanched, fluffed a block, and felt a hot slice along his wrist as he flinched back; fell against the pool table and desperately tried to throw an arm out save himself as he felt it start to fold under his weight--
Costas caught his elbow, deftly avoiding the sword in his hand and the line of red seeping through his sleeve. Wesley blinked up at the detective, and felt his expression returning to the delirious grin of moments before entirely of its own accord. "That was bracing!" he exclaimed, a giddy laugh bubbling just under the words.
"That was..." The detective shook his head, speechless. After several seconds, he looked down at the cut and his practicality kicked back in. "Sorry. I thought you'd block. You seemed..." He shook his head again. "I didn't know you'd be good at this."
"Not good." Wesley set his balance to rights and extricated his arm, put the sword down on the pool table, and observed critically the dilemma of how he was to examine, clean and dress the small wound. He added with breathless geniality, "Just trained. I very much imagine you'd laugh if you could have seen how long it took for my tutors to drum it all into me."
Costas, tossing his own sword to the floor with a carelessness Wesley observed with disapproval and made a note to address at a more appropriate moment, took his arm and held it fast this time as he stripped the sleeve back up to the elbow and cursed at the mess of blood that greeted him.
"I don't think it's bad." Wesley eyed it critically. He suspected he'd be feeling less inclined to such dispassion if he hadn't already dosed himself rather heavily with painkillers for his shoulder, which had been acting up earlier that morning. "Messy, bloody, yes - but I don't think it's deep. I'll slap a bandage over it, and we'll continue."
"I'd like to see you try," Costas said, with an assessing sweep over the light shirt-sleeves apparel in which Wesley felt unreasonably exposed, knowing it emphasised his one-armed status. "I'll go get some water."
There was already a first aid kit lying in anticipation in the corner of the games room with the spare weapons. While Costas was out of the room, Wesley tugged it up onto the surface of the pool table, and took out the things they'd need, lining them up and trying not to drip on them.
They had appropriated the games room for training, a logical choice - despite Costas' vehement arguments against it - for its cushioned linoleum floor which would wipe easily clean and take more wear than any carpeting. Its contents - table football, a couple of battered arcade machines and the centerpiece of the pool table - had been shoved aside against one wall, leaving a large open space that was adequate, if not ideal. The swords themselves had been purchased the previous week after much debate about the weapons they currently had versus to the kinds of weapons they would need if they wanted to stand any chance against a truly large and fierce demon such as whatever had recently taken to chewing up the inhabitants of LA.
Costas returned with the water and some towels, which he placed over the pool table after minutely examining for damage the area where Wesley had dumped the sword. Wesley privately opined that he'd never seen the man quite so fussy.
"What's this?" the detective asked, when he'd cleaned away the blood that masked the cut, turning Wesley's wrist around to gaze at the puncture scars on its outside.
"A vampire." Wesley went cold at the sight of Penn's marks.
Costas' gaze went to his neck, and clouded with vague puzzlement when he found nothing there.
"It was playing," Wesley elaborated.
"Oh."
It was with some relief that he watched Costas drop the issue and return to carefully dabbing antiseptic along the length of the cut, wrapping white bandaging to hide both it and the scars from view.
"Thank you." He bent his fingers back, trying to pull his cuff back down over it, not quite able to do so, and awkwardly laughed and thanked again when Costas did it for him. He flexed his wrist a few times, feeling a twinge but nothing too restrictive of movement, reached down and picked up the sword from the towels on the pool table, made a few experimental passes. "Are you ready for another round?" he asked, striking a challenging posture he suspected to look fairly ridiculous, but was fast getting out of the habit of caring.
"Are you sure?" Costas had retrieved his own sword and was wiping Wesley's blood onto the towels. "I've already cut you once. I'm not good enough at this to judge when I need to pull back."
"But I should be good enough to eradicate that concern." He swished the weapon through air a few more times, irritably. His arm felt weak. The cut didn't help. He was still a little breathless. "You're right, though. I'm too out of practise. Next time, it might not be me who gets injured, and you we need in good shape right now. Very well - for the moment let's practise some more of the basic manoeuvres. No more sparring for a few days."
"All right." Costas sounded relieved, and Wesley watched critically as the detective massaged the small of his back, kneading with his fist.
"You should have told me you were having back pains."
"I'm not - it's just - it aches. It's nothing."
"Nonetheless, it's important that I know." He swung the sword around in a balanced arc, and Costas followed his movements. Wesley paused to correct where his left arm ought to be and speculate with some annoyance that perhaps they needed to find a book to show everything correctly.
"Maybe later," the detective said. "Let's try manage for the moment with what we have."
"I suppose." He frowned, and demonstrated an elaborate block and parry. It was difficult to adjust the careful balance of swordplay to the absence of the left arm as counter-weight, but he was enough used to making that adjustment in every small action he took by now that it was not proving so great a problem as he'd thought it might. Certainly nothing he couldn't overcome... but that way led to the kind of distracting thoughts that had almost got him skewered before. "I wouldn't want to ask you to fight if you weren't in reasonable condition," he picked up. "I'm hardly aiming to get you killed. So if there's anything... then I do wish you'd tell me about it."
And there was quite a lot of ammunition there, should Costas choose to take it up, about the things he himself tended to neglect to mention. But the detective merely shrugged the issue aside with a casual lack of concern in which Wesley had no faith whatsoever.
"In any case," he said, taking the sword through another manoeuvre and frowning crossly at Costas' smirk when he lost his balance and wavered a little in the middle and the detective faithfully copied him. He repeated the action more smoothly and continued, "The better I can train you, the less the danger... are you quite finished?"
"Sorry. That one wasn't deliberate," Costas said, righting his balance with a slightly embarrassed grin.
Wesley sighed and shook his head, and was about to begin another demonstration when he heard a faint noise that sounded distinctly like the door opening downstairs.
He and Costas exchanged glances.
"Shit. It must be Irene."
Wesley rolled his eyes. Costas was frantically surveying the mess of the games room, the swords in their hands, the assorted weaponry in the corner - his eyes finally zeroing in on the blood on Wesley's shirt. "Shit," he said again. He snatched the sword from Wesley's hand and threw it together with his own down the narrow gap between the wall and the side of the pool table. He tossed the heap of towels over the weapons on the floor, then cursed again and rearranged them so none of the bloodstains were visible. He looked back at Wesley. "What are you doing just standing there? Put something the hell on over that shirt before she sees the blood."
"Jack, this is really..."
"Just shut up and do it, okay? I do not want Irene to know about this shit. I don't want her worrying." He caught up Wesley's sweater from where it hung off the top of a one-armed-bandit and flung it.
Wesley fielded the garment and heaved a sigh as he slung it over his head, shoved his arm through, belatedly realised it was the pinned sleeve and backed off to whisk it around the right way. He was tugging the sweater the rest of the way into place when Costas impatiently yanked it down his spine with enough force to almost bend him over backwards and pull him off his feet. "Do you mind--?" he spluttered.
Irene's voice yelled up the stairs; he didn't quite catch the words. Costas still had a hand twisted in the fabric at his back and used it to tug him out of the games room. The detective shut the door behind them and waved his protests into silence.
"Up here, Irene," he said, starting towards the stairs. Wesley huffily followed.
She was coming up to them, but Costas barrelled his way down, forcing her to back off in a not-terribly-gentlemanly fashion, and herded her into the kitchen in reverse. And if her suspicions were not roused by that, Wesley reflected, then she was a good deal less sharp than he was almost certain she was.
"Coffee?" Costas breezed, going straight to the counter.
"Do you have anything else? I'm trying to cut down on caffeine."
Costas pointed like an accusation. "He drinks tea."
"All right." Irene looked momentarily amused, but it was quickly subsumed. She was looking between them in a fashion Wesley found unsettling, analytical and puzzled and faintly shocked. "Jack? Is there... something you have to tell me?" she asked with a rather gallant effort towards light humour.
Costas frowned at her and discovered the nature of the way she was examining himself and Wesley, their rumpled state, and the general sweatiness they were exuding after their weapons practise. "Oh, Jesus, no," the detective blasphemed heartily. "For fuck's sake, Irene--"
The language turned her expression frosty.
"You of all people know I'm not gay," he said, sticking to his guns with characteristic belligerence.
"We're not sleeping together," Wesley confirmed, feeling his face redden, although he was... a little amused, if just as much put out, by the fervency of Costas' denial. "Or... anything else, I assure you."
Irene, recovering from her shock as she carefully examined their denials, pressed her lips together and the side of her mouth twitched. Wesley watched her efforts to still it, which turned out to be in vain. A giggle escaped that was far too girlish for her staid exterior. She patted Wesley's arm with her hand, words obviously failing as she shook her head. Costas glared at her. She managed to control herself and gasped for breath. "I'm sorry. It's just - I really thought - for a moment there--"
"Very funny, Irene," Costas said sourly.
"Why are you all sweaty?" she demanded, all mirth gone.
The two of them appeared to enter some form of old-husband-and-wife staring contest that shut out the rest of the world, and Wesley, feeling intensely awkward, sidled around the detective to finish making the tea and coffee while they so occupied themselves.
After a considerable amount of silent glowering, Costas broke first, as had surely been inevitable from the start. "Wesley-was-giving-me-fencing-lessons," he mumbled, running the words together like a mischievous four-year-old.
Irene blinked. Wesley unhappily cleared his throat and placed a cup of tea in her hand. He nudged a coffee across the counter to Costas.
"Wesley gives fencing lessons?"
"Not as a rule," Wesley said. He heard himself, winced, and made an effort not to sound quite so much like Costas just had. "It's... it used to be a hobby, but I hadn't tried it since... We bought the equipment, thought we'd try to pick it up again together."
"Oh." She looked like her emotions were riding a seesaw from amusement to anger. "You don't get enough of the threat of death or serious injury every day at work? You have to bring it into your spare time as well?"
Costas definitely winced. Wesley rubbed his hand over his forehead in an attempt to hide his face.
"For Christ's sake, Irene, it's just a hobby!" Costas exploded.
Wesley, who had seen them row before, edged out of the way, made it around the breakfast bar, and felt somewhat happier to have three feet of polished wood between himself and the two of them.
"It's not dangerous..." Wesley hesitated. "Well, a couple of cuts and bruises, inevitably; accidents do happen, but..."
"Shut up." Her tea slammed down on the counter, slopping over the sides of the mug.
Only a very brave man or a very great fool would challenge that glare. He knew he was not the former, and hoped he was not the latter. "Yes. All right."
"It's not," Costas insisted roughly. "Besides, what business is it of yours anyway? I think you pretty much signed away any part you had in my life decisions since you fucked your boss in the back of my car."
Wesley blinked, and looked at Irene, anticipating a denial.
And Irene deflated. "I thought we had an agreement," she said, waspish. "You weren't going to throw that at me any more."
Costas deflated equally. "Yeah. Damn, I'm sorry. I didn't... Hell." He reached over and pulled her into a loose, awkward hug. "We're cool. You know that. I didn't mean to bring up all that old stuff."
"I know." She slithered out of his grip, looking as though the proximity was not doing any great wonders for her olfactory senses. "I didn't intend to come here to shout at you, either. I just came to see how you are. Of course it's your business if you want to take up... fencing." She eyed Wesley in a fashion that suggested she hadn't completely discounted the original theory either. "I just do worry, that's all."
"You don't need to."
Costas lied very well, Wesley noted for future reference.
"Don't be ridiculous," Irene said. "You risk your life every day."
"Guess so," the detective allowed.
"I like knowing you're still around."
Wesley was immensely touched by this admission, which Costas seemed to dismiss with a grunt, and he wished himself elsewhere, feeling very much that he ought not be a part of this exchange. But the conversation chose to turn next to Costas' Aunt Susie with her bad knee and the baseball scores for a game the previous night that Costas griped he had missed because of Wesley, and it was with some relief that he allowed himself to tune out the small talk.
Leaving them absorbed, he went back upstairs, where he pulled off the sweater that was slowly roasting him. He made efforts to tidy the mess made in Costas' haste to keep Irene in the dark about the training, and took care of the swords properly as the detective refused to believe they needed ("But you hit things with it. That's the goddamn point, right? So it's not exactly a delicate instrument.").
He was making more practise strokes, watching his form reluctantly but intently in a full-length mirror, when he heard the sound of the front door again. Shortly after, he heard Costas come back up the stairs and stomp into the room.
"Everything all right?" Wesley asked, distractedly.
"No," Costas said. "My wife's fucking scary."
The maps and papers had grown far too voluminous for either Wesley's work desk or the larger kitchen table. They now covered the floor of Costas' little-used dining room. In the centre of it all, the Los Angeles city map was spread out to the full, many areas highlighted. Wesley crouched in the midst on hand and knees, tracing patterns over the expanse, squinting through his glasses at the smaller print.
"The earliest attacks all seem to be concentrated around this area here," he said, shifting to indicate the extent of the chosen area, trying not to tear through the paper, and blinking as the pattern finally registered, dates and times clicking into place at last in a design made logical by geography. "We missed it before because many of the bodies were not discovered, of course, until much later - especially those where there was barely enough left to precisely call a body."
Costas grunted, but his eyes betrayed interest. Wesley shuffled back across the map to allow him to venture in close and examine for himself: little crosses in fluorescent orange marker, each one of them representative of a gnawed corpse. Most human, a few larger domestic animals.
"The pattern widens afterwards," Wesley continued. "But at the same time, there seems to be more connections. The pattern splits off, deaths becoming concentrated in a number of diverse areas." He looked up into Costas' grim gaze, and said soberly, "I very much suspect we may be dealing not with one demon here, but several."
He caught up a bright yellow marker and scooted back across the map, causing the detective to leap out of the way in his enthusiasm. "Here," he said, biting the lid from the pen and spitting it across the room out of the way, trailing the pen to mark out a more or less circular zone in its wake, "is one distinct area. You see?"
"Uh-huh. The analysts aren't stupid. They got as far as identifying that the killings could be separated into a bunch of different geographical groups."
"How many?" Wesley asked with interest.
"About four." Costas knelt down and ran his fingers over the map, indicating boundaries with a hesitancy symptomatic of his aversion to paperwork.
"Ah." Wesley nodded, feeling a little smug that he did, after all, have something to add. "Not the case. You see, this large area you indicate here? I suspect there may be two creatures in this area. There is some overlap, it's true. But this victim here--" he indicated "--was the one found all but untouched, not chewed up like the others. A transgression occurred - one demon crossed the boundary of another's territory. I would hypothesize that it was probably chased away before it could make any use of the prey it had killed."
He pointed elsewhere; a blue fluorescent cross. "This is where we found those traces of demonic substance last week. It was injured."
"Killed?" Costas suggested hopefully.
"No, I don't think so. There's an attack well within the bounds of what I'd deduce to be its territory a few days later. That's been the only one since, though. It may be that it was injured badly enough to be forced to survive on smaller prey, like birds and rodents."
"Well, I suppose that's something." Costas eyed the map, tracing the areas with his gaze as Wesley carefully defined several more vaguely circular territories. "It shouldn't be as difficult to track and kill... how many of these things did you figure out there were?"
"Somewhere between five and seven. This area here could be two territories, but it could also be one creature stronger and more wide ranging in its hunting than the others. It's possible this area here is a smaller territory, or one of the demons could have made a foray outside its main hunting ground and then returned. It may be another we don't have to worry about too much. The last killing there was over a week ago. It may have died."
"Died?"
"Hit by a car? Another fight with one of its fellows? Or - do you remember the report of the citizen who said he shot at a wolf with a hand gun?"
Costas nodded and almost grinned. "So they can be harmed, at least." He patted the holster at his hip. "So - what, then? We set out and do some tracking? If we start with the injured one, that should give us an easy target first-off. And nab a specimen so you can work out what these things are and what their weaknesses might be before we have to go up against a healthy one."
"A commendable plan of action." Wesley slapped his hand down sharply on the paper in illustration. "But I believe I already know what they are."
"You do?"
"A theory, in any case. You see, I searched for any reports of other strange activities right before the time of the earliest attacks. Did you know that about a dozen women disappeared from their homes at around that very same time? A number of them weren't reported until days later, but their last reported sightings by friends - or rather acquaintances, since all of these women seem to be suspiciously lacking in family or close friends... well, that day could possibly have been the catalyst, and these events linked."
Costas was staring down at a missing persons report uppermost on a pile of other documentation and looking very much as though he had significantly little desire to find out precisely how these events were linked. "And this helps us find out what they are exactly how?"
"It helps because they were a part of the trigger. If I can figure out the trigger, I can figure out the demon. And I think I know what it was that happened. A number of women of... loose character, it seems, reading between the lines of the reports of those listed missing... suddenly disappearing... I think we have on our hands the spawning of a Haxil demon."
"Haxil demon," Costas repeated dryly. Then, going rather pale, "Spawning?"
"A Haxil demon reproduces by implanting its spawn in human women. Don't wince quite so, Jack, it uses a human proxy to do so and I've no doubt all these women were quite willing... at the time. The wretched souls did not have any idea what they were getting themselves into." He flinched from that thought himself. "Our problem would therefore logically follow as being the progeny of that mating."
"This is being done by baby demons?" Costas asked in appalled disbelief.
"According to my books, the Haxil young are birthed insanely ravenous. In the first few days of their life, they will double their body weight many, many times over. After the initial hours of feeding frenzy, we're already looking at a creature half the size again of a large wolf. It fits with all the information we have."
"Hell. I really wouldn't want to meet the daddy."
"I very much imagine that's true." He rose to his feet, sparking pins and needles in his legs, and bent aching knees to cross the room to retrieve a book abandoned on a chair. He presented the picture depicted on the opened spread of pages for Costas' perusal.
"Hell." For several long moments, the detective just stared. Wesley reflected that the image of a person added for scale would have given the whole thing an effect rather daunting enough even without the added flourish of what the demon was portrayed doing to the figure. "I don't like the way the word 'impervious' seems to keep cropping up in this," Costas said finally.
"Don't worry," Wesley breezed, hoping his dismissal to be justified. "That's just the parent. Given that I haven't heard any reports of a twenty foot tall invulnerable demon wrecking the city lately, I would imagine it to have returned to some sort of dormant state, probably hiding out underground. These things aren't exactly easy to lose among the human world. It probably won't emerge again from its slumber for another century or two. And its spawn, I do believe, are rather more vulnerable to attack in their youth. The first millennia of life, give or take a century."
Costas gave a low, off-key whistle and shook his head. "How old does it have to be before its daddy gives it the key to the car?"
"It's hardly a joking matter. Haxil spawn at this stage are likely deadly, vicious, and unpredictable, running entirely on newborn instinct. There's nothing to hold them back from a full-fledged massacre - they haven't the intelligence yet to know that they would be hunted down and destroyed should they shout out their presence to the authorities. We have to find them all and stop them before anything on such a scale can be allowed to happen. What they've already done is... appalling." Wesley suppressed a small shudder.
Costas was rolling his eyes, but only said, "Right. So we stop them. You got any great plans as to just how we stop them, sensei?"
"I did not pencil in my plans for this evening as 'drive around every lousy abandoned property in goddamned Reseda," Costas grumbled, coaxing the Volvo around another sharp corner of the rundown industrial area.
Wesley craned his head out of the open window, watching their surroundings carefully as they drove by. Costas' words took a few moments to register and he pulled his head back in briefly. "This is the epicentre, so to speak," he said, trying to keep one eye on his search. "And so long as we have no more accurate leads, this is probably the best place to start. It's a perfectly logical search pattern."
"I don't even know what you're looking for."
"Possibilities," Wesley threw back airily as he resumed his position hanging out of the window. It unfortunately coincided with the passage of a car travelling in the opposite direction. As he flinched back, jarring the seat in its fixings, he heard Costas mutter under his breath. Something about 'losing the other one'.
"Thank you for your contribution, detective," he said acidly as he turned his back on the man and tried again.
The play of the air moving over his face was oddly relaxing. He felt it muss his hair, a transgression that might have irritated had he not been so focused upon the task at hand. Scenery slid past him as they slowly proceeded; flat concrete expanses and blocky structures with all the charm of fifty-foot high shoeboxes; more complex creations of piping and geometry which nonetheless made him think of something erected on Blue Peter from straws and egg cartons.
"Stop," he said to Costas.
The car drew obediently to a halt. The detective said nothing, but Wesley could see the questions in his face.
"I thought I saw something. I'd like to take a closer look."
Costas frowned out at the empty industrial sprawl, no other human figure anywhere in sight. Wesley knew what he was feeling, that ominous shiver of fear. It might be weeks before anyone found their bodies out here, too.
"I'll bring an axe," the detective said.
"I think that would be an excessively fine idea."
Wesley climbed out of the passenger seat, and the slam of the door behind him seemed to echo around the empty air, surely alerting anything for miles around to their presence. He had no doubt there were demons in this place, somewhere. It was ideal ground for them. But would there be any clues about the demons they were looking for?
He stepped out into the crumbling road, heading for the debris of concrete chunks, masonry and twisted fragments of metal that clustered against the tattered wire fencing on the left. Gravel fragments crunched under his shoes and scattered away from his toes when he drew to a halt. The fence loomed over him, seven feet high, diamond-shaped mesh stretched between posts maybe ten feet apart.
The tears in the mesh were small, the largest only about a foot in diameter, wire curled and twisted outwards at the edges. Costas walked past him and, after cautiously testing its ability to hold his weight, tossed the axe over the other side and used the holes as hand and foot holds to swing himself up and over. Wesley grimaced and then determinedly reached up. He grasped and climbed in awkward, jerking motions, almost falling over the top and down the other side. Wordlessly, Costas caught him and set his balance right before retrieveing the axe.
"Come along," Wesley said, in a tone that aimed for brisk but came out hollow, and led the way back, following along the line of the fence. He heard Costas' steps slow a little and the click and hiss as the detective lit up a cigarette.
"Yes, why don't you advertise precisely where we are?" he said as Costas came to a halt beside him and the smoke assaulted his nasal passages.
Costas glanced at the cigarette as though it had committed the infraction of its own accord and didn't stub it out. His eyes returned quickly to front, though. His booted foot toed the carcass before them over onto its back.
"Is that--?"
"I do believe it is." Wesley knelt down. There was little left of the cat other than bone and chunks of fur, but teeth had scraped marks into the larger bones. He judged their width measured against his fingers. "The jaw seems approximately the right shape and size." The carcass hadn't been there long. A day; two at most. A shiver ran down his spine as he straightened up. There had still been activity in this area on his map. He'd known it when he brought them down here.
He stared around. Lingered on the distant buildings across the concrete expanse. In one of those structures, one of their killers might be waiting, and possibly worse things too.
"Wes," Costas said sharply, tossing the cigarette away with a jerk of his fingers.
Wesley turned. The detective reached out and grabbed him roughly, stopping him taking that extra step. His protest dried in his throat as he caught sight of what Costas had been trying to indicate - the thin dust layering over the cracked tarmac and the prints in it, faint but forming a distinct trail. Five pad impressions and four small scratches, stretched in a trail of opposites off from the corpse and, it looked like, over towards the nearest of the buildings.
His breath catching, Wesley bent to look closer and saw dark smudges, blood traces, on the nearer impressions. He looked back up at Costas, aware his mouth gaped open unattractively. "I think we have our demon."
Costas nodded and his fingers unconsciously tightened upon his axe. He turned toward the building, shielding his eyes, assessing. "We're going in?"
Wesley's mouth was dry. "Yes."
The day was just starting to fade. Maybe an hour or two of light left, Wesley judged as they trudged across the concrete to the industrial plant. Despite the fact their hunting was often done in the night-time hours, he found himself also thinking they were cutting things rather fine; that this would not be a good place to be caught after darkness fell.
Costas' knuckles were white around his axe. Wesley carried nothing with him except for the clothing on his back.
They followed the footprints as far as the building's unhelpfully blank wall, then around, losing them occasionally where they backed and re-tracked, and where there was less dust cover on tarmac clearly far more regularly used, a trail in itself. It took them around the perimeter of the building, and where they were almost at the point that progressing further would entail completing a near circle, they found the entrance.
They could hardly mistake it. A tear four feet high and maybe seven wide had been torn through the fabric of the wall. Visible claw gouges scored the edges. Wesley could not resist reaching out and touching his fingers to them in amazement.
Costas blasphemed with predictable force and length, and looked at the axe in his hands with disillusionment.
"There might not be anything here anymore," Wesley rasped under his breath, wishing he could exorcise the nervousness from his voice. "I very much suspect this was where it began. I don't think any of our creatures could do this alone, however strong. I should imagine this was where they collectively gouged their way out, the night the very first of those people died."
"I hope you're right," Costas retorted hoarsely back. After a second he added, "About the strength, I mean. I guess I should be able to handle one of these things. I'm not... because that's what we came here to do, after all."
"It is." Wesley slowly stepped across the threshold into the darkness.
"Here." Costas handed over a flashlight pulled from the interior of his bulky coat.
Its hollow click awakened a thin beam of light so fragile Wesley suffered a moment from the delusion that the force of the dark pressing in from all around might compress it down to nothing.
He tried very hard to stop the beam from shaking quite so much as he advanced through the darkness, Costas walking a half-step behind at his side. To their left was a tangle of pipework, masses of pipes of varying sizes, some of them in early stages of corrosion. To the right were about ten feet of concrete ending in a featureless wall. Above, light reflected from a grill several feet over their heads that turned out on closer inspection to be a walkway, and thin linear blocks of black along the shadows higher up suggested several more levels of such between themselves and the ceiling. To front and back, most worryingly of all, was just space and blackness the beam could not reach far enough to illuminate.
Even the auditory stimuli were like something out of the worst of the horror movies the Slayer's little group of friends had seemed to enjoy mocking so much in their downtime, back in Sunnydale. From several places, he could hear the drip-drip-drip of leftover fluid from the pipes, or perhaps it was rainwater that had seeped in through the roof. He tried to convince himself that, logically, the creaks and groans must be from the metal of the pipes contracting as the heat of the day cooled to evening. Perhaps the small sounds they themselves made bounced back at them by hollow tubes acting like amplifiers. It was demons they were hunting here, and no demon made a sound so mournful and so softly eerie.
"I think I saw the movie," Costas said, echoing his thoughts, then looked at Wesley a moment and snickered. "Don't worry. The amputee survived."
"I haven't the faintest idea what you're talking about."
"Yeah, well. You're culturally deprived."
"I beg to differ."
"We should get you a sawn-off shotgun."
"Yes. And I'll stop in the middle of battle to take my shoes and socks off to load it with my feet." He played the torch over the featureless gloom in front of them and finally achieved contact - with a large cylindrical vat into which a number of the pipes ran, towering up beyond the range of the torch beam towards the ceiling. "Would it perhaps be possible to keep relatively quiet so we stand some chance of hearing the demon creep up in the dark to eat us?"
"Why do you need so many words to tell me to shut up?" Costas griped back half-heartedly before acquiescing with silence.
They rounded the curve of the vat. A broad opening in the wall led into another chamber, wreckage of a big sliding corrugated door hanging off one side. Though no windows were visible, this room was lighter, illumination coming from somewhere up close to the roof. Wesley paused to switch off the torch and when he looked up Costas was several feet ahead. He started sharply forward, but a wave of dizziness surged static through his senses. He lurched back against the wall, fighting off unconsciousness.
Contrary to the theories of Buffy's friends, he'd never fainted for no good reason in his life. He leaned there, blinking, gathering his senses, feeling weak, trying to figure out what on Earth--
"Over here, Wes." Costas' voice sounded strange, a cracked mumble, and he repeated himself, louder, stronger. "We've got something. You need to see this."
Wesley forced his vision to focus. Whatever it was, the detective was clearly not feeling any desire to see it himself. His face, his whole form, was angled away from whatever it was in utter revulsion. The fist he clenched around the axe was pressed to his mouth. The axe blade obscured much of his expression.
"What is it?"
Costas just shook his head dumbly and waved his pointing hand in emphasis.
Wesley extracted his weight from the wall to place it back onto his legs very slowly, and pushed off to take a shaky step towards the detective. To his relief, the steps got easier and the worst of the weakness passed. He drew up alongside Costas with his limbs still trembling, convinced his skin must look the colour of paper.
So it didn't make much difference to his physical state when he saw what Costas had found.
There was a sunken octagonal bowl in the floor, its purpose no doubt having been part of some kind of cleansing process when the plant was in use. Its current fluid level was several feet below the top of the bowl, possibly only inches of liquid remaining, but that wasn't all that was there.
A sea of bone glistened whitely back at him.
"Oh, Lord," Wesley said.
After a few seconds, he reached for the short ladder down into the pit.
Costas clutched his arm. "Don't."
"I need to ascertain whether or not they're human." He stared down into the mess, sincerely not wanting to, then swung over the side and began to descend as precariously as he'd climbed the fence. A second later, Costas caught his hand in a firm grip and lowered him down, letting his feet negotiate the steps.
He couldn't reach for the bones without stepping down off the ladder, even with Costas to help.
His legs sank almost up to the level of his knees. The sensation was foul and reawakened his desire to pass out, but the thought of falling in the midst of such a horrific cocktail helped him fight it off again.
Tentatively, he picked through the bones. A stripped human skull rolled over and glared emptily back at him. He gulped and the air caught at the base of his throat almost choked him before he could cough it away.
Human. He was standing amid the remains of what must have been, just weeks past, at least a dozen human beings. Many of the bones were broken, filled with marks that ranged from pinpricks to the recognisable indentations of variously sized teeth.
Other bones, too. Smaller, misshapen, definitely not human. Little crunched fragments of skulls. It only increased the horror when he realised what they meant.
"Oh, God." A floodgate had opened up inside his head and the world rushed in, threatening to sweep him away. "Oh, God." He was going to be sick. He blindly struggled to climb up the pit's nearest side, too irrational to head back for the ladder. He had to get out--
Costas caught him under his right shoulder, flailed against the absence at his left - Wesley was too distracted even to flinch at the touch - before curling a fist in the material of his shirt at the waist. Wesley gripped Costas' arm in return with a force that had to hurt as he was lifted up and out. He collapsed to shiver, damply and wretchedly, on his knees at the side of the open mass grave. Its stench clung to his soaked trouser legs for him to carry away with him in reminder, and it made him want to tear the damp cloth off at the knees to get rid of the feel of it against his skin.
Costas was standing over him, face drawn with concern, too much white around the man's irises, looking as freaked as Wesley had ever seen. "Is it--?"
"I... I should think so. The missing women. They..." He swallowed.
The muscles bunched at the edges of Costas' mouth. "Tell me later. We don't have to do this now. Later." He pulled his cellphone from his jacket, and his hands were shaking almost too wildly to hit the buttons. He stopped and visibly had to compose himself. "I need to call the department. Demons or no, I can't leave them here like this. Probably best keep it anonymous, given the trespassing and--"
"Don't use your cellphone," Wesley said dully. "A payphone..."
Costas stopped dead, then let out a flustered, embarrassed snort. "Come on." He extended a hand, waiting for Wesley to grasp it. "I don't want to still be in here when it gets dark."
"No." Wesley let himself be helped up, but stopped and held back after only achieving so far as his knees. "They ate their way out." He heard the words emerge hushed, terrified, plaintive. "They ate their way out and then they started on each other, until only the strongest were left..."
"At least that means we only have to deal with a handful of these things," Costas offered sickly.
He nodded. "There would have been hundreds..." He met the detective's eyes. "This all happened weeks ago, Jack. Weeks. We missed it. The missing women... it should have clued me in. Some of them were reported. I knew about the Haxil's mating habits. I missed it. This is my fault. What happened to those girls... if I'd looked hard enough, looked in the right places... all of this could have been prevented."
"That's bullshit." Costas angrily hauled him the rest of the way to his feet, apparently so he could grab him by the collar and shake him in rough punctuation. "I've been a cop over ten years. You can't save everyone. You can only catch a killer after he's - it's - already killed. By definition, Wes."
Wesley wrenched out of his grip and away from the less-than-gentle reassurances, turned his back and started to march away. He was still unsteady enough that it came out a lurch, and when he was struck by realisation of the intense idiocy of walking off alone in a fit of pique in this place, he stopped and leaned forward heavily against the giant vat, resting the palm of his hand and his forehead against the smooth, cold surface.
"What is it?"
The awareness of Costas' presence behind him caused him to jump. The detective had been silent in his cautious approach.
He shook his head. In the gloom of the industrial hell around them, he was aware of oddly shaped shadows that played at the limits of his vision, and he had not forgotten the possibility that one of the Haxil brood could yet remain in the place, but he found himself unable to muster much concern.
He laughed aloud at the irony of the thought.
"I always thought I had a mission," he said, slow and low enough in his throat to be barely audible, enough so that Costas stepped in closer to hear. "No, more than that. A calling. The mission." He shook his head. Another bitter crack of laughter escaped him. He could not fathom how he could be laughing, when his eyes stung and were becoming embarrassingly moist. He blinked several times in quick succession.
'Allergy'... he thought of saying, and didn't.
"How ridiculous." And that giggle was even less sane than the laughter had been.
"What is this?" Costas rasped. "You're talking nonsense and you're fucking freaking me the hell out, and at the moment more of that is just what I don't need. You've helped to kill a lot of bad things, saved a lot of people. I was there. Penn--"
"Forget bloody Penn!" His voice echoed metallically amongst all the yards of metal and piping. "Don't you see, it was never about the mission, never about helping people. What I was trained for... my great purpose."
"Rubbish. You didn't even want to do this. I dragged you back into it. You were ready to quit."
Wesley felt his face stretch into a deathly grin and Costas' protest died as he apparently realised that wasn't a defence that was about to help.
"You've worked yourself damn hard," the detective argued. "I've lost count of the number of times I've told you to ease up."
"You don't understand." He clenched his hand into a fist against the curved metal. "It wasn't for them."
Costas was silent, and it was impossible to be sure whether his silence was a sign that he understood or that he didn't.
"I've been such a fool."
"Yeah, you're a jerk," Costas responded pissily. "You didn't need a goddamn morbid epiphany to find that out. I've known since I met you, would've said so for free if you'd only asked."
Wesley jerked around a hundred and eighty degrees at the sheer injustice of the remark. "Excuse me? You did say so--" He caught himself before he stamped his foot. "On at least fifty different occasions. Often with detailed elaboration, footnotes, and sub-headings--"
Costas' mouth concertinaed into tight folds of largely faked bemusement. Any moment, he was going to say, "I did?" and crease his forehead to match the crumpled line of his mouth.
"Oh, for Heaven's..." Stopped, glared narrowly at Costas, gulped and seethed, in no mood to be mollified. "Fuck this." Wesley shoved the detective aside, and this time adrenalin and anger was enough to carry him back the way they'd come and out into the open air, feet punching the tarmac as he stamped back to the car.
Running steps behind him, another hand on his shoulder, and he was so bloody tired of having to rely on this man's hands...
"Let go of me." He tried to shove the detective away.
"Don't be such an asshole."
Wesley set his jaw determinedly, rolled back his shoulder, and swung his arm around in an arc that ended dead on-target with Costas' cheekbone.
"I said, let go of me."
Costas fell away with a muffled curse and he swung back, continuing in the direction of the car, not entirely sure what he was going to do when he got there.
The hand on his shoulder spun him again after a few steps. There was a blur and then red confetti filled his vision.
"Shit. Shit, shit, shit, shit..."
And he was sitting on the ground staring up at a swearing Costas with his senses reeling and something distinctly unpleasant registering in the area around his chin as the initial numb shock faded. He reached up fingers that flinched from an already swelling jaw and an exceedingly split lip, spat the blood pooling in his mouth from where the lining had broken against his teeth.
"Damn it, I'm sorry," Costas was saying. Or other variations thereof. Rather more times than necessary.
Wesley frowned as his head cleared somewhat, then wished he hadn't and ruled out all facial expression as an option for the next week. "I don't see why you should be," he interrupted, recalcitrant. "I believe I hit you first."
"But--" Costas started to protest, then turned the word into a growl of frustration and strangled whatever he'd been about to say.
"Good old Jack doesn't hit cripples," Wesley filled in.
"Damn you." The detective moved as though to help him up, then backed off, unsure. "You're like a fucking minefield. Whatever I do, I'm gonna step on something that explodes. What the hell am I supposed to do to keep us both intact that doesn't involve doing nothing? Tell me. Tell me what I'm supposed to do!"
Wesley looked down at the ground. Greyish evening on its road to dark surrounded them. He balanced awkwardly to reach out and snag his glasses, connected with them on the second attempt, and put them back on his face. The frame felt a little loose, but the world crystallised. He watched the detail of dust playing over the cracked ground; traced back patterns and guilt.
"I'm sorry."
"What?" Costas, if anything, sounded more freaked than before.
"You didn't do anything wrong. I'm glad you hit me. You had every right to hit me. I'm very sorry."
"You are so insane it's--" he broke off. "What?"
Wesley supposed it was unsurprising that his eyes reflected what they had just registered so plainly. His muscles froze, gaze locked beyond Costas. "Jack?" His voice squeaked out of existence entirely. He managed to raise his hand to point. Costas spun around, gave a pause so brief that it made the movement almost a pirouette as he continued through three hundred and sixty degrees, and dived to haul Wesley to his feet unceremoniously and shove him back towards the car, previous concerns forgotten. "Run!"
"What--? We came here to--"
"I left the fucking axe inside the plant! Run, damn it!"
There was no time for the utter incredulity and verbal chewing that such a confession required. Instead, Wesley did precisely as asked, hearing shots ring out as Costas turned to fire his gun (from what Wesley knew of his marksmanship, very likely hitting nothing if he was doing so as he ran).
He reached the fence, still hearing the reassuring pound of Costas' feet behind. Threw himself at the wire and pulled himself to the top in three desperate, jerking grabs, and more or less somersaulted over the crest. He landed on his back in the road, rolled over gasping for breath, sat up.
Something hit him in the chest and he automatically caught the car keys Costas had thrown over the fence. He surged to his feet, fell against the hood, crawled around the vehicle using it for support until he reached the driver's door. Wrenched it open, got in, and stared blankly between the controls in front of him and the sole hand in his lap.
The sound of an impact and a movement in the corner of his vision wrenched his head up. He was in time to see the Haxil spawn, a creature the approximate size of a pony and much like the image of the adult creature he'd seen in his books apart from a slightly elongated snout and the fact it seemed happier walking on all fours, snatch Costas from the top of the fence. It brought them down in a tangle of struggling limbs, still on the opposite side.
Costas was strong, but by no means could he wrestle such a demon into submission bare-handed.
Well, not bare-handed. Somewhere in the struggle, the detective apparently managed to draw his gun and at point-blank blew a chunk out of the demon's side. The gun must have been lost, then, as no more shots were fired. Watching from behind the wheel, Wesley saw Costas break clear from the Haxil and leap back onto the fence, moving like an acrobat in his urgency.
The Haxil, not so damaged it was ready to abandon its prey, crouched in preparation to pounce.
Wesley twisted the key, slammed his foot down, and wrenched at the steering wheel. Just as he closed his eyes, he saw Costas register what he was doing and throw himself back off the fence again.
Forward momentum, dizzying; a sudden, brutal jar - more pressure on the accelerator; another jar, harder, slamming him forward, his face mashing into the steering wheel, his arm against the dashboard--
--please, not the other, no, not broken, not damaged, please--
--his foot shaken from the pedal, and the sound of breaking glass, some massive shadow blocking out the windshield, dominating even through the closed lids of his eyes; then nothing but aftershocks, near-stillness, near-silence...
He opened his eyes. And yelped in what, he would allow Buffy's friends just this once, was indeed a manner very like a womanish scream. On this occasion, he felt perfectly happy to plead extenuating circumstances.
Inches from his own face, the maw of the demon gaped, its body sagging over the hood of the car, its jaw pressed against the last shards of glass still clinging at the base of the windshield.
Wesley gulped as he realised it was still breathing, awareness still alive and angry in its nasty onyx-black eyes. Then, he let himself breathe with relief as its chest rattled and stilled, the surface of the eyes glazing.
"Wesley!"
He jerked back in his seat and turned at the sound of Costas' voice, grateful when his arm moved freely. As did the rest of him, though he'd likely have bruises and possibly whiplash.
Costas surveyed the dead demon with disbelief, then turned his appalled face to Wesley. "Jesus, Wes. What the hell have you done to my car?"