Current mood:	mellow
Current music:	L.A. Guns - Slap In The Face
Entry tags:	30 seconds to mars, buffy the vampire slayer, hellfire tales, hellfire: matt/xander/jared, my chemical romance

Hellfire Tales: Away with The Boys in the Band 2/15(?)--ADULT. MC/XH/JL
note of randomnes, yes, the Chumash and Olmec are/were both real peoples. And if you catch it and are wondering. Yep. That's exactly who that is supposed to be.

full header & part one



Matt leaned back against the stage's support pole and took a drag off the cigarette he bummed off Steve the sound guy.

Xander out of his sight was driving him nuts. There were too many people. Xander hadn't been with him at all yesterday and only a little bit before he had to walk away and let Xander alone in a crowd of strangers Matt didn't trust one bit. He had the kids with him. Mike and Oksana were—well Oksana was a slayer. Poor kid seemed to be a Dreaming Slayer at that. Mike was Mike. Xander sure as hell could take care of himself.

Really, the worst thing most likely to happen to him? Devon pounce him and lick him and whine he was hungry.

Matt didn't like that, but he wasn't going to try to kill Devon for it either. Devon wasn't interested in Xander, he was just flat out freaking starving. A 'nibble' of just sexually charged energy wasn't doing anything for Devon anymore. In fact all it seemed to do was serve to make him hungrier and more desperate for a full out 'fuck and feed'. Devon wouldn't feed on Xander. Hell, he didn't seem to be able to even nibble on Xander's energy any more than he could Matt's without permission.

Matt was explained by whatever deal or bought spell or whatever Rose had done a century and a half ago to protect Dulcinea and her descendants. No one could really explain why Devon, or Rose for that matter, couldn't feed on Xander. Xander shrugged it off as “just cause it was him and things went weird when it came to him” and so did everyone else.

The best anyone had could guess it was the whole damned mess with the Ruby that set Devon over the edge. That how powerful the curse was when Devon fed on Matt's energy just enough to get him semi rational it was way too much, too strong and too magically charged. That was when Devon started changing and was now on his way to full blown Incubus. There didn't seem to be anyway to stop a part-incubus or part-succubus from changing to a full blown demon once their demonic nature got so much of a hold. The thing was, Devon's nature really hadn't. He didn't feed with actual sex unless it was Oz. Instead it was dancing and grinding and flirting and nibbling on what energy he could.

Didn't seem to matter though. Devon was headed for full demonic incubus at the speed of light. And the reason for that went straight back to the beginning of the nightmare with the Ruby.

Rose was more than slightly worried she'd end up demon and not ghost after the baby was born. Which she was bound to her bar, she could very easily eventually starve to madness once Hellfire wasn't occupied again and it wasn't like there were very many of them there really. Certainly not enough to feed a full incubus and a full succubus, even if the incubus could theoretically make the trip to LA or Vegas to feed somewhat regularly—as long as there wasn't the threat of Willow, which there was.

All things considered the baby was likely to be very strongly succubus natured. That had them consulting all sorts of every type of doctor or demonology expert that they could think of, they being Tara, Wes, and Harry. Well, Harry was doing the actual calling people, since most people didn't know Tara, and Wes and Tara weren't known to be back among the living. Spike and Clem were even asking around where they could because no one knew how the protections against Succubi and Incubi were going to affect a succubus natured child.

Trying to get his head around the fact there was going to be a kid was bad enough. A half-demonic kid with probably a sex-demon nature and possible magical birth defect. Some damn thing like that—he really wasn't sure what they were worried might happen with the baby. It kinda blurred past his ears, he hit his limit of coping with fucking bizarre about the point he'd –as Xander put it—knocked up the ghost of his five or six greats grandma's girlfriend.

Yeah, that's pretty much where his brain hit a massive brick wall, kind of went numb and shut down when they started talking or trying to figure out—whatever it was that they were worried about in his hearing.

“Bum a light?”

Matt reached in his pocket for the lighter he had and glanced over at the man standing there. The new guitar tech in charge of Ray's equipment.

The guy was tall, at least a couple inches taller than Xan and for all that Xander didn't seem it once you got to know him, he really wasn't a small guy at all. Six foot tall with half a lifetime of demon fighting made Xan pretty freaking intimidating if you didn't know him between the scars and the shape he had to be in to survive demon fighting for half his life.

This guy was taller than Xan, and had freaking cowboy boots adding to that. Matt's 5'9' really wasn't tall or short, just kinda there and left him feeling freaking short next to this guy who was all long legs and long arms, broad shouldered and fricken tall. His hair was black, straight and in a pony tail that reached his ass. Dark eyes that were kind of unnerving in a long narrow face, high forehead and razor-sharp cheekbones, nose a little too big, mouth a little too wide, chin just a little too pointy. Not a bad looking guy at all, just a little too sharp a little too something to be considered handsome.

Between the hair, and the deep bronze tan of his skin and the name which had struck Matt as something odd earlier but damned if he could remember what it was at all at the moment, Matt had guessed he had to be at least part Native American somewhere, somehow along the line. The guy was wearing a threadbare blue plaid flannel with the sleeves hacked off and unbuttoned, faded jeans with holes in both knees. His belt was braided leather with a silver and turquoise buckle. The necklace he wore probably wasn't really a necklace, or shouldn't be called a necklace, but Matt didn't know what else to call it. A silver oval about the size of a fifty sent piece bent out of shape with a what looked like a wolf on it in turquoise hanging from a thin braided leather cord around his neck.

Wolf...no. Not Wolf. “Coyote, right?” Matt frowned. “I had my mind still back with the kids and three others yelling at me.”

“Yeah. Jake Coyote,” he nodded and took a drag from his cigarette as he handed the lighter back to Matt. “Kids?”

“My boyfriend's daughter and his kid brother,” Matt said with an edge of a dare in his voice. There was going to be no way of being inconspicuous about being with Xander even with Xan's tattoo covered by the leather brace Matt absolutely hated. He couldn't argue the logic of keeping the ink hid, because yeah they'd get aggravated to hell and back by the guys, would anyway since Frank and Worm saw both Xander and Matt shirtless but no need to belabor the point and them to know the full extent of the amount of matching ink. That would only make the guys that much more irritating.

Coyote's eyes flicked to Matt's arm, to the tattoo that was left behind by the damned ruby. Coyote squatted down, back leaning against one of the support poles and gave Matt a sharp, sincere enough but something else to it smile. Something—flickered—around the guy for a second. Nothing visible but something that kicked every instinct Matt had about people into fucking orbit. And he was not too sure the guy he was looking at counted as people in the wholly human sense of the word. Something in that flicker was really different.

“Interesting ink. Gorgeous work but I haven't seen anything remotely like that for a very long time.”

“Oh fuck, dude, what are you? No evil, okay? Too much fucked up to deal with without Xan, Mike and Oksana having to slay the fucking new tech, got it?” Matt blurted unthinkingly. He could have kicked himself once he realized the words were out.

Coyote's dark eyes widened for a second. One black eyebrow arched up high, he tilted his head a little more and looked at Matt with an intensity that made Matt want to squirm.

“You think I'm evil?” Coyote asked.

Oh yeah. Definitely a bit less than normal human. No, make that a lot less, like nothing more than human looking.

He eyed the guy, purposely using the instinct or whatever the hell it was for the first time in—fuck, well over twenty years. He'd crushed and walled off that for years and years. He took a shaky drag on his cigarette and managed to stay standing as the walls and blockades he'd put around that part of himself kind of fought being taken down, then fucking exploded. He nearly went to his knees. That fucking hurt and the backlash of everything...

Shit.

Shit.

He was a fucking idiot. There was no way he was going to get that shit buried again. The nightmares were back, not normal ones but the fucking bizarre horror movie ones that had his parents and the doctors they took him to doping him up trying to get him to sleep, which only trapped him in the fucking nightmares once the meds kicked in. They'd been slipping back for months—since Jared and everything Matt didn't believe then. More and more now since the fucking ruby. Flashes of color now and then that he almost remembered from when he was really small, when he was dragged around to shrinks and everything else. Even if he'd only been four, maybe five, he'd known enough—he made his mom cry, his dad worry and pace and just look at him in a way Matt had wanted to cry. The whispers he was crazy, the medicine that made him sick and made everything so much worse. He'd learned out of desperation and instinct to wall it up, bury it, lock away all the craziness until nothing was left but a really sharp instinct about people.

The backlash of all that shit being let loose nearly knocked him on his ass. “FUCK,” he snarled and fought to keep his breathing even. He took a drag off his cigarette and closed his eyes, willing the world to go back into a normal sort of focus.

“There are much less painful ways to reach for your gifts, cousin,” Coyote said. The fucker sounded almost like he was trying not to laugh.

Matt figured kicking the new guy in the face was a really bad thing to do especially with everyone already giving him the eye because the consensus of the crew was he was acting weird. Hell, Brian and the guys were maybe conspiring to lock him up in the rehab/psych ward he'd avoided getting stuck in in Jersey. Xan wasn't going to charm the guys and Brian as easily as he had Matt's Mom.

“Not evil. Not usually anyone most are happy to see. Think half your relatives would just as soon shoot you as talk to you. Depends on the day which half. Ruthless crazy fucker, usually have a reason for shit even if most won't get the reason. Fuckin' trouble, not evil. And I've got enough fuckin' trouble so no fucking shit just pretend you're human and whatever you let loose to be a little more, can ya please fucking wrap it back up.” Age and power and shit Matt couldn't begin to figure out with the whole world shifted into the weird colors, lights, energies and superimposed images almost forgotten that colored all his earliest memories. Too much. Way too fucking much, he focused on the empty half crushed plastic coke bottle on the ground rather than anything else. The half second glance at Coyote had been enough to nearly make him black out, the whole fucking world was too much and making him nauseous.

“Ruthless crazy fucker,” Coyote smiled, something a little bitter but mostly amused to the tone of his voice. “You're very good, that you can recognize and accept what your gifts tell you when you did what you did to them.”

“It kept me out of nuthouse drugged into a fucking vegetable,” Matt muttered. “Shut up.”

For someone who swore they weren't a “bookage type” Xander had a full blown freaking library in his house—and he read at least decent chunks of almost all the books. Or well, skimmed and browsed through enough that he knew the contents to know which book actually needed to be read for latest threat or apocalypse. When Matt had asked what the comment of Tara liking his aura was about Xander had shrugged and said Tara saw them, and basically offered Matt a book or to have Wes explain it. Matt took the book. Gave him something to do and occupy his fried brain when they were going on about the curse and the baby and everything else.

Matt had devoured the book. He hadn't been quite able to bring himself to look to see if there was anything else on Xander's shelves of books that was on the same subject let alone ask if there were more. He'd read that thing almost as if his life depended on it though. Every mostly forgotten memory of the lights and colors and dreams from when he was a freaking baby that had his family convinced he had some freakishly rare childhood onset of schitzophrenia or something came back with a vengeance. Things he'd purposely tried to forget even when he was only five or six.

He fought to remember anything from that book on controlling the 'gift'. Most of it seemed like bullshit, even just reading it. A few things made him just recoil in horror at how wrong they were and how they would not work, and then made him wonder how badly he'd lost his mind because he KNEW that in his bones, stronger than any instinct pinging about people had ever been since he'd buried and locked up everything.

Finally he got it. He managed to open his eyes back up. Everything seemed sharper but the lights and colors and odd shit weren't swimming before his eyes. The world looked normal, just felt like more. That he could manage to ignore, he hoped. The world was still to sharp and bright and all sharp sticks poking at his senses, especially the ones that shouldn't exist. It was somewhere where he could stand it though, at least to get through the rest of the day. He could half ass pull off normal, not that everyone who knew him wasn't already convinced he was half way to losing it. He was. The goddamn curse from the ruby was going to drive him insane.

“Impressive, little cousin,” Coyote said quietly.

“Don't start with the short shit, I ain't that short and Xan's going to fuckin go half off if you keep up with the cousin shit. I'm human. You sure as fuck aren't.”

Coyote grinned, amused and wicked and really close to up to no fucking good at all. No, whatever this guy was, he wasn't evil. Ruthless, probably could get scary and it wasn't a stretch that he could have people wanting to skin him with only a few seconds around him if he was in the mood to do that.

“What is your Xan? The one that wears the other half of that?”

“Yeah. And human mostly, at least started that way,” Matt muttered.

Coyote frowned slightly and eyed the markings on Matt's arm.

“It sure as hell wasn't either of our ideas. Goddamned psycho fuckin' vampire.” It wasn't like that was a secret even if Xan had wanted quiet until Matt could handle it, the leather brace Xan wore was more for keeping Brian and the guys shut up. Clem's clan had certainly spread the news possibly through more than one dimension. Whoever had put that fuckin' vampire up to the Ruby in the first place likely had a group that knew. A few of the messes on the last tour, though a bar tour with a pair of werewolves, an incubus, a damphyr, and hell only knew what the other one in the Dingoes was. Matt hadn't asked but he was betting the answer was somewhere between “mostly human” and “not human at all”. That Willow bitch who just thinking about would get Xander so damned upset, she was the only one that was on the please don't let find out for long time list. The rest was more deal as they went.

“Vampire?”

Matt snorted. “Yeah.”

“You make it sound like a planned act—”

“It was, only it wasn't supposed to be the two of us, one of us and a witch who is practically Xan's sister. Plan was to destroy her.”

“That sort of extravagance is more likely seen among the Old Clans, Older vampires directly descended from the first vampyr.”

Matt snorted. “Bastard's ash goo in a jar of Holy Water, in blessed boxes of lead, silver and iron, everything packed in salt, sealed in concrete and buried on holy ground.”

“Excessive, thorough, but excessive.”

“Yeah well, Xan's family have a lot of—bad previous experience with resurrections.”

“You shouldn't...”

“Whatever the hell you are and whatever you're up to, you're not evil and you're not aiming it at anyone that's mine. I've got too much else to give a fuck beyond that.”

Coyote nodded. “I've long considered your family friends, Serpent's Child. Many would have hunted me along with the evil they vowed to fight, but our goals were similar many times, just different approach, and their understanding wasn't—they didn't understand things I've done.”

Matt snorted again. “Well, I don't understand any of this shit and don't want to. Ain't got a choice. What the hell is the serpent shit? Cletus called me Serpent's Kin.”

Coyote frowned.

“Fuck...” Matt sighed as Brian came into sight. “Later, Coyote.”

“Your name—”

“Cortez.”

“The same as the last I knew...but then there are usually only sons in the Serpent's children, and they tend to keep tight what's theirs, would have married their woman. Or has been for at least a thousand years.”

“Great...some sort of prophecy or shit with Serpent's daughters...”

“Yes.”

“Fuuuck. What if she were part succubus...”

Matt really didn't like the flare of—hell he didn't know what that was. “Fuck tell me later.” Yeah, the look on Brian's face said Frank and Worm had chewed Brian's ear off over him already, not that Brian wasn't ready to corner him as it was for announcing he was quitting and was riding with Xander and the kids—and fucking DRACULA.

Only Xan, really. Escapes his mind to mention Vlad was friggin' Dracula. He very carefully kept his mind from Jared, not easy to do since that was one subject Brian seemed to be determined to rant about right along with Xander.

~*~

Xander managed not to growl as he finally made his way toward the first stage to find Matt. If they had to use the sleep-sand stuff on Mike and Oksana they would. He was well enough supplied with healing salve.

The day had been straight from hell. My Chemical Romance's set was three-fourths over and it would be time to start breaking things down and loading up and back on the road for the next day's show. Oz said they'd manage without him, as long as Devon didn't set off the crowd around the Dingoes stage into an orgy.

He'd had Devon plastered to his back all day, using Xander for a freaking pacifier. Oz had said he couldn't feed today so—shoved him at Xander. Without Xander agreeing to let him feed, all Devon could do was cling, sniff, whine, lick and grind—though with Oksana plastered to one of Xander's sides and Mike to the other just as thoroughly as Devon had been to Xander's back, the licking and grinding had been curtailed to only when Oksana had to use one of the portapots. And to Devon's credit, the whining had been PG rated in Oksana's hearing at least.

That had been fun. Not.

If not for Oksana he thought the guys that showed up for Pepper—the little tattooed guy Frank and the big, bodyguard type Worm—might have killed him.

That had been fun too. Yeah, right.

An attempt to get something to eat, with Devon whiny, bitchy and acting about two plastered to Xander's back—he'd tried he wasn't letting go and he wasn't walking either unless Xander let him feed so Xander had ended up carrying him piggyback. Mike had been ready to run off and hunt down Frank and Worm for being asshole to Xander. Xander finally got it in Mike's head how it had to look to them, and they were trying to look out for Matt. Mike still wanted to punch them in the nose. Oksana piped up and offered to lift Mike up to reach Worm's nose.

Not even food could be had without drama.

Drama in the form of an itty bitty woman not more than an inch or two taller than Mike and maybe ten pounds heavier, long chestnut hair streaked with blue. Getting pissed off at a guy because he didn't get what an honor it was to serve her and she'd been a king, a god... She also looked like the woman in the pictures that were in the boxes of Wes' things they'd...liberated from a storage unit last fall. Depending on when the pictures were taken, Fred Burkle or Illyria. Fred was years gone, but, yeah.

She'd craned her head and looked when he'd shouted Illyria.

A bit of fast talking, quiet assurance she'd be just fine in a day or two, he'd gotten her prescription refilled, she'd been doing so well they'd let her have charge of her meds after she'd been doing so herself supervised for months and months but yeah whoops. She'd be just fine once she had her meds a couple days. He apologized for his sister. And told her to come along, she could call Spike with his phone after lunch.

Amazingly Illyria had followed along. Evidently there'd been a picture of him, younger with both eyes Cordelia had that she remembered, from Fred's memories. He'd do.

Vlad had shown up just after the sun had set, within seconds that Xander had to wonder if he didn't do some funky teleporting crap that he really didn't want to know about.

“You've got a lot of fucking nerve...”

Xander stared at the guy and struggled to remember his name. Something with a B? Brian. The one that had come to Hellfire and brought Matt and Tyson wanting the Dingoes on the bar tour and on this tour and made the attempt to convince them they needed him for a manager.

“Maybe, but I don't have fuck all for patience,” Xander glared down at the man.

Vlad laughed.

Xander grabbed a fistfull of the back of Mike's shirt. “You can't kill Matt's friends.”

“Can I hurt him a little?”

“No.”

“Is he being insulting?” Illyria scowled.

“Kinda. Mostly just protective of Matt.”

“Brian!” Matt snarled striding over, a tall guy with long black hair behind him.

“Devon was in one of his—moods and spent most of the day plastered to my back. He was trying to lick me when the big guy and the little guy showed up for Pepper.”

“Pepper nice,” Oksana said quietly.

“We'll see if you can play with her again soon, huh?” Matt smiled. “She's going to be out on the whole tour. Security really won't mind not having pooper scooper duty if you want the job walking her.”

Oksana beamed.

“Who—”

Xander turned his attention to the pissy short guy, Brian. “My daughter Oksana, my sister Illyria, my brother Mike, and Oksana's uncle Vlad.”

Xander watched worriedly as Matt clenched his fists.

“One. Fucking. Word. Brian. Just one. And I will quit right now,” Matt snarled.

Xander groaned and rolled his eye. “Yay, so helpful.” he said sarcastically.

“She is—not who you think she is,” the guy behind Matt said cautiously.

Xander looked beyond Matt at the guy half in shadows. “She's exactly who I think she is.”

“Foolish—”

“Illyria,” Xander growled.

“I was—”

“I KNOW! Okay. You can call Spike again and let him tell you a nice bloody bedtime story, okay? Right now, zip the lip.”

“This shell's mouth does not come with a zipper. That would have been an interesting punishment when I ruled. I had several tongues removed and mouths sewn shut.”

“Uh huh, that's nice. Spike can tell you about eating a hippie at Woodstock and spending the day locked in a portapot hallucinating because of all the LSD the hippie had. That'll make a nice bedtime story. Or maybe Drusilla's favorite things to use for skip rope.”

“Skiprope is undignified. I had garlands on my throne—”

“Okay. Yeah. That's nice. Quiet now,” Xander groaned eye not leaving Matt.

“I—” Matt choked. “You mean what I think you mean? Spike—“

“Think, Matt. Spike. Yes.”

Matt made a strangled noise.

“What the fuck happened to your neck? Someone fucking bite you?”

“Yeah, Brian. I did.” Matt snarled. “MINE.”

“Yep,” Xander agreed softly. “C'mere. S'okay.” Xander whispered. If the little fuck didn't keep his damn mouth shut Xander might be the one to tear him apart once he could move again even if the guy didn't have a clue.

“How many years—“

“Two fuckin' months,” Matt snarled at the tall guy behind him.

The guy murmured something in a language Xander didn't recognize. He really didn't like that. Things were screwed up enough.

More than screwed up enough. The guy behind Matt was poking at his weird radar somehow. That was never good. Even if he might not be big bad evilness, weird radar getting set off was never good. Weird radar set off with unrecognized languages was even more not good.

“You get by without me on tonight, Bri.”

“Matt--”

“That. Wasn't. A. Question.” Matt snarled.

“Godfuckingdamnit, Cortez!”

“Vlad, Illyria, Oksana and I can help,” Mike said. “You go with Xan.”

“I will ride with you tonight to make sure all is well—”

“Fine, Coyote. Keep an eye on 'em. They know where the bus is. Vlad, you eat?” Matt snapped.

“I had a bite or two. Enough.”

“CORTEZ!”

“Fuck you, Brian. I'm one fucking word from quitting. Don't. Don't even start.”

“BEHAVE ALL OF YOU!” Xander snarled at Vlad, Illyria, Mike and Oksana.

“C'mon, calm down,” Xander whispered as they walked away.


~*~

“He hurt my father why you bring him mad. I hurt you.”

Brian gaped at the little girl trying to make out what she said through her accent and the odd wording.

“Because he made Matt mad,” the older kid corrected. That one at least sounded normal. Bland American that didn't have any real nuance to it to pin a definite region on him. English definitely wasn't the little girl's native language even if it was her father's.

The man, Vlad, sighed. “You are going to be difficult.” his English clearer and less accented than his niece's.

“Xander no happy,” the little girl said.

“I know, but so be it. This one is too stubborn to be swayed otherwise.”

“Don't go whining because you end up with a splintered stake up your ass.” the boy muttered.

Oksana made a face. “No.” she glared stubbornly at Vlad.

“Not yet,” Vlad agreed reluctantly.


~*~

Matt tried to feign sleep as the door to the bus' bedroom opened.

Letting Xander go up front on his own when the others came back had been hard as hell, but he'd done it. He'd actually managed to do nothing more than knock Xander to the bed and grind on him fully clothed when they got to the bus—kind of like a crazed animal but at least he hadn't done worse.

“Nice try, but I'm not buying it,” Xander said softly and crawled into the bed, curling up behind Matt without a breath of air between them.

Matt swallowed at the kiss pressed against his bare shoulder.

“Vlad sent Illyria to Hellfire. That at least will help with sanity levels. She almost got security called on her and arrested when I stumbled across her. She was telling some poor bastard he had to be her guide for the world now since her previous guide was killed by the vampire's stupidity.”

“You know her then? What is she?” that she was human wasn't even an option. What he'd felt off her had rattled him enough his shaky nothing but sheer luck control crumbled. The colors and lights and odd shit intruded on his vision and that was even more unnerving, especially the pieces that didn't quite—weren't part of her but somehow there anyway.

The body's name was Winnifred Burkle. Xander wasn't sure the exact story of how Illyria ended up in Fred's body. He'd never asked. Illyria was one of the Old Ones, ancient demons or maybe demonic demigods that ruled on earth at one point, something like that. There'd never been an apocalypse he'd dealt with with the Old Ones so Xander didn't know exactly, and he wasn't going to ask Wes either since Wes and Fred had been dating before all this. Illyria might have been evil once, Xander kinda thought it was more like primal, all powerful and the moral compass of an extremely spoiled two year old more than outright evil, at least in Illyria's case. After all intestines used as throne decoration was the expected thing.

Matt snorted.

“That's what Wes said when he'd said anything about her. Well, Fred's a her. Illyria's more of an it. Could be fact, could be wishful thinking because the host is utterly destroyed, nothing remains, scraps of Fred's memory that Illyria could try to impersonate her, or maybe know a few things that Fred did but the host is destroyed, not even the soul survives. A vampire—the soul is kinda booted out, well the body dies so the soul's released and the demon moves in. Not with however Illyria ended up in Fred.”

Matt swallowed. The little pieces, shreds and splinters that were not the being but still there...That had to be the remainders of Fred. The being was brutal, overwhelmingly old and incomprehensible but not—no. Matt had seen and felt evil, at least of the human variety. It only stood to reason demonic was that much worse. She was something, but he didn't exactly think evil was the right word.

He tried to change the subject even if he probably didn't want the answer. “How did Vlad send her to Hellfire? She's not like loose somewhere hitchhiking?”

“Nope. Phone call to Wes. Andrew and Wes headed out to the edge of the wards along the road going out of town. Vlad mojo'd her butt right to the edge of the wards.”

Yeah. He didn't want to know that. He didn't want to know Vlad could do that. He, well honestly, he didn't want to know that anyone could do that. That was scary fucking shit. That someone could maybe just appear out of thin air and...rob you or whatever—no, not thinking about what the whatever since it wasn't likely to be robbing done if someone had the power to do that. Even more, he really didn't want to know Vlad could do that. Dracula having the ability to magically teleport people and things was just—no.

Xander curled a little tighter around him, pressing even closer against Matt's back. His hand catching Matt's and threading their fingers together over Matt's heart, Xander's knee rested over Matt's.

“Who's driving?”

“His name's Clay Grundy and he falls under you probably don't want to know but I'll tell you in the morning, okay? You're--”

“On the edge of a fuckin' nervous breakdown again?”

“Kinda,” Xander agreed, his arm tightening around Matt. “It's been a long day, you seem to have collected your very own not exactly human stray and I was only in your sight for about half an hour or so, most of that taken up by dog drama after you not seeing me for over twenty-four hours and me traveling on my own during that. Not to mention the crowds everywhere.”

“Trust you,” Matt whispered. “Fucking boils under my skin and I about take the head off of everyone but I trust you. Everyone else I want to beat the living shit out of for looking at you wrong.”

He could feel Xander. Not the instinct that he'd always relied on but from whatever he'd accidentally broke loose. Could feel the pain and scars and...

“You got that sleep sand shit?”

“Ye-eah,” Xander said hesitantly.

“Didn't sleep last night. Too fucked to sleep now.”

“Okay. Yeah, but I reserve the right to call bullshit in the morning.”

Matt choked on the twisted amusement at Xander's words. A tiny pinch of sand was blown in his face a second later, only enough to put him out a couple hours but if he was already asleep, with luck he'd stay asleep.

~*~

“Oksana is asleep, I'll return before dawn.”

Xander rolled his eye at the flash of smoke that Vlad disappeared in. “Theatrical bastard,” he muttered and went for the window by the little booth of the 'kitchen' section of the bus opening it.

He turned and looked at the guy sitting on the couch. “So what are you?” Xander snorted.

“Do you really want to know?”

Xander studied the guy. “You going to eat anyone?”

“Nom”

“Kill any one, sacrifice anyone to hell gods to open portals to hell dimensions—”

“Where did you grow up?”

“Sunnydale, California.”

The guy shuddered.

“Xander Harris.”

“Jake Coyote.”

“You're right. I really don't want to know what you are,” Xander muttered. He didn't know what, but somehow he should be connecting something to that name. What he couldn't come up with for the life of him beyond troublemaker. Troublemaker didn't necessarily mean evil and the guy had gotten on the bus, which even invited he wouldn't have gotten past the wards with any malevolence in him. Hell they'd had a time getting the wards to accept Mike the kid was so screwed up and filled up with rage and hate.

“You're Chumash?”

“Nope.”

The guy stared at him a long while. “You are Chumash.” This time it wasn't a question.

“Nope. I'm from Sunnydale. Construction job, fell through into a burial cave, pissed off Chumash vengeance spirit.” He was too tired and too worried about Matt to even begin to get wigged by this guy honing in on the Chumash spirit and the Thanksgiving made memorable by way of ghost-induced syphilis.

The guy didn't look like he really believed Xander, or believed that was the whole of it but nodded. “I mean you and yours no harm.”

“Duh, much? You didn't get blasted to kingdom come by the wards on the bus.”

“Either way, Matt is Olmec.”

“What the hells is Olmec?”

“You are woefully uneducated.”

Xander rolled his eye. “I don't do bookage. I just get used as bait or distraction. As long as one of the book types tells me what weapon is the one I need and where whatever I'm trying to help kill is vulnerable, I'm good.” Xander had the impression Matt was about as Olmec as Xander himself was connected to the Chumash and the thread of connection was a stretch at best. Well, if Matt was Olmec? It was probably forgotten as trivia a couple hundred years ago or more.

“So?”

Xander gave the guy a dangerous grin that even Willow had flinched away from more than once. “Hurt mine, I'll hunt you through every reality, dimension and hell I have to to make you pay. Other than that—we're good. I don't have the energy to worry about non-evil annoyances.”

The guy laughed. Xander couldn't help but think he sounded a little bit like a coyote as he did.


~*~

next