GENEALOGY

"At least I would have had something to snack on."

I could not believe the words I had heard. What in the name of…

Angel shook his head, his eyes taking on a look of fear. I could do nothing but stare at him. "God, Wesley," he breathed. "What's wrong with me?"

I could clearly hear the change in tone in his voice. For one moment, one brief and painful moment, Angelus had been here. "I-I'm not sure," I stuttered.

He saw through it. "Wes, what's going on?"

"A prophecy." I breathed. "I found a prophecy."

"And?"

I took a deep breath. "The Father will kill the Son," I whispered. A faint tremble crept over my limbs as I stood, clutching to the wall. I struggled to remember the words I had read. "In the End of Days, the vampire, a Chosen Warrior of Good, shall father a Son, born by a creature of beautiful Evil. The Son has but one destiny, as foretold by all gifted with foreknowledge. The Father will kill the Son, and the End of Days will be at hand."

Seconds later I found myself holding the baby, his small body suddenly thrust into my arms. Connor opened his little blue-gray eyes and looked at me, yawning the way infants do. I looked up. "Angel, what-"

"Take him, Wes." His eyes were hard, almost cold. "Take him away from me. If the prophecy-" He swallowed. "Find Gunn and Fred and just go."

"Really, Angelus, do you think this man to be such a coward as to run from you at a word?"

Holtz.

As if one, Angel and I turned to see the man standing just a few doors down the hallway. He was flanked by several of his…apprentices, whose faces I recognized from our meeting.

"Mr. Wyndam-Pryce," said Holtz in a tone that most likely rated friendly in his repertoire of vocal emotions. It sent a chill down my spine.

"Holtz," I replied, attempting to make my own voice devoid of emotion. Control, Wesley. Control.

There was silence as Holtz contemplated us. No one moved. Connor was blissfully oblivious to the situation, asleep in my arms. The vampire hunter stared at me, a strange look on his face. "The child is doing well, I see," he said softly.

I wondered if perhaps he was remembering his own children, the family that Angelus and Darla slaughtered all those years ago. Yes, if I were in his place, I would have had similar thoughts. "He is," I replied.

Holtz turned away from us without acknowledging those two small words. "Rosalind," he called. A small woman, pretty in her own way, with odd, green eyes, made her way through the little crowd of vampire-hunters. "Rosalind," he said again, "is this what you saw?"

For a moment I was reminded of Drusilla the Mad, of the accounts of her I had read, and I wondered if Angel was struck by the same similarity that I saw. There was a kind of movement to her, as if she were dancing while standing still. A natural psychic, a born seer - unlike Cordelia, unlike Doyle, whom I'd never met, who had been given the talent after maturation. Rosalind watched us carefully, never seeming to move yet at the same time seeming to dance. Briefly, I pondered what her incentive to join Holtz had been. Was she also somehow the victim of the undead? Or had she foreseen such a favorable outcome for Holtz's vendetta that she saw no reason not to join him? "Yes," she whispered finally. "Yes. This is what I saw." She grinned a little, and not for the first time I wondered if she was more like Drusilla than I had originally thought. Was insanity part-and-parcel of a seer's existence?

"Good," Holtz told her and she danced away to the back of his herd again. He looked at Angel with a smirk. "Do not be surprised, Angelus. You have your seer, though she is not standing beside you today; likewise, I have mine. Her loyalty is somewhat dearer, I would say."

I think I felt Angel flinch. There was no way Holtz could have known the true nature of Cordelia's absence, but the implications of the statement were painful nonetheless. "Tell me what you want Holtz," Angel said. "Let's settle this as men."

"Ah, but that is the fatal flaw, for you are no more a man today than I am still a father," came the reply. The smirk had not yet left Holtz's face, but now it had twisted slightly, becoming angry. "And there is but one thing I want from you today, Angelus. Give me the child, and I may decide to let you walk free."

"You're still playing the father, Holtz. Look at all these young faces surrounding you. How many words of revenge and retribution did it take for each one, hm? How long before they took a bite of the apple and joined your crusade?"

Holtz proved himself to be very good at ignoring Angel's words. "Give me the child."

"No." The word was spoken firmly, resolutely, and at first I did not even realize that I had spoken it. I glanced down at Connor and then steeled myself against Holtz. "No. You're not taking him."

"Oh?"

I took a deep breath. "Over my dead body." I knew it sounded juvenile the moment I said it, but it fit my thoughts exactly.

Holtz laughed. "Mr. Wyndam-Pryce, you haven't the slightest idea of what is about to occur, do you?"

I shrugged, my already tight grip on Connor tightening. "I assume that you do?"

Holtz laughed again, a darkness in it that had not been there before. "Sahjhan! I believe it is about time."

I felt a brief tingle and a moment later a vaguely humanoid demon stood beside Holtz. Sahjhan, the Time-Weaver. The Black Star Chronicles. Chapter 52.

I much preferred the woodcut portrait to the reality.

I tried to step back, to step away from Holtz and Sahjhan, but found myself frozen in place. I couldn't move my limbs. I turned my head to Angel and realized that the same had been done to him as well. I glanced back at Holtz's people and saw a young man with blue, crackling energy circling his hands. That tingle had been a spell of some kind, not a reaction to Sahjhan's appearance. A spell. Damn.

"So this is the Son," said Sahjhan, approaching Connor and me. "He's turned out well. Too bad things went wrong in this timeline."

"Wrong?" I said hesitantly as I tried to remember what the Black Star Chronicles had recorded about this time demon. I came up with nothing but the memory of the woodcut.

"Oh, yes," said Holtz, following Sahjhan. "You see, Mr. Wyndam-Pryce, things are very nearly the way they should have been. I am here, Angelus is here, you and the child are here. But this is not quite how things were to have been."

Angel growled.

"You see, Mr. Wyndam-Pryce, you are on the wrong side of the battle." Holtz grinned and in several swift, fluid motions, took Connor from my arms. He cradled the child in his own arms, almost lovingly, and for a moment I again thought of his centuries-dead children. He walked the few steps to Sahjhan, who said two words of a demonic-sounding language I was unfamiliar with. The demon shimmered, glowed -

And turned substantial. Holtz handed him Connor and a moment later there was a flash of light, which forced me to close my eyes against the brightness. When it left, it took Sahjhan and Connor with it.

"Connor!" Angel tried twisting in his frozen state, tried to break free, but to no avail. He kept crying out his son's name, cursing Holtz, vowing revenge. It of course did nothing to soften Holtz's heart and I forced myself to close my ears to the inhuman exclamations.

"Where did he take Connor?" I demanded.

Holtz stepped up to me and stared into my eyes, as if trying to see my soul in them. "You needn't worry about that, Mr. Wyndam-Pryce. The child will be well taken care of, groomed appropriately for his role in the prophecies. No, the question you should be asking is when he now is."

"When?" I was puzzled, and then I remembered that Sahjhan was a time-weaver, a time-travelling demon. "He's been taken back in time."

"Exactly," replied Holtz. "A child would have no defense against his evil vampire father, who was foreseen to devour him. But the man that the child becomes - he would stand a chance. God, or whatever powers control the world, saw it fit to even the odds a bit. Take the child back however many years it takes, and in this year he is old enough to defend himself."

Quickly, my eyes searched Holtz's companions. Was there a young man among his flock with Angel's face and Darla's eyes? With his height and her slimmer build? I cursed under my breath. There were several who fit the bill.

"You see, Mr. Wyndam-Pryce, for whatever reasons there were, the powers that control the world, God or whatever else you wish to call it, allowed an aberration in this timeline. Sahjhan tells me that in the infinite number of ways he has seen these events play out, this is the most unique."

"I'm so very glad to hear it," I said sarcastically.

"Yes, I suppose you are," replied Holtz. "This aberration occurred some five or six years ago, not far from here, and involved a Slayer."

"Buffy," whispered Angel suddenly. I hadn't even heard him stop wailing.

"Yes, a girl named Buffy Summers, a Slayer. I assume you are both somewhat familiar with a book of prophecies called the Pergamum Codex?" He did not wait for us to respond. "I am told that this Codex contains a prophecy relating to that particular Slayer, that she would die at the hands of a particularly powerful vampire, and in all other variations of this world in which she fought that vampire, she did die."

"Buffy died," I told him. In fact, she's died twice. I did not voice that thought aloud.

"But she was revived, I am told," replied Holtz. "That is where this aberrant timeline was born. Because if she had died and stayed dead, rather than rising again in some sort of vampiric irony, you would never have become her Watcher, Mr. Wyndam-Pryce. And had you not become her Watcher, you would never have joined Angelus; instead, you would have joined me."

"And why would I have done that?" I asked, partly sarcastic and partly curious.

"Because, for reasons unknown to me, in every other world you were dismissed from the Council, just as you were here, and you jumped at the chance to rid the world of the Scourge of Europe for once and for all. To prove yourself, like any other young man."

Something about that statement rattled me. "Where is Connor?" I asked again.

Holtz stepped up to me, his face a scant few inches from my own. His lips twisted in a bizarre kind of grin. "I'm looking at him."

My stomach lurched. I couldn't breathe.

"But before you start wondering if Wesley Wyndam-Pryce ever truly existed, let me assure you that he did. And he looked very much like you as an infant. But, such as is the destiny of some children, he died. His mother, the wife of a Watcher, was visited by Sahjhan and given a new child, similar to the first. Assured that the child was not evil, nor demonic, and that he in fact had a destiny on the side of Good, the distraught woman accepted the child, blocking out all memories of the first child, the dead infant. And her husband, having been away for months in Moscow assisting a Slayer, never knew the difference, as he had never seen the child outside of its mother's womb."

Holtz stepped back and after a few moments began to pace. "You, my dear sir, are a tool in the battle between Good and Evil. My tool. You are of course fully human, but your blood is indeed unique. You cannot be turned, which I find to be quite humorous, given your heritage. I believe that you are familiar with a prophecy in which the Father kills the Son?"

Throughout his speech, I had been silent and motionless. For the first time I managed motion. I nodded.

I could not bring myself to look at Angel.

"Your blood, young man, your death, is the key to the End of Days, the deciding factor in which side wins. Angelus will kill you. There is no avoiding that. But your blood will eternally anchor him either to the side of Good or to the side of Evil. In all other variations of the world, it has always anchored him to Evil. I do not expect that to change. And because he is evil, I am able to kill him before other entities which would desire him have the chance to employ him."

Other entities. Immediately, my thoughts turned to Wolfram and Hart, though I knew they weren't the only 'players' who might want to be on friendly terms with someone like Angelus.

"And by doing that," continued Holtz, "I ensure the outcome of the End of Days for the side of Good." He stopped pacing. "Surely you see the logic of the situation," he said. "Good must win, sirs, and in some instances, the death of one man is worth the lives of a thousand-thousand others." He clapped his hands.

The young man with the blue magick stepped forward and began to cast a second and then a third spell. I found myself unable to speak, to even move my head or my eyes. I could barely breathe.

Suddenly, I heard a scream.

The spell on me broke and at once I came to realize that a battle had broken out around me. Angel moved swiftly, killing Holtz's followers with their own weapons, snapping the necks of those who tried to use magick against him. Holtz himself was felled by the twisting of his spine. Angel turned toward me and for a moment I could not even recognize him behind the twisted, monstrous face of the demon within him. There was a malicious joy in his yellow eyes as he stalked towards me. In that single moment I realized that it was indeed Angelus, and not Angel, who stared at me. He smirked. "Guess you're not such a wimp after all, Wes," he said in a low voice. "After all, that's my blood flowing through your veins. Who would've thought, huh? But guess what?" He pinned me to the wall with one hand at my throat. The smirk turned into a sneer and he leaned in to whisper in my ear. "I want my blood back."

In all my years of being a demon hunter, being a Watcher and the son of a Watcher, I had never been bit.

I can no longer say that.

It was painful, to say the least, and suddenly I began to struggle against him, but all I managed to do was to anger him and it became even more painful. I ran through my few options and came up with just one: kill Angel. And with Holtz quite clearly dead and unable to carry out his promise, it was left to me.

Being a Watcher, and particularly being Watcher to such unique and innovative girls as Buffy and Faith, taught me a multitude of things. The paramount of those, however, was how to hide weapons underneath everyday clothing, and ever since the incident with Rebecca Lowell and Angelus's brief appearance during my first few months with Angel and Cordelia, I had taken to carrying a few weapons on my person. There was a knife in my shoe, which I could not reach, and usually a small bottle of holy water in my pocket. But I had taken it out to make room for the supplies for summoning the Loa. That left the wooden stake.

Already I could feel myself begin to die, to fade from life, but there was a little strength left in me, and if I were to die, at least I would take Angelus with me. I reached a hand behind me, between my back and the wall, and withdrew the stake from underneath my shirt.

Life-and-death situations are often described as occurring in slow motion, as if everything slowed down. Not this. I was simply suddenly aware of Angelus' fangs leaving me and he looked at me with surprise on his face as he turned to dust. I do not remember actually shoving the stake into his chest.

Silence. I felt dizzy and collapsed to the floor. Flashes of my dream returned to me - my bleeding hands. Blood everywhere. Tainted. The stake bounced out of my hand and the moment I saw it come to rest on the carpet of the hallway, the world turned black.

I awoke to the sound of a rhythmic beep.

"Wesley?"

The voice was familiar, but it took a few minutes to register and several more moments to open my eyes. "Cordelia?"

She smiled. "You're finally awake," she said softly. "I was about to give up on you for today. How to do you feel?"

I began to try to sit up, but quickly gave up on that idea. Groaning, I turned my head towards her and finally saw her completely, not just out of the corner of my eye. "Not sure," I replied. "But I seem to realize now that I'm not dead. How long was I unconscious?"

"This is the third day," she told me. "And you're really lucky. You almost did die." I frowned at that. "I found you just in time," she replied. "Gunn and Fred and I all got back at the hotel at about the same time, and if they hadn't been there to help get you into the truck…" She sighed. "The doctor doesn't think you would have lasted long enough for an ambulance to get there and then get to the hospital. It would have taken too long. As it was, your heart stopped for, like, twenty seconds."

"Oh."

"They're ruling it a household accident or something to that effect. Like in Sunnydale. Remember? Running with barbecue forks?" She tried to smile at that, but it didn't reach her eyes.

I looked away from her, remembering what had really happened. Clearly she was waiting for me to explain what had happened. "Where's the Groosalug?" I asked.

She laughed. "On his way to New York. A vacationing art supervisor for one of those romance novel publishers saw him and wants to turn him into the new Fabio." She laughed a little at that. "Groo says his hair will grow back quick enough to do it, too. But it's okay. We figured out that we don't really belong together. A…mutual breakup."

"I see."

She frowned. "Wes, what happened? It's been three days, and we haven't been able to find Angel and Connor." She paused. "Was it Drusilla? Did she finally hear about Darla?"

I sighed, and discovered it was a little painful to do so. Bruises. Probably from being slammed against the wall. "Angel's dead."

I heard this little gasp and realized that it was Cordelia. "What?"

"He's dead," I repeated.

"How?" She began to cry.

I swallowed. "Somehow he reverted to Angelus. He's the one who tried to kill me."

She looked up at me. "Self-defense?" she asked. I nodded. "Did he-?" She stopped and tried again. "Did he kill Connor?"

"No." I looked at her. "At least not the way that you think."

She frowned. "Wesley, please. Just tell me what happened."

"Holtz came to us, took the baby and gave it to a demon capable of traveling through time. His name is Sahjhan. Sahjhan took Connor into the past and -" I swallowed again. "And-"

Cordelia took my hand and began to rub at my palm. "Sh," she whispered. "Just tell me."

"God, it's so terribly complicated. You won't believe me."

"Of course I'll believe you, Wes," she told me. "I don't care how crazy it sounds. We revel in crazy, remember? Just tell me."

I took in a deep breath. "Cordelia," I whispered, "I'm Connor."

[END]