10 - Dead Men Walking

#

NEWSFLASH: We are receiving worldwide reports of growing ethereal activity. Sightings of ghosts and poltergeists have increased by several thousand percent with no sign of subsiding anytime soon. A press statement by Magitech Research Division has told of an as yet unspecified crisis in the ethereal realm, which is spilling over onto the Earth plain.

Military forces in the United States and the European Union have been put on alert, as there are suspicions this might be a similar occurrence to the Golgotha Event of 2038 AD (see separate reference), where a major demon manifested in New York City.

The authorities advise all citizens to stay calm until more information is available.

Download from Global News Network Omninet, November 16, 2057

#

In London James Gregory, age 81, was visited by his wife, whom he had murdered thirty years earlier. The police had never been able to prove anything, but that didn't save Gregor from the heart attack that struck him down when he saw her face again.

In Frankfurt Norbert Haas strolled across the cemetery to visit his parents' graves, as he did once a month, and had a thirty-minute conversation with a man whose final resting place he had passed on his way in. The man finally took his leave, promising Haas to say hi to his parents.

A Dutch adventurer unearthed a long-lost pirate treasure from the bottom of the Mexican Gulf, telling the press that he had been told where to find it by a ghost with an eye patch and a wooden leg over a bottle of beer.

A biker gang went marauding through downtown Los Angeles, scaring people off the streets even though the bikers tended to just pass through everyone they tried to run over. Their intangibility didn't seem to curb the bikers' enthusiasm, though, and they left a trail of intense cold in their wake, as well as a few people who died from sheer fright.

Helmut Mueller, president of the European Union, tried to call his American counterpart to discuss possible actions to be taken against the increasing chaos. President Chase, though, was busy talking shop with Hillary Clinton, who had made an unannounced appearance in the Oval Office after having died in that very room about forty years earlier.

For most of the human race, the situation seemed to hover somewhere between frightening and just plain ridiculous. The dead returned in droves, but apart from that very unsettling fact everything seemed to stay pretty quiet.

For now.

#

Willow watched with a heavy heart as security guards led the screaming woman towards the medical department. She shouldn't have taken a risk like that. Helena had been one of her best clairvoyants and she had volunteered to try and peer beyond the Ethereal Threshold. They needed to know how many more souls were waiting there, how many more would pour through the widening cracks in the Threshold like so much rainwater through a leaky roof.

Of course they had Giles, a ghost who could pass through the Threshold and just report back to them, but there had been little trace of the Watcher since he had told them everything he knew about the crisis. Buffy had said he went back into the ethereal realm for more information and, Willow thought with a sad laugh, he might just be caught up in the traffic on the way back here.

So they had to try it another way. Never before had any clairvoyant managed to peer beyond the Threshold, though many had tried. But never before in recorded history had the barrier between the living and the dead been this shaky, either. Some of her stronger psychics had already received impressions of something building beyond the veil, but none of them was strong enough to consciously look at it.

Except for Helena. She had broken through, looked beyond it, and gone insane.

"Let me know if you get anything intelligible out of her." Willow told the doctor. "And do whatever you can for her! Money isn't a consideration, understood?"

The doctor nodded, following his patient out the door. Willow returned to her office, taking small, tired steps. Arriving there, she dropped heavily into her seat, trying to remember the last time she had slept. Must have been a few years ago, she resolved.

"You have to take things a little easier." Sally reprimanded her as she walked in the door. Willow's familiar moved with pure feline grace, her long tail standing upright in an expression of irritation. "I don't want to see you work yourself into an early grave."

"I can't rest now, Sally!" Willow said, trying to sound resolute, but not quite getting there. "Research Department is working on a spell to maybe stabilize the Threshold for a time and I need to be there the moment they have it finished. We are desperately short on experienced witches right now and will need my power."

A subdivision of Magitech was the world's largest agency for freelance witches and right now they were bombarded with calls, everyone hoping that a witch might be able to exorcise the ghosts that kept appearing everywhere. Willow couldn't exactly order the freelancers to stay in and wait for something that might come up, not with so many people willing to pay for their skills. As a result money was flowing in like crazy, but it had left Willow short of talent for the moment.

"They'll call the second they find anything." Sally said, moving beside her. "And I promise to wake you up as soon as they do. You have to rest."

"No, I …" Willow began, but too slow. Sally had already gathered her into a hug and started purring so intensely that Willow feared it would vibrate the bones right out of her. She felt herself melting into the incredibly soft fur of her familiar, every muscle relaxing, her eyelids dropping. Her entire body turned into so much mush under Sally's ministrations.

"You're fighting unfair!" She mumbled, already half asleep.

"Always!" Sally murmured, stroking Willow's hair back as the witch fell asleep in her arms.

Rising back to her feet with Willow securely cradled against her, Sally walked into the small bedchamber next to the office, depositing her precious cargo on the soft sheets. She would make Willow take care of herself even if she had to tie the witch to the bed in order to do it. The familiar had already lost one of her charges. She would not lose the other as well.

Sally sighed, remembering Tara. Witches did not choose their familiars, it was the other way around. Both Tara and Willow had been surprised by Sally's unannounced appearance in their lives, but had grown used to it quickly. The bond between them had been strong, Sally loving the two women with all her strength, vowing to always protect them from harm.

Until Tara had been taken from them by a cruel accident.

"I'll keep you safe, Willow." Sally whispered to the sleeping witch. "I swear I will."

Returning to the office, she found that Willow's phone was blinking.

"Office of Mrs. Rosenberg," she picked up the call, "what can I do for you?"

A holographic image flickered into being over the desk, Buffy's face looking down on Sally.

"Hi, Sally! Is Will around?"

"I just put her to bed. Is it important?" She knew that, despite her youthful appearance, Buffy was Willow's oldest and dearest friend. If Buffy said it was necessary to wake Willow, then she would. Grudgingly.

"No, let her sleep!" Buffy shook her head. "Just wanted to bring her up to date. Angel had a visitor of the creepy kind a few minutes ago. Apparently Hell has figured out that this mess was caused by the Necronomicon."

Sally nodded, being familiar with the matter at hand and the major players involved. Didn't get much more major than this, she thought.

"Is he all right?"

"Yeah. Apparently they just talked. He's freaked, though, and that takes some doing, let me tell you."

"I have some news as well." Sally added. "Willow tried to have one of our psychics look beyond the Threshold to figure out what's happening on the other side. I'm afraid it wasn't exactly a success."

"Good news all over." Buffy mumbled. "Giles hasn't come back either, so we're in the dark. Just great." She paused to sigh deeply. "Okay, I better get back to work. Keep an eye on Willow for me, okay?"

"Always!"

Buffy was about to sign off when something seemed to attract her attention. For a moment she conversed with someone outside the phone's visual pickup.

"What?" Sally heard her ask. "Hold on a sec!"

Buffy disappeared from view, several excited voices rising in the background. Sally was getting worried, even debating to wake up Willow, when Buffy returned a minute later.

"Sally! Do me a favor, okay? Look out the window and tell me what you see!"

"Look out the window? What ...?"

"Just do it, please!"

Confused, Sally nevertheless went over to the window and looked outside. It was a late morning here in California, almost all the way around the world from where Buffy was calling. Sally couldn't image what she was supposed to see here that would get Buffy into such an uproar.

Looking down from the top floor office, she saw only the usual bustle of people down on the streets. Magitech Central, a few miles outside Los Angeles, was a sprawling complex, almost a small city in itself, and people were moving all over, going about their business.

No, Sally realized after a moment, they weren't. Most of them weren't moving around at the moment. In fact pretty much everyone she could see seemed rooted in place, staring upward.

"Oh shit!" Sally muttered, looking upwards herself.

The sky above them had changed. It was still the same steely blue it always was here in California, but now that blue was overlaid with something else. It was as if the sky itself had turned transparent, a blue-tinted window, behind which something moved.

Something like a billion or more twinkling stars.

"Do you see it, too, Sally?" Buffy's voice came from the desk, hailing from the other side of the world. "Are you seeing that, too?"

#

In a padded cell several floors below, the mad clairvoyant Helena laughed hysterically. "They're coming! They're coming! All of them! They're coming here!"

#

Sariel and Gabriel looked up from where they walked in the streets of Los Angeles, taking in the new appearance of the sky.

"We might have less time than we thought." The Messenger muttered.

"Gee, you think?" The Angel of Death replied, looking skywards. Though this situation looked anything but good, there was a gleam of anticipation in her dark eyes.

11 - Sorry I'm Late, But Traffic Was Murder

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NEWSFLASH: We are experiencing a worldwide phenomenon. The sky over the entire planet seems to have been blanketed with something Magitech Research Division calls a transdimensional interface. The phenomenon is purely visual so far, probing aircraft have been unable to make any kind of physical contact with the moving objects visible in our skies. Also it seems to have no fixed position in space, as we have similar reports coming in from the orbital stations and the lunar colony.

Military forces worldwide are on full alert now and preparations are made to repel any kind of otherdimensional invasion (see separate reference 'Golgotha Event'). It is yet to be determined whether this phenomenon is in any way connected to the mass appearance of ghosts these past two weeks.

The authorities advise all citizens to stay calm until more information is available.
 

Download from Global News Network Omninet, November 17, 2057

#

"I believe we are facing a problem, Mr. Giles."

"I believe you are correct, Mr. Pryce."

The two Watchers floated in empty space, though it bore no relation to the empty vacuum encountered in the physical realm, and looked at their intended destination.

Not only theirs, as it turned out.

"There are a lot of them." Kendra said.

The Ethereal Threshold loomed directly before them, a silvery barrier that stretched on for eternity in all directions. Giles remembered looking at it a hundred times before, remembered thinking that it looked to him like the surface of a quiet lake, somewhere in the middle of a beautiful forest. On occasion he would see a small part of the surface ripple as the glowing star of a soul burst through it, making its way from the material world into the afterlife.

Those were memories, though. The quiet lake was no more and they were looking at a storm-tossed ocean. The silvery surface rippled and churned wherever they looked, rending and tearing in some spots, only to flow together again a second later.

A huge, pulsing mass of bright lights was hovering directly above the angry surface, millions upon millions of them like so many hungry insects about to descend on a helpless prey. As Giles watched he saw a rend appear in the Threshold, a gap opening in the barrier between dimensions, and immediately thousands of souls dove for the opening, elbowing their way past others in their desperate attempt to get through.

When the rend closed scant seconds later a few dozen or so of them had made it through. The others returned to hovering, waiting for a new opening.

"A traffic jam in the afterlife." Wesley shook his head. "Who would have thought."

Giles looked at his two companions, thinking back to the events of the past week. After delivering his warning to Buffy and Angel, Giles had returned past the Threshold, hoping to gather more information about the developments on this side of the fence. Heaven and Hell would not stand idly by as their souls disappeared and he had to know what they intended to do about it.

He knew that Kendra had wanted to visit her former Watcher, Wesley, during their trip to the material plain. Giles was familiar with the tragic history between the two and understood why Kendra felt the need to speak with Wesley one final time.

What he had not expected was that, upon her return to his side, Kendra would bring Wesley along.

"I often wondered what it would feel like to be dead." Wesley said as they observed. "I certainly never expected anything like this."

Giles nodded, understanding him only to perfectly. The afterlife had certainly not been what he had expected the first time he had crossed the Threshold. Though he had wielded the cross for years in his battle against Vampires, Giles hadn't been much of a Christian in life, or a firm follower in any other kind of religion for that matter. When he had died, he had more or less resolved to just take whatever he found on the other side at face value, voiding himself of most expectations.

That had probably been his salvation.

Looking back to where they had just come from - 'back' being a completely random direction in this place - he could see the angry glare of the realms they had left behind just minutes ago.

The dimension known as Hell glowed a deep crimson, pulsing with the fires of damnation. Even from here he imagined he could hear the screams of those still imprisoned there, though their number was decreasing rapidly. What he could hear for certain was the furious growling of the demons, unlike any demons he had ever encountered in the material world, who were not happy with the current situation.

Heaven did not look much different from this vantage point, truth to be told. The light of the trinity star cast its glare over a world of flashing steel and winged warriors preparing for battle. A call to arms had reverberated between the worlds and Heaven was arming itself for war, just like Hell.

The war to end all wars, Giles thought ironically. So often had that phrase been used. This time it could actually come true, for there would be nothing left afterwards.

"I am amazed that we can see into both Heaven and Hell from here, Mr. Giles." Wesley said. "I would have thought these two realms to be more ... distant from one another."

"They normally are." Kendra explained to him. "But no longer."

"The Restoration spell did more than damage the Threshold." Giles continued. "The power of the Necronomicon Nocturnum cut a bloody swath through a number of different dimensions to reach all the souls it called back to Earth. Heaven, Hell, a number of other places that are normally as separate from each other as the material world is from here. They are all coming closer together."

"There is more than Heaven and Hell over here?" Wesley asked.

"Much more." Kendra said, smiling. "We don't know how many. Probably too many for anyone to count."

Wesley, having seen some impressions of both Heaven and Hell in the short time he had been dead - which was a concept he still had to get used to - had but one answer to that revelation.

"Thank God!" He mumbled.

"We have to go through the Threshold once more." Giles brought them back to the matter at hand. "We have to warn Buffy and the others of what is happening here."

"What can we do?" Wesley asked, looking at the mass of souls before them. "Stand in line?"

"Even with the rapid breakdown of the Threshold that would be taking too long. By the time we got through it might be too late."

Giles cursed himself for not taking this into consideration. When Kendra and he had first crossed over to warn Buffy it had been a perilous undertaking. The Threshold had still been solid then, the rends far and few between, and the news that it was breaking down known but to few.

He hadn't expected things to deteriorate this quickly. Though the actual crossover would be much easier now, getting there was a whole new problem. Apparently the news had spread rapidly and now everyone wanted to go through. Giles gave a sad chuckle. Considering that a large part of these souls hailed from Heaven and Hell, could he really blame them?

"There must be a way to get past them." Kendra said, old fighting instincts still very much alive inside of her. "Maybe there is some method of predicting where the next rend in the Threshold will appear."

"Considering that a few million souls are probably trying to figure out the same thing," Wesley said, "this might not be the solution we should put our hopes on."

A sound attracted Giles' attention. Not a sound as such, seeing as he had none of the physical senses left, but something that registered with whatever senses he had now. It appeared like a sound to him, though.

A sound like the beating of mighty wings.

"Look!" He pointed for the others.

They rose from the steel city of Heaven like great birds of prey, their wings beating at the void. There was a dozen of them, all dressed in battle armor, carrying great swords of fire. War cries echoed as they took flight.

Coming right toward the Threshold.

"Seraphim warriors." Kendra identified them. "Advance scouts for the main host."

The angels quickly closed the distance, the souls parting before them like the sea. These were the ones who had imprisoned them for so long, who tried to keep them away from where they wanted to go.

The souls feared the angels.

"They are going to cross the Threshold!" Giles called out to the others.

"Are they ... is this the start of the war?" Wesley asked.

"Unlikely. They will probably just scout the terrain and prepare for the actual battle."

The twelve angels dove toward the Threshold, where a rent was appearing even now.

"There is our chance!" Giles told the others and, without waiting for them to reply, followed the advancing angels as fast as he could.

"If they notice us," Kendra told him as she caught up, "they will probably not be pleased."

"That's a risk we have to take!"

Wesley was half a step behind them as they flew in the wake of the angels, the winged warriors either not aware of their presence or just not bothered by it. The Threshold loomed before them, the silvery surface churning angrily. The rend was like a wide, gaping wound. Giles imagined he could hear the Threshold screaming in pain.

Then they were through.

#

"I think we should ..." Willow started, only to be startled into silence when three shapes suddenly materialized right in front of her.

"We made it!" Wesley announced unnecessarily.

"Wesley?" Buffy, Angel, and Willow all asked at once.

Giles swept some imaginary dust from the shoulders of his equally imaginary suit.

"I believe we have some news to bring you." He announced to the people present.

"No kidding." Faith mumbled.
 

12 - Better to Fight in Heaven Than Die on Earth

#

STEPPING DISK: A new form of magical teleportation technology, first developed by Magitech's late founder Tara Rosenberg. In the past magical teleportation has proved very unreliable, especially in the preciseness of the arrival coordinates. The Stepping Disk technology will revolutionize mass transportation, as large volumes of goods and/or people can now be transported to pre-calculated location coordinates with a margin of error that is less than one meter.

While Stepping Disks will not completely replace traditional methods of transportation, due to their large requirements of both electrical and magical energy, they offer a valid and safe means of transportation for time-sensitive deliveries.
 

Exert from a Magitech Inc. advertisement brochure, May 2057

#

"So they will be going to war?" Angel asked, hoping against hope that he had somehow managed to misunderstand what Giles and Wesley had just told them.

"Heaven is preparing as we speak." Giles nodded. "Hell will no doubt respond in kind."

Silence had settled over the gathering like a heavy blanket. Angel and Buffy, along with Faith and Spike, had just returned from Siberia. The excavation was in full progress, but so far there was no sign of the Necronomicon Nocturnum. And with the new trouble brewing up in the sky they felt that they were needed elsewhere.

They had flown halfway around the world and it was everywhere. Millions upon millions of glowing lights filled the skies from horizon to horizon, brighter than all the stars in the heavens combined. Souls. A virtual ocean of souls just waiting to rain down upon the Earth once the barrier that kept them back finally fell.

"We have woven some spells," Willow explained tiredly, "that we hope will stabilize the Threshold for a little while at least. Considering the magnitude of this, though, I doubt it can really last."

"The Threshold is ripping into pieces." Giles told them. "The only question right now is whether Heaven will go to war against Hell before that happens or after. From what we have seen on the other side, I fear it will be the former."

Buffy shook her head. "I still can't believe this. I mean, we're talking about Heaven here. Aren't they supposed to be the good guys? What about, you know, God? Why isn't he doing something about this?"

Giles smiled sadly. "I am afraid the Heaven we are talking about, Buffy, is not the beautiful place of hereafter that we've heard about in Sunday school. Rather it is the Revelation kind. Plagues, stars falling from the heavens, oceans boiling, this is what we are talking about."

The interior of the room was darkened to the day outside, a necessary procedure with two Vampires present, and in the twilight Giles' ghostly appearance looked every bit as tired and worn out as Willow.

"And I'm afraid that, if there is a God of any kind to be found, he is not in Heaven. Or any other place I ever visited."

"We can not count on divine intervention to save us." Kendra announced. "We must do something ourselves."

"Darla is supervising the search for the Necronomicon in Siberia." Angel paced the length of the room. "Until it is found, I don't know what else we can do. Willow?"

The witch looked up from where she had almost fallen asleep again, Sally hovering around her like an overzealous mother.

"I don't know what other options we might try, magical-wise. My best people are working around the clock, trying to find some other way to stabilize the Threshold. We are also working on some spell that we hope will drive disembodied souls back into the afterlife, but even that would only be a temporary measure if they could just come back anytime it pleases them."

Angel looked at the tired group of warriors assembled here. He had gone through hell with these people by his side. Spike, Faith, Willow, Giles, Wesley and, most important of them all, Buffy. He didn't have many fond memories of Kendra, but knew her to be a capable warrior. Or at least she had been in life.

Of all his friends present here today, three were already dead. Willow, no matter that she had grown into one of the world's most powerful witches, was old and tired. Faith was keeping up well thanks to her advanced healing powers, but the years had marked her as well. Only the immortals among them looked unchanged and that was purely physical.

For a moment he wondered why he had never made an effort to surround himself with new mortal friends. Back during the time when he had first met Buffy there had been many of them. Cordelia, Doyle, Wesley, Kate, Willow, Tara, Giles, Buffy, Faith, all of them mortals. But now that old circle of friends was growing smaller almost every year and there was no one new to replace them.

Angel knew the answer to that question, of course. It was painful to see those friends slip away. So very painful. Looking over at Buffy, he remembered how hard she had cried when Giles had died. Or her mother. He remembered his own tears upon Cordelia's death. Or when Kate had been killed.

Was it any wonder they were not anxious to make new friends among the mortals?

Shaking himself out of his brooding, Angel forced his thoughts back to the matter at hand.

"Giles! What can we expect to happen if Heaven and Hell actually go to war over this?" Buffy asked her Watcher.

Giles took off his glasses and cleaned them, a gesture he realized was completely futile considering his state of being, but one he found calming nevertheless.

"Armageddon, I fear. Despite their own ethereal nature, a war between Heaven and Hell will no doubt spill over into the material world, especially with the Threshold deteriorating. I must admit that I have no idea as to the  extent of the power these warriors can unleash, but I have little doubt it will be ... well, apocalyptic in scope."

"I fear he is right." Wesley said. Angel had still not completely overcome the shock of seeing his old friend here, dead. He hadn't even heard of Wesley's demise from the retirement home before his ghost turned up here in the company of Giles and Kendra. Looking at how the latter stood close to her former Watcher, though, it appeared that Wesley had finally been able to lay his ghosts to rest, no pun intended.

"What little I have seen on the other side," Wesley continued, "only leads to one conclusion. A war between these two powers will be a thousand times worse than the coming of Golgotha was. We could be facing a catastrophe of truly biblical scale."

Angel nodded, remembering their war against the greater demon. Back then they had won, barely, and only by bringing together a virtual army of warriors. He wondered if all the warriors in the world would be enough this time around.

"I talked to President Chase on the flight back from Siberia." Angel said.

"And how is Cordy's little toddler today?" Spike asked.

"The little toddler is 53 years old, remember? And the president of the United States."

"I still have that photograph where he nabbed Spike's coat and got mud all over it." Faith remembered with a grin.

"Don't remind me!" The bleached Vampire groaned.

"What did he say?" Buffy asked, smiling at Spike and Faith despite herself. They all needed a little lightening up right now.

"Well, after he got through telling me what a smart woman Hillary was, he said that pretty much every military force on the planet is on alert. I gave him all the information we have right now. He isn't exactly thrilled about facing an invasion from Heaven or Hell. Or both."

"Who would have guessed?"

"Our chances of facing such an assault, should it come to pass, are pretty much nil." Giles called everyone back to the matter at hand. "Our best shot is to make sure that it doesn't come to that."

"Oh, and how are we gonna do that?" Spike asked, throwing his hands in the air. "Knock on the pearly gates and ask politely not to launch Armageddon because it wouldn't fit our schedule?"

Seeing Giles' thoughtful expression quickly wiped the sarcastic smile from Spike's face.

"That was meant to be a joke, man."

"It just might be worth a shot." Angel mused. "I doubt either of them wants to fight a war that will destroy everything. We are looking for the Necronomicon to restore things to order. If we can just convince them to be patient until we find it ..."

"You're out of your bloody mind!" Spike yelled. "I've seen you pull a lot of hair-brained stunts these past two centuries, mate, but this has got to be the stupidest idea you ever had."

"Besides," Faith interjected, "the only guys we could send on this little diplomatic mission would be you three." She pointed at Giles, Wesley, and Kendra. "And somehow I doubt that either Heaven or Hell would be willing to listen to a bunch of dead guys, seeing as all the dead are busy getting the hell out of Dodge at the moment."

"She is right." Giles said. "Neither side would listen to us. It would have to be one of you. Someone who is still alive."

Buffy stared at her Watcher. "You are saying what I think you're saying?"

Giles nodded.

"Is that even possible?" Willow asked. "I mean, we are talking about corporeal beings travelling to a non-corporeal dimension. I don't think I can even begin to grasp the necessary mathematics for this."

"Under normal circumstances, no, it wouldn't be possible." Wesley mused. "But from what we have seen, both here and on the other side, the dimensions are already starting to overlap. It might just bend physics enough to allow ..."

"Are you all nuts?" Spike yelled again. "We are talking about taking a bloody trip to bloody Heaven. Or Hell. Or whatever."

"Yes, we are." Angel said. "The question is, how do we get there?"

Wesley walked over to Willow's desk, smiling regretfully as the aura of cold he projected caused goosebumps to appear on the old witch's skin.

"Willow, I'm afraid I didn't keep myself completely up to date on matters. I .. I heard about Tara, though. My condolences."

"Thanks you." Willow whispered, for a moment considering the irony of a dead man offering his condolences to someone alive.

"I was wondering, though," he continued, "did Tara ever manage to complete her work on the Stepping Disks?"

"What? Yes, I mean ... we haven't gone into actual production yet because of the legal problems, but we have several working prototypes here. Are you thinking ..."

"I am." Wesley nodded.

Go to Part 13