[Gunnwesley] Fic: Kungai Part Three 7/18 (Wesley/Gunn, NC17)

[helenraven]

Title: Kungai Part Three 7/18

Author: Helen Raven

Email: helenraven at talk21.com

Pairing: Wesley/Gunn

Summary: The full history of the relationship between
Gunn and Wesley in the Birthdayverse. A novel in six
parts.

Rating: NC-17

Disclaimer: Not mine, not for profit, not even a blip
on the litigation radar.

The Story's Home Page: http://www.kelper.co.uk/kungai

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Over the next week Wesley's application went through
as expected, and the lease was settled to start on
Monday the 12th of February. Yan asked when they were
looking to start training with the guards, and they
decided they'd be ready by the week after the move.

They got used very quickly to keeping their stakes to
hand whenever they were in the apartment. They didn't
have to chain Angel during that week, but hardly an
hour seemed to pass without some reminder of how
quickly he could now change. Angel had some form of
hallucination every day, and they could be triggered
anywhere, at any time. The hallucinations that started
when he was in his room were usually very quiet, and
sometimes they didn't realise that he was having one
until they knocked on the door and tried to talk to
him. Angel seemed less concerned now about how he was
getting worse, was less and less likely to ask them
what he'd been doing, how many gaps he was having -
even when the gaps must have been obvious, like the
times he woke up on the floor.

Gunn was beginning to wonder if they'd already seen
the last time when Angel would be lucid after a
vision. Seemed so long since he'd been able to tell
them what the vision meant and then join them in the
mission - join them in a real mission, anyway, with
someone really there to be rescued. His last lucid
vision had been that strange repeat of the vision of
the three kids in the nest at Vernon and La Salle; and
maybe that was why the vision had been so strange,
because it was trying to tell them something about
Angel, not about the mission. Was that the rule, that
any vision about something that had already happened
was a warning about Angel? Or about Angelus?

On the morning of the last Tuesday of the month, Gunn
got a call from Anne. There was something weird
happening with some cops in the area, suddenly making
life impossible for the kids on the street, and yeah,
she'd taken it to the precinct house, and if he and
Wesley had time to come by the shelter, that'd be the
easiest way for her to explain just where things got
weird. Gunn and Wesley did have time, would be over in
half an hour. Anne said that Rondell might be at the
shelter when they arrived. "George too, maybe. They've
been in on this, helping us. I told them I was going
to call you and they're... dealing with it. Just so
you know."

Gunn was ready to meet Rondell again, he wasn't gonna
stress over it, but yeah, he was glad when it turned
out that Rondell wasn't at the shelter - for Wesley's
sake, mostly. They went up to Anne's office and she
told them the trouble had started about two weeks ago
and seemed to be getting worse. Kids had been showing
up at the shelter desperate to get off the streets,
saying they'd been threatened by some scary, scary
cop, chased even, or beaten. All the kids swore they'd
been doing nothing wrong, except maybe looking like
what they were: young and homeless.

Anne had called Rondell, asked if they'd been getting
the same trouble. They hadn't, but they came to talk
to the kids, asked around on the streets, and found
that these scary cops were just in Precinct 89,
nowhere else, and that no one could remember seeing
any one of them before two weeks ago. The precinct
still had its regular cops, that most of the kids got
to know by sight after a month or so on the street,
and the regular cops were treating the kids the same
as ever. Though maybe some of those regulars had got
kind of smug, and when was the last time anyone had
seen one of the regulars out working at night?

Rondell and his crew figured out which streets the
scary cops had been seen in most often, found safe
places where they could take up watch, and after four
nights they'd collected badge numbers for seven of the
scary cops, and could describe each of those cops well
enough for the kids to be able to recognise the ones
that had threatened them. Anne went to the precinct
house to make complaints against the seven officers,
giving the details of all the threats to the kids. The
cop on the desk took down the names, times and places,
but by the third he was laughing and shaking his head,
telling her the kids must be playing a joke on her -
because there weren't any officers with those numbers
assigned to the precinct. Anne had asked Lindsey the
lawyer for help and he'd got back to her just the day
before saying exactly the same as the cops: that the
kids must be playing her for some reason, because
those badge numbers all belonged to officers who were
dead. He'd given her the list of the names and when
they'd died, and she didn't try to argue with him but
went straight to the library and looked for newspaper
reports on the dead officers. She found reports of
five of them, all with photographs, made copies to
show to the kids and to Rondell's crew - and of course
they'd recognised all five cops. So what the hell were
they dealing with here and how could they stop it
since obviously they weren't going to get any help
from the law?

Wesley said, "I think we can take it that they're not
vampires. Which essentially leaves us with zombies,
and then the questions are: who is controlling them,
and with what, and from where? If we can break the
control, the zombies will... return to their natural
state."

"They've gotta know about this at the precinct house.
Way the regulars're leavin' the streets at night. Bet
it comes from there."

"I agree. But the material for the spell that's
controlling them, that could be located anywhere. And
we have to find that material in order to destroy it
and break the spell."

"Could be anywhere, huh?"

Wesley pulled a face. "Within the area of the
precinct, probably. The range is usually limited to a
few miles. There are spells that can reveal how
another spell is being cast. That would be the most
direct way of answering our questions, though it may
take a few days to find a suitable spell. And a
suitable person to cast it. We'll almost certainly
need to get close enough to one of the zombies to cast
our spell around it. And then once we've found the
source, we'll need a strategy for the raid."

"Sounds like Rondell and the crew are the best bet for
getting us close. They know where to wait. Sure they'd
be up for the raid, too."

Anne said, "Can I tell Rondell what you're planning? I
know he'll call today to see what you said."

"Go ahead. Uh... he and the crew aren't likely to try
anything in the meantime, are they? Go out 'n' try to
bag a zombie? That'd be a bad idea, right, Wes?"

"A very bad idea, especially if you consider that
they're experienced and fully-equipped police officers
as well as zombies."

Anne smiled. "I'll put it to them like that. Should
make them think. When will you know how long you'll
need?"

"By this evening, I think. I'll call you by ten, at
the latest."

Wesley had sounded confident with Anne, but as soon as
they got in the truck he sank deep into troubled
thought, frowning hard at the dashboard and sighing
frequently.

"We got that much of a problem?"

"No, no, not really." Wesley's tone was distracted but
lighter than Gunn had expected. "Just wondering if I
should forget about looking for something myself and
call in a full magic-user straight away. Since I'll
probably have to do that anyway. How selfish - and
irresponsible - is it for me to want to find out for
myself what our options might have been? When a full
magic-user could do it all for us in a fraction of the
time."

Gunn laughed. "Man, you should've told me how much you
loved researchin' spells. I'd've been lookin' for work
for you right from the start."

Wesley closed his eyes briefly and gave a
tired-sounding sigh. "It's not like that, Charles.
This would be such a good opportunity for me to take a
measure of my..." Another sigh. "My current
limitations. I wouldn't trust any test I set myself."

"Oh. Why'd you need a test? You workin' towards a
diploma or somethin'?"

"I have a diploma, but I might not be entitled to it
since I lost my arm. I want a test to see how much
useful magic I can still do. If the answer is 'almost
none', then I'll know for the future that we'll always
have to bring in a full magic-user. And my instincts
tell me that this would be a good test. But it's
definitely not the most efficient approach to dealing
with the zombies."

"You can't just work around things? See you do that
all the time. I'd've thought it was like cooking."

Wesley shook his head. "When a spell says to do
something with your left hand, that's rarely an
optional detail. As I've discovered. Some types of
magic involve creating a... projection of yourself in
a realm of ideas, so you can manipulate other ideas in
that realm. Or that's what it feels like, anyway. But
it seems I can't get there anymore. I don't fit."

Gunn felt his guts twist at the thought of how he'd
laughed, teasing Wesley about loving to research
spells. He didn't know what to say, didn't trust
himself to say anything right now; he'd trust himself
to hold Wesley, needed to hold him, but he knew the
moment would be gone by the time they got home. "But
there's other spells? Where it doesn't matter?"

"There are, and ideally I'd like to give myself four
hours, say, to look for as many suitable spells as I
can find. Spells that would do what we need, that is.
And then I'd like a few more hours to see if any of
them are within my capabilities. Bearing in mind that
I was far from being an expert even when I was whole.
I enjoy the theory but I'm uncomfortable with much of
the practice."

Gunn shrugged. "Don't think we're in a big hurry, are
we? You should do it. Zombies haven't come close to
really hurting anyone. Aren't likely to, either, now
everyone knows to stay off the streets. Extra day
won't make any difference."

"You think so?"

"Yeah."

Wesley nodded and relaxed, and Gunn decided that he
hadn't been totally wrong before: Wesley was looking
forward to this piece of research, even though the
result might be bad news for himself.

Wesley also had Wyndham Gunn work to do that day, and
by ten o'clock, when he'd arranged to call Anne, he'd
only been able to spend three hours researching the
spells. He had found four possible spells, but they
either required a left hand or too much expertise or
both, and he'd decided that there was hardly any
chance of finding a spell he could perform, even if he
looked for another three hours. He told Anne that he
was going to ask someone else to perform the spell,
and they might be able to cast it the next night.

"Who you gonna ask?" Wesley was still just saying "a
full magic-user", hadn't mentioned any names to either
Anne or Gunn.

"You haven't met any of them." Wesley was getting into
his jacket. "I'm going out to ask them now. I'll be
gone for at least an hour, maybe two or three."

"Or you could just 'phone?"

"There's an etiquette. Someone in my position has to
make the approach in person. Can I take the 'phone? In
case Angel has a vision."

Gunn passed Wesley the cellphone. "These people
dangerous? If they're that touchy. Maybe you need to
call in too."

Wesley shook his head. "They can be unnerving.
Especially if they've got company. But if I'm out of
contact for two hours, it's most likely because I've
had to join in one of Cameron's endless games of
charades." A sudden smile. "And any attempt to rescue
me from that would be taken very badly."

Gunn never formed any plan of waiting up for Wesley.
There wasn't any point, and he wouldn't expect it from
Wes if he was the one out working late, but he did
find himself putting off going to bed. He'd never yet
got into that bed (their bed) without Wesley, and the
idea felt wrong enough for him to keep deciding on one
more game. From the rate at which his yawns increased,
he would probably have given in around one a.m., but
Wesley got back soon after midnight, tasting of
marzipan and smelling of wood-smoke, and rather
pleased with himself for succeeding with the very
first magic-user he'd visited.

Gunn spent at least two hours with this magic-user
during the next night, knew he must have heard Wesley
call the guy by name ten or twenty times; but somehow
Gunn found it impossible to remember anything about
him, except that he was an ordinary-looking white guy.
If you took your eye off him for more than... maybe
five, ten seconds?... then when you looked back you
just didn't recognise him, would swear you'd never
seen this particular ordinary-looking white guy
before. Gunn thought he could see Anne, Rondell and
the others having the same problem; and making the
same decision to keep it to themselves. Wesley was the
only one who used the guy's name.

First, Gunn, Wesley and Rondell drove the guy around
and showed him all of the hiding-places that the crew
had used when they were collecting badge numbers, so
he could choose the best location for casting the
spell. He asked a lot of questions about how regular
the zombies were at patrolling each street, and at the
end he chose 37th Street, between Western and
Normandie, where the hiding-place gave good views of
the approach and was easy to get into, and where
zombies had been seen between two o'clock and three
o'clock on at least four nights.

Back at the shelter, Wesley helped with preparations
for the spell, which involved about half an hour of
intermittent banging, splashing, grinding and chanting
from behind the closed door of the kitchen. Everyone
waiting outside acted like they couldn't hear
anything, and Gunn reckoned they'd all decided the
same: that it was obvious right from the start that if
you made one joke, you'd have to make hundreds more.
Gunn took the chance to make his first real move in
the direction of peace with his crew, going over to
Rondell and asking him if there were any new cops on
their streets, if they were still able to use the same
system to keep clear of cops during the patrols.

Rondell didn't seem to need more than a couple of
seconds to decide that Gunn wasn't trying any kind of
dig, and soon they were able to move on to what had
changed with the crew itself: new people who'd joined,
what they'd done to mark the holidays, new ideas they
were trying, new problems. George joined them and the
talk became more about telling stories: the best
moments of the last few months, and then, more and
more, good moments from the months and years before
that. They didn't ask Gunn anything about the changes
in his life, not even to mentioning that they knew
he'd saved those three kids from the nest. But he'd
known they wouldn't ask, and knowing had made it
simpler for him to start with the peace-making; he
didn't have to get any story ready about how he was
earning a living, how he was fitting in with Wesley's
friends.

"You still play pickup on Sundays?"

"Most Sundays yeah."

"Got room for one more?"

Rondell and George looked at one another, then Rondell
said, "Sure. So you haven't got onto... what is it?
'Cricket'?" Could almost be taken as a genuine
question. A mild dig, by Rondell's standards.

"Pickup's still good for me. You'll give me a call,
yeah, when you're plannin' to go out?"

There was only room for three in the hiding-place: the
magic-user, Wesley and Rondell. They drove over to
37th Street for one o'clock, leaving Gunn, George and
the rest back at the shelter. Gunn had suggested that
he and George could take the other car and wait a
couple of blocks over, but Rondell said that if the
zombies saw them parked and went to deal with them,
that might throw off the plans for the spell. So Gunn
was at the shelter waiting again while the action was
somewhere else; but at least this time the crowd of
them waiting could go into the kitchen and get sodas
and snacks.

"Action" probably wasn't the right word, anyway, not
from what Wesley had said. Watching an
ordinary-looking white guy making a circle on the
sidewalk with a potion that just looked like iced tea,
then making another circle inside the hiding-place and
sitting inside it where he could look out at the
sidewalk, and then waiting and waiting for the zombie
to walk along the sidewalk and into the circle. Even
with the business of the magic-user having to keep on
anointing his face and his hands with the potion while
he waited, you were still looking at the demon-hunting
equivalent of ice-fishing.

All of the action would happen inside the magic-guy's
head, nothing to see from the outside. When the zombie
stepped into the circle, the guy would get to see the
spell (or feel it, maybe - Wesley's description was
really confusing), and the guy would know the type of
spell, and the spell would guide him towards its
source. Rondell would keep a lookout for the cops and
then do the driving, and Wesley would act as liaison
for the guy, like he'd been doing all night.

At about a quarter after three, Rondell called Gunn to
say that he and Wesley had just run the spell guy home
- Wesley was walking him up to his apartment right
now, and then they'd be coming back to the shelter.
They'd tracked the spell to some hidden room on the
third floor of the precinct building, and he reckoned
they'd need at least a day of hard thinking to figure
out how to get in there and break the spell and get
out, all without being arrested or maybe shot.

You couldn't say Rondell and Wesley had bonded or
anything, but they'd made a start on learning how to
work together, and they each took their parts quite
naturally in telling the story of tracking the spell.
The source or focus for the spell was a small statue
of Granath, a god of zombies, and the spellcaster must
be keeping this statue in an entirely closed room,
because the spell couldn't be cast under any form of
natural light, not even moonlight. The spellcaster was
driven mainly by feelings of anger (not greed or
revenge or power), and there was animal fat and blood
on his hands, and a lot of sweat. The statue was
definitely on the third floor, about twenty feet off
the centre of the building, towards the south-east
corner.

So... who was gonna walk up there and wander around
knocking on walls until he found the hidden room? For
the "walking up" you'd need someone who looked like he
belonged in a precinct building (outside of custody),
and that ruled out every one of them in the shelter or
with the crew back at base. And looking like you
belonged would only get you so far once you started
knocking on walls, unless you were lucky enough that
the third floor was deserted at night. Difficult, and
it had been a long, strange night, and they soon
stopped trying to think about it properly and were
just making joke suggestions about storming the
building. They agreed to call it a night, meet again
the next evening, and get in touch if any of them had
any ideas during the day.

When they got home Wesley went straight to his
bookcase, pulled out a book and laid it on his desk,
then stood for a few seconds about to open it but with
his hand still an inch away - and then he shook his
head and put the book back.

"Wrong book?"

"I don't need to know more about Granath. Not right
now."

"Nah. He'll still be there in the morning."


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