Part One: Western Union Desperate In L.A. (Los Angeles)

Connor fuckin' hates L.A. How are you supposed to wreak vengeance when the sun is shining up your arse all day? He misses Boston and New York and Philadelphia, grey skies and cold that seeps into your bones. That's the sort of weather that the Angel of Death needs; it is, as Murphy said when they stepped off the plane, "smitin' weather."

Sunshine and palm trees are bullshit, is what they are.

They walk through Hollywood, saints with a divine mission, and no one clears a path, no one looks up. The people in California are drowning in sin, and none of them are repenting. They're talking on their cell phones and fuckin' other people's wives and they all look, sound, dress alike. Connor's desperate, after just two days, to hear a voice that isn't Hollywood, just once.

They're here because Smecker said they had to be here. He's not backing them, exactly, but he's keeping the rest of the Bureau off their tails. ‘Cept what should have been a routine extermination in a nicer part of Philly went wrong, and the Bureau chief was starting to shout, so Smecker shipped them out here, where no one's heard of saints and the only angels are in the city's name. He'd said, "I got an old cop buddy, he's got a daughter used to be with the LAPD. She could use some help, free-lancing as a PI. L.A.'s fucked up, boys, even if you are saints. Go give it a good clean."

So they're here, and so the sun's an actual excuse for the dark glasses, but it's too hot for a coat and where the fuck's Connor supposed to hide his fuckin' guns if he can't wear a coat?

Los Angeles strips the mystery off of everything.

The trouble is they don't know anybody. They know Kate, who's nice enough but clearly fuckin' terrified of them, and she tells them where to start, but after that, they're on their own. Murph says that hanging out in bars is the sure-fire way to find the bad guys, the really bad guys, the ones like Pappa Joe and the Russians that started this whole thing, but the truth is Murph really just likes to drink.

Half the time when they stagger out of the bar at the end of the night, they're drowning in whiskey and have forgotten what they went in for.

The other half of the time, they get pissed and angry and start fights with the drunk regulars.

Neither of those things is what they came here for, and it's starting to trouble Connor just a wee bit.

Kate tells them that there's this law firm, Wolf and something or other, and she says that they're the evil ones around here, the ones whose souls saints and angels pray for, though she hasn't seen a sign they have souls to begin with. Murph's ready to storm right in and shoot the place up, but Kate says that's been tried before and their Da says it's just the sort of attention they don't need right now.

They've put a couple of right bastards down in the last week, but it's been dark alley mercy killings, nothing showy, just tryin' to do what's right and save the world from its own excesses. They can't find the wankers they'd like to make examples of, so they end up in bars more frequently, drinkin' until they can't see straight.

Like they did before they were saints.

At the end of three and a half weeks in L.A., Smecker calls and says that they have to do at least another month out there, the Bureau's screaming up his ass to find out where they've gone, and even their Da throws up his hands and says, "Oh, piss it."

Murphy drags them into this tiny pub, entrance in an alley, a place he swears they can smoke in, unlike the rest of this bloody useless city, and when they shove through the door, cursing and shouting and Murph swinging at Connor's head, it's empty but for one man at the bar.

Connor is still cursing a blue streak and trying to cuff his brother upside the head when the man at the bar turns to look at them, and Murph and their Da go still almost immediately. Still, silent, ready for the kill. Connor knows that feeling. He stops fighting and looks up, one hand still fisting in Murphy's too-long hair.

The man at the bar has a scar across his throat and the eyes of a man who's dead inside.

They know they've found a man they could kill.

Murphy's reaching for the gun tucked into the back of his trousers when Connor yanks sharply on his hair. He looks away from the man at the bar and back at his brother, and their Da shakes his head, just a tiny bit. They're right, of course, Connor's always fuckin' right and Da's is even righter.

No need to stir up an unfamiliar bar if they could just tag this guy in the alley later on. They might want to come back here, and you can't come back to a place you've shot up - they learned that the hard way back in Boston.

The dead man has turned back to the bar and his drink. They saunter up to the counter and order a round of pints and "enough whiskey to kill a horse," as Connor likes to say. He and Connor can't help but get rowdy when they've been drinking, and they're already shoving and shouting and smoking fags when the dead man pulls out a credit card and asks the barman to pay up.

Murphy stops horsing and Connor knocks him back up against the bar with a thump. He grunts and shoves Connor off as the dead man looks up from his drink for the first time since they've walked into the bar.

"Evenin'," Murphy says, and the dead man gives him a bare, tiny nod. The barman's back with the credit card and he tosses it down on the bar.

"You don't look like no Lilah to me, mister," the barman says, voice quiet. Murph looks down at the card when he says it - it's platinum, real high class, and it says "Lilah Morgan - Wolfram & Hart."

"It belongs to an associate," the dead man says. He's got an accent, posh educated Brit, and every word he says has weight. His voice is dangerous, whiskey smooth and bullet fatal, and Murphy knows without a second thought that he will not be easy to bring to justice.

"I don't like to mess with Wolfram and Hart, man," the barman says. "They're trouble."

"I assure you," the dead man says, and the ice in his voice creeps up Murphy's spine so he shivers. Connor gives him a quick punch and Murph knows that Connor and Da are both hanging on every word the Brit utters. "I assure you that my associate is well aware that I have this card, and she will have no problem with you putting my charges onto it. If you don't mind."

It's not a suggestion, it's an order.

All the blood in his body rushes straight to Murphy's dick. He likes his birds and his blokes about evenly; shagging one's not the same as shagging the other, but they've both got their upsides. He likes his birds tiny and fragile, little blonde things with American accents, and he likes his blokes angry, righteous, and bearing not a small resemblance to Connor.

It's fucked up, but it could be worse.

The dead man doesn't look much like Connor, but it's that edge in his voice, like it's a deadly weapon. Murphy stares down at the dead man's hands, tapping idly on the bar top, so he won't stare at the dead man's face.

They're rough, scarred, work-worn, his hands. They bear testament to the authority in his voice.

Connor's sagged against Murphy's chest, and he can feel Connor's cock pressed hard against his thigh. If they don't get a mercy kill out of this man, he might have to bend his brother over the counter in the hotel room loo and shag him absolutely bloody stupid.

They like to keep it out of the family when they can, but sometimes there's no other option.

The dead man's scarred, strong hands are signing the bill and after he pushes his stool back and stands up, he jerks his chin in their direction one more time. "Gentlemen," he says, and Connor shudders against Murphy, lust and rage and fight reduced to a single violent shiver. Murphy and their Da nod back, and the dead man walks out through the back door of the bar, straight into the dark, dank alley they came in from.

As soon as the door slams shut behind the dead man, Murphy shoves Connor off him, Connor sprawling ungracefully across the bar. "Oy, faggot, get the fuck off me!"

Da just raises an eyebrow and Murphy adds, "Connor wants to shag the dead man."

"Not very good form, son," Da says, and he slaps down a handful of cash on the counter while Murphy pries Connor off the floor. Murphy's got a Glock tucked into the back of his jeans, underneath his shirt and Connor's got one, too, somewhere close but out of sight.

"So does Murphy," Connor says. "I felt it!"

"Quit your whinin'," Da says, and smacks Connor's head. "Let's go."

The door hasn't even rattled shut behind them before Murphy and Connor have their hands fingering the still-set safeties on their guns.

Great tragedy breeds many things. Regret, grief, sorrow. But great tragedy also breeds wariness, and a caution that may not have existed before. Wesley knows all this, and his prior carelessness has left him with a scar across his throat. He can feel sliding skin every time he swallows, and it burns more than the scotch he's drinking by the gallon, trying to forget.

Wesley is more careful now than he was before, more cautious. He trusted warily before; now he doesn't trust at all.

He knows without a doubt that the three Irish men in the pub have followed him out into the alley, and he has a strong idea that they don't have the friendliest of intentions. They're family, he assumes, because the two young ones look like brothers, and they've the same tattoos across their hands. They're rough and strong and all three have the beads of the rosary showing above their collars. The older one is the father, or maybe an uncle.

They seem to be the sort of men he used to crave attention from. Wild men, who know how to drink and to fight and to kill. They would not have given him the time of day if they'd seen him four years earlier, but now, he knows the way he looks. He's wounded and edgy, watchful like a frightened animal. He looks like someone dangerous. He wants to be someone dangerous.

At the end of the alley, standing beside the trash cans where he's left his crossbow carefully tucked in a space where no one would see it, he hears the cock of the safety on a gun. He's outmatched, and he hasn't spent the last three years running from demons and vampires to get shot in the head by three Irish blokes with a drunken desire for blood.

When he can hear their footsteps closing in behind him, see the shadows of their intention cast in streetlight and concrete before him, he puts his hands up slowly. The crossbow is bolted and ready to fire, crooked invisibly and uncomfortably between his shoulder and his neck; it's a trick he learned from Angel, and it's ugly, but it works. Secure, ready to fire, and with his back to his new friends, impossible to see.

He doesn't want to kill, but he will if he has to.

He's tired of death, but he isn't quite ready to die.

"Turn around slowly," an Irish voice says. "With your hands still up. And don't try anything stupid. You'll regret it."

Wesley turns slowly. Nothing stupid, the man said, but he didn't say anything about surprises, and vampires are quicker than most drunken Irishmen Wesley's met. Hands in the air, crossbow at the ready, and as soon as the shorter of the two brothers is in his sight, he's dropping one hand to the bow. Steadied, sighted, and in under two seconds, before they can even throw a single punch, the brother on the right is on the ground, a bolt straight through his left shoulder.

The other brother freezes and lets the gun he's bringing up on Wesley's forehead fall. His eyes jump, as though he can't decide whether to help his brother, screaming bloody murder on the ground, or jump straight onto Wes and pound him into a pulp. The brother's indecision of a moment and Wes has another bolt in the bow and singing into the air above their heads; chasing demons hones your reflexes.

He wonders briefly if these men would agree with that fact. The rosaries, the practiced way they stalked him down the alley - they're demon hunters, though he's not certain they hunt his sort of demon.

The whole fight takes less than half a minute, when all is said and done, and there isn't a single bullet fired. It just feels as though Wesley's moving underwater. It's been so long since he's had a good fight, a good down and dirty fight with someone who matched his skill.

Fighting back-alley fledgling vampires is certainly a job, but he doesn't want to make it his career.

The brothers are bawling at each other and at Wesley from the ground, and the father, who doesn't look to be a man who's hesitated a day in his life, over anything, blinks once, and in the split-second that his eyes are closed, Wesley whips the crossbow around and catches him full across the head with the weapon.

The crossbow makes an awful sound of metal and wood on bone. It shatters immediately; he knows his own strength, and it is more than he appears to have. The old man goes down hard, his gun skittering away across the alley, and Wesley doesn't wait to see what other weapons they might have.

He leaves the pieces of the crossbow strewn across the bodies, one brother screaming in pain and the other in rage, and he turns and runs.

"What sort of fuckin' freak carries a crossbow?" Murphy asks. He's got Connor pinned to the bed while their Da carefully extracts the half-inch bolt from Connor's shoulder.

"I don't know, you wanker," Connor says through gritted teeth. He's hurting, worse than when Murphy cauterized his thigh with the iron. His fuckin' body, it's just going to be one big scar when this is all finished. He's going to stand before the Lord and say, "Look, Holy Father, if there's a sign that I deserve to get into heaven, it's this body. Every good work I did can be seen in these scars."

And this time, there are splinters everywhere, he can feel these tiny wooden shards digging underneath his skin and it hurts and it itches and fuck, that bloody English bastard should have been an easy mark.

He consoles himself by gritting his teeth, digging his fingernails into Murph's arm, and staring at the ceiling of the hotel room Smecker has stashed them in. He nearly bites through his own tongue trying not to shout, and the sound of the wire cutters slicing the tail of the bolt off burns in his ears. The head of the bolt is buried deep, when his Da rips it out through his shoulder, the shaft tearing flesh with an awful sound, he tastes blood running off his own lip.

When the extraction is over, Murphy gets up off Connor and says, "I'm going to call Kate."

Connor doesn't know what kind of help Kate can give him; she certainly doesn't know every slit-throated Englishman in the entire city, but if it makes Murph feel better, then Connor's willing to let him.

He's bandaged up, blood already seeping through the clean gauze, and their Da is tending to his own cuts in the mirror, dabbing gingerly at a goose egg on his temple, split and bloody down the middle.

"He hit me with the fuckin' bow," his Da explains at Connor's puzzled expression. "You were already down."

"What fuckin' kind of Robin Hood carries a fuckin' crossbow in fuckin' Los Angeles?" Murphy shouts, phone dangling from his hand, dial tone shrieking noisily, and Connor just stares at him. They've got to keep it down; it was hard enough sneaking back into the place with him drippin' blood everywhere and their Da with a great bloody bump on his head, and Smecker told them they couldn't get tossed out of this place, or they were on their own.

There are blood stains on the rug, and Connor isn't sure how they're going to get those out, but maybe Murphy's got a plan for that. Connor's got a plan, a good plan, but it's for something else entirely.

"I'm going to have a shower and a wank," Connor says. No one pays any attention to him; Murphy has the phone to his ear, humming tunelessly while he waits through Kate's automated phone system, and his Da is still considering the lump on his head.

He does have a shower and a wank. Standing under the hot water, keeping his bandaged shoulder out of the stream, he wraps a hand around his cock and strokes himself until he's hard, playing back the fight in his mind. The English bloke, the dead man, he fought like a cat. He wasn't surprised by them at all.

Most of the scum they put down, well, they fight - they fight with guns and hit men and the same kind of fire power that Connor and Murph and Da carry. They don't fight with crossbows and cat-quick reflexes, not like the dead man. He knew that they were there for him, and he fuckin' beat them. They haven't gotten beat, ever, except that time with Da and the fuck-up in Philly, but those were mistakes. Those were fuck-ups, not fair fights, and Robin Hood with his arrows and his dead eyes, he beat them.

Beat them on the jump, to the punch, every cliche Connor can fuckin' think of, this one guy beat them flat out.

Connor doesn't know if it's hot or terrifying, a little of both, and when he comes there are stars behind his eyes and the English bloke's face in his mind.

He's the sort of enemy Connor has been looking for. He doesn't think there's much point in having enemies if there isn't sex tied up into it. Hate is just as strong as love, and contempt doesn't come close to matching it. Every time he shoots a rapist in the head, he feels contempt and something that might be pity - he's not sure he actually knows what pity feels like.

Staring into the dead man's eyes while time slowed down and the crossbow released its bolt with an echoing twang, all he felt was lust.

When he walks out of the loo, towel around his waist, Murph is lying on their bed, looking smug. "Tossing off again, eh, Connor? I told you he was hot for the dead man, Da."

"Oy," their Da says. "Shut the fuck up, Murphy, and make sure you're loaded up."

"Where are we going?" Connor says. They've been out and up all night; he's tired and he hurts and he'd just like to sleep straight through to dinner time and stop thinking about the dead man for a moment. He doesn't want to go anywhere.

"We're goin' to shoot up a lawfirm," Murphy says happily. "Put your kit on and let's go."

When Murphy said to Kate, "I'm looking for a Brit with a thick scar on his throat, and I know it's a fuckin' long shot, but -"

"Oh," Kate said. "Oh, no. You didn't get messed up with him, did you?"

"He shot my fuckin' brother with a fuckin' crossbow, Katie, I'm a little pissed. Who the fuck is he?"

"He used to run around with Angel," Kate said, and he couldn't tell if this was good or bad or what the hell Angel was. "But Angel's, you know, he's gone missing and Wes got his throat slit, a friend who's still on the force told me, and then he disappeared. I've been looking for him, I want to know what happened before Angel disappeared.."

"Who's Angel and why the fuck do I care?" Murphy asked.

"He's a vigilante," Kate said. "Kind of like you guys. He helped the hopeless. Since I'm out of the organized business, I thought Angel might ... need my help."

"Oh, fuck," Murphy said. "We're in a fuckin' load of trouble."

After he explained about the bar and the credit card and the fight and the crossbow - and when he asked Kate about the crossbow, she muttered something that sounded like "vampires" and "stakes to the heart," but Murph wasn't going to ask about that bollocks, because he didn't need to know. Kate told him that if Wes, that was the dead man's name, Wesley Wydham-Pryce, was using Lilah Morgan's credit card, she'd know where he was.

"Rich bitch lawyer's got her nose in everybody's business," were Kate's exact words. "Try Wolfram and Hart, but I'd be ready to clean house if it comes to it."

They're on their way, Murphy explaining everything to Connor, who's tired and pissy as a wet hen and doesn't want to go anywhere, and Connor says, "He sounds like the sort of saint we need."

Murphy slaps him in the head and says, "Keep your fuckin' cock in your pants, Connor," and their Da just rolls his eyes at both of them, but Murphy thinks Connor's probably right. From one vigilante to another saint - dead eyes don't have to mean a dead soul.

It's July, and too hot for coats, so when Da pulls the rented car up in front of the firm, there's sweat dripping down Murphy's neck. Metal detectors they can't get around, but if they can avoid those, there's not a shoulder holster in the world that a heavy wool coat can't hide.

The building's massive, mirrored glass reflecting sun sharply back into their eyes, and the grounds are practically deserted. "Might be easier than we thought," Murphy mutters to Connor.

"I'm still not fuckin' sure why we're here, you ass," Connor replies, and he's frowning over his sunglasses.

"Because," Murphy says, and maybe he says it slower than he should have, because Connor hits him in the arm. "We need to find our nice vigilante Robin Hood, and Kate says that Lilah Morgan of Wolfram and Hart, Associates, is the place to start."

"Robin Hood was a vigilante, you poof, you don't need to say it twice," Connor snaps, as they're walking through the big glass doors into a lobby that's dead empty.

"Quit fighting, you little shitheads," Da says.

They're halfway across the lobby, Connor still glaring daggers at Murphy above his glasses, when Murphy puts a hand out and stops him, turning back to their Da. "Wait," he says. "Is this a clean up mission, or is this a fact-finding mission? Am I shooting to kill, or shooting to learn?"

"Shooting to learn?" Connor snickers.

"Miss Lockley seems to think that the city and the Kingdom of Heaven would both be better off without these leeches," their Da says. "Why not make it a little of both?" Connor pulls a gun out of his holster and cocks it as quietly as he can.

"Right, then," Connor says. "Lead the way, Murph."

The bloke behind the front desk is mousy and meek and frighteningly long in the front teeth. When he smiles and says, "Can I help you gentlemen?," Murphy is afraid he's going to eat them alive.

"We're looking for Lilah Morgan," he says, resting both his hands on the top of the desk. Smile, look harmless, and don't show your weapons unless you have to: words for a saint to live by. Connor is sidling around the edge of the desk, and the mousy bloke with the pointy teeth is looking a trifle nervous. He's got one hand underneath the desk already, feeling around and Murphy knows he's looking for a panic button.

"I'm sorry," mousy pointy-toothed receptionist says. "Do you have an appointment?"

"We don't," Murphy says, and he's watching Connor out of the corner of his eye. They're always better when they're working together, after all. Connor slips behind the desk and has his gun pressed to the center of the mousy guy's back before Murphy can even say, "We're old friends, so if you can just point us in her direction, we'd be much obliged."

The mousy guy jumps, and Connor prods him hard with the nose of the gun. "Ah," the mousy guy says. "She's in a meeting. You'll have to come back."

"I think," Murphy says, "that you'll find we don't have to come back at all."

The mousy guy brings his elbow crashing back into Connor's stomach as Murphy says this. Connor tumbles arse over teakettle, starts bleeding from his shoulder again, and crashes into the back of the desk - poor guy, Murphy thinks, he's having a shit week - and the mousy little pointy-toothed bastard jumps up onto the fuckin' desk. When he turns his head to Murphy, Murphy swears the guy's not human, something other, something out of a horror movie, like fuckin' zombies. The mousy guy opens his mouth to yell, presumably for security, and Murphy sends three shots straight through his heart just as Connor and their Da blast the little bugger's face off, one from the front and one from the back. He twitches and Connor shoots him again, just for good measure.

There's an awful lot of blood all over the front desk. At least none of it's theirs.

There's a lawyer type, better dressed and smarter looking, who walks into the lobby just as they're shooting the face off this little shit, and their Da turns without flinching and sends a bullet straight through the man's temple, before he can even recognize what he's walked into.

10 seconds after the first shot's been fired, sirens sound.

"Aw, fuck," Connor says. He's leaning on the desk, breathing heavily and clutching at his shoulder, and Murphy holsters his gun to give him a shoulder to lean on. Connor collapses against his side, heavy and comforting, and Murphy says a silent prayer that they've both survived everything so far. "Fuck," Connor says again. "That's goin' t'be security, don't we know it. But look here, I've got us a company directory."

"So let's make for the lifts, boys," Da says.

A little of both, Murphy thinks. Some mercy and some information. And Ma always said Connor was the smart one.

Wesley doesn't have the connections he used to. There's no Cordelia to make phone calls, no Gunn to find information on the street. He could use Lilah's connections at Wolfram and Hart, if he wanted to; he uses her credit card, after all, and how is that any different from using their research department?

But he doesn't want to. When he has questions that would have sent Cordelia to her computer and Gunn to his old neighborhood, he forgets them. When he wants to know why three Irishmen he's never seen before turn up at his favorite bar, sporting tattoos in Latin, of all things, wearing rosaries, and carrying some heavy firepower, he gets the bottle of scotch out of his kitchen, sits down in his living room and drinks until he doesn't care about three Irishmen in a bar anymore. When he wants to save someone, he just gets drunk instead.

He's never heard a good joke about three Irishmen in a bar, anyway, and if he has, none of the guys in the joke had tattoos.

He's slumped on the sofa and halfway through the bottle when someone starts pounding on his door. No one knows where he is, and if they know, they don't care. Unless it was Angel knocking to wake the dead, he doesn't care either. "Go away," he shouts. "Nobody's home!"

The pounding gets louder. Wesley staggers to his feet and sets the bottle down on the table with a slosh and a crash. He leans his head against the door, his eyes closed, and something pounds on the other side directly underneath his cheek. The door jumps in its frame; Wesley leans up and presses his eye against the peephole.

It's the bloody Irishmen, though they've left their senior citizen at home. The one with Veritas on his hand is leaning against the frame, smoking a fag, and the other one, Aequitas, is pounding on the door.

Wes reaches for the crossbow that hangs beside his door, flips the latch, and yanks the door open - to find himself in the crosshairs of a high-caliber pistol with a silencer. Veritas cocks the hammer with a single lazy movement, and Aequitas says, "Oy, Robin Hood! Looks like we got the right apartment, Connor."

Veritas - Connor - crushes the fag out on the floor and says, "Our lawyer friend wouldn't steer us wrong."

"Can we come in, Robin Hood?" Aequitas says. "You might be quicker on the draw, but we've got more fire power. And we'd like to talk to you."

"Put the guns on the table," Wesley says, the crossbow still trained on Connor's chest. "And tell me who you are, and why you pulled three high-powered pistols on me in the alley last night."

They're both on the couch, bottle of scotch wrapped in Connor's hand and boots on his table, before he can blink. "I'm Murphy MacManus," says Aequitas, "and this is my brother Connor. We're God's cleaning service, you could say."

Connor swigs enthusiastically from the bottle, and he pulls it away from his mouth with a pop. Wesley's eyes go straight there, and when he looks, Connor is running his tongue along his lower lip slowly and deliberately. He raises an eyebrow at Wesley and says, "Nice flat, but what kind of fucked up vigilante uses a crossbow?"

"One with enemies other than humans to fight," Wesley says dryly. He'd been drunk when he stood up to answer the door; he can still feel the alcohol buzzing along in his system, but his head is strangely clear. He releases the bolt from the bow and rests the bow against his hip.

"We're not much for killing animals," Murphy says.

"Rocco was," Connor adds, "but it was mostly an accident. Mind if I smoke?" He's lit the cigarette before Wesley can say anything. Wesley gets the impression that he would have smoked even if he'd been told he couldn't.

"Not animals," Wesley says. "Just not human. It's ... not important."

Connor cocks his head to one side, studying Wesley intently, the smoke clouding up between them. When he's finished staring, he turns his head to his brother and whispers something in Russian. Wesley's Russian is rusty; you don't find many demons with a use for the language. When they finish their conference, Connor takes a long drag on his cigarette and blows the smoke at Wesley.

Murphy says, "Last night we may have mistaken you for someone you're not. Sorry ‘bout that. But our sources tell us that you're a vigilante hunter of our very favorite sort, and we might have an offer to make you."

He blanches, and he doesn't want to show it on his face, but it's all too raw, too near the surface. Without meaning to, the hand not wrapped around the crossbow drifts up to his throat. "I used to help the hopeless," Wesley says, and he slides the crossbow onto the coffee table. "But I've moved past that recently."

"Have a drink," Connor says, holding out the bottle that is, by rights, Wesley's already. "And we'll have a chat, eh?"

When they got back to the hotel from the law firm, Il Duce leaned back in the ugly hotel armchair and says, "My sons. Are you going to kill this nice vigilante dead man, or are you just going to talk to him?"

Connor looked at Murph, who just shrugged. "Talk."

"Then, my good boys, I am going to stay here. If roughing him up becomes necessary, don't hesitate to call."

"Right, Da," Murph said. "I get to drive."

The rich bitch lawyer on the dead man's credit card had been perfectly happy to see them. She'd passed an address over her desk immediately, no questions asked, and smiled at them with a cat-who-got-the-cream sort of grin. She'd looked them up and down, her eyes lingering on the glimpse of Murphy's rosary over his collar, the writing tattooed across Connor's trigger hand.

"I know who you are," she'd said. She'd already given them the address, but when they'd turned to go, she'd told them their notoriety had not escaped the entire West Coast.

"Just some friendly Irish blokes looking for an old man," Murphy'd said to her. "Not who you think we are, luv."

"I'm not stupid, Mr. MacManus," she'd said. "Wolfram and Hart has a certain ... interest in you and your family, and we were all so upset to discover that as of a few weeks ago, Agent Smecker at the FBI couldn't tell anyone anything about your current location. And then you waltz right into my office. Well. The things I could do with you, now. I'm quite a fan of your work." She'd stood up from her desk and stretched, still looking like a jungle cat, and walked around to face Connor directly. She ran a hand up and down his chest, and he could see Murph out of the corner of his eye, trying to stifle a grin. Too many bloody attractive folk in Los Angeles, Connor thought to himself.

"Which one are you, then, Connor or Murphy?" the rich bitch lawyer said.

Da had stepped in before he could answer. "Ma'am, you didn't see us here. We are not and have never been your allies. And to be perfectly, politely honest with you, your sort is the sort we send to their graves."

She'd laughed and waved a lazy hand at the door. "So go. I was just going to offer you a better deal than Agent Smecker's giving you."

"Signing our souls to the devil?" Murph said over his shoulder as Connor had propelled him out the door. They didn't really want to stay and fight. "I don't think so, lady."

They left Da at the hotel, watching VH1 with a strange fascination, and Murph insisted on both driving and stopping off for a pint on their way. "He's not expecting us, Connor," he said. "Let's have a pint and then move on."

So they stopped for a pint, and going out to piss in the alley before climbing back into the car to finish the drive, they stumbled onto a mountain of a man beating the utter shit out of a skinny blonde girl who Connor recognized as the waitress who'd brought them their pints.

They put a couple of bullets through his skull, dusted the bird off and sent her back into the bar. "Stay out of trouble," Murphy said, and smacked her on the ass. Connor smacked him in the head.

"You are so fuckin' uncouth," Connor said.

Their man Robin Hood - Wesley, Connor says to himself in the car, rolling the name over in his mouth like it was a good sip of whiskey, Wesley Wyndham-Pryce, Robin Hood At Large - opens the door with his crossbow trained on Murphy's breastbone. Connor's quicker than he is, and Murphy's mouthier, so they don't even have to talk their way into the guy's place - he just stands back and lets them in.

He watches them walk through the door suspiciously, as though they might be about to burst into flames. Connor's not sure what that's about, but it's a nice flat, and he's got a nice bottle of scotch sitting on the table, so he makes himself at home.

He's a strange one, Wesley. He's cryptic about what he does, what he did, who he helps. He stares at Connor and Connor finds that he's preening underneath the gaze. It's fuckin' humiliating, he's flirting like a 15 year old girl with this scarred, recalcitrant vigilante.

He's elegant, and there's something feral underneath Wesley's skin that appeals to Connor.

He'd like to fuck that wildness right out of Wesley, if he's being perfectly honest with himself.

He lets Murph do most of the talking.

Murph talks, and Connor sits on the sofa with his boots on the table and his legs spread wide and drinks scotch straight from the bottle. Murph says that they're in the business of cleaning up human scum, and Wesley says he's in the business of protecting people who can't protect themselves.

"Brothers in arms," Connor says.

"Something like that," Murph agrees.

Murphy knows he's talking around the point, but he's still not sure if the dead man is a friend or not. He doesn't want to show all his cards before he has to.

And Connor's no bloody help; he's been sullen and angry since they got to Los Angeles, and now he's stretched out on the couch with the bottle between his legs, practically drooling over the dead man. He's lettin' Murphy do all the talking and Murphy's dead sure he's already bollocksed it all up.

But the dead man is listening, head cocked to one side, and he hasn't thrown them out. He keeps glancing between Connor and Murphy, like he's trying to decide if Murph is actually the brains of the operation, or maybe like he's about to rip the bottle of scotch out of Connor's hands and shatter it over their heads.

Murphy pauses, trying to find a way to tell the dead man that they kill the scum of the earth, the murderers and the rapists and the thieves, without seeming hypocritical, and the dead man speaks.

"Vengeance," he says. "You're in the vengeance business."

"Something like that," Connor says. "Vengeance, cleaning house, taking out hits. It's all the same thing. We don't kill women and we don't kill children, but we do take great pleasure in sending the really vicious ones to whatever God they see fit to pray to."

He sounds drunk to Murphy's ears. He probably is; the level of liquor in the bottle is considerably lower than it was when Connor snagged it off the table.

"I know a couple of women in the vengeance business," Wesley says.

Murphy raises an eyebrow and Connor just giggles. "Women," Murphy says. "In the vengeance business?"

"It's not the sort of vengeance you think it is," Wesley says.

"But," Murphy says by rote. It's second nature by now. "You, personally, are in the business of exacting vengeance on people who are mistreating the downtrodden and the righteous and the meek. Correct?"

"Well," Wesley said slowly. "Something like that, only with fewer references to the Beatitudes and more strangely acidic blood and demon artifacts."

Connor crosses himself sloppily when Wesley says demon artifacts, and then indelicately slides off the couch onto the floor, empty bottle of whiskey still clutched in his fingers. Murphy watches him fall and knows that Wesley is doing the same thing. Murphy wavers briefly between being mad as hell that Connor's missed the information-finding point of this mission and gotten piss drunk without him, and being amused by his brother's antics. He knows, either way, they're not going anywhere but back to the hotel tonight. He reaches out and frees Connor's Glock from the waistband of his jeans, sliding it across the table to rest against Wesley's crossbow.

He'll let Connor take all the risks he wants when they're drunk on nothing but their own righteousness, but Murphy isn't stupid - Connor couldn't point a gun at his own fuckin' head, the state he's in right now, and Murphy's sure as hell not going to let him point one at someone else.

Murphy isn't big on accidentally getting shot in the head by his own fuckin' brother, just because his brother's a fuckin' dumbass.

"Tell me straight," Murphy says, trying to drag Wesley's eyes back up from the prone figure of Connor. "Are you or are you not the sort of man who punishes the wicked?"

"If by wicked, you mean creatures without souls who are fundamentally evil, than yes. I am."

"Well then. I think we'll get along fine. You wouldn't be able to point us in the direction of some fundamentally evil creatures without souls who need to be taught a lesson, would you?"

Wesley leans back, his cold eyes serious and firm on Murphy's face. "Aye," he says, and Murphy can hear just a trace of mockery in the way he says it. "But first, Mr. MacManus, if you could kindly explain to me why you and your brother tried to jump me last night, I would appreciate it immensely."

"You're not Catholic, are you?" Murphy asks him.

Wesley shakes his head. All the talk about the righteous and the Kingdom of Heaven, not to mention the rosaries, had left him little doubt that devout Catholicism had something to do with these men. These boys. There's something innocent behind their quick ease with a gun and their devilish smiles, and Wesley can't think of them as more than boys, playing at vengeance the way that Charles played at it before he joined their formerly merry band of men.

He just isn't sure what the power of God has to do with execution-style killings in alleys.

"Church of England," he says.

"Well," Murphy says, and he draws the word out as though he doesn't want to tell Wesley what comes next. "We're on a bit of a mission."

Wesley simply raises an eyebrow, and Murphy continues.

"We persecute the scum of the earth, because the Church was doing a piss-poor job of it."

Wesley can feel his eyebrow creeping higher.

"Have you noticed, man," Murphy says, and leans across his sleeping brother as though he was about to tell Wes a fabulous secret. "Have you noticed that a great number of men in this world seem to think the rules that God has set down - do not kill, do not rape, do not steal - are merely suggestions for people other than them?"

"Yes," Wesley says. He agrees. He hasn't gotten close to Lilah and failed to notice that Wolfram and Hart has always operated on an above-the-law and above-the-general-rules-of-human-conduct sort of principle.

"My brother and my da and I take care of that," Murphy says.

"You enforce God's will?"

"At the end of a gun," Murphy agrees cheerfully.

"You kill men?"

"Only the ones who really deserve it. Only the ones who cross into the domain of the truly corrupt. Only the ones who cross the line into our territory."

"Men. You kill humans."

"Isn't that what vengeance is?"

"I'm in another sort of vengeance," Wesley says pointedly. "I was doing nothing but drinking whiskey and yet you thought I looked like the sort of man who wasn't adhering to the laws of humanity."

"You've got a look about you," Murphy says. "Dead, like. Your eyes. There's nothing there, man, and if you've looked in a mirror and not noticed, well. And you had a card from Wolfram and Hart, an associate's, you said, and Kate says that if we're to find the wicked of Los Angeles, we should start there."

"It's been a long couple of months," Wesley says, and his hand goes again to the scar on his neck, fingers rubbing idly. "A man's eyes are not the only measure of his worth, Mr. MacManus."

"We have been known to make mistakes," Murphy agrees genially. "That's why we're here. We're in a spot of trouble on the East Coast, like."

"You're the Boondock Saints." Wesley's read about them; Lilah's been trying to find them for weeks, thinks that Wolfram and Hart could put their services to good use. He's certain they've already been there, though, and after sitting in his flat with two-thirds of the most deadly assassination team in the history of the country, he's not certain they'd be amenable to working for the enemy.

"Aye, that we are."

Wesley stands up before he can think what he's doing. "Leave your gun on the table and your brother on the floor. We're going on a field trip."

"Where the fuck - ?"

"I'm going to show you my side of vengeance. There's a market you haven't even seen yet."

He pretends not to see Murphy's eyes bug out at the sight of the weapons cabinet he throws open.

"You really are a fuckin' Robin Hood, aren't you?" Murphy reaches out and closes his fingers around the handle of one of Wesley's axes - one of the heavy ones, the one that Cordelia bought him for Christmas last year.

"Be careful. That's one's-" Wesley says, as Murphy starts to lift it from the closet. The axe falls to the floor with a tremendous crash, the sharp blade buried an inch deep in Wesley's hardwood floor. "Heavy," he finishes lamely.

Murphy looks to be somewhere between shocked and awed. "I'm bringin' my gun with me, man."

"That's fine," Wesley says, hefting his largest crossbow out of the cabinet and securing a bolt in place before slinging it onto his back. "But you're not going to need it."

When Connor surfaces, his head pounding and his mouth tasting like the three-day-old coffee Murphy once forced down his throat, he can hear voices in another room. He knows the pitch and cadence of Murph's voice like his own, and as the dead man's bottle of whiskey is empty, staring at him from underneath an unfamiliar table, he assumes that they're still in the dead man's apartment and the dead man is the unfamiliar voice in the kitchen.

"I still can't believe my fuckin' eyes," he hears Murphy say. "I never thought my rosary'd come in handy like that, before."

If Murphy's tied up the dead man with his fuckin' rosary, Connor thinks, and I've fuckin' missed it, he will be very, very sorry.

He pries himself off the floor and he's trying to rub the sleep out of his eyes when he stumbles into the kitchen. The window behind Wesley's head is dark, the sun long set but not the next morning yet, either. Wesley and Murph are sitting at the table together, bottles of Guinness scattered across the table top, and their voices are low. "I mean," Murphy says. "It touched his arm and he fuckin' started smokin'! Sizzling flesh and everything!"

"Well," Wesley says. "That is what happens when you touch something evil with an instrument of God."

Murph's an instrument of God? Connor thinks blearily. How come no one told me that?

He blinks once, twice, and clears his throat because they haven't seen him. Murph is just looking up when Connor's eyes light on the huge fuckin' axe leaning against the wall behind Wesley's chair.

"What the fuckin' fuck is that, and why is it covered in blood?" He knows he sounds a little bit like Rocco, and as he thinks that, he misses Rocco intensely. Rocco would have liked L.A. Lots of strippers here, and very few cats that Connor's seen.

Plus, then Rocco wouldn't be dead.

Connor'd trade the notoriety and public support for Rocco's dumb fuckin' ass screwing everything up every time they went out to punish the wicked.

Really, he would.

"Sleeping Beauty finally wakes," Murph says, cutting through reverie.

"It's an axe," Wesley says calmly at the same time. "And it's covered in blood because Murphy and I had a run-in with a demon last night."

"You fuckin' went out without me?" Connor says, and smacks the back of Murphy's head, hard. Murphy spits Guinness onto the table and bangs the bottle down to grab at Connor's wrists before Connor can do anything else.

"No fighting in the kitchen," Wesley says wearily.

"Sorry," Connor says, straightening up. Murph has already wound his fingers back around the bottle and is looking shamefaced at the table. Connor drops into the only empty chair and hefts the bottles in front of him, one at a time, all of them empty.

"Fridge," Wesley says.

"Bring me another," Murphy says.

Connor has the door of the fridge open with one hand; he's teetering precariously on only two legs of the chair. Wesley's kitchen is tiny; he can reach across it with one arm, and even though he's hooking a cold bottle of beer out of the fridge with three fingers, he can't stop staring at the axe against the wall.

"What kind of monster takes killing with an axe?" he says.

"The kind that isn't human," Murphy says. Connor can't tell if he sounds morose or pleased about this.

"The fuck are you talking about, Murph?"

Murphy slumps across the table, the way he does only when he's very drunk or very tired. Maybe a little of both. The corner of Murph's mouth keeps twitching, and Connor's hardly looked at Wesley since he walked into the kitchen. He can't help it; his eyes keep darting between the battle axe dripping blood in a tiny puddle on the floor, and Murphy, who is wearing the expression that he wore the first time they sat in an interrogation room with Smecker.

Murph is pleased with himself, Connor can tell that, and at the same time, he's not sure how much he wants to say. The twitch on his mouth means he's trying not to smile; Murph wants to smile, and he's not sure how appropriate it is.

Connor's not known him all his life to miss these things.

"You tell him," Murphy says, head still on the table, waving his bottle at Wesley. "It's fuckin' incredible shit, is what it is, Connor."

Connor's sitting at the table, wearing the same expression he wore when their Ma called them up and pretended to shoot herself - it's his "I can't fuckin' believe I'm hearing this shit" expression. Connor looks suspicious and well he should, Murphy knows, because it's really one thing to hear it, but it's something else entirely to see it.

Connor apparently feels just as he does on the subject. "That's a load of bollocks if I've ever heard one."

"It's true, though," Wesley says. He's leaning across the table, fingers laced together so tensely that Murphy can see the veins throbbing underneath his skin. Murphy could sit up, but he's rather comfortable lying on the table. Swinging that big fuckin' axe is exhausting. Connor's leaning back in his chair, boots on the table and arms crossed across his chest, looking at Wesley like he's the biggest fuckin' moron in the world.

Murphy would agree, except that he saw his rosary burn a perfect cross onto the creature's arm, and he saw it dissolve into dust when he took its fuckin' head off with the axe.

Seeing is absolutely believing.

Connor's chewing on his bottom lip and Murphy can see him flexing a fist where it rests against his chest, as though he doesn't know whether to punch Wesley or not. Murphy's trying to think of something clever and smartass to say, just to diffuse all this tension, when Connor brings the chair crashing to the floor and leans forward, right in Wesley's face, as though every gear in his brain's just clicked into place.

Murphy's still considering breaking up what looks to be a bloody good fight, because he probably should break it up before it starts, but he's never adverse to watching a fistfight, when his pager goes. Smecker had wanted them to have cell phones, so he could keep fucking tabs on them, but Da had objected. Either to the technology or to having Smecker able to track them down that easily, Murphy isn't sure which, but instead of phones, they've got fuckin' pagers, like they're in the goddamned mob.

Connor's just about to punch or kiss the dead man, either of which was fine by Murphy, and his fuckin' pager goes off. And it's his fuckin' Da.

"Don't kill him," Murphy says to Connor. "Explain it to him better," he says to Wesley. "And can I use your phone, Wes?"

"In the other room," Wesley says, waving a hand and not taking his eyes off Connor's. "Go ahead."

Murphy walks out of the kitchen, and he doesn't hear fist hitting face. Instead he hears Connor's voice low, asking a question: "So they're men, but without souls."

"They were men," Wesley says. "Now they're vampires, but there's still no souls. Except for one."

His Da answers the phone in the hotel room by saying, "Where the bloody fuck are you fuckin' little fucks?"

"With the dead man, Da," Murphy says patiently. "We're getting an interesting lesson in a different sort of vengeance than we've been playing at."

"Well, get your ungrateful arses back here as fast as you fuckin' can," his Da says. "VH1's stopped showin' I Love The 90s and the rest of this crap on the telly is shite, plus it's church in a few hours."

"Soon, Da," Murphy says, and hangs up before Da can say anything else.

"So everything I've seen in the films is true, then?" Connor's saying as Murphy walks back into the kitchen. He looks for the beer he'd left on the table, and finds it in Connor's hands. Murphy rips the beer out of Connor's grip and punches him in the arm, but Connor only shrugs him off and stares straight at Wesley. "Crosses, holy water, stakes through the heart, sunlight, garlic?"

"Well, not garlic," Wesley shrugs sheepishly. "And you can behead them, too."

"Wild. Murph, d'you hear this crap? Vampires."

"I killed one," Murphy says.

"The verb we prefer is slay," Wesley says prissily, and Connor tears his eyes from Wesley's face. He fixes Murphy with such a familiar snickering grin that Murphy can't contain himself, and they're collapsed across the table in hysterics before Murphy can think about what's happening. Wesley watches them for a long moment before his mask breaks into a grin and he laughs with them. His eyes don't change, Murphy can see; they're dead and long dead at that, but the laughter is genuine.

"So you've got demons," Connor says when they collect themselves.

"Aye," Wesley says, and there's not a trace of mockery in his voice this time.

"Well," Connor glances at Murphy before he finishes. Murphy nods. "Well," Connor says again. "I think we're your men."

"You should come meet our Da," Murphy says.

"Aye," Connor adds. "He's the third Saint among us."

"Is he mercy?" Wesley says, and a confused look passes between the two of them. "Truth," he says, nodding at Connor. "And justice," he finishes, with a look at Murphy.

"Ah," Murphy replies. "No. He's ... ah, something like rebirth. Resurrection, if you will." Connor had fixed his brother with a dark look that Wesley can't read, and Murphy glares back. It's clearly a silent challenge, but a challenge of what Wesley didn't know.

"Come meet him," Connor saidys "You should meet him if we're going to keep you around."

"Are you going to keep me around?"

"Aye," Murphy says, slinging an arm around Wesley's shoulder. "We thought we would, seeing as how you're not the bloke we thought you were. Just to make up for a case of mistaken identity, you see. And to use you for your endless resources in finding demons who need to be sent to a higher God."

"What's your father's name?" Wesley says, torn between pulling away from Murphy's abrupt familiarity and leaning into the touch. Lilah is physical but she isn't comforting. For all their brash, brusque bravado, the MacManus boys are surprisingly easy to be around.

Connor slings an arm around Wesley as well. "Well, he's got a name, but everyone except us just calls him Il Duce."

"And we call him Da," Murphy says, steering him towards their car.

Actually meeting Il Duce goes significantly less well than Wesley had hoped. Wesley's been explaining the supernatural for years, to Slayers and confused parents and people who've wandered into places they shouldn't have been, like Cordelia. He has the routine down perfectly, he knows the cards to play and the cards to hold back, and when he's finished explaining, the people in front of him believe what he's said is true, even if they're not fond of the truth.

He hardly gets a word in edgewise in after the twins shove him through their hotel room door to meet their father. "Da," Murphy says, "This is Wesley Wyndham-Pryce. He's in the vengeance business, too, keeping the streets clean of the kinds of monsters you wouldn't believe."

"But not human monsters," Wesley clarifies, as quickly as he can. He thinks he almost understands the MacManus family's work, and he does not argue that it needs to be done - but he contemplates putting a gun to the back of Lilah's head and pulling the trigger, and he cannot fathom policing the human race the way they do.

"Not human monsters?" Il Duce says, and to Wesley's ears, he sounds just like his father. No matter what Wesley did, no matter the good he created in the world, there was an edge of disapproval underneath the words. No matter what.

Wesley runs through his talk: vampires, the Slayer, overpopulation of demons in Los Angeles because they can blend in, helping the hopeless. He says, "Vengeance of a sort. Keeping the streets safe for humans."

Il Duce raises an eyebrow carefully and says, "Souls?"

"Souls," Wesley parrots, feeling exceedingly slow. "What about them?"

"Do these creatures you kill have them? Do they have souls, could they be saved?"

"No," Wesley says. "Not many of them do. I don't kill anything that has a soul that can be saved."

"Categorically, all vampires and these many demons, none of them have souls?"

"There's one vampire with a soul," Wesley says. "But he's probably literally dead, not just undead, by now, so it's sort of a moot point."

"But," Il Duce presses, "these creatures have no souls, and yet you kill them. They are no better than animals, doing what they are bred to do, and you put them down."

"We," Wesley starts, and corrects himself. He hasn't stopped speaking as though he's part of a team, and every time he forgets, it's as fierce and painful and sudden as Justine pulling her knife across his throat. "I help the hopeless people in Los Angeles. I make the streets safe. Demons are bred to kill, they are bred to be the natural enemy of the human race, the best parts of the human race."

Il Duce says, "I do not kill animals, but what you do with your time is your own business, as is ours."

Murphy says, "But, Da, the blokes we kill, they're no better than animals, either."

"They're no better than animals," Il Duce says patiently, still staring at Wesley. "But they have souls, they could be better than animals, and they have still not learned their lessons, my sons. So we teach them. But we do not kill animals."

"I don't kill people," Wesley says. "So we're even."

"You're not Catholic," Da says to Wesley. Connor's perched on the edge of one bed, watching intently, head close to Murphy's. He knows, and Murphy knows, that Da's approval is important to their mission. They wouldn't have gotten Rocco involved if he had been around; they wouldn't have brought this dead man back if they hadn't believed he had something to give.

"Church of England," Wesley replies, back ramrod straight. "But I do understand what you're doing here, sir, I think. But I have a different enemy than you do, and you'll have to understand that I can assist you while at the same time remaining true to my own mission."

Da looks at him suspiciously, and Connor finds that he's holding his breath. He doesn't know what he believes; he believed Wesley, sitting in his tiny kitchen, drinking Guinness and hearing fairytales. He believes his Da, sitting in their grimy hotel room, facing down the issues of morality and living a life in the Church.

It's simply a matter of how you look at the world. After all, not everyone on the planet sees the world the way he and Murph do - not everyone sees the scourge that needs to be cleansed from the face of humanity.

It's giving him a headache, the silence and the tension vibrating through the air, and when he finally exhales, trying to find that place in his mind where he knows right from wrong, he discovers he must have closed his eyes.

Wesley is shaking Da's hand, looking a tiny bit nervous. Da isn't smiling, but he hasn't reached for a weapon.

"A detente, then, sir," Wesley says. "I'm sorry that you won't be joining us tonight."

"I'm sorry that you won't know the joy of hearing the scum of the earth beg for mercy," Da says.

"I'm sure I will," Wesley says. Connor can hear the sharpness in his voice, carefully hidden from those ears not listening for it. "I simply won't pull the trigger."

Da has sat back down in his armchair, the one he's claimed as his own, and he's staring up at Wesley as though the Gospel of the Lord is written on his face. "I'm sure you will," he says, and to Connor, it's the voice he heard when their Da asked them if they possessed the constitutions necessary to take their mission to its natural ending.

"As far as is necessary," he and Murph had said. "We can and we will."

"Off you go, my sons," their Da says. "Save the humans for me. I understand we can shoot them in the broad daylight, as opposed to Mr. Wyndham-Pryce's creatures."

Murph hops off the dresser like he hasn't been sitting, trance-like, for nearly half an hour. "Let's go, Connor," he says. "Let's kill us some monsters."

Wesley is hefting axes from the boot of their car and Murphy's smoking a contemplative cigarette, staring at the sky and leaning on the handle of an axe, when something clicks in Connor's mind. "Vampires don't have souls," he says speculatively, and Wesley looks up sharply.

"That's true," he agrees, but he sounds wary, as though Connor is swimming in dangerous waters.

"But you said you know one with a soul," Connor says.

"I knew one with a soul," Wesley answers, and hands Connor an axe. It's heavier than Connor expects it to be, and it pulls at the spot where Wesley had shot him. Murph snickers when Connor nearly drops it. He flips his brother off and turns back to Wesley.

"You knew one, but you don't know one now?"

"He's as good as dead," Wesley says. "For all I know."

"Did you kill him?" Murphy says, crushing the butt on the pavement.

"I broke his heart," Wesley says. "I was his Judas."

There is more there, and Connor knows, but it's the way the dead man's eyes fix on his that makes him not press the point.

"It's easier to find them when you're on foot," Wesley explains. "Unless you've got a vehicle for this, it's easier that way." There's something in the way he says "a vehicle for this" that suggests he isn't telling them everything. Connor glares at Murphy and makes an irritated gesture, which Murphy takes to mean, "Ask him what he bloody well means by that, wanker," and Murphy just makes an even ruder one back.

He's not quite as anxious to find out what Wesley means as Connor is. Murphy's pretty sure that Connor's still thinking of the dead man as a good potential fuck; Murphy is thinking that he'd be as deadly an enemy as he would be an ally, and he isn't sure that he wants to fuck the man like that.

It's just among the worst ideas Murphy's ever heard, and Rocco had a lot of really fuckin' bad ideas.

Connor hasn't quite got the whole battle axe thing down when they run into a pack of vampires feeding on a homeless man three blocks from the motel, and he's favoring the shoulder that Wesley shot. It makes his already faltering aim even more erratic, and Murphy knows that he isn't much better with the axe, but at least Murph's accidentally beheaded two of the burlier vampires, sending a shower of dust straight up his nose. When he blinks after he's sneezed, Connor's swinging the axe straight at Murphy's head, obviously having lost control of it completely, and there's a vampire bearing down directly on Connor's back.

Wesley, behind them, shouts, "Duck!" and Murphy does, just as Connor's axe breezes over the top of his skull. Crouched on the ground, he's feeling at his head to see if there's blood or his brains are gushing out, just as Wesley lets a crossbow bolt loose, straight at Connor.

"Fuck," Connor says, and clatters to the ground on top of the axe, whose blade is still resting about six inches from Murphy's nose.

The vampire turns to dust over their heads, showering down and making Murphy sneeze violently, four times in a row. When the remains of the fight have settled, Murphy disentangles himself from Connor, who's wide-eyed and frozen with either terror or adrenaline, and crawls to his feet.

"We need a little more practice," he says to Wesley.

"It's an acquired skill," Wesley says dryly. He's sweating, and Murphy can see his pulse beating wildly in his throat. Murphy may have taken a couple of the vampires out by himself, but the majority of the fight was Wesley's - just like it'd been earlier in the evening. It's well past midnight now, and Murphy does a quick calculation in his head. He and Connor have been awake, running around this crazy city, for going on 36 hours, and the pounding in his veins, Murphy isn't sure what's causing it at this point.

Connor interrupts his thoughts, scrambling to his feet, saying "Fuck me, you weren't fuckin' lying."

"No shit," Murphy says, punching Connor. "I told you so."

"They're really not men," Connor says.

"Mr. MacManus, you have a gift for stating the obvious," Wesley says, running a hand tiredly through his hair. It dislodges a cloud of dust and debris, leaving his hair sticking up at all angles. It's a startling counterpoint to his precise speech and the icy reserve keeping Connor and Murphy at arm's length. It makes him look young and surprisingly vulnerable, shadows from the streetlights shafting across his face.

Connor is, of course, staring at the throbbing pulse in Wesley's throat with undisguised lust. Murphy cuffs his brother again; Connor's cock has lead them straight into trouble more than once.

And not everyone is receptive to the idea of two brothers.

"Well," Wesley says. "The best part of this job, I do have to say, is there's very little mess to clean up. And very little blood is ever shed." He has a long gash down one arm; one of the vampires was carrying a shiv. Murphy could see, before the blows started falling hard and fast, that the vampires were, had been, nothing more than street rats who happened down the wrong dark alley.

Murphy is favoring his left leg and Connor is breathing heavily, though Murphy thinks that might be from something else entirely, and clutching his shoulder, which is leaking blood through his shirt. Fighting without the benefit of guns is harder work; these monsters aren't the sort of men or demons they usually bother with.

But Wesley has shown him how these demons kill, and Murphy believes that these vampires are as much of an abomination against God as the human scum of the earth.

Connor is still wide-eyed, staring at Wesley and looking vaguely unbelieving, as though he can't decide what to say next. "Is it their nature?" he asks Wesley, unblinking.

"It's all they know how to do," Wesley says. "Kill and steal and terrorize humanity."

"They're no better than animals," Connor says, and Murphy isn't sure what note he hears in Connor's voice: surprise, or honest regret.

Murphy asks Wesley, standing in the alley, axe slung across his shoulder, what he usually does when he was finished fighting.

"Go on to the next fight," Wesley answers without thinking, because it's true. "There's always another fight." If he'd been with Gunn or ... with Angel, whose name he is trying not to think, whose fate he knows and is trying to forget, if he'd been with one of them or even with Cordelia and Fred, it would be true. There's always another pack to stake, there's always another alley to patrol. With these boys, it is a lengthy battle, to be certain, their battle for righteousness and justice and mercy, but it is punctuated by heavy bouts of drinking.

Wesley knows this, as certain as he knows that Angel was right to try and kill him.

"That's probably your problem," Murphy says, and his arm is wrapped around Wesley's shoulder again. "You Brits never know when to relax."

They steer him into a tiny corner shop that's still open - or just opening, Wesley thinks, as the hint of pink smog-covered dawn starts to creep around the edges of the horizon - buy too much beer, and then they take over his kitchen.

"What time is it?" Wesley says when they shove him roughly up the stairs to his own flat. If Wesley's neighbors weren't already scared half to death by the strange hours he keeps and the strange weapons he brings home, they would be at the sight of two black-clad men pushing him through his own front door. Perhaps, he muses, they'll believe I'm being kidnapped and save me from these hooligans.

Connor dashes his hopes of rescue. "Half-six," he says. "Plenty of time left to drink."

Connor and Murphy, by Murphy's words, are not only professional vigilantes, but also "professional drinkers." Wesley saw how Connor put down his bottle of whiskey the night before, or maybe it was the same night. Wesley isn't even sure what day of the week it is - "Saturday," Murphy tells him, "very early, or Friday, very late, if you prefer" - and he knows that they can drink.

They've each finished two bottles before he's nursed one to the bottom. It's all warm - they've skipped refrigerating anything in favor of quicker intoxication - and his kitchen table is covered in empty bottles and spilt beer and cigarette ash in what seems like the blink of an eye. The kitchen clock tells him that it's been nearly two hours. The sun is coming up, and when the first true glints of sunlight hit the blinds and the sticky mess of beer and bottle, Wesley breathes a little easier. Even vampires in Los Angeles aren't stupid; sewers and tunnels and all, they don't hunt after sunrise.

Wesley can't stop staring at the guns in the middle of the table. He made Connor unload them before he let them set them amidst the mess, and now Connor and Murphy are draped comfortably across each other, beers loose in their hands, and Connor is carelessly flipping the safety on one of the guns off and on.

The twins are both piss-ass drunk, and Wesley is just sitting across from them, watching. Connor's got his cigarette trailing out of his mouth, ash about an inch long and dangling precariously, and Murphy slumped half across the table and half across his brother with a piece of pizza hanging out of his mouth and a beer bottle hanging between his second and third fingers.

They're both seductive, in an unpolished, raw sort of way. When Wesley looks at Connor he sees a passion that hums underneath his skin - restrained, tempered through his rosary and his allegiance to his brother, but if you look closely, the passion is there. Murphy's emotions boil much closer to the surface, and they both have impeccable instincts, for fighting and for choosing allies and enemies. They're dangerous and brutal and there is, Wesley thinks, something undeniably sexy about both of them, separate and apart.

It's drunkenly quiet in his kitchen, Connor and Murphy watching him and Wesley watching them, and no one is saying a thing.

But Connor's got his eyes trained right on Wesley, still flipping the safety lazily, because Wesley knows that Connor isn't stupid, and that he knows there is something Wesley's not telling them.

But it's Murphy who asks the question, Murphy who says, "Oy," and points his beer bottle blearily in Wesley's direction, slopping some crap American excuse for beer over his hand. Wesley wants to lick it off and he's surprised by the visceral desire that bubbles up in him. "Oy," Murphy says again, and then he looks at Wesley and says, "Seriously, man, what the fuck is wrong with you, you fuck?"

There's no one out at the edge of the dawn, no one but the three of them and a couple of harmless drunks staggering along the boardwalk. Wesley didn't answer Murphy's question, and when Murph had said it, Connor could feel the air around them start to hum. Wesley had stood up, handed Murphy the keys and said, "Can you drive, or have you drunk too much beer?"

"I can drive," Murph had said. "Where're we goin'?"

"To see the answer to your question."

They're standing at the edge of the pier in Santa Monica, staring down into the dark water. The sun is starting to reflect on it, shining back up into Connor's eyes, and he feels brutally hungover, except that he thinks he's still drunk. All three of them are squinting, and he's not sure if he feels so drunk he's almost falling in or if it's because he feels totally sober despite all the fuckin' pints he's drunk that he can't keep his balance. It's the end of a three-day binge, except this time with vampires, and Connor has lost all sense of reality.

Standing on the Santa Monica pier, over an iron box in an ocean's worth of water. They can't fuckin' see anything in the water, it's still too goddamned dark despite the sunrise, and Wesley is looking like death warmed over, like somebody broke his heart and shot his fuckin' dog, too.

"There's a guy," Connor starts.

"A vampire," Wesley says morosely. "With a soul. Who used to be my partner."

"There's a vampire, with a soul, which apparently is a rare thing," Connor begins again. "And his son, who may or may not be a biological impossibility, and who you kidnapped - "

"Though I'm not quite clear on that," Murph interrupts.

"Yeah, me, neither," Connor agrees. "This vampire's son boxed him into something heavy and tossed him in the bloody ocean, and he's floating around down there, not dead, in a box."

"That's about right," Wesley says. Connor reaches out a hand - Wesley's leaning so far over the railing, Connor's suddenly terrified that he's going to do a header off the fuckin' pier into the watery depths with his vampire-with-a-soul buddy. Connor also suddenly thinks that he and Murph had no idea what they were walking into, pulling guns on this dead man. No fuckin' idea.

"This is more fucked up than Smecker in fuckin' drag," Murphy says.

"Aye," Connor says, because Murph has summed everything up really well. Wesley has let Connor pull him back off the railing; he's sagged against Connor's chest, still staring into the water, saying nothing.

Wesley doesn't say anything.

"You goin' to leave him there? In the box?" Murphy says.

"For a while," Wes shrugs.

They're quiet again for a while, mostly because Connor doesn't quite know what to say to that - if Murphy was in a box at the bottom of the Charles fuckin' River, Connor would do everything in his power to drag him out. Finally, just to break the silence, he says, "Want to go to Vegas? Everyone's a sinner in Las Vegas."

"Can we bring the battle axe?" Wesley says.

"Why not," Murph shrugs. "S'long as Connor doesn't try to chop my fuckin' head off again."

"Can we have a nap first?" Connor says.

"I think that would be a very good idea," Wesley says slowly. He sounds careful and throughtful and dreamily dangerous. "Do we have a plan for Las Vegas, or are we just going to wing it?"

"Winging it's what got us here," Murph says before Connor can open his mouth to say the same thing.