“It is done,” Maria intoned solemnly.

Angel got to his feet and then reached out to help his childe up as well.

The effect on him this time, with Spike’s strength added to his own, was far less debilitating than it had been with the Magdala.  He regained his faculties fairly quickly, and urgently assessed the situation.  The Clan Masters and their Lieutenants were still incapacitated, and their minions appeared to be no threat.  The Magdala had obviously adhered to their pledge.  They still knelt in obeisance at the back of the hall.

Next he turned his attention to his pets.  Wes and Gunn had obviously retrieved their weapons from behind the curtain once the spell had been invoked.  They stood in a fighting stance and held them at the ready.  Illyria now wore her full body armor.  She appeared unarmed, but Angel knew she could tear the head off any vampire with her bare hands in an instant, should the need arise.

“You okay?” he asked, finally focusing on his childe.

“Fine,” the blond answered tersely.

There was a tightness about his eyes that Angel thought he recognized, but he knew there was no time to question it now.  Right now he had to get his Clan Masters’ attention.  They were beginning to stir, and a few had regained their feet.

“Aurelians,” he called out, as he had just prior to enacting the spell.

With their minions’ help, the Masters and their Lieutenants shook off the effects of the spell and pulled themselves together.  They looked dazed, but turned their attention to the Master of their Order en masse.

“Masters of Aurelius,” Angel addressed them.  “When I took control of the Order, I promised to bring it great power and glory, and I will keep my promise – with your help.  We will destroy the Merovian Order, using the plan agreed to last night, but where able, we will salvage those we can to join our fight.  And we will fight, never doubt that.  Only our targets have changed.  Now we will attack the perpetrators of evil, rather than their innocent prey.  There will be enough blood and violence to slate your demon’s lust, believe me,” he said, a very Angelus-like smirk appearing.

He looked slowly around the chamber and found all eyes pinned on him, confusion and awe warring with the darkness of their demons, who howled at the injustice done them.

“I’ve been to hell, brothers and sisters of Aurelius, and my childe has glimpsed it as well.  We will do everything in our power to ensure that none of you suffer that fate for even a moment, much less an eternity.  What you feel now is my soul, and William the Bloody’s, but one day, when all is done, you will hopefully regain your own, and your demon and human spirits will be one with it again.  The rarest of opportunities has been set before you; to be part of a great destiny, one that will elevate you above the other demons, vampire or otherwise, that walk this earth.  Share our mission, and find glory, redemption and peace.  Reject it, and be destroyed.  You have twenty-four hours to decide.”

He turned to the blond by his side.  “Take the pets and the Magdala and escort the others back to their wing,” he ordered.  “We’ll come for you tomorrow night,” he said, once more addressing the Clan Masters.  “Be prepared to swear your allegiance to me and my mission, or meet your final end.”

*   *   *

Angel waited in the Hall and within fifteen minutes he was rejoined by his childe and their pets.

“The Masters are in their wing, and the Magadala in the cage room,” Spike informed him immediately upon entering the chamber again.

“Good, we need to talk,” the dark vampire said curtly, waving them toward the benches along one wall.  “Wesley, we need to know if the ensouling will hold.  It took both of us to activate it for the full Order.  Is it possible it can fail at some point?  We need to know what we’re up against.”

Wesley nodded reflectively.

“From what little we’ve actually seen, it appears that the difficulty is attaining the activation energy.  Perhaps once this occurs, only one soul will be required to control the Order,” he suggested after a few minutes of thought.  “Are both souls working to control them right now.

Both vampires glanced at each other, then nodded.

“You can feel both?” Gunn asked, his brow furrowed.  “I thought one soul couldn’t exist where another one was?”

“They don’t,” the Master of Aurelius confirmed.  “But I can feel mine brushing up against Spike’s, like it did when we first tested his mark.  When the connections were finally made, I felt… something.  Something else.  Something different.

Angel glanced away, as though he wished he hadn’t said what he had, and Spike chewed his bottom lip.  Wesley frowned.

“Master William,” he said, speaking carefully, “did you feel something, too?”

The blond nodded, staring down at the floor.

“Can you describe it?”

After a minute the smaller vampire shook his head tersely.  “Something different,” he finally replied, parroting his sire’s words.

“But not now?  Now it feels the same as when Angel first tested the mark on you?”

“Yeah,” the blond mumbled.

Wesley exchanged a concerned glance with Gunn.  Something was obviously wrong, but they had no idea what it was, and neither, it seemed, did the vampires, or if they did, they weren’t sharing, at any rate.

“I’m not sure what it means,” the Englishman finally said.  “The spell we researched says nothing about the joint effort of two souls during an ensouling attempt.”

“We should observe the manifestation of their souls again and see if anything has changed,” Illyria suggested calmly.  All eyes turned in her direction.

“Yes,” Angel said, abruptly standing and striding to the center of the still lit star.  He muttered the portion of the incantation that defined the soul spell, and a blue haze filled the room.  Around him an aura glowed, a deeper shade of blue in a narrow band.  From that aura finger-streaks of light traced outward through the blue haze.  They were too numerous to count, but they numbered in the hundreds.  From a cursory inspection, it seemed that there must be enough to account for all the members of Aurelius, including their newest Clan.

“Now you, Spike,” the older vampire commanded.  He stepped outside the star to make way for his childe, and the bright blue aura, the blue haze, and the lights contained within it abruptly disappeared from sight.

The blond strode into the center of the vacated pentagram, duster billowing about him.  He was barely in the star before he tersely invoked the opening portion of the spell.  Instantly the room was filled with a pale pink haze.  Spike’s aura shown bright red, and from it arched hundreds of thin lights tracing off through the haze, in what appeared to be roughly the same number as seen a moment before.

“Fascinating,” Wesley murmured.  “Spike, stay there.  Angel, step inside again and activate your aura,” he ex-Watcher suggested.

The vampire complied, speaking the line as he stepped over the perimeter.  His bright blue aura appeared, but the pink haze that had enveloped Spike and everyone in the chamber disappeared, replaced with the pale violet they’d seen during the actual ensouling.  The hundreds of arcs were doubled, one set clearly emanating from Angel’s blue aura, and one from his childe’s red aura.

“Strange,” Illyria stated, tilting her head as she considered the two vampires at the center of the star.  “The connections are steady.  It appears that both souls are still feeding the others of the Order.  Perhaps one of you should revoke your soul from the spell.”

“How do we do that?” Angel asked frowning.  “And is it safe?”

“You simply revoke the outward flow of communication,” Wesley clarified.  “Turn it off, if you will.  As to whether or not it’s safe, I don’t know.  I assume if the connections falter, you can simply engage the outward flow again, and re-stabilize them.”

“You assume?” Spike asked, clearly not happy with the suggestion.

“Yes, I’m sorry, Master William, I don’t know what else to suggest to test the theory.”

“We’ll try it,” Angel finally said.  “Spike, revoke the outward flow, but be prepared to put in back in place again if the connections don’t stay steady, understand?”

His childe was still frowning, but he nodded his agreement.  An instant later, when the line of Latin was spoken, the red aura disappeared, as did one set of connecting lights.  The violet haze shifted abruptly back to pale blue.  For a moment everything was fine, but then the light streams that flowed from Angel’s blue aura started to flicker and fade.  The dark vampire gasped, falling to his knees, and his childe immediately invoked the outgoing flow again.  His red aura returned, the haze shifted to violet, and the double set of lightening strikes reappeared.  They were, once again, quite stable.

“Well, that answers that,” Gunn said slowly.  “Looks like it’s gonna take both Angel’s and Spike’s souls to control the Order.”