The excitement of After the Fall continues in this fourth volume from Whedon and Lynch! With truths revealed, master plans laid out, and people dying, it's clear evil is winning the fight in Los Angeles. In this decisive story, a climactic battle will see Angel live free or die for the final time.
Spike gets up after being thrown off the Wolfram & Hart building by Gwen in the previous volume. He complains about leaving behind his comfortable lordship to join in a series of very uncomfortable battles against Team Gunn, Wolfram & Hart, and the various other demons in Hell that are threatening humans. As he is doing this, he heads back up to the battle to help, only to be attacked by more of Gunn's vampires, and after he takes care of those, slayers that the vampires have been training on come out and attack him.
Then we see a disembodied Angel talking to Cordelia about the vision he saw of himself in the Apocalypse. From what he saw in the vision, it appeared that he was on the wrong side, fighting against the humans. He begins to wonder if he should just leave with Cordelia, for if he is dead he cannot be there to harm any humans during the apocalypse. Cordelia points out that it could be a trick.
Wolfram & Hart then send an army of dragons to cause further destruction to show that they are not happy with the current events. This causes Gwen and Connor to stop their fight. Angel’s dragon dies trying to protect them. Then, Gwen defends Connor from the attacking dragons, telling him to get off the roof and do what he feels he needs to do.
Meanwhile, Gunn points a crossbow at Angel's body, with Wesley doing his best to stop Gunn from killing Angel, but not doing very well as he is incorporeal ghost. Then Connor comes down to stop Gunn. After Connor kicks Gunn out of a window, Angel decides to stay to help his son in the continuing battle against Wolfram & Hart and all the other evil demons and vampires in Hell/LA. Then Spike walks in with the slayers he had been fighting earlier, having convinced them they were on the same side.
After Gunn gets up off the ground, complaining that the visions he has been having did not tell him that Connor would defeat him in battle. He soon finds Illyria, who then turns into Fred after Gunn starts showing some distress as he admits that is not sure if what he is doing is right. When she turns into Fred, Gunn suddenly becomes convinced that he is right and shoots her with a crossbow.
Groosalugg is battling dragons while on a winged horse. As Groosalugg does battle, Angel describes how evil Wolfram & Hart is, having caused all this destruction, having sent LA to Hell, and how it was all done for him. We then see that Angel is still unconscious but, as his narration regarding Spike’s flustered reaction to Angel’s current state would indicate, obviously aware of what is going on around him.
We then see Gunn carrying Fred/Illyria away. As he talks to her about his plan, he experiences a series of time slips. These time slips have been occurring a lot whenever Illyria becomes flustered. Gunn flashes back briefly to before he was a vampire and experiences a breath, after which he says he wants more. He continues on, protecting Illyria from demons and dragons that are headed after Angel.
The demons reach Angel and his friends, take Angel, and take him to where Gunn took Illyria. Gunn had built a device in hopes of restoring Fred to her former self, but the demons employed by Wolfram & Hart said that they allowed him to build the device as they as had always intended it to be used for Angel. Illyria is taken off the table, and Angel is put on that same table.
Illyria then tells Wesley that she wants to bring back Fred, but neither she nor Gunn could. Even if either of them could, it would not be the same as she could not bring Wesley back. Illyria then comes to the conclusion that it needs to ends, and she then turns into her true demon form, a giant monster with many large tentacles. She then attacks everyone around her.
As this is happening, the device that Angel is laying on is healing his wounds. As Angel is healing, Illyria collapses the building they are in. When Angel emerges from the rubble, Angel tells Wesley that he has been partially healed. Then Gunn lunges at Angel and stabs him through the shoulder. They experience another time slip as Angel turns around to face Gunn, as Angel flashes back to a couple of centuries in his past. As Gunn tells Angel that he is going to get Illyria to turn back time to before LA was sent to Hell and that then he will kill Angel, Angel experiences another time slip this time into the apocalyptic future that Wolfram & Hart had given him a vision of. Then Betta George appears from under the rubble and goes into Illyria’s mind. George reveals that Illyria’s plan is to end existence, to which Gunn responds “That’ll work.”
In her true demonic form, Illyria is wreaking havoc in Los Angeles, destroying everything and everyone within her reach, including Groosalugg, who had been fighting her on his winged horse. She uses George as a telepathic link to the others, ranting about how she is going to make so no one hurts and there is no pain.
Angel, Wesley, Spike, and Connor regroup and try to come up with a plan to stop Illyria. As they head to fight her, Gunn tries to stop them, saying that Illyria was meant to do what she is doing. After Gunn fatally wounds Connor, Angel knocks Gunn to the ground and starts to kill him with an ax but hesitates. Angel realizes that because he is trying to kill these people who used to be his friends, that he could easily become the monster that he saw in the visions of the apocalypse that Wolfram & Hart sent him. Then he thinks further and realizes that the demons inhabiting Gunn and Fred’s bodies are not Gunn or Fred, regardless of how much they want to be. This gives Angel an idea, so he drops the ax next to Gunn and presents his plan to the rest of the group.
Angel asks George to fill Illyria’s mind with Wesley’s memories of Fred. He hopes that will show Illyria that this is not what Fred would have wanted. Wesley suggests that George should use Spike’s memories of Fred as well. George does this easily as Fred is front and center in both Spike’s and Wesley’s minds. Illyria sees these memories and lets her guard down for a moment, and that gives Wolfram & Hart’s army enough time to kill Illyria. As Illyria is struck down, Connors lays dying in Angel’s arms. With his last words, he tells Angel that, vampire or not, he is a good man.
Angel thinks back to when Connor was born as he sits, holding his dead son. Angel then starts fighting the demons that surround him. Soon he and Wesley realize that the demons will not kill him because Wolfram & Hart need him to stay alive, so Angel asks Spike and the slayers to hold back the demon army. While they do that, Angel goes to fight Gunn to the death. He goads Gunn into killing him. When Gunn does kill him, Wolfram & Hart pulls Angel from the last moment that he was in good shape. Wesley reveals to Spike that this timeline in Hell is actually occurring between moments in Earth’s reality. Therefore, the last possible moment they can pull Angel from his timeline to just before they sent LA to Hell.
Spike suddenly finds himself fighting in the alley alongside Angel, Illyria, and Gunn, just as they were in the series finale of the TV show. They all retain their memories of what happened in Hell, but all the actual events were erased. Everyone who was killed during their time in Hell, are as well as they were just before LA was sent to Hell. Angel saves Gunn, preventing him from becoming a vampire like he did in Hell. The dragon that Angel had saved previously reappears to defeat the remaining demons that are attacking Angel and his friends. Angel sees that though he saved Gunn from becoming a vampire, he is still hurt very badly.
When they go to Wolfram & Hart looking healing potions for Gunn, they find that the Wolfram & Hart building has disappear, as if it were never there. They head over to the hospital on Angel’s dragon to get Gunn help. Outside of the hospital, Angel sees Connor alive again. After Angel hugs his son, a stranger comes over to him wanting to thank him. Then Angel sees many strangers that want to thank him for saving them.
Angel struggles with his newfound fame as he looks into Wolfram & Hart’s disappearance. As Angel is doing research at a library with Nina, he talks about not wanting any extra attention and mentions that he has had to make some lifestyle changes in order to attract less attention. As he says that he thinks back to giving the dragon to Groosalugg, who like the dragon and Connor, had been resurrected in LA’s return from Hell.
Angel goes on to talk about how now that most things are as they were before that people will want to move on like nothing had ever happened, but he does not think that is possible as everyone remembers every moment of their time in Hell. During this speech, we see Gwen telling the boy she was with before LA went to Hell to stop touching her, and we also see Spike look at Illyria while the latter has her head down, looking guilty about what she had done, and then they both go their separate ways.
Angel says that he is tired and rambling and should probably leave. Angel says goodbye to Nina as they leave the Burkle Wyndam-Pryce wing of the library, which is named after Angel’s dead friends Fred and Wesley. Angel hopes that those two are together in the afterlife, but he sometimes doubts it. Whenever he has those doubts, he feels a warm breeze. He implies that Cordelia sends that warm breeze as she hates it when he is pessimistic. Angel decides he should check in with Spike.
Spike is fighting demons with his friend Betta George when he gets Angel calls. Spike stabs the demon he is fighting with a sword and tells George they need to go. The demon tells Spike that Angel’s finale is coming. When Spike meets up with Angel, he shows him the demon that talked about Angel’s finale. That demon, who had been in the trunk of Spike’s new car, told him that the former lords of Hell are going to get back at Angel by killing his most vulnerable ally.
On the way to rescue their ally, Spike talks to Angel about the Shanshu prophecy, and says that what Wolfram & Hart put Angel through is proof that Angel’s future is not as certain as they would have him believe, for if their vision of Angel’s future were for sure going to happen, then there would be no point in putting Angel through all of that. Then Spike suggests that the Shanshu prophecy could still be about him, to which Angel says the thing about not being in any prophecies or history books is that people will never see you coming.
Angel and Spike arrive at the hospital where Gunn is staying and meet an army of demons that have come to kill him. As they prepare to kill Gunn, Illyria announces from the rooftop of the hospital that no one will kill Charles Gunn, as he was important to Fred.
Angel goes into Gunn’s room and sees Lorne standing in there, silently looking out the window. Angel tells an unconscious Gunn that it wasn’t him, and gives his Angel Investigations card with his number on it in case he ever needs to talk. Angel wants to help Gunn, as he knows a little bit about atonement. He thinks to himself as he walks away from the hospital that, though he has done very bad things in the past, and though he is destined to do more bad things in the future, for now he is here to help.
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