Interlude:
Step one was taken care of. On to step two.
She returned to the United States via the Ways. She wasn't the expert at moving through them that Maggie McCoy-Dresden had been but she knew enough to do so safely and fairly quickly. It took her two hours to get from Northern Europe to the American Midwest, and she saw no thinking beings on the trip, to her relief. She had nightmares about running into some self-important jackass from the White Council and having to try to explain herself to them.
She knew her power levels were sufficient for membership on the White Council of Wizards, but really, she'd rather join— well, pretty much any other organization short of the Westboro Baptist Church, or the group she had belonged to for most of her existence.
"I'd rather be an alcoholic heroin junkie with eczema and a body-hair issue than join the White Council," she muttered as she stepped out of the Nevernever and into Chicago's Union Station, appearing in a little alcove between an employees' restroom and a janitor's closet. "Well, okay, maybe not— but I'd rather be a Jehovah's Witness, and from me, that's saying a lot."
She headed to the street, found a hotel that didn't charge insane rates, and settled in.
A part of her wanted to reveal herself now, to get it over with— but she knew better. She needed to stay out of sight, to be quiet and wait. Patience would get her more than impulsiveness— and was more likely to let her accomplish her goals besides.
But waiting was hard, now. Once, waiting had been one of her great strengths, but now… she hated it. It was hard, it didn't come easily, she didn't want to do it, and—
"My god, I sound like a child," she sighed aloud. "I will wait. There will be a perfect moment to strike— and I will wait for it."
In the meantime, a shower would help her relax. And a meal. Then she could work on her magics— she needed to learn to be even more frugal with power than had always been her habit; she had so much less power now, it was frustrating.
A shower-turned-bath and a meal did help her relax— too much, almost. She ended up falling asleep almost as soon as she returned to her room from the restaurant where she ate.
She woke at about four in the morning, fully dressed and on top of the covers, felt both chilly and somehow clammy. She undressed, showered briefly to get rid of that sweat-clammy sensation, and went back to bed.
"Mortality sucks," she murmured, just before sleep took her.
Harry:
Black Court vampires are terrifying monsters, as monsters go, and I really hate dealing with them. Still, I do have one advantage over them that I don't over lots of monsters; fire is a serious problem for them.
"I'm good with fire," I muttered as I brought my shield up, prepared for kinetic energy, and angled it so that if the Black Court vamp who was charging at me hit the shield, he wasn't likely to drive me back or to the ground.
Black Court vampires are a lot like Dracula in the book about him, which, according to rumor, was written by Bram Stoker while he was under the influence of a White Court vampire. The White and Black Courts have always hated each other, probably because they're as opposite as you can get and still both call yourselves vampires.
The White Court: Vampires that eat life-energy, not blood, and tend to feed off of specific emotions— despair, fear and lust are the three kinds that I've dealt with, lust being the most often. White Court vamps tend to be physically attractive, also, regardless of the emotion they drain. Also, as a rule, they prefer all of their existence to be played out in subtlety; relationships, politics, even war, are played as games where the surest way to lose is to act overtly, blatantly and without style.
Even their feeding is different— White Court vamps do kill, some more often than others, but they don't have to— and most of the older members of the White Court, as well as many of the most powerful (not always the same thing) consider it gauche to do so except in dire need. Also, White Court vamps are born, not made, and can, under certain circumstances, avoid inheriting the vampire part, if their family wants it so and makes an effort to make it happen. (You can imagine how rare that is, I'll bet!)
The Black Court: Corpses that walk around, and, for the first year or two of their existence, look like runny zombies. After that, they tend to dry up and look dry zombies, or maybe like an unwrapped mummy. Regardless, they're ugly.
When they feed, the victim invariably dies— usually messily and in great pain. The older kind— called "Rukhs"— can create vampires when they do this, and often do. Those the elders create can also create vampires, when they kill, but the ones the second generation creates are generally near-mindless monsters that exist only to feed, and can't generate more vampires.
All Black Court vampires are hideously strong, tough and fast, far above what Stoker depicted Dracula as being in the novel— he probably thought that no one would believe a bunch of human men could beat the actual Black Court vamps if he made them as scary as they really are.
On the plus side, he got most of their weaknesses right; holy items, holy ground and running water can hold them at bay (they can cross running water, but it's easiest for them to do so in their coffins, or in bat form— which only the older, more powerful vampires can actually do). Garlic, holy symbols, sunlight and fire can destroy them, along with being beheaded. A wooden stake through the heart won't kill them, but it makes them incapable of moving— they fall down and twitch a lot if you stake them.
But fire… that's my favorite of their weaknesses.
The charging vampire hit my shield with both hands, trying to simply slam his way through it, and the shock of the blow, despite my careful angling of the quarter-dome of force, did stagger me just a bit— the vampire had been smart enough to hit lower on the shield, rather than trying to lean out over it and hit above my arm, and the better leverage gave him more force to stagger me with. Still, it wasn't much— and he'd stopped running.
I dropped the shield, aimed my staff at the vampire and bellowed, "FORZARÉ!" as I sent my will through the oak rod. At the last second, just as the invisible force leapt out of my staff and slammed towards the vampire, I jerked the tip of the rod up just a little bit.
The vampire who'd attacked me flew away from me at a slight upwards angle, headed almost straight down the street. He wouldn't hit any buildings as he came down, so wasn't likely to attack any innocents.
"I'm good," I muttered as I drew my blasting rod, then turned to see what was happening with Buffy and her vampire.
The one shot she'd taken from the vampire hadn't apparently done Buffy any serious harm. She was fighting the thing, not quite going toe-to-toe with it, but certainly attacking it a lot more directly than anyone else I'd ever seen fight one up close and personal (except for a Knight of the Cross, of course). For a moment, I simply stood and watched, my jaw slowly dropping, as Buffy the vampire slayer fought a vampire a lot tougher than any she'd ever fought on her own Earth— and made it look kind of easy.
The thing about Black Court vampires is that they aren't like the demon-possessed human shells of the vampires of Buffy's world. "Her" vampires came to unlife with an instinctive knowledge of fighting, something Buffy said Giles thought was because they were warrior demons. Good point, that… but the Black Court vampires didn't have that instinctual martial arts knowledge, not unless they'd been martial artists before.
This one, very obviously, hadn't been a martial artist. Buffy, despite that super-strength shot to the gut that she'd taken, was dancing around the vampire, making him look really, really stupid. He'd swing, a big, wide roundhouse (admittedly a very fast big, wide roundhouse), and she'd not be there when it landed, would fire off a kick at the vampire. She didn't punch it at all, nor use the Scythe, and I found myself wondering why.
I was trying to decide whether or not to go help her when I heard running footsteps and a loud hissing, and remembered that I had a monster of my own to deal with. I looked down the way I'd flung my opponent, and saw him charging again— but this time, he was farther away, and I had time to do what I do best. I leveled my blasting rod and said, "Fuego!"
A bolt of fire about twice as thick as my thumb and blazing a bright yellow-white shot out and hit the oncoming vampire in the chest, right at the base of the throat, punched through the creature— and it exploded into a thousand bits of burning flesh.
"Dammit," I sighed, "I was aiming for his head."
I turned back towards Buffy— and saw why she'd been doing things the way she had, finally.
Undead or not, Black Court vampires, like most things, do get tired after a while; it just takes them a really long time, by comparison. I mean, sure, the fight had only been going on for about a minute, but that's actually a long time when every blow you throw is at full strength, when you completely commit all of your resources to every attack.
Buffy was wearing her opponent— I guess "him" still applies, at least by appearances— she was wearing him down, conserving her own energy, after a fashion, dodging and throwing kicks that probably weren't meant to do anything more than keep the vampire pissed off and fighting at full strength.
Now it was slowing down— and Buffy got serious. Her feet came at the vampire with all of her speed, weight and muscle behind them, she started adding the occasional punch to the mix, and she even smacked the vampire across the face with the handle of the Scythe a time or three, always getting him with the sharp flanges above the stake in the butt of the handle.
It was gorgeous to see.
Finally, the vampire seemed to realize what she was doing, and it went for an all-out attack. It let Buffy knock it back, slam it into a park bench, and rolled over the bench. Then it grabbed the thing by the armrest at one end, swung it back over its head, and slammed it down at Buffy as she charged in to finish it off.
I took a long step forward, tried to shout her name, but my breath caught in my throat and—
—and I felt stupid as Buffy sidestepped the overhead swing easily, and, while the vampire was trying to wrench the bench out of the ground to swing again, did this funky little pirouette that started with the Scythe in close to her body, hands spread on the handle— and ended with the Scythe at the full extension of her arms, hands together on the haft, and the blade passing through the vampires neck with a little shrill of vibrating metal.
Buffy watched with a clinical sort of interest as the vampire's remains began to rot at an accelerated rate, then turned and started my way, rubbing absently at her stomach. I glanced around, saw the woman fleeing away from the direction I'd sent my vampire the first time, and making good time— she must have taken off her high heels.
I didn't see Javor Gavrilovic at all.
"Murph?" I called.
"I've got him," Karrin said from the shadowed depths of the porch.
"Go, you," Buffy said as she came up beside me. She looked at me and said, "You know, I'm more and more flattered that Xander says she was the closest thing in this universe to me, before we came here."
"Thank you," Murphy said, as Buffy and I skipped up the porch steps. "I may have to kiss Xander for a compliment like that."
"Who in the hell are you psychopaths!" Gavrilovic asked as Buffy and I approached him from behind. He was on his knees, his hands linked on top of his head, palms up. Something about his posture— knees tightly together, feet not so much— suggested that Karrin had nailed him in the groin, and he was still recovering from that. "You do realize that I will have you all arrested, don't you? The local police are all friendly with me, and—"
I stepped around in front of him and let him get a good look at me in the glow from his porch light— and Gavrilovic stopped talking immediately. A look of purest shock crossed his face, and he blurted something in what I assumed was Serbian.
"English only!" Karrin barked, and shoved the barrel of the mini-machinegun she carried into his field of vision. "Next time, you get a round in the foot to sharpen your memory!"
"I killed you!" Gavrilovic said, his eyes going wide. "It was a perfect shot, I saw the exit wound as you went off the boat, you can't be alive!"
I just smiled— and he seemed to realize what he'd just said. His mouth closed with a snap, and he looked away from me, looked at Buffy. (Not like I could blame him on that one. She had on black leather pants and a deep red silk blouse, and she looked a lot better than me.)
"Don't look to me for help," Buffy said, her voice calm, level, almost cold. "Not only is he my boss, he's my friend. I'm not real happy with you either. Not like I'm anywhere near as crazy-pissed as he is, but I'm not happy."
"None of us are happy," Murphy said, her voice detached, almost eerily so, like when she was at a really horrible crime scene, and had to get that way to stay sane. "But my friend raises a good point.
"You didn't try to kill her. You didn't try to kill me.
"You tried to kill him— and I'm extremely glad I'm not you."
"Whatever you want, you can't have it," Gavrilovic said, his teeth clenched together. "I wouldn't tell you anything if I could, and I can't. My services are hired anonymously, very deliberately. It is safer for both my clients and myself."
"Bullshit," I snarled. I leaned down close to his ear, careful to stay out of Murphy's line of fire, and hissed, "If that's the case, then why, exactly, are you using Black Court vampires for bodyguards, Gavrilovic?"
"I… it was a perk, a bonus." He swallowed hard. "The monsters were to be mine to command for one year after your excision. It was offered to me, and I took it."
" 'Excision,' " I said, tasting the word. "That's the word for 'murder,' these days?"
"It is the term for what I do," Gavrilovic said with a haughty toss of his head. "I excise the dead weight from humanity."
"Uh-huh," I said. I walked around behind Murphy and said, "Okay, well, if you don't know who hired you, you're no use to me except for playtime.
"Tie him up. We'll take him with us." I gave him the coldest smile I could manage, and considering that the asshole had murdered me, I'm pretty sure I was approaching absolute zero. "I'll bet you I can make him last at least two months."
"Oh, please," Buffy said, and rolled her eyes. "Thirty days. Six weeks tops."
"As easy as I took him down?" Karrin snorted. "Two weeks tops, boss."
"You don't frighten— shit!"
I'd known the protestation of fearlessness was coming— it's always coming at that point— and I was ready.
I called up my "little ball of sunshine" spell, created a tiny, brilliantly hot ball of pure fire over my left palm. Then I tilted my hand down, puffed a breath of air at the ball of fire, and sent it drifting towards Gavrilovic at the pace of an athletic snail. He tried to shy away, and felt the blade of Buffy's Scythe at the back of his neck. Murphy stepped slightly to one side, giving me center stage, as it were.
"You killed me," I said, my voice a thing of frosted steel. "You're right about that. It was a killing shot.
"I came back— but it wasn't easy, it wasn't fun, and I'm not happy about having to come back. You hurt and scared my friends, the people I love, my family— and I'm not going to let you off the hook for that, Javor Gavrilovic— not without a price!
"Tell me who hired you and I'll kill you quickly— that's the best you can hope for.
"Otherwise… this ball, while it looks to be pretty large, is actually about the diameter of a big needle. The extra light is a side effect, that's all, from the oxygen in the air igniting.
"So imagine a needle of pure fire, Gavrilovic, imagine what I could do to you with that."
"Varma!" he cried, and he started to sob. "His name was Varma! I spoke to him only once, but he did insist on that once."
"Indian, huh?" I said, nodding a little. "Have an accent?"
"Yes, but it was European," Gavrilovic near-sobbed. "Like he was an immigrant. Voice kind of high-pitched. And he sounded sick, like— my grandfather, he had emphysema, could barely get the breath to speak, Varma sounded like that."
I froze. I almost forgot the ball of fire for a moment, as certain things came together in my head.
"Was there anything else?" I asked, my voice a growl, now. "Anything at all?"
"He said… he'd had others try before, one amateur, one professional, and that they'd failed. He said…." Gavrilovic gasped for breath and searched his memory desperately. "I wasn't happy about trying after others had tried and failed, that makes a target more wary, but… but she said, that the other attempts had been years ago."
"Did you ask for details?" Karrin asked, seeing that I was out of questions.
"I… yes!" Gavrilovic sobbed. "He said that the amateur attempt was four and a half years before mine, the professional attempt three and a half years before.
"Please, just kill me quickly!"
I closed my left hand, banished the ball of fire, and nodded at Buffy. She clouted Gavrilovic on the back of the head with the flat of the Scythe, and he fell facedown and unconscious on his porch.
"Son of a bitch!" I snarled. "I can't believe I missed— dammit! That bitch, that fucking bitch!"
Murphy and Buffy both knew that I tended to save the f-bomb for the most serious of circumstances, and Murphy cautiously said, "Harry, do you know—"
"I know," I said, and shook my head. "Not now. Not here.
"Look, I can't do anything to this guy magically, and I can't just kill him— what do we do with him?"
"Maybe you should have thought about that before we came," Murphy said with a sigh. "If we let him go, he'll maybe come after you again, Harry, and obviously the cops aren't going to do anything, or they would have by now."
"I have an idea," Buffy said, though she sounded unsure of herself and maybe even upset. "This guy— sniper, right? Never kills any other way?"
"Right," Murphy confirmed. "What do you have in mind?"
"It's… ugly," Buffy said, her voice shaky, "but I'll do it, if you agree that it needs doing, both of you."
She told us, and Murphy and I both winced— but it might be the only way for us to be sure he wouldn't come after me again, or one of them. So, one more "I'm going to kill you" bluff, coming right up— this time with an "or" clause.
"Wake him up," I said to the air, and Karrin bent over, started poking and prodding him here and there.
After a moment, Gavrilovic responded sharply to one of Karrin's nerve-proddings, and rolled over slowly. On seeing us again, he went very, very pale.
"I'm going to offer you a way out of dealing with me," I said, my voice low and angry, though the anger was more at myself than him, at that point. "But there's a price tag. I can't risk you ever murdering another person for money, Gavrilovic, I won't risk that."
"I won't, I swear, I'll retire, right now, toni—" the assassin babbled, his voice loud, almost a shout, his eyes filled with hope.
"Shut up!" Buffy snarled, and he did, immediately. "You're a murderer, why should we believe you?"
Gavrilovic's mouth moved silently for a long moment, before I let him off the hook.
"You have a choice, Javor Gavrilovic," I said, my voice heavy and angry. "You can die— or you can lose both index fin—"
Something hit the porch roof, hard, punched through, landed a couple of feet behind Buffy. It rose before any of us could do more than shift our focus to it, and it blurred as it darted forward— and slammed a fist down on Gavrilovic's head so hard that it popped like an over-ripe watermelon under that psycho-comedian guy's favorite sledgehammer.
All three of us were spattered with brains, blood and bone, and still trying to figure out what had happened when the figure that had done the killing started to glow, passing rapidly from red to orange, and not stopping there.
It was a stone figure of a gargoyle, one of several that had lined the roof of Gavrilovic's castle-mansion, and it made no move towards any of us— just kept glowing more and more brightly.
"Run!" I yelled, and we all three got off of the porch. Buffy started to go across the street, I started to follow, and Karin called "No, this way!" as she ran towards the nearer corner of Gavrilovic's house.
We got around the corner— and there came a huge explosion and an equally huge gout of fire from the front of the mansion.
"Shit," Buffy muttered, looking around the corner at the conflagration. "Thanks, Karrin— if we'd gone across the street, we might still have been killed."
"Yeah, thank you," I gasped. "Once again, you're a lifesaver."
"Yes, well, there will very likely be cops very soon, Harry," Karrin said. "Let's get out of here, okay?"
"And the lady does it again," I said, nodding. "Let's go, folks. Slow march, nothing unusual happening, right?"
We got off of Gavrilovic's block quickly, then slowed to a casual pace and walked along while trying to clean the worst of Gavrilovic's messy death off of ourselves with various handkerchiefs and other pieces of cloth. We got several blocks away before we even heard sirens, and I wondered if maybe someone hadn't told somebody in power to ignore calls from that address. It could be, given what I knew now.
"Harry," Murphy said as we turned towards our entry point to the Ways after walking several blocks in a different direction to get away from Gavrilovic's house, "it sounded like you figured something out about who hired him. Did you?"
"Yeah," I said, sighing. "I know who it was, Karrin— and I feel like an idiot for not seeing it before. But… not here. In fact, not until we're back at my place, behind my wards. I don't want to take any chances, Murph."
She looked at me closely, saw that I was serious, and nodded once. "Okay, Harry."
We made it to the place where we needed to enter the Nevernever without incident, and once we had entered the place, we all relaxed a lot. Of course, we tensed up again as the damned weapon-using-armor-wearing-scary-dinosaurs paced us through their part of the Nevernever, but we relaxed again when we left that part of the trip behind us.
Soon enough, we stepped out into the alley behind the Last Trumpet, and we all breathed a sigh of relief. As we walked towards the car, Buffy spoke for the first time since we'd left Belgrade.
"Sorry about forgetting what you told me about vampires here, Harry," she apologized. "I just— well, it's been a while since the briefing, and I hadn't seen one ever, so… I guess it didn't sink in."
"That's okay," I said calmly. Then I gave her a sidelong look and corrected myself. "Well, it's okay as long as you can tell me honestly that the knowledge is now firmly planted in your brain."
"It is," she said, and blushed a little. "That was a hell of a shot to the gut— I'm fine, get the worried look off your face— and that sort of thing tends to assist the memory, you know?"
"You're sure you're okay?" Karrin asked from the other side of her. "Not just being Tough Slayer Lady?"
"I'm sure," Buffy chuckled as we entered the parking garage where I'd left Captain Midnight. "Really, you guys. I'll have a big bruise there that will be a fading bruise by breakfast, and a not-bruise-anymore by supper time tomorrow. Slayers heal fast."
"So, how did that thing rate on your scale of nasty?" Murphy asked as we climbed into my car.
"Oh, very nasty," Buffy said. "Stronger than even one of the First Evil's über-vamps, tougher in some ways. Way faster.
"I'm just glad Harry says that vampires don't get much stronger than them."
"Except…?" I prompted as I pulled up to the gate and paid the attendant.
Buffy frowned in thought, then said, "Oh. Except for really old Black Court vamps, which are called… something chess-ish. And are scarier on all levels, and that wasn't an old vampire?"
"They call elder Black Court vampires 'Rukhs,' Buffy," I told her. "Sort of chess-like, I'll give you that.
"But no— that wasn't an older Black Court vampire. I'd say is was a second generation one, though, not a third, so you've faced the middle rank, now."
"Yay," she sighed.
I've never heard that word said with so much lack-of-sincerity before or since.
I got us back to the brownstone, and we met in my apartment after we'd all had a chance to shower. (I gave Karrin the key to the apartment on the fifth floor that I'd outfitted as a guestroom.) (Not the one I was letting Molly use as a lab— putting a guest through that sort of risk is against the Unseelie Accords, the Geneva Conventions, and probably all the laws of gods and men that were ever made.)
(All right, yes— I'm exaggerating. But ever since an early potion attempt of Molly's blew up in her face [almost literally] and helped screw up what was supposed to be a day off and my first date with a lady I really liked, I've been a little wary of her and labs, okay?)
Once we'd all sat down at my kitchen table and all had drinks, I dry-scrubbed my face and tried to think of a way to tell the whole story about what I'd just figured out without Murphy blowing up on me. I couldn't think of one— so I just bit the bullet and put it out there, though I explained my reasoning as I went.
"Okay," I said, leaning forward and planting my elbows on the table. "Here's how I got to the conclusion I've reached— which I will give you, after I explain how I reached it."
"This had better not take long," Karrin warned, her eyes fierce and angry. "I want to know who killed my friend, Harry, so I can help you pay them back."
"Ditto," Buffy said.
"Okay," I said. I sighed and said, "Look, you know there are things I didn't tell you about my trip back from the dead. I hope you understand that mostly it's… stuff that I can't talk about yet. But some of it is… kind of personal. So I'd rather you didn't repeat this, okay?"
"All right, Harry," Karrin said, the anger leaving her eyes as she reached out and squeezed one of my hands even as Buffy squeezed the other.
"My lips are sealed," Buffy said solemnly.
"Okay, well… you both know, now that she's gone, about Lasciel." I sighed and shook my head. "Having a carbon copy of a fallen angel in your head for a few years is weird— but worse is that, in the end, the copy stopped being so carbon— and pulled a Pinocchio. She became an independent entity, partly because I gave her a name— names have power, and when I started calling her 'Lash,' it gave her… she started to become an entity unto herself, not a piece of Lasciel.
"Then came the night Carlos and I took on Madrigal Raith and Vitorrio Malvora over the killing of a lot of minorly magic-talented women. Murph, you know how bad things got at the end, when Vito went all spooky and possessed, but Buffy… I don't think you can know. We were all pinned by despair, fear, guilt— all the nastiest things a human being can feel, the power of Vito Malvora magnified by a freaking Outsider— Buffy, imagine something as much more powerful than the thing you fought to night as it was more powerful than— than Dawn. Then make it a purely emotional attack…."
"Damn," Buffy muttered softly. "That's… scary, yes."
"Okay, so…." I sighed again, shook my head, and said, "So to save me, or at least to give me the chance to save myself, Lash… she took the impact of that assault on herself, and she… she died of it."
My voice had gotten thick, and both ladies squeezed my hands. "The only thing that's left of her is… she gave me the skill with a guitar, made the connection between what I heard in my head and what came out through my fingers solid, real… and permanent."
"That's why that song you played is called 'Lash,' then," Buffy said, and gave me a smile. "Harry… that's pretty damned awesome of you."
"I guess," I said. I shrugged and said, "I think it's more just fair, though.
"Anyway… on my way back from being dead, I know that I mentioned running into one friendly being."
"Oh," Buffy said after a moment. She squeezed my hand again, held on this time. "It was Lash?"
"Yes," I said, my voice rough and ragged. "It was her. She… well, she saved me again. Details… I can't give you those, not right now— but this time, she saved me without losing her own existence. She gave me a place to rest, to recover, and helped me figure out the best way to get the rest of the way home.
"And she tried to help me figure out who'd killed me. She said, that, if she were going to do it— and she had planned murders, back when she was Lasciel, though she hated thinking about them— she'd have waited a while after the offense that required my death, so that I wouldn't connect them with her.
"She told me that it was pretty likely that whoever had me killed hadn't been in my face for a while, probably a long while, and that they'd rely on my having put suspicion on people with more recent reasons to want me dead, if I survived the attempt.
"I put that to Bob, and he came up with a list of seventy-eight freaking people who might well want me dead for offenses real or imagined, who'd have the resources to arrange a hit man, and the respect for my magical strength and talent to do it that way, rather than up close and personal.
"The name I've figured out as the real power behind this attempt was on that list.
"Tonight, everything finally clicked. Tonight, I got it.
"Murph, you remember right before that craziness at the horror convention, the case where I got Molly as an apprentice, where that car hit me and forced me off the road?"
"I remember," Murphy said, her eyes narrowing. "That'd be about, what… four and a half years ago, now?"
"Exactly," I said. "And it would fit Gavrilovic's claim that the first was an 'amateur' attempt. Then, almost a year later—"
"Some professional bomber wired a bomb to my car," Karrin growled. "Almost killed us both, would have if you hadn't accidentally hexed the bomb into going off early."
"Yeah," I said, nodding. "Then the Black Court bodyguards, and the name 'Varma.' " I freed my hand from Buffy's, took a notebook out of my pocket and wrote it down. Then I tore out the page and tore the individual letters off in little blocks. "Terry Pratchett made a joke in one of his Discworld books about how vampires (on the Disc, at least) always use their own name backwards when they need an alias— and I guess he was almost right. She was smart enough not to just reverse her name, but…."
I'd been shuffling my homemade Scrabble tiles around while I spoke, and now I leaned back to reveal them in their new order.
"She couldn't resist using the letters of her name, just not backwards," I said, and looked down at the name I'd made from V-A-R-M-A.
Mavra.
"There's the name of the vampire bitch that killed me," I said, my voice low and angry. "And I'm going to return the favor— in spades!"