Title: Night of the Old One (2/5)
Author: Alixtii
Timeline: Post-NFA. Book I of Dark Champions.
Spoilers: All of Buffy and Angel.
Characters: Faith, Illyria, Drusilla, Lilah, Andrew.
Disclaimer: Joss owns everything. Yeah, even that.
A/N: For those who missed my saying this in the last chapter's notes, yes this has been posted before in screenplay form. This site doesn't allow that format, so here it is again within the parameters allowed. Once I've reposted all the original screenplays as stories, I will begin to post new episodes in the Dark Champions series.
A/N 2: Thanks to a dear friend of mine for suggesting "Elvira" as a name for the cheap vampire whore at the end of this chapter. It was so obvious, so clichéd, so bad that it was absolutely perfect for the character and I had to use it. If I haven't told her enough, let me say it here: she's a genius. Or a madwoman. Probably both.

Devon Wilshire looked down at the resume in front of him. "Head of the Science Division of Wolfram & Hart's Los Angeles branch," he read. "Very impressive. May I ask why you ended your employment there?"

Wilshire's interviewee—a petite brunette named Winifred Burkle who struck him as equal parts cheerleader and nerd—simply nodded. "You may," she said, a mischevious smile on her face.

"Why did you end your employment?"

"Earthquake," Ms. Burkle answered. "The L.A. branch was totally destroyed."

"Wolfram & Hart has offices here in Cleveland," Wilshire pointed out gently. "Why didn't you go there." Best to push gently. The last thing he wanted was for her to actually decide he was right, leave the interview, and return to Wolfram & Hart. Which, if the intelligence in front of him was correct, wasn't likely, but he chose to play it cautious.

"Let's just say Wolfram & Hart and I don't see eye-to-eye anymore," she answered, remaining calm and collected and clearly choosing her words very carefully. Remembering she was in a job interview, Wilshire supposed, and that she was being evaluated on the answers she gave.

Wolfram & Hart and I don't see eye-to-eye anymore. That was one Wilshire simply couldn't give up. "Earthquake?" he asked her, an eye raised inquisitively. She simply returned his question with an enigmatic look.

Wilshire shrugged and continued to read the resume. "Author of 'Supersymmetry and P-Dimensional Subspace.' Remarkable. Have you ever done any work with time manipulation?"

Was that a smirk he detected? "I have some experience in that category, yes."

"Wonderful." It did seem as if she were exactly the type of candidate for which they had been looking. "Now, it says here that you've attended graduate classes at UCLA but never completed the program. May I as—" He caught himself. "Why is that?"

"I was sucked through a portal into a hell dimension for five years," she answered, completely deadpan.

Wilshire nodded. He didn't see how a thing like that could be held against her. If necessary, there would be opportunities for her to complete her education while employed at DemonTech.

He thought Winifred Burkle might just be the image of the model employee. Yes, he supposed she would fit in quite well.

"Now why don't you just explain to me what happened, Alec? Nice and slowly."

Alec nodded, took a deep breath, and began to give the details of the previous night's events. "Me and my buds were on the street, minding our own business," he explained. "We're looking for a snack, when all of a sudden this chick comes by in this tight-fitting outfit. Really hot, if you know what I mean. Only she was blue. Well, her hair was. And her eyes. And lips. And her forehead."

"And what did you do, Alec?" Edward Lanoire was Vice President of Special Projects at the Cleveland branch of Wolfram & Hart, and Eddie, Malcolm, and Alec had done a few oddjobs for the man over time. So the powerful lawyer was the natural option for Alec, still unnerved by his encounter with the blue woman the night before, to confide in.

"Well, we started hitting on her, you know," Alec answered. "Because she was like, a looker and all. But then she said—she said she was disturbed by something, and that she was looking for violence. So we decided to give her some."

"Tsk. Tsk," Lanoire said, shaking his head. "And then she dusted Malcolm and Eddie?"

"Uh-huh," Alec answered. "She threw Malcolm into a parkbench and pulled Eddie's head right off his shoulders. And then she said she was—"

"Illyria. God-king of the primordium." Alec turned around to look at the woman who had just entered Lanoire's office. She was a tall brunette in a professional-looking skirt and blouse. A matching scarf was wrapped around her neck. "Well, former god-king," the woman said.

"Former demon overlord of a thousand underworlds."

Faith looked at the elaborate woodcut in the book, squinting so she could see it more clearly. It was some type of horned beast, of the demon-so-hideous-it-strikes-fear-into-all variety. "The harbinger of incredible darkness," Andrew continued, really beginning to warm up. Faith figured that was a bad sign.

"It doesn't look like the creature I saw last night," she pointed.

"This is its true form," Andrew explained. "We don't know what form it had to take to enter our dimension. You said it was blue?"

"Yeah."

Andrew shut the book, a satisfied look on his face. "Then it was probably this," he said, straightening out (not slouching added at least two inches to his height) and crossing his arms. "Besides, Giles said there was a prophecy about this creature returning to the Hellmouth. Sunnydale is destroyed—"

"So it has to be coming here," Faith finished. "I got it." She eyed Andrew up suspiciously. "Tell me again why he couldn't have just left this information on my voice mail?"

"He felt you would be better served with my skills as a Watcher-in-Training extraordinaire, esquire, et cetera." Under Faith's relentless Slayer stare he added, "And you never check your messages."

"Our particle accelerators are capable of velocities of—well, infinity, really, but my scientists tell me that would cause the particles to gain infinite mass, causing a rift in the interdimensional fabric which would suck everything everywhere into it, which is why we don't do."

Gene Rainy's ears perked as he heard the distinctive voice of the Man Upstairs (in addition to being his boss, Devon Wilshire's office was also three stories above the lab). It was always wise to be aware when those in charge were around, even if they were spouting inane scientific facts that were only half-accurate—and who in the world was that slender woman next to Wilshire?

"It would create a miniature black hole capable of swallowing the Earth,"Gene explained, not keeping his eyes off the pretty brunette. "Not a good idea."

"Gene, this is Winifred Burkle," Wilshire introduce the woman. "She'll be working with you here. "Ms. Burkle, this is Eugene Rainy, the head of our Dimensional Fabric Research Team."

"So far, we've found out that if you use the right softener, the dimensional fabric becomes soft and fluffy with a fresh outdoor scent," he joked. Then something clicked. "Winifred Burkle? As in the author of 'Supersummetry and P-Dimensional Subspace'?"

As he watched her embarrassed nod, he could feel the blood rush to his face. This pretty girl was Winifred Burkle? And she was going to work for him? He searched his mind for something to say. "Your analysis of heterotic theories as being flawed a priori inspired this experiment. You see, I'm alternating the valuables of the distance scales—"

Wilshire cut in, smiling. "I guess I'll just leave you two alone to get acquainted," he said, and turned to leave.

"What about the feedback quotient?" Burkle asked him. "Won't the scales become inverted by the T-duality—"

"Not withing a fragment vector," he explained. He knew this. He could do it. "You see, all it requires is a modulation in the Anderson substratum. . . ."

"Once she was a being of unimagined might. Illyria ruled undisputed over a million Earths. And then there was an uprising, and it was consigned to the Deeper Well."

Lanoire frowned. The last thing he wanted right now was a history lesson. But if the Senior Partners went through all the trouble to send Lilah Morgan to Cleveland from Hell, he supposed he owed it to them to hear what she had to say to him. "But it escaped?"

Lilah shrugged. "Escaped, was let out, something. Who knows what happened, exactly? Now she's out."

"And why would the god-king of the primawhatsit be going around slaying vampires?"

"Primordium," Lilah corrected. "And the short answer is no one knows."

"The long answer?"

"When Illyria escaped from the Deeper Well, it needed to take a human host. It is now trapped in that human form. Most of its powers are gone."

"Most?" Lanoire asked. Lilah didn't answer. "Do you know who that host was?" Again, silence. Lanoire sighed and looked the dead lawyer in the eyes. "We need you to tell us everything you know, Lilah."

"You mean you need me to tell you what the Senior Partners think you should know," she corrected. "No more. They have plans for Illyria. Big plans. And the last thing they need is you messing them up."

"And the plans in L.A. went off so well," Lanoire reflected. "Where you used to work, if I remember correctly."

Lilah looked at him, and Lanoire wondered if her hellbitch-stare had been just as withering when she had been alive. "I was in Hell then. Not my fault."

Lanoire nodded and made an exaggerated show of turning away from Lilah and towards the open appointment book on his desk. "Oh, of course not," he said. "Just tell me what the Senior Partners want us to do."

Lilah stepped toward him, placed an object on his desk. "Wait," she answered. "Just wait. And watch." After she had left, Lanoire looked at the book she had left on his desk.

It was The Screwtape Letters.

"Look at this," Gene said, hunched over the console, busy pushing buttons and throwing switches. "I just need to reprogram the oscillation length of the Ferguson dynamics, and—" He threw one final switch and—yes!—an energy nexus appeared in front of them: a spiraling vortex producing visible electromagnetic radiation throughout the spectrum.

Gene was awarded by the surprised expression on Burkle's face. "An interdimensional rift."

"Isn't it cool?"

Gene was filled with excitement as he watched the shock give way to awe and wonder. "It's beautiful," she said.

He pushed a button and the nexus collapsed upon itself and dissipated. "Our next step is to stabilize it, study it, figure out how to use it."

The way Ms. Burkle cocked her head to look at Gene struck him as rather strange. "Use it?" she asked him.

"Welcome to the world of commercial research," he told her. "Everything has to have a purpose. Just think of the things this type of technology could be used for: interdimensional communications, FTL, alteration of temporal flows. Knowledge for knowledge's sake is a thing of the past, I'm afraid."

The strangeness persisted; perhaps it was the way she moved? "They are looking for a weapon," she said. It was not a question.

"Not necessarily," Gene argued, wanting to get along with her but not knowing how best to respond. "Think of it more as a tool, something to make life easier."

"Still, they seek to enjoy their own power."

"Well, yeah," he conceded. "Who doesn't."

As quickly as it had come, the strangeness had gone, replaced with Ms. Burkle's usual more bubbly demeanor. Still there was something reserved about her as she asked, "You don't think someone could keep fighting with no hope of reward, knowing he is going to fail, just because it is the right thing to do?"

Gene looked at her, wanting to answer in a way which would please her, but having to answer honestly. "I think you'd have to be pretty whacked."

"So you went to Wolfram & Hart?"

Alec nodded, puffing up his chest to look like a big-time player. And failing miserably. "I thought they might be interested in hearing about a new player in town."

"So what'd they give you?"

Alec smiled, pulled a wad of bills from his pocketing, flipping through them in front of Elvira. She counted them, greedily. There was so much one could buy with that. Of course, one could always just kill somebody and steal whatever one wanted, buyt cash made everything go so much easier. "So what you want, girl? Name it."

Elvira smiled, raising a hand to point to a young woman walking down the pavement across from the two vamps. "Her."

Alec grinned as he went to vampface. "My pleasure."

The two vampires crossed the street, circling the street. Seeing their demonic visages, the girl screamed trying to get away, to no avail. She was reduced to merely spinning around in place, looking for an opening as Alec and Elvira came closer and closer, coming in for the kill. Elvira was so caught up in anticipation of the young girl's body beneath her fangs that she didn't even notice the elderly man on the street until Alec exploded into a blur of dust.

Elvira watched as the old man pulled his wooden cane out of the cloud which must have once been Alec's heart (which had belonged to Elvira, damn it all—and Alec's tidy payout from W&H had turned to dust as well). She turned to face him, keeping her distance from him as she contemplated her options, when he sprang at her, moving so fast she couldn't keep him from plunging the cane into her hurt as well.

Since Alec and Elvira were no more than dust on the ground, there was no one to hear as the young woman's claims of gratitude turned to screams of terror.

TBC…