"It's a long way back," Angel grumbled. "And I don't know about you, but I've been to hell and I'm not liking the idea of going there again."

Spike thought that over. Then he thought it over again. Unusually, he decided to think it over a third time. "Nope," he said at last. "I'm not seeing the down side. Look, Mister Sunshine, the girls had the right of it. We're in a hell dimension already; it's just a matter of degree. Second, we definitely can't stay in Paragon, and I wouldn't sign away my freedom if I could. An' c, we may as well catch up with Buffy, because they won't let us into whatever passes for heaven here. As if that were a surprise."

Mister Broody-Pants mulled that over himself. "All right, you've got a point. Several points. We can travel faster without the others anyway. We make for that town where Buffy said there was a portal. What was it she called it?"

"A gate of inauspicious passage," Spike allowed. As usual, Angel looked startled that Spike remembered anything. "We'll have to cast about for it. Who knows, though? I could sense the hellmouth, couldn't you? Just keep your eyes open."

"Think we'll catch up with her in time?"

"Got anything better to do?"

Angel sighed, shrugged, and said, "Lead the way."

Chapter 15-Hellscape

It didn't seem like that much of a party, really, which suited Lilah just fine. She hadn't planned it to make Holland happy. The old man never really seemed put out, but tonight he was plainly lost in thought, and that didn't typically bode well for him.

"Did I ever tell you," he asked, "about why I signed on with Wolfram and Hart? It had to do with my kids."

"Go on," Lilah said grudgingly. Kids were a horrific mess. They screamed and threw food and left shit everywhere, and that was after they were nearly grown. Babies didn't even bear consideration. Adult children, admittedly, had some uses, but the only time Lilah had ever wished she'd borne offspring was in May, when the annual company sacrifices came around.

"They tell you the educational system in this country is the best in the world," Holland said. "And it is-if you're rich, or if you live in a good spot. But there's only so much a good education can do if you're just not very bright. I never did tell you about one of our best, Brad Kendall, and his daughter, did I? Never mind that now. My son-"

Lilah did her best to listen without really hearing. It was a skill you had to acquire in law, where you needed to remember the smallest of facts but listening to babbling clients could become excruciating. Almost too easy, Darla muttered in her head. Never really liked the old geezer, even if he was useful at times.

"I'm sorry you had to sacrifice so much for your son," Lilah said at the end of his spiel. Holland's manner frequently disarmed or unnerved would-be heroes who were expecting someone more obviously evil, but to her, it was far more irritating when he began these speeches. It would be good to be done with him. "Working for the company must have been really difficult for you at first," she added for good measure. She didn't expect to get a suicide out of that alone; Manners was tougher than he might seem at first. But it would make him careless. Before he could start in on another, less accurate recollection, she excused herself to head for the ladies' room.

Nice work, Darla started as Lilah splashed a little water on her face-it'd been a month since she actually needed to use a toilet for anything-and then the vampire in her head stopped short. Incoming.

When Lilah looked up again, a very attractive young Latina with startling dark blue eyes was standing behind her, waiting patiently and incidentally blocking the door. "Your handling of Manners was very neat," she said. "It'll be a pity to lose him."

Lilah schooled her face to stillness. "I wouldn't dare try to replace him if I couldn't do his job better than he can."

"You believe you can do that?" Not the faintest sign of a human reaction on that face.

Envoy from the Senior Partners? Darla suggested. Lilah gave her a mental shrug. Probably, but it wasn't guaranteed.

"These days I can do anything better than he can." Absolute truth, naturally. You only lied when it was really necessary.

"Fortunately for you, I'm inclined to agree." The young woman reached out and locked the door. "We haven't met, but you know me. Specifically, you know me as the Hart."

Lilah began to offer a retort about the Senior Partners being sealed away in another plane, but before she could do so the woman lifted her long skirt away from the floor, revealing a pair of cloven hooves. Lilah fumbled for the briefest of moments, then recovered. There were plenty of demons with hooves. "I hate to burst your bubble, but actually a hart is a male deer of a particular age. Not that I'd ask a lady her age, since it's so frequently deceptive anyway."

The woman gave her a level look, then ran her hands down her skirt, briefly revealing an immense bulge that vanished faster than could be accounted for by the cloth rearranging itself. "Come now, Miss Morgan. In my line of work, being flexible is a necessity." She leaned forward until her mouth was an inch from Lilah's and spoke more faintly, wisps of smoke curling from her lips and vanishing as Lilah breathed them in. "Calling me the Hart would be awkward in polite company anyway. My name, to keep it short, is Mara."

"So this is what a Hellmouth looks like around here." Spike gave the portal a skeptical look. The immense squared-off doorway was carved in all manner of symbols and glyphs; most were beyond his ability to read, but here and there pictographs seemed to be depicting a war and a prison. "Who made the damn thing, I wonder?"

"To hear people talk, anything advanced and dangerous was made by the Anathema," Angel said, a tinge of amusement in his voice. "You'd think that they wouldn't drill a gateway straight into the prison they made, though."

Spike scoffed. "Every prison needs a way in and out. I don't know if demons need supplies, but I guarantee you they still have things the humans want. An' if you ask me, I bet they have some kind of parole system. Humans are arrogant buggers. You think it's as easy as it is to summon demons by accident?"

Angel frowned as if he didn't really believe Spike could be serious. Well, whatever. The gateway terminated in a wall inscribed in more glyphs, with a little cluster of tents set up at the bottom. "Somebody's got a use for it," Spike muttered to himself. "Can't be a good thing." He rummaged about in the tents for a moment, but he didn't recognize any scents, and there was nothing obviously incriminating. He pulled a random piece of cloth-a torn sock, looked like-from a heap of rubbish, and stuffed it in his back pocket. "Evidence," he said when Angel gave him a strange look. Angel was the investigator; he ought to understand. "Let's get on with it."

Together they stepped through the door to hell.

Lilah wasn't familiar with the code Mara tapped in on the elevator buttons. The result was similar to one she was familiar with, though-the car plummeted into an abyss. "I remember when it took five days to get from Creation to Malfeas," Mara said softly. "Makes me nostalgic."

"Isn't technology wonderful?" Lilah wasn't sure what kind of emotion the demoness was feeling, but she had no interest in making her feel better.

"If it were a matter of technology," Mara said drily, "the First Age would have had much better than this. It took five days to cross Cecelyne because that was the nature of the cosmic principles the Yozi represented. Only the highest wonders were able to circumvent that by crossing straight into the Demon City."

Lilah's stomach rose as the elevator fell faster. "Then how are we doing it? What's changed that we can cross Cecelyne so fast?"

Mara sighed. "We still can't. We don't have to. There is no Cecelyne anymore. At least, no single Cecelyne. That's what I hoped to discuss with you."

Gradually the elevator began to slow. "So an entire cosmic principle...what? Died?"

"Was killed. In the Yozi War. Thousands of years ago, so long that even we higher demons no longer remember what exactly brought it about. All I know myself is that it was touched off by the death of my progenitor, the Ebon Dragon." Mara looked pensively at the elevator floor as the doors opened. "Then the bloodbath began." She stepped out into a shattered landscape of verdigris and basalt rubble beneath an emerald sun.

Lilah followed, staring. This had been a city once, a city that dwarfed Los Angeles. Even its ruins rose taller than the Wolfram and Hart tower, arching into the sky above. "But you survived."

"Most of us lower souls did. The Green Sun Princes rose to fill the Yozis' places...after a fashion. They had the potential to grow into the images of their patrons, to become replacements for them. It never truly happened, though. The originals had never intended that to happen, had in fact engineered them to try and prevent it. As the war degenerated, a dozen Malfeases and Adorjans and Kimberies warred with each other. They couldn't fully die any more than their originals could. They became ultra-powerful nightmare specters when they were killed-we call them the Onceborn, just as the dead Primordials are the Neverborn. Perhaps in time one of each might have subsumed the others, given a little longer. I don't believe it, though." Mara stared at her hands. "I've been passed from Ebon Dragon to petty Ebon Dragon so many times I'm not even sure I'm the same demon any longer."

Lilah stepped a little way up a shard of a brazen wall. You getting this? Anything sound familiar? "What put an end to the war? Or is it still going on?" A few faces had begun to peer around the bits of rubble. Demons. She recognized a few of the species.

It sounds...right. But I don't remember it, not consciously at least. i'd guess it was long before my time.

"Oh, it sputters on after a fashion. The greater part of it came to an end when the last of the original Yozis tried to save Creation. They-we don't know who-forged the Six-Metal Prison to lock away all of the Exaltations. They were too great a prize, and too dangerous a weapon. But it was too late for that. The last Yozi died, and Creation died with it."

Lilah wondered idly if the lavender demons creeping out of the emerald wreckage represented the Lollipop Guild. Stop that! Darla tittered at the image. "Wait. If Creation died, where did we just come from?"

Mara gave her a twisted grin. "Exactly where you say you came from. Earth. You live on Earth." She reached out to pat a needle-haired demon on the head. It snarled and whimpered like a feral dog. "The two Primordials who were never imprisoned or killed still survive. Autochthon-at least, I haven't heard of him dying, though he might have-and Gaia. They weren't enough to sustain Creation on their own, but at the climax of the war, they carried away the survivors as it crumbled." Mara waved her hands around expansively. "The demon realms still survive, after a fashion. The Wyld exists. I don't know about Yu-Shan, though you hear tales of heaven here and there. I expect there's still an underworld too. We expected the Neverborn to get what they wanted and fall into Oblivion when Creation ended, but apparently too much survived. There are more of them than ever before."

Lilah glared at the needle demon, which fled. "I don't understand. Why bring me here? The stories say you aid those fated to bring great horror into the world." She stared around at the endless rubble. "Is that what you mean me to do? I'm no goody-two-shoes, but I know which side my bread's buttered on. I'm not bringing this kind of destruction to Earth."

"The Chosen of Saturn used to say, 'Better a horrible ending than horrors without end,'" Mara said with uncharacteristic good humor. "Allow me to turn that saying on its head. Better unending horror than the end of existence. The world has ground on with most of its mystic underpinnings gone for several thousand years now, but that doesn't mean it can do so forever. The Six-Metal Prison deprived us of Exalted to fix things, but now you're back."

Lilah nodded. "And is that what I am, then? An...Exalted? Holland thought that the Prison contained Slayers. Their essences, anyway."

Mara outright snickered at that. "A Slayer? You? I'm sorry, I've got an image of you painted in skulls and carrying an Uzi. No, that's not you, Lilah. I"m sure you're capable of violence, but you're no Slayer. What you are is a Fiend, and I don't say that as a humorous compliment. That is your Caste. You're a diplomat, a lawyer, a politician. You grease the wheels with your words. I'm sure you'll come in handy, but I'm not sure you can do the job we need on your own. What about the Prison? We intended for you and Holland to release the rest of the Exaltations, but you've stopped him from going ahead with it."

"It occurred to me just before...just after I didn't tell Holland to stop that we were opening a literal Pandora's box. This is a genie we can't put back inside, isn't it? Several hundred genies, in fact." Lilah waved at the devastation that had been the Demon City. "What if all that happens is, we do this to Earth? Then all that's left is Autochthon, and you said he might be dead already."

"Poor sick bastard," Mara agreed. "He might. Never was in the best of health. But there comes a point where you have to take risks, and we passed it several millennia ago, if you ask me. I'm not saying the world will end tomorrow. It's hung on this long, and I expect you have some time. Just...consider that you may need help for something this impossible. And in the meanwhile...yes, you have some training to get on with, and I'm here to help you with that."

She hadn't really answered Lilah's objection. Lilah filed it away. She'd ask again later.

Bitter Copal enlarged a portion of the image. "See here? The paws of a big cat. And here." The hologlyph advanced a little further. "Watch the wings materialize." He sketched out a rough drawing of the demon, starting with the features he'd named. "Dragon head, cat paws, wings...What you're dealing with here is a radeken." He waited while Buffy peered at the thing. "You don't have any obvious mutations to resemble it, but not all of our changes are obvious, and it could be yet another thing that's worn away over the millennia."

"it could be worse," Cyan said after a few moments. "They're no more intrinsically violent than erymanthoi-"

"That's debatable," Copal cut in.

"-albeit less predictable. And at least it explains quite a bit about your history. A radeken is the best Kimberian choice for a Slayer I can think of, the only thing that comes immediately to mind save a baidak, and I can't imagine that would work well-"

"Conceivably a fers baidak might make a successful alembic. What that would do to the host's mind, I'm not sure."

"-but inserting a radeken consciousness into a young girl, even in a primitive tribe...well, I can certainly see how that would result in her being exiled. Or more likely, of her slaughtering the village. Did anyone actually say she had been exiled, or was that your inference?" Cyan didn't sound nearly so cold as Copal, but she was completely ignoring the look of panic Buffy was sure she had on her face.

"Then I actually do have a demon inside me? A violent, dangerous demon?" Dracula had said the Slayer powers were rooted in darkness, but he had never really said how, and her attempts to find out what that meant had been interrupted completely by Glory's first attack.

Copal grunted under his breath. "Did you really believe that much had changed between you and us? Cyan, are you certain this mewling thing is the one foretold?"

Cyan made a dismissive gesture. "She's got more grit in her than first appearances usually show. The surface cowardice is likely how they got to her in the first place. She'll adjust, but she was taught for a good five years that she was a shining exemplar of light against darkness and demonic powers."

"Hmph. Well, Buffy, now that it's woken I can't imagine it will return to dormancy. At the very least, not without a fight. I will be highly interested to observe you at any time, to see how the struggle shapes you, so by all means feel free to ask for advice."

Cyan put a comforting hand on Buffy's shoulder. For all her deception, she and Sulumor had been the best stabilizing force Buffy had had since arriving in Malfeas. "The unwoven coadjutor is a source of strength, Buffy. It can be inconvenient at times-consider that I have a firmin living in my head. They're barely sapient, if at all. Radeken can be hateful, but I suspect they're easier to negotiate with. You just have to work out what they want."

"In that case," Buffy muttered, "I guess I should go take a nap before I leave."

"Very much worth your time," Cyan agreed. "Get to know your coadjutor. Perhaps she'll do nothing but snarl and fight, but you can't be sure till you take the risk."

Desert.

Buffy climbed up a little hill to put a hand on the scrubby tree. Was this Cecelyne? It was less barren than the area she had passed through with Sulumor, but she'd implied that all desolate places were part of Cecelyne, even dead salt seas.

The Primitive touched Buffy on the shoulder, and she leapt about five feet in the air. Not an exaggeration; she found herself clinging to the tree limbs. Buffy released her grip and dropped back down. "Watch. Listen. Or you die." It was the raspy voice Sineya had used at the end of her dream, not Tara's voice or the slightly more cultured voice she had used to say that death was Buffy's gift.

"Thought I'd learned that." She turned to face the other and found herself virtually nose-to-nose with her. "You don't have to look like this for me. I know what you are."

"Do you?" Well, it was a simple enough question. She remembered Adam saying the two of them came by their aggression a different way from regular people. She hadn't understood that at all, at the time.

"You're a radeken. A demon. I guess this is what you looked like in your first incarnation as an Infernal?" The Primitive growled. "Bad memory? Sorry. The others talk as if there's supposed to be a new coadjutor for each incarnation."

The Primitive shrugged. "Something wrong. Something changed. Something broken." Her form dissolved into a swirling sandstorm. "Long dry time." The blowing grit coalesced into a bulky creature with tawny feet like a mountain lion, the great black wings of a condor, and a bone-white dragon head like a skull.

Buffy nodded. "See? Not attacking. Wouldn't do any good anyway."

"You don't sleep on a bed of bones," the creature growled. Not angrily; that was simply the way it spoke, no differently from in Sineya's shape. "The floods rolled back, and you're a fireman."

"Um. You remember. Not bad."

"You kill. Blood. Fire. Strength."

She breathed deep. "I guess. But I don't fight alone. I have friends. We work together. We can work together."

The creature snarled. "We do. You are I. Enough."

"There are things you could teach me." But do I want to know them?

The creature curled up like a cat around the base of the tree. "Why? What you give? No blood. No smoke. No power. Where?"

It craves the scent of blood, not the blood itself. Could that be how it started fixating on vampires? "You want blood? What if I give you blood?" Maybe there was a way. This thing...this beast made me what I am?

"You always gave me blood. You fight. You kill. Things that drink, that reek. What more you give?"

Good question. It craved smoke. And it stole power from weather, but how could she give it that? Was that a power she had? None of the Infernals she'd worked with had mentioned that ability. "I can burn things. You want me to burn things for you?" Dangerous, in the dry South, but easy.

"Mmmm. I...consider. Go."

It looked as if that was all the answer she was going to get.

"Now leaving the Emerald City," Mara said. A gateway loomed before them, an arch of black nacre. "Sorry if you were hoping to meet the wizard."

"From what you say, the wizard is long dead." Lilah stepped through and found herself on a steep slope of volcanic glass, beneath a blank white sky. Up it, to her amusement, wound a road of yellow brick. "I don't suppose this goes back to Kansas?"

Mara emerged behind her. "This is a fragment of Qaf, the Heaven-Violating Spear. I suppose you might find a way back to Earth from here. No guarantees. As for wizards...well, Dorothy, not just anyone can wear the Silver Slippers. I brought you here, not to meet a wizard, but to make one of you." She began to stroll up the slope. "Walk with me."

I wish I could tell if she were crazy or not. Darla's apprehension carried through, a thick miasma of worry.

Oh, I'm sure she's crazy. Especially if she's telling the truth. She followed along in the demon's wake. The path wound past streams of water and lava and acid, over lumps of metal and past piles of dirt, but there was no sign of any life. "So you want me to open the Prison further. Free the other Exaltations. But they don't all serve the Yozis, not if the Slayer was one of them."

"No, they don't-though she did once. Ironically, Slayer was the name for the warrior caste of Infernals. But you're right," Mara said, glancing back. "Whoever made the prison crammed not just the Solar and quasi-Solar Exaltations inside. They got the Lunars, the Sidereals-they even managed to rip free and recompile the Terrestrial Exaltations that Gaia parceled out into bloodlines instead of individuals. I don't think anyone even realized how that had worked until it was undone, but Gaia modified the same original creations that Autochthon gave her, no differently from Luna or Ignis Divine or the Maidens. She just did, well, more to them." She studied Lilah's expression carefully. "You don't know any of this, do you? Well, releasing the Exaltations is certain to cause all manner of chaos, but it's necessary all the same. We need more than you, Faith, and one tween Abyssal."

"I can release them in a controlled manner, at least. We worked out how to free them one at a time." She didn't want the others released at all! There was already too much competition out there.

"I understand you like being all but unique, Lilah. And you may well be right. Free them gradually, use the most cooperative, if you think that will be helpful. But we need more." Mara turned a scowl on Lilah, making her heart rise into her throat. "Don't be greedy. I mean for you to be first in power, Lilah. You're perfect for the job."

"I see," she said with a confidence she didn't remotely feel. "I'll do my best."

"Then I'll do my best to get you home," Mara said sternly. "Until next time. There are more places you need to see."

Angel had been walking the mad hellscape for what seemed like hours. At least the sun didn't burn him. He'd discarded the wrappings the two of them had used to help keep the sun off during the day. The green light here felt warm, even comfortable-if not remotely safe. He'd been up towers until they emerged out of the ground. He'd been swallowed and shat out in a different layer by a creature that looked disturbingly like Acathla. He'd been through doors that didn't even seem to exist till he was on top of them.

"I'm going to ask again," he said, cracking his knuckles. This time the patrons bothered to sit down their glasses. Spike glanced up at him, smirking. "Does anyone know the name Buffy Summers?"

"How much is it worth to you?" The being in front of him looked human...almost. Its eyes were dead black, its skin paler than his or Spike's, and it had no scent. Beyond that, it was a hulking bruiser of a man, jet black hair dangling to his waist. There was something familiar about it, but Angel couldn't place where he had seen a similar creature.

"How much is it worth to you to not be beaten to death?" Angel pulled out the lead truncheon he'd acquired. "Come on, is it really worth this much trouble to keep quiet?"

"A round on me for anyone who speaks up," Spike shouted. "He's got the stick, I'll give the carrot. No strings attached!"

"A round of what?" snarled an apelike creature with horns jutting from its back. "We're tired of the pegedu-piss they serve around here."

Spike shrugged. "What's good with you folk? We're new here." This produced a round of derisive snorts. Spike and Angel were clearly demons; they might be from an unfamiliar region, but there was no question they had to be from Malfeas.

"What d'you think's good?" queried a thing that looked suspiciously like a M'Fashnik demon. Probably it was one, but it was hard to say. "Get us some bleedin' chalcanth and we'll talk."

With a chuckle, Spike turned to the bartender, a hard-bitten purple succubus of a sort Angel had seen frequently around here but didn't recognize, a double row of rings pierced through her upper and lower lips. She stared at him flatly. "You want chalcanth? I want coin, pal. No service for no money."

Spike gave out a long sigh and turned to Angel. "You wouldn't happen to have any money on ya, bloke?" Angel turned out his pockets and shrugged. "I guess we do it the fun way." Angel gave him a tight smile.

And the fight was on.

The spire ended, after a fashion at least. The stone of it continued on up into infinity, so far as Lilah could tell, but it was no longer a mountain to walk up. It became a pole to climb. Above that, it continued to thin out.

"Eventually," Mara said, "I'm told it becomes a wire so thin it can slice adamant in pieces. It's a symptom of the fragmentation of the world. I've read your Stephen Hawking's book, how he proposes that the universe is finite but unbounded. The new Yozis, the half-worlds that formed from the ancient Infernals, are opposite that: infinite, but bounded. This Qaf continues up forever, just as the true Qaf did-but no one can climb much higher than this."

"You want me to fix that. Somehow." Lilah rubbed her brow. She felt as if she ought to be sweating, though she hadn't done that in weeks. "And if I told you I haven't the slightest idea how?"

Mara tapped her hooves impatiently. "You will. Or another Exalt will. Lilah, you need to understand this: your limitations are gone. That was the whole point of Exaltation, to carve away the human limits that prevented the defeat of the Yozis by such tiny beings." Her blue eyes pierced Lilah through. "I brought you here to show you things you would never have encountered in your own world. Reality itself is not what you are familiar with. There is power in your mundane world of paperwork and court rituals; you know this already. But you needed to see for yourself what lies beyond that limited reality."

"And you're showing me this why exactly?"

"Thousands of years ago, I set Brigid on the path to creating sorcery. She was an imperfect vessel, a Solar, a weapon aimed at the heart of my masters. You are an Infernal, and I mean for you to recreate sorcery in your image, Lilah. I want to see you wield magics that would make Brigid tremble. You are a woman of your time, a child of an era that has forgotten demons and spirits but that has built wonders even without the Essence that the ancient Exalts depended on. You will shake the world, Lilah, and you will remake it." She tilted her face up and kissed Lilah on the forehead. "Go home. Use your company's library and study hard. Recombine the knowledge you find there and surpass it."

"How do I get home from here?"

"You could do it," Mara said, "but I'm going to leave you with an enigma instead. Besides, why wait for you to fumble through it?" She took Lilah by the shoulders with a wrenching motion. Off-balance, Lilah toppled off the slope and into the endless white.

"You could have been killed!"

Angel hung his head. "We won the fight."

"Yeah," Spike echoed. "I don't see the problem." Angel grunted softly. They were on their knees in front of her, hands chained behind their backs.

"You picked a fight in Octavian's territory," Buffy said, taking each of them by an ear. "Do you have any idea who or what Octavian is? They call him the Living Tower, and not because he's part of the landscape the way some demons are. He's a warrior demon who's only ever been defeated twice."

"Well, maybe we wanted to be the third time," Spike grouched.

"He's got the skull of a Solar in his belt buckle," Buffy almost shouted. "Do you have any idea how insignificant you are to him? Hell, you're lucky you don't rate with him or he might have actually taken the time to beat you to death. Sure, maybe you'd have found a way. You've kicked a lot of butt, I know. But what if you hadn't? You'd have died here and nobody would've ever known what happened to you."

"Could you beat him?" Spike asked, his tone suddenly becoming snide. "I mean, this isn't about-?"

Buffy set her mouth. "I don't have to beat him," she said stiffly. "I asked him to bring you to me-asked him nicely, I admit-and he did."

"You asked a demon nicely." Angel found that difficult to believe. Buffy couldn't have changed that much.

"She's learning," said one of the purple-skinned succubi who seemed to be following Buffy wherever she went these days. She looked a lot younger than the one who'd been tending bar, though it was hard to say what was different about her. More hope in her expression, perhaps. "Octavian wasn't very respectful, but he has a right not to be. He's much more powerful. And he did do what she asked."

"Thank you, Aphrodisia," Buffy said softly. "These are my friends. Sort of," she said, looking at Spike. "I'm not too happy with them right now, but I'd appreciate it if you'll be nice to them." Aphrodisia flinched as if she'd been slapped, but Buffy didn't seem to notice.

"Running with a strange crowd, these days, aren't we, Slayer?" Spike evidently didn't know when to quit.

"I could introduce you to my blood-ape employees," Buffy said. "You might get along with them better. I'm sure they'd be happy to beat you to a pulp and lock you up for me if you make trouble, too. Or I could just have Aphrodisia set you on fire. Sound like fun?"

"I've had better times," Spike mumbled under his breath.

"Look," Buffy said sternly, "in another hour you'd have missed me entirely. I'm leaving to conquer a city called Gem." Angel jumped.

"Conquer a city? Buffy, why?"

She met his eyes cautiously. "Because those are my orders," she said, voice firm. "I'm good at following orders. You know me." Her tone changed slightly. "Gem is under the rule of someone called the Despot. He lives up to his name. I can't possibly make Gem's situation worse, except maybe for the folks rolling in money."

"An' you're gonna be the next Despot, is that it?" Spike seemed to have gotten that something was up from the moment Buffy said she was following orders.

"If I have to be. I'm hoping I don't have to be. More to the point, you two do realize that demons can't leave Malfeas on their own, right? They have to be summoned. And I haven't got the slightest idea how to summon a vampire, because, surprise surprise, vampires don't actually seem to exist yet." Buffy tapped her toes grouchily. "I am literally having to invent a ritual from scratch to get you guys out of hell. Be glad I'd like to have your help, okay?"

"You're inventing a ritual?" That didn't seem like Buffy. She wasn't the inventive type. Smarter than most people took her for, but not when it came to that sort of thing.

She bent down and looked him in the eyes, very closely. "I am inventing a ritual. From scratch. Because I can be just as smart as I can be strong. Angel, whatever else this place has done to me, it's also helped me understand what I am. That matters to me, okay?"

He understood that much. "Of course, Buffy. Have you managed to let any of the others know where you are or what's going on?"

Buffy shook her head immediately. "I haven't been able to reach any of you since I came to Malfeas. I haven't seen Fred or Xander in longer than that. I'm sorry, Angel. If you were trying to find someone, I'm not much help. Look, I'm running low on time. I've got to go work out that ritual, and then I've got to meet with some cultists in Gem. I'll bring you two and the girls over as soon as possible, okay? In the meantime, Aphrodisia, I trust them with anything in my townhouse."

"Does that include us, mistress?" Aphrodisia waggled her bare eyebrows at Spike. Well. No accounting for taste.

"Only if you're interested, Aphrodisia. I trust them not to try anything if you're not." Buffy glared at Spike. "I know your chip won't stop you. Fear of me better do the job, okay?"

"You've got it, Slayer." As she left, Spike looked at Angel. "Odd, innit?"

Angel looked back at him. "That she's concerned about demons?" He turned to look at the retreating Slayer. "Yeah. That's new. Um...Aphrodisia? About these chains?"

She heaved a long sigh. "Dharma will like you, I think. But don't be gentle. You'll bore her."

If Angel could have blushed, he would have.

Morning, sleepyhead.

Lilah opened her eyes groggily. You weren't...were you in control?

Alone with my thoughts. Couldn't even open your eyes. Not sure how we got back.

The last thing I remember is spinning out into the void. Lilah checked all her fingers and toes. Everything was intact, including the clothes she'd had on when she left the party. She should have been in a gown, or nude, depending on her mood when she went to bed.

Likewise. Mara sure knows how to slam her lessons home. Can we get up? I don't know about you, but I enjoy seeing the sun.

There was something to that. Lilah sat up and gave herself a bit of a shake. No point in being at less than her best. She checked herself in the mirror, forcing her eyes to see herself instead of Darla. Good, good. Looking good was easy now. She ran her fingers through her hair, patted her face with water a bit, and strolled out onto the balcony of her apartment. Sunglasses. Shit, I forgot the sunglasses! She had to duck back in and grab them. That was one of the few things she shared in common with Buffy; she had to keep her sunglasses on pretty much whenever she was outside. At least she was too old to look like a valley girl.

She wants us to free more of the...Exaltations, Darla thought. It wasn't what we had planned, though, and I'm not sure how good it is for us. Not all of them are corrupted, just like we told Travers.

"It would be good to have a little help if we could rely on it," Lilah said softly, but aloud, "but how can we trust even the corrupted ones? And Mara knew more about the one that got away than we do. She said something about a tween Abyssal...whatever an Abyssal is."

Think we can get her on our side? Hell, maybe we can still get Faith on our side with the right act.

It was a possibility. No more loose Exalts, just the three of them. And presumably Buffy. "Why didn't she mention Buffy?"

You've got me.

Angel emerged, gasping, from the desert sands. Five days trekking across the ifucking/i desert back from Malfeas after all the trouble he'd had getting there. At least he knew it was because Buffy had finally summoned him.

"Sorry," said the little girl in front of him. She had a ragged dress on, skin not quite black as basalt, dredlocks in her hair, maybe five or six years old. "I didn't think to take into account that it always takes five days this way. The ritual wouldn't work till it'd been enough time."

"Buffy?" This couldn't be Buffy.

"In the flesh. You saw me show up looking like Faith."

"You were off. It was a good enough copy to fool Giles for a second, but it didn't look that much like her. And it didn't...you even smell different, Buffy." He could feel the burst of sand next to him as Spike emerged.

"I want to look like a native," she said. "Like I'm from Gem, or somewhere fairly close. I didn't know I smelled different, though."

"Slayer?" Spike said in astonishment.

"Yes, Spike. It's an illusion. Technically. Somehow if you hit me in the head it's still my head. Not sure how that works, since I don't even come up to my own boobs, but it happens. Now stop flaking out, because I need to explain something while we have a moment alone, okay?"

Angel leapt immediately to the heart of it. "You can't really be serving the Yozis."

"Good one. Gem's government sucks. I mean to liberate it, my way. As for the Yozis...maybe destiny says I have to free them. It doesn't say I have to let them stay out long." She picked up a stake and made her characteristic stabbing motion with it. "I'm not even going to stick them back in prison. I'm going to finish what the Exalted should have finished last time. I don't know all the details yet, but I mean to have an army of us at my back, and I'm going to kill them all. It's what I do."

Angel saw Spike's mouth hanging open and realized he was doing the same. "Buffy, the Yozis-"

"Are horrific evil monsters who don't deserve to live. I'm not even started doing what they want and I'm already sick of it. You have no idea the number they've done on my brain. I'm just lucky Dawn's really not my sister. Next I might stop caring about you, Angel. Or Xander, or Willow, or anybody else." Her face crumpled up for a moment with anger and tears. "I'm going to iend/i them. And if they turn into Neverborn like last time, I'll end those too."

"From what I've heard," Spike said very quietly, "even the Exalted host couldn't wipe out the Neverborn."

"They weren't trying hard enough," Buffy snarled. "I don't care if I have to nuke the Underworld. I'll find a way. I'm going to kill them all. Starting with the Ebon Dragon."