Berugn flicked out menus in Fyarl to everyone at the table. Most people wouldn't think Fyarls could read, but Fyarl was innate knowledge. Always know your customer base.
Berugn was pretty sure he ran the only demon truck stop in the state. Demon bars were fairly common, but demons with gainful employment in the legal human world weren't. Made it hard to find business. He was a M'Fashnik, though. Money was in his blood.
He peered out the window. That didn't look good. A lone biker was pulling up outside, and she was on fire. Stupid vampires thinking they could handle daylight.
She stopped, and to his horror began pulling her pink helmet off. Berugn raced to catch her before she could set the pumps on fire. Too late; he reached her just as her long blond hair spilled out and released a torrent of green flame. Green?
She was in vamp face, and the green fire kept searing away bits of her skin, but each time she regenerated. Must be soaked to the gills in blood or something. She didn't look like the biker type-more of a cheerleader, really.
"I think I'm gonna die before I get to Sunnydale. I don't know why it picked me. It's okay I guess. I fail at most things, and this'll be the last time."
Why wasn't she already ash? Berugn tried to pull her inside; if she had lasted this long she might live through it...so to speak and all that.
"It's like somehow it came from a place equally far away from everywhere. But there's nowhere like that, is there?" She was damn strong; he couldn't budge her. And the green fire was leaving welts on his hands. Maybe it was keeping the sunlight away somehow, too.
"Lady," Berugn said, "come in out of the sun before-"
"It's too late for that," she told him. "You're a M'Fashnik, aren't you? You've got pretty good regeneration?"
Berugn frowned. "That's...what's that...I mean, sure, but-"
She buried her fangs in the left side of his neck, and she drank, and the last thing he noticed was the green flames as they died away with him.
Chapter 40: The Eternal Footman
Faith floored the gas and roared away from Kate's store, flanked by Amy and the Buffybot. The rest would be behind them in Kate's van, but she doubted they could keep up in a chase like this.
Five Days' Darkness rode behind her. She'd figured him for the motorcycle type. Still, she had plenty of things she wanted to ask him, and she couldn't very well-
"You can't save her," he said, his voice somehow present beside her ear. "Once the Exaltation bonds with a demon, it can't be removed short of death. She'll make the offer, and with Lilah's track record so far they'll accept."
"What if they don't?" Faith asked, then added "What if I kill 'em first?" as he started his answer.
"Then she keeps hunting new candidates until one agrees or the Exaltation burns her out from the inside." The dark man grumbled under his breath. "Harm's a marginal candidate for an alembic. She has a moderately strong personality by vampire standards, but she's no big bad. I'm not convinced she'll make it to Sunnydale."
"Why doesn't it just Exalt her?" Amy wondered. Faith wasn't sure how she could hear the witch over the road noise. Must've been Five Days' Darkness' doing.
"Autochthon designed the Exaltations to be for humans only. Humans flew below the Primordials' radar, and were a lot less likely to betray the cause. There are some edge cases-even half-demons have Exalted before-but Harmony doesn't qualify. She's undead, too, and the dead don't Exalt."
"Well, that's not-"
"Fair? Maybe not. But a war like nothing before or since was about to happen, and the Incarnae wanted no risks." He brought his bike up even with Faith's. "What part of human history has ever been fair?"
Faith considered that for a moment. "Well...there's our loophole then."
"What?" Amy hadn't followed her leap.
"We turn her human."
Five Days' Darkness fumbled a turn. "No! Even if you knew a way, no one but Autochthon ever really understood the Exaltations. You're probing the outer boundaries of the supermote's behavior and that has only ever led us to disaster. You mustn't-"
Faith interrupted him. "Us?"
The dark god groaned. "Shit."
For the first time since being turned, Harmony could feel what it was like being eaten alive.
By process of elimination she'd worked out what had to be happening. It had happened to Halfrek, maybe before her group had actually left to find Kate. These stupid powers Lilah was flinging around, one had latched onto her. And since she wasn't human it needed another host. It would eat her up like a Skilosh eye.
At least, if Amy was anything to go by, she wouldn't quite be dead. She'd be a voice in the back of someone's head, and that was scary, but not as scary as poofing out of existence or going to hell. Maybe it'd be someone she could help a little, or at least who'd let her enjoy some things.
Aw, who was she kidding? That wasn't the story of Harmony Kendall's life. She went through school terrified into being like everyone else-everyone knew serial killers went after weirdos who stood out-and completely unaware of the real threat. If she had any talents, she'd buried them so deep she'd never find them in a thousand years.
Then she'd found out what the real threat was, and she'd been stupid enough to think she could help. She hadn't even been the real her afterwards,but she'd still kept trying to matter. First by trying to lead a gang of vampires. Then by pretending she could be one of the good guys. She wasn't any of that, though. She was a bit player in somebody else's story, and she'd only thought otherwise because she was stupid.
Now she was burning up from the inside, and all that really mattered about her anymore was whether she got back to Sunnydale in time to enpower someone else. She wasn't important. She never had been.
"Ten thousand years ago," Five Days' Darkness began, "there was exactly one Exalt left on Earth. Creation had died with Kimbery, the new Yozis were warring among themselves, and the mere existence of so many new Neverborn was warping demonkind into stranger forms, undead ones most of all."
"Vampires," Faith said.
"Yes. And that one Exalt was following Kimbery's last orders. If she hadn't been a creature of insane vendettas, Earth would have died too. Even so, with each new coadjutor, there was the risk that Kimbery's command would become something new and dangerous. A group of mystics begged me-Lytek was already dead and Autochthon out of reach-to help them free their Exalt from her Infernal nature. And so I came up with a plan, the only one I could think of.
"I found a powerful demon-blooded young man and also a great warrior in the fight against the vampire hordes. I had him transform her, for five days, into a Kimbery-spawned demon. And then I killed the Slayer in battle."
This time it was Faith who nearly ran off the road. "You what?"
"The Exaltation joined with the demon just hours before she would have transformed back. And thirty minutes prior to that, she encountered a suitable host and Exalted her anyway. It wasn't voluntary, you see. The bent and broken magicks altered the Exaltation itself. The demon remained a demon and fused with the Exaltation forever. From then on, it no longer needed a new alembic; it simply chose a new host on its own. That's how there came to be a Slayer line: because I tampered with something best left alone."
There must have been an objection Faith didn't hear. Why didn't Five Days' Darkness translate for them the way he was doing between Amy and Faith?
"Yes, the Slayers have done that. But the world would have been protected that well anyway. All I accomplished was to thrust that responsibility onto the backs of ten thousand teenage girls. Altering the boundary between demon and human risks absolute disaster, and I never even achieved the benefits I was aiming for. Transforming Harmony has only a tiny chance of saving her, and who knows what horror might instead be unleashed on the world?"
Faith kept her mouth shut and focused on the road. She wasn't giving up rhat easily. Which meant she wasn't going to talk about it any more.
The wastes of Quor-toth were hot and dry. Lilah had no clear idea how long she had been there, especially in Earth time, but it had definitely been months here. Her belly was big enough to make hunting a pain in the ass even with her powers. Not hard, really. Just annoying.
Demons didn't bother her, at least. Even the barely-sapient Sluks followed her orders, for all that she was a walking bag of the water they needed. Unfortunately that meant she had few challenges, even here in the supposed "darkest of the dark worlds".
Only in the last few days had there been any sign of pursuit. She thought whoever it was had come from Earth, which would explain why they'd taken so long to find her. Quor-toth time was unstable, but it passed even faster than time in the prison pocket dimension. On Earth, no more than a day should have passed while months dragged by for her.
Well, whoever was hunting her would find that she was no easy meat. She might not be a combat monster by Exalt standards, but she could hold her own against three full Wolfram & Hart security teams at once.
Light flared in the distance. Another Exalt.
Finally, some excitement in her life.
Harmony pulled into the Sunnydale CostCo. She didn't really need gas. This bike wouldn't be taking her anywhere else. She just wanted to see. The mirrors wouldn't help. But she could pull over, take off the gloves.
Her hands were charred to the bone in places. She could see the tendons move when she flexed her fingers. She'd stopped three more times for blood, but nothing packed the healing punch she apparently needed.
She'd made it here. That was all that mattered. She pulled her gloves painfully back on and tooled off down the street. It might not be so bad. There'd be no more pain. It'd be kind of like being a ghost. Right?
She'd missed it here. Dangerous, but she'd survived where so many more promising people had died. If she had to kick the bucket, there were worse places.
She putted past three of the cemeteries. Down Revello Drive. Past the decaying mansion Angel had once called home. One more time around the high school.
She was getting close...she knew this neighborhood. Oh no. Oh no no fucking no.
Not the Mears place. Not Warren motherfucking Mears.
"What do you mean, Faith?" Five Days' Darkness sounded confused. "I'm not translating for anyone."
"I can hear Amy," Faith explained. "Even if I can hear over the road noise, surely I can't talk over it. Anyway, nobody else hears us and I don't hear anyone else."
Five Days' Darkness began to laugh. "What a perfect example, Faith. There are things that ought not to be tampered with. Boundaries that you shouldn't push. That was one. Amy was your familiar, Faith. She's still your familiar."
"What?" Amy sounded not so much surprised as scandalized. "You can't have a human for a familiar!"
"You can't make a human your familiar," the dark man chuckled. "But you weren't human. You were a rat. I suppose it was always possible in principle, but I never heard of it happening. You can communicate without words, see through each others' eyes. That held through the transformation. No, I don't think it will hurt you-but it's one more thing that never should've happened."
"What a revolting development," Amy said, but she said it with a giggle. "But Five, if this is harmless-"
"I think it's harmless," Five Days' Darkness said. "But we don't know that. Who knows what repercussions it could have down the road?"
Faith shrugged and refocused on the problem at hand. They hadn't spotted Harm's motorcycle on the road, and they were closing in on Sunnydale.
"So who were you on the phone with?"
"You're no longer the only Exalt running around loose. Lilah's released more than just the ones that've come to you.' And he clammed up again.
Harmony heeled the bike around recklessly to leave town and parked it. She hopped off the seat and stalked off toward the desert...er, toward Warren's house. She took the helmet off to let the sun shine down on her, but only once she reached the safety of the open carport.
This wasn't working. She could resist, but only for a second or two. She needed longer. She tried to focus on everything she knew about Warren. She remembered him as an arrogant jerk. She knew he'd made the Buffybot to have sex with, and he hadn't even programmed her to like him or enjoy it with him-just to not be able to resist him. Faith had called him a rapist, though Kate had weaseled a little around the law and Buffybot being a robot. Harm never quite understood these things. She did know, absolutely, that if she spent more than a day or two in Warren's head that she would go completely bananas. She wouldn't be able to help him at all then, and annoyingly that made the most difference to the compulsion.
Harm reached up and knocked on the door. A tall brunette opened the door. "Hi, I'm Janet. Warren's very busy right now. Are you from Wolfram & Hart?"
"Um," Harm said. "Yeah I guess."
"Okay," Janet said brightly. "Come in and wait next to the stairs. Warren is very busy right now, but Jonathan or Andrew will see to you in a moment. You don't look very well. Are you feeling sick?"
Yeah, that had to be a robot. Harm couldn't see her own face, but from her arms and the black crisp of her hair she knew it had to be a charred wreck. She'd cry about it later if she found a way out of this. "I'm fine. Take me to Warren."
Now that she was inside she could tell that Jonathan and Andrew pulled at her too, but not nearly as much. Faith had said the Exaltations were attracted to human souls. Unfortunately Warren was the strongest pull.
A dozen robogirls fluttered about her making a big deal about how awful she looked. They weren't even as human as Buffybot. She wanted to punch them, but she'd probably just hurt her hand. Some bored-looking warrior demons were standing around in the basement too. There was no way to fight her way out of this, even if she could work up the willpower. She'd never get through them all.
"Eww," Andrew said. "Who let the walking cigarette butt in?"
"Who cares, you little human dweeb?" Harmony snarked back. She was a little rusty, but he got the message. "I'm here for Warren."
"Er...going to get Warren," Andrew said, twitching, and hurried off.
Harmony glanced over at Warren's computers. She couldn't read the code at all, but Warren had scattered helpful notes through it and on the desk too. He was trying to make super-smart strategy computers. He thought he was close, too, not that she could tell.
"Wow," Warren said. "I thought anyone from Wolfram & Hart would look a little more upscale. But you...you look like-"
"Shut up, Warren. You don't even remember your old classmate?" She managed to bite off the "You must rely need a brain boost" part, but only just.
"Harmony Kendall? No wonder you didn't make the first-year reunion. Wow, you look like hell." He shook his head, astonished.
"Well, I've sort of come from there-" No! She wasn't going to do this! But she couldn't talk her way out, either, not if every third phrase turned into part of her recruitment pitch.
No, if she was going to get out of this, even just to die in peace, then the girl who'd graduated by the skin of her teeth was going to have to outsmart Warren Mears, who was working on AI research two years after high school.
And that was impossible.
"I knew it wasn't so easy," Holtz snarled. "Truth is never so kind."
As Mara had taught her, Lilah fell back, but Black Claw Style wasn't put to its best advantage in this desolate place. Fortunately she had other resources. "What exactly do you mean, Daniel? Your little girl is alive."
"She is," Holtz admitted, "but at your mercy. And she still was returned to a world centuries changed, just as I was forced to live without my family. No further harm has been done, no, but what recompense have I been given...Darla?"
Lilah feigned ignorance as he opened fire. "Darla? A dead vampire? Surely you have me confused with someone else." The bullets passed through her body as if it were a cloud of dust. Wow, that had thrown her the first time a section of herself had turned to sand.
"Even children have ears, Miss Morgan. Sarah has better than most. You talk to yourself when you think you're alone."
"Darn it, you got me." It didn't really matter if he knew. He was going to die here anyway. She took careful aim and began to fire, but it was merely a distraction. With her free hand, she flipped him the bird, and a burst of black sand engulfed him. He was in his riot gear, but so far he really believed he needed that armor.
A garotte wrapped around her throat and began to choke. What the hell?
"You thought I came here alone? Miss Morgan, meet my new friend Justine. We have a great deal in common."
Lilah ground her teeth and let her neck turn to sand-by the dark gods, that was disconcerting-but before she could get turned around, Holtz had a blade pressed to her chest.
"No doubt you will free yourself again quickly, Miss Morgan, but my revenge against you-even against Darla-can wait. Angelus will, inevitably, return. And I will have his child, as he took mine." Lilah began to laugh. "I intend to leave you splayed open for the infernal elements, Miss Morgan. You may well survive, but I don't see the humor."
"First, you insufferable bastard, the proper title is 'ms'. But more importantly, if I'd known that's what you were after you'd have had me a month ago."
"Wolfram & Hart sent me with a special package for you, Warren, to help you with your work. You just have to be willing to let them use it as they see fit." That part was easy. All part of the spiel.
Warren grinned in his typical weasely fashion and wandered in the direction of some of his combat-sexbot-Terminators. Harm took the opportunity to size up his combat demons. She couldn't beat them. She'd have time for one good bite and then she thought she could bring herself to run. She couldn't last much longer, but she could ensure Warren stayed mortal.
"So what's this great deal from the mighty law firm?"
Fyarl. Nasty. Tough, but no healing to speak of.
M'Fashnik. Better, but nothing great.
Bracken. No use there.
Wait, what was that guy with the green skin? Was she that lucky? Please, just once in my sucky life...
Harmony lunged, mouth open, and fastened her fangs on its arm. Energy surged in her like the high voltage wires she'd touched a week after being sired just to see if it really couldn't kill her. The ether screamed in her ears and tore apart.
"Warren," Amy moaned. "Please let it not be too-"
The Mears house exploded in a ball of roiling green fire. The blaze churned, turned on itself, consumed itself. Smoke rolled over the conflagration and when it passed, the fire had turned a brilliant purple tinged with gold.
"Holy shit," Faith said. "Well...I guess she kind of won...sorta."
Something like a mushroom cloud curled out of the fireball, but only something like. A spear pierced it, became the tusk of a purple unicorn...
...and was gone.