Riley Finn's head felt full of cotton, his back ached, and he needed to pee. He opened his eyes. This was not how he enjoyed waking up. Wherever he was, it was still pitch black, he had something squishy on him, and he smelled freshly-turned soil.
Uh-oh. In his experience the two most likely reasons for that were that a) he had been turned and b) he had been buried alive, and neither was appealing. He attempted to resolve the issue by getting up, but his arms moved half an inch and stopped short as if he were tied up.
"Hold still," Oz's voice said. "You were thrashing in your sleep." Riley felt hands unstrapping his wrists. "We think Lilah caught you. Get ready. You look...different."
Riley sat up, nearly injuring himself in the process. Must've been away from Sam too long; he had the worst case of morning wood ever. "Different how?"
For answer, Oz turned on the lights. Riley looked down at himself. For the briefest moment he thought he must've been bodyjacked, then that he'd been abandoned in a tanning booth. His skin was the rich brown of good Iowa soil. He lifted one hand and sniffed it; the loamy scent was his. He'd been well-defined before; now he had a sixpack, and everything about him that hadn't been toned was now. The mirror on the wall showed that his face was essentially unchanged except in color, though his hair now looked a little like grass sprouting from his scalp. Also...he needed some new boxers.
"Sorry," Oz said. "We figured it was Sam's place to change those if you couldn't, and she's not back yet." At least it explained why he didn't also have the world's worst case of blue balls. "Every couple of hours..." Oz shrugged. "Good dreams?"
Riley rubbed his temples. "I don't actually remember the last couple of-" Something in his head clicked. "Scratch that. Lilah spotted me as a spy right away and..." He narrowed his eyes. "...sent me back to keep Sam's people occupied."
Oz hesitated for a second, then nodded. "Right. They're still on their way back. Should be another hour or two." He looked down. "They were sure they got Lilah, but the news says she's alive and Al Gore isn't."
"Damn it," Riley muttered. "She played Sam and she played me too."
"Polls are saying she's going to sweep the country," Oz said flatly. "I'm not sure what else we can do. The others are talking in the main room."
Riley took a moment to get dressed. Hopefully he wasn't going to have any more...reactions while he was awake. He was remembering some of those dreams now.
Chapter 55-Miss Lehane Goes To Washington
Buffy! No, of course it wasn't. It was the robot who looked like her. Of course, that made the robot very hot in her own right. There were a lot of things he was conservative about, but either the robot wasn't really sentient and didn't have any rights to violate or she was a real person and it wasn't any more wrong to make love to her than anyone else. And she'd been built as a sexbot, anyway! No...he was a married man.
Of all the women in the room who shouldn't have turned him on, Faith headed the list. He might not have actually felt violated-he hadn't known for almost a week!-but legally speaking she had raped him. He accepted that she was reformed and was willing to work with her, but she shouldn't have made him hot under the collar unless it was with anger. Tough luck there.
He barely knew Amy. She'd been a rat by the time he came to Sunnydale. She was into powers he didn't understand, and that made him nervous. She was with Faith. Damn, she was hot. And he was married.
Harmony hadn't been smart enough to be of any interest till she Exalted, and now she was downright creepy. She had the most wonderful tits, though-stop it! Stop!
Kate was older than him, so it wasn't really appropriate-he was reaching and it wasn't even working. Each woman in the room made him want to explode all by herself. At least Shoat wasn't giving him problems-but if he started staring at her he'd really worry everyone. Riley focused on Robin and Oz and hoped he didn't have any latent tendencies he hadn't noticed.
"Well," Harmony said appreciatively, "you've changed." Was she really trying to sound seductive or was that his hornones talking?
He focused hard, looked away from her chestagain, and said, "Lilah made me a Terrestrial, and for once her motives make sense. She wants the Dragon-Blooded we already have too busy, ah...having sex to attack again."
"There's only one of you and ninety-nine of them," the Buffy robot said, puzzled.
Riley just nodded. "Uuuh-huh." He wasn't going to do it, of course. He was a married man and he wasn't going to cheat on his wife and that was that.
"Apparently Terrestrials are notoriously superhumanly horny," Amy said with a small smirk. "You've seen how Sam acts," she added, winking at the robot.
"But there are ninety-nine of them," the robot insisted as if still not seeing the point.
"I think the word is 'orgy'," Robin tried. "They won't object to more Dragon-Blooded men, but he can keep several busy at once while the rest...play."
"Also," Kate said, "presuming we can trust Five Days' Darkness' word, the whole biological point is to get as many of the women pregnant as fast as possible. It'll ease off after that...some, anyway."
"What'll ease off?" said the sexiest voice Riley had ever heard, and Samantha Finn walked through the door. She might as well have been naked, even though he knew the uniform wasn't as form-fitting as his mind's eye insisted. She was flushed even brighter red than usual and seemed to be avoiding his eyes. Then their gazes locked in spite of her efforts, and he heard her gasp from across the room-or was that just him? "Riley," she said breathlessly, "you, ah home early...you...um..." She glided across the floor and into his arms and thank you God she was pressed against him and-
"Sir?" asked Lieutenant Marie Santangelo, her strangely ashen face peering through the open door. "You said we needed to f-f-find r-rooms holy mary is that your husband?"
The room was suddenly very full of women.
"Whuph!" It wasn't often that Faith got knocked on her ass, or thrown out a door. "What just happened?"
"We just saw why the Usurpation was possible," Robin joked. "I count five Celestial Exalts outside and one hundred Terrestrials inside, and they stomped your butts. Though I doubt the Usurpation was caused by horny Dragon-Blooded women."
"Don't count out horny women," Harmony giggled. "I wouldn't have minded getting my hands on him, even if he does kinda look like he's in blackface."
Robin sighed and said, "I'm gonna presume that race and geographic origin are both factors. Fire's pretty much the same wherever you go, but where Riley's from the main type of earth is farming soil."
Kate also sighed. "I hate to say it, but it looks like Lilah's getting her way on this one. I guess I'd better get off the security cams and not be a peeping tom, but I think Sam's managed to pull rank and lock herself in a room with him, only they're camping on the other side and stripping, and I doubt they'll wait long."
"Meaning that they're probably not going to help us much till election week's long over," Amy concluded glumly.
"Then we have to do something on our own," Shoat said. "We can't just roll over for her."
Faith had already concluded that. But she had to do it in a way Lilah wouldn't see coming. She'd thought recruiting an army was necessary, but if it telegraphed her every move...
Maybe she'd been doing the wrong thing this whole time. She vanished into the growing shadows.
"I love you," Riley said after the third time. He'd said it over and over, and it made Sam smile every time he did. It also made her cringe inside. She was going to have to tell him.
"I love you too," she said, watching as he prepared to go again. She was already aching for more herself. "Ri...I love you and I'm glad to get the chance to be close to you again. And you feel wonderful. But we have problems."
He looked at her like a lost puppy. "Huh?"
"First...I'm nowhere near done, but Riley...I'm bored. I love you and we're a good physical match but you need to learn some new techniques. Experiment a little already, honey."
"You, uh...you want me to use my mouth?" He was so earnest.
"That's a start. But second...I've got ninety-eight desperate soldiers out there and with the possible exception of a few lesbians you are exactly what they need. I hate it, Ri." She had to finish this discussion while she could still think straight. "I don't want us to split up. But at least for the time being...I'm willing to share. Do you understand?"
Riley recoiled. "Honey...Sam...I love you. I don't..."
The third blow would be the hardest, but maybe it would make him see what had to be done. "Ri, you don't have to worry about cheating on me. I cheated on you on the way home."
This time it was as if she'd slapped him. "What? With...who was it?"
"April Petersen. She...she's worked out a way of hitting on straight women. Probably gay guys, too, not that she'd care. And it works. She's taught some others. I don't mean mind control or anything. She's resistable. But after a week of nothing but my hand, and months of having to...ah...supplement...she was what I needed. If I'd known I'd find you like this when I got home, maybe I'd have waited. I'm sorry." She didn't actually feel guilty, but she hung her head anyway, playing submissive.
There was a moment...a brief look on his face...anger, betrayal...and then: "I forgive you, Sam."
She nodded. "Then I hope you'll forgive this as well." She opened the door. "All right soldiers! The commander's had her privileges. Gather up in groups of...of four. Santangelo, Petersen, Fisk, Cole, in here with me!" They snapped to attention, naked and too aroused to care, and hustled into the room. Sam locked the door again while Ri stood as if she'd poleaxed him. "Petersen, see if you can teach that thing you do to Finn. You'll feel better about it after."
It wasn't as if they were going to have to force him. Rather, he'd get to stop forcing himself.
It was for the best. It was.
A sudden gust of wind rippled across Los Angeles. People here and there glanced up from their late night business. No one noticed any causs for the disturbance, so they put it down to the weather.
No one looked up.
At LAX the breeze reached its destination, and a girl appeared beneath a plane's wing, halfway up its landing gear. This plane was leaving on a flight to Washington, D.C.
The girl crawled up into the wheel well. It'd take forever getting there under her own power, and anyway, why risk getting lost?
"You don't show it much," Robin murmured to Harmony, "but on a raw power level you're growing fast, aren't you?"
Harmony blinked; she'd been distracted by the knowledge of the store-wrecking orgy going on inside. "I, ah...think so. But how-?" Her eyes narrowed. "Five was talking about you, wasn't he?"
Robin shrugged and glanced at the door. "What did he say? That I should've inherited some kind of powers from my mom? I didn't."
"You should have," Harmony mused. "Nikki Wood shouldn't have been less powerful than Buffy, not at her age. You should be half-caste. And you're right, when I beat Black Nadir Guy I...fulfilled something inside and it cranked me up a notch. I don't have much else to show for it, but it's there. So how'd you know?"
"What're you implying?" Robin scoffed.
"How long've you been fighting demons?" Harm wondered.
"A few years," he said with a shrug. "Went through a whole 'avenging son' phase back in my twenties, but I never caught up to the one who got my mother and it burned out eventually."
"That was a while. Show me your scars. I bet you've got some totally cool scars." She reached for his arm.
He pulled back. "Not really. I mean...I got stabbed in the gut this one time. Little bit of a scar there. Mostly I don't get hit." He pulled his shirt up to reveal a tiny triangular scar. "Safer that way."
"That's not a lot of scars, to have been fighting demons ten years. And gut wounds are totally serious business."
"I know that!" he finally growled. "What're you trying to imply?"
"Oh, just that if the Slayer line can go for millennia and not notice they've got more than super strength and speed, one guy can go for ten years or so and not notice he's got any powers at all. Right?" Robin nodded grudgingly. "You've lasted ten years with barely a scar and survived a gut wound, and you knew I'd gotten more powerful. Five says an Infernal half-caste should be able to do a lot of what a Slayer can, just not at the same level of raw power."
"You're suggesting I'm some kind of cut-rate Slayer?" Robin shook his head.
"I'm saying we may have to fight some kind of guerilla war against President Lilah Morgan, and we can't afford not to train you in whatever you can do."
"All right," Robin said after a few moments. "Can't hurt."
Faith came around suddenly. Plane was touching down. Lilah was heading here on the last wing of her trip to address the nation as a whole. No last moment side trips; she was that confident. She had reason to be.
Faith slipped down the landing gear. The news would tell her where to go. Somewhere soon Lilah would stop at a hotel or something of that nature. And Faith would be waiting for her.
"She's waiting for you," D'Hoffryn said. "She wants to get back at you for a great many things."
"Well," Lilah chuckled, "I should change hotels." Deep in her head Darla concurred.
"No," Mara said. "As important as it is to let you go your own way, no Exalt can completely hide from combat. I've trained you for this. It's time to pull out the stops."
"Are you serious?" Lilah frowned at her. "I'm a Fiend, right? I travel and I play the politics game."
"There comes a time," Mara said, "when every Malefactor must stand under the whip and knife, every Defiler must break out the rayguns...and every Fiend must carry stiletto and garotte. Fight her your own way, Lilah. Summon demon allies, control her mind, or just stab her in the back. But fight."
"You want to know how I handle a combat situation? I avoid it." Early on, thinking she was a Slayer, she'd gone out looking for a fight, but her powers didn't work like that. It wasn't safe.
"Not even Elloge or the Ebon Dragon could avoid every fight, Lilah," D'Hoffryn explained with a shake of his head. "You won't either. Don't try to hide from this."
Drusilla stood over the box of souls. So many had escaped now, yet the box still throbbed with power. Knox had found it and she had led Darla to its resting place. She craved it. It frightened her. The things inside she could never touch, and that frightened her most of all.
Kimbery had made it, and now the Yozi was dead and notdead. Just like Drusilla. Nothing like Drusilla.
Prophecy itself was torn now. How could she trust what she saw? Only a fool would believe it, now, so close to the end of all things. Why was her destiny tied to these greatest of weapons when even they were doomed to fail?
"Little one," Heinrich said. Not Heinrich. His name was gone. "Come away. It has nothing to do with you, Drusilla." Was it him? Or just the voices in her head?
She laid her fingers on the laser device Grandmum had made, the key of the lock. How did it open again? Could she even know?
Drusilla raked her fingers over the controls and turned away.
Faith slipped through the Hilton like a ghost. Lilah must know she was here, must have drawn her here. There had been too much publicity about where she was staying. Unless it was someone else wearing her face again.
If it was, Faith would keep hunting till she found her.
Faith pried open the elevator hatch. Lilah was somewhere above, probably in the penthouse suite. Security was concentrated on the top floors. She began to shimmy up the cables; flying would burn energy and risk attracting attention.
No one else was climbing up or down the shaft, of course. She reached the doors unopposed and pried them open a crack. Two agents stood just beyond the door. Before they could react to her presence, she smacked their heads together, dropping them both. But someone would notice soon.
Faith slipped around the corner. She was in a wide coatroom, not a hallway. Lilah's coat hung there, along with a pair of black jackets. So there were more agents in here somewhere. She had to be prepared to kill them, regardless of what she wanted. So why was there no sign of them?
She ghosted through the rooms. No one in the main room. Kitchen was empty. Bathroom seemed entirely unused. A door from the small kitchen led out onto the roof, where there was a pool and hot tub. Faith checked the second closet first. Still empty. Where-?
Someone sat up in the hot tub. Faith opened the door as quietly as possible. No reaction from the tub. Something must be wrong, surely, but if Lilah really just hadn't noticed and Faith left now she might not get another chance.
She dashed across the remaining distance, raising a stake. Simple, but just as deadly to humans as vampires. At the last moment, the figure stood, and the stake pierced Lilah Morgan's heart. There was a rushing of wind, and Lilah began to crumble to dust starting from the point of impact. Faith was startled enough to let her hand keep moving forward, straight through Lilah's disintegrating body.
The effect halted, only inches away from Faith's wrist. "Nice try," Lilah said, "but did you really believe it would be that easy?" She took two steps backward through the water, and the swirling dust coalesced back into her uninjured chest.
"Nope," Faith said, bringing her hand up. She jammed an agent's pistol into Lilah's right eye and fired.
Harmony checked her cell phone for the thirtieth time. "You think I can sneak in?" she asked. "Maybe they're asleep."
Kate looked at the window and blinked slowly. "Nope," she said, blinking again. "And I'm not going in there."
"Can you check my e-mail with that? I've got an order on Amazon." Harmony squinted as if she could see through the windowshades somehow. Probably there was a way.
Kate frowned. "I hadn't thought of that. Maybe." Then she shook her head. "Sorry, too alien. I can see through security cameras and hear through the radio, but I can't read electronic impulses. Yet, at least."
"I'll go in," Shoat said.
"No!" Harmony, Amy, and Oz all said at once.
"They won't do anything to me," Shoat said. "They'll probably even stop while I'm there. And on the off chance anyone is that far gone, I can defend myself, guys."
"Against a hundred Terrestrials?" Kate sounded afraid of the idea. "We talked about that with Five Days' Darkness, Shoat."
"They won't all-"
"No!" everyone said again.
Harmony sighed and began fiddling with her phone. "Maybe I can hack into it somehow with this thing. It's all wireless, right?"
"That's only in the movies, Harm," Oz said. "You can't really hack into a computer with-"
"Yay! I'm in!" Harmony scrolled up and down on the tiny screen. "Can't see it very well. My order is where? San Diego?" She frowned. "Anybody know a herodsgirl ?" No one answered. "She's sent me this. It just says 'Miss Edith formally requests your presence for a tea party in the Wolfram & Hart Tower.' Doesn't Droodzilla like to talk about a Miss Edith?"
"Drusilla with an e-mail account?" Lorne chuckled. "Sweetheart, I'm not sure she even understands the concept of mail mail."
"She has a cell phone," Kate dissented. "I don't know where she learned to use it, but she has one."
"Drusilla is crazy like a fox," Oz said. "Also like a loon, but...hey, anyone know where Faith went?"
Faith squeezed the trigger, and the bullet went straight through Lilah's eye and skull.
Lilah's head coalesced from the dust again within moments. "A bullet in the head didn't kill you, Faith. What made you think it'd kill me?"
Faith shrugged and tossed the gun aside. "Something will. I just hafta figure out what." She grabbed Lilah by the waist and slammed her out of the hot tub and into the roof.
Lilah didn't dematerialize this time-indeed, she might be a little bruised-but she stood up without difficulty. "You know what your problem is, Faith? You've been Exalted too long. Yes, I know what we are." Faith swung at her, but she danced aside. "Don't worry about my guardians. Ive ordered them quite strictly to stay out of this. They won't interfere."
"Hold still, damnit!" It wasn't a rational thing to ask. Faith wasn't feeling very rational. Lilah complied anyway, but Faith's roundhouse kick passed through her in a spray of dust.
"You've forgotten how women fight,Faith, if you ever knew. Called at fifteen, right?" Lilah raised her hands. "We use our nails, go for the eyes." She slashed at Faith's one good eye, forcing her to recoil, catching her face anyway in a small spray of blood. "We hit below the belt." Her knee slammed into Faith's crotch before she could dodge, and pain exploded through her belly. "I'm a dirty fighter, Faith. I have to be. Why do you think the rules of fighting favor men, hmm? I'm a hair-puller, too." Lilah seized Faith's hair in her left hand and yanked Faith off her feet. She slammed back-first into the door and crashed through it, reeling into the apartment.
Dazed, Faith fished in her pocket and found the dagger, the one Buffy had ended up driving into her gut. Her turn now, with any luck. Lilah came at her, hands clawed, and Faith drove the knife at her, but once again Lilah went dusty and escaped. A sickly green aura shimmered around Lilah's hands as she slashed again, slicing a bloody gash in Faith's shirt.
Faith rolled aside, but a wave of sick pain boiled up in her stomach. Poison? Shit, that was bad. Lilah strolled casually toward her. "I thought you were better than this, Faith. I'm disappointed. You're the fighter, not me."
Faith struggled to her feet. "...cheated..."
Lilah laughed. "Faith, really now. You've barely seen the half of what I can do." She seized Faith by the arm and yanked her to her feet. "I thought you were a killer. You went to jail for it, didn't you?"
Faith felt her face being slammed into the wall, but only vaguely. She was more aware of the stake sinking into the deputy mayor's chest, the wet meaty thunk of it, the terror in his eyes, the sick feeling as Buffy tried to keep him alive, theguilt she'd had to wall off- "Stop it! Get out of my head!"
"Make me. You can, you know. Force me out. Get into mine. But you're too good a person for that now. Right?"
"Get...the hell..." Faith struggled to say, only to be rudely interrupted by a cloud of smoke that coalesced into a hooved woman.
"Mara?" Lilah asked with feigned irritation. "I'm in the middle of something here."
"End it," Mara said hastily. "You've proven yourself anyway. We need you in L. A. It's the Prison. It's broken."
"What? Did they all get out?" Prison?
"We should be so lucky. No, just the opposite. One of them is stuck. We can't explain it. We can't fix it. You've got to come help us or all this means nothing, Lilah. Nothing at all."