Faith's eyes were gummy. She lifted her hands slowly and rubbed them. The darkness didn't clear. "Lights? Anybody?" She ought to be able to see in any ordinary darkness.

"Please exit the chrysalis. Your treatment is complete." The voice was high but toneless. Treatment? Oh. Oh, yeah.

Faith fumbled about, found a hazy membrane inches in front of her face. She tore it, and it collapsed onto her. That better have been what she was supposed to do. She sat up on the bench, naked. The room was darkened, but not pitch black as she'd thought. Most of her lower body seemed to be miss-right, it had worked! Faith flexed her human legs, breathed air into a single set of human lungs, felt her hands around her smooth, tailless human ass. Yes!

"Towers? What time is it?"

"It is twenty minutes after midnight," answered a richer voice. "Calibration is underway. I will wake your friends if you so desire."

Faith thought that over as she tore away the cocoon. "Naw," she finally said. "This may be my last chance for a good night's sleep for a while. I'm gonna get a look at the sky, then rest. I'll leave in the morning."

Oz opened his eyes slowly to find himself naked and draped across a desk. "Ouch," he said. His feet were full of pins and needles. He began to sit up, then caught sight of an equally naked Harmony Kendall, still in vamp face. She was covered in scratches and bruises, but she was snoring faintly.

Come to think of it, he looked a little worse for wear himself. What had happened last night? He didn't normally care much for Harmony, but it sure looked as if they'd had sex. In monstrous forms, no less-and when had she been turned again, anyway? Also, if she was snoring, didn't that mean she was breathing?

Oz decided the simplest course of action was to poke her. He prodded her in the ribs. Harmony rolled over, muttered something about rare steak, and went back to snoring. Oz shrugged, got into his jeans-commando, since his boxers were in tatters-and left the office, closing the door behind him. She'd be all right.

He collided with Harmony. Awake, fully-dressed human Harmony, with dark circles under her eyes. "Hey," she said uncertainly. "Have you seen another me anywhere? She was supposed to be in my room."

Oz thought about that for a moment. "We had sex," he said simply. "She's asleep in there."

"You what?" Harmony blushed bright red. "I didn't...she didn't tell me...I'm sorry!"

Oz shrugged. "I don't mind." He wanted to reassure her that she was good in bed, but the truth was he didn't remember a thing. "She didn't mind either. Is that okay?"

Harmony nodded weakly and opened the door. "Harm? You awake in there?"

The other version of her met her face to face in the doorway. "I'm awake. I need to tinkle. Or maybe you need to, I'm not sure. You look like hell. Have you slept?"

"Slept? No. Why?"

The vampire Harmony rolled her eyes. "You totally need me inside you. You're a wreck without me."

"Well, y-you don't need to be wandering around yourself," Harmony said defensively. She opened her mouth and inhaled, and the second Harmony dissolved into bloody vapor and vanished inside her. "Sorry about that, Oz," she began, then concluded with "Eep! Gotta go!" and darted away.

Oz shook his head. The Exalted were strange. Life was strange. "See you around," he said to the air.

Chapter 70-In This Valley of Dying Stars

The mantis turned its head slightly as the fly settled nearby, but made no other motion. That was its way of hunting; that was how it evaded the prey's notice. Its scythelike arms flashed out-

And Kate Lockley caught it in mid-strike, ripped off the tiny, deadly arms, and bit off its head and torso. "It doesn't have to be big," she told Buffybot once she was done chewing. "I can shrink down and be a mantis now-or I can copy just its arms. Lots of little bitty creatures have useful abilities that I can scale up."

"What about the square-cube law?" Buffybot asked.

"Doesn't seem to apply." Kate's forearms sprouted into huge serrated blades. "The better to decapitate vampires with. I hated running off to Cape Kennedy, but it's where we touched the moon from. Hopefully it'll do us some good."

"Can you mimic anything about the animals you've hunted?" Buffybot wondered. "Can you be the size of that bug?"

Kate considered that. "Y'know, I'll have to try. Fred didn't mention size except in terms of what I can hunt."

She was about to make the attempt when Buffybot said, "Someone's taking bodies from the city morgues." That much of a non sequitur left her speechless. "It isn't Harmony and Shoat," Buffybot added about a minute later. "I've accounted for them."

"Police?" Kate managed at last. "Are they making zombie police again?"

"I don't think so," Buffybot said. "There are no signs of additional police on the force. There's no place for them to be hiding bodies either. However they are trying to cover up the disappearances."

"Not a surprise there," Kate deadpanned. "Probably they just want to avoid publicity, but who knows? Is there a pattern to the losses?"

"A very simple one," Buffybot said. "Geographical sequence, south to north and east to west. The Good Samaritan Hospital should be next."

"That was too...they're not even trying to cover it up." Kate began to pace back and forth. "Well, we're going there tonight. Undercover. Is there any way you can hide?"

"I've got lots of ways to hide!" the robot bubbled. "Here's the newest!" She shimmered with white flickering light and faded away. "Don't worry, I'm still here!"

What in the hell? "How long have you been able to do that? Who modified you?"

"About two days," Buffybot answered in a high-pitched, upset tone, "and no one! No one's opened me up for anything but routine maintenance in weeks."

"Did Warren build you with...with machines to change you around inside?" It was a long shot, but no one knew how he'd built a sapient robot either.

"If he did, he didn't tell me," Buffybot said, and reappeared, tugging at her hair. "My specifications aren't complete, though."

Kate groaned and banged her head once against the wall. "Let's not look a gift horse in the mouth. We'll examine you when we've finished at the morgue."

"All right," Buffybot said, suddenly chipper again. Kate sighed. Sometimes the robot seemed self-aware, but where her own emotions were concerned she was all but oblivious. "See if you can shrink!"

So that was how, a few hours later, Buffybot came to be invisibly-and silently, thank God-ensconced in the morgue, with Kate perched atop a shelf, about six inches high with dragonfly wings just as wide. Harmony had laughed and called her a fairy princess before saying something really ominous about the void in a tone that suggested makeup and frilly dresses were involved.

For the moment, all the bodies were still present. No monsters had eaten then, no cops had stolen them, and none had arisen and walked out under their own power. Must be an off night for weird things.

"The hospital has now been closed to visitors for one hour," Buffybot reported, "and you can alert us to any emergencies by listening to the radio, so we can talk quietly."

Kate leaned over the side and looked down. "I don't guess you have any ideas about why you're developing these new capabilities?"

"I don't," Buffybot said, "except that maybe it's related to the crystal thingie Amy thinks is my CPU. She said it might be ancient supertech, but we couldn't figure out where it came from."

Kate began, "That sounds-", but at that point a crackling, rushing noise cut her off, and a portal in the green and purple shades of a bruise erupted out of the corner. Shambling figures made their way out of it, whirring and clanking.

"Targets present," said one of the not-Borg. "Gather all corpses and return."

Kate's first impulse was to attack, but then they'd learn nothing. These...things...looked far more rotten than even movie Borg, as if they were mechanically-augmented zombies. It was a wonder that one could talk. Instead, she made a quick gesture to Buffybot and dove off the shelf, flitting through the portal before she had time to think twice.

She'd gotten maybe a foot before she collapsed, coughing, onto a pile of rusted wreckage. Kate felt an invisible hand close around her, so at least she wasn't alone, but the air-she couldn't-

She could. Though the surrounding smog was so thick Kate could barely see an inch in front of her and could taste grit on her tongue, her lungs had adapted to process it. Somehow.

"I don't like this place," Buffybot whimpered. "Is this the scrap heap both Spike and Xander independently warned me about?"

Kate squinted. Through the shifting miasma she made out heaps of plastic and metal, still-sparking boards of crystal circuits and half-melted dolls, wrecked mattresses with rat skeletons twisted through the fluff, shelves and doors and broken glass...

"It sure looks like it," she admitted. "But you're not broken and we're not staying." She flitted into the air, hovering at Buffybot's shoulder. The portal still spun and growled. "Get behind something. We'll follow those things when they come back with the bodies. This is one hell of a hell dimension," she grumbled, "and I'll bet you my life savings they're in league with Lilah Morgan."

Riley woke up with a start. He was tangled up with...not Sam. One of the squad? He pushed himself up to hands and knees. No, the squad all had more muscle definition. Lilah? Santangelo had suggested he try getting into the President's pants. Wasn't she taller?

The woman next to him rolled slowly over and smiled, eyes still half-closed. "Greet the morning with Miss Edith and I?" Fingers with nails like razors ran across his cheek. "Don't take the vapors. Grandmum isn't exclusive, nor my Spike, and Daddy hasn't laid hands on me in ages. I miss Daddy's touch." While Riley tried to absorb this unwanted lump of information, Drusilla slid her tongue into his mouth and wrapped delicate fingers around his manhood, which was never at less than half-mast any more. "The devils in my head sing true," she murmured with her nose pressed against his. "You're quite the lover now your chains are snapped."

"How-?" Riley began, struggling to focus his sleep-clogged brain. "I don't remember how we...how we...stop that!"

Drusilla winked at him and took her hand away. "You asked very nicely if Grandmum wanted drinks." Darla and Lilah seemed hardly distinguishable to her anymore. "She said she'd enjoy that, so long as I was permitted to join in. The drinking, that is. After you were well sloshed I asked if I might make proof of you, to see if you were fit for a queen's bed. You were, but she had quite gone asleep."

"I didn't...did...stop that!" Riley protested again.

Once more she drew her hand away. "Yet it wants milking. See? 'Twill grow sore without."

"Never mind that," Riley insisted. "Did I really agree to this or did you put me in your thrall?" He searched around for his clothes, but the room was a tumbled nest of blankets.

Drusilla pouted at him. "You shan't make me cross and 'scape my wrath, peasant boy. I cannot touch your thoughts now, though soon again perhaps. You had drunk one drink when you began to shout sweet words and slap at me. I thought I had enticed you fairly."

Riley groaned and hung his head. Now he remembered that, a little. "Drusilla, I was angry, not...I wasn't coming on to you."

Drusilla looked down at his dick again and raised one eyebrow. "But you hurt me so sweetly. Can you not see how I might take it all awry?"

Riley wrapped the blankets around himself and sighed. "I guess I can at that." Drusilla had, from all he'd heard, never had a sexual relationship before Angelus; all she knew about was his twisted obsession with pain. Even for a vampire she was kinky. God, what had he done to make her think he was good in bed? "I didn't mean it that way. From what I remember I was angry because you kept defending your murders."

Drusilla's pout grew deeper. "I did not...I misunderstood you altogether. And you seemed to enjoy our play. I didn't intend..." Fat drops of water began to trickle onto the blankets. "...intend to do you any wrong..."

Jesus! He'd thought Drusilla was so far gone to madness that her soul made no difference to her. Riley remembered the heat in her voice, the flush in her cheeks, her screaming at him, insisting that anything the Whirlwind had done they'd done by right, that Europe had deserved to be bled dry. That was when he'd slapped her, finally. He shouldn't have, but...and then things had gotten all twisted around somehow...obviously. And now she was crying because she thought she hadn't respected his consent? He sighed and put an arm around her.

"Drusilla, anything you did wrong last night I did too. We were both drunk, we misread each other's signals, and then we apparently both had a good time. But I wasn't coming on to you, not at first anyway. I hit you because I was angry, not to turn you on."

She stared at him. "Is there a difference then?"

"Wh-yes, there's a difference!" She poked at the tented wet spot he was making in her sheet. "Drusilla, that's pretty much a constant now. I'm sorry it confused you."

Drusilla nodded. "The dead are walking, Riley. Grandmum won't see it. The stars are falling and the earth is bleeding and the machines are taking us all asunder. We will remake the world, and that's a fright...but it will need remaking after what's to come."

"Then you agree with me?" She nodded and put her hand on his chest instead. "Maybe if we speak to her together...or should we just take it ourselves?"

"I cannot see," Drusilla said. "Won't you hold me? We will speak more of this matter, I swear it, but let me touch you. Please?"

Riley studied her face. It could all be an act. She'd been a liar with few equals. A tear broke free from her left eye and rolled down her cheek. If she kept up the act while they saved the world, would it even still be an act at that point? Or just an action taken, regardless of her reasons?

Riley kissed her gently on the lips. With a sudden giggle, she shoved him onto his back and climbed atop him, adding fresh scratches to the faint lines on his chest. She laughed as she rode him, and he managed to smack her butt till bright red marks curled around her hips.

Her eyes never grew dry, though, the whole time.

"Five," Gwen said. The midnight-black deity turned to face her and Lorne. "We need to talk about Harmony."

"This necromancy gig," Lorne said nervously. "I'm all for letting bygones do their bygone-ness, but, Night Show, the things she talks about..."

Five Days' Darkness folded his arms. "No one else seems concerned," he muttered.

"She's talking about her magic like it's a religion. A science too, somehow, but...sacrifices to the Abyss?" Gwen shook her head. "That's freaky cultist talk."

Five clenched and unclenched two fists. "It is. Somehow she's managed to fix her course by the one school of necromancy that never had a good practitioner. The Ajaian school treated it as a science of magic, no different from sorcery. The Shizuans saw it as an act of war, of violence against the Underworld's darkness and death. Both could be aimed at good goals, though the means were always doubtful, of course. But the school of the Maw openly gave their worship to the Neverborn, or to Oblivion itself." He covered his face with a third hand and pinched the bridge of his nose. "Everything else has gone wrong, and so naturally this is the school that calls to her."

Lorne shrugged helplessly. "Well, she's gathering up the band to go find something powerful," he said. "Her, Shoat, Santangelo, and anyone else who she can get. She called it the Mantle of Soot. Whatever that is."

Five's chest began to heave, and at first Gwen thought he was sobbing. Then he burst out in gales of laughter. "Let her look! It's a wild goose chase. The Mantle of Soot never existed. Thank all good powers Brigid prevented that."

"What is it?" Gwen asked. "Or what would it be, anyway?"

"The Mantle of Brigid, the First Sorceress," Five said, "increased a sorceror's power immensely, even let her access spells of a higher circle. Perhaps Brigid wanted to make sure no one ever had such power over the Underworld, though necromancy was barely a concept in her time. Rather than let it be buried with her and spawn a copy in the ghostly realm, Brigid passed the Mantle down to her students. It was lost for a while in the Usurpation, but the Scarlet Empress owned it till just before Creation ended. No Mantle of Soot ever came into being, and I thank God or Fate or Time or whatever that it didn't. Harmony is wasting her time searching for it."

"Should I go with her, then?" Gwen didn't like the idea of getting involved in a boondoggle right now.

"It'll give her a chance to hone her powers," Five said, "and anyone else who goes with her. She needs to learn as much as she can and be ready for whatever's coming, because something surely is. I'd appreciate it if you went to help."

Gwen grumbled, but said, "Fine. Who knows, maybe I'll come back an Exalt too."

She was being sarcastic, but Five nodded. "Indeed. Who knows?"

Amy wandered in costume through the intensive care ward. There was only so much she could do. Doctors flocked around her whenever she appeared, and nurses, and any patients well enough to move. But her energy was so limited.

"This one?" she asked, pointing to a patient swathed in bandages.

"Severe burns. Not expected to live," a nurse said. Amy nodded and stretched out her hand over him, though it wasn't necessary. The red, raw edges of the wounds receded beneath the cloth.

"Why don't you come more often?" a surgeon demanded. "You can save so many lives!"

"My powers have limits," Amy said for the umpteenth time. "I have only so much energy. To increase it, I have to train, and there are other crises in the world that need seeing to. If I stop a thirty-car pileup or a terrorist bombing,I may be saving just as many lives as I can here. More, even. I come as often as I can." She didn't mention having to save the world.

The surgeon nodded unhappily. He, at least, understood. Maybe he realized that they weren't so different, that just like her he could only spend so much of his energy, his effort, his life before having to retreat and recuperate.

"I can manage one more," she said. "Remember, it doesn't have to be an injury. Got any cystic fibrosis cases? ALS? These people here might die tonight, but they also might live. Other people have time limits and then it's over."

"We've got a pancreatic cancer case up one floor. It hit her hard and fast," said a grey-haired doctor, "and we can't operate."

Amy nodded and pointed to the elevator. She sagged against the wall on the way up. She loved doing this, but it was so incredibly draining. What she hadn't said, what she hadn't learned till the election was over and it was too late, was that the people whose wishes she granted had to obey one order or suffer, and the ones she healed were also made to adore her. She didn't have to ask anything of them, and most people would have loved her for their cure anyway, but if she'd been able to tell the electors "Vote Republican or be ruined", Lilah would never have come to power. Of course, Bush Junior would have, so it was a choice of evils, but she was pretty sure Bush wouldn't have sold the planet out to demons. Tough call.

She was halfway down the hall when she spotted a pregnant woman slumped in a chair, sobbing. "Fetus has bilateral renal agenesis," a redhaired nurse said. "Tends to cause other defects and is virtually always fatal. We can't-"

"How long?" Amy broke in.

"He'll live to be born, then die a day or two after," said the nurse. "Another three months if she keeps the pregnancy. By that time there'll be more damage, though. Amniotic fluid issues."

Amy broke away from the gaggle of doctors and knelt in front of the woman. "I swear I'll be back within the week and cure your son," she said. "I have someone with pancreatic cancer tonight and then I'll have to stop. I swear," Amy insisted when the woman clutched her by the arm. "I will cure him."

The woman doubled over and began to wail. "How long has the cancer case got?" Amy asked desperately.

"Her pancreas is shot," said the grey-haired doctor. "Necrotizing tissue, no enzyme production at all. She might live the week on intravenous fluids and antibiotics or she might die tonight."

Amy stared back and forth between the doctor and the nurse. "Fuck it," she said. She placed her hands on the woman's belly. "Be healed," she intoned; lots of people needed the reassurance. The energy flowed out of her, leaving her drained. "Help me up," she grunted.

A pair of nurses lifted her to her feet. Once there, she was able to make herself walk on down the hall. "I thought you said-" the grey-haired doctor began.

"I was mistaken," she lied. The cancer patient wasn't as wasted as some; the illness had cut her down with brutal speed but without a long battle to wear her down. Amy placed her hands on the unconscious woman's arms. "Be healed," she said.

Darkness dragged her under.

Harmony fumbled with the map and the texts. Maybe she should've scanned them, but her phone had a teeny screen. "Okay," she said. "Everyone ready?" When no one objected she opened the door. Wolfram & Hart didn't maintain many permanent dimensional portals, but the boundary between life and death was thin here.

"Five says we're wasting our time," Shoat said after they were already through. Santangelo and Gwen nodded agreement.

"He knows a lot, but he doesn't know everything." Harmony held up a printed-out piece of paper. "'The Shroud of Ramone was a failed attempt to duplicate the Mantle of Soot,'" she read, and handed that one to Shoat. "Pass it on. 'The Shroud was woven in the amphiskiopolis called the Infinite Prison,'" she quoted from another sheet, and handed that one to Shoat too. "'The Infinite Prison moves around the Labyrinth but can often be found in the vicinity of the destroyed underworld city of Cadaverous, where remains of the previous world can sometimes be found.' Aaaand 'Cadaverous and Ravenous are thought to be near the ancient tomb of the sorceress Silur, whose education proceeded in a direct line from Brigid, the First Sorceress.' You guys follow?"

"Brigid wasn't buried with the Mantle, but you think Silur was?" Gwen had gone pale as if she hadn't considered such an idea.

"I traced it back," Harmony said. "It makes sense. It doesn't matter who the Mantle was buried with so long as it was buried. And Silur died in the Usurpation just before the Mantle was lost."

"They buried it with her but lost the records," Santangelo said, understanding. Harmony bobbed her head up and down. "So down we go?" Santangelo gave out a resigned sigh.

"Yup," Harmony said. "Void Circle, here I come."