Waves of dark power rolled off the blonde at the computer as she popped her gum. Every time the download slowed she glanced to the left to read from a dusty tome. Prudence Maclay edged close enough to see a title along the top border: Necronomicon. She shuddered and backed off. "So," Harmony Kendall said, "you want the good news or the weird news?"
"Good news first," Prudence said. No bad news, at least.
"You have three sisters. Congratulations! Birth name Halliwell, doesn't ring any bells for me. Piper, Phoebe, and Paige, in that order. Cute theme!"
"What's the weird news?" The Necronomicon drew her eyes back, but Prudence refused to look. That thing had a reputation.
"All recorded as adopted by different parents on different dates. But look at the names." She pointed a pink nail at the screen.
"Piper Maclay. Phoebe Maclay. Paige Maclay." Prudence scowled. "I've never been any good at the technopagan thing. How'd you find this? What the hell's it mean?"
Harmony made a cute little pout. "That's the bad news. The really bad news. Are you sure you want to know?"
"No," Prudence said. "Tell me anyway."
Chapter 86-She Looked Down to Camelot
"Anya."
The name cut through her focus. "Anya, are you okay?"
Anya raised red eyes to look at...Mnemon? Why would Mnemon come to see her? Maybe it was a Lunar. She pretended to believe. "Not completely. Are you worried about the wedding?"
"Somewhat. I'm more concerned about what could make a Sidereal elder betray her husband."
Anya snorted. "Kejak. And I'm no elder, not really. I'm old enough, I have the experience in a lot of ways, but I can't back it up yet with power. Chejop got in my head because I didn't even know how to swear loyalty to Righteous Tsunami's policies when he did it."
"And you do now?" Mnemon sat down outside the cell, studying her.
"Committee policy says no favoring one faction over another, all activity focused on opposing Creation's enemies, and otherwise stay out of national infighting. Killing the Admiral of Luthe would violate that." Anya tilted her head to study Mnemon in return. "Why are you so interested in me?"
"How did you get to be friends with people a millennium younger than you?" Mnemon's tone was curious and absolutely frank. Anya respected that. "Buffy and I get along rather well, now that we're not fighting a war. But that doesn't mean she's not just out of her childhood. The rest of you as well...except for you."
Anya nodded. The smile on her face was too big; it probably looked smug. She tried to fix it. "I grew up in a world not that different from parts of your North, a bit more advanced here and there. And then I checked out of that world while it changed. I'd say it was different for you, except that the Scoobies really are from a different world from you. They don't believe the same things. Their technology's different, their culture is different...and if you want to live in their world, you're gonna have to let them guide you. The difference is, they have to live in your world too. So you're gonna have to guide them just as much. They're not afraid of Anathema, or being Anathema. They don't look up to the Dragon-Blooded, they don't venerate their ancestors or most of your gods. In fact, they're used to being told to worship whoever they want."
"I wondered about Buffy's new religious laws," Mnemon said, measuring her words. "I thought they were a stealthy method of introducing Yozi-worship."
"I'm sure they are, a little-just enough that the Yozis don't complain." Anya stood and began to pace up and down the cell. "There's one big difference. When I went back to being human, I turned into a teenager again physically and metaphysically. Some things, like my hormones-and by that I mean my sex drive-reverted to the way they used to be. And...parts of the created identity I had turned real. Just enough that I had a little documentation and a place to live. In some ways it's as if I'm a different person, not just from Anyanka, but from Aud, too. Am I oversharing?"
"Normally I think I'd say yes," Mnemon chuckled, "but not right now. So...in this other world, demons are...what? Citizens? Persecuted? Buffy's policies on the subject baffle me "
A pair of pelagothrope guards strolled in. Anya pointed at Mnemon, covered her eyes, and pressed herself against the wall by the door. "Pardon, Great Lady, but it seems to me there was a prisoner in this cell block."
"I have seen no prisoner," Mnemon said coolly.
"Guess there was a screw-up," the other guard said. They left hastily, muttering about paperwork.
Anya stepped away from the wall, easily cracked the lock, and stepped out. "Complicated," she said. "Buffy's stance on demons is complicated."
Phoebe Austine toiled away in her little cubby of an office. With no calls or appointments pending, she struggled with lyrics instead. Normally she was so good at this! But today the words came out in fragmented segments, and with far too much relation to her. Only then I am human; only then I am clean.. Who was she kidding? She was a Maclay woman. She'd never be clean. She'd never be human, even.
Her pen halted and her eyes widened. She'd meant to write If the heavens ever did speak, he's their last true mouthpiece. It was an iffy sentiment, but it might go over in the right context. Except she'd written I'm, not he's. Phoebe made a strangled sound in her throat and scribbled out the blasphemy. That was it for songwriting today. She didn't have her head in the right spot for it.
The phone rang. It was her job to get it, but right now she wanted to let it go to voice mail. "Austine Ministries? Please, I really need to talk to you."
That usually meant someone looking for healing or exorcism. She'd been adept at reading people from the beginning, which was how she got this job. She answered as neutrally as possible, "What sort of assistance are you looking for?"
"We're trying to cast out a demon," said the voice on the other end. That was a perfectly normal thing for the ministry to deal with, so why did it give her such bad vibes? "We need to meet with you as soon as possible."
"I take it this isn't a case that can wait for broadcast services." That was fine, and they would bring in cameras. A possession case that could wait was usually fake anyway.
"No, no, definitely not. Can we meet within the hour?" The vocal strain was real, at least.
Phoebe nodded, though of course they couldn't see it. "Within the hour, or at your earliest convenience. You know where the stadium is?"
They said yes and hung up. Phoebe called for a security detail-they'd need that no matter if the case was real. She really preferred doing healings on live television, though. It showed the power of God, and she always felt better with a chance to dance in the Holy Spirit first. But good works often couldn't wait.
Then she called Joe. Her husband trusted her more than the main branch of the family would, but even he believed she had to maintain a delicate balance to avoid having the Spirit of God taken from her and being wholly damned at once. She wouldn't think of performing an exorcism without him.
Buffy squeezed her eyes shut and inhaled. "Done," she said in a strained voice. "Going to get married with a parasite in me."
"Just like that?" Shadow asked.
"Just like that," Buffy agreed. "Not that I haven't been thinking about it for a while now. If I'm not ready for it as a ruling monarch about to marry, when will I ever be?"
Shadow smirked at that. "Good way to look at it. You sure won't need child support."
"I'm still a little scared. My daughter's going to inherit some of my powers for sure." She returned a rueful grin to her double. "Imagine if she has Slayer strength as a toddler."
"You're right," Shadow said, "that sounds like a real ton of fun. I guess I'll have to be your kids' aunt. I'm not supposed to have kids of my own."
"I bet you will anyway," Buffy told her. "If there's really a way to turn Abyssals into Solars, you'll find it."
Shadow crouched down and patted Buffy on the tummy. "Hey. I know you just started in there, but go easy on mommy, okay? Be a good girl." Then the pair of Buffys burst into shared laughter. "Now we just have to make sure the Silver Prince bites it so she can grow up safe." So soon after the laughter, Buffy couldn't understand how her twin's tone was so hard and cold.
Buffybot began to choke and cough. Immediately Lorne was there to pat her on the back, wondering why humans had such vulnerable tracheas and why Buffybot would emulate that little feature-slash-bug. Had he ever even seen her do this before? "You all right, Call?" He hoped she got the reference.
Buffybot hacked some more, but her vocal processors weren't dependent on her throat being clear. "I have...components or...something...trying to escape from my body. I don't know what they are exactly." Even as she spoke, wooden marionette legs forced their way out of her mouth. "What's happening?"
Lorne turned his head left, then right, in an ultra-slow shake. "You have got me there," he admitted. He took hold of the marionette legs and pulled. Buffybot emitted a loud groan, almost as if she were giving birth, and the puppet emerged fully, finishing with a round but highly-detailed wooden head.
The marionette opened its mouth and began to wail like an infant. Buffybot's eyes widened in alarm as she caught it in her arms. "What does it want? I can't feed it!"
Lorne leaned over the crying...thing. "Aww. Poor baby. Coochy-coo!" He tickled the wooden torso. To Buffybot's amazement, the puppet began to calm. "He just needs some loving, mama. Don't ask me what's going on, cause this dancing greenie does not know the score, but...he's a baby. Snuggle 'im."
Buffybot cuddled the puppet to her chest. Sure enough, the screeching faded rapidly into happy gurgles. "I can't be a mother, Lorne. I'm a robot! How do I...anything?"
Lorne threw up his hands. "Check Yahoo? Do I look like I've got kids?"
Buffybot made a sad face. The puppet reached up fleshless limbs and tickled her under the chin. The pout faded. How could she be sad about that?
"I don't know magical materials," Alexander said as loud as he could manage. The din of construction nearly swallowed his voice anyway. "I know how to build and repair things. I know weapons. The First Age artisans were great at what they did. But we are not them!
"The First Age built ships for the Exalted! They are better than anything that ever sailed my Earth's oceans...individually. But there's a problem. Only the Exalted can run them effectively. Today some of those vessels are still on the seas, but they have been stripped down to the bone. Their weapons quit working. Their power systems ran down. Their control systems don't function for you.
"These ships are not like that. In some ways they're crude, sure. Their weapons aren't as powerful. They're not as durable or maneuverable. But for every Dragon-Blooded vessel on the water, ordinary people can pilot a score. For every Celestial vessel on the water-if every Celestial were even on the water-you could pilot a thousand.
"With overwhelming numbers, the Dragon-Blooded destroyed Celestial rule. In the same way, you can destroy Terrestrial rule if you need to. These ships are the backbone of your fleet!
"You might be asking, why give you such a thing? Partly the answer is to mobilize everybody. The world works better when the whole world works, and there are all kinds of threats out there to defend against. But beyond that: the Exalted can make your lives better. We can be more knowledgeable and more competent than you'll ever be. But none of that makes us good, or right, or just. And without goodness, all that knowledge and all that competence only make us worse monsters. I'm giving you a chance at standing against us if we're wrong, Celestial, Terrestrial, or both. I'm giving you a good life after our fall.
"This is not my fleet! This is your fleet! You can succeed without us! You will exceed what we could be without you! This is the Third Age, and our ascent begins now!"
The roar of applause rose and rolled over the roar of the machines as if it were nothing. Alexander nudged Fred as he sat down beside her. "Was that over the top? I never can tell."
Kate slammed the door open and crashed into the room. Right. Left, behind the door. Shoat shot in behind her, gun pointing up. Wasn't remotely nuts these days. Riley and Sam were next, peeling off into the next rooms, checking behind the sofas.
"Can't believe we're doing this for some Chik-Fil-A manager," Riley muttered. "What's her name again, Piper? Who names their kid Piper?"
Shoat giggled, but then added more seriously, "Ithink it's a cute name."
"We're doing it because people are worth helping," Kate said, biting off her words irritably, "and because someone is handing out magic radiation poisoning and we need to find out who."
"Well, we're not learning anything here," Sam said mournfully from a door to the left. "We're too late."
Shoat pushed past her into the bathroom, where a barely-recognizable corpse sprawled over the toilet, skin covered in bloody blisters. She rolled the woman over, blackened gore still leaking from the body's mouth onto the porcelain. "Aw, poop," the tween muttered, "she's still barely alive, but I don't think any of us can save her. Her guts are pretty much goo."
"And she's been vomiting them up?" Riley looked a bit green.
Suddenly Shoat narrowed her eyes and shook the dying woman. "No! It's not worth it! Don't listen to it!" She didn't even have the last phrase out when a dead-black bruise like a half-open eye melted into being on the woman's forehead. Purple energy radiated from her like a cloak shaken by the wind, and a triangular symbol with interior curves shone darkly behind her for a moment. The blisters smoothed over, fading into milky-white skin. Her hair grew long and glossy brown. Only her eyes remained cataract-white, and from the way she blinked them at Shoat, then stared, her vision was unimpaired.
"It said I didn't have to die," Piper said, and put a hand to her throat as if unfamiliar with the musical tone of her voice. "Seems like a good deal to me."
Kate made a disgusted noise in her throat. "What's done is done. Come on. You've got a sister to meet." She didn't seem to notice the horror in Shoat's eyes.
"I hope Willow and Tara are all right," Fred said to Anya, watching the new fleet slide into open water. "It's been days."
"There's no telling where they were going," Anya reminded her. "It's not like Tara left a note. For all we know, Tara will come back in the shape of the wooly mammoth she wanted to hunt. I do hope Willow found her, though."
"Tara would've left a message if it were something like that," Fred argued. The steel belly of a battleship scraped the bottom of the hatch, filling the water with a grating noise she could feel. "She's the responsible one."
"Oh, yes, that's what we all used to say about Willow," Anya said with no obvious affect. "She was too responsible to do anything foolish with magic. Cough, 'I will it', cough. Power changes people."
"Including you?" Fred asked.
Anya laughed out loud. "Especially me. Don't forget who you're talking to. Look, Tara's generation of paganism doesn't remember the Middle Ages. They have this idea of nature as cute and cuddly, like a...a..."
"A fuzzy bunny?"
Anya laughed nervously. "Yes. That is the perfect image. Nature is terrifying and cruel and civilized humans set out to kill it for a reason. Now that she's living the one-with-nature dream, Tara's got a choice: try to remake nature in her idealized image, or accept it as what it is, monstrous. And herself with it. I'd have figured on the former, but hey, who am I to complain if she goes for the eviscerations?"
Fred clammed up and watched the ships go by. That didn't seem like Tara, but she remembered Pylea. Remembered that first week of eating berries and wondering whether hunger or toxins would kill her first. The success of a snare trap-she'd heard they were inhumane, and the squealing weasel-thing had proven it, but she'd been too hungry to care. Stealing small chicken-lizards from the farms, growing slowly bolder. If she'd Exalted there, what would she have done?
Tara had come from a different kind of desperation, but she would certainly understand. No wonder she feared power. She knew what people did with it, and she knew what she could. Most of all, she knew herself.
Was it possible that it wasn't Willow she was afraid of at all?
Beth Maclay strolled into the ministry building unopposed. Nursery, kids' classes, adult classes, studio room, offices...sanctuary access. Some people might want to wait till services were over, and she understood the impulse not to profane the room with violence. But really. This was the Lord's work, and it was time for an end to secrecy.
She took a knife from the kitchens. People might be looking for some kind of horrible radioactive weapon, but this was all she needed. God's fire of judgement came from her, not from any material blade.
Beth paused at the back of the sanctuary. The worshippers were "dancing in the Spirit". Sometimes such things were real, but she knew that wasn't the case right now, because there was a Maclay woman leading them. The Holy Spirit had nothing to do with Maclay women. Herself excluded, of course. Phoebe Austine was a demon infiltrator, poisoning the whole ministry. Joseph Langstrat Austine was a fool. Anyone should be able to see from Phoebe's ecstatic expression that she was a sensualist, not a woman of God.
Beth Maclay put her hands over her head and danced through the crowd, making her way up the aisle, her knife stuck through her belt. No one would see until she was too close for the witch to escape. She had planned all this out, as God demanded as part of the price of her empowerment. And halfway up the aisle, she came to a sudden halt as a young woman with dark brown hair dropped from the ceiling, scalloped dagger outstretched. Who-?
Phoebe spun in place before the stranger could reach her, as if she had somehow seen what Beth had missed. That was impossible, of course. She was a demon, but Beth was empowered by the Almighty himself. Phoebe's leg scythed up, and the dagger was knocked from the stranger's hand. Phoebe's leg scythed down, and the stranger slammed into a pew. Still, she was up in an instant, and Phoebe seemed as confused about what had happened as Beth was.
The brunette sneered. "If that's all you've got, witch, you might as well give up now." Was she also an agent of God?
Beth drew her knife and set it ablaze with hellfire, catching the other's eye, but Phoebe's as well. "God has sent your judgement, Phoebe Maclay. Don't think to escape." The strange brunette stared at her, but they moved forward as one. God was with them both.
"Freeze!" The dancing had already begun to disintegrate; now it fell apart entirely as a muscular blonde set herself and pulled out a service revolver. "Sorry to interrupt a worship service, but I'm pretty sure there's a commandment against murder. Faith, what are you doing?"
Faith? But the brunette seemed as confused by the name as Beth was startled. "I have a witch to kill," she said, "for God and my earthly father Daniel Holtz. If you're here to stop me-" A bullet thudded into a songbook she'd whipped in front of her chest. "-it'll take more than that."
A woman in a red-tinted uniform slapped a hand down on Beth's shoulder. "Nice fire. Mine's bigger." And she burst into brilliant orange flame.
"Natural fire is no match for the wrath of God," Beth snapped, and slashed at the false soldier, cutting a swath through her clothing. Still, the green flame of judgement failed to take root in her flesh, so Beth must not have actually hurt her.
It was only a matter of time.
Amy hung back. The others might be comfortable here, but she really was a witch. She didn't think she believed in God God, but what she knew of magic suggested any god might be given strength by true believers. Whether that was what had happened with Phoebe she couldn't be sure, but the woman had somehow managed to pull off a perfect pair of kicks on Faith, even if they hadn't hurt her. Hell, the bullet didn't seem to have hurt her much.
Faith spun and slammed a flurry of her own kicks into Kate's chest, driving her back by a step or two. "Don't make me really hurt you, Faith," Kate insisted. "You can't seriously think you're Holtz' daughter. Look around you. He's from a couple of hundred years ago. You're not!" Faith just sneered and launched into another round of kicks. "He's brainwashed her somehow," Kate grumbled.
Amy saw it too, though she wasn't certain how. It was simply obvious: Faith wasn't herself. She had one notion how she might get Faith's attention, but it would get everyone else's here too. She didn't want that, not if she could avoid it.
The other woman, the stranger with the radioactive knife, was dueling Riley and Sam and holding her own, if only because they had no idea what she was capable of. Amy signaled to Spike, who was also hanging back-for similar reasons, no question, and he began making his way through the crowd toward Phoebe. To draw attention away from him, she reluctantly yanked the knife out of Radioactive Girl's hand with telekinesis. The woman sneered at her and shrugged as her fists burst into the same eerie green flame.
Spike was right behind Phoebe when she spun, eyes wide with shock, and flung her hands up. At least she wasn't kicking him. Instead, though, she recited, "The Lord rebuke you, demonspawn, and by his power be you gone." Spike put his hands on his hips and laughed. "By word of God depart this place. Be banished from our time and space." Amy almost burst into laughter herself...and then Phoebe made what Five called the Victory Over Primordials mudra, and Spike vanished in a burst of shredded color.
"Crap!" Amy shouted, drawing glares from everyone close enough to hear, and darted forward. "Faith, damn it, this isn't you! I promise this isn't you!" Faith rolled her eyes, leapt straight up into the air, and cracked her heel into Kate's chin, then spun to attack Amy as well.
Amy made a clutching motion that ended in a fist and yanked Faith forward faster than she could move on her own. Faith collided with her face to face, and Amy ignored the pain of impact to lock lips with her. Faith wrenched herself away, spluttering and spitting...then halted, seized Amy by the shoulders, and kissed her back.
"What the hell happened?" Faith asked. Everyone in the building was glaring at them now. This was no good. This was no good at all.