This chapter includes an obvious tip of the hat to Howard Phillips Lovecraft.
Chapter 1
Earth, Various Locations, May, 2001
"So, is she going to be OK?" Riley Finn asked.
The young woman with very dark red hair, Captain Samantha Cain, was resting on a hospital bed in a hidden base in Fort Riley, Kansas. Four years ago, she had been a doctor with the Peace Corps, working in a village, before her infirmary was wiped out by Toth demons. Riley, having just started with the Initiative, was part of the crew that had rescued Sam. When he had rejoined the Initiative three months ago, Riley was shocked to learn that the erstwhile Peace Corps volunteer had joined the Initiative as both field doctor and operative. Riley touched the bandage on his face. The cut would leave a nasty scar, but his head would have been cut in two if it hadn't been for Sam's quick actions, both in combat and in medicine.
It was almost like being back with...
Riley felt the vibration of his cell phone. He took it out of his pocket.
"Finn," he said.
"Major Finn, you don't know me, even though we are ultimately employed by the same department," a man's voice said. The man sounded like he was in his seventies. He had an accent that was hard to identify. Almost like a hybrid of English and German.
"And you are...?" Riley asked.
"I am Trevor Bruttenholm, I run the civilian law enforcement and intelligence arms of our branch of the DOD."
"I know who you are, sir," Riley said. "And it's a pleasure to finally talk to you in person. I think I've read every article and monograph you've ever written."
"I'm not sure even you have clearance to read all of them, Major Finn, but I am quite flattered nevertheless."
"I'm particularly interested in your article about the personality traits of various Great Old Ones..."
Bruttenholm delicately cleared his throat, politely sending a message that further discussion regarding the hypothetical personalities of Pre-Cambrian deities would have to wait for another time.
"Sorry, sir. What can I do for you?"
"We need to make contact with a close acquaintance of yours, Major Finn," Bruttenholm said. "A Miss Buffy Summers."
"I don't think you need me for that, sir, she's pretty easy to find," Riley said. "She's even in the phone book, under her mother's name."
Riley felt a pang as he thought about the untimely passing of Joyce Summers. He had really liked her.
"Actually, Major Finn, that is precisely the point. Miss Summers and her closest acquaintances appear to have fled Sunnydale. Apparently, Miss Summers has elicited the enmity of a rather powerful God from a hell dimension."
"A God?" Riley was uncomfortable with the concept of calling any entity except the subject of his Lutheran Sunday School lessons "God".
"Yes, I share your lack of comfort with the concept," Bruttenholm replied, and Riley remembered that the man on the other end of the connection was a devout Roman Catholic. "But Glory is apparently worshipped as a God in her home dimension. She appears to be closely related to the Great Old Ones themselves. In fact, she may even be one of them."
"But...Buffy said she was just a 'hella strong skank with awful fashion sense!' How could that be a ...I mean, where are the non-Euclidian angles? The sanity destroying hideousness? The..."
"It doesn't matter," Buttenholm replied. "What matters is that this Glory is powerful enough that the Slayer, arguably the most accomplished one in history, has decided that discretion is the better part of valor.
"And we need Miss Summers, Major Finn. Desperately. It would be no exaggeration to say that the continued existence of our world is at stake."
...
K was uncomfortable. Usually, J rode in the passenger seat along with him, but now it was Zed. J was in the back seat.
Zed for the most part stayed at home base. It was the way things worked.
For Zed to insist on going with them meant that things were seriously wrong. This was more than just another world threatened with destruction scenario.
"So let me get this straight," J was saying. "The preds are threatening to blow up the Earth? I thought they considered us a game preserve. I thought they signed a treaty with us and everything."
"Yes," Zed replied. "But the preds now allege that we have broken the treaty. It's ridiculous. We have done no such thing. They knew they hunted here at their own risk."
"So what's their gripe, Zed?" K asked. "The preds don't strike me as the sore loser type."
"Their argument, K, is that we have been harboring exotic and extremely dangerous non-native wildlife, in violation of treaty. And they allege that we have failed to contain this exotic wildlife."
"Exotic?" asked J. "You mean some sort of alien species?"
"Of a sort, J," Zed replied. "Of a sort."
K maneuvered the disguised pseudo-car into an overgrown drive way. As a member of MIB, he figured that he knew every secret department every government on this world had, especially the United States government, but this was new. However, as he maneuvered the pseudo-car through the driveway, he recognized the sure signs of a super-secret government base. The planned lack of maintenance, the uninteresting landscaping and shabby ruins lining the driveway, all of which were calculated to bore civilians. It looked like an MIB or Second Department of State base, but this was neither. This was something different, something new that had been kept a secret even from him.
"What is this?" J asked. "Who are these guys?"
The nice thing about having J along was that he asked the questions K wanted answered without forcing the latter to give up his cultivated expression of cool detachment.
"The BPD," Zed replied. "And that's all I can tell you. One of them will have to tell you what the initials stand for."
"Do these guys know about us?" K asked. So much for cool detachment. K fingered the pen in his inside jacket pocket as he steered one handed.
"Only my counterpart, but don't worry about the damn pen, K," Zed replied. "These guys keep secrets comparable to ours, so a few new ones won't matter to them. And we can't be wiping each other's memories while we are all working together."
The familiar pattern held as K pulled the pseudo-car up to a gate. The gate was calculated to look minimally maintained, but it was actually very sturdy. It appeared to be made of the same alien steel alloy that reinforced MIB equipment.
K was unsurprised when two black suited men seemed to just appear on each side of his vehicle. The man on the driver's side was big, and as he tapped on the window with his left hand his right was under his jacket pocket.
The man looked in at the car, taking in the black suits and official aura of its occupants.
"ID's," the man said. K produced his fake FBI ID. The man took it and snorted.
"That's not good enough," the man said as he pulled a Beretta from out of his jacket pocket. Behind him, K knew that J had his "noisy cricket" out and at the ready.
"I'm sorry," Zed said, leaning carefully across K and showed the man his own Department of Defense ID. "Agent Clay, I presume? This man is with me and I believe that Mr. Bruttenholm is expecting us."
"Parker," Agent Clay spoke into his lapel. "Call in and ask if the boss man is expecting a Mr. Zedowski for company."
The man on the other side of the pseudo-car did not move, so there were clearly other men on the grounds, probably hidden behind the intentionally overgrown woods that lined the cracked driveway.
"Zedowski?" echoed J in a whisper.
"Shut up, J," Zed whispered back.
After a second, Agent Clay raised his free hand to his ear.
"Let 'em in," he said. He threw K's ID onto his lap, but carefully handed Zed's ID to him.
"You need to get your man a better FBI ID, Mr. Zedowski," Clay said to K. "I've got the real thing."
K drove through the gate. On the other side was an old rundown mansion and a massive brick courtyard. There were also five men in dark suits, three with high powered automatic rifles. One of the men with the rifles waved them to an empty spot on the courtyard to park. K was not surprised when their parking spot suddenly started to descend into an underground facility.
"Here we go," said J.
The underground facility looked a lot like MIB underground facilities, minus the aliens walking, flying, slithering, and hovering around. Instead, the facility was just full of men in black suits.
"Holy shit, K!" J exclaimed. "Is that guy who I think it is?"
K looked where J was pointing and saw three differently dressed men standing together. Well, at least two of them were men. One of them was an older, professorial looking type, his eyes blinking behind wired glasses. He wore a brown tweed suit. The other was a younger, big blond man with a black military looking outfit. He had a large bandage on the left side of his face.
The third man, if he was a man at all, was huge. His skin was as red as a tomato, and on his forehead were horns, cut and filed back. His right hand was several times bigger than his left, and looked like it was made of stone. And he had a red tail.
"Yep, that's Hellboy," K said. "Looking just like he does in the 'bloids."
"Oh man, don't tell me," J said. "We're joining forces with the monster hunters."
The platform elevator completed its descent.
"Go ahead and open the door, K," Zed said. As K opened the door, the older man stepped forward. K noticed that Hellboy followed the older man protectively.
"Gentlemen," the older man said. "I am Trevor Bruttenholm. Welcome to the Bureau for Paranormal Defense,"
"Toldja," J said.
...
Buffy was overwhelmed.
Giles was seriously wounded by a spear thrown by one of the Knights of Byzantium. Tara was losing what little control her fragile mind had, and Willow was clearly on edge. Spike and Xander were snarling at one another (well, OK, that was nothing new), and Dawn was barely holding herself together.
And then there was Gregor, the leader of the Knights, telling them that resistance was futile like some medieval version of the Borg.
Willow was working on putting a spell on the disconnected payphone in the abandoned gas stationed they were holed up in. She was having to be careful to cast that spell while not weakening her barrier spell, which was all that was protecting them from the growing army of knights outside.
"OK," Willow said. "I think I got it to work."
Buffy stepped forward, intending to call Ben, the young, good looking doctor she had met in Sunnydale Memorial Hospital. However, before she could take the receiver from Willow's hand, a voice came out of the phone.
Willow and Buffy looked at one another. The voice almost sounded like...
Buffy put the phone to her ear.
"Hey, Buffy," the voice said. "It's me, Riley. Hold tight. Help is on the way."