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Part 1
A hush fell over the Board of the Watchers when the Hunter entered the room. It was as if a shadow had passed over the assembly, a shadow heralding a long and bleak winter. She strode purposefully to the head of the table and eyed the Director with infinitely cold eyes.The old man shifted uncomfortably, then moved from his place to take a seat along the edge.
The Hunter stood at the head of the conference table, regarding the Board members silently for a long time, until throats began to clear and hands began to fidget.
Her voice was as clear as ice when she spoke.
“I’m here because you people screwed up. It’s that simple. And at this moment, I’m the only thing in God’s creation who can pull your balls out of this vise. I know it, Giles knows it, and deep down you know it.”
“I think …” said a fastidiously attired Board member from near the other end of the table.
The Hunter brought him up short with a look that could have frozen a sun.
“Excuse me?” she asked. “What did you say?”
The man cleared his throat. “I said, I think …”
“Let me make this perfectly clear. You do not think. If you people were any good at it, I wouldn’t need to be here right now. So from this moment forward, I think. You do not. Am I understood?”
“This is inviting disaster. The Metaphysical Council of Gaul clearly delineated the limits to your involvement. Anything else is completely unacceptable,” said a hatchet-faced woman.
Giles felt his jaw clench. She was one of the Board members who had voted to murder Buffy Summers in order to circumvent a prophecy that hadn’t even been translated correctly.
The Hunter’s voice was quiet when she spoke. “Yes, Ms. Einstadt. This is completely unacceptable. But I didn’t dig this grave. You did. I’m just the one with the ladder who’s going to try to get you out. But if you don’t want that, I’ll be glad to let the bulldozers plow the earth over top of you. I’ll even dance on the burial plot when they’re finished. Now, does anyone have anything else they’d like to add?”
Ms. Einstadt wasn’t finished. “We’ve managed just fine without you for a long time, Hunter. In fact, if it weren’t for Watcher Giles’ misguided affection for the Slayer, you wouldn’t be here now.”
The Hunter’s look was predatory. “Still trying to justify murder, are you? Let me try to put this in a way your little minds can understand. If it weren’t for Giles’ affection for the Slayer, if he’d let you kill her, I definitely wouldn’t be here now because you’d all be dead. This world would have fallen to Lillith Prophet and there’s not a soul who could have saved you besides myself. Now your Slayer is lost, and I really am your last hope in this universe. Get over it.”
When the silence had stretched into half a minute, she said, “No more comments? Good. Now, I can either do this with your cooperation, or I can go through you. It doesn’t matter to me either way. You children can put it to a vote, or whatever schoolyard nonsense floats your boat. I, however, have other things to do.”
She started for the door. “Well, are you coming, Giles?”
It was a pointed message on her part. It said that Giles’ fate was no longer the Board’s to decide. It was hers. There would be no Board assassins taking shots at him while the Hunter was in town. And if that was more than a little emasculating, Giles measured it against taking a rifle bullet in the back of the skull and decided that there really was nothing inherently wrong with a little bruise to the male ego.
* * *
“C’mon, Slick. Rise and shine,” said Angel to the figure lying in the large brass bed amid a tangle of black silk sheets.
He twirled the Louisville Slugger in one hand and swung it casually at the shutters covering a large window. The latch splintered and the shutters fanned open, revealing black paint covering the glass.
The man on the bed stirred and opened his eyes. “Wha’?”
“Now Slick, you got to know that sleeping above ground is just plain dumb for a vampire. Why, what would happen if this place burned down during the day and you couldn’t get into the sewers in time? Or, I know, what if some kids were playing baseball outside and one of them accidentally broke a window?”
Angel took up a batter’s stance and swung the Slugger into the darkened window. The pane shattered, streaming sunlight into the dim interior of the bedroom.
“Ah!” shouted the man in the bed as he scrambled away from the jagged rectangle of light that splashed onto the sheets.
“Steee-rike one!” Angel bellowed. He moved over to another pair of shutters.
“Angel? Angel, man, what the hell you doing man? Cut it out. This ain’t funny. Jesus, man.”
“Jesus? Jesus ain’t here at the moment, Slick. Just a really pissed off Angel.”
“What’s your damage, man?” asked Slick, now out of bed and moving as far from the intruding light as possible.
Angel moved deliberately into the bright shaft of sunlight and spread his arms. “Ta-da.”
“Oh, man. You’ve got to be kidding. It ain’t possible.”
Angel tapped the bat against the second pair shutters.
“Hey, man. Angel. Enough with that shit already, huh? Don’t make me get all vampiric on your ass. It’s too late in the day for that. I’m tired.”
“I don’t think you quite get the score here,” said Angel. He removed a can of butane lighter fluid from his pocket and began squirting it over the bed.
“I said that’s enough!” shouted Slick, his face distorting into the visage of the demon he was beneath the flesh.
“Yeah, Slick, it is,” said Angel, dropping the can and producing a miniature cutting torch from another pocket. He lit it, and adjusted the intense blue flame. “I figure you could probably get to me if you really wanted to. But then I’d almost certainly drop this torch, and with all this flammable stuff someone carelessly spilled all over your place … well, you get the picture. Maybe you’ll make it underground in time. Be an interesting bet, if I were a betting man.”
“Aw, no, man. Don’t do this,” said Slick.
“I’ll think about it. Let’s talk, maybe we can work out our differences. I’ve been reading some self-help books. I’m into the whole openness and communication thing.”
“Sure, Angel.”
“You know, I seem to recall that back when I spent time in Boston, you used to be just a font of useless knowledge. All sorts of trivia rattling around in that skull of yours.”
“Yeah, I know stuff, sure. Lotta stuff. You want to know something, that’s what this is about?”
“Smart boy. I’m looking for a way to find somebody lost in the demonic plane, bring them back here. You know of any spell or artifact that could help me do that?”
Slick rubbed his short beard. “I dunno, man. Kinda tough. Used to be spells that coulda done it. Nobody these days could figure ’em out good enough to cast ’em, though. Best bet’s a portal.”
“I’ve got a Leiffert Gate, but no return ticket. The only known beacon talisman was destroyed. And I’d need two, one for me to get back and one for the person I’m after.”
Slick shook his head. “No, man, you’re shit out of luck, you want to try that with a Leiffert. You don’t got any spare talismans, means they got misplaced along the line. Never find the things now. No, a Romanovsky Gate is what you need. Bring a whole freaking army through a Romanovsky, you want. That’d solve your problem.”
“You know where I could get my hands on a Romanovsky?”
“Could be I might of heard something. Pretty rare artifact. Maybe only one still in existence. Be pretty valuable information to a lot of people. All sorts of things a guy could do, he has a Romanovsky.”
“You forgetting the torch here, Slick?” asked Angel.
“Playing the odds is all. Maybe I make it underground and you end up with squat. Or maybe you make it worth my while, we do this like two adults, huh?”
“What do you want? And I’m not going to get you any victims. I’m out of that lifestyle.”
Slick glanced at the broken window. “Yeah, I figured. No man, all I want is you to whack a guy for me. Vamp name of Jimmy Stone. He’s trying to muscle in on some of my rackets. I can’t do nothing about it. Family politics, you remember the drill. But you do it, hey, I figure that ain’t my fault, right?”
“You’re a real mensch, Slick,” said Angel. “Okay, I’ll take this guy out. But you better come across with that information, or you’ll follow him into the dustbin. Got it?”
Slick scowled. “Yeah, like the freaking plague.”
* * *
Buffy slipped through the dark, cold streets of Pandemonium unnoticed. Almost seven months before, at the start of her journey, the demons that called the city home would have seen her for what she was and come for her in droves.
A lot had changed in those months. The new strength and power that burned somewhere deep inside her, the power that she’d once called on to defeat Lillith Prophet and regain her soul, hadn’t gone away completely. It was a familiar thing to her now, and if it wasn’t the blinding fire it had been when she’d defeated the Elder Power that had stolen part of her soul, it was at least a stable and reliable part of her.
Her abilities had changed. Giles had predicted that, although he couldn’t know how. She could sense evil much better these days, and things once invisible to her eyes had become visible. That was handy in a place where death often went unseen.
There was more, too. She’d discovered she could make herself blend in with the demons of Hell. Everything, she found, resonated a certain way. Living and undead and noncorporeal alike, all had a certain signature. She found she could alter her own signature so that, as far as anyone in Hell was concerned, she was one of them.
It worked well enough on the lower level demons. But Pandemonium was home to some of the most powerful denizens of the descending hierarchy of Hell. Whether she could fool them as easily remained to be seen. She wouldn’t take it on faith that she could. Better to be quick about her mission here.
She could easily see her ultimate destination from almost any vantage point in Pandemonium. The Cathedral Fortress that was the unholy see of this realm loomed black and large over its demonic charges, always there to remind the inhabitants who ruled and who served.
And if her information was correct, somewhere inside lay her way home. Somewhere, deep within that forbidding edifice, lay the Mephisto Threshold.