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Part 8
Through her military-issue binoculars, Elisa scanned the brooding, dark city from the strike team’s hiding place among the broken and hulking rocks of a ridge just over a mile away.She’d been to this city ages ago, over a dozen lifetimes in the past. It had changed some since then, grown larger like a black stone tumor. Areas once affluent had become shadowed ghettos, and new precincts had emerged to take their place. The perverse and twisted architecture had evolved, too, subject to the changing tastes and demented whims of the ruling powers.
But one thing remained the same in Pandemonium. The great Cathedral Fortress still stood in its festering heart, an edifice of grim majesty that loomed oppressively over the cursed city that spread out around it. It was where she knew the Mephisto Threshold lay, where soon an army of evil would step out of this world and into hers, turning her home into a place as barren and bleak as this damned and doomed plane.
If that happened, it would be over her dead body.
She was pulled from her thoughts by Angel.
“If these Signature Cloaks of yours don’t work, we’re dead, you know,” he said.
Before she could answer him, Giles said, “They should function as intended, from what I’ve seen of the specifications. A very clever bit of thaumaturgical engineering, actually. I’d always suspected it was possible to remodulate a person’s etheric signature as a sort of camouflage. There are certain artifacts, amulets and so forth, that appear to do something very similar …”
“Giles,” said Hunter.
“Yes?”
“The physics lecture can wait. The Signature Cloaks work. R&D has tested them extensively. To the residents of this plane, your etheric harmonics will look native. Just keep the damn firepower under wraps. Hechler & Koch submachine guns aren’t exactly standard hardware around here.”
She looked back toward the three strike team members who were with them. “Aston, did you double-check those explosives?”
The hard-faced British demolitions expert nodded. “Five by five, ma’am. We’re ready to rock the house down.”
“Good. Parks, you take the rear. I’m on point. Aston, Rodriguez, you’re babysitting. Let’s move out.”
* * *
The guard never saw Buffy, never knew she was even there until the knife slid into what passed for his demonic heart.
“Damn, you’re good,” said Jenny.
“Good at killing. Great resumé item. Knocks ’em dead in job interviews,” said Buffy. She glanced up and down the long stone corridor. “I’d have expected a lot more guards.”
“I’m sure they never thought they’d need them,” said Jenny. “You just slipped us past half a dozen of the trickiest wards I’ve ever seen. I’ll say it again. You’re good. And not just at killing.”
“Thanks. I think this is one time I’ll take lucky over good, though.”
The corridor opened onto the cavernous amphitheater, the sinister Mephisto Threshold at its center. Buffy made her way purposefully to the great machine, Jenny close behind.
“What are you going to do?” asked Jenny.
“I’m not certain. I need to find out how this works, see if I can find some weakness we can exploit.”
“I’m not sure how we can do that. Not without a full thaumaturgical laboratory at our disposal and a few weeks, anyway.”
“I don’t think that’ll be necessary,” said Buffy as she placed her palm against the cool metal of the Threshold and closed her eyes. Looking within herself, she found the cold, distant fire of her newfound abilities. Then she shifted her mind away from it, opening her senses up to the artifact under her hand. A sense of unparalleled strangeness washed over her. Strangeness and immense power, woven together in a fantastically complex mystical tapestry.
Slowly, and without conscious thought, Buffy allowed herself to become one with that tapestry. She moved along its warp and woof, traced its intricacies and contours, and eventually came upon what she sought.
There was a flaw in the Threshold. As durable as the artifact was, as painstakingly constructed, the millennia had take their toll in subtle ways. Oh, the Threshold would still work, but imperfections had crept into its materials and its magic. Entropy was one law even Hell couldn’t circumvent.
Buffy opened her eyes and withdrew her hand. She looked at Jenny.
“The good news is, I can definitely void the warranty on this sucker. But I need to get through the protection enchantments to the actual metal. Can you do a disjunction? Interrupt the magical lines of force that run through this thing?”
Jenny nodded. “Sure. For a few minutes.”
“Good …” began Buffy. She stiffened and scanned the amphitheater and galleries, but she didn’t see anything. She didn’t need to see the demons to know they were coming, though. “We’re going to have company soon. They know we’re here. It’s now or never.”
Jenny stepped back. She concentrated for a few moments, then began to recite an incantation in Latin. The words seemed to reverberate out of all proportion to their volume, as if the walls itself were resonating in phase with the magic that was forming into a spell within the chamber. Jenny ended the spell with emphasis and the Threshold seemed to shimmer slightly for just an instant.
“Whatever you’re going to do, you’d better do it now. I don’t know how long the disjunction will remain in effect,” she said.
Buffy gave a sharp nod and drew Slayer. She took a deep breath, then with two hands, she swung the sword in a powerful arc. The blade tore through one of the Threshold’s imperceptible faults behind an invisible edge of magic, striking a shower of sparks as enchanted metal impacted enchanted metal. Then the blade itself shattered, leaving a foot of its length embedded in the dark bulk of the Mephisto Threshold.
“Nothing,” said Jenny.
“Nothing yet,” Buffy corrected. “This whole thing has a very delicate and complex spell matrix infused into it. We just obliterated a chunk of it. We power this thing up, it ought to do a pretty good job of destroying itself, wouldn’t you say?”
“I hope you’re right, because it looks like we’re only getting one shot at this,” said Jenny.
Buffy followed her gaze to the first gray wave of the Cathedral Fortress’ defenders, entering through the ceremonial arch at the far end of the chamber. These were much different from the sentry she’d killed in the hallway. Buffy had seen their kind before. They were called Guardian Demons, tall and eyeless and gaunt, but immensely powerful and able to draw off life energy with a mere touch. Buffy had only fought one in her seven months in Hell, and it had been the closest she’d come to death since her fight with Prophet.
“Here goes nothing, then,” she said, placing her hand on the same symbol the first sorcerer had used to activate the Threshold.
The rest of the symbols flared red, as they had done before, but now blue tongues of magical energy lapped around the break in the Threshold’s continuity. Quickly, Buffy activated twelve other symbols at random, selecting whatever was within reach.
The machine’s rising pulsation vibrated through building, and once again the center of the Threshold undulated with blue-gray light. The light grew silver, then began to bend into the vortex.
And then something went very wrong with the Mephisto Threshold.
The whole outer ring began to shudder, as if it were unbalanced. Then the fissure Buffy had created widened like a stress fracture in a piece of limestone. The Threshold groaned like a submarine rising from depth, and the vortex took on an odd, agitated look. The massive mountings that held the gateway in place began to vibrate and protest.
“I think we’d better hunt cover, and fast,” said Buffy.
“That way,” said Jenny, pointing to a small exit in the direction most directly opposite that of the approaching guards.
They were almost there when the Mephisto Threshold ceased to exist.
The explosion tore the great metal ring apart, the concussion sending the two saboteurs sprawling as it rocked the entire Cathedral Fortress on its foundations. Heavy blocks of masonry fell from the shattered dome, stirring up clouds of fine stone dust. A deep rift opened in front of them, pitching part of the floor up at an angle.
Buffy and Jenny looked back at where the Threshold had been to see a nightmare being born.
* * *
Somewhere in the direction of the Cathedral Fortress, something very much like thunder split the air.
Elisa held up a hand, bringing the company to a halt in a dark, narrow alley. Dressed in worn and dirty longcoats, their heads wrapped in woolen rags against the cold, the six members of the strike team looked as forlorn and hopeless as any other denizen of the dismal city. But the longcoats were actually the disguised Signature Cloaks, with a special alloy mesh woven into them that was imprinted with the magical formulae to alter the wearer’s ethereal harmonics.
She poked her head around the corner and saw a knot of people and minor demons milling about in the thoroughfare, their attention focused on a stream of smoke rising lazily from the central dome of the Cathedral Fortress.
Returning to her team, she said, “Something’s taken a chunk out of the amphitheater where they keep the Threshold. My guess is, that’s where we’ll find our missing Slayer. I think we’re a little late to the party.”
“What do we do now?” asked Giles.
“We’ll have to continue on to the Cathedral, make certain the objective has been destroyed. That’s also our best chance of finding Summers, I think. But everybody stay extra alert out there. If there’s trouble, security’s going to be a bitch around here very quickly. This thing could become a goatscrew of epic proportions in heartbeat if we don’t stay on top of it,” said Hunter.
“Um … ‘goatscrew’?” asked Giles.
“It’s technical,” said Aston.
“All right. Enough with the made-for-cable banter. Let’s move out,” said Hunter, motioning them forward into the crowded avenue.
* * *
The Mephisto Threshold was gone but for the blasted remains of its mountings and a small arc of the metal ring. But something worse had taken its place.
Where the vortex had tried to form, there was now a roiling sphere of energy nearly twenty yards across. It seemed to gather itself into a coherent mass and then appeared to turn inside out. Immediately, loose pieces of debris began to fall toward its maw to be swallowed whole. Many of the guards, who had just tried to resume their pursuit of the intruders, suddenly found themselves in the grip of something far worse than Hell. The others fled in panic, self-preservation overriding duty.
“What is that?” asked Buffy.
Jenny looked frightened. “It’s the vortex. It must have reached equilibrium before the Threshold went. It’s self-sustaining now, and without the Threshold there’s no way to shut it off. We have to get out of here. Now.”
Buffy tried to stand and screamed as her right leg gave out from under her. She looked down to see a six-inch long shard of metal from the Threshold impaling her left thigh.
Jenny grasped the situation quickly, and without giving Buffy any warning, she yanked the fragment sharply from the Slayer’s leg.
“Ow!” yelled Buffy.
“You’ll live. I think it missed any major arteries. I’ll still need to tie it off,” said Jenny, keeping one eye on the slowly expanding rogue vortex. “I’ll have to make it quick, though. The Great Void isn’t my idea of a vacation destination.”
Jenny hastily shrugged out of her coat, cut off a sleeve with a small dagger, and bound Buffy’s leg tightly just above the wound. Buffy closed her eyes and hissed at the white hot pain the action sent through her leg.
At that moment, something odd began to happen a few yards away. The air took on the now-familiar shimmer of an impending portal. The shimmer became a bright white circle, so blindingly pure that it was painful to look at directly. Both women knew instinctively what it was.
“Your ticket out of here. Destroying the Threshold must have counted as your act of redemption,” said Buffy.
“Bad timing,” said Jenny. The Threshold vortex crept ever closer, now tearing through support columns and destabilizing the whole structure dangerously.
“Go on,” said Buffy. “This may be your only chance. I’ll be fine.”
Jenny looked from the portal to the encroaching vortex to Buffy. A look of despair gave way to one of firm resolve. “No, you won’t be. Sorry, Buffy, but we got into this together, we’re going to see it through together.”
Their eyes met, and there was no need for Buffy to say “thank you”. It and much more passed wordlessly between them, at a level that people connected on only very rarely.
Jenny draped Buffy’s arm across her shoulders and helped the injured Slayer to her feet. “C’mon. Time to get the hell out of here.”
* * *
It had, indeed, become a goatscrew of epic proportions, thought Giles.
They’d reached the main plaza outside the Cathedral Fortress only to find that something had gone very, very wrong in Pandemonium. The Cathedral was being torn apart from within, and whatever was doing the tearing was getting bigger.
And it was scaring demonic creatures in swarms from the structure. All kinds of demonic creatures. Giles was able to note the appearance of two fire trolls, a Black Reaver, some hulking thing that might have been a sentient Golem, five skeletal Death Knights, and worst of all, at least a dozen Guardian Demons.
The eyeless horrors, any one of which could tear a man in two in a second, started across the plaza in a fluid blur of motion at odds with their gaunt and ungainly appearances, but halfway across they stopped as a body, sniffing the air through the disfigured slits that served as noses.
Guardian Demons, Giles knew, could smell life from miles away. And they didn’t like it. But the Signature Cloaks should have been enough to fool them, unless one was malfunctioning. Giles didn’t have time to puzzle it out. In the space of an eye blink, the Guardians turned as a group and leapt forward in a gray haze of speed. Their target was Elisa Hunter.
No, thought Giles, not Elisa Hunter. The Dark Hunter. That had to be it. The Cloaks were optimized for human signatures. The Hunter entity was something else entirely.
“Weapons free!” yelled Elisa, and the plaza exploded in a frenzy of violence the likes of which even the Watcher had never seen in his life.
* * *
About fifty yards into the corridor leading from the disintegrating amphitheater, Buffy and Jenny pulled up short. Coming toward them down the passage were five Guardian Demons, scrambling along the debris-littered hallway and eager for a kill.
“Detour,” announced Jenny, and she hastily turned them toward a side corridor that led to an ascending stone staircase.
“Up may not be the best idea here,” said Buffy.
“Given a choice among the vortex, the Guardians, and up, which do you prefer?” asked Jenny.
Buffy looked at her and nodded. “Right. Up.”
Even with Jenny’s help, it was a painful climb up the steep flight of stairs, but the sounds of destruction approaching from behind kept Buffy moving.
They emerged at the top of the stairs onto a wide observation deck that overlooked both the city before them and the Cathedral Fortress behind them. The problem was, there was increasingly less of the Cathedral behind them with every passing moment, and there appeared to be no other way down.
The expanding vortex tore through the remains of the Cathedral’s majestic domed ceiling and began the building’s final destruction, collapsing the roof as it continued its inevitable advance.
Silhouetted against the approaching blue fire of the Threshold vortex, the two women stood on the edge of the Cathedral, looking down at the street five stories below with nowhere to run.
“You know something?” asked Buffy. “I really, really hate cliffhangers.”