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Epilogue
“C’mon, Giles. Open up. It’s Prophet.”A beat passed, and Prophet added melodically, “I’ve got piz-za-a-a.”
Giles unlocked the deadbolts on his door and admitted the creature who looked so very much like Buffy Summers, yet was so profoundly and infinitely different inside.
Lillith entered with a bounce in her step, holding a pizza box and wearing a tee shirt that said, Ask Me About the Apocalypse.
“That’s a good boy,” she said, patting him on the head as she moved by him to open the box on his dining table.
She moved over to one wall and began to rummage around the wine rack . “I decided I really like pizza, Giles. I keep adding these things to my list of excuses to keep this planet in one piece. Ooh … a 1988 Chateau Margaux. A man of taste and breeding. I like that in a lower organism.”
“Please don’t take this as rude, but just why the hell are you here?” Giles asked.
“You love asking me that, don’t you?” asked Lillith as she took the bottle into the kitchen to uncork and pour it.
“No games, Lillith. Please.”
“I’ve got good news, and I’ve got not so good news. What do you want first.”
“The good news, I suppose,” said Giles.
A minute later, she set two glasses of wine down on the table and gestured for him to join her. When he finally relented, she said, “The good news is, it’s been decided to chalk this up as a victory for your side. It was supposed to be about whether the world at large could cooperate, but getting you, Angel, the Dark Hunter, and the Board to pull together on anything was such a long shot that they’re sort of counting it as sufficient evidence of at least a primitive ability to set aside differences in pursuit of a common goal.”
“And the bad news, I imagine, is that the destruction of Pandemonium was not met with universal acclaim.”
“Let’s put it this way,” said Lillith after taking a sip of her wine. “On the one to ten tick-off-the-Elder-Powers scale, wiping Pandemonium off the face of Hell rates about a hundred and fifty. People are pissed, Giles. This isn’t something that can be just swept under the rug, pretend like it never happened.”
“I feared as much. What’s going to happen now?”
“Well, you owe me big-time on this one, but I’ve managed to broker a compromise with my associates. They were prepared to just obliterate this entire planet, but I’ve gotten them to agree to one final test, make it or break it. This time, though, if you people fail, it won’t be Armageddon and the New Kingdom you’ll need to worry about. Lose the next one, and the Gehenna Matrix takes this world and makes it go away. Forever. It’s the best deal you’re going to get.”
“Why are you doing this, Lillith? Why stick your neck out for us?” asked Giles.
Lillith shrugged. “A year ago, I never would have. I’d have swatted your race aside without so much as a second thought. But I’ve shared Buffy Summers’ soul. I know what you people can be at your best. I think it’s worth letting you risk being your worst just to see if you can amount to something that might make the universe a better place.”
“I suppose I should thank you,” said Giles.
“I wouldn’t. Not yet. I just gave you a chance. I never said it was a particularly good one.”
“No, I don’t expect it is. But Buffy’s beaten you twice already. I expect she can do it again.”
Lillith smiled, and to Giles, there was something especially chilling in the expression. “That depends on the test, now, doesn’t it? And let me tell you, this one’s nothing you or she will ever expect.”
* * *
“The loss of the Dark Hunter at this juncture is problematic,” said the Director. “If the Elder Powers persist with the Armageddon Agenda, and there is no reason to believe they will not, any new host the Hunter may find will not have time to become an effective countervailing element. We will be relying on the Slayer exclusively, and that asset is still considered unreliable at best, and openly hostile to our plans at worst.”
“There’s always the Avatar Project,” said Ms. Einstadt.
The fastidiously attired man from the end of the table said, “Avatar carries with it certain risks that may prove … unsupportable. Nothing like this has ever been attempted.”
“The preliminary data are encouraging,” said the Director. “And the Avatar Project was conceived specifically for just this sort of contingency. There is every reason to believe that we now possess a weapon more powerful than the Slayer — quite possibly even more powerful than the Dark Hunter itself.”
The Director’s eyes scanned the Board members.
“I call for a vote,” said Ms. Einstadt.
The Director smiled a thin, bloodless smile. “I second the motion.”
* * *
“What’s wrong?” asked Angel as they stopped at the door to Buffy’s hotel room.
Buffy shook her head. “I’m sorry I haven’t been myself the past few days. It’s just that I’m the Slayer. Sacrificing myself, that’s something I’ve accepted as inevitable. Having someone sacrifice herself for me, someone I had begun to care about … it feels as if I failed her. As if I failed as the Slayer.”
“It was her choice, Buffy,” said Angel. “And I’ll always be grateful to her for it. It was a noble thing, and I know it’s natural for you to feel bad she had to do it. But it was her decision. You would have done the same thing, in her place.”
“I know,” she said very quietly. “But it still hurts like hell, and it’s going to take time. I have to understand it. I have to find out what she saw in the Slayer that was worth that kind of sacrifice. I owe her that. I owe myself that.”
Buffy started to unlock the door and Angel said, “Did you ever stop to think that, just maybe, Giles and Willow and I might actually see something more important than the Slayer when we look at you? That Elisa did, too? That when all is said and done, it’s Buffy Summers we love and not the Chosen One?”
She pushed open the door and paused for a moment before answering.
“Yeah,” she said. “Yeah, I have. And that only makes it worse, because I honestly don’t know if Buffy Summers is worth that kind of love.”
And with that she entered the empty room and was alone.
She poured herself a finger of vodka over ice and sat in the room’s garishly upholstered single chair for a long time. Finally, she said to the darkness, “Where the hell are you? I need to talk to you.”
As if on cue, tendrils of diffuse white light began to swirl around an invisible center near the middle of the room. They grew denser and brighter, until the apparition became a vague pillar of orbiting incandescence.
“I know it’s not over yet. I’m still having the dreams, still seeing the visions. The world still ends in fire, and deep down in my gut I know I can’t stop it. Not by myself,” she said.
Buffy closed her eyes and pressed the cool glass against her forehead. “I can’t do this alone. Elisa couldn’t do it alone. It’s going to take the both of us, and I know that. Damn you to hell, Hunter, but I do know it. If neither the Slayer nor the Dark Hunter can win this fight, let’s see what a Dark Slayer can do.”
END————————————————————-
Really boring technical stuff for grognards* and nitpickers:
The effectiveness of modern weapons against demons in the Buffy-verse was pretty convincingly established in “Innocence”, prophecy loopholes or no. I’ve simply taken that premise a step further, and tried to give a nod to legend and lore by invoking two metals traditionally effective against diabolical minions: silver and iron.
The firepower in the hands of a single modern infantry squad is truly staggering. In fact, the Dark Angels in the story would probably be considered to be traveling a bit light by the standards of, say, a typical 8-man SEAL squad, but since I wasn’t interested in writing a Tom Clancy novel, I didn’t really want to bog you the gentle reader down with the likely inventory mix of M60 machine guns, M203 grenade launchers, M67 grenades, Primacord and M18 Claymore mines (among other things). My feeling is that such military minutiae are not the primary interest of most Buffy fans (nor are they mine), and would have only served to grind the action to a shuddering and ponderous halt. I mention them here in passing only so that I can’t be accused of not cracking the books on the subject.
But, says the observant armchair Patton, if nine people with M16s can hold off nearly two regiments of demons (I don’t know what Hell considers a regiment. Let’s guess and call it 400 assorted bad guys. Who’s going to say we’re wrong?), what chance would Hell’s invasion have had in the modern world? A pretty good one, speculatively speaking, since the last time I browsed the Jane’s books at the bookstore, none of our weapons platforms came equipped with a Disjunction Generator. Magic would be the great equalizer, and besides, those pesky demons can be pretty tricky when they get going.
*grognard: a veteran and an expert. Knows it all and complains constantly
about every last bit of it.