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Chapter 32
A Friend is Just an Enemy You Haven’t Made Yet
“That was simple enough,” said Cade, regarding the still form of the Slayer in the alley below. He looked up and fixed his gaze on Lillith. “And now for you.”“I’m not that easy,” said Lillith even as she called a familiar spell to mind.
Fire raced along the wall toward Cade, unstoppable and purifying. It engulfed him and swirled around him, but Cade remained untouched. He made a small gesture and the fire retreated and receded leaving him unmarked.
“Tired tricks from a tired being,” said Cade. “I almost pity you, Lillith. Almost, but not quite.”
Lillith made a lunge for Buffy’s discarded sword and was staggered backward by a backhanded blow across her jaw. Pain exploded through her head, and hot needles of light danced in her vision. Her mind fuzzy, she fumbled for another spell, this one a transmutation.
To Hell with the direct approach, she thought as a thin layer of stone beneath Cade’s feet changed at the molecular level. Bonds broke and reformed, molecules reconfiguring, a regular crystal lattice forming from an initial seed to transform the chaotic molecular structure of the rough stone into something else.
Cade moved toward her only to have one foot slip on the new, unnaturally smooth surface, forcing him to go down on one knee to prevent himself from falling. For Lillith, it was an opportunity. She grabbed the sword and in one fluid move, arced it toward his neck.
Her eyes widened in surprise when the weapon met steel instead of flesh and bone. From beneath his black robes, Cade had produced a sword of his own, a blade of dull black that to Lillith’s senses radiated magic like heat from a bonfire.
For a moment, the two adversaries stood face to face, swords locked, and Lillith looked deeply into the coldest eyes she had ever seen. Then Cade shoved her away and moved onto normal stone.
Lillith took a deep breath and found her center. She was an Elder Power. Trapped in a mortal shell, true, but she was still an Elder Power. This thing that she faced was about to find out exactly what that meant.
“So be it,” she said.
She attacked and Cade countered, steel clanging on steel in an almost continuous, percussive symphony as two creatures of inhuman reflexes and abilities forgot all about magic and sorcery and instead sought to kill one another by more primal, but equally lethal, means.
* * *
“Who are you?” Willow asked the one-eyed Buffy when Elisa Hunter finally decided they’d put enough distance between them and the Parasites.
“They’re parallel reality versions of themselves,” said the vampiric Cordelia. “I met them before Buffy and I came here.”
The alternate, leather-clad Cordelia replaced the two spent shells in her shotgun and said, “She’s right. Lot of different Earths out there, Willow. Lot of different versions of us. Think of the four of us as the Ghostbusters with major attitude.”
She racked a 12-gauge shell into the chamber. She smiled at Willow and said, “Hey, it’s a living.”
From behind Buffy’s damaged twin, Faith said, “I hate to break up this little interdimensional Slayerette reunion, but we’ve got bugs to hunt.”
“She’s right,” said Buffy. “Let’s save the talk for the Pub. We’ve got to secure the generator if Buffy Two Six Alpha is going to have any chance of making it back in one piece.”
“Buffy Two Six Alpha?” asked Willow as the group made its way back through the complex.
“That’s your Buffy’s Vauxhall Reality Matrix designation,” said Elisa. “It references her reality of origin. I’m McKenna One-Twenty-Two Sierra Tango, but everyone just calls me Mac S.T. for short. Faith hails from reality Six One Whiskey Kilo. The gruff and rough Buff here is the Three Echo Foxtrot vintage. And Cordy’s Chase Niner Bravo.”
“This is all a little confusing,” said Willow. “And not confusing in the fun way, like being in a hedge maze, unless of course it’s the one from The Shining, in which case maybe that’s a pretty accurate example.”
“You get used to it,” said Mac Sierra Tango. “But it does give the phrase ‘being your own best friend’ a whole new meaning.”
Buffy Echo Foxtrot raised a hand and brought the group to a halt.
“Something wicked this way comes,” she said.
“I’m not getting anything on the tactical,” said Faith. “Anyone know what part of the spectrum these things emit in?”
“They’re Phase Parasites, we think. They grow and multiply by feeding off electrical or bioelectrical energy — as far as we can tell, anyway. The big problem is that they might be time-shifted right now, in which case you won’t be able to see them,” said Willow.
“Oh, great,” groaned Faith.
The others readied weapons and Mac turned to Willow.
“Echo-Fox has a serious sixth sense for this game. Aside from the Dark Hunter, I’ve never seen anything like it,” she said quietly.
“Shhh,” said Echo Fox softly. “We’re about to have some company. Everyone mind their manners in front of the guests.”
* * *
Dimly, as if through a dark haze, Buffy saw Lillith falter in her fight as all-too human fatigue eroded the Elder Power’s reflexes. Loose fragments of stone crumbled beneath Lillith’s boots and cascaded down to the alley as she was pushed to the edge of the wall by Cade’s onslaught.
Lillith was putting up a good fight for someone who was no less flesh and blood now than anyone else. But Buffy knew that it would never be enough to win. Thousands of years before, when the Avatar first came forth to destroy the world, it had taken hundreds of Elder Powers and thousands of demons to defeat it. What chance, then, did one lone woman have against it, Elder Power or no?
Maybe just one, thought Buffy as she waged her own losing battle against looming unconsciousness and inevitable death. Fighting past the numbness and cold that tried to overwhelm her, she managed to work her service Magnum clear of its holster and raise it with a blood-slicked hand.
Perhaps, just perhaps, the enchanted silver rounds would be unexpected enough, enough of a surprise, to give Lillith a chance. It was a desperately thin hope, but she was out of time and out of options.
The gun wavered in her weak grasp, and she fought to focus and merge the double vision that made aiming impossible. Somewhere deep inside, she found the last, dying embers of the Slayer, and her aim steadied. Her vision for just a few precious seconds became clear. For one last, brief moment, she was the Slayer once more.
Buffy fired and the gun’s recoil felt terribly harsh. She was aware of the bullet striking its target, aware of Cade staggering backwards, caught unprepared by a weapon that had no parallel in his world. The vampire-killing round had been enchanted just strongly or subtly enough that it found its way through the Avatar’s preoccupied defenses. The bullet took him in the shoulder amid a spray of red, shattering bone, tearing muscles and ligaments, severing arteries.
He would heal quickly. Lillith never gave him the chance. Buffy saw her react instantly to the opening, raw sorcerous fire flashing from her outstretched hand and streaking unerringly toward Cade.
Buffy recognized the spell. Lillith had used it against her once, a lifetime ago.
The flame engulfed Cade, and this time the Avatar had no time to counter with either disjunction or magical defense. His robes caught fire instantly, and he staggered backward, blinded, to stumble and fall into the alley on the far side of the wall.
Buffy managed a small, satisfied smile before she closed her eyes and let death come for her.
* * *
Three Parasites time-shifted into view less than ten yards away.
A driving rain of weapons fire greeted them almost instantly. The projectiles gouged molten globules from the creatures and they retreated amid a cacophony of high-pitched shrieks that sounded for all the world like rusty iron scraped down a blackboard.
In a flash the three of them disappeared through the grating of a small air conditioning vent.
“Shit,” snarled Faith. “I hate it when the bad guys live to fight another day.”
Mac chewed her lower lip and appeared lost in weighty thoughts. Finally, she said, “These things need to be contained — at all costs.”
“Sterilization protocol?” asked Buffy Echo Fox.
Mac nodded grimly.
“Bitchin’,” said Faith with a smile on her lips.
“Would one of you like to explain just exactly what a ‘bitchin’ sterilization protocol constitutes in this case?” asked Willow.
“It means we have to take extreme measures to make absolutely sure we stop these Phase Parasites of yours. If they escape the complex and feed off any bioelectrical energy they come across, before you know it this planet will be overrun with the them. We have to destroy this place and everything in it,” said Mac.
“But the wormhole generator,” protested Willow. “If we destroy it, we won’t be able to get the others back from Hell!”
“How do you think we got here?” asked Faith.
“Faith’s right,” said Elisa. “All I have to do is get into the lab and download the quantum coordinates from your generator, and we can plug them into ours back in Pubspace.”
“Getting back into the lab being, of course, the thorny problem at the moment,” said Echo Fox.
“We do it the old fashioned way,” said Mac. “We find the weak point in the perimeter, and we go there. And anything that gets in between will wish it hadn’t.”
* * *
“You’re right … shouldn’t have pissed him off,” said Buffy, the words almost inaudible.
“Shh. Everything’s going to be all right. Just rest,” said Lillith, feeling tears on her cheeks. She’d never cried before, never felt this kind of loss and helplessness in all her millions of years of existence. How did humans stand it?
“You used to be … such a good liar, Lillith.”
“I won’t let you die. I won’t let you leave me, damn it,” said Lillith, her voice strained. “You’re all I have. My only friend.”
“If I’m your friend … hate to see … your enemies list,” Buffy gasped. “Tell Angel and Elisa … tell them all I love them. Tell them I’m sorry. So sorry.”
The Slayer managed to raise her hand and Lillith interlaced her fingers with Buffy’s. Then Lillith felt Buffy falling away into a dark emptiness, into the finality of death, and she knew what had to be done.
She released the Slayer and with the point of the Masamune katana began scribing glyphs in the ground around them.
“You tell them yourself, Buffy. We’ll tell them together.”