Big Bad, page 3
She still felt human. Just wrinkly and human. The worst of both worlds.
Her face heating up with an embarrassed flush, she cleared her throat and tried again. “Wish granted!”
And again, she felt nothing. No wellspring of unlimited creation. Not even a hiccup of power. Complex Wishes like bringing someone back from the dead meant creating a pocket dimension where the killing blow had never happened. Normally when Anya set out to create a new Wishverse, her magic became linked to the ever-expanding infinite schema of timelines and universes. She should have been able to sense all the other worlds created by vengeance demons. Worlds where losers were heroes, the dead lived, where only famous people worked in coffee shops and constantly fell in love with their customers.
She couldn’t even sense the world without shrimp.
Something was definitely wrong.
Andrew shifted his weight uneasily from foot to foot while Jonathan skittered out of the way of Human-Mike’s passive-aggressive mopping.
Anya gripped her amulet between her thumb and forefinger. It was cold to the touch and refused to glow, no matter how much she mentally begged it to connect her to its Creation magic.
“This almost never happens,” she said, flinching a sheepish smile at the boys. “Unless the Powers That Be have a particular reason for not wanting someone to stay dead. Your friend wasn’t politically important, was he?”
“He was an intern at City Hall,” Andrew said.
“So, no,” Jonathan said.
“He was really good at building robots,” Andrew said. “Do you think that they want him to stay dead so he won’t accidentally create Skynet?”
“I knew we shouldn’t have called the party-bots T-800s!” Jonathan said, stamping his foot. Blood splattered out of his canvas sneakers. “Even as a joke, I knew we were tempting fate!”
“Oh, this is your friend who makes the femme-bots?” Anya said. She had a vague recollection of Andrew talking ad nauseam about the genius of his friend turning some old toy parts into automaton girlfriends. Anya had been fairly disgusted by the idea of women created only to “party” with Andrew’s little gang and had stopped listening in favor of wondering if she could honor the vengeance Wish of a robot against its creator. She supposed if Warren stayed dead, she’d never get to find out. Heaving a sigh, she said, “This glitch is probably just a paperwork thing. I haven’t been into the office since I moved to earth. Let me call my supervisor real quick.”
Andrew turned around and started to call out to Human-Mike before Anya cut him off.
“No, God, not him. My real supervisor.”
She pulled a second necklace out of her collar. This one had a much smaller jewel and had been given to her eleven hundred years ago during her brief human life. She curled her hand around the talisman and cried out, “Blessed be the name of D’Hoffryn!”
After a moment’s pause, there was a crackle of indoor lightning that made Human-Mike spill his dirty mop water. Andrew and Jonathan yipped, jumping out of the way.
A deep voice boomed, “Behold D’Hoffryn, lord of Arashmaharr! He that turns the air to blood and rains death upon—ahem. A little help, if you please?”
Anya peered over the counter. Her longtime boss, D’Hoffryn, the master of all vengeance demons, had materialized as a disembodied blue head on the floor between Jonathan’s feet. The boy’s eyes bulged as he staggered backward.
“Get that thing off my floor!” Human-Mike cried, backing away from the soapy puddle he’d made.
“Andrew, pick him up,” Anya said, flapping a hand at what was left of D’Hoffryn. “He’s one of the Lower Beings of hell, for God’s sake. Show some respect.”
“He’s pretty low right now,” Jonathan said.
Andrew reached down, both of his hands shaking as he lifted D’Hoffryn’s spiky blue head and set it on the handoff counter between him and Anya.
“Anyanka,” D’Hoffryn said. Andrew’s hands had left smears of dark blood on the Lower Being’s cheeks. His goatlike beard brushed the counter as he spoke. “I’m glad you called. As you can see, there’s been trouble in Arashmaharr.”
“What happened to your body?” Anya asked with what could have been considered a shriek. D’Hoffryn was usually over six feet tall and sturdily built under a brown velvet robe he’d been wearing since the dawn of time. Seeing him without limbs was perturbing.
D’Hoffryn side-eyed Andrew and Jonathan. “Who are these mortals?”
“Coworkers,” Anya said. “They’re harmless.”
“Mostly harmless,” Andrew said under his breath. For some reason, this made him and Jonathan snicker.
D’Hoffryn glared at them for a moment before his gaze slid back to Anya. “My body was cleaved in twain.”
“Cleaved?” Anya asked. “By whom? Or what?”
Anya didn’t know of anyone who would dare attack one of the Lower Beings. Outranked in hell only by the primordial Old Ones, the Lower Beings had their own magic beyond what was granted to the vengeance demons by their connection to the Marnoxon gem. D’Hoffryn could teleport and fly and shoot fire out of his hands—when he had hands.
“Yesterday,” D’Hoffryn said with a weary sigh, “a slayer gained entry into Arashmaharr—”
“Who left a talisman where a slayer could get to it?” Anya asked, aghast at the thought.
“Lloyd, we believe. He was found dead here in Demondale, his amulet missing,” D’Hoffryn said. A chill ran up Anya’s back as she pictured a fellow vengeance demon murdered in the town where she lived. Lloyd wasn’t some soft-skinned former human, either. He’d been an Asphyx demon with shoulders sharp as pikes. “His talisman brought the slayer directly to the office. She was wielding an ax twice her size and slaughtered everyone that came between her and the Marnoxon gem. There are very few survivors. Only those of us with magic of our own are even able to leave the scene.”
Horrified, Anya pictured the vast hallways of Vengeance LLC, terrorized by a mythical vampire hunter. She imagined the cubicles splattered with blood, her coworkers for the last millennium hacked to pieces. If Anya hadn’t taken her sabbatical, she would have been one of them. Instead of blending smoothies, she would have been murdered by a slayer.
Had there been any survivors? Halfrek? Frex? Balash? The gods? The chatty receptionist?
Ugh. Anya wasn’t sure she wanted to live in a universe where that girl lived but Lloyd didn’t. Even with his penchant for pranks, Lloyd had been a good demon. He always brought everyone in the office topside souvenirs when he returned from a long mission. He used to leave earth coins on Anya’s desk because he knew she collected money.
“Excuse me, sorry,” Jonathan said. “What’s a slayer?”
“The bogeyman for vampires. When they’re bad, the Powers That Be send the slayer to stake them,” Anya said distractedly. She had heard rumors of slayers before, but never actually seen one. Until this moment, she’d assumed it was just what vamps called any human strong enough to kill more than one of the undead. “Why would a slayer want the Marnoxon gem?”
The gem was the most precious item in Arashmaharr, if not in all of hell’s many dimensions. Housed in the deepest bowels of Vengeance LLC, it was guarded at all times by no fewer than five armed demons. Anya herself had only glimpsed it on her very first walk-through of the office when D’Hoffryn had cut a sliver of it to make her amulet.
“What’s a Marnoxon gem?” Andrew asked.
“And does it look like a piece of Kryptonite?” Jonathan asked.
“Is that another space reference?” Anya asked, annoyed.
“Technically,” Andrew said, shoulders coming up to his ears. “Krypton is the planet Superman is from. Kryptonite is a green rock. I mean, it comes in a lot of colors, but the classic—”
D’Hoffryn cut him off. “The Marnoxon is a large green gem. A piece of Creation.” He did his best to nod toward Anya, but accidentally slid himself toward the edge of the counter. Anya nudged him back to safety as he continued, “Anyanka wears a piece of it around her neck, as do all vengeance demons. It is what allows them to create and destroy as a Wish dictates. Without it, Vengeance LLC and all in its employ are powerless.”
“Which means, without it, I can’t bring your friend back to life,” Anya told Andrew and Jonathan. Her head swam as she imagined being stuck on earth, completely powerless. No extra vengeance money. No superstrength. Would she age at an accelerated rate? Her immortality was directly tied to her contract with Vengeance LLC. Was that a wrinkle she felt forming on her forehead? No, she was being ridiculous. She could still transform into her demon self. She just didn’t have any magic. “We need to get that gem back.”
“So,” Andrew said, wringing his bloody hands. “We need to find someone who knows how to stop a slayer?”
OUT OF THE spiraling dark falls the Slayer. The staff in her hand towers over her, the glow of the green gem illuminating the night. From one darkness to another. Of course.
If the whiny little British man she beat up at the magic store was right, then the staff can only point her toward the most malevolent places on earth. Something about the spell cast on it constantly searching for the closest pinnacle of evil. Which means that—combined with the magical portal-creating gem that she filched from Vengeance LLC—it should have no trouble taking her on a tour of hells on earth.
She takes a moment to close her eyes and wait for the new world to stop spinning. It’s official. She hates portal travel. This ride was as vertigo-inducing as the one that first landed her in Demondale. Hopefully this doesn’t mean she’s jumped forward in time again. Demondale is a full two years ahead of where she started.
Although she’ll take queasy-twirly portals and time-jumps over talismans to hell anytime. Even after she’d been trapped in Demondale, seeing the vengeance-demon dimension had been horrific. The moment she had landed outside of Vengeance LLC, she had learned there is a big difference between a colony of hell and an actual hell dimension. Demondale might be full of monsters, corruption, and unnatural nighttime, but it was still on earth.
Arashmaharr, on the other hand, was definitively not earth. It was somewhere with burning skies, sulfurous stink, and throngs of demons wearing business casual. Truly horrifying.
Opening her eyes, nothing jumps out at her as indisputably hellish. Unlike the world under the sunshade, this version of Sunnydale still has the ability to grow plants. The Slayer leans down and runs her hands through the grass, delighting in its prickly softness. In Demondale, most of the parks and lawns have been replaced with Astroturf. One of the many reasons she wants to destroy it.
But first, she needs to make sure her intel is correct. If this gem can really end Hell on Earth, then there’s a chance she can send herself back. Inside the portal, she saw all the evil Sunnydales, dozens of entry points all leading to something rotten. One of them has to be the hellmouth she calls home.
After a month trapped in Demondale, this is the Slayer’s first flicker of hope.
Once there are no dimensions more evil than her own Sunnydale, the green gem will have no choice but to point her back to her Sunnydale.
She just has to clear out any dimension with an open hellmouth and a Black Flame flag. The only thing she wants more than a way home is to bring an end to Hell on Earth.
Because if being stuck in Demondale has taught her anything, it’s that hell doesn’t belong on earth.
This first stop on her apocalypse tour doesn’t look particularly bad. There are no demons parading down the street. The streetlamps shine down on parked cars that don’t seem abandoned. Nothing screams Hey, look, I’m evil, except for the colonialist-glorifying Spanish-revival architecture of City Hall and the public library. But those are the same in her own Sunnydale.
She shifts the weight of the backpack she filled with the magical crap from the demon Ascension. Should she have just taken a stake and left the rest? She’s not sure what most of these things do. She hopes that some of them will come in handy during her quest. And, if not, at least she has them and the nerd boys don’t. Guys who would accidentally murder one another in the middle of the day while playing terrible techno so cannot be trusted with a giant corkscrew knife covered in runes.
Besides, she’s left her ax behind in Arashmaharr, stuck in the skull of the last demon who’d been guarding the gem. She’d been totally hurting for weapons. And if a stake-shooting crossbow isn’t her Chosen One birthright, then what is?
Walking past buildings that in Demondale are all Mayor Wilkins’s campaign offices—here, a post office, a bank, and a bail bonds company—the magical staff jerks hard to the left, nearly knocking the Slayer out of her sneakers. She comes to a stop in front of a small innocuous building. The sign out front reads SMILEYDALE PUBLIC ACCESS. The Slayer frowns.
Smileydale. That’s a new one. Definitely not what big tough demons would name a town.
The staff seems to vibrate with excitement, aiming the big green gem on the top toward the building’s front door, like a dog begging to go for a walk. When the warlock in downtown Demondale had first told her about the magical dowsing rod, he had made it sound so much cooler than this overeager wooden stick. The Slayer had pictured something more sleek and subtle. Portable. Efficient. Fits in a pocket. Which, okay, might just be describing a stake. But why mess with a perfect weapon? This giant, cumbersome walking stick is hideous and bossy. Adding the Creation gem made it lethal but has not helped its appearance. Honestly, if she weren’t already planning on ending every evil world the staff led her to, she’d have to unplug them from reality just so there’d be no witnesses to her holding such an ugly accessory.
She stole the Creation gem in hopes that it would be her direct ticket home. The first two vengeance demons she had interrogated in Demondale had used their glowing green amulets to teleport away from her before she could get any real information out of them. It was clear that the amulets were the source of their powers. Of the magic that had ruined the Slayer’s life. In the month since she was ejected from her own reality, she has relentlessly hunted vengeance demons. For information. For revenge.
Unfortunately, vengeance demons can be from any humanoid or demonic species, all different shapes and sizes, united only by their awful Wish magic. Taking one of the amulets for herself only gave the Slayer enough power to portal to and from Vengeance LLC. She went in armed, cut her way to the Creation gem, and wished to teleport home. But once she’d jumped into the portal, it had spat her back into Demondale. The gem doesn’t seem to be able to tell one Sunnydale from another.
So, here she is, knee-deep in plan B. Take the wizard staff that sniffs out hellmouths from the nerds, attach the gem, and blow up every reality that stands between her and home.
Providing that the British man hasn’t lied to her. He’s a little weasel. Just because he works with Giles doesn’t make him trustworthy. It’s not her Giles he knows—it’s Demondale Giles. The real Giles wouldn’t be caught dead going by something as casual and tawdry as a nickname.
After she slips inside the public-access building, the door closes behind her with a heavy thunk. The office is small and poorly lit. She’s grateful for the light from the Creation gem; its internal glow is brighter than the yellowed fluorescents overhead.
No one sits behind the front desk. Brown dust crusts the buttons of the multiline phone and the keys of the computer keyboard. The Slayer isn’t super proficient in technology—in her normal life back in the real Sunnydale, she leaves computer stuff to her friend Willow—but even she can tell that the computer isn’t old. Just disused.
Moving deeper into the building, the Slayer tiptoes past more empty desks and unattended sound equipment. She squints to see through the beige blinds of the individual offices. The door to the break room stands open, revealing a refrigerator that’s warm, its power cord curled neatly behind a water cooler with a full jug covered in cobwebs. Everything looks as though it’s been abandoned for months.
But if it’s abandoned, why was the front door unlocked? Anyone could walk in off the street and steal any of the computers.
So why are they all untouched?
At the end of the hallway, a single red light glows above a sign that reads ON AIR. Below it is a door that says SMILE TIME STUDIO. The staff knocks itself against the doorknob.
Slipping inside, the Slayer recoils as she’s faced with burning-bright stage lights. As her eyes adjust, she can make out the shadows of TV cameras aimed at a set of eye-watering primary colors. It looks like a day-care toy chest blown up in size and scope. Giant alphabet blocks and massive teddy bears frame the set, but the TV cameras are all aimed at a fake tree house with puppets dancing in front of it, singing a song about the importance of building confidence.
“That’s right, kids.” A puppet with a shock of red hair sticking out through the snapback of a tiny baseball hat dances up to the TV camera, pressing his face close to the lens. “Get real close, that’s it. Put your hands on the screen. We’ll play patty-cake together.”
Shimmering purple light flows out of the camera and into the red-haired puppet’s hands. The puppet shudders and groans, a sound that is wholly disconcerting coming out of a children’s entertainer.
The purple light crawls across the set, filling each of the other puppets, who continue to sing and dance. Word by word their song shifts from being about confidence to a series of Latin phrases the Slayer doesn’t know.
What she does know is that nothing good is ever sung in Latin. It’s some kind of magical spell, drawing the purple light out of the TV camera. Out of whoever is watching this puppet show.
Looking around the room, the Slayer realizes that there are no people here. Just like the offices in the front of the building. The director’s chair is empty.
There are no cameramen.
There are no puppeteers.
“No way. Puppets?” the Slayer snorts, talking as much to the glowing green staff as to herself. Is it possible for a magical item to make a mistake?
She’s fought a lot of evil in her time, but never anything made of felt. A ventriloquist’s dummy once, but that was a misunderstanding. Still, she knows that puppets don’t sing and dance on their own without some kind of magic and, honestly, anyone magically controlling puppets has got to be evil.
