Ten

THE POWERS

The rider on the great black horse with the sockets for eyes trotted down the deserted street, at a leisurely pace; he wasn’t in a hurry. This was a strange place he found himself in now, and he thought it was interesting. He wanted to see the sights.

There had been a battle: soldiers had formed a line and shot at him. The soldiers laid dead now, in a tangled, bloody heap a block behind him. To their credit, they held their line, and didn’t retreat, even as he kept coming: as he moved implacably, inevitably forward. He always moved forward. He never stayed still for long, and he never retreated. There was simply no force in the world that could stop him, or even slow him down. He was as unerring as a hawk as he searched out his prey; swift as an arrow once he sighted it; terrible as a hurricane once he fell upon it. He took no particular pride in that. It was simply how things were. The tens of thousands of years he had seen, and the billions of lives he had extinguished, had rendered it all commonplace, somehow; routine.

Though he had found it interesting, being shot at; he had never been attacked with guns before. He had seen guns used, on a thousand bloody battlefields in every part of the world, but he had never been shot with one. The last time he had appeared physically in the world, six-thousand years before, men used swords.

He used a scythe. It was the only weapon he had ever needed.

He remembered rain--what it had felt like when it fell upon his skin, when he was still human, a very long time ago. When he had lived a life--much the same, he imagined, as the lives of those soldiers--in an ancient place, a place that was ancient even when he was young. He had enjoyed the rain, when he was young. When everyone else abandoned the hunt to scurry back to their homes like frightened children, fearing that the gods did not smile upon them that day, he would persevere, alone. He liked the rain. And he liked hunting. He always brought back a deer.

That ancient place had long since fallen, disappearing beneath the waves, but he was still here; he still hunted. He still moved inevitably forward.

The soldiers’ rounds had reminded him of the rain, as they struck him in their thousands, and bounced harmlessly away. The soldiers fell beneath his scythe after that like so much chaff, and their screams, as he sliced them to pieces, his hand steady and precise as a surgeon, were beautiful. He liked the hunt; the only thing he liked better was the moment it ended, and he watched the light leave their eyes. The hunt had become almost perfunctory, offering precious few surprises, as the endless years wore on; as the years wore everything down but him. But the ending of the hunt was always new. Everyone died in their own way: every scream was music, a new composition. Some people fought him, while others tried to run; some lingered horribly, and withered away in their sick beds, and still more simply surrendered, and accepted the inevitable. In every case it was new, and the rider remembered them all: he remembered their eyes, blazing with defiance, or wide with fear; he remembered their faces, angry, surprised, frightened, despairing; he remembered their voices as they shrieked or sobbed at him, their pitch, their cadence. Their melody.

The rider bore them no ill will. He was a hunter; they were prey. The hunt always ended the same way. Only once before had anyone ever successfully resisted him: six-thousand years before, a sorcerer-priest of Sumer had prayed, and his prayer was answered. But before it was, the rider had still taken down kills: he had killed nearly the whole world, such as it was, by then. So the rider left the sorcerer to his ruined, flooded, war-ravaged, dead world; left him to fashion a new world out of ashes. And the rider rode into the cage that had been prepared for him then, without complaint. He had killed eighty-seven million people in less than three months. A most excellent hunt indeed.

And souls still came to him, even when he was in the cage; he was Death, and there was always work to do. He couldn’t appear physically again, not until someone freed him. But in the meantime, he was always watching; watching all the souls in the world as they lived out their days, and took their separate paths, all of which led back to him. And as he watched humanity, as he saw them grow in pride and power, he knew one of them would free him, in time. In their unending attempts to destroy each other, human beings--foolish, fallible, flawed--inevitably tore down the things they built. They tried to destroy their neighbor’s house, and brought it crashing down upon themselves too.

Everyone died. Everyone came to him, in time. And he was patient.

The street was black as a coal chute. The sun had gone, and night covered the whole world now, and in this part of the city even the man-made light had failed. The strange mechanical torches these people kept in their dwellings--from which they habitually drew solace every day when the sun set, removing its bright illusion of safety and warmth from their world, and the darkness closed in, bringing with it all the secret, terrible knowledge people refused to let themselves believe--no longer functioned. The power had gone out, for blocks all around. Save for the sporadic fires that were once again burning throughout the city now that the rain had stopped, the darkness was impenetrable; the street might as well have been at the bottom of the ocean. That didn’t concern the rider. He could see perfectly in the dark; his eyes, brighter than the streetlamps, blazed forth and cut through that black night like twin stars. They saw to the bottom of that black sea; they saw the things that squirmed there in the dark.

The street was quiet, after the battle; there were no more screams now, and even the distant sirens had ceased their irksome blaring. It was as if the world itself was hushed, out of respect for the fallen. As the rider trotted his horse straight down the middle of the street, the echoing of his horse’s hooves was the only sound...and they echoed through the cold, empty dark like the steady ticking of a clock...counting down to the end.

The rider checked his horse a moment, and lowered his black hood, to better look about him at this strange new place. His face was a skull.

Death looked about him, and he wondered at the mammoth, towering steel and glass buildings that soared up into the black night of Los Angeles, reaching impossibly high, stabbing at the heavens like swords. The red crescent moon might have been a bloody wound the buildings had rent in the sky.

Death didn’t like the buildings. Tributes to human arrogance, he thought them: they were presumptuous. Like Icarus, they dared to try to reach the sun. Like Icarus, they would be punished: they would fail, and fall.

Dead bodies, bloody, broken things, laid scattered here and there in the street, abandoned like so much refuse. Their smell was a reek, now that the rain had ceased; of shit and piss, blood and sweat. The birds were picking over them.

Death hadn’t snuffed them all out himself; not all of them felt his cold scythe at their throats. Many of them had been lying dead in the gutters when he arrived. The vampires had gotten to them first. Though one died by her own hand: when she looked upon the ashes of her world, and saw Death riding forth in power to claim it, a woman jumped from the window of one of those beautiful, soaring towers. The woman, the wax wings of her presumption melted by the sun of Death’s terrible gaze, plunged to Earth and exploded against the ground like an overripe fruit, scattering all the stuff inside her in wet red chunks all around.

“It has been too long, brother,” a voice said. The voice was a low, phlegmy hiss.

Death turned. Another rider trotted his horse up the street from the opposite direction. The horse was a sickly, pale yellow thing, its hooves gnarled and deformed as with some disease, its eyes jaundiced and runny; and it stank. The rider atop it went well with the horse: though he looked akin to Death, being a skeleton in a black hooded robe, he stank, too. He was Pestilence: a vile, diseased creature, he smelled like the bodies in the street. He carried a spiked whip that moved of its own volition in his bony hand like some cobra under the spell of a snake charmer.

“Aye,” Death said, his voice echoing down the street like stone grinding against stone. “Too long since I breathed the air, felt the wind. And, such a place! Have you ever laid eyes on a place such as this?”

“I’ve been exploring this strange new world, north, south, east and west, learning the ways of the place,” Pestilence hissed. “I’m just now returned from Muscovy. The same everywhere: towers climbing to the sky, though some countries are richer than others. This country is the richest of all, I’d say.” He looked up at the skyscrapers all around him. “Humanity has come far, since last we rode.”

“Their pride has grown, for certain. They reckon themselves as gods, I think. Do you know they have weapons now which could destroy this world? Weapons which could annihilate every single living creature from its surface, blot out the sky, boil the oceans, burn the forests to barren deserts. It’s an obscenity. And they wonder why it is all coming to an end now. They brought it on themselves, in their pride, their arrogance.”

“I heard tell of those weapons in Muscovy. Muscovy has grown to a great power this century: many nations pay them tribute, many more live under their dominion. The people of this place...United States, I believe they call it...are Muscovy’s blood enemies, and both sides possess thousands of these terrible weapons, which soar through the air like eagles and then fall upon their targets in a great conflagration that burns like the sun. Some in Muscovy have discussed using them. I hope they do: I would very much like to see one.”

“For my part, I have been too busy killing to learn the ways of this world yet. So come, tell me: what of Persia, Egypt, Rome? Are they no longer powers?”

“Nay, Muscovy and United States are the powers now. All others are merely pawns on their board. Even Cathay is cowed: their numbers are great, more than a billion now by my reckoning, but the Orientals cannot stand against the terrible weapons of the powers. It is the same everywhere. I could hardly believe the Saracens are under the yoke; when Muscovy was naught but unwashed barbarian clans and United States was one great endless forest with feuding savages frolicking about under the eaves, the Saracens were precisely determining the movement of the stars. Things change.”

“Aye. My country was a power, once: the only power. Until the sea claimed it, and it left only whispered legends in its wake. But, this place, not this country, but this very place--this city, this village--I was attracted to it, for some reason. I smelt it, like some black stinking cauldron; I heard it, like a distant scream; I felt it, like a blast of north wind. Aye, I can even taste it; it’s like ashes on my tongue. But I can’t yet see it. There is something here, some black thing, blacker than the darkness that hangs about it, and it’s close by. It doesn’t belong here, and it is connected to still blacker places...places that exist on other planes, and have taken some foothold on this world.”

“The Wolf, the Ram, the Hart,” a voice said, and as both riders watched, another Horseman approached; he looked like them, a skeleton in a black hooded robe, but his weapon was a huge, blood-stained axe, and his horse was different from the others: it was a thin, bony, spindly-legged, dispirited beast with a dull, coarse, ashen gray coat, and it looked like it hadn’t eaten in weeks; it seemed hardly strong enough to support its rider. But that was only fitting, for its rider was Famine. And the beast did manage to bear him, as it slowly trudged along the blacked-out, carcass-strewn street, making its way toward the others.

“Speak plainer, brother,” Pestilence hissed. “Or are you so withered away that you can no longer form a coherent thought in that old head of yours?”

“Nay,” the rider said, as his horse trudged toward them. His voice was old, weak, tired. “The black heart of this place is a ways back yonder,” he said, and pointed whence he came with a long, bony finger. “A great tower like these others, but it is all alight; the darkness that hangs over this village, that quenched the lights in the towers hereabouts and the light from these lofty metal torches lining the streets too, does not seem to affect it. The place shines like a beacon, but its heart is black; I feel it. That black heart led me here like a fish on a line.”

“Aye,” Death said. “I too feel its pull, though I am no one’s fish: a hound on a scent, perhaps. But I would see the place, whatever it is.”

“A short ride yonder,” Famine said. “But where is our brother? Where is War?”

“You know him,” Pestilence said, and chuckled. “He’ll be off inspecting the troops, no doubt. I imagine he’ll be rather out of sorts. All the wars are over now. Night comes, and the game ends; there will be no more fighting.”

“Don’t count your chickens, boy,” a voice said; the voice came from above. When the three riders looked up, they saw another rider, galloping through the sky toward them; another skeleton in a black hooded robe. But this one rode a great white horse, just as tall and proud as Death’s hollow-eyed black one, and a silver trumpet hung from its bridle. The rider who sat astride it held aloft a long sword that glowed like a star and seemed to cut through the darkness itself, sending it to flight.

“I never did like when you called me that,” Pestilence hissed, like a snake underfoot.

“Guess it’s lucky for me I never did give a good goddamn what you like,” the rider on the white horse said, as his horse alighted beside them. The rider’s voice had a trace of a Southern accent.

“Children, children,” Famine said, and laughed; it was a hollow rattle, devoid of warmth. “We were just about to spy out the place that drew us hither. Have you felt it, War? Like a black hole in the world, leading somewhere outside.”

“Yeah, I feel the damned thing back there, whatever it is; I was just about to have a gander when I came up on you three,” War said. “But it don’t feel like no black hole to me. Feels more like some stinking brothel, or a saloon for turncoats and backshooters...or a butcher shop.”

“See, War, I know why you’re so prickly,” Pestilence said. “You’re in the wrong trade. With such soaring oratory, you should have been a poet. Ah, we few, we happy few, we band of brothers!” Pestilence cackled; the laughter bubbled up repulsively in his throat. It sounded like he was coughing up bile. “I think that’s how it goes; some Briton wrote it. Unfortunately for you there won’t be any more poetry, will there? No more fighting either. Just the dark...swallowing up the light...just death: inevitable, final. Humanity is at an end now. All their battles, all that striving--what good was any of it? It all led here anyway. Where they were always meant to be.”

War looked at him, with eyes that could outstare the sun.

“Don’t you recollect you used to be one of them, you damned plague rat?” War said.

“So long ago now,” Pestilence said. “And I never cared for the world. Death took me young, but I was ready. The human race is a race of thieves, liars, cowards and butchers. I learned that lesson and learned it well, during my youth in Sodom; I was the king’s chief assassin. I poisoned hundreds at his command. In the end I poisoned him too. All their poetry, all their art, all their philosophy, all their grand aspirations? Pretty, worthless baubles. They count for nothing. Humanity brought this darkness on itself. They pulled it over their own heads like a funeral shroud, and it will swallow them up. Here’s another snippet of poetry for you: ‘The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned.’ I like that one. That’s no child’s wishful prattling there; that’s a man who’s seen the world.”

The woman was elegant: that was the first thing Lindsey always noticed about her. Her suit cost a thousand dollars if it cost a dime, her makeup was perfectly applied, her hair was flawless, those diamonds she wore were real, and her perfume made him stand at attention. And she was beautiful: statuesque, with the very best legs he had ever seen; they just kept going and going. It was almost ridiculous, how long they were. Not that he was complaining.

But it was her elegance that stood out: it was always the first thing he noticed about her because it was at the heart of her. She was her clothes, her hair, her makeup, her jewelry, her perfect, effortless poise: it was her whole identity. She was beautiful too, but her beauty was cold, like ancient marble. Hers was the kind of face you saw on a statue; it was noble, even heroic in aspect. She looked like royalty. Looking at her perfectly full lips, her proud, aquiline nose, her high, sharp cheekbones, her cold blue eyes, so alive with intelligence, he could have thought some Greek goddess had come to life, if he didn’t know her.

But he did know her, and though Lilah’s face was beautiful and without flaw there was no warmth there. When she smiled, with those sharp teeth of hers that occasionally tempted Lindsey to covertly check her reflection in any nearby windows to make sure she could actually cast a reflection, he knew someone somewhere had just been screwed and then some: rode hard, put away wet, and hung out to dry. When Lilah’s eyes focused on him, Lindsey saw the calculation there, and felt the wheels turning in her mind: how could she use him? she’d be wondering. How could he further her plans?

When he piled everything he owned in the world in the back of his pickup truck and left his family’s shack in Oklahoma to hit the big leagues in L.A., Lindsey’s mother had told him to watch out for those big city girls. “They’ll use ya up and throw ya away boy,” the old bat had drawled, as she blew cigarette smoke at him, standing barefoot on the dirty front porch in a stained old housecoat. “Those girls are sharks. They’ll take ya for what they can git and move right on up to the next poor fool won’t listen to his mama.”

Lindsey never liked his mother much, but after working with Lilah for three years, he had to admit now that she was right. Lindsey shuddered to contemplate what could happen to him if he ever dropped his guard and Lilah Morgan managed to get her claws into him. It’s not that she was smarter than him. Lindsey was pretty sure almost no one was smarter than him, and the ones that were didn’t work half as hard and weren’t a fifth as tough. But Lilah was ruthless. She was ruthless the way bad guys were in the movies, she was ruthless the way Wile E. Coyote was when he kept trying to kill the Road Runner in the cartoons. It was almost farcical. Her taste for power was boundless and intrigue was her favorite hobby. She started little turf wars at the law firm that offered no conceivable benefit to her, just to screw with people. She hatched little schemes that had nothing to do with anything, just because she liked scheming. And then sometimes she hatched big schemes...

“I’m a baller, McDonald,” Lilah had once said to him over bottles of Taittinger champagne, as they celebrated landing a new client, a wizard named Cyvus Vail who would come to prove very useful to the firm indeed. Lindsey and Lilah had been put in charge of luring Vail away from his current law firm but his contract with them was ironclad. Lilah was the one who came up with the plan to kidnap the son of the senior partner of Vail’s law firm, drug him, put him in a dress, and film him in a gay bondage sex video that she made sure had its own AOL homepage within the hour. When Gerry Dunn of Dunn, Latham and Ehrman called to ask how the hell she thought she could get away with this, she told him the kid was already on his way to the Arab Emirates and that he looked just darling in his Armani dress and his leather slave collar with the little silver bell, but there was still time to turn the plane around...for a price. “And when I say ‘baller’ I don’t mean you should get your hopes up, Tiny Toons,” Lilah had continued, as she licked her lips, savoring the champagne, and smiling like a vampire. “What I mean is, I’m a gym rat. My head’s always in it, y’know? I’m always in the game. I’ll move twice as fast as any of the guys at the firm and I’ll work three times as hard.”

“This a game to you?” Lindsey had replied.

“Were you born in a shack in Oklahoma or something?” Lilah had said, and smiled again. “Everything’s a game, and I play to win. In this world, if you don’t wanna get fucked? You do the fucking. And you can take your eyes off my tits now.”

Lindsey always made sure to keep a step ahead of her...because he honestly thought she was capable of anything. There were no lines for Lilah. Nothing was out of bounds. She was dangerous...she scared him, a little.

And technically, Lindsey was her boss. He’d gotten promoted above her the year before. Most days, he felt pretty bad for the guys who worked under Lilah...figuratively and literally. Lindsey knew Lilah liked to be on top.

The fact that he was a rung above her on the ladder didn’t stop him from worrying. Around Lilah, Lindsey watched his back...whenever he could tear his eyes away from her backside.

“Well this sucks,” Lilah said, as she stood in her enormous, lavishly-appointed office on the forty-third floor of Wolfram and Hart’s Los Angeles branch, staring out the floor-to-ceiling window at the magnificent view of the Los Angeles skyline with her arms folded across her chest and her lips pursed in a steely pout. But there was nothing to see out there anymore; this part of the city was blacked-out, and the sky was so dark it was nearly impenetrable. Only the fires burning sporadically across the city gave any light.

“Yup,” Lindsey said, as he sat in her chair, with his feet up on her desk. He did little things like that sometimes, to remind her of her place. He thought she needed to be contained.

“The apocalypse is here,” Lilah said. “The fucking apocalypse. And were we consulted? Biggest frickin’ evil in the world and we don’t get an invitation to the party.”

“And see, I bought a tux and everything,” Lindsey said.

“Yuck it up. Do you get how screwed we are here? This wasn’t supposed to happen. The apocalypse is our thing. Our timetable, our plan, our players. Angel isn’t even in the game yet! He’s the guy this is all supposed to come down to, right? The Senior Partners’ big plan? So where the hell is he?”

“Relax, hot legs. We got people on it.”

“Oh, good. Now I’m relieved. Any of them working on inventing a reset button so we can like, un-end the world? Look at it out there! L.A.’s burning! Beverly Hills is burning! I like Beverly Hills. Have you been listening to the newsfeeds? They’re saying the White House was attacked. Everything’s going tits up and we need a plan...”

“‘Tits up’? What are you, British all of a sudden?”

“Two years at Oxford.” Lilah’s cell phone beeped. She pulled it from her coat’s breast pocket. “Yeah?”

She listened for a moment.

“Keep trying. The clinic, our guys, the police out there, everyone we know out there. Find her or it’s your fucking ass.” She snapped the phone shut.

“What’s that about?” Lindsey said.

“Nothing,” Lilah said. “Personal stuff.”

“Okay, so look, the Senior Partners have the apocalypse planned out, right?”

“So they tell us.”

“So this thing? Yeah, it looks bad, but if the apocalypse has to come down the way the big bosses say, then somehow, some way, we’re gonna get past this speedbump here. Okay, yup, things are grim. The way I see it, we hunker down and wait ’til Research and Intelligence gives us something useful.”

Lilah was quiet for a moment, as she stared out into the darkness.

“I can’t...I can’t reach my mother,” she finally said.

“What?” Lindsey said.

“My mother, she’s...she’s got alzheimers, okay? She’s in this assisted living place in Seattle, it’s one of the best places in the country. But I can’t reach her. We can’t get the place on the phone. I sent two full security teams in four helicopters to go get her the second this all went down and they haven’t reported in. The phones are all wonky, the cops won’t answer calls anyway and I don’t know if Seattle’s even there anymore.”

“You have a mother?”

She frowned at him.

“It’s just I thought you were like, some evil experiment born in a test tube or something. Y’know, like those Hitler clone kids in The Boys From Brazil.”

“You can be a prick sometimes, you know that?” Lilah said, and went back to staring out the window.

Lindsey got up, and put his hand on her shoulder.

“Lilah...” he started to say.

She brushed his hand off her shoulder, and stormed away from the window. “Fuck this, I’m going there,” she growled.

“What?” Lindsey said. “Are you kidding me? Wait!” He ran after her. “Lilah, wait!” He caught her before she reached the door and grabbed her arm.

“Get the fuck off me!” she screamed, scratching at his arm and trying to wriggle out of his grasp. “Get off!”

“Listen to me!” he shouted, grabbing her by the wrists and holding her still. Her nails had already drawn blood; his right hand was bleeding. “You can’t leave! We’re in lockdown! Do you get that we’re in fucking lockdown? That means nobody in or out!”

“I can leave, I can go wherever the fuck I want!” Lilah screamed, as tears filled her eyes. “I’m Lilah Morgan! I’m Lilah Morgan! I go where I fucking want! No man fucking stops me! Let go ! LET ME GO!”

Lilah was crying now, as she kicked at him, and tried to free herself, but Lindsey held her still.

“You can’t go out there and you fucking well know it! Its fucking vamp central out there! You’ll die, Lilah! You’ll die!”

“My mother,” Lilah whispered, as she finally stopped struggling. “She’s gonna die, Lindsey. My mother’s gonna die.”

“Maybe. And I’m sorry about that darlin’, okay? But you’re not gonna die. We’re not. We’ve got all the building’s defenses protecting us here, plus Cyvus Vail’s mystical barrier, and we’ve even got Vail himself in the building. No one’s getting in here, it would take a nuke to knock us down. We have plenty of food, water, the Partners made contingency plans for stuff like this. We can survive for years in this building, Lilah. Right now, that’s what we have to do. That’s our job. Survive. Until Research and all the psychics and everyone else we’ve got working on this fucking mess give us something we can use.”

Lindsey let her wrists go. Lilah wiped her tears away.

“Yeah,” she said.

“‘I’m Lilah Morgan’? Lindsey said, and smiled. “‘No man stops me’?”

“Shut up,” Lilah said.

“Naw, hon, your speech was downright inspirational. I got goosebumps. You know what you’re like? You’re like an evil Mary Tyler Moore. Just, y’know, throw your hat up in the air and catch it.”

“Yeah, I notice you still haven’t shut up,” Lilah said, and managed a small smile now.

“Who can turn the world on with her smiiiiiiiile?” Lindsey sang.

“Oh, God,” Lilah said, her smile getting wider.

“Who can take a nothing day, and suddenly make it all seem worthwhile? Well it's you girl, and you should know it...”

“I’m gonna kick your ass, McDonald,” Lilah said, and started to giggle.

“You’re gonna make it after aaaaalllllll...” Lindsey sang.

“Shut up!” Lilah said, and punched his shoulder, and giggled...and looked into his eyes...

They kissed.

“World’s ending,” Lilah whispered, and ran her fingers through his two-hundred dollar haircut.

“Yeah,” Lindsey whispered, and kissed her neck.

“We might be locked up in this building a long time. Days...weeks...” Lilah ran her fingers over Lindsey’s chest, and started unbuttoning his shirt. Lindsey’s chest might have been sculpted out of marble; he wasn’t tall but he was built like a steel fireplug and there was nothing soft about him. He was standing close to her; Lilah noticed his chest wasn’t the only part of him that was hard now. “Months...” she murmured.

“Yeah.” Lindsey caressed Lilah’s cheek, and kissed her again, and inhaled her perfume. It sent a thrill through him. He ran his fingers along her thigh, slowly moving them up...

Lilah unzipped his trousers. “I know a way we could pass the time,” she whispered, and licked his ear, and slipped her hand inside...

An alarm went off. “Fuck!” they both said at the same time, wincing, as it assaulted their eardrums. The alarm sounded like a police siren, except about three times as loud. Thankfully it was designed to emit one short burst instead of a prolonged screeching.

Lilah pulled her hand out of Lindsey’s trousers; Lindsey pulled his hand away from Lilah’s thigh. As Lindsey attempted to get his trousers zipped up again--he was having some difficulties now--both their cell phones beeped. They pulled their phones off their belts and flipped them open.

“This better be good,” Lilah hissed into her cell phone.

“What?” Lindsey barked into his.

“There’s a...wait, skeletons? There are skeletons?” Lilah said.

“Horses?” Lindsey said. “What? Guys on horses are what? Hello? Hello?”

Lindsey snapped his cell phone shut. Lilah was still talking on hers, and heading to the computer on her desk.

“Yeah, yeah, keep your panties on, let me take a look,” Lilah muttered into the phone, and pushed some buttons on her keyboard. “If this is those asshole wizards down in Demon Resources playing around with extra-dimensional summoning spells again...”

“Guard at the front desk got cut off,” Lindsey said. “Sounded like a fight down there. But how the hell can that happen when we’ve got our barrier up?”

“Hope that barrier came with a money back guarantee,” Lilah said, as she closed her cell phone and stared daggers at her computer monitor. “Shit.”

Lindsey ran to the desk, and looked down at the monitor.

“Those guys look like...oh, fuck me,” Lilah said. “Fuck me!”

Lindsey saw four skeletons on horses, trotting through the lobby, killing every single person who crossed their path. He saw people screaming. He saw people cut down like cattle.

“What the fuck?” he said.

“Yeah, okay, so...please tell me that isn’t the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse in the lobby?” Lilah said.

“That’s the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse in the lobby,” Lindsey said. “What the hell else could they be? I didn’t even think they were real.”

“Sometimes I really, really hate this job,” Lilah said, and pressed a button on her intercom. “Hi, security? This is Lilah Morgan, Special Projects,” she said with a big smile, leaning over the intercom. “So like, what exactly are we doing about the four big skeleton guys in the lobby? That’s being handled, right? You guys are like, totally on top of that.”

“Ms. Morgan, an assault force comprised of elite commandos supported by a full demon cadre and a complement of wizards is en route to the hostiles, and I am personally supervising the encounter from the security office,” came the terse voice in reply.

“Bill, those dudes just waltzed right in here through Vail’s shield,” Lindsey said. “You sure you can contain this?”

“Let’s find out,” Lilah said, and pointed to the monitor. “Show’s about to start.” Lindsey looked at Lilah’s computer monitor, and saw more than a dozen demons, three wizards and at least forty commandos suddenly flood into the lobby from two different directions and take positions around the room, completely encircling the Horsemen. There was plenty of space in the lobby and plenty of good vantage points for security to target attackers; Wolfram and Hart was attacked so often that the lobby had been redesigned decades before to the Security Department’s specifications. The lobby was the one part of the building that was open to the public; all the other floors had the very best security, mystical and otherwise, that money could buy, so attacks nearly always came through the lobby. The lobby was a pleasantly minimalist, wide-open room; it was very sparsely decorated--the firm had gotten tired of paying to replace furniture--though there were a few tasteful (fake) vases on end tables here and there, and a few paintings scattered around to give the walls some color. Space and light were the two themes; there was lots of marble, lots of metal and glass, and on most days the room was a bright, pleasant, chattering hive of activity.

It was certainly a big room. But the Horsemen made it look small. Lindsey thought they didn’t seem to fit, somehow, as he watched them sitting tall in their saddles, calmly observing the security forces arraying themselves all around them.

Lindsey watched the security forces take their positions. The demons looked angry, but then they always looked angry. All but one of the demons were Fyarls--the firm preferred using Fyarls because they were stupid enough to be domesticated but at the same time they had an unquenchable appetite for mayhem once they were let off the leash. Grisnakh, the leader of their cadre, was the demon who held the leash. He wasn’t a Fyarl, in fact the firm had no idea exactly what he was; the Research and Intelligence Department had a man working on it full time and he still hadn’t figured out what species Grisnakh belonged to. Grisnakh was twelve feet tall, he looked like a cross between a lion and a dinosaur, no one in Research or the Archives had even heard of a weapon that could penetrate his armor plating, and he had been sent by the Senior Partners as the building’s watchdog the day they broke ground on the L.A. branch.

Grisnakh had wrecked quite a lot of furniture, and more than a few priceless vases. Actually, he liked eating vases.

“Hold on, I think I can get sound too,” Lilah said, and brought up a menu, and punched some buttons.

“What in tarnation is that thing?” Lindsey heard the rider on the white horse say, as the Horsemen looked at Grisnakh.

“Their dog,” the rider on the yellow horse said.

“Hell, that boy looks almost as mean as my mother-in-law,” the rider on the white horse said. Lindsey could have sworn that rider had a Southern accent.

The rider on the gray horse made a rattling noise; it might have been amused. The rider on the black horse was silent.

The architectural plans for the L.A. branch had to be revised, after Grisnakh arrived; there wasn’t a single door he could fit through. He wasn’t just tall, he was wide. Grisnakh had his own secretary even though no one was sure if he was even intelligent; the entirety of the secretary’s job was procuring his meals. Grisnakh’s yearly food budget was more than Lindsey’s salary.

The commandos took their positions, aimed their weapons--sniper rifles for the moment, but Lindsey knew they were packing heavier stuff--and waited. As Lindsey scanned their faces, not one of the commandos seemed frightened, or apprehensive, or even particularly stressed. Most of them looked bored. They’d not only trained for this, they’d faced this situation before, numerous times. These skeleton riders weren’t the first group of malcontents to invade the firm; they weren’t even the first this year.

The wizards surrounded the riders in a triangular formation, staying far back from the demons and also out of the commandos’ lines of fire. They were three old men in black, billowing robes with long, dirty gray hair, yellow slits for eyes, forked tongues, six fingers on each hand, and iron slave collars around their necks. Witches and wizards who wanted to become truly powerful always bonded themselves to a patron deity eventually. It gave them mastery of the elements, as they were freed from having to call upon various deities to cast spells, as all the other magic-users in the world were forced to do. The trade-off was that they were slaves; they wore iron obedience collars in this life, which were welded to their necks and could never be removed, and they pledged themselves to the eternal service of their patron deity in the next life. Lindsey had never met a witch or a wizard who didn’t wear a collar. For magic-users, slavery was the only route to true power.

The wizards were set; they closed their eyes, and raised their hands, twisting their fingers to form strange signs. The commandos had their rifles aimed at the skeletons’ heads. The Fyarls looked like they were shrieking, but then Fyarls were always shrieking. At least they were shrieking in the direction of the skeletons, Lindsey thought.

Grisnakh was smiling. He liked killing new things.

“Mr. McDonald, I have to see to this now, sir,” Bill said.

“You have attacked the offices of Wolfram and Hart,” one of the commandos was saying now. He was crouched behind a rubber tree plant near the water cooler. “Violence here will not be tolerated. Stay where you are. Drop your weapons and surrender now.”

“Surrender?” Lilah said. “They just killed like twenty people and we’re giving them a chance to surrender?”

“Policy,” Lindsey said. “We’re the bad guys, remember? Another bad guy takes a shot at us, if we think they can be useful we try to get them on the team.”

There was a sound, then: the sound chilled Lindsey and Lilah all the way down to their bones, and stopped their breath in their lungs...

It was laughter.

The skeleton on the black horse had laughed...

All the color had drained from Lilah’s face. Lindsey jabbed the intercom button with a shaking hand.

“Fucking attack!” Lindsey shouted into it. “Fucking kill those assholes! NOW!”

“Green light,” he heard Bill say...and as he turned to Lilah’s monitor, he saw Grisnakh run straight for the skeletons...

Something flashed out from the skeleton on the white horse. Lindsey wasn’t sure at first what it was...it was like a ray of light...

As Grisnakh’s top half slid away from his bottom half, and both halves fell to the floor with a thud that shook the whole lobby, Lindsey realized the light was a silver sword that had moved faster than his eyes could follow.

“Nope,” the rider on the white horse said. “That boy ain’t half as mean as my mother-in-law.”

The lobby was quiet for a moment, after that.

The wizards just stood there, agape. The commandos actually looked flustered. The Fyarls shrieked, but the shrieks had gone up a couple of octaves in pitch and they took a step back from the skeletons.

“They...they killed Grisnakh,” Lilah whispered, pointing at the lower right hand corner of the monitor, where Grisnakh could be seen lying in two halves on the lobby floor in a flowing puddle of yellow blood. “I didn’t think...anyone could kill Grisnakh.”

“We might have a problem,” Lindsey said.

All hell broke loose after that, and lasted for a grand total of about a minute. Lindsey could tell because Lilah’s monitor had the time in the bottom right-hand corner of her menu bar. It said 11:34 when the commandos started taking shots at the skeletons from under cover, and the wizards started bombarding them with fireballs, and the Fyarls sprang at them, their claws extended. Lindsey and Lilah saw the bullets bounce off the skeletons’ heads. They saw the wizards frown in puzzlement, as their fireballs hit the skeletons and did no damage at all; they didn’t even singe the skeletons’ robes.

Lindsey and Lilah heard the Fyarls actually whimper, as they were cut to pieces by the skeletons before most of them could even land a blow. One managed to slash at the skeleton on the gray horse with claws that should have cut it in half, and that Fyarl lost its arm for its trouble. The skeleton grabbed the Fyarl’s arm and tore it out of its body, then beheaded it with his axe as it stood there shrieking and bleeding out. Another Fyarl managed to slash at one of the horses, the black one; the slash had no effect whatsoever and the horse simply ignored it. Then the Fyarl was beheaded, and there were no more Fyarls.

The wizards switched to lightning attacks now, sending burst after burst of it straight at the skeletons; it had no effect, but it created a pretty light show. At the same time the commandos stopped taking sniper shots and let fly with everything they had, AK-47’s and even shoulder-mounted missile launchers.

When Lilah’s computer clock said 11:35, the lobby had been blasted to rubble by the missiles, the wizards had all been beheaded, and the commandos were in full retreat. One of the horses, the yellow one, had shit on the lobby floor.

Lilah turned to Lindsey.

“Scale of one to ten, how fucked are we?” she said.

“Ten,” Cyvus Vail wheezed, as he burst into the room.

Maggie Walsh stood in front of the monitor, watching people die.

She was underground. She was safe: the Initiative’s facility beneath UC Sunnydale was a hangar-sized cavern with state-of-the-art research facilities, its own commando teams and hundreds of holding cells for its test subjects, and it also had its own power source, food and potable water stores to last years and on top of all that it was designed to withstand a nuclear blast. More importantly, it was designed to keep its secrets. No one would be leaving--and that included the vicious, inhuman things they kept locked up there.

Aboveground, on the UC Sunnydale campus--in the classrooms, in the gym, in the library, in the cafeteria, in the Student Union, in the dorm rooms, everywhere--vampires were killing students. And Maggie was watching.

She’d asked Washington for assistance and the CIA Director had personally told her there would be no assistance--at all, ever. The Initiative was designed to be airtight; it was designed to withstand just this sort of disaster. Maggie was told she could liquidate the demons the Initiative had painstakingly rounded up and captured over the past year at her discretion if she was worried about them becoming a threat, but under no circumstances was she to let any human being out of the facility until this crisis had been averted.

The CIA Director, a fat, sloppy, viciously intelligent old man who liked young female interns, who had the worst bad breath Maggie had ever encountered, and whose ties never, not one time, matched his shirts, had given her these instructions from an underground bunker in Maryland. The government was evacuating. At 8:42 p.m. eastern standard time the White House had been attacked and President Gingrich and his family had been killed before they could be escorted to safety; Vice President Lieberman had officially assumed the Presidency at 8:44 p.m., on Air Force One, as he was being flown to a secured site, and he had ordered the immediate evacuation of the Federal Government. The new President, his staff, the Joint Chiefs, the Cabinet, the heads of the CIA, FBI, NSA and half a dozen other three-letter agencies, some known to the public, some not, the entire US Congress and the Supreme Court and all their most essential staff members too, along with all their families, had been evacuated to underground bunkers where they would wait out the siege...and try to find a way to fight...

All Maggie could do was sit there, underground. She passed the time studying her enemy.

She wasn’t an expert on vampires; currently, the Initiative was concerned with hunting demons. Their commando teams killed vampires on sight, but demons were captured and taken for study...for Project 314, the darling of the government’s eye. Project 314 had been in the works for decades and had widely been viewed as a hole down which billions of dollars had a tendency to disappear every few years, until Maggie Walsh had proposed a radical new approach that had the benefit of offering quick, tangible results. Project 314--sometimes called Project Super Soldier by those in the know within the Federal Government--had been given priority over all other DRI projects once Maggie had demonstrated her techniques, and Maggie had been given the DRI. The government wanted a Super Soldier. Maggie hadn’t given them one yet...but she had created a better soldier, the most advanced soldier that had ever existed, and the government liked what it had seen so far.

That soldier’s name was Riley Finn, and he was a studious, reserved, soft-spoken boy from Iowa, polite to a fault and a little shy around girls. He even went to church on Sundays. And he had been a navy SEAL for awhile too: best sniper in his class, heavy weapons expert, land warfare expert, gifted close quarters combatant, brilliant tactical thinker; and then Maggie got hold of his file, and knew he was just what she needed...her Super Soldier in the making...the first of a future army of men who would take the world for the United States.

There was even a timetable now: twenty years. Riley was coming along so well that success was virtually assured; all the hard work had been done. Project 314 would be completed by the year 2000, the draft would be immediately reinstated after that, the army would be ready by 2006, then the campaign would begin: the Middle East by 2009, Britain, Canada, Central and South America and Africa would all fall in line, the Soviet Union by 2012, Japan and Australia by 2014, China after that...and by 2017 Western Europe would be fighting alone...

Maggie took this opportunity to watch the vampires and learn what she could about them, as the world fell to pieces above her, and she wondered if anyone up there actually had a plan. According to the files she’d read, the current Slayer--a girl living in Sunnydale named Buffy Summers--had saved the world on three documented occasions, and maybe more often than that, as intelligence was hard to come by on her. She seemed to be able to sense when she was being followed somehow, even by the best, most invisible agents, so Maggie had quickly ordered all physical surveillance stopped. Maggie had requested permission to install listening devices and cameras in Buffy’s house, but the CIA Director was leery about that; the Slayer had saved his fat ass before by handling threats he was supposed to be on top of, and he didn’t want to risk antagonizing her. But then Maggie had found out that Buffy had applied to UC Sunnydale, a perfect stroke of good fortune. In time she’d be able to watch Buffy to her heart’s content, up close.

Maggie wondered if the government wasn’t just sitting back and waiting for the Slayer to bail their asses out of yet another mess...and now there was apparently another Slayer too, a girl named Faith Lehane. The Initiative’s information on her was appallingly sketchy and Maggie didn’t like that one bit; something would have to be done. A Slayer was too important to be an unknown quantity.

Maggie had a great view of the vampires; The Initiative had all of UC Sunnydale wired up. Every classroom, every hallway, every dorm room had remote cameras. The school itself was simply a front for the Initiative. It always had been; when the Initiative was created in 1938 by secret order of President Roosevelt the University of California suddenly announced a new branch, in Sunnydale. People wondered at that; Sunnydale was a small, out of the way town then. But the government knew it was built on a Hellmouth; that made it the perfect place for the newly-formed Demon Research Initiative--or DRI--to get its feet wet. UC Sunnydale became a very well-respected school after that; the government made sure of it, giving it an unlimited budget for expansion and sending its most brilliant operatives there to pose as teachers.

Maggie taught Psych 101.

She wondered idly about the psychology of vampires, as she watched them kill; as she watched students she’d had in her classes being butchered, and mutilated, and raped on the giant monitors that hung in the center of the lower floor of the sprawling compound and could show up to a hundred different camera feeds at once at DVD quality. The vampires had come to the campus as an organized group, and they attacked the campus in an almost military fashion. It went against what little Maggie knew of them; she’d always thought nearly all vampires were solo hunters who ate when they were hungry and didn’t give much thought to any goals beyond that. A few notable vampires--Angelus, the Master, Kakistos, Darla, Spike, Drusilla, Maggie had read all their files--had bigger ambitions. But they were the very rare exceptions. Or so Maggie had thought. Now, as she watched these vampires methodically going from room to room, rounding up every student they could find, lining them up in the gym and brutally executing them, mutilating and raping them first, she wasn’t so sure.

All around her the Initiative’s research staff was quiet. Usually the Pit--the floor of the huge complex, twenty feet below the encircling catwalk, where most of the hands-on work with the captured demons was done--was buzzing with activity. But now it was strangely subdued. Her researchers weren’t working on their projects, all of which were actually the same project--everyone here was working on Project 314, in some capacity. Instead most of them were on the phones, trying to reach their loved ones. But phone service was sporadic now across most of the country and even cell phone service was being hit hard, and most of her researchers didn’t know if their families were living or dead.

Maggie allowed them to try to reach their families. For awhile. She had decided to give them all until 0800 hours and then it was back to work. From a psychological standpoint, Maggie knew work was important right now...

Maggie watched the vampires. They were draining blood from the students now, and painting obscenities on the gym wall with it.

“I’m sorry,” Maggie whispered.

“We should be out there,” Riley said.

He sat on his bunk, in full uniform; he was confined to quarters. When the vampires had attacked the campus, and Professor Walsh had refused to allow him to even attempt to mount a rescue, he’d been a little short with her--at least that’s what he called it, but Forrest was there too, and he claimed Riley had “gotten all up in Prof’s face like a damn crazy white cracka.” Either way he was confined to quarters now, not that it mattered; there wasn’t anything to do anyway.

Sam, Graham and Forest sat with him, even though they weren’t confined to quarters. But they felt bad for him.

The four of them sat together on Riley’s bunk, in full uniform...with nothing to do...nowhere to go...as the world collapsed somewhere above them.

Graham had his head in a book. Sam had her head on Riley’s shoulder. Forrest had his headphones on. And he was throwing a pink rubber ball against the wall over and over again, and catching it. Riley thought the sound was getting progressively more annoying. But Forrest tended to get restless.

“Sure thing Iowa, because, gettin’ our asses stomped by like two-thousand vamps and HST’s, that’s like, brilliant strategy,” Forrest said. “Dude, you’re like a tactical genius. No wonder why you’re in charge.”

“You get that he can make you do pushups right?” Sam said, and smiled that big, beautiful, stunning smile she had, and got that defiant little twinkle in her eyes, the one that Riley knew meant, ‘You wanna go? Let’s go.’ “He can make you do so many pushups. He can make you run laps.”

“Isn’t fraternization between officers and enlisted men officially frowned upon?” Forrest said, and moved his head to the music, and caught his ball, and threw it back. “Coulda sworn it was frowned upon.”

“Absolutely,” Graham said, without looking up from his book.

“Now don’t be jealous, boys,” Sam said, still smiling.

“Good point,” Forrest said. He took his headphones off. “But even though my commanding officer is a crazy white cracka...”

“Farm boy,” Graham said, still not looking up from his book. “He’s a crazy farm boy. Milkin’ cows and all that.”

“Fifty of ’em every day at the crack of dawn, soldier,” Riley said. “Don’t you forget it.”

“Damn, dude says it like he’s proud,” Forrest said, and laughed.

“He’s got great hands,” Sam said, and did the smile again, and took Riley’s hand. “Trust me.”

“Be that as it may...” Graham said, while continuing to read his book: a dog-eared paperback copy of All Quiet On the Western Front.

“Be that as it may,” Forrest said. “I’m thinkin’ maybe Iowa has a point. I’m gettin’ serious cabin fever in here, you know? Feelin’ the need for speed. Gettin’ out there, smackin’ down some hostiles? Sure, there’s a fuckload of ‘em around but goddamn, I could use some action.”

“Hey,” Riley said, and smiled, and picked Forrest’s rubber ball out of the air without looking at it, his hand moving so fast it could hardly be seen. “Language. There’s a lady present.”

“Yeah, fucker,” Sam said, and laughed.

“Crazy Iowa cracka boy, meet crazy Kansas cracka girl,” Forrest said, and shook his head.

“And I’m confiscating your ball,” Riley said.

“Dude,” Graham said. “Harsh.”

“I’m in charge,” Riley said. “I gotta make the tough calls.”

“Shit,” Forrest said, and took his headphones off. “I am climbin’ the damn walls in here.”

“I’m the only one confined to quarters,” Riley said. “Take a stroll, get some air.”

“Nah,” Forrest said. “I like buggin’ you.”

They were quiet. Sam held Riley’s hand. Graham read his book. Forrest laid back on the bunk, looking up at the ceiling.

Riley pulled his taser from his holster, and looked down at it.

“We should be out there,” Riley said.

“We’re locked down, boss,” Graham said. “Order came all the way from D.C. Be angry at Professor Walsh all you want, but this comes from over her head.”

“I’m not angry with her,” Riley said, and stood up, and paced around the little spartan room. “I just feel...so damned cooped up...useless. We could make a difference out there. Save some people.”

“And do what with them?” Graham said, and put his book down. “Bring them here? This gonna be a refugee camp or something?”

“Why not?” Riley said, and stopped pacing, and faced him. “People need saving out there. It’s our job to save them and we ain’t doin’ jack shit.”

“Language,” Forrest said. “There’s a lady present.”

Riley paced. Forrest laid back in the bunk and stared up at the ceiling. Graham went back to his book.

Sam stood up.

“So let’s do something about it,” she said.

“Do what?” Graham said. He was looking up from his book now. “We’re stuck here.”

“Yeah, whole joint’s in lockdown,” Forrest said. “No way out even if we did decide to be crazy and throw our careers away.”

“So let’s dig a tunnel,” Sam said.

“You’re kidding,” Graham said. “Uh...right?”

“She’s not kidding,” Forrest said. “Look at her. She’s doin’ those crazy eyes. And she’s a crazy woman from Kansas.”

“She’s kidding,” Riley said, and turned around, and looked hard at her. “Trust me.”

“It’s the one annoying thing about you,” Sam said, and looked right back at him. “How you’re so goddamned honorable that you think you have to protect me. Got news for you, soldier. I don’t need protecting.”

“Maybe you need a good kick in the ass from your commanding officer then,” Riley said, his eyes not wavering.

“Oh, bring it,” Sam said, and smiled, and got that twinkle in her eye.

“Ten bucks on the chick,” Forrest said, turning to Graham. “She’s got the killer look in her eyes.”

“I’ll take some of that action,” Graham said.

“Okay, you two need to stop talking,” Riley said, turning his attention away from Sam for a second. But then it was focused right back on her again.

“Look, you guys,” Sam said, looking at all three of them. “I’m not saying the four of us go out there and save the world. I’m not saying we bring a thousand refugees down here. First, the four of us wouldn’t survive an hour anyway if we went around taking down every hostile we encountered. From the news reports the whole country’s overrun, hell, the whole world’s overrun. But we’re here on a Hellmouth, ground zero, and this is where the anomaly with the sun started according to our scanners. Whatever caused this, it happened in Sunnydale. If there’s a way to fix it--and I’m not saying there is, but if there’s a way?--it’s in Sunnydale too.”

“So what are you saying?” Riley said.

“We reconnoiter,” Sam said. “We go into town and assess the situation, try to get some hard info we can bring back. Professor Walsh knows who the Slayer is, right? It’s classified, but she knows, right? Don’t you think the Slayer is probably trying to do something about this? Maybe she can use some help, or maybe she has some info we can use. I can tap into Professor Walsh’s computer and pull up the Slayer’s name...”

“I know who she is,” Riley said.

“Thought that shit was classified, need to know, eyes only and whatnot,” Forrest said.

“For you goldbrickers,” Riley said. “Not for me.”

Sam rested her hands on Riley’s chest. He looked down at her.

“So why don’t we pay her a visit?” Sam said...and did that smile...

“Have you been able to reach Rupert Giles yet?” Quentin Travers thundered, sticking his head out the heavy oak door of his lavish oak-paneled office, and glaring at his secretary in the also very lavish, also oak-paneled outer office. His secretary was a very young, very fragile looking pasty-faced blonde-haired girl who always wore heavy wool suits that looked quite uncomfortable and thick glasses that made her look like some sort of bug, and she was about as relaxed as a wire hanger. She had only just graduated from Oxford and she really wasn’t prepared for this sort of thing. Being a Watcher and fighting back the apocalypse was all well and good; it was glamorous, even. Actually experiencing the apocalypse was rather different. The girl had spilled three cups of coffee because her hands kept shaking. One of them she had spilled on him. Quentin thought she might actually climb out of her skin.

“N-no, no sir,” the girl said, Beatrice Something or Other her name was, Quentin seemed to recall; he hadn’t really paid attention when he was introduced to her. “The...the phones are all wonky Mr. Travers, I haven’t been able to raise the United States, even by cell...”

“Then find a damned carrier pigeon!” Travers shouted. “Or a psychic, or a Ouija board, or a crystal ball, or sprout wings and fly there! But get me Rupert Giles on the blasted phone!”

“Yes...yes sir,” Beatrice whispered, her hands starting to shake again.

Quentin sighed, and came out of his office, and sat down beside her desk.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

Beatrice looked up at him as if he had told her he was a space alien who had come to bring her back to Saturn with him.

“Sir?” she said, barely above a whisper.

“Beatrice, isn’t it?” Quentin said.

“Yes...Beatrice...Beatrice Calloway,” Beatrice said. He noticed that she had yet to look directly at him; she seemed to have trouble making eye contact.

“Well Ms. Calloway, I know it must be dreadfully difficult, listening to the ravings of a terrible old fellow like me. And I apologize for that. I can be very trying; the fact that I’ve gone through five secretaries before you would be a testament to that.”

“No, I should...I should’ve reached him.”

“My dear, you’re not a magician. If the phones are down out there then the phones are down out there.” He sighed again. “It’s been a hard couple of months, and the older I get the more I show the strain of this damned job, I suppose. Losing Rebecca Greer was a blow; she was one of our best. And now, being blindsided by this...”

“Sir...there must be something we can do. Right? I mean...we’re the Watchers Council. We...we have resources...”

“What we have is the Slayer. Without her we’re a bunch of terrible old men--and a few pretty young girls,” Quentin added with a smile--“with their damned fool heads stuck in books. And then one day you look up from the books, and you realize the world came to an end while you were too busy reading to notice. So you take it out on your secretary, who really is a bright, pleasant young woman who doesn’t deserve this sort of abuse, and then you apologize profusely for being an arse.”

“It’s...it’s all right, sir,” Beatrice said, and smiled. She had a lovely smile, Quentin noticed.

Quentin sat there. He had nowhere else to go, really; nothing else to do. He’d gotten everyone in whom he could find, issued all the orders, made all the calls. Without the Slayer none of it was worth a damn and he knew it.

“Sir...isn’t there...isn’t there anything we can do?” Beatrice said.

Quentin looked toward the window. It might as well have been painted black. He looked at the television set hanging on the wall in the corner, droning on quietly. The BBC was reporting that in the United States, the White House had been attacked; here at home, the royal family was in hiding and Parliament was in emergency session with two full army battalions guarding the building. Casualties so far were in the thousands in England alone; worldwide estimates put the total at close to a million now.

It had only been nine hours.

“Pray, I suppose,” Quentin said.

“This won’t do,” Richard Wilkins III said, as he stared out the window of his office in City Hall, watching his city burn. “This won’t do at all.”

“I imagine not,” the wizard sitting on the couch said, in a thick Jamaican accent. The wizard was a tall, thin black man with a shaved head, tattoos in a spiral pattern on his face, pointed ears, black eyes without any white whatsoever around the pupils, and an iron collar around his neck. He wore a black robe that seemed to change color whenever he moved, flashing all the colors of the rainbow, like light seen though a kaleidoscope, and black slippers.

“I’m supposed to ascend in six months,” Wilkins said. “This can’t be happening now. Something has to be done.”

There was a beeping sound. The wizard pulled a cell phone from one of the pockets of his robe. He opened it, and listened.

“Your inside man would like a word, Mr. Mayor,” he said, and smiled.

“Well he’s sure done a bang-up job,” the Mayor said, not looking away from the window. “He’s been there two days and he’s managed to end the world.” He sighed, and shook his head. “Give me the phone.”

The wizard brought the cell phone to the Mayor.

“I hope you have some good news for me, Mr. Giles,” the Mayor said.