“Are
you following any of this?” Lilah asked the glowing woman desperately. While she was accustomed to oblique
references and gnomic pronouncements, as both a lawyer and a servant of ancient
evils, this was rapidly becoming distressingly baffling. So much so that she was admitting weakness to
someone.
“Kind
of. Not really, but kind of,” said the
woman.
“Think
you can explain it to me?” The woman
shrugged helplessly.
“I
think what they’re saying is that the world was destroyed and recreated, and
very few people noticed.” And here the
woman stared straight at Lilah, her glow intensifying. “And I think that your bosses are among those
that didn’t notice.”
“Oh,”
said Lilah, already trying to think over the implications of that and failing.
“Ahem,”
said the cat pointedly, before resuming its conversation with the dog. “As I was about to say, what now? You can touch this world, much as you did in
the time immediately preceding your birth.
Yet now it seems that your actualization will never come, as your mother
and father know the signs of your coming.
And knowing, they will stop themselves before they create you.”
“Will
they? Well, maybe. But the reason why they were worthy of
creating me was in who they were. In
order to be true to themselves, almost inevitably they will start the chain of
events that will lead to my creation.”
“Or
not.”
“Or
not,” said the dog, shrugging in a manner that was entirely alien to a dog’s
body. “I am nothing if not patient. With the creation of existence, so too came
the eventuality of its destruction and renewal.
If I could wait since then, I can wait longer still.
“And
besides, even if it’s not my current mother and father, another will come
along. ‘Into every generation, there is
a Chosen One,’ and so on.”
“Unless
the line is cut,” said the cat.
“Unless
the line is cut,” agreed the dog. “But
even then, one will come. If things had
progressed without this re-creation, a girl would have been born some time in
the future. She will have a twin, you
see, one who becomes a vampire and inherits all of the memories and dreams that
should have gone to the girl. They would
make very good parents, I think.”
“How
V.C. Andrews of you,” said the cat.
“Symmetry
and contradiction are inherent in my creation, as dichotomy was to yours,” said
the dog, again shrugging. The dog and
the cat then silently watched as the sun rose fully, pulling free from the
horizon.
“Things
have already changed,” said the cat finally.
“And will continue to change.”
“Even
us?” asked the dog.
“Yes,
maybe even us,” said the cat.
“But
not now.”
“No,
not now.”
“Well,
then,” said the dog, as it walked away, “I guess I’ll see you the next time all
of creation goes bye-bye.”
“So,
soon then,” said the cat.
“Yeah,
pretty darn soon.”
The dog
walked down the hill and soon enough disappeared from sight. The cat meanwhile still looked down upon the
city below the cliff, as it slowly came alive for the day.
Finally,
the glowing woman interrupted the cat’s introspection. “It’s like you guys can’t even have a normal
conversation. It’s all, ‘oh, doom and
reality and creation, blah, blah.’ So
pretentious.”
“It
sure is,” said the cat, and paused before it continued. “Have you the Destroyer’s soul?”
“That’s
not his name,” said the woman. “And
yes. Oh, god, now I’m doing it.” The woman pressed her hands to her face in
mock despair before turning back to Lilah.
“You might have noticed from the whole glowing and floating gently that
I’m not exactly one-hundred percent human.
But you’re used to that, right?”
“Right,”
said Lilah. In fact, she rarely dealt
with non-humans, despite being part of the Special Projects division of Wolfram
and Hart. Most of her day-to-day work
was in the office, reviewing paperwork and researching laws and treaties. However, as befitted an evil law firm, much
of that paperwork was written on human or demon skin, in blood, and those
treaties and laws were from dimensions far from Earth. But she wasn’t going to admit to anyone that
she was ever unnerved by the alien deviance that made up her life. “Ghost?”
“Kind
of but not really,” said the woman apologetically. “That’s as close as I can get without going
into way too much detail.”
“Once
again, ahem, but more emphatically,” said the cat. “In any case, girl, you are now free to go to
your body.”
“Yeah,
about that,” replied the woman, “I doubt that my body would be able to handle
all of . . . well, me in there. And I
really don’t want to go all ‘Scanners.’
It’d ruin all my clothes.”
The cat
tapped a paw against her cheek in contemplation. Lilah had to resist a powerful urge to squeal
in delight at the adorable sight.
“You’re right about that. Messy
and you’d just end up back here. No,
what we’ll do is suppress your nature.
It’d be difficult to do it wholly, but it is possible.”
“I
guess I could make some genetic modifications to myself as I enter, then
compress myself down so that I can’t consciously access most of my abilities,
that’d keep me from going all explodey.”
“You
will be, to all appearances, much as you were before you ascended.”
Lilah
considered that, despite the earlier snark from the woman, she too could not
hold a normal conversation. Well, Lilah
had seen much the same during the meetings of the Circle of the Black Thorn,
the cabal which was the precursor to Wolfram and Hart and served alternatively
as its controllers and rivals. The
Circle was responsible for the Senior Partners’ apocalyptic plans, and as such
could not help but be pompous when discussing even mundane things with each
other.
“Visions? Floating?
Purity beam?” asked the woman.
“The
visions . . . yes. There will be pain,
but not killing pain,” said the cat.
“Oh
joy. That’s something to look forward
to,” said the woman as she walked towards the cliff. “You wouldn’t happen to know where I can find
Darla, would you? I have an immaculate
conception to kick-start.”
“She
will come to you. Right now she is in
Chechnya, near Grozny, indulging in her love of war. Yet the Master is even now gathering his
forces and his favorite children, to prepare the field for next year’s
Harvest.”
“There’s
no way that I’m flying to Russia before I get back into my body. Guess I’ll just have to keep the kid with me
until Darla gets here. Anyway, good
talk. We’ll have to do it again
sometime.” With that, the woman launched
herself into the sky, but not before giving them a wave and yelling back at
Lilah, “I’ll have my people call your people and we’ll do lunch!”
Lilah
really hoped the glowing woman was joking, because that was a cliché too far.
“And
now we’re down to one,” said the cat.
Lilah jerked her attention away from the flying woman, who was now lost
in the morning sunlight. “Hello, Lilah. Did you enjoy your peek behind the curtain?”
“Is
that what this was?” said Lilah. From
some sixth sense, possibly honed from her job experience, possibly simply
something innate in her, had told her that it was the cat that had gotten her
to come here. That this little black cat
had the power to order the Senior Partners.
And now she was alone with this thing, in the desert, and nobody knew
where she was.
Two
things kept her in place: one was the certain knowledge that if she was going
to die, here and now, there was nothing to stop that from happening. The other thing was her curiosity. The power and the wealth and comfort, coming
so fast and relatively easily, had drawn her to Wolfram and Hart. But, if she were honest with herself, it was
simply knowing the truth of the world, as ugly and horrific as it was, kept her
at her job. Knowing all the secrets that
so very few knew was intoxicating.
Her
curiosity may be what caused the cat to kill her, but Lilah could not do
anything but stay and learn.
As if
reading her mind, which it in all likelihood could do, the cat smiled. “Oh yes.
I thought you’d enjoy seeing my conversation, and I was right. I like you, Lilah. You are the Manichean struggle incarnate, and
that makes you very attractive to me.
Therefore, I shall give you a reward, which is also a punishment, which
is also a test.”
“What?”
asked Lilah. She was confused by all of
this, especially the last remark, angry at her confusion, but too frightened to
let her anger show. Suddenly, between
the blink of her eyes, the cat disappeared and was replaced by a little
girl. She was about eight or nine,
wearing a red-striped dress, her brown hair in pigtails. That made the predatory grin on her face all
the more terrifying.
“More
power. Specifically, control over the
Los Angeles branch of Wolfram and Hart.”
Lilah
drove back to LA, the instructions to make effective her sudden promotion
frantically written down on a legal pad taken from her briefcase. Though she doubted that she could ever forget
any of them. Go to the elevators in the
Wolfram and Hart building and press the floor buttons in a certain
sequence. Go to the White Room and talk
with the little girl that acted as the Conduit to the Senior Partners. She was to tell the girl that the source of
their power, that which lives in all people, commanded them to give her control
over Los Angeles.
And
they would. Lilah was certain of
that. The implications of this was
buzzing in her mind, the adrenaline pumping through her so much that she felt
her heart would explode.
So this
power was the gift, that much was obvious.
And the punishment was in her position.
She knew, from having done it herself, that everyone underneath would be
looking to climb to the top over her dead body.
Preferably that would be literally over her dead body. The struggle to keep her power and make it
grow within the organization would be her punishment.
But
what was the test?
And
what did Manichean mean?
And why
had the little girl that was once a cat been laughing so much as she disappeared?
you following any of this?” Lilah asked the glowing woman desperately. While she was accustomed to oblique
references and gnomic pronouncements, as both a lawyer and a servant of ancient
evils, this was rapidly becoming distressingly baffling. So much so that she was admitting weakness to
someone.
“Kind
of. Not really, but kind of,” said the
woman.
“Think
you can explain it to me?” The woman
shrugged helplessly.
“I
think what they’re saying is that the world was destroyed and recreated, and
very few people noticed.” And here the
woman stared straight at Lilah, her glow intensifying. “And I think that your bosses are among those
that didn’t notice.”
“Oh,”
said Lilah, already trying to think over the implications of that and failing.
“Ahem,”
said the cat pointedly, before resuming its conversation with the dog. “As I was about to say, what now? You can touch this world, much as you did in
the time immediately preceding your birth.
Yet now it seems that your actualization will never come, as your mother
and father know the signs of your coming.
And knowing, they will stop themselves before they create you.”
“Will
they? Well, maybe. But the reason why they were worthy of
creating me was in who they were. In
order to be true to themselves, almost inevitably they will start the chain of
events that will lead to my creation.”
“Or
not.”
“Or
not,” said the dog, shrugging in a manner that was entirely alien to a dog’s
body. “I am nothing if not patient. With the creation of existence, so too came
the eventuality of its destruction and renewal.
If I could wait since then, I can wait longer still.
“And
besides, even if it’s not my current mother and father, another will come
along. ‘Into every generation, there is
a Chosen One,’ and so on.”
“Unless
the line is cut,” said the cat.
“Unless
the line is cut,” agreed the dog. “But
even then, one will come. If things had
progressed without this re-creation, a girl would have been born some time in
the future. She will have a twin, you
see, one who becomes a vampire and inherits all of the memories and dreams that
should have gone to the girl. They would
make very good parents, I think.”
“How
V.C. Andrews of you,” said the cat.
“Symmetry
and contradiction are inherent in my creation, as dichotomy was to yours,” said
the dog, again shrugging. The dog and
the cat then silently watched as the sun rose fully, pulling free from the
horizon.
“Things
have already changed,” said the cat finally.
“And will continue to change.”
“Even
us?” asked the dog.
“Yes,
maybe even us,” said the cat.
“But
not now.”
“No,
not now.”
“Well,
then,” said the dog, as it walked away, “I guess I’ll see you the next time all
of creation goes bye-bye.”
“So,
soon then,” said the cat.
“Yeah,
pretty darn soon.”
The dog
walked down the hill and soon enough disappeared from sight. The cat meanwhile still looked down upon the
city below the cliff, as it slowly came alive for the day.
Finally,
the glowing woman interrupted the cat’s introspection. “It’s like you guys can’t even have a normal
conversation. It’s all, ‘oh, doom and
reality and creation, blah, blah.’ So
pretentious.”
“It
sure is,” said the cat, and paused before it continued. “Have you the Destroyer’s soul?”
“That’s
not his name,” said the woman. “And
yes. Oh, god, now I’m doing it.” The woman pressed her hands to her face in
mock despair before turning back to Lilah.
“You might have noticed from the whole glowing and floating gently that
I’m not exactly one-hundred percent human.
But you’re used to that, right?”
“Right,”
said Lilah. In fact, she rarely dealt
with non-humans, despite being part of the Special Projects division of Wolfram
and Hart. Most of her day-to-day work
was in the office, reviewing paperwork and researching laws and treaties. However, as befitted an evil law firm, much
of that paperwork was written on human or demon skin, in blood, and those
treaties and laws were from dimensions far from Earth. But she wasn’t going to admit to anyone that
she was ever unnerved by the alien deviance that made up her life. “Ghost?”
“Kind
of but not really,” said the woman apologetically. “That’s as close as I can get without going
into way too much detail.”
“Once
again, ahem, but more emphatically,” said the cat. “In any case, girl, you are now free to go to
your body.”
“Yeah,
about that,” replied the woman, “I doubt that my body would be able to handle
all of . . . well, me in there. And I
really don’t want to go all ‘Scanners.’
It’d ruin all my clothes.”
The cat
tapped a paw against her cheek in contemplation. Lilah had to resist a powerful urge to squeal
in delight at the adorable sight.
“You’re right about that. Messy
and you’d just end up back here. No,
what we’ll do is suppress your nature.
It’d be difficult to do it wholly, but it is possible.”
“I
guess I could make some genetic modifications to myself as I enter, then
compress myself down so that I can’t consciously access most of my abilities,
that’d keep me from going all explodey.”
“You
will be, to all appearances, much as you were before you ascended.”
Lilah
considered that, despite the earlier snark from the woman, she too could not
hold a normal conversation. Well, Lilah
had seen much the same during the meetings of the Circle of the Black Thorn,
the cabal which was the precursor to Wolfram and Hart and served alternatively
as its controllers and rivals. The
Circle was responsible for the Senior Partners’ apocalyptic plans, and as such
could not help but be pompous when discussing even mundane things with each
other.
“Visions? Floating?
Purity beam?” asked the woman.
“The
visions . . . yes. There will be pain,
but not killing pain,” said the cat.
“Oh
joy. That’s something to look forward
to,” said the woman as she walked towards the cliff. “You wouldn’t happen to know where I can find
Darla, would you? I have an immaculate
conception to kick-start.”
“She
will come to you. Right now she is in
Chechnya, near Grozny, indulging in her love of war. Yet the Master is even now gathering his
forces and his favorite children, to prepare the field for next year’s
Harvest.”
“There’s
no way that I’m flying to Russia before I get back into my body. Guess I’ll just have to keep the kid with me
until Darla gets here. Anyway, good
talk. We’ll have to do it again
sometime.” With that, the woman launched
herself into the sky, but not before giving them a wave and yelling back at
Lilah, “I’ll have my people call your people and we’ll do lunch!”
Lilah
really hoped the glowing woman was joking, because that was a cliché too far.
“And
now we’re down to one,” said the cat.
Lilah jerked her attention away from the flying woman, who was now lost
in the morning sunlight. “Hello, Lilah. Did you enjoy your peek behind the curtain?”
“Is
that what this was?” said Lilah. From
some sixth sense, possibly honed from her job experience, possibly simply
something innate in her, had told her that it was the cat that had gotten her
to come here. That this little black cat
had the power to order the Senior Partners.
And now she was alone with this thing, in the desert, and nobody knew
where she was.
Two
things kept her in place: one was the certain knowledge that if she was going
to die, here and now, there was nothing to stop that from happening. The other thing was her curiosity. The power and the wealth and comfort, coming
so fast and relatively easily, had drawn her to Wolfram and Hart. But, if she were honest with herself, it was
simply knowing the truth of the world, as ugly and horrific as it was, kept her
at her job. Knowing all the secrets that
so very few knew was intoxicating.
Her
curiosity may be what caused the cat to kill her, but Lilah could not do
anything but stay and learn.
As if
reading her mind, which it in all likelihood could do, the cat smiled. “Oh yes.
I thought you’d enjoy seeing my conversation, and I was right. I like you, Lilah. You are the Manichean struggle incarnate, and
that makes you very attractive to me.
Therefore, I shall give you a reward, which is also a punishment, which
is also a test.”
“What?”
asked Lilah. She was confused by all of
this, especially the last remark, angry at her confusion, but too frightened to
let her anger show. Suddenly, between
the blink of her eyes, the cat disappeared and was replaced by a little
girl. She was about eight or nine,
wearing a red-striped dress, her brown hair in pigtails. That made the predatory grin on her face all
the more terrifying.
“More
power. Specifically, control over the
Los Angeles branch of Wolfram and Hart.”
Lilah
drove back to LA, the instructions to make effective her sudden promotion
frantically written down on a legal pad taken from her briefcase. Though she doubted that she could ever forget
any of them. Go to the elevators in the
Wolfram and Hart building and press the floor buttons in a certain
sequence. Go to the White Room and talk
with the little girl that acted as the Conduit to the Senior Partners. She was to tell the girl that the source of
their power, that which lives in all people, commanded them to give her control
over Los Angeles.
And
they would. Lilah was certain of
that. The implications of this was
buzzing in her mind, the adrenaline pumping through her so much that she felt
her heart would explode.
So this
power was the gift, that much was obvious.
And the punishment was in her position.
She knew, from having done it herself, that everyone underneath would be
looking to climb to the top over her dead body.
Preferably that would be literally over her dead body. The struggle to keep her power and make it
grow within the organization would be her punishment.
But
what was the test?
And
what did Manichean mean?
And why
had the little girl that was once a cat been laughing so much as she disappeared?