"Where the hell are the others?" She demanded, grabbing him hard by the upper arm and shaking it for emphasis. Distantly she noted his deltoid was as hard as a rock; he must have worked out.

"Not here; it's complicated." Looking around at the grasping horde, he suddenly exclaimed, "Upstairs!"

And in the blink of an eye or less, they were in an empty upstairs corridor.

"Wow," she gasped, letting go of his arm. "You can teleport too?"

"No-we're in your mind, Cordy. I think I made a mistake," he admitted, grimacing. "It's large enough that when I gave you the iron to hold, it presumed it was under attack. So now it's going to fight to survive. That's a primitive instinct, isn't it-the desire to survive. Especially in a big dumb animal like this."

She slapped his shoulder hard, startling an "Ow!" and an angry frown from him. "Start making sense or I'll shove you down the stairs." She threatened, not willing to admit she was as freaked out as she was confused. It was wonderful how everything sort of went to shit at the same time; as if someone decided you didn't have enough shit in your life, and decided to start shoveling it on until you drowned in it.

So Bob told her a truly creepy fairy tale about a parasitic demon who hid in flowers, and supposedly was now making a home in her cranium. She remembered holding that iron coin thing, and how it suddenly, inexplicably burnt her; but when she looked at the palm of her hand, it was fine.

"That's why you haven't been getting visions," Bob continued, sounding perfectly rational for a crazy person. "That's what I sensed blocking you-the Cephalic demon has been...well, for lack of a better term...'absorbing' the visions as soon as they hit. They don't reach you, and it gets that much closer to physicality."

"Uh huh," she replied doubtfully. It sounded completely nuts, which meant it was quite probably true. How many nuts things had she been involved in in her life? Too goddamn many. "So how are you here?"

"I entered your mind. Sorry about that, but I couldn't ask you first."

She ignored any potential innuendo in that, and tried to puzzle out the details. "How? Is it like a Vulcan mind meld sort of thing?"

"Well, no-"he began, then suddenly looked up towards the end of the hallway.

She felt it too, then; a sort of distant rumbling growing closer, like the rapid build of an earthquake. "What the hell is that? Did the zombies get a bulldozer?"

"You tell me," he said. "I'm just a visitor here."

The wall seemed to explode outward at the far end of the hall, and the head of a snake-bigger than both of them and as ugly as sin-burst through and darted straight for them.

"Oh shit," she cursed. "The Mayor."

Bob had already grabbed her hand and started running down the hall; she had absolutely no trouble following him. "Mayor? You grew up in a strange town, didn't you?" He asked, as they pelted around the corner.

"Like you wouldn't believe," she agreed, and realized the hallway they were now in dead ended straight ahead...and they were running full force towards the solid wall.

"Bob," she said, trying to put on the brakes. But he was too strong, and had built up enough momentum to carry them forward regardless of her cooperation. Looking back, she knew there was good reason for the haste; the demonic, serpentine body of the transformed Mayor was filling the hall as it pursued them, the ceiling crumbling and the walls collapsing as it raced towards them like a bat out of hell, gaping, fang filled maw open wide. "Bob, wall!"

They were either going to smash headlong into the wall and die, or the Mayor was going to ram them through it, reducing them to a fine, mushy pulp before he gulped them down like cheese on a cracker.

Cordelia closed her eyes and braced for impact-she never imagined dying in such a bizarre and confusing way-when Bob suddenly shouted, "Door!"

She opened her eyes in time to see a door instantly appear in the white wall before them, and he simply threw it open as they kept on running, the Mayor making a weird, squealing/roaring sort of noise.

"How the fuck did you do that? "She asked breathlessly, continuing to glance back over her shoulder. The Mayor simply burst through the door like it was rice paper, and kept on coming, destroying the Hyperion in its wake. At least the zombies would make a decent snack for it.

"This is not reality, Cordy-it's your mind. It's trying to turn it against you, but it's a big, dumb animal. It can play with your memories, but you are still in control ;it's trying to convince you you're not. Believe it and you're dead." He explained, continuing to run and almost literally drag her along with. She was getting tired, and the Mayor was gaining ground. "What kills that thing?"

"What, the Mayor? Buffy blew it up."

"Buffy?" He wondered, then shook his head, as if it didn't matter right now. "So, will fire kill it?"

"I don't think so."

"What else? Anything else?"

She didn't see why he wanted to know; they'd be dead any second now. "A volcano killed one once, I think. Why?"

"Perfect," he said, and then shouted, "Volcano!"

"What?" She asked, still trying to grasp what the hell was going on, and then she felt the floor starting to give beneath her feet. Looking back, she saw the floor of the hallway was falling away behind them...and into a boiling pool of reddish-orange lava beneath. The waves of heat coming up from it were so incendiary the floor panels and fragments of carpet falling away burst into flames before they even hit the magma, but she didn't see how the entire hallway didn't burst into flames, or the entire goddamn hotel.

"If this is my mind, how are you controlling this?" She asked, nearly losing her footing as they rounded another corner; Bob held her up, and kept on going. If they stopped for a second, would they fall in the lava too?

"I'm a Belial-mind games are my specialty," he claimed, as the Mayor screamed in rage, tail thrashing and taking out all the surrounding rooms.

And that's when a brick wall appeared right in front of their faces.

"Fuck!" Bob exclaimed, raising an arm in front of his face. "Door!"

He barely said it in time, but as he impacted it it seemed to smash under his weight, brick splintering like wood, but he lost his footing and fell forward, pulling her down with him.

She landed right on top of him-and he was not a soft thing to land on (but then again, for a guy, that was a good thing)-but looked back in time to see the serpentine Mayor, every single gray, scaly inch of him, plunge into the channel of lava left in their wake, roaring in anger and agony as he fell into the roaring river of molten rock below, some of it splashing on and burning through the remaining hotel walls.

Bob had twisted as he fell, so he hit the ground on his back. She looked down at him, panting for breath right along with him, and asked, "Is it dead?"

He had to catch his breath first, but he shook his head. "Just the Mayor incarnation is dead. No offense, Cordy, but I don't think you're strong enough to kill this thing; it's far more developed than I thought."

"Which means what?" Maybe it was the big demon in her head, but this close up to him, he really was an attractive man...er, demon. And his body was as hard as a rock-he must have worked out.

"Which means we're going to have to split up." He craned his neck, shoving his head back so he could have a look at where they were. "Well, this is cute too."

She looked around, basically for the first time, and saw they were no longer in the Hyperion-they were in a graveyard. At night. A familiar looking graveyard. "Oh shit," she cursed under her breath, making herself get off Bob and get back to her feet. "I'm back in Sunnydale again. This is so unfair."

"Sunnydale? Hellmouth country?" He asked, rolling up to his feet with a feline, demonic sort of grace. "Ah, well that explains a lot."

Dirt started erupting from the graves all around them, pale, bloodless hands shoving over tombstones in their haste to rise from their coffins.

"Noon," Bob said, as the first snarling vampire looked their way.

The midnight sky suddenly turned bright, the sun spreading like a stain across the fibers of the sky, darkness draining away as light bled all over, filling every crevice, chasing the shadows away. The vampires shrieked as they turned into instant pillars of flame, finally exploding into dust.

"How is splitting up going to help?" She asked him, not admitting she was still impressed. But she was, and the guy was as cool as could be about it all. But then again, if this wasn't really real, why would he be bothered?

Okay-that almost made sense.

"I'm going to distract it. While I do that, I want you to make a break for it," he explained, taking her by the elbow gently and leading her across the sunlit graveyard, past still smoldering piles of former vampires. She thought she saw her own name on one of the tombstones, but Bob didn't let her stop to see.

"A break for what?"

"Consciousness," he said, then looking straight ahead, said, "Door."

A wall appeared out of nowhere, right in front of them, and in it of course, was a door, and without pause he opened it and went right through, into yet another corridor of the Hyperion. Cordelia wondered if this was what an 'acid trip' was like, and followed him through.

"If I gain consciousness, will this thing die?" She wondered. As soon as she was in the red carpeted hall. The door sealed up behind her, as if it had never existed at all.

"No, but you won't die," Bob explained, continuing down the hall. "I need it to see me as the tastier, more psychically rich morsel. I think it's still semi-corporeal enough to make the jump from you to me. I think I can kill it better in my mind."

"You want to be...infested?" She asked in disbelief.

"No, but I don't see any other way to do this."

"What if you can't? What if it kills you?"

He shrugged nonchalantly, and pasted on a grin that seemed both brave and precarious, as if his mask might slip at any minute. "I don't think any critter can-I'm from Australia, for Christ's sake. Everything there is either poisonous or has three rows of teeth."

"I don't buy it," she told him.

He stopped walking and looked back at her, surprised. "What?"

"The macho act." She frowned at him, but not angrily; she was just curious. "What's the deal, Bob? You're unlike any other Belial demon I've ever met, and I don't just mean the strength of your hoodoo ability. Why are you doing this? Why do you care?"

She wasn't sure he was going to answer her-she could almost sense the incoming bullshit-but suddenly they were both grabbed by massive rubbery tentacles that grew out of the wall, and were pulled back, into what should have been the wall, but was now some massive, living organism.

Cold gray tentacles started wrapping all the way around her body, pulling her arms tight at her sides, constricting her throat, and she could see Bob being swallowed by them as well; they were slithering over him like a sea of snakes, and he was drowning.

But not for long.

"Fire!" He shouted, word muffled by the tentacle attempting to strangle him.

And to Cordelia's horror ,Bob became a living pillar of flame.

Blue white fire seemed to erupt from his skin, straight out of every pore, and the tentacles seemed to scream and shrink away as if they had never been more than plasticine arms in a bad sci-fi movie.

But Bob was not screaming, nor did he seem to be in any pain at all; as the flames continued to crawl all over him, like a living entity, she could see, beneath its thin veil, that none of him was actually burning. He was enveloped by flame, yet it was not touching him somehow. And he was not afraid. Maybe the macho thing wasn't really that much of an act after all.

He raised his arm towards her, and the flames seemed to shoot out as if from a flamethrower, pouring out onto the tentacles trying to bury her.

She thought she could feel the heat of the flames as they burned through the tentacles, making them (somehow) scream and shrink away, but she heard his voice, loud and clear: "It can't hurt you, Cordy."

And she believed that, straight to her marrow.

She thought she now understood how special Bob was; the power she could feel radiating from him could not be evil. It didn't feel that way, not in the least. It was warm and inviting, like the sun. Who was Bob really? He was not what they assumed, but that was all she knew.

The flames died around him, and he told her, "Remember, this is your mind, Cordy-you can fight back. You can do whatever you want. Don't let it trick you into fear. Now go, down that hall, and remember, you must demand an exit. And believe you'll get it, no matter what."

"And you?"

He smiled faintly. "I'm going to give it an offer it can't refuse."

"Be careful," she told him, and then, acting on pure impulse, grabbed him and kissed him. He was surprised, but didn't resist. He was warm, as if filled with sunlight.

Then she pulled away, and started down the hallway, leaving him behind. She didn't know what he was doing, but when she glanced back, she saw he seemed to be limned with blue fire again, but this time it was not flames. She did not know what it was.

Vines started growing across the hall as the walls twisted and spasmed, like she was in the belly of a living thing, but she simply said," Axe." And there in her hand was a gleaming silver battle axe.

She chopped at the thorny vines trying to block her path, and they squealed and bled as she hacked through them, but the hacking was exhausting, and she my have traveled all of five feet. There had to be a quicker way to do this.

Well, of course. "Chainsaw," she said, dropping the axe, and a chainsaw appeared in her hands instead. She didn't know how to start the damn thing, so she imagined it was running, and it was.

Actually, this could be a lot of fun, under different-head not busting open like an eggshell-circumstances.

After slashing through the vines, which bled a sticky black blood that she pretended could not stain her clothes, she could hear a scream: but it was a deep, painful sound that seemed to be coming from the heart of the Hyperion itself, rattling the walls and her teeth at the same time. It was a sound both infinitely enraged, and painful beyond all measure of pain.

Bob, she thought ,panicked, and started to turn back, in time to see the hallway filling with black blood; a tide of ichor rushing straight towards her.

‘Run, Cordelia -go!' She heard Bob say, somewhere deep inside her mind. But his 'voice' sounded strained, as if he was trying to hold back a hurricane by sheer force of will alone.

"Exit," she shouted as she ran forward, towards a dead end wall, the black blood pooling at her feet, as sticky as tar and yet threatening to pull her down, like quicksand. "Exit!"

She wondered if it would hurt to die inside your own mind.

20

The waiting was the worst part.

To stand around helplessly and have no idea what was going on, and be unable to do anything regardless. Wesley hated that. But in this instance they were totally helpless, and he abhorred the feeling.

He also blamed himself-why didn't he think of a Cephalic demon? And why didn't he realize that Cordelia was under siege? He should have suspected something; they shouldn't have had to wait for a Belial demon as questionable as Bob to clue them into a problem.

And Bob was questionable; so far he had been helpful, and so far he had not lied to them, as far as he could tell...which made him very suspicious. He wasn't acting much like a Belial demon, unless he was after something, then he was. There had to be something else going on, and Wesley was determined to figure it out before Bob sprung it on them.

He found the book he was looking for on the shelf-the volume of Blalock's Journal dealing specifically with the origin of Belial demons-when Gunn asked, "So what do we do? Just stand around and wait?"

Angel, who had started pacing in a tight circle by the couch, never venturing too far so he could keep an eye on the (presumably) unconscious Bob, told him, "I think so."

Gunn's face clouded, his expression torn between annoyance and rage. "What about that iron thing? It hurts it, right? Can we kill it with iron?"

They both looked at Wesley curiously, and he sighed as he straightened his glasses and put Blalock's Journal on the front desk, next to several other demon and spell 'dictionaries' he had pulled. He was going to get some bad eye strain, he just knew it. "Iron can only kill it in its corporeal form. We could, in theory, try and kill it now, but we'd have to ram something iron through its nesting place-Cordelia's skull."

Gunn looked at him, hazel eyes wide in shock. "Okay, there's a good plan gone to hell."

Wesley was going to tell him it was okay-a bad plan was better than none at all-when he noticed something odd happening to Bob out of the corner of his eye.

It started on his face; it seemed to be creeping from his scalp down. His otherwise suntanned skin was turning as pale as cream, a creeping stain that seemed to bleach him as his entire circulatory system-veins, capillaries, arteries-stood out in cords beneath a thin layer of nearly translucent skin, a relief map traced in electric blue, crawling down his face to his neck, his neck to his arms, like they were living things, worms and snakes beneath his flesh.

"Wesley," Angel asked, then stopped his pacing when he saw the look on his face. "What..?" Angel looked where he was looking, at Bob, and seemed equally horrified and fascinated.

Gunn looked too. "Should that be happening?"

Wesley, aware the question was aimed at him, shook his head as he came around the desk. He had no idea what the rules were here, but somehow that didn't seem good.

Suddenly there was a flash of light, a brief, barely visible...something, that seemed to dart from Cordelia's head straight into Bob's, and Bob collapsed to the floor, as lifeless as a rag doll, as Cordy shouted, "Exit!"

Angel knelt down beside her as Wesley and Gunn both darted to her side, and she sat up, looking startled. "This is real, right? Real world?"

Angel smiled at her, looking relieved. "As far as I know. How do you feel?"

"Fine-empty. How's Bob?" She asked, looking around for him. She nudged Gunn aside to find Bob passed out on the floor, and gave them all an evil look as she got down beside him. "Bob? You back yet? Bob?" She turned him over on his back, and looked startled at his pale (blue) bloodshot appearance. "What the hell's happened to him?"

"We don't know," Wesley ruefully admitted, as she placed a hand on his corded, pale throat.

She sucked in a surprised gasp, and looked at them all, her brown eyes wide and horrified. "He's not breathing. Guys, he doesn't have a pulse."

Wesley quickly went over to Bob and knelt on the other side of him, double checking for a heartbeat. She was right; he not only had no signs of life, but he felt like he was starting to grow cold already.

Oh god-this had never even occurred to him as a possibility.

Wesley laced his fingers together and started pressing his joined hands down on Bob's chest, not really sure if CPR would work on Belial, but what else could they do? Even if the phones worked, you couldn't call an ambulance for a Belial demon being killed by a psychic parasite.

Cordy made a sound of anguish, clasping a hand over her mouth as tears filled her eyes. "You bastard," she said, looking down at Bob, choking back a sob. "You knew it would kill you. You knew it!"

Wesley wondered if he had-was a Belial even capable of selfless behavior?

He tried for well over two minutes to get his heart beating again, repeating chest compressions and hoping for some sign of life, anything, but there was no change, no movement, and Angel, looming over them, said, with actual remorse, "Stop it, Wes. He's gone."

Reluctantly, Wesley stopped CPR, and Cordy sobbed, tears rolling down her cheeks and splashing on Bob's motionless ,insensate face as she gently touched his cool, vein tattooed forehead.

He supposed he could put Blalock's Journal away, because he wouldn't need it anymore.

Bob was dead.

21

Considering he never trusted the guy, and basically he hated him, Angel wondered why he felt so bad about Bob's death.

Because he died saving Cordy? Because he wanted him to die? Or because Cordy was actually shedding tears over the bastard?

It made his heart hurt just to hear it, and he really felt Bob was a waste of the emotion, since he was sure he was playing them in some way. Yet he had risked his life for Cordelia, and may have taken the death meant for her. Even if he was a smug, lying bastard, he couldn't hate him for that.

He turned away, towards the front desk, as Wesley said, "Maybe we should take...him upstairs." Angel knew he was going to say 'the body', but didn't, for Cordelia's sake.

Angel nodded, turning back towards him, where he was still hunkered down beside Bob's body. Cordy was still on the other side of him, now crying silent tears, but that made it worse somehow. She ran a hand through Bob’s muddy brown hair, and said, "I'll help."

Gunn, who didn't look upset more than just confused, replied, "Cordy, don't-"

"I'm going to help," she insisted, giving him her determined, 'don't you dare mess with me' look. Gunn wisely backed off.

It was then Bob gasped loudly for breath.

Wesley fell back on his butt in shock, while Cordelia just looked down wide eyed as Bob coughed up a bit of his bluish blood, and his eyes shot open, as if from a bad dream.

"God, what a nasty bugger," he said, sucking in a hard breath. He sat up, wiping the blood from his mouth with the back of his hand, and only then seemed to notice everyone was staring at him. "What?"

Cordy threw her arms around him and hugged him fiercely. "You're alive," she crowed happily.

He gave her a slightly confused hug back. "Oh, did I die? I hate it when that happens."

"Do you die a lot?" A startled Wesley asked curiously, getting back up to his feet, and trying hard to pretend nothing undignified had just occurred.

"No. I think I was a death virgin, but I'm familiar with it through relatives. And cities."

Cordy pulled back from the hug and punched Bob in the shoulder.

"Ow!" Bob exclaimed-a bit dramatically, in Angel's opinion-grabbing his shoulder. "Why are you always hitting me? You are one violent woman."

"You knew that goddamn wormy thing could kill you!" She accused, wiping away her tears with her forearm.

Bob grimaced, shrugging a single shoulder. "I knew there was a good chance...but if I had told you that, would you have left?"

"No!"

"See why I didn't?" He canted his head to the side, and started smacking the other side of his head with the palm of his hand. "I think I'm gonna need a paper towel if you got one."

"I'm afraid to ask why," Gunn said. All this time, he had remained standing back by the couch, and Angel admired his common sense.

"There's a towel in the bathroom," Cordy said, sniffing away the rest of her tears and standing up. "I'll go get it."

Angel could now see something dark green oozing out of Bob's left ear-the corporeal remains of the Cephalic demon.

"Oh man, that's disgusting," Gunn said. No one disagreed.

"How did you kill it?" Angel wondered, as that seemed to be the unanswered question here.

He waited until Cordelia came back from the bathroom with a towel before getting up-shakily; Wesley grabbed his arm to help him keep his feet-and color started coming back to his skin as his veins and arteries seemed to shrink back, hidden beneath the skin where they belonged. "Never play mind games with a Belial-you cannot win. As soon as it made the jump, I let it know what a bad host trade it had made; I was a psychic smorgasboard, but I was dead, and now so was it. I convinced it I was dead, and then that it was dead too as a result. I guess I method acted-sorry. But that bugger refused to shuffle off the mortal coil lightly. Primitive urge to survive and all." He took the towel from Cordy with a grateful nod and a thin smile, although his lips were still pale blue enough to make it look eerie, and started to wipe off the remains of the demon. "I really do think this is the grossest thing I've done. And I've done lots. Back in Botany Bay, we-"

"The question now is who sent it," Angel interrupted, not interested in any gross stories from Botany Bay.

"You know who sent it," Gunn countered, sounding and looking pissed off at the very idea.

Yes, he did-who else would want to prevent Cordelia from having visions, especially now? Wolfram and Hart.

"Actually, we have the same problem we had before-how do we kill Bellara?" Bob interjected, still wiping demon guts out of his ear canal.

Outside, beyond the wood and protective walls of the Hyperion, it was still possible to hear the screams of sirens and wail of car alarms, the sounds of people violent and controlled somewhere beneath, like the ocean at low tide: a distant murmur, but always there.

Wesley walked back behind the front desk, and started opening books. "Lovely. Back to reading."

There were collective groans, except from Bob. He seemed to be staring at a point on the floor. Suddenly, he looked up, and asked, "What time is it?"

Wesley glanced over his shoulder, at the clock on the wall. "Midnight-why?"

"I have to meet a contact," Bob said, looking at the remains on the formerly white towel before balling it up and shoving it in the nearest trashcan. His color wasn't great, but he seemed steady on his feet now. "He was supposed to have some more direct dirt on Workfam and Carp-and no, Angel, you can't come with me. He knows you, and he hates you." Gunn opened his mouth to speak, and Bob held out a hand to stop him. "No offense, kiddo, but he doesn't like Humans at all. I have to go alone."

Angel really didn't like the sound of that, no matter what he had done for Cordy. "And we should trust you why?"

Although Bob gave him a look of disbelief, it was Cordy who exclaimed, "How can you even say that, Angel?"

The hurt and anger on her face was painful to see, especially directed at him. Bob had nearly died saving her life-she trusted him. And nothing he could ever say would adequately explain to her why he couldn't trust Bob, even in spite of that. So Angel simply looked away, back at Bob, who was looking sort of smug again.

If Angel didn't know better-and did he really?-he'd think Bob rigged the whole thing. "No visit to Helga-come straight back here."

"Don't worry; I don't have the stamina for Helga right at the moment," he claimed, and walked off, back towards the basement and sewer access, pausing to pick up his coat on his way across the lobby.

"Helga?" Cordy asked, looking at Angel for an explanation.

"Kiddo?" Gunn asked, looking between both him and Bob.

"If I'm not back by one, call out the dogs," Bob said, shrugging on his jacket and disappearing into the basement.

After a moment's silence, Gunn said, "He is one weird dude."

That seemed like the understatement of the century.

***********

Bob waited until he was at least two blocks away from the Hyperion to lean against the wall, catch his breath, and try and stop his legs from shaking.

Shit, that had been close. Shit shit shit.

That was no normal Cephalic demon; it was some sort of bad ass, full on Power That Be sucking mutation, and he had no idea how close it had come to permanently killing him, but closer than he felt comfortable with. Luckily, he was not a normal Belial demon, but it had been a combination of luck and experience that saved his ass from that fire, nothing else.

There had been times in his life when he was so overwhelmed with grief-like back in Botany Bay, when Maggie and the kids all died of tuberculosis (shit-Humans could be so frail)-that he had wanted to die. He thought he might, he tried to force the issue, but he never came right out and went the suicide route, because he was too much of a coward. And when he tried to lose himself in the Outback and die the same hideous death (by exposure and dehydration) that had claimed so many others, he had been inexplicably 'rescued' before he got more than delirious. Besides, he was a demon-he was hard to kill.

Until tonight, of course.

He sank back against the sewer tunnel wall, ignoring the smell and the constant, water torture like dripping noise, and he wondered if he really was ready to die. To finally rest, once and for all.

He wished he believed in an afterlife; he wished he believed he'd be reunited with all the loved ones that had been taken from him over the centuries. But he didn't. He'd lived long enough to know life just didn't wrap itself up in a neat little package like that. It was inherently unfair.

Was he ready? Was he ready to give it all up? Because the plan he had in mind would probably be all she wrote for him. And that was only one of the reasons why he couldn't tell it to the others.

He heard movement, a scuff of leather on slick cement, and knew by smell that he was only not only no longer alone, but he was surrounded.

As he shoved himself off the wall, six Frenik demons seemed to grow out of the darkness of the surrounding tunnels, eyes glowing like rubies, and one came towards him: a big one, maybe six and a half feet of solid, reptilian muscle swathed in an almost absurdly dignified Armani pinstriped suit. Bob knew a merc when he saw one, and he was sure these were all mercenaries; all mercs, all hard to kill...and all immune to Belial psychic power.

Armani boy looked at him coldly, and said, somewhat sibilantly, "Maximum Bob-boy, you look like shit." He pulled a semi-automatic nine millimeter pistol out of his jacket, and aimed it right in Bob's face. "And you're coming with us."

22

Bob glanced blandly at the gun before looking at the Frenik holding it, wondering if this was Krukval. He was supposed to be the big ,fancy ass hoo haa in the Frenik mercenary world, but Bob had never hired him, and would never, because, basically, he was a putz. He supposedly had a thing for expensive suits, pinstripes, and a taste of the 'ultraviolence'.

Krukval waved the barrel, as if to pull Bob's attention back to it, but he didn't care. This was not the first time he had a gun in his face, and, no matter how brief his existence might be from now on, he bet it wouldn't be the last time he had a gun jammed in his face.

"I can pay you triple whatever they're paying you," Bob said blandly. He wasn't offering, he was just pointing it out.

Bob heard some shifting behind him; the idea of that much money-however much it was (must have been a hell of a lot)-made them anxious. Krukval's men would have been happy to make that trade and walk away with the money.

But not Krukal-his eyes remained stony and implacable. "I don't want your fucking money, 'Max'." He said it with such contempt that only then did Bob realize he hated him. Why? Because he had never hired him and his band of crooks? Or because he had power Krukval could only dream of?

"So what are they offering you? Power? Immortality? Their personal guarantee you will not end up an appetizer for whatever they're bringing up?" He kept his voice low, level, calm, so it would appear he was in control of the situation. After all, belief was four fifths of reality.

"None of your fucking business, Belial," Krukval spat, inadvertently telling him-without having said a word-that he was working for Wolfram and Hart. He then stepped back and gestured with the gun barrel towards the end of the sewer tunnel behind him.

Bob stayed right where he was, folding his arms over his chest and fixing Krukval with a stringent glare. "You stupid shit-don't you know I could crush you like a fucking bug? This is your last chance, Lizard Boy. Leave now, and I'll let you walk away with your lives."

There was some nervous tittering behind him, but Krukval's laugh was full throated and deeply amused. "I heard you were a funny guy, Bob, but I had no idea. That's fucking hilarious."

"I'm as funny as clown shoes," Bob agreed, deadpan.