Anya considered the slayer’s rampage through Vengeance LLC. Picturing her coworkers cleaved to bits made her equally sick and hungry for revenge. It had been eons since she had considered taking vengeance on her own behalf.

“Did she leave here with a big-ass ax?” she asked Rayne.

Rayne’s shoes stopped struggling. “Oh, well. I suppose she did leave with a Pylean Crebbil, but it was up as decoration over the bathrooms. I never assumed she would use it to—”

Ripper pinched the bridge of his nose. “Oh, Ethan, you absolute prat.”

Angelus’s fangs struck Rayne’s neck. The man didn’t even have time to cry out. One moment, his feet helplessly doubled their kicking. The next, his eyes were empty, and his body was limp. There wasn’t even a slurping sound.

Did all vampires eat so quietly or was Angelus a particularly dainty killer?

Angelus dropped Rayne’s body unceremoniously to the ground and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Spike, Dru, come on. We’ve got a slayer to hunt.”

“Wait!” Anya said. She knew that the vampires didn’t really need her help, but she definitely needed theirs. At any moment, the sky could come crashing down, a torrent of obliteration snuffing out everything in its path. Including her, entirely human without the magic that marked her as a demon, powerless to escape. It was torture, knowing that she couldn’t just hide in a nonhellish universe until the slayer was done with her killing spree.

She had to get back the Marnoxon gem. It was either that or die—and she was not interested in death.

“We don’t even know where the slayer is going!” she said. She peered over at Ripper, who looked as pale as his dead associate. “You sold the dowsing rod. Where is it pointing?”

“The only place it can point is a colony of hell. At the Black Flame flag,” Ripper said stiffly. He seemed determined not to look down at Rayne’s corpse.

“And where is that?” Angelus asked.

“How the hell should I know?” Ripper huffed.

“Why don’t you give us an educated guess, mate?” Spike said. The threat in his voice was clear.

Ripper tossed down his cigarette and ground it under his shoe, smearing desiccated brown leaf bits across the floor. “The City Council appoints a powerful demon to act as the guardian of the flame,” he said. “To prevent something like this from happening. But if you want to know where to go, you’ll need to rough up someone higher in the food chain. I have no idea where the Mayor would want his flag planted.”

“The Mayor?” Andrew echoed. He nudged Jonathan, who flinched, his gaze stuck on the dead Rayne. “We have an in at the Mayor’s office.”

“We used to,” Jonathan said. He dug in the front pocket of his backpack and retrieved a City Hall ID tag. The photo on the front was of a smug-looking boy whose dark hair was gelled into points. Underneath the word INTERN was the name Warren Mears.