Anya wasn’t sure that being human was anything more than a curse. She would have loved to have multidimensional vision like Frex or stony skin like Lloyd.
Not that it had saved any of them from the wrath of the slayer. She had killed them all. Slaughtered them in their cubicles. Even if Anya lived long enough to go back to Arashmaharr, it would be changed. Empty.
“Why do you have these humans following you around? Are they your servants?” Willow, the red-haired vampire, asked Drusilla as Anya, Andrew, and Jonathan rejoined the group.
“We’re not servants!” Andrew said, his cheeks pink and shining from his brief sprint. “Willow, you know us! We were all on the academic decathlon together! We won state when you aced the globalization super quiz!”
“We went to the same synagogue,” Jonathan added. “I was at your bat mitzvah. I gave you a copy of Elder Scrolls: Arena on CD-ROM, and your mom got mad because the cover had a girl in a leather bikini. Remember? She called me an ‘agent of the patriarchy’? Your mom. Not the girl in the bikini.”
“Knowing who you are is exactly why I’m confused, Jonathan,” Willow said flatly, throwing a yellow-eyed glare over her shoulder. Anya noticed that the Mayor’s guard vamp had yet to relax her face into something human-passing. Was it a political statement of some kind? Or did Willow just prefer herself bumpy and ready to fight? “Dorks don’t generally get invited on reconnaissance missions.”
That was a good point. Too good, actually. Anya couldn’t have this new vampire talking the others out of letting Andrew and Jonathan tag along. Not only were they her ticket to a payday, but they had already proven to be quite useful. The group never would have made it past the officious little man at City Hall’s front desk without Jonathan’s intervention. Anya knew perfectly well that there were still places under the sunshade where people were prejudiced against demons. Too many times she’d caught Human-Mike upgrading the juices of human-passing customers free of charge—in some bizarre sign of mortal solidarity. Keeping Andrew and Jonathan nearby could be their ticket into places the vampires wouldn’t be invited into. She only looked human. Andrew and Jonathan spoke fluent mortal.
“Hey!” Anya shouted at Willow. “These dorks are the ones who tracked down the slayer to begin with! Shouldn’t that have been your job?”
“That’s right!” Jonathan said, his teeth full of chocolate and caramel from the Mayor’s box of condolence candy. “We have every right to help protect reality!”
Willow ignored them, turning back to Drusilla. “They could be snacks.”
Drusilla considered the boys, her usually vacant blue eyes sharpening to an uncanny focus. She drummed her sharp fingernails on the curve of her jaw. “They do smell deliciously of fear. And chocolate.”
“There could be just moments left on earth, and you want your last meal to be these two?” Anya raised her voice to get the vampire girls to focus on her and her nontasty demon blood. She recalled Spike sniffing her vengeance demon–ness back at the Bronze. Did she smell bad to vampires or just inedible? She didn’t like the idea of being stinky. Particularly not when standing within sniffing distance of Angelus. “They’re barely a chicken nugget compared to most humans. Hardly a meal.”