Episode 9: Hell Hath No Fury

Guest Starring (sort of): Angel Coulby as Renée Blackwood,

Alan Tudyk as Demetri,

Morena Baccarin as Sophia,

and

Olivia Williams as Althenea

"You okay?" Angel asked Oz.

The werewolf's face was contorted with agony as he clutched his broken leg. Every other second, a shadow of the beast inside him could be seen behind his features. "No," he said through clenched teeth that went from blunt to sharp and back again with each wave of pain. "But I'll live. What about Renée?"

Angel turned to look at the young woman in question. Her dark skin was unusually pale and coated in a light sheen of sweat. Her breathing was rapid and shallow, and she was barely conscious, but the ugly wound on the left side of her throat had, at least, stopped bleeding.

"She'll be alright," he said rather grimly. "She stood up to Demetri, so he took more blood from her than he probably would have done—to punish her. Still wasn't enough to put her in real danger, though."

Oz nodded jerkily.

After a moment had passed in silence, Angel noticed that the blonde, ghostly-looking Slayer, Agatha, was staring at him. "Why was Sophia talking to you like that?" she asked, her eyes narrowed in suspicion and distrust. "What did she mean by that offer she made you? All that stuff about you getting a pulse, and her being a century too late to meet you?"

"I used to be like her," said Angel. Rarely had he hated what he had once been as much as he did at that moment, surrounded by these woebegone victims of his former fellows. "A vampire."

Unmistakable—and understandable—loathing filled Agatha's expression at his words, and Joselyn, Catherine, and Abigail had similar looks on their faces, though less intense. Little Olivia simply watched him, her large blue eyes wide. "Why are you here?" demanded Agatha, closing in on him as much as she could with the chains on her ankles. "What do you want with us?"

"I told you already: I want to free you," said Angel patiently. "You—all of you—you're meant to kill their kind, not be their free drink refills." When their expressions did not soften, he changed tact. "Do you think they would have chained me up if I was on their side? Believe me, if I was still like them, things would be much worse for you. You're being fed, you get to stay together, and, apart from taking your blood, they're not hurting you. You don't want to know what hell your lives would be down here if I was with them."

"You're talking like you'd have run the show," said Agatha disdainfully. "Demetri's always saying that we've got it too easy, but that it's not up to him."

"That's because Sophia is his sire. Her will is his highest law, and obviously she thinks keeping you healthy improves the quality of your blood. She wasn't my sire, though, and I wouldn't have cared if that quality suffered a little. There wouldn't have been anything stopping me from doing things my way. But, lucky for you, I'm on your side, and whether you like that or not, you don't really have the luxury of being picky about your allies right now."

They looked away, and he felt slightly guilty for making them feel worse than they already did. "Look," he began again, his tone much gentler, "my wife is a Slayer, just like all of you. Four of Demetri's guys tried to get her yesterday, and she dusted them in under a minute."

"Really?" asked Joselyn, looking awed. She wasn't the only one.

Angel smiled and nodded. "She and Willow—Oz's wife, who happens to be a very powerful witch—know he and I were following their trail, and they'll be able to get us out."

"How can you be sure they won't get captured too when they try?" asked Abigail in despair.

"Yeah," said Agatha. "How do you know Demetri and Sophia won't just use you two as bait?"

Angel's smile became a smirk. "You don't know Buffy and Willow. Believe me, we're not bait. We're the Trojan Horse."

"Where did you come from?" Buffy and Faith asked each other in unison, while Xander said, "You're pregnant?" to the latter and Willow noticed Giles and exclaimed in concern over his bleeding arm.

"We came from the mystical doorway Dawn made in the pantry; yes, I'm pregnant, so hands off if you want them to stay attached; and Giles got clawed by this shadow beast thing in the big library place we just escaped from," said Faith.

"Oh," said Xander, looking more confused than ever.

"What's wrong?" asked Dawn, staring at her sister's stricken, desperate face.

"Where's Angel?" asked Connor. Faith stiffened.

"We think he's being held hostage by vamps here in London," said Buffy. "Oz and Renée too, plus a few other Slayers."

"They got Renée when we were on the Underground," said Xander.

"The Underground's crawling with vampires," said Wood.

"Yeah, that's where that gang of them jumped me in June," said Faith.

Buffy's eyes narrowed. "Did they have a syringe?" she asked.

Faith frowned. "Now I think about it, yeah, they did," she said. "Didn't get the chance to use it, though." She smirked in satisfaction at the memory. She had thrown the syringe-wielding vampire into the path of an oncoming electric train, which effectively ended his attempts to administer the drug.

"Which Tube station was this, Faith?" asked Giles. He winced and put his left hand to his injured right arm.

Faith thought for a moment. "Holborn, I think," she said finally.

Xander gasped. "That's where Renée and I were, too."

"The room I saw Angel, Oz, and Renée in definitely looked like it could have been underground," said Buffy. "And the ceiling was all curvy, like a tunnel, maybe?"

"There's no way that's a coincidence," said Willow.

"So you think the vamps have their home base down there?" asked Connor skeptically.

"Yeah, wouldn't the thousands of Londoners using those trains every day have noticed?" said Xander.

"Not necessarily," said Giles. "There are plenty of abandoned platforms and tunnels in the Underground. I happen to know that Holborn Station has two such platforms apart from the four that are in use."

"How do you know that?" asked Buffy incredulously.

"My father took refuge there during the Blitz," he said lightly. "It was a thrilling tale he told time and time again throughout my childhood."

"Wow," said Dawn.

"Yes, well," Giles continued modestly, "considering the rather laughable initiative London generally shows towards improving and updating its infrastructure, I'd say it's a fair bet that the unused platforms still exist."

"Buffy, did you say you've seen that room?" asked Dawn.

"Yeah. Why?"

"Because if Giles can tell me exactly where it is and you can tell me exactly what it looks like, I think I can get us all there."

"What on Earth was that about?" asked Cassandra. After Buffy and Willow's unceremonious departure from the house, she and Althenea had remained in the sitting room, confused.

"I can't be certain—they left so quickly, but I rather think that they left because people they love are in danger," said Althenea thoughtfully.

"Well, I do hope they'll be able to put everything right," said Cassandra, helping herself to a cup of tea. "I don't know much about the friend, but heaven knows Willow doesn't need any more heartache."

"No, indeed," sighed Althenea. At that moment, the telephone rang, and she excused herself from the room to go answer it. While she was gone, Cassandra pondered what she had glimpsed of Willow's friend's dream. It really hadn't been much to go on, and it was all rather vague and patchy. She wasn't at all surprised that the young woman hadn't been able to make heads or tails of it.

Althenea returned within moments of her departure, looking distinctly less relaxed than before. "What is it?" asked Cassandra.

"That was Amelia," said Althenea. "She and a few of the others have noticed an upsurge of dark energy this afternoon in Wales, about thirty miles west of Wrexham. It's bigger than anything we've seen in recent years."

"Hmm. Perhaps the dream had something to do with it."

"My thoughts exactly. I'll contact Willow at once."

"What's that?" asked Olivia in a tone of wonder.

Everyone but Oz, whose eyes were closed and breathing was labored as he continued to fight against the pain, and Renée, who had finally succumbed to her blood loss-induced weakness and passed out, looked to see what the child was pointing at. A bright blue glimmer had appeared about four feet above the ground at the end of the long room. They watched in silence as the light expanded abruptly into a ring larger than a hula-hoop, and then a brunette teenager toppled through it, her face as white as a sheet and her eyes rolling backward.

"Dawn!" cried Angel, half bewildered, half fearful that she would be injured in her fall. He needn't have worried, however. Before she hit the ground, Connor came through the shining blue ring behind her and caught her in his arms.

"Hey, Dad," he said, as casually as if they were meeting at a park for lunch.

"Is she okay?" Angel asked, looking at Dawn. Before Connor could answer, two more people came bursting through the mystical doorway.

Oz's head jerked up. "Willow," he said. His features became instantly serene, as if the pain he felt had suddenly vanished. Their reunion was mirrored by that of Buffy and Angel. By the way Buffy threw herself into Angel's arms and began peppering his face with relieved kisses, they might have been apart for weeks, as opposed to hours.

Xander was next to come through. He saw Renée, ran the short distance to her, and pulled her limp form into his arms. "Oh, God," he said hoarsely, gingerly touching the wound on her neck. "Who did this to her?"

"Demetri," said Agatha.

"She's not—," he began in a tone of horror, but Angel cut across him.

"She'll be okay," he said. "He didn't turn her, and he didn't drink enough to kill her."

"Are ye really here to rescue us?" asked Joselyn.

"That we are," came Faith's voice. She, Wood, and Giles brought up the rear. With the additions of eight people and a portal to the long, narrow room, it had become uncomfortably cramped.

"Connor," said Buffy over the loud metallic snaps of her breaking Angel's manacles open. "Take Dawn back to Faith and Wood's."

Connor obeyed without question. After breaking Renée's shackles so that Xander could carry her through the portal after Connor and Dawn, Faith moved to each of the other five girls in turn and broke them loose as well, while Buffy moved to help Willow free Oz.

"Why won't it work?" asked Willow, tears of frustration sparkling in her eyes.

"What?" asked Buffy.

"I'm trying to heal him, but it's not working!" she burst out.

"I'll be fine," grunted Oz, reaching out to take one of Willow's hands in his. "Broken leg won't kill me. Just get us out of here, and you can try again later."

"But you're in pain," Willow protested. Anger and concern were warring across her features, and concern was only barely winning.

"It's not bad," lied Oz, suppressing a wince.

Within minutes, everyone who had been imprisoned in the abandoned platform was safely in Faith and Wood's apartment. Wood had reverted to principal mode and was shepherding Joselyn, Agatha, Catherine, Abigail, and Olivia into the kitchen to get them properly fed for the first time since their abduction and, in the cases of the former three, contacting their families. Faith was helping him, because she couldn't escape the feeling that if she had found these girls in the first place while traveling Europe in search of Slayers, this whole thing could have been avoided. Somehow, she had missed them, and the price of that error had been high.

"Is that little girl really a Slayer too?" asked Connor in a hushed voice, craning slightly in his seat in the living room so he could see where Olivia and the others were still gathered in the kitchen.

Buffy nodded. "I wouldn't have been able to see through her eyes with the big kitty if she wasn't," she said quietly, "but I don't get why she's one already." She fell into a troubled silence—a silence that spiraled around the group as they vaguely watched Willow's renewed but equally fruitless attempts to magically mend Oz's leg.

"Abigail said their parents were killed when they were taken," said Angel. "Maybe the trauma of that event activated Olivia early."

"Hers wouldn't be the only case of supernatural ability manifesting in times of great stress," said Giles. "Poor girl."

"She's lucky, though," said Angel. "If she hadn't been activated when she was, Sophia and Demetri would have had her killed too."

After another minute, Xander, who had been looking at Renée with unfocused eye throughout the entire conversation, abruptly stood up. Everyone looked at him. "Come on," he said, his jaw muscles tight with barely controlled anger. "We've got a vamp nest to clean out."

The "clean-up crew" consisted of Buffy, Angel, Willow, Xander, Giles, and Connor. Faith had grudgingly admitted that, at five months pregnant, she really couldn't risk a fight against vampires this strong. Wood stayed too, both to make her feel better about not being able to get a piece of the violence and to look after the girls. Buffy had thought Giles would want to do the same, considering the state of his arm, but he had rather fiercely declared that, as a tenured Watcher, he wanted to personally ensure that the fiends who had been exploiting those Slayers were reduced to ash.

As Angel had informed the other five of how unhelpfully limited the space was in the corridor below the room where he, Oz, and the Slayers had been chained, as well as that a vampire (who had been a Red Cross volunteer before he was turned) would be coming up to take the Slayers' blood any minute, they waited in the room, ready to spring an ambush. As expected, the aforementioned vampire arrived within moments, a box of stolen Red Cross equipment in his arms. The shock of coming face-to-face with six people (of whom all were armed, none were in shackles, and only one was even supposed to be there) delayed his reaction for two full seconds, during which Xander rammed a stake between his ribs with an expression of cold hatred on his face.

But that was as far as things went according to plan. While the rest were content to wait, knowing more vampires would come to investigate when the first failed to return with their food, and that they were ideally placed to pick them off one at a time once that happened, Willow was not.

Murderous intent was etched into her face as she pushed past Xander and disappeared through the open door and down the stairs. She was deaf to the others' attempts to call her back. All she knew was that as long as she was unable to end Oz's pain, she was going to cause it in those who had inflicted it upon him.

The strip lights flickered over Willow's head as she arrived in the narrow corridor at the base of the stairs. She knew she would have only seconds until everyone else caught up with her, and she was determined not to waste them. For that, she was in luck. The vampires must have heard the noise upstairs, for three of them emerged into the corridor at the same time she did.

"Oi, Ginger, what're you doin' down 'ere?" shouted the nearest. Willow gave him and his fellows a cursory glance, but she knew they weren't the one she was looking for.

"Where's Demetri?" she asked in a low, deadly voice as, with a wave of her hand, all three of them were lifted off their feet and slammed hard against the ceiling, sending trickles of white dust floating down from it. None of them answered her, but the second one's eyes flickered briefly towards a door down the hall. Willow sprinted beneath them until she reached the indicated door, which flew open as the three vampires dropped with sickening thuds back to the floor and Buffy, Angel, Connor, Xander, and Giles piled into the tight space.

Several additional vampires had arrived on the scene by then as well, but Willow wasn't worried about them. She knew they wouldn't make it past Buffy and the others. Without hesitation, therefore, she walked through the door. It was like stepping through a portal to the seventeenth century. The room wasn't large, but the luxurious tapestries, silver candelabras, and ornate antique furniture—none of it overdone—lent it an air of grandness all the same.

But this grandeur was completely lost on Willow, who had eyes only for the two vampires in the room, whom she knew at once to be Demetri and Sophia. As Demetri had Sophia pressed against the wall and was trailing possessive kisses down her throat, she was the one to notice Willow first. She nudged Demetri, who pulled away reluctantly.

"Don't you knock, witch?" he said with a scowl of annoyance.

"Sorry to interrupt," said Willow sardonically. "Looks like you two had a real romantic evening planned."

"My, my," said Sophia without interest, "the third intruder in one day."

"Meanwhile, intruders two and four through eight are playing with your friends in the hall," said Willow. "Oh, and we've confiscated your food supply."

"I knew those minions were worthless," said Demetri with an exasperated groan.

"Yeah, you might want to work on that," said Willow, "if, you know, I let you live." She looked at Sophia. "Leave."

Sophia laughed, but Demetri considered Willow for a second. "Go help the others," he said. "This should be fun."

"Very well," she sighed, casting a look of amused disdain at Willow before leaving the room. She had no sooner entered the corridor than Buffy knocked into her, unbalanced from her current fight against one of the other vampires. Together, they fell into the room across from the one in which Willow and Demetri now squared off. Buffy and Sophia both shoved each other away and got to their feet.

"You must be Sophia," said Buffy, brandishing Mr. Pointy.

Sophia's eyes roved over Buffy appraisingly. "And you must be the reason Angelus seems to prefer his mortal life to the one he had before. I offered to turn him back, you know."

"You can't have Angel," Buffy snarled.

"No," Sophia agreed with a twinge of regret. "He declined my offer. He seems to be yours entirely." She chuckled. "The former Scourge of Europe married to a Slayer. It is strange, but I respect his past enough to honor his wishes."

Buffy was completely taken aback by this attitude, which she had never before encountered in a vampire. "Um, thanks," she said blankly.

Despite the limited space, the four men were doing quite well against the vampires in the corridor. Their unexplained presence there had confused their opponents so much that they weren't fighting back as effectively as they might have done. Giles, Angel, and Xander had dusted two apiece, and Connor had taken out four. Only three remained.

"Hmm, you're here about the werewolf, aren't you?" asked Demetri with a cruel smirk. "I can smell him all over you. How's his leg?"

"Oh, about like this," said Willow. Despite her calm tone, the lights flickered worse than ever, and she raised her hand and jerked it sharply in the direction of his left calf, both bones of which immediately broke. Demetri let out a yell of mingled pain, shock, and anger, but didn't fall to the ground because Willow was keeping him upright by magic.

There was a loud buzzing noise, and then the lights in the hall completely failed. In the darkness that resulted, Giles let out an agonized cry of pain. Neither Angel, Xander, nor Connor understood the cause. They had just succeeded in killing the last of the vampires, so he couldn't have been attacked. The lights came on again, much dimmer than before, but bright enough for them to see him doubled over, clutching at the gashes the shadow beast's claws had left in his arm. The wounds now seemed to be coated in the same solidified darkness of which the creature's flesh was made, and it appeared to be spreading across Giles's skin in vein-like tendrils.

"What's happening to him?" asked Angel and Xander in unison. They blinked and glanced awkwardly at each other, for that had certainly been a first.

"It must have been what that shadow beast did to him in the Archive," said Connor, looking horrified.

"Get him back to the portal," said Angel urgently. Connor nodded, and Angel and Xander turned to go find Buffy and Willow.

"Willow!" came Xander's frantic shout. "We have to go! It's Giles!"

Willow looked away from Demetri, who, though he was growling at her in full vamp face, was still unable to move to retaliate. She hesitated, then looked back at the furious vampire. "Whoops, I guess time's up," she said in displeasure. "And with Slayer blood and vamp healing, you'll be as good as new in under a week. So I'd better do something more permanent before I go." With that, she made a rapid slashing movement with her hand, and deep cuts opened across his face, looking exactly like claw marks. "That's from Oz," she said, "because he couldn't do it himself."

She released the magic binding his movement, and he fell to the ground, unable to pursue her because of his leg. A few seconds later, Sophia reentered the room and raised her eyebrows at him. "Was it as fun as you thought it would be?" she asked, smirking.

"You knew how powerful she was, didn't you?" he spat, wiping blood from the gashes on his face.

"I'm surprised you didn't," she said with a scornful snort. "You're lucky you got off with just a broken leg and a ruined face."

"And why the hell don't you even have a scratch on you?" he asked grumpily.

"I don't pick fights unless I know I can win them," she said condescendingly. "And I don't underestimate my opponent. Now hold still, so I can set these bones."

Oz, Abigail, and Olivia looked around in surprise when everyone came back through the portal rather sooner than they had expected. Connor came first, supporting Giles, who was shaking violently and flinched under the bright lights in the living room.

"Where did Faith and Wood go?" asked Connor.

"Left to take the others to the airport so they can fly home—except Agatha. She lives in London, so they're dropping her off on the way," said Abigail, sounding thoroughly depressed.

"What happened?" asked Oz, staring at Giles.

"I think the thing in the Archive infected him," said Connor. Buffy, Angel, Xander, and Willow came through the portal then, and Buffy ran to Giles's side.

"Can you speak?" she asked him, looking as if she wouldn't be able to take much more of the people she loved being in danger in one day.

"The light," said Giles through gritted teeth, his eyes tightly closed. "It's too bright."

Xander hurried towards the light switch, but the moment his hand lifted to turn it off, Angel and Connor both shouted, "Don't touch it!"

"What are you talking about?" he asked.

"That wound didn't activate until it went pitch black down there," Angel reminded him. "What do you think more darkness will do? The lights stay on."

"Oh, God," said Willow in a choked voice. Everyone looked at her. Her face was crumpled with anguish. "This is my fault. I got carried away. The lights—it was my fault." Oz made as though to go to her, but was prevented from leaving the sofa by his broken leg, and he fell back onto the cushions with a grimace.

"You're not the thing that infected him," said Connor bracingly. "But I think you're our best chance fighting it."

"What?" she asked, confused.

"Physical attacks don't work against it, but magic might," he said. "We should hurry."

"Okay," began Buffy in an attempt at a confident, commanding voice, her gaze on Abigail. "You help Oz watch Giles." Abigail nodded, her eyes wide. "And we'll go fight this thing."

Abigail helped Connor lower Giles into a chair, as the two sofas were occupied by Oz, Dawn, and Renée, while Buffy pulled the edges of the portal to the abandoned Holborn platform closed, making a mental note to remind Dawn to lock it when she came to. While they were thus occupied, Willow approached Oz, her expression still anguished.

"I know why I couldn't heal you," she whispered so that nobody else would hear (Connor tactfully pretended that he was not the exception to this), tears welling in her eyes. Oz took her hand and pressed it to his lips.

"Why?" he asked, not because he wanted to know as much as because she obviously needed to tell him.

"I wanted revenge. I was too focused on my hatred of Demetri for doing that to you. The healing magic I've been using for the past year is white magic of the purest kind, and negative emotions like hatred block it."

Oz reached up to caress her face. "Remember what happened those times you were in danger?" Willow nodded tearfully. She would never forget the lengths to which he had always gone to keep her safe. Oz's expression was gravely serious. "I think you and I might need to work on our temper problems," he said.

Willow let out an unwilling giggle and gave him a slightly indignant poke on the arm. "As long as you promise to never get captured again."

"As you wish," he said. When she moved her hands towards his broken calf, however, he shook his head. "Save it for Giles." She bit her lip, but nodded.

The same party that had gone to fight the vampires, minus Giles, walked into the pantry and through Dawn's portal to the Lost Archive. Buffy was squeezing Angel's hand so tightly that it almost hurt. "Giles'll be okay," he said, pressing a kiss to the side of her head and squeezing her hand back. She swallowed, but said nothing in reply.

When they reached the door at the end of the sloping tunnel, Connor looked inquiringly at Willow.

"Wait," she said. She closed her eyes and focused on Giles and how much she wanted to help him. She took a deep breath, then held up her closed hand and said, "Fiat lux." When she opened her hand again, what looked like a miniature white-gold firework leapt from it into the air. The light of it dazzled their eyes, and it hung over all five of them in a kind of dome.

"Wow," said Connor. Whatever misgivings he had once had against magic were certainly long gone now—though, of course, it also helped that he was now Connor Reilly, rather than Connor the Destroyer. Unconsciously holding his breath, he lifted the heavy beam away from the door and set it aside, then pushed the door open. Once they were all through it, he made sure to close it again. It wouldn't do to have the creature escape into London.

It took Buffy, Angel, Willow, and Xander several minutes to get past the initial wonder the Archive inspired. Afterwards, Connor led the way to where they had found the skeleton and then been attacked by the shadow beast. They all drew instinctively closer together when the skeleton came into view.

"What happened before?" Willow whispered.

"We saw the skeleton," said Connor. "And then we turned to go, and the demon thing was right there in front of us."

"Great," said Xander. "So, who wants to go out into the inordinately creepy darkness to be demon bait?"

"Hmm," said Willow, "I don't think we have to resort to that." She closed her eyes and put her fingers to her temples, muttering under her breath. The lights surrounding them grew brighter and brighter, then multiplied until what looked like a canopy of brilliant stars hovered around them. Many of these little balls of light soared high into the air and alighted upon the cobwebby chandeliers hanging from the ceiling. They continued to grow and brighten until there was barely a shadow to be found in the long undisturbed library.

The effect on what was already a magnificent place was awe-inspiring, but none of them paid attention to that. Almost as soon as the lights began to brighten, a wailing shriek of pain sounded from a nearby aisle. They exchanged glances, then hurried towards the source of the shrieking. In no time at all, they found their quarry, which was cowering, trying to seek nonexistent shelter from the light. Connor thought it looked a little smaller than it had before, and it also appeared to be slightly transparent.

When it saw them, it growled fiercely and sprang forward with the desperation of a cornered wild animal. They all yelled and tried to dive out of its path—except Willow, who simply held up one hand, palm out. Mid-pounce, the creature froze, claws extended and fangs still bared. Looking thoughtful, Willow walked towards it and then slowly circled it, examining it from every angle.

"This isn't a demon," she announced at last.

"What do you mean?" asked Buffy.

"Well, it's not normal, that's for sure," Willow qualified. "But demons have auras just like humans do. Aura-reading isn't exactly my area of expertise, but even I can tell that with this thing, it's like the shadowy stuff is the aura, as well as the body."

"Okay," said Angel, "but what does that mean?"

"Hopefully, I'll be able to shed some more light on the subject," she said, suppressing a giggle at her own joke. She waved her hand again, and several of the lights hovering nearest to them zoomed towards the creature. As soon as they touched the beast's shadowy flesh and sank through, it fell to the ground, writhing and emitting a sound so terrible that all of them, Willow included, clapped their hands to their ears.

Buffy was worried that it was no longer bound by Willow's immobilizing magic, but it seemed to be too busy reacting to the lights that were now trapped within it to pay any of them the slightest attention. It writhed and shrieked in obvious agony, and then something very unexpected began to happen: its shape started to change. The creature shrank, its black features blurring and distorting, the light inside it now shining through in beams, until, abruptly, it went out.

There on the floor before them, her whole body shaking violently, was a woman. They all watched in surprise as she got slowly and jerkily to her feet, using the nearby bookcase for support. She was very tall, had long dark hair that cascaded down her back in waves, and she didn't appear to be entirely human. There was a luminous, pearly glow to her skin and her eyes were deep, piercing blue pools of molten glass. She was clothed in a long, elegant gown that was precisely the same color as her eyes, and the material was strange and shimmery, almost as if it had somehow been woven out of liquid. After taking a moment to compose herself, she looked directly at Willow.

"You released me," she said, panting slightly. Her voice echoed, as though there were two of her speaking at once. "I thank you."

"Who are you?" asked Willow.

"My name is Triennia," she said.

"Okay, I'm a little lost here," said Xander impatiently. "A minute ago, you could have been the Balrog's pet kitty, and now…what are you?"

"I am an Endless," she said. "An Immortal." Angel's eyes narrowed slightly in recognition at this, but he didn't interrupt. "I was cursed into that form eons ago by another of my kind, Bracchion, after I spurned his advances. Several centuries ago, after I brought much destruction to several small towns, I was trapped in the pages of a book by a powerful sorcerer." She bent down and picked up an open, dust-covered tome from the floor. "This one. The world was a safer place when I was in here. But I was read out again, and this has been my…lair, of sorts, ever since."

"I thought the Immortal didn't use magic," said Angel. Everyone looked at him.

"Ah, so you've met dear Bracchion, have you?" asked Triennia, pronouncing the name with biting disdain.

"Maybe. I never caught his name. We've had…disagreements in the past."

"What he did to me was not magic, but something much older and more elemental. It was manipulation of the most basic kind. I became Living Darkness, or at least encased in it and bound to it, and the only way to counteract it was—"

"Light," said Willow. Triennia nodded.

"So," said Xander, sounding deeply mistrustful, "if you remember all of the stuff that's happened while you were 'Living Darkness', doesn't that mean you were in control?"

"No," she said. "I was conscious, but powerless in my own body." A terrible sadness blanketed her features. Angel looked at her empathetically. He could relate to that rather well.

"Ahem," said Buffy, "I think we're forgetting about our other problem. Giles."

"The man I infected," said Triennia.

"Yeah, him," said Buffy impatiently. "So how do we get him uninfected? More pretty lights?"

"Light will keep the curse at bay, but there is no breaking it."

"What are you talking about?" asked Connor. "Willow just broke the curse on you! Why can't she break it on Giles?"

"My curse has not been broken, young one," said Triennia with a look of grim acceptance. "It never will be, unless Bracchion himself decides to free me of it. It has merely been disrupted, but it is as immortal as its caster. Given the opportunity, it will consume me again. Your Giles may be more fortunate than I, however. The curse has not yet taken him fully. It may be that you will be able to spare him the worst of it, but you must act quickly."

They returned to the apartment without Triennia, who declined their invitation to accompany them in favor of staying in the Archive (Willow made sure her lights would stay on for a good long while before leaving her there). When Willow applied her light spell to Giles's cursed wound, Buffy and Connor both had to hold him still to prevent him from destroying Faith and Wood's living room with his violent twitching and flailing. They waited with bated breath until the seizure finally subsided. The claw wounds on his arm had closed and scarred, and there was no longer any visible trace of the darkness that had been creeping across his skin.

"Giles?" asked Buffy tentatively.

"I'm not sure I'm quite as fond of that library as I was before," he said wearily.

Buffy let out an unintelligible squeaky sound and threw her arms around him, sobs wracking her whole body. "I thought we were going to lose you, and right after we nearly lost Angel, Oz, and Renée."

Giles received many more hugs, and Willow finally succeeded in healing Oz's leg, after which he held her while she cried relieved tears into his shoulder. Abigail and Olivia stood slightly apart from all of this, looking unsure of what to do with themselves. Buffy walked up to them with a kind smile on her face.

"What's going to happen to us?" asked Abigail, clutching her sister's hand tightly.

"Do you have any family?" asked Buffy gently.

Abigail shook her head and swallowed painfully.

"Then you can stay with us, if you want to. We can take care of you, and we can train you so you'll be able to fight back against vampires the next time you meet them."

"Livvy too?" asked Abigail, moving slightly closer to Olivia, as if wanting to shield her from view.

"Not until she's older," said Buffy. "Much older."

"Good," said Abigail firmly. "As for me, I want to learn how to fight those evil tossers."

"Um, guys?" came Willow's voice unexpectedly. Everyone turned to look at her. She was holding her cell phone to her ear, looking aghast.

"What is it?" asked Buffy.

"The Coven's been trying to reach me for the past couple of hours. I've had my phone off since we left L.A., though, so I didn't notice until now." She looked at Buffy. "They think they've found the thing you and all the other Slayers have been dreaming about. We have to go, now."

"What's going on?" asked Xander.

"A bunch of demons are doing some kind of big ritual up in Wales. We have to stop it before midnight." They all looked at the clock. It was eleven-thirty.

"What'll happen if we miss the deadline?" asked Angel apprehensively.

"The Old One they worship will be resurrected," said Willow. The silence that followed was deafening, but brief. While it lasted, Angel thought of Illyria and what it had cost to resurrect her, but doubted very much that they'd be able to make an ally out of this Old One as they had ultimately done with the former God-King.

"How do we stop it?" asked Connor.

"And how come the Coven didn't do that already?" added Xander.

"They can't," said Willow. "It's protected against magical interference. This is a job for brute force."

"Are we going to need backup?" asked Buffy.

"It wouldn't hurt," said Willow. Buffy nodded, then darted into the kitchen and out of sight without another word. Everyone else exchanged slightly bewildered glances, but she returned moments later wielding the Scythe and followed by a dozen Slayers from the Hyperion, who were all slightly confused to suddenly be in an apartment in London, but carried weapons and looked eager to help.

"Got enough magic left to teleport us there?" asked Buffy.

"Yeah," said Willow uncertainly. "But the teleportation sickness is going to be really bad for all of you. Are you sure…?"

"There's no other way," said Buffy. "And there's no time." Willow nodded and stood up. She took four of them at a time, until only Oz and Giles remained, along with Abigail, Olivia, and the still unconscious Dawn and Renée. Though they had been healed, Oz and Giles were too weak to be participating in any more battles that day.

The teleportation sickness was indeed terrible for all of Willow's passengers. Only a few of them managed not to vomit, and it was several minutes before they were able to stand up. After that, they were off, urgency overcoming the last vestiges of nausea and fatigue.

The ritual site was very easy to find. The fire blazing at the center of it was a bit of a giveaway, and even without that, the chanting was audible from a distance of at least a hundred yards. Fortunately for the good guys, the demons doing the chanting were small and scrawny, and once they were there, they cut them down with almost disappointing ease, while Willow magically doused the fire and broke the many symbols and talismans arrayed around it. It was all over in minutes.

When they got back to Faith and Wood's apartment, both occupants had returned, having successfully seen Agatha home and Joselyn and Catherine to the airport. Faith was furious to discover that she'd missed the second battle in one day, but, for the most part, everyone was just glad to have it all behind them.

"Gee," said Buffy humorlessly to Angel, Willow, and Oz, "how dare we try to have nice, peaceful, happy honeymoons, right? You, Oz, and Renée get captured and wounded. Giles gets attacked by a cursed Immortal, and a bunch of demons try to bring back an Old One."

"When the other shoe drops for us, it really drops," Willow agreed.

"Xander?" asked Renée. It was the next morning. Though they intended to fly back to L.A. properly so as to keep the number of stamps in their passports in order, Buffy, Angel, Willow, and Oz had cheated and gone through Dawn's portal to the Hyperion to sleep in their own beds for the night, but Xander had stayed, not wanting to leave until his girlfriend was awake.

"How are you feeling?" he asked, covering one of her hands with his.

"Not bad," she said. She wouldn't meet his eye. "But, erm, I dinnae think I'll be going back to Los Angeles with you."

"What do you mean?"

"I'm going to go back to my parents' place," she clarified.

"Are you saying…is this goodbye?" asked Xander with a hard swallow, feeling his insides turn to ice.

Renée looked thoroughly miserable. "No. Not forever. I just…I need some time. It isnae because of you, I swear. You got me out of that place, and I cannae tell you how grateful I am for that, but…if something like that happens again…I need to be with my family first."

Xander nodded. He wanted to tell her that he'd never let anything like that happen to her again, but the words got stuck in his throat. He couldn't help thinking that if he had been a bit quicker on the uptake, he could have prevented her capture, so how was he supposed to promise that he'd do better next time? And he couldn't promise there wouldn't be a next time, either. Renée was a Slayer who fiercely honored her calling as such. There would always be some risk in that, no matter what, and she already had two scars to prove it.

That day on the plane back to California, with a stranger sitting next to him in Renée's seat while Buffy and Angel, Willow and Oz, and Giles, Connor, and Dawn sat together in different rows, Xander had never felt more powerless or alone.


Sophia and Demetri are officially my favorite OCs. Hence not killing them. The way I view Sophia's reasonable, non-confrontational attitude is that she is Lawful Evil, whereas Demetri is Chaotic Evil. Sophia knows how to play everything to her advantage, shows respect where respect is due, and isn't burdened with an overblown ego, so she doesn't make careless mistakes out of wounded pride. Demetri likes causing pain a little too much to worry about the consequences his actions might have-and he also thinks he's untouchable. He probably would have ticked off one person too many for brutally torturing their friends and gotten himself killed centuries before this if Sophia hadn't been holding his leash. And then there's Triennia. She's another one from the story I pulled Erebus and Kaida from, and she won't be the last, since I might well never fix that story's hopelessly convoluted and redundant plot, which means this might be the only chance for these characters to get out of my head and stretch their legs. I love Willow's emotional journey in this. It wouldn't have been any fun at all if she never had even a partial relapse into dark magic, and this served that purpose well. Giles being in danger from something she helped cause would affect her powerfully, because she nearly killed him the last time she went dark. Anyway, remember that in my reality, Buffy never dated the Immortal, but Angel still went to Rome to resolve that demon Mafia dispute thing and distantly interacted with him. Since we never found out anything about the Immortal except that he doesn't use magic, his moral alignment is ambiguous, and he's a womanizer, I wanted to play with that a little. From what Triennia said about him, it's a reasonable assumption to say that her rejection of him set off the womanizing, because after being rejected by her, he'd want to prove that he can get girls. Also, the resolution of the dreams and ominous signs...yeah, that plotline kinda got the short straw of the three plotlines in the episode. Sorry about that. Also, more emotional turmoil for Xander. *rubs hands together diabolically* And now everyone's finally going back to L.A. That makes a happy me, because it means less research, but I've had fun playing with everyone in Europe, and, what with Dawn's doorways, future adventures there will be much easier to pull off (not to mention interactions with Faith and Wood).