Even though she fought as hard as she could without using her fire or even transforming, they overpowered her in the end; at first, she had been doing fine, holding them off the best she could and knocking two of them out, then one of them had snuck in from the left, taking vile advantage of her blind side, and had rammed his pair of hedge clippers into her upper leg, making her stumble, another man taking the chance given by that to hit her over the back of the head with a frying pan, something which might look comical in various cartoons, but threw her down on all fours nonetheless.
Ignoring the shouts to stop Willow let out, they came down on her next, grabbing her and dragging her out of the storeroom, despite her struggling and cries for help; when Norm tried to step in and stop them, one of the men punched him hard and sent him to the ground again, others of the group holding back David and Ollie when they tried to intervene as well.
"You can't do that!" Irene shouted, using decades of experience in noisy classrooms to raise her voice above the racket the cult was making, "have you all lost your minds?! Let that poor girl go!"
"Thou shall not suffer a witch to live!" Mrs Carmody triumphantly yelled in reply, waving her bible around again, "now the sinner will get what she deserves, God will be appeased and we will be delivered!"
"You're insane!" David shouted, struggling in the grip of the two men who were holding him, glad that the babysitter had thought of hurrying to the back of the supermarket with Billy so at least his son didn't have to see anything of what was happening, "she helped Jamie, can't you see that?! She saved him!"
"Nothing good ever comes from this kind of magic! Jamie's soul belongs to the devil now, thanks to her!" Mrs Carmody shot back while, to Willow's endless terror, one of her followers was handing her a large kitchen knife, but before she could do anything with that, several of her followers let out surprised cries as they were roughly shoved aside, their yelps interspersed with a shockingly loud, throaty growl.
"There comes the other deviant", Mrs Carmody observed as Pat shoved yet another one of her followers aside, a malicious smirk forming on her face, "what are you waiting for?! Grab her, she's next!"
Two of the men did just that, one of them ramming his knee against her leg injury when she tried to break free, making her howl in pain – before she clenched her teeth and stared at the by now clearly insane woman, her voice down to a low growl when she spoke up. "If you don't stop this right now, you'll pay. You don't know whom you're messing with."
"Pat, no!" Willow cried out as she realized what her lover was about to do, knowing that this would only make things worse, "don't, please! Just try to—"
Mrs Carmody's hand closing around her throat and the other one pressing the knife against her cheek made her fall silent, her eyes widening in terror once more; smiling crazily, the woman slowly ran the cold knife down her cheek to her throat, her breath hot and smelly when she brought her face so close to the redhead that for a moment, it seemed as if she wanted to kiss her, an impression she ruined when she spoke up. "You had the chance to repent, but you didn't take it… Now, you'll get what you deserve, sinner…"
The pressure of the knife increased until Willow was sure it would cut her skin any second; before it did so though, Mrs Carmody's eyes suddenly went wide, and moments later, the men who had grabbed Pat started screaming as the fire that had burst from her fists spread up her arms and burned them, making them let go of her and stumble back, their eyes wide with shock and terror. With another loud growl, ignoring her injured leg, the demon shot forward; and while she did so, her body changed, several people of the crowd screaming when they saw her hair spread and thicken until it became fur and her muscles bulge.
Since she had been sure that she wouldn't need to demon out during what had been supposed to be a harmless trip to the supermarket, she hadn't bothered with putting on clothes that might survive the process; the shirt was loosely fitting enough to not get torn up, but the pants were ripped to shreds, something the demon didn't even notice though as she stopped next to Willow and the for once speechless Mrs Carmody, the growls she was letting out sounding awfully loud in the shocked silence that had fallen over the supermarket while her flames vanished, giving them all the chance to see her in full demonic glory – and reducing the danger that she might accidentally burn her girlfriend.
Gathering all his courage, Myron gripped the hammer he had chosen as a weapon tighter as he slowly approached her; then, her head whipped around and she glared at him from a glowing red eye, growling loudly at him, baring her impressively sharp teeth at him in the process. A second later, the hammer fell to the ground and Myron let out a small, high-pitched whimper, a dark stain slowly beginning to spread in the crotch of his pants while he stumbled back from her, nearly falling as he hurried to put as much distance as possible between her and himself without taking his eyes off her.
Taking the chance given by how stunned everyone was, David and Ollie quickly freed themselves from the grasp they had been held in and hurried to move over to where the witch and the demon were now standing next to each other, both men handling their own shock about this surprisingly well, even when they saw how the wounds the black haired woman had taken so far fully healed within not even two minutes.
"A demon", Mrs Carmody whispered, still clutching the knife, "a demon sent from Hell!"
"Actually, we came from California", Willow mumbled, then nearly started giggling hysterically as she realized what a stupid thing this had been to say, blaming it on the fact that she'd had had a knife to her throat and had been threatened with death until a mere minute ago.
"I should just rip your head off", Pat now growled, the glow in her eye increasing even further, showing her tremendous rage, "that would be doing the world a favour. If you just drop that knife now though…"
For a few more seconds, Mrs Carmody kept staring at her, her lips moving soundlessly; then, she let out a high-pitched shriek that made Willow's ears ring and charged at her, the knife raised at stomach height, the redhead having a second to see the insane glint in her eyes before Pat was in front of her, a low grunt coming from her when the knife was rammed into her stomach. Shocked cries emerged from the crowd again when, without missing a beat, she reached up with both hands and grabbed the by now insanely laughing Mrs Carmody's head; a noise that sounded like a thick twig breaking echoed through the supermarket, the laughter stopped abruptly and the woman's body went limp, her eyes staring up at the ceiling without seeing anything when the demon let her go and she fell to the floor, her broken neck causing her head to end up in an unnaturally twisted position.
With another grunt, Pat grasped the handle of the knife and pulled it out; for a few more seconds, blood was streaming from the wound, then it closed, the stomachs of several people turning at the fleshy noises that came along with the healing.
"You killed her", one woman finally broke the silence, her voice squeaky high and trembling, "you monster…!"
"Oh come on", Ollie threw in before anyone else could say something, "you didn't miss anything of what just happened, right? Your beloved religious leader here tried to murder someone who so far only has been helpful to us, even saved Jamie's life, she only got what was coming to her."
"Sweetie, you can turn back now", Willow whispered to her girlfriend, noticing how everyone sans David, Ollie and Irene took several steps back from her; after a moment, Pat did just that, noticing that her pants were ruined moments later and nearly sending David into hysterics by blushing deeply.
"Great", someone at the back of the small crowd mumbled, "now the monsters are not just out there, but in here, as well."
"Hey!" the demon snapped, offended, forgetting her embarrassing pants problem for the moment, "shut your trap there, you really wanna compare me to those bugs which are too stupid to realize that they can't eat that glass front?!"
"Please don't eat me", the guy meekly replied, looking as if he was close to being the second man who'd wet his pants; Pat just snorted, then was distracted by Irene when the elder woman demonstrated a surprising amount of practical thinking by shoving a pair of jogging pants into her hands.
"Thanks", she mumbled, giving the followers of the recently deceased Mrs Carmody another warning look before she set off to change into the new pants, Willow following her a moment later, trying not to think about how her girlfriend demoning out might make this situation even worse than it already was.
"I can't believe I did that", Pat mumbled ten minutes later, sitting on the table in the store manager's small office, the first room she had found suitable for changing into the jogging pants, ignoring the non-smoking sign on the wall as she blew a cloud of smoke towards the ceiling, "what was I thinking? Demoning out in front of all those people? God, I'm so dumb."
"Aw, Sweetie, no", Willow tried to calm her down, moving closer to her so she could hug her, mindful of the glowing cigarette between her fingers though, "I wish it hadn't been necessary too, and I don't even wanna know what they are doing and saying out there right now, but now that I have had time to think about it… There really wasn't anything else you could have done to stop this crazy woman."
"I could have knocked her out without showing them all my furrier side", Pat argued, raising an eyebrow when at once, Willow shook her head.
"They never would have let go of you for you to do that if you hadn't burned them", she then pointed out, "and if she'd stabbed you in your less hairy form, you would've had to demon out afterwards anyway to heal it, so…"
"I wonder if they'll try to stone us with pea cans the moment we step outside again", the demon sighed after a moment of pondering this and considering that her girlfriend had made a good point, her eyebrow wandering up again when the witch let out a giggle in reply.
"Sorry", she finally brought out, "I'm not laughing at what you said, I just remembered how Myron pissed himself when you growled at him, and how you blushed after you returned to that much more attractive form and realized your pants are ruined…"
"Oh I liked those pants", Pat sighed out, then smiled as well, having to admit that in hindsight, it was pretty funny how Myron had wet his pants.
"At least your boxers didn't get ruined", the witch smirked in reply, "and I doubt many of the people out there noticed that they are light blue, with a Scoobie Doo print. Plus, your shirt survived it as well, so I guess you were lucky."
"Yup", the demon agreed, finishing her cigarette and, to Willow's shock, putting it out on the manager's desk, shrugging when she noticed the look on her girlfriend's face.
"That guy's a douche", she then stated, as if that would explain it; shrugging it off, the redhead took the chance given by the lack of a cigarette to move even closer to her partner, putting both arms around her neck and smiling when the embrace finally was returned.
"And once again, you saved me out there", she mumbled, once more briefly forgetting about their troublesome situation as she got lost in her girlfriend's warm gaze, "you've done that so often since we started being together, it's really becoming a habit."
"Well, it's surely not one I wanna kick", the black haired woman gave back, smirking slightly, "I love you too much for that."
"I love you, too", Willow replied, her voice barely above a whisper now; then, without thinking about how this might be inappropriate after she almost had been killed just minutes ago and another woman actually had died, she leaned in for a kiss which soon deepened, both of them once more forgetting their troubles and the dangers waiting for them for quite some time not long afterwards.