Part Seven

Sunnydale
Thursday 4 am
Cordelia knew she was dreaming, and the knowledge gave her little comfort. She watched from a vault doorway as Hrahek and his warriors surrounded Angel, thrusting their vicious swords at the vampire until he fell to his knees. Across the room, beyond the demons, Holland Manners – a former director of Wolfram and Hart, killed during one of Darla and Drusilla's massacres – stood watching, his mild-mannered smile contorted by vampiric features. Cordelia knew that Gunn was somewhere near, but she couldn't see him. She felt frozen to the spot where she stood, unable to move or speak, her eyes riveted on the terrifying scene before her. Angel had no weapons, and the demon warriors outnumbered him seven to one. They slashed at him individually with their swords, taking it in turns as if performing a ritual, each cut delivered with rhythmic precision. Angel did not fight back – raising his arms against the blades had been futile, so he held them folded across his chest, blood dripping onto his trousers and pooling at his knees.
"You have no power here," Manners commented, and Cordelia found herself face to face with the former lawyer.
Unable to speak, despite her efforts, Cordelia looked at him for a moment in total terror. Then she raised her hand, which suddenly held a wooden stake, and drove it into his chest. Barely able to register his surprise, Manners disappeared in a cloud of dust.
Hrahek and his followers froze, creating a bloody and terrible tableau with Angel at the centre, eyes closed and head bowed as a sword hung over his neck. Another sword had just pierced his side, and Cordelia doubted there was an inch of his skin that had not felt the cruel cut of those blades. With Manners destroyed, and the demons immobilised, Cordelia could at last move in her dream. She grabbed a sword from the nearest demon's hand and hacked at it until it exploded in a dark purple sticky mess. When all seven had been dispatched, she turned to Angel, sword still in her hand, dripping purple-black gore. He was no longer kneeling – he had fallen to the ground, as if only the cyclic ritual of the swords had been holding him upright. Cordelia looked at him, and knew he was dead. No dust, just a battered and bleeding body, but she knew it with absolute certainty. And it filled her with dread.
Still dreaming, Cordelia stepped out of the vault and emerged onto a deserted street, squinting in the bright sunshine. She raised her hand to shield her eyes, and realised she still held the demon's sword. She brought it close to her face so that she could examine it, and saw that its hilt was crafted into three animals' heads – a ram at the centre, with a hare and a wolf on either side. The metallic heads turned towards her, and opened their mouths in angry silent growls. Screaming, she dropped the sword …
… and sat bolt upright in Buffy's bed, hand over her mouth. She had barely got her breathing under control when Dawn and Fred burst into the room, wide-eyed and obviously spooked by her scream. Cordelia apologised for waking them, and brushed it off as a 'bad hair-day' dream, not wanting to worry them. As soon as they left, she grabbed her cell phone and punched in a short text message, then lay down and listened to the early morning birdsong while she waited for an answer.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Los Angeles
4 am
Buffy had been puzzled when Hrahek's portal had transported them into a small empty room; it had obviously once been someone's office, as she could make out a name on the glass portion of the door, but it had been stripped of furniture. She had expected to be taken back to the Hyperion, from where she could contact Angel and the others in Sunnydale, and wondered why the demon had brought her here. Deciding there was little point in asking Hrahek – their conversations were difficult as it was, and she became quickly frustrated with her inability to make herself understood – she cautiously stepped into the corridor to look around, and soon discovered she was in the Wolfram and Hart building. Stepping back into the deserted office, with Hrahek as ever less than three steps behind her, she looked at him with a frown. This was something unexpected, and they had to talk.
"What's this?" she whispered, then remembered she needed to keep things simple. And slow. "Why are we here? We should be in Sunnydale, or back at the hotel. I need to contact my friends. Remember?"
Hrahek nodded once.
"Kenjiin here," he said, the concept of whispering obviously alien to him. "Friends here."
A thrill of excitement and fear washed over the slayer. Her friends were here, with the demon – were they in danger? How would she find them? Did this mean it would all be over soon?
"How do you know?" she demanded, suddenly wondering how far she could trust the demon. "And where, exactly?"
The questions were obviously beyond Hrahek's comprehension: he simply looked at her without answering. Buffy suppressed a growl of frustration, shook her head quickly to clear her thoughts, and closed her eyes. She needed to focus, to come up with a plan. And she needed to know if Angel was near, or if the strangely familiar tingling she'd felt since her arrival was only apprehension or wishful thinking. Sensing that the demon was about to say something, she held up her hand to silence him and opened her eyes.
"Stay here," she said quietly. "Or go home. You'll be in my way. Understand?"
Hrahek cocked his head to one side and waited.
"Let me do my job," the Slayer enunciated slowly. "You'll know if I succeed or fail – what you do then is up to you – but you have to let me do it my way. Okay?"
"I wait," the demon agreed.
Not for the first time, Buffy wondered why Hrahek couldn't kill Kenjiin himself, but that would have to wait for another time. Right now, satisfied that she would be unhindered by her foul-smelling shadow, she nodded, and slipped out of the room. She gave no thought to where Hrahek would be waiting: she figured the transmitting bracelet she wore would lead him to her. Gripping the sword he had given her before leaving Kravlar, she turned right and followed the corridor towards the elevator.
Moving purely on instinct, Buffy came to a door marked 'Emergency Exit' and silently pushed through onto a concrete landing labelled "7". Stone steps wound upwards and downwards, and without hesitation she headed down. She knew from past conversations with Angel and his team that Wolfram and Hart had an extensive underground vault facility, and figured that any demon activity would most likely take place down there, out of sight of the firm's more 'normal' events.
As she quickly descended the stairs, she thought about Hrahek and the strange deal she'd made with him – another demon's life for her freedom – and tried to find a way out of it. What if Kenjiin was a non-evil demon, like Angel, and several others she'd met since becoming the Slayer? What if Hrahek was the 'bad-guy' in this scenario, and her killing Kenjiin unleashed further evil into this or some other dimension? What if Kenjiin's assassination, at her hands, led to all-out demon war? She was pretty sure something like that had happened in earth history, only with real people getting killed rather than demons, and she didn't want to be responsible for that kind of chaos. She really needed Giles and the scoobies on this, to give her the information needed to make the right decision.
The emergency stairwell ended at the underground car park, but Buffy knew there had to be another way down to the vaults. Assuming the elevator was for staff only, and presumably accessed with a coded number, she quickly scanned the deserted parking area, then scouted around for a manhole cover to give her access to the sewers: she knew that was how Angel had gained access on several occasions.
She dropped down into the darkness, and was immediately grabbed from behind – an arm encircled her chest, pinning her arms to her sides, while a rough hand clamped over her mouth. Still gripping Hrahek's sword, she felt the cold metal through her trousers and hoped the tip hadn't marked her boot. Before she could react, her captor spun her around to face him, holding a finger to his lips. It was Jayce, the guy from the hotel.
Buffy's expression and mannerism were all she needed to ask him what the hell he thought he was doing. Jayce cast a furtive glance in each direction of the sewer, and leaned close to her so that his whisper wouldn't carry too far.
"Waitin' for Gunn and Angel," he told her, clearly agitated. "You Buffy, right?"
Buffy nodded.
"Where are they?" she asked, hoping he had directions.
Jayce shrugged, and pointed upwards.
"Don' know, man," he said. "Been here forever – they up there in the vault somewhere."
"How do I get in?"
"There's a vent just over there," Jayce told her, clearly seeing no point in trying to talk her out of anything. "That's where Gunn went. Don' know what's after that."
Buffy nodded, and followed his gaze. A vent cover lay against the sewer wall about twenty yards ahead of them.
"Who else is in there?" she asked.
"Kenjiin went in with a couple his guys," Jayce shrugged. "Don' know if there was a greeting party."
Buffy shivered, and it had nothing to do with the cold damp sewer. With a nod, she headed for the vent. Crawling through the narrow conduit was difficult enough, but made more so by her efforts to keep the sword from clanging against the sides as she moved. Eventually, she saw dim light ahead of her, and stopped to listen.
Metal on metal, and grunts and groans, thumps and thuds and gurgling screams – the sound of battle filtered through the caged vent at the end of the conduit, and notched up Buffy's Slayer senses. She heard a gasp that was unmistakably Angel's, and a muttered curse from Gunn. She heard cloth tear under the swish of a blade, and a harsh crunch as someone – or something – was flung against a wall. Confident that the combatants would be too involved in trying to stay alive to notice any noises from the vent, Buffy hurried to the opening and chanced a quick look into the vault beyond.
Two demons and three uniformed security guards lay dead or unconscious, just inside the door opposite the vent. Gunn was fighting hand to hand with another security guard, dodging the guard's taser gun in between kicks and punches. Angel lay with his back to her, and a third demon was bending over him, a heavy mace-like weapon in one clawed hand.
In an instant, Buffy hurled herself out of the vent, sending the iron grille flying towards the demon's head. She landed on both feet within inches of Angel's body, swinging the sword towards the demon as she moved.
"No!" Gunn shouted, wrenching the taser from the security guard and zapping him furiously with it. "Buffy, no!"
Buffy's sword stopped at the demon's shoulder, and she realised it had done nothing to defend itself. It merely looked at her without curiosity, and bent further over Angel to help him to his feet.
With the security guard rendered unconscious, Gunn hurried to help them, panting with exertion. Between them, he and the demon raised Angel to his feet, but he was barely conscious.
"Buffy," Gunn said grimly, acknowledging her presence, and introducing her to the demon. "This is Kenjiin."
"You're dead," Buffy said apologetically, holding up her bracelet-bound arm and pointing at it. She turned and thrust her sword into the body of a nearby demon. It gurgled, twitched, and sighed before it died. "Bye, KenJean."
Buffy looked at Kenjiin a moment, hoping it understood, then turned her attention to Angel. He was badly injured, with several gaping wounds that seemed to have opened some not-yet-healed scars. She gently placed her palm on his cheek, and he opened his eyes. Unable to speak, he attempted a smile, and then passed out. Without a word, Kenjiin scooped up the vampire's limp form. Gunn kicked a security guard's body out of the way, and retrieved a long narrow box from under his corpse.
"Let's go," he suggested, and led the way out of the vault.
Kenjiin followed, carrying Angel effortlessly, his mace held firmly in his claw, and Buffy brought up the rear, picking up a similar weapon as she stepped over the dead demons. The corridor had only one exit, via a door that led up some stairs to another door; it was obvious that both were normally kept locked, but the security guards had left them open in their haste to deal with the intruders. In less than a minute, they emerged in the car park. Gunn hurried ahead to the still open sewer access, and softly called Jayce up to join them. Not waiting for his friend, Gunn led Kenjiin and Buffy out through the back of the car park and into the alleyway, then to Angel's car. Jayce whistled softly, and Donny joined them from the shadows near the front of the building.
Willow squeaked with delight when she saw Buffy, and ran to hug her friend. But the reunion was brief, as they made room for Angel in the back of the car, Tara climbing into the passenger seat to make room for Buffy. Theo had started the engine on their approach, and left it running while Gunn hugged his three friends to thank them for their help. With a solemn lift of his chin, Jayce nodded once at Kenjiin and Buffy, then led his crew down the street.
"We gotta get back to the hotel," Gunn told Kenjiin, who stayed in the shadows of the alley once he'd carefully deposited Angel in the car. The demon nodded, and turned away.
"He's …" Willow began, but was silenced by Buffy, who held her finger to her lips. "Erm … quiet," she finished, trusting her friend to explain.
Back at the Hyperion, Lorne and some of Jayce's crew helped them get Angel out of the car and up to his room. Lorne persuaded Buffy to leave him to see to the vampire's wounds, and she joined her friends in the hotel office where she hurriedly wrote an explanation of her wish for silence whilst verbally explaining her experience in Kravlar and her deal with Hrahek.
"So," Willow said, picking up the situation with enthusiasm, "with Kenjiin dead, all our worries should be over – right? Cos now you're back, and everyone's where they should be, and we don't need to open any more portals. So everything's back to normal?" She left the word 'please' unspoken, but it was apparent from her tone.
"I hope so," Buffy sighed, giving Willow the thumbs up for her performance. "I really need a good, hot shower. And bed. I miss my bed. And sunshine. And …"
"B-buffy?" Tara stammered, looking fearfully above the Slayer's head.
Before anyone could do or say anything, their ears were filled with a watery rushing noise and a portal opened in the ceiling, sucking a struggling Slayer into it before it snapped shut.
Willow, Tara and Gunn stared at the dripping point in mid-air where the portal had been, then slumped in their chairs, defeated.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Sunnydale
Thursday 6.30 am
Cordelia reached for the juice container in the refrigerator door. Tired, bleary eyed and worried, she winced as a pain jolted through her forehead but put it down to lack of sleep. Only as she straightened did she realise her error.
"Oh, no," she murmured, as her empty glass smashed to the kitchen floor while she tried to reach the breakfast bar. She knocked over a high-seated stool and fell with it, landing awkwardly on the tiles as the brain-burning vision seared into her head. "No!" she sobbed, against the pain and the images before her. "No!"

Dawn awoke half an hour later, slamming her hand on the cheeping alarm clock and knocking it to the floor. Feeling dreadful, having gone to bed after midnight and being woken by Cordelia's nightmare in the early hours, she wondered how her sister managed so often on so little sleep. Then she remembered that Angel would be back later that day, with the key to the demon dimension they needed to bring Buffy home, and her spirits lifted. As she padded across to the bathroom, she noted that her sister's room was empty and smiled, hoping Cordelia was making waffles for breakfast.
She heard the phone ringing, and quickly finished brushing her teeth when she realised no-one was going to get it. Frowning, she hurried into Buffy's room to lift the receiver.
"Hello?" she asked tentatively, wondering who would call so early.
"Dawn it's me," Giles said, an urgent tone in his voice. "Is – is Cordelia there? Or Fred, perhaps?"
"Sure," the teenager nodded, ignoring the urgency as it was so much his way of speaking lately that she'd stopped taking any notice. Moving the receiver away from her mouth, she yelled at the door, "Cordelia! It's for you – wanna pick up?"
She and Giles waited, but nothing happened.
"Maybe she fell asleep over breakfast," Dawn said. "She had a bad night – dreams and stuff. I can get Fred …"
"Uh, yes," Giles agreed. "Perhaps you should. Get one of them to call me back, please. I'm at home," he added.
"'K," Dawn said, and replaced the receiver.
"Everything okay?" Fred yawned, emerging from what had been Joyce Summers' room and was now shared by Willow and Tara.
"Giles called," Dawn answered, heading downstairs. "He wants you or Cordelia to call him back."
Fred was reaching for the phone in the bedroom when Dawn screamed her name from downstairs. She ran, trying to dispel the imagined horrors she thought were awaiting her, and found Dawn kneeling over Cordelia's body in the kitchen. Fred swallowed, hoping she wasn't going to faint, and knelt beside the panic-stricken teenager to carefully examine her friend.
"It's okay," she breathed, hand on the teenager's arm. "She's not …" She left the 'd' word unsaid, and gently patted Cordelia's cheek in an effort to rouse her. "Cordy?"
After a few minutes, Cordelia came round, groaning, and wiping tears from her eyes as she sat upright on the floor. Fred handed her a glass of water and two painkillers, having guessed what had happened.
"God," Cordelia moaned, stretching her neck muscles in an effort to dissipate the thumping headache which seemed to grip her from the shoulders up, "me and the PTB need to have a serious talk."
"What – what was it?" Fred asked, almost afraid of the answer with Angel and Gunn being so far away. "What did you see?"
Cordelia glanced at Dawn, and winced at the pain it caused her.
"It's kinda jumbled," she told Fred, her eyes revealing the white lie.
"I'm not a little kid," Dawn reminded them. "I'm the Slayer's sister. And – and I live on the Hellmouth. Don't hide stuff from me, please," she added plaintively.
"It was just another 'Buffy versus the demon' thing," Cordelia told her. "You don't need the details. Has Angel called?"
"No," Fred answered in a small voice, worried for Gunn and the others.
"Giles called," Dawn remembered. "We should call him back."
Cordelia got to her feet, carefully and slowly, and dialled the Watcher's number while Fred and Dawn began breakfast, ears attuned to the one-sided conversation.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Los Angeles
Thursday 8 am
Nathan Reid paced back and forth in front of the huge window in his office. Lilah Morgan and Gavin Park watched him impassively from their seats on the other side of his desk, neither of them daring to take their eyes from the Special Representative of the Senior Partners. Both lawyers had arrived half an hour earlier, having been summoned curtly by phone. Lilah was pleased to see that Park looked as weary and wary as she felt, but she was confident that her feelings were better controlled. She was also pleased to note the surprise on Park's face when Reid had informed them that the Kravlar Key had been stolen: obviously Gavin had not known the key was formerly housed in their vaults.
Both Lilah and Gavin had reported that their security measures were intact, and Reid now paced in silent contemplation of this, leaving the two lawyers to their own thoughts. Park was mystified – he'd increased and double-checked security before leaving the building last night, ensuring that human and non-human protection was in place, and knew it to be in place this morning, barring the four dead security guards downstairs. It seemed they were the only breach in the defences. Lilah wondered why he'd felt it necessary to increase security, and was chagrined to realise that his own project was so heavily secret that she couldn't even guess its nature. Her thoughts returned again to the woman she'd seen in the street just before Gavin's departure last night, but she couldn't voice her suspicions without revealing that she'd been spying on her colleague.
"I'm awaiting confirmation," Reid said at last, stopping to stare out at the early morning cityscape, "but I think witchcraft may be at work here."
Lilah gasped, feeling that her thoughts had been invaded.
"Yes, Lilah?" Reid prompted, whirling around to face her.
"Just – just surprised," Lilah said, recovering quickly. "Witchcraft is so old hat these days."
Reid looked at her, his face a mask of anger.
"It is not to be under-estimated," he warned. Then he sighed, and leaned on his desk towards the two lawyers. "But that's neither here nor there. We need to locate the key, and retrieve it. I trust you two will see to that."
Lilah did not relish working with Gavin at the best of times. Under the present circumstances, it was the last thing she wanted. She cleared her throat.
"I don't think we both …"
"Lilah," Reid said menacingly, "humour me."

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Hrahek knelt before an elaborately carved altar, murmuring guttural prayers to a stone effigy in its centre. Dark stubby candles sputtered and glowed in the dim light, throwing eerie shadows over the demon's features and across the rocky floor. Moisture dripped from the stone-hewn ceiling, sizzling on contact with the altar and evaporating into tiny clouds of steam. Outside, the wind howled and occasionally the candles flickered as if they would be blown out.
A few feet to the demon's left, Buffy lay on the ground and watched through slit eyes. Her feet were bound together, and her hands tied tightly behind her back. Her ribs ached, her bottom lip was split, and she knew she had at least one black eye, but she was the Slayer and would soon heal. The journey through the portal had once again rendered her unconscious, but she vaguely remembered the demon's rough handling of her and was thankful his anger had not resulted in her death. Yet.
Hrahek laid his sword across the altar, and bowed his head, silent at last. After a moment, he pushed himself to his feet, turned, and disappeared into the shadows. Buffy's heart raced. It looked like she was in a cave, but in the feeble candlelight it was difficult to tell for sure. Beyond the altar, dark shadows closed in – there could have been walls, or long unlit tunnels, or simply a vast space beyond her immediate field of vision, but all she saw was pitch black nothing. She could hear nothing except the ever-present howling of the wind, and that sound was not very far away. She had no idea where Hrahek had gone, or what he was doing, and she would have little notice when he returned.
Buffy tried to free her wrists from the rough rope that bound her, but to no avail: she couldn't even loosen the ties. As she struggled, she realised that both her wrists and her ankles were bound to thick metal hoops in the floor. With a sigh, she accepted that she wasn't going anywhere, anytime soon.
Her thoughts turned to Dawn, and she wondered what would become of her little sister if she couldn't escape. She knew that Giles and Willow and the others – even Spike – would take good care of her, but she worried that dealing with so much death in so short a time would take its toll on the teenager, who was still barely coping after the death of their mom. And Buffy knew how deeply affected they had all been last time she'd died – how would they get through that again? And Angel …
Buffy shook her head, trying to push back the tears that threatened to burst from her eyes. A short while ago, taken in by Hrahek's lies, she'd thought he was dead and had been willing to kill anything the demon threw in her path to avenge him. Then she'd learned the truth, and had been so overcome with joy and hope that she realised – again – that she really hated not having him in her life. Dealing with her resurrection had pushed that to one side, even after their very intense meeting that time, but now she knew that Angel was another issue she needed to face, and resolve.
Angel, and Spike – what was going on there?? – and missing Mom, and making sure Dawn was brought up properly, and getting a paid job, and still being the Slayer even though she'd died … Buffy had so many things to deal with, on top of the whole 'why-couldn't-I-stay-in-heaven?' thing that gnawed at her constantly. Maybe Hrahek would put an end to it all. If she died here, beyond the reach of her loved ones, maybe she would finally be able to rest in peace.
Buffy closed her eyes, and waited.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~