Chapter 9

The drive to the mall was silent. Willow sat up front with Angel looking through her spell book, trying to distract herself from the tension that surrounded them. Angel had yet to even look at Buffy, not that Buffy was making much of an effort to look at him either though.

"How long will it take you to do the spell?" Angel asked upon arriving at their destination.

"Five minutes at tops. You're going to have to get to the demon quick. It'll probably start killing people on sight when it turns."

The three of them walked to the storage room for Willow to set up. Quickly she did a locater spell indicating that the demon was in the food court. Biting her lip Willow wished the two of them good luck as they went off into that direction. Alone.

The mall was strangely empty, being a Friday night and all. It was pretty close to closing hours though so most of the people left were the teenagers who didn't know about Sunnydales' more interesting side of town.

The food court had few people milling around. There was a group of kids at one side of the court and a few late shoppers sitting down to have a quick dinner before heading home. The demon wouldn't be to hard to find in here once the spell took effect. 'Just follow the screams' Angel thought.

Next to him Buffy took a deep breath. Biting her lip she slowly turned to him. "So..."

"Don't even try." Angel cut her off abruptly. He didn't want to talk, he just wanted to get this done and over with so he could go home and brood.

"What?" she looked at him with wide eyes thinking how she had never seen him this angry before.

"I don't want to hear about how you're sorry and all that other bull shit. All I want to do is fight this demon, kill it, and go home."

"Angel, we need..."

"We don't need to do anything." He shook his head "I should have never come back."

Buffy looked at him in shock. He was actually regretting coming home because of this whole thing?

"Fine." She said. "Stand there and mope and think that the worlds' done you wrong instead of trying to talk this out. Run away from the problem again Angel, you seem to be so good at that."

Angel spun around to look at her. "What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

"It means that every time things get tough you run away instead of dealing with it!"

"When have I ever run away from something?"

"My seventeenth birthday!"

"Buffy, I had to go hide a stupid arm in a box so the world wouldn't end! How the hell is that running away!"

"That was just an excuse!"

"Excuse!" he looked at her incredibly

"Yes an excuse! Our relationship was just starting to get serious and so you jumped at the chance to leave! You never were really invested in this whole us thing." Buffy knew she was grasping at straws here, but she wanted to hurt him just a fraction of what he did to her. When he left her lying on the bedroom floor the other night she wanted to die. The feelings that came over her that night clawed at her chest causing her heart to almost burst with the pain that she was feeling.

"If you think that's what happened then you're an idiot! I didn't want to leave and you know that! I wanted to stay with you and be with you forever, but no. And don't you dare tell me that I wasn't invested in this relationship. How long did it take you until you chucked your ring?"

Buffy looked down at her hand, her silver claddagh ring didn't sit there anymore. It hadn't since the night he came back. "I had to move on Angel, I thought you were dead. Okay? Five years went by and I didn't even get a single letter from you. How hard would it have been for you to at least pick up the damn phone once in a while?"

"I wanted to, every minute. God Buffy, I could barely go two seconds without thinking of you. Wondering if when I came back you'd be dead because I wasn't there to protect you. Instead I come back to find out that your engaged to be married!"

"What? Did you expect me to sit around and wait for you? It's been five years Angel! You left and I thought that you were never coming back. So yeah, I moved on. And I'm sorry that I didn't tell you what was going on! I screwed up! I know that! But I've been with Riley for three years now and I'm sorry that I wasn't so heartless that I broke up with him the moment you showed up! How am I supposed to know that you'll stick around this time? Huh? How am I supposed to know that you won't think that this relationship is going no where and you'll just leave! If you haven't noticed, we're not exactly the definition of a normal couple. And knowing you, sooner or later that would catch up to you!" Buffy took a deep breath to compose herself. "I was scared. Riley was, I guess my backup in case you didn't want me." Angel was about to retaliate when she held up her hand. "I'm not saying that that justifies my actions. All I'm saying is that I'm sorry, and I don't want to lose you again."

Angel looked at her. He wasn't sure if he was capable of anything else. He was angry at her, but he too, didn't want to lose her. Not again. How was he supposed to forgive her for this though? "After this is over..." he never got to finish his sentence, because the air was suddenly filled with a high pitch scream.

Without saying a word, Buffy and Angel ran towards the noise. Willows spell had obviously worked because standing in front of the Taco Bell was the Reine demon. It was over seven feet tall minus the horns. Its eyes glowed black with specks of red. Angel looked it up and down once, and was immediately knocked back by the smell. The demons rotting flesh hung off of its bones and gave off a putrid stench nearly gagging him.

"Shit." Buffy muttered "This is so not good."

The demon held a young girl around Buffy's age in one of its decaying hands. Angel turned to Buffy. "Ready?"

"No." And with that the two warriors went head first into battle.

Giles wasn't exaggeration when he said that the demon would be stronger in its true form. Usually it would have taken Buffy and Angel ten minutes tops to take out something like this. Sure they would both walk away with a good amount of cuts and bruises, maybe a few broken ribs, but nothing life threatening. The battle was going on fifteen minutes now and the end was no where in sight.

Angel knew that he had already cracked several of his ribs. He could taste his own blood in his mouth and knew that tomorrow, he'd defiantly be sore if he wasn't already dead. Retrieving his battle ax from the ground he swung it at the demons mid section. It connected but didn't seem to do much of anything besides hacking of some more of its flesh.

Pulling back Angel tried a different tactic. Taking his ax he ran full force at the demon, yelling at the top of his lungs. He succeeded in launching himself at the flesh rotting corpse and hitting it in the chest. All it did though was piss it off even more then it already was, and Angel found him self flung across the room with his battle ax firmly embedded in the demons upper chest.

Sparing a glance at Buffy he looked over, hoping she was fairing better then he was. She was favoring her left leg more then he would have liked and she had a gash across her forehead. Taking her sword she impaled the demon through the chest where the heart should have been. For a minute Angel thought that they had won. As an ear splitting scream penetrated the night air Angel actual felt a surge of hope that the demon was finally defeated. But the moment the sword was pulled out, the scream stopped, and the demon made its way towards Buffy. With no weapon Angel still tried to get up and help her, but Willow pulled him aside the last minute.

"Willow, what the... let me go."

"No, listen to me."

"Willow..."

"Angel listen. The only way you can kill this demon is to have the sword stay embedded into its heart..."

"Why the hell didn't you tell us this before?"

"We didn't know! We thought this was a Reine demon but Giles just called and said that our calculations were wrong. This is a hybrid of a Reine demon. Apparently a Reine demon and an Ethros demon..."

"Willow. Not now."

"Sorry. You need to take the sword and make sure it comes in contact with the heart."

"We tried that Will, you saw it. That thing just pulls it out the second it goes in."

"I know, I know. Giles and the gang are in the back room right now setting up a spell. Distract it for about two or so minutes and then impale it. By that time we'll have enchanted the sword to stay inside the demons chest. I think."

"YOU THINK!"

"Well we're not one hundred percent sure about it. I mean none of us have ever really tried this spell before and..."

"Okay, just do the spell. I'll stall it as long as I can. Go!"

Willow ran off. Turning towards the demon and Buffy, Angel screamed.

"BUFFY!"