Author's Note: Well, it certainly looks like I might manage to finish this part of Excedo Inferi in under two years. The next episode after this one is the Excedo Inferi version of Amends, so maybe I can manage the Christmas episode around Christmas. 'Tis the Season and all that. Anyway, thank you for the reviews. And to answer some points:

tefla: You will find out what happened (or at least part of what happend) in this very chapter.

Queen Boadicea: You will get a glimpse of how vampires fare in this brave new world. As for Buffy and Angel, though... not yet. That's gonna take a few more chapters.

Arobow: You will find out how this Hell fits into the Dante's Inferno version Buffy and Angel travelled through, but not just yet. Safe to say, though, it's not a different Hell. Not quite, at least.

Serrafina: The fate of the rest of the Scooby gang and whether or not Angel got his soul back in this world will be answered a few chapters down the line. This one here gives you a few hints, though.

And now, on with the Show!

Part 5:

Cordelia did not know how long their journey took. She was still too stunned by Xander's revelation. They were in Hell? How was this possible? And for a century already? Surely that was nonsense. She didn't look a day older than she remembered being. Even if Xander was right (for once) and she had somehow blocked out memories of some terrible event, how could she be unchanged if so much time had passed?

Then again, who was she to say that anything was impossible? The last thing she did remember before coming to this terrible place was Anya, who was obviously some kind of demon. Had she done this somehow? Buffy and Faith had been there, she remembered seeing them briefly. Had there been some kind of instant-apocalypse that the Slayers had been unable to stop?

Xander led her through the hellish, broken landscape as if he knew every inch of it by heart, making the most of every tiny bit of cover he could find. More than once they almost ran afoul of monsters. Some of them, Cordelia belatedly realized, were vampires. Not the ‘demon-in-a-human-corpse variety she was used to, though. They looked like vampires who had peeled off their human skins, leaving only the demons that had always lurked just beneath.

Finally they entered something that might have been a building once, little more than a crushed ruin now. Its basement was still intact and Cordelia recognized it as a bank vault. Someone had converted it into a kind of living area. Inside they met several other people, none of them familiar.

"Harris," one of them, an older man with greying hair, greeted Xander. "Finally back from your fool's errand, I see."

He looked at Cordelia. "So you are the girl he was so wild about freeing, eh?"

Cordelia, feeling offended somehow, gave him her best death glare. "Yeah, what of it?"

The man seemed very surprised by her words. Taking in her sorry state, he had probably expected her to be a skittish wreck or something. Well, she might not remember what had happened to her (and should probably be grateful for that), but she was certainly not going to be talked down to by anyone.

"She's amnesiac," Xander told the man. "Doesn't remember anything from when she was a prisoner."

The man pondered this for a moment. "A blessing, girl. Wish I could do that."

"Cordy, this is Max," Xander finally introduced them. "He put together this little survivors band here."

Figuring that this was not the moment to acquire tact, Cordelia just gave him a short nod before turning back to Xander.

"Okay, Xander. How about filling me in now. What happened? How did we end up in Hell?"

Xander sighed deeply, then motioned her over to a semi-private portion of the bank vault. They sat down on something that might have started out as a couch some centuries ago and Xander handed her some unidentifiable foodstuff. She hated the taste, but was profoundly thankful to have anything to quiet her aching stomach even a little.

"Are you sure you want to know this, Cordy?" Xander asked after they'd eaten a bit.

"I'm not asking you to give me a play by play of how... this," she motioned at her mangled body, "was done to me. But I need to know how it happened. Was it that demon in the school? That Anya girl?"

Smiling sadly, Xander shook his head. "The demon wasn't called Anya, Cordy. It was called Akathler. And it certainly wasn't a girl."

Cordelia was stunned once again. "Akathler? That big stone thing that would suck the entire world into hell? I thought the Watchers had taken care of him after Buffy and Angel vanished."

"Watchers? What are you talking about, Cordy? Those stuffy Brits never did a single thing to help us. Giles was the best of that sorry lot and even he could do nothing when deadboy unleashed that monster."

Deadboy? Angel unleashed Akathler? Slowly it was dawning on Cordelia that something was terribly wrong here, something much more profound than the entire world apparently having gone to Hell. So she did something truly extraordinary for her: She kept her mouth shut and motioned for Xander to continue.

"I was with Buffy when we made our last stand against Angel," he said, sounding incredibly tired. "She had that sword-thing, the one Kendra brought. Was supposed to save or us something. I barely remember.

"When we entered the mansion I was to find Giles and get him out. I only saw Buffy fighting one of the vamps while Spike turned on deadboy. Then I got the G-man and made fast tracks out into the sunlight."

He sighed deeply. "I don't know what happened inside the mansion, but suddenly the entire building crumbled and got sucked into this vortex. That's when I figured out that... that Buffy failed. Akathler had awoken and all was lost.

"There was no sense in running, even if I could have found it in me to just leave Giles lying there. So I watched. Then the vortex sucked me in and next thing I know... here we are."

He motioned all around him.

"The entire world ended up here, every bit of it as far as I can tell. All the buildings, cities, all the people. Haven't seen any animals since we got here, so maybe they were spared. I don't know.

"The demons went crazy after that. The vampires... they all shed their human skins like snakes. Probably figured they didn't need to blend in anymore. Then more monsters appeared. Soon they were rounding up the people left and right. There were some fights, some resistance, but it didn't last long. Most of our technology doesn't work here in Hell, so we were pretty much helpless."

He gave a shaky laugh. "That was also when we found out that, well, we couldn't die. Or age, for that matter. Somebody figured that, seeing as Akathler zapped us bodily into Hell, Death can no longer reach us here or something. So we live, no matter how messed up we get, no matter how broken. We keep on living. No escape."

Looking at Cordy, he shrugged. "That's pretty much it. I managed to keep myself from getting caught, not sure how. At first everything was chaos. Kinda got the feeling the demons were as overwhelmed by everything that went down as we were. Took them a while to sort it all out.

"Now most of the people are in the pens, getting tortured day in and day out. The demons are having a blast. And except for a few scattered groups such as this there is nothing else left. A few years ago, while scrounging for food, I spotted you in... one of the pens. Knew I had to get you out. Took me a while, though. Sorry about that."

He stopped, his story finished. Cordelia was trying to wrap her mind around everything she had just heard. Angel, still evil, had unleashed Akathler and the entire world had gone to hell? No, it hadn't happened that way. She knew it hadn't happened that way.

"This is wrong," she muttered.

"Tell me about it," Xander just said.

"No," she emphasized, grabbing his shoulders with her crippled hands. It hurt like a bitch, but right then she didn't much care. "I mean it, Xander. This is wrong! It didn't happen this way! Buffy stopped Angel! She sealed the portal and kept the world from getting sucked into hell."

Xander just gave her a pitying look. "Cordy..."

"Don't Cordy me," she yelled at him. "I'm telling you, this is wrong. It didn't happen that way. The world isn't supposed to be this way!"

Buffy! She had to find Buffy! Not that she'd ever admit it out loud, but if anyone could fix this mess, it was Buffy.

TO BE CONTINUED