A/N: Sorry for the slight delay - end of term, much work to be done. This is a slightly shorter chapter than last weeks. I'm still trying to get all the players together so we can get to the action. No flashbacks this chapter, but plenty of references to past episodes of both Angel and BTVS.

Please, please, please read and review - otherwise I might misplace my muse...

Cordelia swung the sword again, trying to get a feel for it. Two years on a higher plane and she still remembered everything Angel had taught her, but she felt rusty. She should probably ask him to train with her again before the impending big fight. Apart from anything else, it would mean getting to spend some time alone together…

And that in itself was confusing as hell. A part of her wanted nothing more that to pick up from where they were headed two years ago, on the cusp of what promised to be an incredible, if somewhat complicated, relationship. And judging by the way Angel had kissed her earlier, he felt the same way. At the same time, she knew that nothing he had said or could say would lessen the huge weight of guilt she still felt over everything that had happened since she ascended to be a higher being. That, combined with all their others problems – namely that he was a 251 year old vampire, cursed with a soul that he'd lose if he got too happy – was not exactly the makings of a storybook relationship.

And then there was Connor. Cordy didn't think she'd ever be able to forgive herself for what he had been put through. She knew if probably wasn't the most sensible of options, but she had been avoiding him since she's been back. She was really not looking forward to the conversation she needed to have with him.

Focus Cordy, she told herself. If she focused on her training, maybe her brain would stop working overtime, even for only 5 minutes. 5 minutes without over analyzing everything she had been through would be bliss.

She suddenly sensed someone behind her. Swinging the sword around, she stopped it mere inches from Xander Harris' neck. He held up his hands in surrender.

'Geez, Cordelia. I'd hate to get you mad at me now,' he told her, a slightly fearful expression on his face.

Cordy smiled and lowered the sword. 'You shouldn't sneak up on someone when she's wielding a sword,' she told him.

'You're pretty good with that. Angel trained you?'

'Yeah,' she smiled at the memory of their past training sessions. 'I made him. I got tired of staving and waiting for Mr. Tall, Dark and Vampy to swoop in and save me.'

Xander nodded and took a seat at the edge of a nearby table. 'So, uh… how are you doing, Cordy?' he asked hesitantly.

'I'm okay. Still… adjusting, I guess.'

'Well, it takes time. But … we're all glad your back among the living,' he told her.

'Even Buffy?' Cordelia raised a disbelieving eyebrow.

'I'm not saying there's not going to be the occasional appearance of a certain green-eyed monster, but… it's all going to be alright, you know?'

'Assuming the up coming big scary doesn't kill us all.'

'And on that cheery note…' Xander smirked. 'So you're a demon, huh?'

Yep… part of me anyway.'

'I should have known… Willow always said I was a demon magnet – makes sense that my only human ex-girlfriend would end up being one too,' he said with a laugh.

'Funny, Harris,' she replied.

'Seriously, though. You've changed – a lot,' he told her. 'You've grown into a hell of a woman Cordelia Chase.'

'Well, you didn't turn out so bad yourself,' she replied. 'And the eye-patch – it's a look…' She sat down on a chair opposite him.

'So… you and Angel, huh?'

'I was wondering how long it'd take before you brought that up.'

'How'd I do?'

'About three seconds longer than I thought.' She gave a small laugh and rolled her eyed. 'Okay, so, get it over with. Is this going to be like the little speeches you used to give Buffy, cuz if so…'

'He loves you.'

Cordelia opened her mouth in surprise. 'Okay… didn't see that coming.'

Angel, Buffy and Connor arrived at the bar in Cordy's vision only to find it surrounded by demons.

'Great. Thirty, at least…' Angel said.

'You'd think Cordelia would have told us a little detail like that,' Buffy remarked sourly. 'Kinda important.'

'She only sees what the Powers let her see, Buffy,' Angel snapped back.

'We need back up, is all I'm saying,' she replied. Reaching into her pocket, she took out her cell phone and hit speed dial. 'Hey Faith. You anywhere near West Hollywood? ... Good. We need back up… 86th and West. Il Taverno. Get here as soon as.'

'So, what now?' Connor asked as Buffy ended her call. 'Do we wait for Faith?'

Angel looked back towards the bar and saw the demons starting to move in. He shook his head. 'No time. We just better hope Faith gets here soon. Come on.'

With that, he was out of the alley and across the street. Buffy and Connor looked at each other, and with a resolute shrug followed him into the fray.

'Do you remember what I was like when I left Sunnydale?' Cordelia was asking.

'Remember? I still have the scars!' Xander joked in reply.

Cordelia laughed and rolled her eyes. 'God, I had such big dreams. I was going to be an actress. I was going to be famous and rich and marry some incredibly wealthy media mogul with his own TV network.'

'Well… zero out of three is… pretty bad, actually.' Xander took a good look at the woman in front of him and really took stock of how much she had changed. 'You really don't care about any of that any more, do you?'

'No, I don't,' she replied, a little surprised herself. Then she cocked her head to one side, reconsidering. 'Well, the money would be nice… but I had a chance at all that, a chance to be rich and famous. And I gave it all up.'

'For Angel.'

'Yeah… crazy, huh?'

'Just a little bit,' Xander replied with a smile. 'But no less amazing.'

'If this is the part where you get all gushy and start trying to take back all the mean things you said when we were at school, you can forget it, buster…'

Xander shook his head. 'I wouldn't dream of it. I meant every word.'

'Thanks a lot.'

'But I said them to a different girl,' he told her in a soft tone. Catching himself before he became too sentimental, he went on, 'and besides, I seem to remember some choice remarks from you too.'

'Like when I called you a loser?' she grinned.

'Which time?'

'And when I call you the Zeppo?'

'Uh huh.'

'And when I called you Xander "I'm as stupid as I look" Harris?'

'Okay, now you're just trying to make me feel all warm and fuzzy…'

'Oh, like you did when you called me a hooker?'

'I never…'

'You told me I dressed like a hooker.'

'Well… sometimes…'

'Xander Harris, please remember that I am not only a part-demon who's trained in combat, but I'm also armed at the moment!'

Xander held up his hands in surrender. 'Hey, I didn't say I was complaining about the way you dressed…' he laughed.

Unholy hell was breaking out inside the bar as Angel, Buffy and Connor pushed, punched and staked their way through the front door. Expecting to see helpless humans being attacked by the big scaries, they were surprised to be confronted with a bar full of demons – some attacking and some defending themselves.

Looking around the room as he staked another couple of vamps, Angel spotted several Lister, Kwaini and Anomovic demons – all of which Angel knew were non-evil and, in two out of three cases, balancing demons. His heart constricted as another breed of demon came into view – at least half a dozen members of the Brachen clan. Thoughts of Doyle assaulted his mind.

'Um, Angel?' Connor's voice interrupted his thoughts. 'How are we meant to tell which demons to kill and which to help?'

'Yeah. Don't you make them wear black or white hats in this city,' Buffy enquired as she decapitated a vampire and move on to the next. 'Or at least lapel pins?'

'Lay off the blue pin-cushiony ones, the red scaly ones, the grey wrinkly ones and the one's who look like crazy, homeless people. The rest are fair game,' Angel told them quickly.

'Check,' Buffy replied, continuing with her slayage.

Angel, Connor and Buffy worked their way steadily through the chaos, aided by the fact that, initially at least, the marauding demons were too busy going after the balancing demons to realize that the three champions had arrived. But they caught on soon enough.

A Kailiff demon turned in time to see Angel swinging a sword at him. As the blade imbedded in his chest, he managed to yell out a warning to his fellow demons.

'Angel!'

The twenty or so demons that were still standing collectively turned and snarled at the three figures near the door.

'So, they know who you are,' Buffy remarked, sizing up the competition.

'Fame's a bitch,' Angel quipped as the demons readied themselves to charge.

Just then, Faith and ten other slayers appeared behind them.

'Someone start the party without me?' Faith wanted to know.

Buffy and Angel glanced at the brunette slayer and grinned. Turning back towards their demon foes, they charged.

Cordy and Xander were ascending the stairs from the basement went a large number of heavily armed fighters came through the door. Xander raised his axe to defend Cordelia. Cordy however kept her weapon ready, but by her side, as she approached the leader of the group.

'Rondell? If you've come to take hostages again, I can promise you I'm gonna kick your ass.'

'Easy there Barbie,' Rondell replied. 'You're boss asked me here.'

'No one but Gunn ever got away with calling me that,' Cordy told him coldly. 'Do it again, and we're going to have a problem. Angel asked you to come?'

'Said you might need a little help. Not that helping a vampire is my idea of a good time, but if evil's gonna get an ass whoopin', I want a piece of that action.'

With the odds now considerably stacked in their favor, the white hats had soon either killed or chased off the attacking demons. The good-guy demons that were left were in varying states of injury, and there had been three fatalities – one Kwaini and two Anomovic demons had died in the attack. Rieff, one of the Lister demons stepped forward to greet their rescuers.

'Angel,' he said, gratitude in his voice. 'We'd just about given up looking for you.'

'Looking for me?' Angel was confused. Still, the demon, who was maybe 20 years old, looked familiar to him. 'Do I… Rieff?' Rieff nodded. 'Shouldn't you be on an island off the coast of Ecuador or something?'

'We were. But the Scourge came for us – six months ago. We fled, but they kept coming,' Rieff told him, hanging his head. 'We lost many of our clan. So we came back here, looking for you.'

'Probably not the best time to come back to LA,' Buffy remarked. 'It's not the safest of places to be right now.'

'Nowhere is safe,' Rieff replied. 'But if we are to survive, we need to be here. Helping you to fight. We arrived two weeks ago and couldn't find you. We received word of a huge battle and feared you had been lost. But your friend told us that you were still alive, that your destiny wasn't over.'

'My friend…?' Angel asked, confused once more.

'Hello Angel-cakes,' a familiar voice greeted him from the other end of the room.

To Be Continued...

A/N: Angel's age is a controversial subject - I calculated 251 from the fact that he was sired in 1753 and this is set in 2004 (the final episode aired on the 19th of May 2004, so this is set around early June of 2004).

In case I lost you with my neverending list of demons (I think thats enough to be going on with for the moment...) the Listers were the demons Doyle saved in 'Hero', the Kwaini were the ones who were addicted to that mystical drug in 'The Prodical' (but were described by Wesley as 'balancing demons, utterly non-violent'), the Anomovic demons are the family that Doyle's ex-wife was going to marry into (before they tried to eat his brains, of course - that might be seen as evil (obviously) but i think technically they're not meant to be really 'evil' evil), and of course Doyle was half-Brachen demon.

As for the final demon that appeared... I think you can all guess who it is...