When Cordelia finally got out of the library she leaned against the wall, mentally exhausted.
She'd won, of course, got most of what she wanted and given nothing away, but it had been a narrow victory, requiring all her considerable skill. If it hadn't been for Giles's little slips she might have cracked.
She'd need to do a lot more preparation for the next talk, and there would be a next talk, Giles hadn't given her much choice there.
"Cordelia." Harmony said with false sweetness. "We missed you this morning. You must tell us where you've been."
"Where were you last night?" Aura added. "Did you really have a date with a college guy?"
Cordelia sighed, then turned to face them.
Aura looked genuinely curious; she clearly had no idea how sensitive that question was.
Harmony did, but she didn't seem bothered. She just smiled and ostentatiously straightened her outfit, not a good move. Harmony's outfit was more elegant than normal, but bright red was most definitely not her colour.
"Yes," Harmony said. "Do tell."
Cordelia scowled. If Harmony thought she could get away with that attitude after the atrocious way she'd acted the previous night she was even more stupid than Cordelia had suspected.
"Have you forgotten already?" Cordelia said sharply. "You were there."
"I was in the Bronze." Harmony said, then looked at Aura. "She did not leave with me. She left with Buffy and her freak friends. She probably spent the morning with them too."
Cordelia smiled at Aura. "Harmony never did have a good memory, did she?"
For a moment Harmony looked strangely amused, her lips twitching into a genuine smile, but then her face tightened.
"At least I can remember who my real friends are."
Still looking at Aura, Cordelia nodded. "I suppose managing to remember two names might be considered an achievement, by some people."
Aura winced, looked at Harmony, then looked back at Cordelia.
"She," Cordelia continued, "has clearly forgotten what I told her only last month, that I have been rehearsing for the talent show."
Aura stepped backwards. "Um, I've remembered. I've, um, got to go. I've got t-to talk to a teacher about my work. She's waiting for me."
Aura turned round and hurried down the corridor.
Harmony smiled. "You think she might have noticed?"
Cordelia nodded. "How could she not? You-"
"Not me!" Harmony said sharply. "You. You've-"
"Me?" Cordelia said. "I'm not the one who brought up last night."
Harmony laughed scornfully. "You didn't have to. You're a freak now, and everyone kn-"
Cordelia moved closer to Harmony, menacingly close. "You will not say that, ever."
Harmony stood her ground. "Or what? You'll set Buffy on me?"
"No." Cordelia said quietly, though the idea was not without appeal, "I will cut you dead, and where I lead, everyone follows."
Harmony glared unwaveringly at Cordelia. "Not any more. You are not the woman you were."
"Enough." Cordelia snapped. "I know last night was ... unpleasant."
A pallid word that, but there were no words for what she had seen, no words that could capture the depths of the horrors to which she had been an helpless witness.
Cordelia shuddered, trying to remember what she'd been about to say.
"Unpleasant?" Harmony said. "Understatement much? Unpleasant is Xander's clothes or Willow's face. Last night was worse. Last night was absolute torture, and you will apologise for it. You will fall to your knees and -"
"An apology? After the way you acted?"
Harmony sighed. "I explained that last night. N-"
"You lied last night, Harmony." Cordelia said flatly. "To my face. Since you had enough mental composure to think up that smear you must have had enough to know better. Buffy may be a loser but there are limits."
Pointing out the many flaws of the losers was practically a duty, simple honesty required no less, but making up gossip was a step too far, and not just because it was dishonest.
"Clearly," Harmony said, "you didn't understand what I said. Perhaps if I repeat it more slowly, with smaller words, you will be able to understand."
"Harmony," Cordelia said sharply. "Even you couldn't be stupid enough to believe what you just said. Ap-"
"Listen carefully." Harmony said, as if Cordelia hadn't spoken. "I am normal. You are not. Normal people, like me, are not used to weird stuff. Weird people, like you, are. When weird stuff hap-"
"I am not weird." Cordelia said. "I am normal."
"You? Normal?" Harmony sneered. "Have you looked in the mirror lately?"
"I am normal." Cordelia repeated. "It is Sunnydale that isn't. You were there last night. You saw."
Cordelia tried to look sympathetic. "Clearly, you saw too much."
Harmony nodded. "I saw what you've been trying to hide."
Ignoring that feeble riposte, Cordelia continued "And your mind cracked. It's your fault, of course. You should have known better than to follow me, not that it matters now. All that-"
"Whose fault?" Harmony said disbelievingly. "You know your friends have always followed where you lead. You should have realised what would happen. And my mind didn't crack."
"Have you tried listening to yourself?" Cordelia said. "You wouldn't be talking to me this way if you were in your right mind."
Cordelia shrugged. "At least you can still pass for normal; most people would have been gibbering wrecks after last night, what with the torture and the shadows and the dreams. Your mind was only bruised, not broken. You'll be your old self again in a few weeks, with my help."
Help Cordelia was certain Harmony wouldn't want. Harmony had definitely suffered some kind of mental trauma last night, even someone as blind to emotional nuances as Willow would be able to see that, but she wasn't acting like someone who had been terrified.
Harmony wasn't starting at shadows, quite the opposite. She was meeting Cordelia's gaze unflinchingly, as she had never before dared do.
No, there had to be reasons other than the memory of fear for Harmony's new attitude. Cordelia had no idea what they might be, not yet, but she'd uncover them soon enough.
"I'm sure you'd just love that." Harmony said, her voice unexpectedly sarcastic. "You're the one who got me into this, deliberately. You po-"
Harmony bit off the word, then swiftly changed tack. "You're nothing like the Cordelia I used to know. You can't expect me to treat you like I did her."
Cordelia watched Harmony walk away down the corridor and smiled. Whatever was bothering Harmony couldn't be anything serious, just the light relief she needed to distract herself from impending apocalypse.
Twenty-five minutes later, after an hurried lunch, Cordelia was sat in the temporary science lab, half-listening to the teacher drone on.
She needed to work out what to do about Giles. He'd accepted her story, for now, but Giles was too smart not to look for corroborating evidence, evidence she would have to manufacture.
If she really had been working with a watcher in secret for months what traces would he have left, apart from the effects on her vocabulary?
"... half-fill with water," Mr Ward said, turning on the tap. "Then-"
Cordelia looked up.
The water was running pink.
Looking startled, Mr Ward dropped the beaker, then hastily turned off the tap.
The tap began to vibrate.
"A plumbing problem?" Mr Ward said.
The vibrations grew louder.
Willow nudged Xander, then put covered her ears and ducked under the desk.
Cordelia followed suit. Two seconds later, so did Harmony.
"It's only the plumbing." Mr Ward shouted, barely audible above the noise. "Don't-"
A final thunderous blast silenced Mr Ward, then the stench of blood swamped the room.
Her ears still ringing, Cordelia stood up and looked round. She had to know what was happening, or she wouldn't be able to tell Buffy what needed doing.
There was blood everywhere; dripping from the ceiling, oozing down the walls, pooling on the floor, more blood than Cordelia had ever seen outside her nightmares, even when Kevin died.
Most of the class was staring numbly at the blood, seemingly too shocked to move, but Harmony just looked curious.
Aura grabbed a lock of her blood-soaked hair, as if to wring it dry, then recoiled in disgust.
The broken tap was stuck in the ceiling, directly over the sink, and from the hole where it had been more blood gushed, an endless torrent to delight any vampire's heart.
Gwen closed her eyes and started mumbling "Not real. Not real," over and over.
Mr Ward struggled to his feet, then stepped forward to look at the blood fountain.
"That's certainly not the typical plumbing problem." Mr Ward said with mingled curiosity and disgust, "Can't be blood. It would have clotted. Smells the same though. Hmm."
Larry glanced down at his bloodstained hands, shuddered, then began feverishly wiping them on his pants.
Willow looked hesitantly at Buffy. "A omen? It could be a omen. Maybe something bad is happening, or-"
"Something bad is always happening." Buffy said, watching the sink warily.
"Something worse." Willow said quietly.
Xander smiled. "Or maybe the vamps are just playing tricks."
"We need Giles." Cordelia said, and not just because he'd be able to explain the blood. He'd also clean up the mess, shield them from awkward question, and generally help everyone pretend life was normal.
Xander scowled at her. "You going to run off and fetch him?"
Certainly not. That was the kind of thing she'd done before her wish, the kind of vital but easily-overlooked help that had left her on the sidelines. This time round she needed to be in the centre of the gang, where she could make sure Xander was properly punished for his affair and use her wish-granted foresight to steer Buffy in the right direction, which meant she needed be close behind Buffy when the action started.
Besides, the blood didn't seem to be dangerous. Disgusting, yes, but not actually dangerous.
Cordelia glared back at Xander. "Certainly not. Harmony can go."
Harmony quickly nodded and stood up, then stiffened. "And leave you here with the other freaks? You'll forget yourself and do something weird."
Harmony smiled. "Think how lucky you are to have a friend like me, someone who can remind you how normal people act when you get these bizarre urges. Aura will go."
"This is my classroom." Mr Ward said. "I decide who fetches the janitor."
Jonathan looked up, his eyes wide with terror. "S-shouldn't we e-evacuate the classroom? We c-can't continue with the l-lesson now."
Mr Ward hesitated, then nodded. "It will take the janitor a while to clean this mess up. You may leave."
Jonathan dashed for the door, closely followed by half the class, but the rest just sat there, paralysed by fear.
As the mob struggled to get through the door Cordelia looked sternly at Jonathan. "Tell Giles."
"He's a librarian." Mr Ward said. "He's not interested in plumbing."
Xander smiled. "Librarians need hobbies."
An eyeball plopped out of the sink, was carried up the fountain, then hovered at the top, defying the current.
"Um," Willow said. "I don't think it's an omen."
Her gaze fixed on the eyeball, Buffy nodded. "Never heard of anything like this."
A second eyeball plopped out of the sink, following the same path as the first.
"Impossible." Mr Ward said. "Any debris should collect in the pool."
A third eyeball joined the others.
"Mr Ward." Buffy said. "You should leave too. Go and, um, do teacher stuff."
Willow nodded. "You need to make alternative arrangements for the class that was have been in this room next period. Staying here isn't safe."
As another eyeball came out of the sink Cordelia edged her chair backwards.
Mr Ward sighed. "This is just a plumbing problem, somewhat atypical yes, but nothing a professional plumber would find unusual. They doubtless deal with this kind of problem every day."
"Only in Sunnydale." Xander said.
A fifth eyeball spiralled up the fountain.
"Where's Giles?" Buffy said, with a trace of petulance. "He'll know what's going on."
The blood fountain shuddered, then swelled, swiftly growing to ceiling height as its shape shifted.
Mr Ward blanched, then flattened himself against the blackboard and put his hands over his eyes.
Cordelia shrugged, feigning nonchalance. "It's just a demon. Kill it."
Buffy looked at the demon, now a five-sided column, eight feet tall, with a single eye glaring from high in each mirror smooth face, then looked back at Cordelia. "How?"
"Eureka," the demon said, its eyes twirling anticlockwise, then started babbling in a strange language.
Willow looked briefly thoughtful. "I think that's Greek."
Harmony laughed. "The geek speaks Greek, what a surprise."
Willow twitched. "I don't speak it, not yet anyway, it might be interesting to learn and I'd be able to read some of Giles's more esoteric books, but there are a lot of technical words with Greek roots, words like pneumocephalic or anootic. I don't know what it's saying, I'd need to see it written down first, but I do recognise enough of what it's saying to be able to tell that it's either speaking Greek or saying something very technical."
Xander looked blankly at Willow. "You think this thing is Greek?"
Willow nodded. "Either that, or it's been dead a long time."
The demon stopped babbling, hesitated, then started again, this time louder.
"That sounds more like Latin." Willow said
Cordelia nodded. She'd heard enough Latin from Giles to recognise the cadence of that language.
"I don't care where it comes from." Buffy said. "It's not staying here."
The demon paused, its eyes twirling clockwise, then flowed towards Mr Ward.
Harmony looked at Buffy. "Don't just stand there. Kill the monster, now."
One side of the demon rippled.
Buffy glanced back at Harmony, clearly displeased. "That's what-"
A blood-red tentacle shot out of the ripples, hitting Mr Ward in the centre of his forehead.
Mr Ward crumpled inwards, his skin tearing as it folded up.
Cordelia stared, trying to work out what had just happened. She'd seen people die before but there was normally more blood.
There was normally more body too, not just skin and hair. The demon must have done something with the rest of Mr Ward, something nasty, but it had happened so fast, faster than even Buffy could react.
There was something familiar about Mr Ward's death though. She'd never seen anyone die that way before, but she had heard about something similar.
Cordelia closed her eyes, trying to remember the details.
Of course, the swim team. The coach had turned them all into monsters, but when they'd changed they'd left their human skins behind.
That definitely wasn't what had just happened, so she couldn't use that experience directly, but she'd done some reading about demons who killed that way during the incident, reading that might prove useful now.
"Finally." the demon said. "Now that I have wrested the keys to your uncouth tongue from your elder's feeble mind even your pathetic little brains, incapable of true thought though they be, will be able to comprehend the folly of your actions, the fulness of my éclat, and the utter futility of resistance."
Great, Cordelia thought, a gloater. The more time it spent boasting the more time she would have to work out how Buffy could kill it.
"Who are you?" Willow asked. "What do you want?"
Xander twitched.
The demon's eyes twirled clockwise. "I will not have the name bestowed upon me by the great lord sullied by the unworthy tongues of malformed monkeys. You will address me as knight errant of the great lord, herald of the doom of man, and master of flesh and blood."
"Or," Buffy said, "we could just kill you."
The demon chuckled "You puling brats? Kill me? Your friends are mere humans, talking cattle, and you, little spear, are young in your power. Without a guardian, to offer what passes for wisdom among your crude kind, you are helpless against my puissance. A knight errant of the great lord, herald of the doom of man, and master of flesh and blood is not so easily defeated."
"Spear?" Willow said quietly.
The demon's left front side bulged, rapidly forming a new tentacle, which it pointed at Buffy.
"That slattern. I am no mere nightwalker or mindeater, easily lured to my death by the semblance of human weakness that hides your peculated strength. I am a knight errant of the great lord, herald of the doom of man, and master of flesh and blood, and I detected the peculiar reek of her soul the moment I escaped the afterworld."
The demon paused, its blood bubbling in what it probably thought was a dramatic manner.
"She is the one you whimpering mortals call the Spear of the Guardians, Herald of Dawn, Sole Hope of Man, Bane of Nightmares and The Midnight Sun; and all your denials are but empty air."
"These days," Xander said dryly, "we just call her the slayer."
Looking half-embarassed half-amused Buffy muttered, "I prefer Buffy.
Ignoring them, Harmony looked straight at the demon, trembling only slightly. "Is there something you want, or are you just trying to bore us to death?"
"I, a knight errant of the great lord, herald of the doom of man, and master of flesh and blood, know my duty to the great lord and the gods we serve. Other demons may waste their strength in a struggle for dominance over the fetid sewers of this cesspit but I have a greater purpose. I am a knight errant of the great lord. I have kept my oaths for a hundred centuries, and I keep them still. "
"That's nice." Cordelia said tartly. "Now tell us why you're here."
It probably wouldn't say anything useful, but the longer it spent talking the better.
"Second," the demon said, "among my oaths was extirpate all evil. That is why I have come, for there is evil present here to rival the First. I, knight errant of the great lord, herald of the doom of man, and master of flesh and blood, can not permit it to live."
"You're going to kill yourself?" Xander said, looking surprised. "I'm-"
"No, insolent whelp," the demon said. "I am not evil. I have slain a myriad harbingers, and destroyed seventeen temples dedicated to the First. You are the ones who are evil. You have consorted with an Herald of the Last, and one amongst you has dared speak the midnight tongue. For those vile deeds there can only be one punishment."
"What deeds?" Harmony snapped. "I don't know about those freaks but I haven't killed anyone, and neither has Cordelia. You have. We saw you kill him, so don't pretend you're not evil. The only, um, -"
The demon laughed. "Such vanity! Human lives don't matter. You are a lesser breed, the pets of third-rate gods, bred as a mockery of my people. You live only a few short years; I can outlive the very hills. You are deaf to the song of magic; I can shape it at will. You-"
Cordelia tuned out the demon's rant; doubtless just a sequence of self-aggrandising lies.
How could Buffy kill it? She certainly couldn't risk touching it, she might end up like Mr Ward, so all she could do was throw stuff at it. The textbooks wouldn't be any use, too light, and the desks were too heavy, Buffy could pick them up but Cordelia didn't think she'd be able to get enough range with them, so throwing stuff was out.
The other option was to find some kind of weak point, a vulnerability Buffy could exploit. The demons obviously had one, or it wouldn't spend so much time boasting about its strength; she just had to find it, preferably before Giles turned up.
Passively waiting until Giles told Buffy how to save the day wouldn't look too good.
She didn't have his advantages though. He must have spent years studying demons, learning how to identify their weaknesses; she only had one year's experience, and she'd tried to avoid reading all those dull books, books written by watchers for watchers, books no watcher would be without.
Cordelia smiled, glad to have solved at least one of her problems. She just had to buy a bunch of old occult books then tell Giles that Winston had left them behind when he had to leave town. Once Giles saw she had physical evidence to back up her story he'd have to accept it as true.
"-And that is why I have the right to do as I will with all that lives."
"You are trying to bore us to death." Xander said, smiling. "It won't-"
The doorknob rattled, then began to turn.
Cordelia leaned forward, looking expectantly at the door. Giles would-
Startled, Cordelia blinked.
There wasn't a door there anymore, just a plank of wood firmly embedded in the walls.
"Buffy," Giles shouted, "Remember what I said last night. They can restore their old appearance b-"
Giles was cut off mid-sentence, probably by magic.
That was two spells the demon had cast, without all the flashing lights and mystic gibberish Cordelia had learned to associate with magic. It hadn't needed to chant, it hadn't even bothered pointing, it had just gone straight from thought to deed.
Well, almost straight. The demon had taken perhaps a second to respond when Giles tried opening the door, and another second when Giles started talking. It was a quick response by most standards, but it wouldn't be quick enough to beat Buffy.
"That won't keep Giles out," Buffy said, fiddling with her pen. "He knows about magic."
"He is only human." the demon said flatly. "True magic is beyond his feeble comprehension. He will not enter this room until you have left this world. His despair shall be most amusing."
"You want to kill us?" Harmony said, smiling strangely. "Get on with it, and kill me first."
"Do I look like a mooncalf?" the demon asked. "Other demons may be blind to the dangers inherent in your death but I am a knight errant of the great lord, herald of the doom of man, and master of flesh and blood. I do not make such errors."
"Um, what dangers?" Willow asked. "What can- Oh! Ghosts. You're worried we might haunt you, but what about Mr Ward?"
Cordelia nodded. From what Giles had said about the deathgate and what she'd read that morning, it sounded like death was going to be less final now. Anyone with half an excuse to become a ghost would be able to haunt their killer, and violent death would certainly qualify.
Unfortunately, most demons were too stupid to think about that, but they'd find out soon enough.
Cordelia smiled, imagining the master's reaction when ghosts started swarming round him. If the ghosts could drive the demons away from the hellmouth, the deathgate wouldn't be all bad.
"Your tutor had not consorted with an Herald of the Last. His shade can hold no fear for me, but your souls are unclean. I will not loose such horrors on my world."
That was the second time it had accused them of doing bad stuff, probably because they'd helped kill a few vampires.
"The last?" Willow said, looking thoughtful. "You mean Omega?"
"Omega, Unbeing, the great unraveller; I care not by what pet name what you call my enemy. Four of you have consorted with its herald." The demon hesitated, its eyes lazily tumbling in place. "And, impudent querist, there is another blot on your soul. You dared speak the midnight tongue. For that crime alone, your soul is forfeit."
"The only people she has consorted with are these freaks." Harmony said hotly. "Let her go."
The demon laughed scornfully. "I can sense her aura, and the scars her dalliance with that foulness has left upon it, as they have been left upon yours." The demon hesitated again, its eyes spinning faster now. "Nor were either of you innocent before last night. She is a malign locus, and you burn with an unnatural desire for her body; both crimes for which death is insufficient punishment."
Xander smiled. "Really? Can I-"
Willow quickly elbowed him in the ribs.
"It's a demon, Xander." Cordelia said patiently. "They lie."
"And if three were already accursed, what of the fourth?" the demon said quietly, focusing three eyes on Xander.
Willow casually nudged her pen, knocking it onto Buffy's desk.
"You bear the Herald's mark more lightly." the demon said, looking at Xander. "Did you dream of laughter?"
"Yes." Xander said slowly, apparently surprised by the question.
"Truly evil laughter?" the demon said hopefully. "Laughter more dread than a banshee's wail? The laughter of which the murmurings of the Cocytus are but the faintest echo? Tell me you heard the laughter that negates all hope, the laughter that sets the works of the very gods at naught. Tell me you heard the sniggering of the Last."
Xander looked blankly at the demon. "Could you say that again, in English?"
"Was it really bad evil laughter, like Buffy heard in her dream that time?" Cordelia clarified, before the demon could start repeating itself.
"You're worried," Willow said, looking at the demon. "Why? You've said Omega is your enemy too. Why would you want to hear its laughter? What could be worse?"
"Suprisingly smart, for a human." the demon said, its eyes still focused on Xander. "If your soul were clean you would make a superb pet. Now tell me, boy, what was the nature of the laughter you heard."
Xander hesitated, then shrugged. "It was laughing at the bad stuff."
The demon swiftly moved backwards, its eyes circling at a dizzying speeds. "Ioculator lasciviat pauperum tabernas regumque turres. Omega edax rerum. Incidis in Scylla cupiens vitare Charybdim."
Cordelia frowned. The demon seemed worried, so the laughter Xander had heard was either good news or a looming disaster. If only she'd understood what the demon had just said she might have a better idea which but she'd never learnt Latin and the few words she had recognised just added to the confusion. What did Omega have to do with lascivious paupers?
Willow finished scribbling something down, then dropped her pen on Buffy's desk, apparently by accident.
"You know what the laughter means?" Xander said, half hopefully.
"It means, little fool, that you should have been eviscerated at birth."
"Forget about Xander." Harmony said. "He's just a loser. Cordelia hasn't consorted with anything evil. Let her go, and she can tell everyone how great you are. Wouldn't that be nice?"
"Harmony," Cordelia snapped. "I don't make deals with demons. They're evil, and they always cheat."
Harmony sighed. "I'm just trying to save your life."
"Don't bother," the demon said. "Both of you must perish. Such is the price of consorting-"
"With the herald." Xander echoed. "We know. Can't you say anything else?"
"You have glimpsed the wind that withers the fruit upon the vine, the rock on which all hope founders. Its shadow lies upon your dreams and haunts your every waking moment. Soon, the memories shall devour your mind from within, reshaping you into abomination. These are not matters that can be laughed away, little fool, not even by your kind. Only one power can do that, and its touch would be no safer. Thus it is that I must act, in fulfilment of my ancient oaths as a knight errant of the great lord, to ensure that you are destroyed, body and soul."
It sounded like the demon was talking about the shadow tree, especially since it had earlier mentioned the previous night, but the demon was being a lot more pessimistic than Giles. Cordelia just hoped that was because the demon was underestimating the strength of the human spirit, not because Giles was wrong.
The demon hesitated, then laughed. "And now you will learn how. While you were safely enraptured by my wisdom, thus avoiding the distractions of combat, I have been covertly working magic with a subtlety beyond human comprehension, preparing the ground for your doom. Now, behold, the flowering of the instrument of your demise!"
A dozen tentacles bulged out of the demon, all pointing at the back wall.
Cordelia turned round.
Tiffany and Jason were both leaning against the wall, blank looks in their eyes.
As Cordelia watched they turned to face each other, walked forwards until they were almost touching, both took two steps backwards, then bent at the waist, bending over until their heads banged together in the middle.
"Mind control?" Willow muttered; obviously correct, but there had to be to it than that. Watching modern dance wasn't fatal.
Tiffany and Jason straightened up, then tried again. This time their lips met in the middle, their mouths opening into a deep kiss, but their hands stayed firmly by their sides.
"Little spear," the demon sneered. "Your classmates are about to die. Will you watch, or will you try and stop me, knowing-"
Buffy snatched the pens off her desk then, her hands moving at eye-blurring speed, threw them all at the demon.
The pens whistled through the air, each heading straight for one of the demon's eyes.
The demon zoomed left, moving so fast Cordelia couldn't even see a blur.
"I did warn you," the demon said, almost conversationally. "You are no match for me. I am the master of flesh and blood, and you are my toy. Later, we shall spend many weeks together, exploring the limits of your endurance. Until then, have a migraine."
Buffy gasped, then covered her eyes, wincing as she did so.
"Don't worry," the demon said. "The pain will stop when I've disposed of your friends."
Buffy tried to stand, but stumbled and fell, then curled up on the floor, whimpering in pain.
As Willow and Xander moved to help her, not that there was anything they could do, the demon spoke again. "This is the parlous part. Distract me now and everyone in the building will perish."
Cordelia turned back round.
Still kissing, Tiffany and Jason took one step backward, but their lips didn't move. They just stretched.
Tiffany and Jason were almost two feet apart now but a tube of flesh still linked them, a red ring round its middle, where their lips had melted together.
Their faces rippled then began to flow, the flesh peeling off their bare skulls and oozing down the ever-stretching tube connecting them.
Cordelia looked away, not wanting to be reminded of her dreams.
Harmony shuddered, then looked at Cordelia. "This is what happens when you associate with freaks and losers. Do as I say and you'll soon be normal again."
"What losers has Gwen been associating with?" Cordelia snapped.
This was certainly not a good time to start arguing, but it would blot out the sound of flesh tearing and bones breaking.
"You." Harmony said.
"Be quiet, please." Willow whispered. "The noise is hurting Buffy."
"Of course," Cordelia whispered, then looked at Harmony. "You dare care me a loser? Now I know you've cracked. I was willing to help you, but now I'm beginning to wonder: do you still deserve to be my friend?"
It would be better for Harmony if she wasn't, stopping her from being tempted to follow Cordelia into dangerous places, and it wouldn't harm Cordelia's reputation. Spending time with Aura and the others would be enough to keep her social status intact, and there should be no risk of any of them becoming too curious.
Harmony scowled. "Do I deserve to get locked in a classroom with a demon and a bunch of freaks?"
A minute of whispered arguments later the demon spoke: "It is done."
"It's ugly," Xander whispered, looking at the back wall. "Should I be impressed?"
Cordelia turned to look.
There was nothing recognisable left of Tiffany and Jason now, just an arch of pulsing flesh over gates formed from human bones. There was a demonic face at the apex, eight feet above the floor, its yellow eyes leering down, but the rest of the arch was all slimy guts coiling round pillars of throbbing muscle.
At the base of the arch, Tiffany's earrings lay next to a few scraps of cotton and torn denim; all that remained of their clothes.
Unable to look any longer at the arch, Cordelia focused her gaze on the bone gates.
They moved, just as Cordelia had expected. There wouldn't have been any point to them otherwise.
Red light seeped through the crack between the gates.
The gates swung away from Cordelia, moving into the space behind the walls, the space where the next classroom should have been.
After one glimpse of the hellish landscape beyond the gates Cordelia turned away, not wanting to add to her nightmares.
"Knn-Yrr," the demon said, "a dimension difficult to enter, impossible to leave. There you will die, and there your tainted souls will be trapped."
Cordelia quickly move to stand by Xander. With Buffy incapacitated they didn't stand much chance in a fight but his help was better than nothing.
Willow frowned thoughtfully. "Another hellmouth, so close to the first one. Is that safe?"
Did it matter? Willow should be thinking about how to stay alive, not about hypothetical threats Giles had once mentioned. Still, if her question distracted the demon for two extra seconds, it might be worth it.
"Presumptuous worm," the demon said. "I studied these matters in the library of the great lord a hundred millennia before you were born. I know full well the dangers, and how to ward against them. Demons of lesser may struggle to construct dimensional gates within the hellmouth's penumbra that can stay open for as little as an hour without catastrophic failure but I have skill enough that gates of my construction can last for as long as a day. This procedure is perfectly safe, without possibility of error."
Xander smiled at Willow. "How big do you think the explosion will be?"
"Little fool," the demon said. "No gate of my design would fail in such a plebian manner. Its failure would entail a progressive collapse of all dimensional barriers at contingent causal nexus, the secondary consequents of which would include the apportation herein of aborigines of the fallen dimensions, those of Knn-Yrr not least among them."
"That means bad things will come here." Cordelia told Xander, then looked at the demon. "Wouldn't an explosion be better?"
"An explosion could not protect my world from your tainted souls. Only your banishment to Knn-Yrr can achieve that. And to usher you into that dimension," the demon said, "your classmates will serve."
Cordelia frowned, wondering why the demon didn't simply shove them through the gate itself.
"It is a simple matter-" the demon said.
As one, all the other people in the room, the ones who had never before been involved in anything weird, stood up.
"-to strip humans of that-"
Their faces changed, their mouths bulging forwards as their foreheads sloped back.
"-which they so laughably call a mind,"
Dull yellow eyes looked out of bestial faces.
"-and to make their bodies revert"
Broadening shoulders and newly bulging muscles stretched their clothes tight.
"-to their ancestral shape,"
As their clothes tore, fur spread across their skin.
"-becoming the animals they should have remained,"
Gwen casually reached down, ripped off half her skirt, and began scratching her upper thigh.
"-mere tools, apt to my use."
The once-human creatures all started to walk towards Cordelia and the others, snarling menacingly as they advanced.
Harmony dropped to the floor and began crawling toward the wall.
Cordelia slipped her shoes off, quickly picking up one herself and passing the other to Xander who looked uncertainly at it.
Willow reached over Buffy, stuck her hand in Buffy's backpack, and pulled out a small axe. "Anyone know how to use this?"
Then the creatures were on them.
Cordelia narrowly dodged the first punch, kicked the ex-Amanda in the kneecaps, then slammed the heel of her shoe hard into the next apeboy's side; brutal, she knew, but necessary. With her life in danger she couldn't afford to fight fair.
It did help that she couldn't tell who most of them had been. She'd only recognised Amanda by her earrings. A couple of the other ex-girls also had signs of their former identities left but the rest could have been anyone. They were all apeboys now, bestial figures draped in rags, and that included the girls. Humanity's ancestors must have been really flat-chested, judging by the ex-girls' figures.
An apeboy grabbed Cordelia by the neck and yanked her off the floor.
Buffy groaned in pain, grabbed the apeboy holding Cordelia by the ankle, twisted, sending it sprawling, then groaned again.
Xander steadied Cordelia before she could fall, then punched another apeboy in the stomach.
Still groaning in pain, Buffy slowly sat upright.
Harmony flattened herself against the wall between the window and started flailing at the two apeboys attacking her.
The next apeboy grabbed Cordelia's hair and pulled.
Cordelia screamed, hit it in the face with her shoe, then managed to clip an apeboy attacking Xander on the backswing.
Buffy, her face contorted with pain, grabbed an apeboy by the foot, lifted it above her head, threw it at the demon, then collapsed again.
The apeboy landed two foot short of the demon, but didn't get up.
Another apeboy jumped on a desk and started kicking Willow.
She stumbled, then tripped it up with the axe.
Cordelia stepped sideways, dodging a punch, then scowled. She'd been forced to step toward the back of the classroom, where the gate waited, and not by accident. That was the only direction the apeboys weren't attacking from, the only direction she could retreat in. It was also the way to a living hell.
Harmony was standing only five feet from the back wall now, with a window at her back.
If this kept up, they'd all be forced through the gate within five minutes, and that was assuming she could manage to stay upright.
Harmony ducked a punch. The apeboy put its arm straight through the glass, then stared blankly at the blood.
But Cordelia was not Buffy. She did not have Buffy's unnatural strength and resilience, nor did she have even the smallest fraction of Buffy's combat skills.
An apeboy sidestepped, dodging Cordelia's kick, and jostled the apeboy attacking Willow, knocking its punch off target.
All Cordelia had to protect herself were her instincts, and those were not enough.
Still groaning, Buffy grabbed another apeboy by the ankle, pulled it down, then knocked it out.
Cordelia had managed to fend off a few blows, and to hurt some of the apeboys, but she knew she couldn't keep it up. The bruises were starting to pile up, and her muscles were growing tired.
Soon she would slip up, and the apeboys would take her down. She would be helpless in their hands, unable to resist when they threw her through the gate.
Breathing heavily, Willow clubbed an apeboy in the shoulder with the flat of the axe.
Buffy was too pain-crippled to help, Xander and Willow had even less experience of combat than Cordelia, and Harmony was hopeless.
One apeboy dodged Xander's punch, but another tripped over Buffy, falling straight into the path of Xander's fist. He knocked the stumbling apeboy backwards, where it clutched at a third apeboy, pulling them both down.
No one was going to rescue Cordelia, so she would have to do it herself, which should certainly impress the others.
Still thinking, Cordelia ducked a punch then stamped on the apeboy's foot.
Again Harmony ducked a punch, tricking the second apeboy into putting its arm through the window.
Stupid of it, but none of them had shown much intelligence. They hadn't even tried to disarm Willow. They were just relying on their brute strength to overwhelm Cordelia and the others.
The demon must have literally stripped their minds away, a big mistake. It clearly couldn't control their bodies directly, or the apeboys would be fighting a lot smarter, but it did have enough control to make them attack; perhaps enough to tell them what to do but not how to do it. That meant Cordelia was effectively fighting a pack of dangerous animals, and animals were easy to trick.
Cordelia feinted left then tripped the apeboy up as it dodged right.
Cordelia smiled, then tricked another apeboy into hitting its neighbour. It was a tactic that wouldn't have worked on a five-year old, but it would be enough to win this fight.
Now all she had to do was work out how to kill a demon.
"Of course!" Willow said as she dodged a punch. "That demon's really only a possessed corpse."
Cordelia remembered Giles saying something similar the previous night, just after they'd left the morgue. The new demons might look and act just like they had in their heyday but they weren't proper demons; they were just demonic ghosts riding shapechanged human corpses, apart from Ytwomj.
Ytwomj had stolen the body of a nascent vampire, a body already part demon, and so returned to true life. The others had taken bodies both fully human and fully dead, achieving only undeath.
Despite its obvious power this blood demon was technically still just a zombie, with the same weaknesses as any other zombie, which must be what Giles had been trying to tell them before the demon had cut him off. The new demons would need to do some weird ritual with bits of its original body to get rid of those weaknesses, and they hadn't had time yet.
A ring of salt should be enough to trap the demon, or maybe a six-pointed star, but only if they could keep the demon still long enough to draw round it. They didn't have anyone invisible to sneak up on the thing this time.
Harmony was wedged into the corner now, and Cordelia was only five feet from the gate but there were only eight apeboys still standing; two attacking Harmony and six-
Buffy grabbed an apeboy by the ankles, pulled it down to the floor, knocked it out then, looking sickly pale, rolled under a desk.
-seven apeboys still standing; five of them attacking Cordelia and Buffy's friends.
Also, normal salt might not be enough, not considering what Giles had said about the effects of a deathgate making undead stronger. They might need to use sea salt, or to bless it first, or something weirder.
Hitting it with the Osirian amulets might work too, if they were as effective against zombies as against ghosts, but again only if they got the demon to stand still, which ruled that out.
Cordelia grimaced at the taste of blood, kneed the apeboy in the groin, than ran her tongue round the inside of her teeth, groaning when two of them wobbled. Nobody would be able to tell, once her dentist had repaired them, but it was still a nuisance. Her parents might ask questions.
Three feet left and Xander tripped an apeboy then Willow, after a nervous glance at the gate, stamped hard on its back.
Good to see Willow putting self-preservation above her scruples; they weren't worth dying for. Perhaps now she'd start using the sharp side of that axe.
"Can either of you remember what you read this morning?" Willow asked. "It might be relevant."
It had been dull. Cordelia had skimmed half of it, using the time to prepare for her talk with Giles, but the gist had been clear.
Nothing could move to a better address with an invitation. It didn't matter whether they were trying to move dimensions, timelines, or just bodies; they needed permission from someone who belonged there. It was all because of some old spell, cast soon after Omega first came ravening from the outer darkness, so the prohibition wasn't absolute. Still, breaking the rule was difficult enough that most demons preferred to trick people into giving them an invitation.
The new demons hadn't. The shadow tree had forced open a deathgate for them, letting them into Cordelia's world without an invitation, or the protections it gave.
Two feet left and Cordelia tripped an apeboy then, as it stumbled past, elbowed it in the back, knocking it into the wall.
The new demons were like gatecrashers at a party. The hosts might not notice them, as long as they didn't do much, but once they were noticed security would eject them.
Similarly, if Cordelia remembered the book correctly, there would now be forces rising against the new demons, forces that would strive to eject them from Cordelia's universe. The new demons had a tough fight ahead, unless they managed to fake or steal an invitation.
The book had been rather vague about what those forces would be like though, just saying they'd make good use of locally available resources. They weren't likely to turn up in time to help Cordelia anyway.
One foot left and Cordelia stumbled backwards when an apeboy punched her in the eye then, when it charged at her, stepped aside. The apeboy tried to turn, skidded, and fell, its head hitting a table with an audible thud.
"Exorcism?" Willow muttered, which would have been a good idea if there had been anyone in the room who knew how to do magic.
Harmony ducked between the two groggy looking apeboys, and limped over to join Cordelia.
Clenching her teeth, Buffy wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, pulled down another apeboy, then curled up, groaning in pain.
Half a foot from the gate, but it was four against three now, not counting Buffy.
Why hadn't the demon done anything? Maybe it couldn't touch them without killing them, and getting itself haunted by their ghosts, but if it had just given them all migraines they wouldn't have been able to fight.
Cordelia kicked the apeboy attacking Xander in the small of the back, then Harmony grabbed its left arm and swung the apeboy round, sending it crashing into the back wall.
Xander stumbled, then punched the apeboy attacking Willow in the neck. When the apeboy turned to look Willow kneed it in the groin, then punched it in the stomach.
All four of them hit the last apeboy at once.
Cordelia looked over her shoulder at the gate, just two inches behind her, saw the shapes reaching for her, and quickly jumped forward. Those things clearly couldn't get through, but Cordelia wasn't going to stand any closer than necessary.
Willow dropped the, still unbloodied, axe, looked at Cordelia and stiffened. "Your mouth, it's bleeding."
Cordelia shrugged, feigning nonchalance. "I'll live."
"How?" the demon said. "You are only vermin."
"If you wanted stupid minions," Xander said smiling, "you should have made them stronger."
Cordelia nodded. If the apeboys had been vampire-strong they would have lost, but they had only been body-builder-strong, not strong enough to make up for their stupidity. They'd spent half their time getting in each others way. They'd been slow too, slow enough that she could dodge them.
Even so, it had been a close fight, leaving them all battered. Xander's knuckles were bleeding, as was his nose; Willow had a cut over her left eye, probably from a ring, and was rubbing at her right shoulder; Harmony had a limp, bloody knuckles, and a cut on her cheek; Cordelia wasn't sure she wanted to know what she looked like.
"That's why it hasn't touched us." Willow said excitedly, then looked at the demon. "You're scared to."
"I am a knight errant of the great lord, herald of the doom of man, and master of flesh and blood." the demon boasted. "I do not fear puny humans."
Willow smiled. "But we've stood in the shadow of a herald - not on purpose, we couldn't have done it on purpose because we had no idea they existed, and if we had known we wouldn't have gone anywhere near it - and that worries you. If you'd used your magic on us or fought us yourself we would have lost. There has to be a reason why you didn't, and I don't think it's because you've got a secret plan. Of course, if I'm wrong, you'll stand still and let me touch you."
Cordelia silently cursed. She should have thought of that. Giles had said much the same often enough, and so had her father. If your enemy's behaviour didn't make any sense they were probably hiding a weakness you didn't know about, either that or they were mad.
Willow rubbed her neck, then put her hand over her mouth, a convincing display of nerves, if you didn't know Willow. Cordelia knew better. Willow had to be planning something.
Cordelia glimpsed a piece of string falling down Willow's back, then Willow stuck out her clenched fist and slowly stepped towards the demon.
The demon started laughing but its eyes were spinning.
Her arm trembling slightly, Willow stepped to within an hairsbreadth of the demon.
The demon zoomed sideways.
Okay, so the demon couldn't directly attack them. That was nice to know, but it didn't get them out of the classroom.
Cordelia glanced down at Buffy, who appeared to have passed out. She'd done her best, fighting through the migraine, but that wasn't enough.
"This will be easy," Willow said. "I think. It could fit through the gaps but I don't think it can jump high enough. We need to move the desks first."
"What are you babbling about now?" Harmony snapped.
"It is of no consequence." the demon said, pointing a tentacle at the door. "There must be thousands of people living in this cesspit, waiting for me to free them from the burden of mind. Faced with such numbers your doom shall be assured."
After a moment's shock Cordelia raced to the door, knowing she wasn't fast enough. Even if she did manage to block the door they couldn't stop the demon escaping through the windows or going back into the sewers, but that didn't matter. She wasn't going to sit and watch while the demon turned everyone in her town into mindless apeboys. Doing nothing just wouldn't be right.
The door wavered then vanished, not even dust left behind.
On the other side stood Giles, a lit candle in his left hand, a charred stake in his right, and a bag at his feet.
Halfway to the door Cordelia stumbled into Willow, almost knocking them both down. Xander quickly dodged round them, sliding to a halt in front of Giles.
"A volunteer," the demon said. "You may watch his transformation, the first of many, or you can submit to my authority and go meekly to your just fate. It is your choice."
Why was it wasting time talking? It must know they'd suspect a bluff unless it actually changed Giles, so there had to be a reason for the delay, perhaps the same reason as why it hadn't just changed Giles when he tried opening the door earlier.
Giles looked frantically round the classroom then froze, his eyes locked on Buffy. For a long moment he stared at her, his face pale, then he slowly turned away and breathed deeply.
As Cordelia reached the doorway Harmony pulled a shard of glass from the broken window, looked at her wrists, and shuddered.
Giles threw the stake at the demon, only to see the demon disintegrate it in mid-air, then stuck in hand in his jacket.
"Run!" Willow said. "Before it can warp you."
Giles pulled out his Osirian amulet. "I am under the aegis of Osiris Khenti-amentiu. No child of the grave may touch me."
"Osiris is sleeping." the demon said.
Giles nodded. "But his power still flows through the ancient channels."
Willow looked intently at Xander, then sidled round to the far side of the demon.
"Power unguided by intelligence," the demon said. "Circumventing the protections that feeble device offers will poses no real challenge for a knight errant of the great lord, herald of the doom of man, and master of flesh and blood. My inevitable victory will be delayed by less than five minutes."
Not for the first time either. Cordelia had already delayed its plans by a few minutes, fighting off those apeboys, with a little help from the others. No doubt she could do so again, through one stratagem or another, until the minutes stretched into hours. Maybe Giles would think of something, maybe the demon would slip up but either way they needed all the time they could steal.
Holding his hands out of the demon's sight, Xander gestured at Cordelia, pointing first at her then to her left. He couldn't have thought of anything himself, so he must be relaying some idea from Giles or Willow.
Harmony strolled across the classroom, stopping three feet from the demon. "Put the door back now. I don't want to be seen in here with these freaks."
The demon focused four eyes on Harmony. "Your petty wants are of no consequence. I am a ..."
Taking advantage of the demon's distraction, Cordelia quickly circled a third of the way round it, ending up opposite the door.
Xander shuffled a little closer to Cordelia.
Harmony smiled at the demon. "Pathetic much? These losers have outwitted you. Crawl back in to the sewers, where you belong, and leave Cordelia alone."
"A transparent ploy." the demon said. "I will not be goaded into killing you. I know what terrors would follow."
"Terrors?" Giles echoed, sounding curious.
"It's scared of ghosts." Willow explained, prompting another defensive speech from the demon.
"Of course," Giles shouted five seconds later. "I should have thought of that earlier. Many ghosts are natural telempaths and some can project emotionally charged memories."
That fitted with what Giles had said the previous morning, but it couldn't be the whole story since the demon wasn't scared of everyone's ghosts, only of the ghosts of those who had seen the shadow tree.
"The dreams." Willow said, just seconds ahead of Cordelia. "You're scared our ghosts will project those memories. Seeing our ghosts could be almost as bad as having those dreams."
"Insolent brat," the demon said. "Do not pretend innocence. You knew full well the consequences when you chose your path.
While the demon was still speaking, Willow looked at Cordelia and silently mouthed "Amulet, on ten."
After a moment Cordelia realised what Willow must be planning. It should work, since the demon had let them surround it, but it would be risky.
"What consequences?" Xander asked, eight fingers held up behind his back.
"You would be like a banshee." Giles said.
"Far worse." the demon said. "Their unhoused souls would become windows into the outer darkness, wellsprings of despair, and in their shadow would prosper all that is vile."
That might be true, but Cordelia would have to think about that risk later. The demon wouldn't waste its time telling them what it thought they already knew unless it was trying to distract them, as it had earlier. It had to be planning another spell.
"I wouldn't do that." Willow said indignantly while surreptitiously showing Cordelia the amulet concealed in her clenched fist.
"Of course you would. Remember the master plan?" Cordelia said hastily, before Willow could convince the demon it was safe to kill them.
As she spoke Cordelia casually rubbed the back of her neck, undoing the clasp on her amulet.
"Oh, that master plan." Willow said unconvincingly. "Our brilliant plan to, um, use evil against evil."
Harmony scowled, then shuffled diagonally backwards until she was leaning against the chemical supply cupboard.
Xander signalled four.
"The Herald did not serve your plans; you served it. You followed a trail of obscure references in esoteric tomes, but that trail was laid down by other pawns of the Herald and the promise at its end was false. I studied the lore of the outer darkness in the library of the great lord, before my people were driven from this world by the plague that is man. Most of my fellow demons were not born until much later, after men had torched the great libraries, when only fragments of my people's lore survived. They know too little of the Heralds to recognise what horrors your deaths would now entail."
So all the demons wouldn't be too scared of ghosts to kill them, only the well-read ones. Disappointing, but there was still a chance the blood demon was wrong. It had repeatedly underestimated Cordelia; perhaps it was also underestimating its fellow demons.
Xander signalled two.
Cordelia looked carefully at Xander, trying to decide whether he was going to wave his amulet on one or zero. They had to strike together if Willow's plan was going to work.
Xander signalled one.
Cordelia started moving, then froze when Xander and Willow stayed still.
The demon laughed. "Did you really think I wouldn't notice your pathetic attempts at subterfuge?"
Then the blood demon had underestimated them again.
"They're waking up." Harmony said from behind Cordelia.
Cordelia looked to her right, and winced. One of the apeboys had just stood up.
Holding her amulet between two fingers, Willow closed her eyes, then stuck her arm straight out.
Cordelia dangled her amulet from its chain then swung it at the demon.
When they touched the demon the amulets began to glow.
Its eyes spinning fast, the demon giggled. "That tickles."
Not what Cordelia had wanted to hear, but she didn't believe it. Giggling was a human reflex, and the demon wasn't remotely human. It wouldn't laugh in a human way; it would more likely just twiddle its eyes.
No, the demon had to be faking. Otherwise it would have brushed Giles aside by now. Perhaps, if they pushed the amulets further in ...
Gripping her amulet more firmly, Cordelia took one step forward, then gagged.
This close she could smell the blood, its coppery reek filling her mouth.
Somewhere behind her Cordelia heard glass shattering, probably Harmony throwing a bottle.
Cordelia clamped her right hand over her nose and mouth, hesitated, then thrust her left hand deep into the demon.
The amulet glowed more brighter, but nothing else seemed to happen.
The demon laughed again. "Your protégés are ill-informed, little shieldling. Those devices are much better suited for self-defence. I could withstand this feeble attack for hours, and by then I w-"
The demon stopped mid word, its eyes a blur of motion. "Megali archontas. Anefiktos. Knn-Yrr kurnugia"
Cordelia blinked, wondering whether that was good news or bad.
The demon babbled a few more foreign words, then Cordelia felt a tug on the amulet.
"Uh-" Xander said.
Redness, golden light, and a thunderous roar.
Pulled off her feet, Cordelia slid along the floor until she hit a desk.
"-oh." Xander finished, swaying slightly.
"Aaah!" Cordelia gasped in sudden pain, then looked at her palm, wincing at the sight of the gash. Half a inch deep and bleeding, that was no ordinary rope burn.
Using her other hand Cordelia pulled herself upright and tried to work out what had just happened.
Giles quickly pulled his tie off and gave it to Cordelia, then gave Willow a clean-looking handkerchief.
Cordelia started bandaging up her hand while she looked round the classroom.
The demon was smouldering, two plumes of grey smoke rising from its near side.
The amulet had been wrenched from her hand with force enough to sever fingers, but it looked like the demon had been hurt too.
"Broken." Giles said, gently stroking Willow's fingers. "You'll need a splint."
Cordelia spotted two scorched looking amulets on the floor, halfway to the demon.
Xander and Giles didn't look injured, and there were only two plumes of smoke.
Giles began examining Cordelia's hand.
Something big had rushed past her on the left, moving so fast she'd been dragged along by its wake.
That must have been the demon, charging the gap between her and Willow.
Two of the amulets had gone off, injuring the demon, but the other two hadn't done anything, probably because the demon had been moving away from their holders.
The demon hadn't left the classroom, though it easily could have; it was standing in front of the gate muttering foreign words.
Something must have happened to the gate, something more important than all the demon's other plans.
"This needs stitches." Giles said, then turned to look at the demon.
"Stitches?" Harmony echoed, looking coldly furious.
One of the plumes of smoke winked out.
"Demon," Harmony said sharply, radiating hauteur. "You will explain yourself, now."
"I know your puny sensorium is incapable of detecting a maledicted causal nexus," the demon said. "But surely even your feeble eyes can sense the malignities now approaching local immanence."
"You mean something bad's coming?" Cordelia said. "One of your friends?"
Probably not, since the demon refused to admit it was evil, but needling the demon might get it to tell them something useful.
"One of your friends," the demon said as the last of the smoke vanished. "They too consorted with the heralds. This is what became of them. Is it truly the destiny you desire?"
It had to be talking about the things beyond the gate, all the other horrors visible in the room was the demon's own work, but the demon had been adamant that those things couldn't come though its gate.
Cradling her injured hand, Cordelia edged left until she could see round the demon, see if she needed to run.
At first, she saw nothing.
There was nothing sticking out of the gate, no tentacles squirming into the classroom, no cracks in the floor.
Cordelia shivered. There was nothing visible, but somehow it looked wrong, deeply, fundamentally wrong.
Remembering the previous night, Cordelia looked at the floor tiles.
They didn't look very square.
"Look sideways, Cordelia." Giles said. "That ... monstrosity is leaking."
Cordelia looked at the wall beside the gate, and glimpsed something flickering to her right.
"What is it?" Willow asked, and Giles began to explain.
Looked at directly, the flicker vanished, but when she looked away again it was still there, a roiling mass of shadow and fire oozing out of the gate.
"You said this was impossible." Cordelia said, glaring at the demon.
"I underestimated the last," the demon said. "And in avoiding Scylla found Charybdis. Now the world must pay for my lapse."
"You may be just a talking monkey, a mockery of my people," the demon said. "But you are still a shieldling, bound by the ancient vows. Perhaps you may be of some small use against the common enemy."
Cordelia turned round, trying to see who the demon was talking to now.
"My vows are to fight your kind," Giles said. "Not to take sides in your squabbles."
The demon pointed at the blackboard. "Have you sufficient lore to recognise this sigil?"
As it spoke, blood jetted out of the demon, arcing ten feet across the classroom, and painting a geometrical pattern on the blackboard.
Giles hesitated. "I've seen it in the council archives. It was, um, said to be the badge used by a defunct group of rogue watchers."
"A partial truth," the demon said. "It is the sigil of the knights of the great lord."
His eyes widening, Giles looked first at the pattern then at the demon.
"But it incorporates the four signs. You can't use those."
"Cease your denial," the demon said. "Had I no right to this sign I would have been struck down."
Giles nodded. "B-but you'd have had to have sworn the vows."
"A commonality which shall provide the basis for a modicum of mutual trust."
Ridiculous. Giles couldn't have anything in common with a demon; it had to be lying.
Giles stared at the demon. "H-how? Those are watcher vows. You're a demon. You can't be a watcher."
"Presumptuous child," the demon sneered. "Those vows are older than the planet on which we stand. They have been spoken by octopodous savants swimming in methane seas, and by the mirror light birds, who flock in the heart of stars. Your claim is an insult to every one of those legions of heroes."
That might be true, but it wasn't relevant. The demon was just trying to overawe Giles, but Giles knew those tactics too well, as Cordelia's talk with him had proved.
Whatever the demon wanted from Giles, it would be better off asking for it straight out. Its posturing was just wasting time.
"B-but the watchers aren't that old," Giles protested. "And we're all human."
"Names change, and the memory of man was ever short."
"You've killed people," Giles said firmly, looking at Mr Ward's remains. "Innocent people."
"Humans are not true people," the demon said. "Their lives are as worthless as the sands of Araby. They are weak where I am strong -"
"Overcompensating much?" Harmony interrupted, sounding bored, then glanced nervously at the gate. "Are you going to spend all day boasting?"
Cordelia looked back at the gate, then edged further away. She could see shapes in the roiling shadow now, unpleasant shapes, and the floor beneath it looked different, more like raw meat than tiles.
"Silence, worm," the demon snapped. "This is no time for infantile prattle."
"Then take all your claims to superiority as read," Giles said. "Tell me what you want and we can discuss terms."
"Giles!" Xander said, his voice tinged with surprise and disappointment. "You can't want to talk to that thing."
"The enemy of our enemy-" Giles began.
"Is our ally of convenience, no more." Cordelia quickly finished. She didn't want to trust the demon either, but she did trust Giles. If he thought he could get the demons help he was almost certainly right.
"It is really quite simple," the demon said. "If I do not seal this gate to Knn-Yrr within the hour all the gates will fail, and the legions of nightmare march forth, but if I do seal this gate these four will escape, and their tainted souls drown the world in horror before the first snows fall. I can not, in good conscience, let either fate come to pass."
Snow? In Sunnydale? The demon definitely had no idea where it was.
"So," Giles said, "you want me to take care of them for you?"
"You are vermin, but the shield stands behind you, and their age-old wisdom has never been found wanting. Give me a surety and I will trust you thus far."
"Release Buffy," Giles said, "and you can have my word."
"Here, Cordelia." Harmony said sharply, pointing down at the floor. "Now!"
The demon said something else but Cordelia no longer cared what. Harmony clearly needed reminded just where she stood; everything else could wait.
Cordelia leaned ostentatiously against the wall and yawned.
"Cordelia." Harmony repeated. "I will not let you kill me. Come here, now."
Cordelia smiled at Xander. "Pitiful, isn't she?"
Xander looked uncertainly at Cordelia, then smiled. "Reminds me of someone I used to know."
"Warped priorities?" Cordelia suggested, idly wondering who Xander was thinking of.
"If she saw a demon, she'd complain its clothes didn't match." Xander said, smiling more broadly.
"Cordelia!" Harmony shouted. "Stop talking to those freaks and come with me."
"She certainly wouldn't be grateful when you saved her life." Cordelia said.
"No," Willow said. "She'd just bicker with her friends while Armageddon crept closer."
After that morning's verbal duel, spotting Willow's double meaning was easy.
"You can't let things like this affect you," Cordelia said, gesturing dismissively at the demon, then winced as her much-bruised shoulders flared with fresh pain. "They happen every week."
Admittedly, nothing this bad had happened before, but the principle still held. Besides, it wasn't as if there was anything she could actually do. Giles and the demon were still talking-
"-teeth out, and carve runes into her skin." the demon suggested.
"No," Giles said firmly. "I do not torture, ever. Nor do I wish to see anyone cower before me."
"But the greatest pleasure lies in the infliction of pain."
-and it sounded like Giles knew how to say no.
"Do you want to die?" Harmony said. "This is our chance to escape."
It was a tempting idea, on the surface, but Cordelia knew better. Running away wouldn't keep her safe; it would only make her look bad. Nor was that the only reason to stay.
"I will not abandon Buffy." Cordelia said, carefully watching Xander's reaction.
"Why not?" Harmony demanded. "She's just a loser freak. I'm your friend."
"She's human." Cordelia said simply. She actually needed more reason than that, trying to save everyone just because they happened to be human would be too hard, but her reply was both literally true and difficult for Harmony to object to without sounding bad. It should also impress Xander and Willow with her saintly nature, a big return on three little words, but she had always been good at verbal manipulation.
Harmony smiled. "So was Owen. You abandoned him."
"Harmony." Xander snapped, his fists tightly clenched. "You-"
Willow gently nudged him, then asked "How's your back?"
Harmony glared at Willow. "Better looking than yours."
Willow looked down at her hands. "So you didn't get any scars? Some people would get hurt if they were blasted by flying glass."
And Harmony had. Cordelia remembered seeing her back covered in blood, but she'd forgotten about Harmony's injuries in all the excitement.
"There must have been thousands of pieces," Willow continued. "It should have taken hours to pull them all out, and weeks for your back to heal. Instead, here you are, looking as though nothing had happened. It's almost as if you had magic healing powers, but you don't know anything about magic, do you?"
"Some of us can afford good doctors." Harmony said, her voice trembling most unconvincingly, then pointed at the gate. "Are those maggots?"
"We don't have much time left." Giles said.
Cordelia turned round. If there was another crisis, she needed to know about it.
The shadow was larger now, and its centre more solid, no longer flickering on the edge of vision. Beneath the shadow maggots crawled over a floor of rotting meat while a green mist fell from the ceiling.
Cordelia hurriedly backed away.
The shadow wrapped itself round one of the apeboys, enclosing it in a dark cocoon.
"Perhaps your blood will suffice." the demon said.
Inside the cocoon, the apeboy writhed, its half-glimpsed flesh changing under the shadow's touch.
"Done." Giles said, holding out his hand.
The demon extruded another blood tentacle, and tapped Giles lightly on the palm, making him wince.
"Awaken, little spear!" the demon cried, and Buffy sprang to her feet, her face free from pain.
The shadow-spawned monstrosity burst from its cocoon, an inhuman skeleton wrapped in emerald flames. Coils of rotting flesh snaked over its twisted bones, heedless of the barbed spikes, and its eyes were orbs of ebon shadow.
Cordelia shuddered. The creature wasn't that ugly, not compared with the shapes that had stalked her nightmares, but its every malformed curve and glistening spike radiated wrongness. Such creatures should not walk the waking world.
Worse, it was still wearing Sarah's ring.
Buffy grimaced. "Which one should I kill first?"
Giles pointed at the skeleton. "We have a truce with the other one."
"My blessing is upon you." the demon said. "Guard well your fellow vermin; I go to battle."
The skeleton lunged at Cordelia.
The demon glided towards the gate.
Buffy jumped in front of Cordelia.
Cordelia stepped further back, leaving plenty of room for the fight.
The skeleton grabbed Buffy's left shoulder, then stroked her face, the barbed spikes sprouting from its warped bones ripping her right cheek into bloody shreds.
Cordelia covered her nose, trying to blot out the stench of burning meat.
The skeleton raised its left hand to deliver a second blow.
Buffy's cheek knit itself back together; long rips becoming mere gashes that faded into pale scars then vanished completely.
Half a second later, Buffy kicked the skeleton back, then tentatively patted her right cheek.
"That didn't hurt." Buffy said in a shocked whisper. "What the hell just happened?"
Then the skeleton grappled Buffy, and the two began to fight in earnest, Buffy ignoring the wounds she recieved, wounds which now healed as quickly as the demon could open them.
"The demon." Willow said. "It must be its blessing."
Cordelia silently nodded, wondering how long the gift would last, and what the price might be.
The demon stepped into the gate, into the space between reality and Knn-Yrr.
"Hear me, O lords of the pit," the demon cried. "Hear me and tremble, slaves of the heralds, for a knight of the great lord has come against you."
The shadows recoiled from it, then surged back.
"I fear not your fury for I am armoured in righteousness; against me you shall contend in vain."
More like self-righteousness, but Cordelia wasn't going to correct the demon, not while it was fighting the other demons. It might decide she was right.
Giles picked up a piece of chalk, then walked over to the doorway.
One of the maggot-ridden coils slithered off the skeleton, wrapped itself round Buffy's neck, and squeezed.
The demon switched languages, first to Latin, then to Greek.
With a nauseated grimace Buffy staggered back, dug her fingers deep into the rotting flesh, and ripped the coil in half, flinging the pieces into the far corner, then brushed the maggots off her shoulders.
Giles drew a five pointed star over the lintel, one point upwards, then added letters in an unfamiliar script.
The shadows wrapped themselves round a second apeboy.
"How do I kill it?" Buffy asked, then the skeleton was on her again, its claws raking her stomach.
The demon began to glow, a faint red beacon amid the growing shadows.
"You don't need to." Giles said. "It will perish with the gate."
The demon faltered in its chanting as veins of shadow marbled its surface.
"Try decapitation." Cordelia suggested. It wouldn't work, or Giles would have suggested it himself, but it couldn't hurt, and it made her look helpful.
"Won't work." Giles said quietly. "That creature is animated by the unnatural forces coming from Knn-Yrr."
The skeleton tripped Buffy with a low kick, then put its other foot on her neck, the barbs shredding her throat.
A second skeleton rose from its dark cocoon.
"Segenarith." the demon said, and the gate quivered.
"Get down," Giles said. "And cover your eyes."
"Segenarith." the demon repeated, its voice louder, and the floor shook.
Cordelia crouched down, putting both hands over her eyes.
"Segenarith!" the demon shouted, and the room blazed with crimson light.
Even through closed eyes Cordelia could see that light, seeping through her fingers.
As the light faded an apeboy wailed.
Cordelia opened her eyes.
Two of the apeboys were awake now; both sitting on the floor, rubbing their eyes and crying, apparently blinded by the blast.
They needed help, but there was nothing Cordelia could do.
She looked away, toward the back of the classroom.
The gate had gone, but not without trace.
A great many-pointed star stretched from floor to ceiling, gradually shading from coral pink at its outermost points through cherry red into a dark maroon. It looked almost like a giant flower, surprisingly attractive for the work of demons, but in its heart unnatural shadows still writhed.
"What happened?" Willow asked. "Is it over?"
"For now." Giles said. "The blood demon sealed the gate to Knn-Yrr with its own body. The gate can not open again while the wall stands."
"But why?" Willow asked. "Why would demons fight?"
Buffy kicked idly at the crumbled remains of the skeleton. "Because they're demons?"
"There is worse than demons." Giles said. "You saw one such last night. The creatures of Knn-Yrr are not so terrible as that was but they too are the enemies of man and demon alike."
Harmony scowled. "Cordelia, why are you wasting time with these freaks? You need to go to hospital, before you get a scar."
"Still here?" Xander said, feigning surprise. "Anyone would think you wanted to hang out with us freaks."
"They'd have to be mad to think that, which would explain your clothes." Harmony said, glaring at Xander, then turned and stalked out of the classroom.
Willow rubbed her injured hand. "How long will Buffy heal like that? Forever?"
Giles hesitated. "Until the moon draws her blood, according to the demon."
Willow blushed, then looked at Xander. "Don't ask."
Cordelia nodded. That was something Xander didn't need to know about. "The rest of us aren't so lucky."
She looked at Giles. "Can you drive us to the hospital?"
Giles nodded. "We can talk on the way. I need to know what else that demon said."
Couldn't it wait? Cordelia looked at the others, gauging their mood, then said what they all appeared to be thinking.
"It's been a long day, and we still haven't recovered from last night. We need a break, before we collapse."
Willow glanced at Xander, then nodded.
"We do need to talk about meditation techniques before you sleep." Giles said.
"Ok," Cordelia conceded. "But nothing else."
Giles nodded. "We'll need to clean up this room too, decide what to do about your ex-classmates, but not right now."
As the five of them strolled out of the classroom together, casually discussing future plans, Cordelia glanced backwards wondering, once again, just why her luck was so much worse this time round.