SquidgeWorld Archive

Prolog

On a hot Sunnydale night in the middle of August, the vampire slayer and her slayerettes set out onto the graveyard.

"Are you sure that there being this many of us won't scare them off?" Buffy Summers whispered aloud. She tugged down the edge of her short red t-shirt, letting the hem fall closer to the waist of the denim cut-offs she wore.

"Yeah," Willow took it upon herself to answer her best friend. These days, Willow was seeming more the Watcher than Mister Tojo did himself; partly because Akira Tojo usually expected her to answer the questions of Buffy and the others as a Watcher training exercise. "We'll set up watch in that tree," she said, pointed ahead to a large okay. "There's a ladder up the trunk and a simple platform set amongst the branches. Nobody would be able to spot us in there; least of all ghouls."

"Now, just what's the deal with ghouls?" Oz chimed in, idly swinging a cudgel as he followed along behind Willow. Willow and Buffy looked over at Mister Tojo, but of course he waved at Willow to field the question.

"Well, that's not an easy question," Willow began. "'Ghoul' isn't a definitive identifier, it's more a label that has been applied to several different undead creatures, lesser demons, various monsters, even human beings affected by certain arcane curses. The only thing that they have in common, really, is eating dead bodies."

"Eww!" Cordelia announced characteristically from the rear of the procession. "Why is it that everything sucks blood or eats dead bodies with you people?"

"No-one asked you to come tonight, Cordelia," Xander reminded her. "You rag on us over and over about how creepy this slaying stuff is. Why are you here, then?"

Cordelia considered in silence for several moments. "Well, with the air conditioning at the Bronze busted, I thought this might be the least swelteringly hot thing I could do tonight..."

* * * *

"Hey!" Xander nudged Buffy's arm. "We've got some suspicious activity over here!"

Buffy swivelled around in the middle of a hair maneuver to look down from the raised platform in the direction Xander indicated. A few shadowed forms were hunching over a grave, possibly digging at it.

"Looks like a ghoul sighting to me!" Buffy agreed. After she finished gathering her long, curly, frosted-chocolate hair into a silk tie that fell down her back, she grasped a short heavy double-headed axe firmly and dropped down from the tree to the ground. She hit the ground with both feet, somersaulted once, landed upright, and stalked off after the suspicious figured.

"Move out!" Xander muttered, climbing back towards the tree ladder. He made his way carefully down it, making sure not to wound himself with the nasty long knife he had chosen for a weapon. He set off after Buffy, only vaguely cognizant of the others following *him*, or of Cordelia's ever-present complaints.

By the time Buffy closed for combat, Xander was close enough to get a good look at the monsters. They were *very* large, about seven feet tall and solidly built... perhaps weighing in at three hundred pounds. But Buffy wasn't stupid enough to let them use their greater mass against her, or the advantage of numbers. She stayed outside the group of them, using her axe expertly to discourage them from charging.

Until Xander got too close. With a snarly roar, one of the beasts lept at him. Xander got his knife into position to stab it as it came, but he wasn't prepared for the impact; it knocked him to the ground, the huge body of his attacker landing on him. A claw dug into his arm... not deeply, but enough to make it clear that his attacker wasn't badly wounded. But Xander would be, in just a few seconds...

A wash of heat brushed up against his face, followed by the dull thud of a small impact. The body of his attacker trembled slightly. A greater blast of heat assaulted his body and face, and with explosive force the monster was shoved off him. Bracing himself against the pain in his arm, Xander swivelled around to comprehend the force that had saved him.

Willow, Oz, and Mister Tojo were all staring at Cordelia, whose hands were outstretched in his direction, in what remained of a launching gesture. A pale red glow surrounded the whole of Cordelia's Junoesque body. And she was floating several inches above the ground, an unearthly wind whipping at her thin thigh-length skirt.

Act One

Before anyone could say anything, a "Whap!" rang out from behind Xander. He swung around. Buffy, apparently, had also been distracted by Cordelia's light show, but the monsters sparring with her hadn't, and one of them had given her a staggering backhand blow with its claw. Buffy shook her head, and raised her axe to defend herself.

Cordelia, still hovering and glowing, pointed to a spot on the ground just in front of the creature who had hit Buffy. An intense ball of red light flew from her outstretched hand to hit the ground exactly there, where it erupted into a volcanic burst of flame. The monsters were pushed back one way, the one who had been right on top of the detonation screeching in an eeriely thin voice. Buffy was knocked back the other way, landing in a heap on the ground. The monsters turned to examine Cordelia speculatively, and then loped away towards the woods.

"Buffy!" Willow called out, running towards her. But Buffy was already sitting up, apparently not badly injured. Xander turned his attention towards Cordelia, and almost jumped in surprise. The strange red glow, the ghostly breeze, the levitation act, and Cordelia's determined deameanor had all vanished in a matter of seconds, and Cordelia was simply standing there with her usual 'What the blazes is going on?' look.

"Uh, hey Cordelia," Xander opened. "Do, um, do you remember anything of what just happened?"

"Well, yeah," she replied, sarcastically. "Buffy went after the ghouls, we stood around and watched while she kicked butt and drove them off. As usual," she added snidely.

Xander shot a look over to Mister Tojo. "A good deal more than that took place, Miss Chase," he began. "As witnessed by the fact that both Buffy and Xander are injured." He raised his voice to carry to Buffy and Willow as well. "I believe we should adjourn to the school."

As they approached the school, Kato gave further instructions. "Oz, would you please apply first aid to Buffy and Xander in the library? I will speak with Cordelia in the sociology room. Willow: brief Buffy on the ghouls, and then bring me the blue case from Mister Giles' office."

So, as Xander was getting his scratches cleaned and bandaged, Buffy turned to Willow. "Okay, you know what those beasties were?"

"I believe so," Willow said, paging through Tojo's bestiary. "Tojo gave me an idea where to look."

"Glory be," Buffy muttered. At Willow's surprised look, she added, "It's just that it usually takes you guys anywhere from half an hour to several days to identify *any* creepable!"

"I'll ignore that," Willow commented in an aside.

"So, are they ghouls?" Buffy prompted.

"Ah, yes. More precisely, they are 'dybbucus maleficeiri', otherwise known as demon ghouls. 'An hellspawn most horrorful and strong, the dybbuk have the cunning of a man and the instincts of a most ferocious beast. To feed their hunger for rancid human remains, dybbuks will do anything, from robbing graves to killing the unwary and burying the remains near their lair to 'season.' Occasionally a dybbuk leader will show an interest in gathering gold or acquiring foully evil artefacts of magic, but mostly they are content with feeding and reproducing their kind, which is itself a most morbid and despicable process.'"

Willow took a breath and continued reading. "'For two dybbuk to replicate their kind, they must first procure a human corpse, recently deceased, with no broken bones. Once this is done, dybbuk in heat will proceed to --' yuck!" Willow interrupted herself. "Skipping over, skipping over, skipping over, ah. 'The result of this foul breeding is an amorphous black larva, which is placed in the mouth of the human body. From there it proceeds into the digestive tract, and consumes the flesh from within. Once it has finished, it forms a temporary shell around the skeleton, moving thus into a pupal stage. The parents and others of the dybbuk pack must now care for the pupae, feeding it parts of dead bodies, especially bones, which the pupa strips the minerals from and uses to extend its skeleton to dubbukian stature and reinforce it to support dubbukian mass. Once this is done, and the demon has gained sufficient body mass, it forms itself completely to the skeleton, becoming a demon ghoul of full strength."

"Great," Xander said sarcastically as Oz finished putting some bandages on Buffy and headed out to get more from the infirmary.

"Any questions?" Willow asked brightly.

"No," Buffy said. "Run along down to Tojo now." Willow grinned, turned, and walked out of the library.

Buffy and Xander turned to look at each other. "I know, I know," Xander told her with a self-deprecating grin. "I forgot my place, got too close to the beasties, and put my life in danger while you had everything well in hand. I'm sorry and I'll never do it again... until next week!" He grinned at her.

"Hey, I wasn't even gonna say anything," Buffy protested. "After over a year of you foolishly risking your life for me, so help me, I'm starting to find it cute!" She smiled teasingly back at him.

"Hey!" Xander expostulated, suddenly determined to defend himself. "Come on, I'm helpful sometimes. What about that incubus? You woulda been gore city if I hadn't saved you."

"Saved me?" Buffy repeated incredulously. "Twenty seconds in the same room with that thing, and you were this close to having a pizza for a head!"

"And you saved me," Xander allowed. "But that's the thing; since I had just saved *your* life, you saving my life reflects well, not only on you, but on me!"

Buffy stared at him for a few seconds. "Whatever." Then she smiled warmly at him. "Well, have I thanked you lately for being my ever-enthusiastic, if not so effective, knight in shining armor?" She stepped close to him.

Unnoticed by both of them, Willow walked back into the library, muttering to herself, "Forgot the blue case." She looked up at Buffy and Xander, and stopped in her tracks.

Xander stared back at her. "Um, no, not lately." Buffy grinned, put her arms around Xander, and brought her luscious mouth to his lips for a sweet and tender kiss. Again she smiled at him.

"Uh... you're not gonna dance with me, now, are you?" Xander said uneasily. Buffy laughed out loud, remembering the incident he was referring to. Willow did too, making Buffy and Xander jump guiltily apart and turn to face her.

"Oh, don't mind me," Willow said, blushing, as she quickly walked towards Giles' office. "Just forgot this," she added, taking a blue case down from a shelf and heading towards the main library doors with it.

"Oops!" Buffy whispered as the doors rang shut, and smiled mischievously at Xander.

* * * *

"Hey!" Willow said to Mister Tojo as she entered the sociology room. "What's up with her?" she asked, indicating Cordelia, who was sitting very still, eyes closed, at a desk.

"She's asleep, thanks to the 'fruit juice' I gave her. That will make what we have to do easier, in several ways."

"Huh? What do we have to do?"

"Oh, forgive me. Simply some tests to attempt to determine the reason for her remarkable performance earlier tonight." He opened the blue case, brought out some small stoppered vials and other effects, and got to work. "You were longer than I expected. Did Buffy have many questions about demon ghouls?"

"Oh, no," Willow muttered. figuring out what Mister Tojo was preparing to do and working to assist. "She didn't have any, in fact. But she sent me down after you so quickly that I forgot the case, and had to go back into the library after it..." She left the sentence hanging, flushing slightly.

"And?" Mister Tojo added promptingly. "Did something happen when you went back into the library?"

"Oh, nothing important," Willow assured him as she held a slip of prepared paper in place to catch a drop of blood from the pinprick wound Tojo had just given Cordelia. "Buffy kissed Xander, that's all."

"I see." Tojo said gravely.

"You know, I never thought about it, but they might get together. She's kinda been seeming more... interested in him lately, and Xander's always had a crush on Buffy."

"Wouldn't that cause... problems?"

"For me? Oh no," Willow assured him firmly. "There was a time when I had a thing for Xander, but I think I've let go on that. Oz and I are cool now."

"I wasn't meaning that," Mister Tojo corrected. "Are not Xander and Miss Chase involved?"

"Well, yeah, I suppose so," Willow allowed. "But why shouldn't Xander dump Cordy if Buffy can make him happier?"

"Because it might mean both his and Buffy's death," Tojo intoned softly, pointing at the pattern of colors on the four test papers they had exposed to Cordelia's blood.

Act Two

Mister Tojo met with Willow, Buffy, and Xander privately at summer school lunchhour the next day.

"What's up?" Buffy asked cheerily as she sat down.

"There... may be a situation of considerable danger," Akira Tojo replied. "It relates to matters which would not ordinarily be my or anyone else's affair, but there is an extraordinary context."

"Huh?" Xander replied after swallowing the first bite of his sandwich.

"Willow told me that the two of you kissed in the library last night. Are you planning to see each other romantically?"

"Um, well, I don't think we've gotten as far as discussing it yet," Buffy answered reluctantly.

"Do you want to?"

"Yes," Buffy and Xander replied, almost in unison... and stared at each other in pleased surprise. "That is, once I have a chance to cut Cordy loose..." Xander began qualifying.

"... a decent cooling-off period." Buffy added offhandedly.

"You think we need a cooling-off period?" Xander asked her in surprise.

"Well, just jumping into a relationship after you've ended another one, it's not exactly appropriate," Buffy argued. "It's a good idea to wait a while, to make sure you don't run into the rebound thing..."

"Not when the breakup was for the specific purpose of seeing someone else..." Xander countered more intently.

"*Enough*!" Tojo snapped. "I am sorry to have to tell you this, but it may not be advisable for you to pursue this at all... in more than the social sense."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Buffy asked angrily.

"It is not a simple matter to explain. First of all, I examined Cordelia last night. She has been imbued with a most intense magical power complex."

"Imbued? So it isn't natural, or inherent; it's something that's been done to her?" Buffy clarified.

"Precisely. Her natural psychic energy has been re-woven to allow her to use it in a most dramatic way without the usual requirements for spells and rituals."

"Could this have been done a while ago?" Buffy wondered. "There was that time back in April that Amy Madison and a couple other people kidnapped her; she didn't remember the past few days after we'd gotten her back."

"Hmm," Tojo hmmed. "That may fit. In any event, the natural interface with her magic powers has been corrupted... as it might if she were enspelled to forget the assumption ritual and what she learned from it. The important factor, though, is that the magic powers are out of control, and that when the power comes upon Cordelia, most likely when it's triggered by some deap-seated need, Miss Chase is out of control too. The magic fever will affect her like alcohol, stripping away her inhibitions and moral attitudes, leaving only the deep-seated drives operable."

"Hmm... doesn't sound good," Xander allowed. "But what does this have to do with me and Buffy?"

"Her feelings for you are based on a strong emotional drive, Xander: the fact that her powers originally manifested to save you from the dybbuk are an indication of that."

Shaking his head, Xander denied that. "I'm just a passing fling for her; she couldn't get serious about me any more than I could about her. I'm not at her social level," he drawled bitterly.

"Her social level isn't what it once was," Willow offered. "Mister Tojo suspected, and he had me call a few people this morning. Jonathan told me about it..."

* * * *

It was about a week before; a fairly busy night at the Bronze. A lot of high-school students were around since their parents had scheduled vacation time around a charity ball that was being held the same weekend. Jonathan looked over at a nearby table, where Cordelia Chase, Harmony, and Kate Benson were talking.

"You can't wriggle your way out of it this time, Cordelia," Harmony said. "We are all agreed."

"What? That you would just drop me like yesterday's blouses? You can't DO that!" Cordelia protested.

"Quiet down," Kate said.

"Cordelia, face the fact. You *are* yesterday's blouses. I mean look at yourself, Cordelia. Take a good, long, hard, look. And then look at our standards; the standards that *you* insisted on. You're not even hanging with us half the time; you're in summer school, you've been cut off by your father; you're working as a waitress!" Harmony gestured disgustedly at Cordelia's hot black uniform. "And we *know* that you've been hanging around with Harris, and worse, with his *friends*! You try to hide it, but the word gets out."

"We conference-called with Dawn, Aura, and Aprodesia," Kate put in. "The vote was unanimous. You're out."

"No! Give me another chance! They're history..."

"You tried that once before, Cordelia," Harmony said. "You've had your chance already. It's over. Accept it."

"Don't try to call us; *any* of us, anymore," Kate chimed in.

And they got up and left the table. As soon as they had disappeared into the crowd, Cordelia put her face into her hands and began to quietly sob.

* * * *

"Oh, my gosh," Buffy breathed as Willow finished telling Jonathan's story. "I had no idea."

"Miss Chase would not want to let any of you know," Tojo said softly. "It would have meant the loss of the only face, the only respect, that she had left."

"But... but we don't care what her old friends think of her, not really," Willow argued. "In fact, I would probably list getting dumped by Harmony as a *favorable* character reference!"

"But Cordelia wouldn't be able to accept that, Will," Xander said. "Her place in the clique has been her measure of who she was for the past two years. Even if she doesn't still have it, she'd rather die than know we know she's lost it."

"And, given that Cordelia's relationship with Xander is the strongest social support she has left, it explains why he is now the most important thing in her life, emotionally, and why I think it would be inadvisable for that relationship to be cut off."

"Come on, people break up all the time. You get over it."

"But not all people are possessed of Cordelia's power complex. If she were to feel abandoned by Xander and betrayed by both of you; natural enough reactions to the breakup and a relationship starting between the two of you, it would force a magical reaction of the most deadly proportions! You might not survive the kind of energies she could raise against you, Buffy. Xander would have little hope of doing so. And should you be able to defeat her, what then? Would you kill her?" Buffy swallowed and squirmed uncomfortably in her chair.

"And we don't know that she would make a frontal attack. What if, in her witch-persona, she seeks out Kaliya and arranges an alliance? You could be doomed with even greater likelihood, if Cordelia's powers were added to the forces Queen Kaliya already controls."

Buffy sighed. "Okay. Meanwhile, is there anything you can do about this? I mean, the way it sounds to me, regardless of whether Xander breaks up with her or not, Cordy's a time bomb now. Is there anything you can do to block her powers off again, or make them less kooky, or something?"

"I will try," Tojo said, bowing respectfully.

Act Three

That night, as Buffy went out on patrol, she ran into vampires sooner than usual. A lot sooner.

Rupert Giles, in his retro-Ripper getup, was waiting just outside the library doors with eight warrior vamps.

"You fought the dybbuks last night," he said without preamble.

"Um, yeah, I did," Buffy said, somewhat awkwardly. "Friends of yours? More demon assasins whistled up by Kaliya to take me out?"

"Hardly," Giles muttered. "I've been tailing them since they got into town. Really antsy about a particular mausoleum on the cemetary. They've been snuffling around it and looking at it a few times, but they've never gone in. Two of them had a little dybbuk about a week back... the beastie should be grown by now. I'm figuring they'll probably make their move tonight."

"And I should be caring... why? For that matter, why do *you* care?"

Giles chuckled. "That's my Buffy. In one ear and out the other. Or didn't Willow or Mister Tojo read you Hammerston's account of the dybbuk? Only a quest for despicably evil magic would rouse them like this."

"And you want the despicably evil magic, whatever it is, as a present for Queen Kaliya."

"If I can get it," Giles agreed ruefully. "But I don't want it falling into the hands of one of those creepeners in any event. And I know you don't either. So, I'm proposing a joint venture. You and your 'scooby gang," me and my vampire guard. We go in after the dybbuks, we see what they're after, we make sure they don't get it. Agreed?"

Buffy sighed. "Agreed."

* * * *

It wasn't long after they got to the graveyard that the dybbuks made their appearance. There were five of them this time, tromping merrily through the graveyard towards the mausoleum that Giles had indicated.

The mausoleum wasn't stylistically different from the ones Buffy was more familiar with, such as the one she had battled Luke and Darla in, the night she had first came to Sunnydale. She thought she had probably been in all of them during patrol at one time or another, but she wasn't sure about this one.

It was BIG! The main chamber of it was about thirty by forty feet, not counting any hidden extension it might make into the hillside it had been built against.

"Why do you want to follow them in, Giles?" she asked, curious. "We could probably cut them off from it, if we move fast."

"A few reasons," Giles replied. "First of all, I must admit curiosity as to their objective. Secondly, dybbuk are built for battle in an unenclosed space; we'd have the advantage once we're inside. Thirdly, I have an intuition that there'll be something else working in our favor if we have the fight inside the mausoleum."

They followed discreetly behind as the dybbuk approached the tomb, and then quickly rushed to follow them in. The room was littered with skeletons, nine of them, standing or sitting against the walls, carrying weapons; broadswords, axes, maces. The dybbuks were standing in a ragged line from the entrance to an open coffin, which one of them slowly circled, looking at it and smelling it intently.

Once the whole of her party was through the door, the closest dybbuk noticed them. "Hello there, old friends!" Buffy called out.

The dybbuk by the coffin, probably the leader, turned to look at her, and gave a gutteral laugh. Then it snatched something from out of the coffin, a golden object that disappeared into its massive claw. A ghostly hum suffused the mausoleum.

And the skeletons came alive! They stood up, (those that had been sitting,) and charged towards all the non-skeletal figures in the tomb; dybbuk, vampire, and human alike, waving their weapons threateningly. And a tenth skeleton climbed out of the coffin, menacing his robber with an axe.

"ACK!" Ever the spookable, Cordelia turned and ran out of the mausoleum, or tried to. She bounced off of an invisible wall across the open doorway and spun back around dizzily. The dybbuk reacted more agressively, stiking out forcefully at any skeletons within their reach. Quickly they freed themselves and gathered in a knot near the outside wall. Three faced inwards, back into the tomb, standing guard against the skels, while two clawed into the stone wall, carving out flaky pieces.

Buffy was quite occupied with a skeleton herself, as were others of the human-vampire camp, even though most of them were going after the dybbuks. Still she shouted to Giles and anyone else who was listening, "Whatever it is they want, they've got it, and they're gonna get out with it unless we take 'em on!"

"Then what are we waiting for?" Giles replied, as he smashed a skeleton's rib-cage into splinters with a quarterstaff. "Take that!" he muttered under his breath.

Giles led his vampire guard forward against the dybbuk. Buffy followed, hoping that her friends would be able to protect themselves. As she charged, Buffy noticed something odd; the pieces of a skel that had been shattered by one of the dybbuks suddenly flew back together, and in a flash of blue light, were whole again. Now gray, it charged forward against the dybbuks, and a slight ringing sound was heard as its bones were struck.

A glance back over Buffy's shoulder told her that the same thing had happened to the skel Giles had smashed. Xander was now fending it off with a club, and he said out loud, "The damn thing's made of metal now!"

"Don't destroy them, just fend them off!" Buffy shouted just before she came into range of the dybbuks. "Every time you defeat them, they'll come back tougher!"

And then she was in the middle of the charge, following the vampire guard into the midst of the dybbuk knot. She found herself face to face with the dybbuk leader, who still carried the item he had taken from the tomb; a golden star with six rays. Buffy wrenched at its beefy arm with a jujitsu move that sent the star flying across the mausoleum, but it countered with a punch from its other hand that knocked her to the ground.

Act Four

Buffy struggled to her feet. The dybbuk leader was being occupied by others, it seemed. She scanned the mausoleum to assess the situation. At least one vampire was unaccounted for, and as she watched, another got his head swiped off by a dybbuk and disintegrated. The humans seemed to be having the best of it so far, none of her friends seemed to be badly wounded yet, and at least one dybbuk seemed to have taken a lot of punishment.

The star! Quickly she looked over in the direction it had fallen. The dybbuk leader and one of his cronies were trying to get to it, but were being blocked by Giles, Tojo, and two vamps. Buffy lept off after it.

Seeing her, Giles and Tojo burst into speech as she dashed past... "The death star... ancient vessel of power..." "Can kill just by pointing it at someone, or from a distance." Okay then, Buffy thought. Obviously the dybbuk leader couldn't use it yet, or he'd have taken them all out when they charged. But there was no way he was getting his hands on it again. She lept to the exact spot with a somersault, and prepared to bring her axe down on the artifact!

"No! Buffy!" Buffy turned around, to see Willow, parrying a skel's two-handed sword with her own quarterstaff, across the room. "Give it to the skels!" Shrugging, Buffy picked the death star up.

Again something caught her attention. A dybbuk groaned, collapsing, evidently having taken too much damage from the three skeletons battling it. One of them reached down and touched it, and suddenly the skin and flesh started falling off and boiling away. Within seconds it rose again, a dybbuk-sized skeleton, and charged to attack one of its former fellows.

Buffy tossed the death star at a nearby skel, and it caught it with incredible dexterity in its free hand. The tone that filled the mausoleum dropped in tone and volume. Just a few seconds after that, a dybbuk, who had been seperated from its fellows and attacked Xander, Oz, and Cordelia, hit Xander with a crushing uppercut that sent him flying into the force-field across the doorway.

Rather, *through* it! Xander scrambled up off the grass, and tried to enter the tomb again, but the barrier was solid again.

"It's become one-way!" Buffy realized out loud. "Move 'em out!" she called out loud, indicating the door.

"Xander!" Cordelia called out, focusing on the wall that had blocked Xander from returning to her. The strange unearthly breeze that Buffy had noticed the night before in the graveyard was buffeting at her white silk blouse and catching at the cuffs of her jeans.

With sudden inspiration Buffy pointed to the dybbuk that had hit Cordelia and shouted "Get him, Cordy! He's the one who hit your boyfriend! Get him!"No sooner did she speak than a blast of lightning erupted from Cordelia's hands to envelop the ghoul. Its skin blackened and it collapsed.

Buffy took stock of the situation. The vamps, Tojo, and Willow were trying valiantly to force the dybbuk towards the door, but the demon ghouls were far too tough to be moved against their will, and they were determinedly pressing towards the skeleton who carried the death star. The vamp guard was taking heavy casualties, and however much that might be a bonus once tonight was over, it was hurting their chances to get the job done. Cordelia's magic seemed like the best chance to solve the situation quickly. "Cordy!" she shouted again. "Throw that monster's friends outta here!"

Cordelia waved her hand. With a whoosh, two of the three remaining dybbuk were picked up by invisible hands and tossed through the air to the door. Cordelia focused on the third, the one Buffy had decided was the leader, but the ghoul made a stop gesture with its own claw. Suddenly Cordelia looked around as if startled, and muttered "What's going on?" under her breath. The breeze had instantly vanished.

Once again, Buffy started calling out orders. "Leave the big guy to me, everybody. You guys head out there and make sure that the dybbuks don't tear Xander apart."

But Giles had ideas of his own. "I'm staying in too; this is my fight, Buffy." He turned to address what remained of his vampire guard. "Protect the mausoleum and the humans against those two dybbuk." Soon most of the humans and vampires has passed through the one-way force-field. All that remained in the tomb were Buffy, Giles, the dybbuk leader, and eleven skeletons, (including the skeletonized dybbuk,) who seemed content for now to cluster protectively about the one Buffy had given the death star.

The dybbuk was hesitating between engaging Buffy and Giles in combat or moving in on the skeletons. Not wanting it to have that choice, Buffy moved between the demon ghoul and the skeletons, hefting her axe warningly.

Dybbuk-guy focused hatefully on her, and prepared it massive body for a murderous charge. Just at that moment, Giles swung out with a longsword, (at some point he must have ditched the quarterstaff,) cutting into the dybbuk's muscular side. It howled in pain, but lashed out and upward with a mighty arm, knocking Giles head over heels into the floor of the mausoleum. Before the ex-watcher had even finished collapsing, the demon was charging with blinding speed after his body, making ready with the swipe of a claw to tear Giles' head from his body.

Buffy reacted without even thinking. Weighing the bipennis-style axe in her hand for only a second, she hurled it at the massive monster. It spun once in flight, and impacted edge-first in the back of the dybbuk's head, which Buffy idly noticed seemed extremely small in comparison to the demon's bulk; it was only somewhat above human average head-size. A sickening crack was heard. The dybbuk froze in place for several seconds, then slowly toppled down to land solidly over Giles' legs.

"Ah! Get this thing off me!" Giles called out, and then a peculiar expression stole across his face as Buffy dashed towards him. "Or are you going to stake me while I'm helpless?"

Buffy grimaced herself. "I thought about it," she said, removing her left hand from a pocket, grasping a stake. Deliberately she dropped it to the floor. "Let's get you outta here before the skels decide we've overstayed our welcome." She grabbed at the bulky body of the ghoul and heaved, but it didn't move.

Buffy knew that three hundred pounds or not, she could have moved it in the heat of battle, but she didn't have the same adrenaline rush at this point. Suddenly a bone hand reached into her field of vision, and she jumped away from the skel that had come up silently beside her.

The skel touched its bony hand to the dybbuk body, and it suddenly skeletonized as the other had. The new dybbuk skeleton, missing a sizable chunk of rear skull, climbed up, freeing Giles, and stared threateningly at Buffy.

"We're on our way out, right Giles?" Buffy said quickly, jogging towards the door. On her way through the force-field she remembered that she had forgotten to retrieve the axe. Oh well. It would make a good weapon for one of the skeletons, she supposed.

As Giles followed her out, Buffy took in the situation just outside the tomb. One of the dybbuk was lying dead not too far away from her. The other was loping away from the graveyard towards the wooden grove where Giles had said their lair was. Only three of Giles' vampire guard were still to be seen, but all of the gang seemed to have only minor injuries.

Buffy turned back to Giles. "Thank you for your help, though I never thought I'd say that again."

"Thank *you*, Buffy," Giles countered. "This was my mission, and it wouldn't have been succesful without you. You saved my life in there, also, and chose not to slay me when you could have. I owe you much for this night's work."

"May I ask something of you then?"

"Yes."

"Give me your word that you won't go after the death star, and that if Kaliya does, you'll give me warning."

Giles considered for a long moment. "You have my word, as a vampire of honor."

"Okay. Let's get out of here," Buffy sighed.

As they walked away, Tojo approached Buffy. "You did well in there. So did Giles. I had my misgivings about being able to work towards a common goal with him, but he fufilled his side of the bargain handsomely."

"Yes he did," Buffy agreed simply.

"Do you think he'll stand by his word about the death star?" Tojo pressed.

"Yes I do," Buffy said.

"Do you think the last ghoul will make another try for it?"

"I doubt it," Buffy decided. "But I'll stand guard there for the next few nights anyway; if he doesn't go for it then, they probably won't. Having gotten to know the dybbuk so well tonight, I can tell you subtlely is not their strong suit."

"I could have told you that before tonight," Tojo said, laughing softly.

"So, post-slayage party at the Bronze?" Xander inquired, coming up beside them. "It's only ten."

"I'll probably put in some hours, waitressing," Cordelia said. "I feel a sudden desperate need for new clothes."

"Sure," Buffy said, smiling at Xander, and then feeling the edges of her smile turn down as she remembered what Tojo had said. Having seen Cordelia's full power in magic-mode tonight, she couldn't fault his advice, but how long could she ignore what her heart was telling her?