Actions

Work Header

Rating:
Archive Warning:
Category:
Fandom:
Relationships:
Language:
English
Collections:
Peja's Wonderful World of Makebelieve Import
Stats:
Published:
2020-11-04
Words:
7,823
Chapters:
1/1
Kudos:
6
Hits:
1,040

B3 #18: Come in Threes

Summary:

Category: Alternate timeline, Angel/Willow, Buffy/Xander.
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Back finally on earth, Buffy is unsurprised to discover that a lot of problems have developed in her absence. B3 #18, continuation of the 'Unhappy Returns' B3 trilogy.
Disclaimer: This is original creative material copyright Chris Kenworthy, based on characters that he has no right to owned by someone else blah blah biddy blah...
Distribution: Distribute anywhere you like, official site for the series is http://members.fortunecity.com/scoobyhq/b3/
Feedback: Yes! Yes!! Feedback, any feedback!! Please? ;-)
Spoilers: Becoming 2.
Submitted through the 0oBuffyXanderFanfictiono0 mailing list. This list can no longer approve new members posts, please join us at 0oBuffyXanderFanfictiono0_2

Work Text:

(This is original creative material copyright Chris Kenworthy, based on characters that he has no right to owned by someone else blah blah biddy blah...)
Author's note: To start with, the gang got trapped in an interdimensional limbo by Queen Kaliya. Xander and Buffy are an item, to Cordelia's silent sorrow. Willow kissed Angel, which kinda ruined things between her and Oz.
Last time, Queen Kaliya attacked our heroes as they tried to get out of Limbo. She killed Mrs. Joyce Summers, but in a final showdown at the Bronze, Buffy shot her with an incindiary pistol, and she's dead. The vampire Giles ran off with Angel's baby.

B3 #18: Come in Threes
by Chris Kenworthy

"Well?" Buffy asked, staring at the others scattered around the living room. "Did the spell work? Are we back on Earth??"

Mister Tojo went calmly over to the window and looked out. "Stars," he said succintly. "That would be a positive indicator."

Meanwhile, Willow was focussing on her own things. "Computer!" she yelped, seeing a Power Mac on a small desk in the corner of the room. When did Mom get that? Buffy wondered, as her best friend scooted over to the machine and switched it on. "Internet!" she declared firmly.

"Well, we've got power here," Buffy confirmed, switching on a light. "Another good sign - we never wired this place for electricity in Limbo. Though why they wouldn't have cut my Mom off for not paying the power bill..." Suddenly, the sheer magnitude of what had happened in Limbo hit her like a kick to the face. Buffy staggered down onto the couch, stifling a sob.

"Hey, sweetie," her father said, rushing over to your side. "What's the matt- oh. Your mother. Well, so she wasn't right here with us. She came from here - the spell would have sent her back to earth anyways, right? I mean, I'm not up on these things, but from what I picked up..."

Buffy had to say it, if only to keep good ol' Dad from continuing to ramble on - he was making things worse with every sentence. "It's not that. Dad... Mom's dead."

Hank Summers made a sound like he had just had the breath knocked out of him. "What??"

"The vampire lady - Queen Kaliya. She killed Mom. Slit her throat to remind me that she meant business."

"Oh, god." He sat down beside her, stretching an arm around Buffy's shoulders. "I'm so sorry, honey; I didn't know..."

"Dad?"

"Uh, yeah?"

"You should live here now," she told him simply.

"Uhh... what?" He blinked and shook his head at her a bit. "This was your Mom's place - never mine, you know that, sweetie. I couldn't..."

"This was the *Summers* place," Buffy corrected him firmly. "It should still be."

Hank tried to digest that. "Well, they've probably kicked our stuff out of the old apartment anyways," he said. "If you want us to live here, that's fine by me."

Buffy smiled a tight smile. "I didn't say *we*, Dad. I don't know where I'm gonna be going, not yet..."

"Hey!" Willow called from the computer, ending that conversation just in time.

Buffy sprang to her feet and rushed over. "What's the word, Watcher Will?" the Slayer asked chipperly as she took a nearby seat.

"I've got a whole bunch of e-mail here from Jenny's old sources. They're kinda thinking I might have died too, but they made sure to send me reports anyways, just in case."

"Nice guys," Buffy said sincerely. "So, what did we miss?"

"Not much - things were really quiet, for months while we were gone. Almost as if Sunnydale was a normal town. But over the past week, there have been several different situations developing."

"Good ol' Hellmouth," Buffy quipped. "Always knows when I'm gonna be coming back and throws me a surprise party every time. First the Master's restoration, then Kaliya, now this. What exactly is 'this,' by the way?"

"Let's see," Willow said. "A spooky and mysterious woman has been searching the graveyard every night." She pulled up a fuzzy photograph on the screen. "Last night, she spent several hours poking around a little mausoleum we like to call 'The Death Star Vault.'"

"Oh, goody," Buffy said dryly. They had found the death star vault last summer, while tracking a pack of demon ghouls, who had broken into the vault to retrieve the death star - a sculpture of a golden sun with incredibly deadly magical powers. The vault possessed a curse and magical guardians to discourage theft, but one could never tell if those could be circumvented...

"Excuse me, please," Mister Tojo interjected. "Might I examine that picture, Willow?" He moved closer to the screen, and nodded to himself. "Gwendolyn Post. One of the best and brightest Watchers of her generation, until she was expelled from the Society for consorting with dark powers."

"Exactly the kind of gal who would love a little thing like the Death Star," Buffy concluded. "Need I say we can't afford to let her get it? Next item, Willows?"

"Uh..." Willow stalled. "Uh, prominent local businessman Lear Chase was kidnapped. My sources suspect a few of Kaliya's henchvamps who never got into Limbo."

"Okay," Buffy said, nodding. "We should intercept Cordy before she comes home from the school - let her know about this. Her stepmom would not be the best one to break it to her." Buffy remembered in a flash what she had learned of Cordy's family situation.

"Actually, Janet Callwood is apparently now Lear's ex-wife," Willow commented absently. "She's the one the kidnappers contacted, though."

"Uh, okay," Buffy said, feeling a little off balance now. "Anything else?"

"Yeah," Willow said, once again hesitant to speak. "Someone or something has taken over the school, holding about a dozen students and teachers hostage."

"WHAT??" Buffy shouted, hurting Willow's ear. "Uh... any idea who?"

"'...officials suspect Sunnydale senior Harmony Concord, the perpetrator, of having suffered a mental breakdown or a sudden development of multiple personality syndrome,'" Willow read out loud. "'Escapees said that Miss Concord was proclaiming herself to be 'Catherine the Great'. They also spoke of apparently magical effects, which the police have denied."

"'Catherine the Great??'" Buffy asked, a sinking feeling developing in her stomach.

* * * *

"Okay, guys, thanks for the lift home," Xander was yattering as the five of them left the Sunnydale High library. "Good spell. Great spell. Thanks a bunch."

"You're so *not* a riot," Amy told him.

"Yeah, well, that's what I was going for...

Suddenly, a thin blonde teenager appeared out of nowhere, right in front of them. "You thought you could defy me, didn't you," she said. It was Harmony, but... at the same time, not quite Harmony. "You thought you could kill me, didn't you? Well, guess what, little Amy - you don't kill Momma quite so easily!"

 

Act One

"Catherine the Great?" Mister Tojo said. "Kaliya's mortal name was Catherina, but I don't see how she could be involved..."

"Not that," Buffy said, cutting him off. "Amy's psycho-witch mother was nicknamed 'Catherine the Great' during her cheerleading glory days." She shook her head frustratedly. "Could she have possessed a living person somehow?"

"I'm not sure," Vanessa said, taking it upon herself to answer the question. "Could you refresh my memory on exactly how she was dispatched?"

Buffy snorted at that. "*Refresh* your memory? Wouldn't that require my having said something about it to you before now?"

Vanessa looked exasperatedly at Buffy. "No. It requires *someone* having told me about it - in this case, Amy. I came to Sunnydale to deal with Cathy Madison, remember, I had to make sure that the job was done."

"Really?" Paula, the youngest of the witches, asked. Vanessa mouthed a silent 'oops' in Buffy's direction - she hadn't told her confederates about that.

"Yeah," the senior witch explained hurriedly. "Not that we knew it was Amy's mom, just that someone was using witchcraft indiscretely. I had thought it was Amy, that she had killed her own mother, but I got the true story from her surely enough, what she understood of well enough at the time to remember. That was when I recognized Amy's potential, and recruited her when I came back to Sunnydale to stay."

Buffy realized that this wasn't essential material to discuss now. "The body-switch had been reversed, and Cathy was trying to take Amy or me out directly. She started a big nasty-sounding spell - 'I will look at my enemy...' or something like that. I kicked a mirror down between us and the spell bounced off it and zapped her. She disappered, and that's the last we know of her."

Vanessa nodded. "I've heard of the spell, but no more than that. I couldn't tell you what happened to Catherine or if any aspect of her could come back. But I know who can tell you - Darrell."

"Darrell?" Angel said suspiciously.

Vanessa nodded reluctantly. "He learned it - that was the reason we broke up. He's got a good heart, but there's this insatiable urge within him to study dark magics... like that spell. I've tried to keep as tight a rein on him as I can, but..." The redheaded witch shook herself, realizing that she was straying off the topic. "Anyways, he knows the spell. He could tell us more."

"Okay, so, some of us should try to make their way into the school and join forces with the five that are already trapped there," Buffy said. "They'll need all the help they can get - Amy, Cordelia, Xander... Catherine has scores to settle with all of them, not to mention Willow and me."

"But we've got two other situations to worry about too," Willow reminded them.

"Yeah, I know," Buffy assured her. "Hence, the splitting up part. Anyone have any ideas about where they'll be best put to work?"

Angel spoke up. "I can probably get inside the copy center undercover," Angel said. "Those vamps wouldn't have any reason to suspect me. There's a longstanding tradition of giving hospitality to a wandering warrior, among vampires."

"Because a warrior vampire is as likely as anything to break your neck if you say one wrong word to him?" Buffy asked teasingly.

"Precisely," Angel replied with a straight face.

"Hmm..." Buffy thought about that. "Well, it's a good idea. Is there any way you could get someone else in there? I don't like the thought of you going in without anyone to watch your back."

Angel gave some thought to that. "We can't try to pass a human off as a vamp - that almost never works for long. But I suppose Angelus could have a human consort - a mortal witch badass enough to ride with a vampire." He shot Willow an inviting smile. "Think you're up to the role, Willow?"

"What?? Huh, me?"

Angel chuckled. "Yeah, you." Willow stared blankly for another second, then grinned and nodded silently.

"Okay, that's that," Buffy said. "Since I'm not on the vampire team, and I probably shouldn't get within sight of Cathy Madison until the proverbial last moment, I guess that leaves me on Rogue Watcher patrol." She considered just a moment. "You can come with me, Tojo, you're our expert on the watchers. Which leaves us three witches to go off and help against psychowitch, which works out well. Any further thoughts?"

"We should set up a time to rendezvous and compare notes," Angel told Buffy. He looked at the clock, which said 2:30 AM. "Say, tomorrow night at nine, in the park?"

"It's a date," Buffy confirmed with a joking smile.

"Hey, now!" Willow broke in. "Now, I've stayed out of this so far, but I agreed to help keep the two of you away from each other..."

"...Which obligation you're now released from, Will," Buffy told her. "Angel and I have avoided each other as long as makes any possible sense - right now it's time to start redefining our relationship. Definition one, we're allies and partners, as far as fighting the forces of evil. Right?"

"That we are," Angel confirmed.

* * * *

Amy did the first thing that came into her head.

She spun around in a perfect '180' and ran screaming away from the girl who was confronting her in her evil mother's voice. That idea made so much sense to the other four that they each followed suit in seconds.

Cordelia was the second out of the gate, running with every ounce of strength she could dredge up even though she *expected* whoever it was, Harmony, Cathy Madison, (whom she had never really met except for that time she had been told she had bodyswapped with Amy,) or something even more horrible, to pursue and catch them in just about three seconds. But the mocking, diabolical voice rang out from the exact same place as Cordy retreated: "You can run, little ones. But you can't get out and you can't hide from me forever!! HahahaHAHA!!!"

Amy made a sharp right turn and charged through a foyer towards the nearest exit. As she pushed at the heavy safety door, it opened easily... but Amy screamed as the threshold lit up in a wall of bright orange flames that appeared out of nowhere. Curious, Cordy grabbed a nearby broomstick and poked it tentatively towards the closing door - and surely enough, the flames appeared again, charring the paint off of her tool.

"C-Cordelia?" a nervous voice asked from behind them. Cordelia turned to see a short teenaged boy standing there - Jonathon something - she'd seen him around, but frankly never really cared. "Xander? Amy? Oz? Darrell??" he continued, indicating quite a good memory for the faces and names of his fellow students.

"Uh, yeah," Xander said nervously. "What is it, uh, Jonathon?"

"Wherever you g-guys have been hiding all this week, you'd b-better get back there," Jonathon stuttered. "And... is there any chance you could take me, too?"

* * * *

Buffy shivered as she stepped out onto the Sunnydale cemetary, but at the same time, in a really odd way she couldn't keep from smiling. After so many months, the Vampire Slayer was back to her usual beat. No more interdimensional limbos, hellhounds, dragons, or horrors. Just a girl with a sharp stake and a field full of dead people. It felt good, in a really creepy way.

"Do you suppose there'll be some minor vamps scuffling around, too?" she asked Akira Tojo. "I need to get my feet wet again in the traditional Slaying game - haven't staked a vamp in months," she admitted ruefully.

"Quite possibly," he assured her. "But remember - our prey tonight is not vampires, but..."

"...But a spooky ex-watcher with her eye on a hunk of black magic," Buffy finished. "Yeah, I remember." The slayer pondered something for a moment, then decided to say it out loud. "It's good to have you back around, Tojo."

"It is quite appreciated to be back, my dear," Tojo answered her, with, as ever, a perfectly straight face. Buffy cracked up in helpless laughter.

* * * *

"How long is this gonna take, Angel?" Willow complained. "We need to be at the copy center..."

"At least an hour before twilight," Angel finished for her. "We'll be there in plenty of time. But you're gonna get killed out of hand if we don't both *look the part*!"

"Okay, okay," Willow said. "I can't argue with that. Sheesh - two makeovers in as many days - why me?" She winked at the handsome vampire.

"What?" Angel looked at her quizzically. "The hair? Was that Buffy's..."

"Cordelia did it," Willow explained. "My idea, but her know-how." Willow turned around to try to examine her new hair in a mirror, but Angel kept her head facing forward with a firm grip on her chin.

"You look great," he assured her patiently, and I'm almost... done..."

"Why couldn't I have done this?" Willow complained. "What does a guy know about makeup?"

Angel looked at her and unsuccesfully stifled giggles. "What?" Willow pressed him.

"Nothing." Angel turned over to the counter, and said "It's just, among vampires, a guy normally ends up doing his consort's make-up. The no-mirror thing, you know. Sometimes you'll be able to convince one of her girlfriends to do it, but otherwise you're stuck."

Willow giggled. "Gee, I never thought about it. Does that mean the girls shave the guys??"

"Sometimes," Angel told her. "So, take a look."

Willow turned about and took a look. The makeup was a bold and dangerous look, biker chic with a touch of goth, and a line across her cheek looked very much like a well-concealed scar. "Looks great," she told him sincerely. "Are we ready to go?"

"Almost." Angel reached over behind her and dropped a bundle of leather into her lap. "Right after we get changed."

 

Act Two

Xander decided to take the lead, since no one else was. "Our hiding place... our hiding place is no good anymore," he told Jonathon uncertainly. "Do you know of any?"

Jonathon hesitated a moment. "Uh, yeah. She may find us anyway, but it's worth a shot. This way." He led them back out of the foyer and through the student lounge.

Darrell coughed, then decided to try speaking up. "So, uh... Jonathon, why, um, why did you think that we'd been hiding?"

"Haven't you?" the short guy replied, giving Darrell a curious look. "I mean, I guess you *could* have gotten in from outside, if *she* didn't have a problem with it. But... well, you have to have heard what happened. Why would you *want* to come here?"

There was no sensible response that could be made to that. "Um, Jonathon," Cordelia asked uncertainly, "well, what happened? Do you know?"

Jonathon shook his head. "I was in calculus class when we heard her. Screaming down the hallway - 'Yes, it's me, Catherine the great come back to claim her prize.' Total psycho-loony stuff like that. I rushed out to see who it was, it was Harmony! She pointed at me and..." He shook his head again. "I dunno, but the next thing *I* remember, it was night, and the school was mostly deserted. There's about two dozen of us left, I think, not counting you guys. Most of the rest got out okay. They say she killed the girl's gym teacher, and a couple others, though. You can never tell what she's about to do next."

"It's okay, Jonathon," Xander said, affecting a confidence he didn't feel. "We're gonna be getting out of here okay."

"How??"

"I wish to god I knew," Xander admitted.

* * * *

Angel strode up to the door of the copy center, trying his best to think like Angelus. Aroused by those thoughts, the *real* Angelus struggled furiously for control of the body, and Angel had to stop in his tracks for a moment to fight his demon down.

"Hey, you okay?" Willow said, turning around and looking into his face solicitously.

"Not now," he hissed at her. "They could be watching. In character!"

Willow grimaced cutely and stood up straighter. "So, what's keeping you, honey?" she asked out loud.

"I'll be okay," Angel told her, standing straight himself and smiling that self-assured smile, with a hint of cruelty two layers beneath the surface, that Angelus was so good at. He closed the two steps to the huge security door, checked to make sure that Willow was at his side, half a pace back, and knocked.

No motion could be seen, but someone must have come to the fisheye monitor, because a voice barked through the door. "Go away!"

Angel smiled - that was about the response he would have expected. "My name is Angelus, and I come asking for hospitality according to the ancient traditions."

There was a moment's pause. Then, "Who's the chick?"

"That chick is my old lady," Angel said challengingly. "What's it to you?"

His tone of voice must have impressed or intimidated someone, because the door unlocked and creaked open. The vampire behind it glanced nervously at the outside as it came into view, but the morning twilight that he was fearing wasn't yet visible. "She a vampire?" the little guy asked Angel.

"Naa," Angel told him, shaking his head as he stepped into the vampires' hideout. "She's still a human, but she's got a demon's heart anyways. This is my kinduv place, you know," he went on, taking a look around the main room of the copy center. "It just needs one or two more corpses to brighten up the layout. So, what kind of brutality do you guys go in for, hmm?"

* * * *

"Hmm," Buffy climbed up the low hill and squinted at the 'Death Star Vault,' just come into view. "What if she's already in the vault? Once the security force walls are up, we'd have a devil of a time getting in. And once Miz Post decides that she's ready to come out, she'll have the Death Star in her hand, and we're pretty much sitting ducks against that."

"I have anticipated that particular difficulty," Mister Tojo said, drawing a scrap of paper out of his coat and handing it to the Slayer. Buffy looked at the bit of scroll, but couldn't read it.

"Uh, okay, so... what is this?"

"A counterspell for force wall spells like the ones created by the Death Star Vault," Mister Tojo said. "Just in case we should need to get in."

"Hey," Buffy interrupted him. "We've got a bogey at eleven o'clock. Come on, we'll need to hurry up if we're gonna intercept her before she reaches the Vault." The Slayer headed off, muttering under her breath. "That is, if she's heading right for the Vault. If it's even Ms. Post..." She picked up speed, tucking Mister Tojo's paper into the pocket of her tight jeans, and checking to make sure Akira himself was right behind her.

Halway to the Vault, Buffy checked her charge and motioned Akira that they would be proceeding onward more stealthily. The figure in the distance did seem to be Ms. Gwendolyn Post, but she was not moving into the Vault, but circling around it, observing it perhaps. Perhaps investigating it with some sort of magic.

"You're the cautious type, aren't you?" Buffy called out loudly once she was only a few feet away from the ex-watcher. "That's getting old already, kinda. Give me a baddie who'll jump into a nefarious plot with both feet, for better or worse. Less stressful on your local defender of the right, ya know."

Ms. Post turned around and smiled self-deprecatingly at her. "Who are... Buffy? Miss Buffy Summers?" she said in a hauntingly lovely British accent.

Buffy smiled her trademark "you're about to get pounded" smile. "Yep. So nice to make your acquaintance, Ms Post. Oh, wait, sorry," she flashed a sarcastic grin. "No I'm not."

"I didn't expect the dark hair - Mister Giles' unforgettable sketch of you has you as a blonde."

"Sketch? What sketch??" Buffy shook off that detail. "Yeah, actually I should be changing it again soon." Now that Kaliya is finally dead, she thought to herself. She had worn the chocolate-brown hair as a reminder of her determination to see the vampire Queen who had turned Giles as a pile of ashes. Kaliya's downfll had finally happened - so, when could she next find the time to wash her hair with a new colorant?

"The sketches of you in Giles' watcher diary," Gwendolyn Post continued. "Oh, yes, I suppose you wouldn't know anything about those. Tradition and all that." Buffy wondered at that - what exactly was in those Diaries, after all? "And of course, Mister Tojo. So nice to meet you again."

"Well, I'm afraid we *really* don't have all night for the pleasantries," Buffy broke in. "As it stands, well, you know, we've got a Slayer, a Watcher, and a Black Sorceress standing outside a vault of dark magic... gee, do you have any idea what happens next?"

"Oh, right, of course, of course," Post told her. "By all means, you have to stop me on behalf of the benevolent, and forever selfrighteous, Watchers. Well, you could overpower me in a flat minute, of course, so I shan't resist you." She held her arms up, wrists together, near Buffy's face, and Buffy grabbed her awkwardly. "What's the procedure at this point? Search me, I suppose, to make sure I'm not carrying any artifacts of demonly power. Then... do you have a holding cell ready, or should I just be beaten to death?"

Buffy sighed. "The 'abusing sarcasm' warning light is now on," she told the older British woman nastily. After giving her a quick patdown, she sighed. "Okay, Tojo, what *do* we do with her? Just give her the customary helping hand out and the cliched 'don't let me see you in this town again?'"

Tojo considered that for a few moments. "That seems like the best option at this point. If she demonstrates stubbornness, we can consider more forceful courses of action."

"Okay, Gwendolyn, let's go," Buffy said, maneuvering her onwards...

* * * *

"Okay, that should be that," Buffy said, brushing her palms against each other. Ms Post had just been ejected from the graveyard.

"No sense in trusting her further than we can see her, though," Tojo reminded his Slayer. "We should set up watch in the Treehouse station. Rotating watches."

"Yeah," Buffy said, leading the way over. Boy, the treehouse brought back memories. It had been on a stakeout for Dybbuks last August, when she had first realized the feelings she was starting to feel for Xander. Boy, that seemed so long ago.

It was as Buffy started to climb the stairs to the treehouse that she started to realize it. Her jeans flexed tightly as she bent her legs... and... and, there had been something in her pocket, hadn't there? A paper... Mister Tojo's spell!

"I don't believe it," Buffy said to herself disbelievingly.

"You don't believe what?" Tojo asked.

"That bitch!" Buffy expostulated. "She picked my pocket! I was very nicely, very politely throwing her out of the graveyard when I could easily have been kicking her snobby British butt, and she stole the spell from me!"

Akira Tojo's face dropped. "She has the spell? The one that would enable her to counter the force walls?"

Buffy nodded, stricken. "Somehow I doubt she's really gonna leave town now."

 

Act Three

"'...but you gave me your solemn vow, Angelus,' the poor hunter spluttered," Angel told them all. He, Willow, and the six vampires of the copy center were enjoying drinks, (non-blood,) in the richly appointed room that had once been Kaliya's study. "It was so funny - he kept going on and on. 'I could have staked you twice since we got out of that cave, but I honored our deal.' It was too easy, with a set-up line like that. I looked him straight in the eyes, and told him 'Yeah, I noticed that. Don't you just feel like an idiot right now?' I tell you, that snivelling vamp-killer's blood was so thin I couldn't stomach much of it, but it was still worth all the trouble just to feel his terror as I first bit into his neck."

"I can well imagine, sir Angelus." That was Terrinon, the vampire who had greeted them at the door, and apparently the leader of this little band. That reminds me of the time I..."

Terrinon started telling another tale of bloodsucking, with the poor victim a country fair duelist in the north of France. From Terrinon's memory lapses, frequent corrections, and the total disparity between the way he really talked and the dialog that he ascribed to himself in the story, Willow guessed that the narration was complete fiction, or, perhaps more likely, that he was taking credit for the deeds of a far more deadly vampire, in a vain attempt to impress his guest. It was probably just all the tension of the situation, but that notion struck Willow as so funny that she had a hard time stifling her giggle.

"So," she asked when the story finally came to a close. "These are fancy digs you're takin' up here. What's the story behind them?" She figured this line of conversation was worth a shot at trying to prod the vampires into talking about more than old war stories.

"Our old boss," Terrinon said. "She bought the building when she moved into town - got it all fixed up real nice."

"Yeah, I'll say," Angelus said. "It must have taken a lot of work..."

"I guess," another vampire put in. "The work was all done by the time we got to town."

"Done?" Willow pushed, realizing that they might be onto something. "By whom? Renovators?" A nod answered her question. "Boy, that must have cost a fair bit."

"Oh, yeah," Terrinon agreed. "But Lady Kaliya, she never had to worry too much about money."

Angel raised his eyebrows theatrically. "Really? What was her secret?"

"I'll show you!" Terrinon declared in a fit of magnanimousness. "We're putting her usual trick to work right now. Need to prop up the old bankroll, you know." He started to lead Angel and Willow through the building. "It's all to do with the stock market. I don't know that much about it, but the idea is basic. The better a company's future prospects are, the more it, and the more the shares of it, are worth, right?"

"Uh, yeah," Willow agreed uncertainly.

"And the worse the prospects for one company are, the better the prospects for competing companies are, also right?"

"Yes," Angel agreed gruffly as they turned a tight corner.

"And we can worsen the prospects for a company by, say, murdering their C.E.O., right?" Terrinon nodded as an expression of realization crossed Angel and Willow's faces. "I see you catch the point. We invested heavily in an L.A. based fashion company, which for the past few years has been living in the shadow of Sunnydale's own Chase Fashions Incorporated. Those shares climbed twenty percent when C.F.I.'s founder, Lear Abbot Chase, disappeared two days ago. When Mister Chase is found dead, the stock prices will go through the roof!"

And at that point, Terrinon stopped both speaking and walking. With a dramatic gesture, he waved into a room, in which a middle-aged businessman sat bound and gagged.

* * * *

"Okay," Jonathon whispered to the five of them as they crouched near the doorway of a classroom. "Right out that door and across the corridor is the computer room. Harmony doesn't tend to go in there, we can lay low for quite a while." He sighed in terrified anticipation. "If we can get there okay, that is."

Cordelia listened hard for a moment. "I don't hear anyone out there. Let's risk it." Without waiting a single instant for the opinions of any of the others, she pulled the door open and stepped into the corridor. All was clear. and she gestured imperatively in a come-on signal. Jonathon looked both ways carefully, and he crept out after her, followed by Darrell, Xander, Amy and Oz.

"Hi there hon!" The voice froze every single one of them in their tracks. Cordelia oriented on the source of the sound just in time to see Harmony/Catherine come into view - from out of thin air, literally! One moment, there was just a row of lockers, and the next, she was standing in front of them.

"You took off so fast, last time," the sorceress in front of them continued whimsically, "that you hurt my feelings! I mean, yeah, I was venting my fury a little inappropriately, especially at you, my dear darling Amy, but you spend two years where I've been and see if you aren't a little peeved." Harmony's face grinned, quite dementedly at all of them. "But I wouldn't have hurt any of you. Well, not *too* much, anyways."

She paced up towards the group of them. Cordelia still couldn't move, and she was beginning to realize that there was a LOT more than ordinary run-of-the-mill terror causing that particular effect. "Ah, yes, Cordy," Catherine came to a dead stop in the center of Cordelia's fixed gaze, only a few feet away from the beautiful brunette. "I have a little favor to ask you." Harmony's fingers snapped, and suddenly Cordy felt a strange loosening of her throat and face, as if it were being made abundantly clear that she could talk - and that she was being expected to.

"A... a favor? What... what is it??" Cordy asked, uncertain what else to say.

"I want your body!" Catherine declared. Cordelia felt a wave of horror pass over her face. "Oh, don't worry," the witch quipped, "not in a lesbian sex way. Think of it this way. Right now, Harmony's my house. As of today, I'm in the real estate market for something a little classier, and you're the best property in the neighborbood." Catherine chuckled nastily at her own joke.

"My... my body? You - you can't have my body!" Cordelia forced the words out her throat. Who knew what this... this monster in the body of her friend would do to her for daring to refuse, but, well, it was one of those things that just *had* to be said, after all.

However, Catherine didn't seem to react with the kind of rage Cordelia had expected. "Oh, yes I can," she declared simply. Cordelia's courage fell to the ground. Could Catherine take over her body despite any resistance Cordy offered? No... Cordelia couldn't believe that. There was always a way to fight, to defend yourself. If all the troubles and tribulations she had gotten into, from hanging with Buffy and the others, had taught her nothing else, they had taught her that.

Resistance was *SO* not futile.

"Let's see, now," Harmony/Catherine was saying, reaching a hand up towards Cordelia's forehead. Cordelia tried to bat it away, to draw back, but her body wouldn't respond to either wish. Harmony's smooth hand brushed away a few of Cordelia's bangs, pressed against her smooth skin for several seconds, then pulled back away. "Hmm," Catherine said with Harmony's voice, as the hand proceeded downward. She touched Cordelia again, in the center of her chest, pressing somewhat against Cordy's breasts through her sweater, (and she said that there wasn't gonna be anything lesbian...) and then away again.

"Heh, as I thought," Catherine said. Cordelia realized that she was getting off on the performance as much as anything else, of having a captive audience paying attention to her every word and motion. Cordelia could appreciate that desire, and knew that it tied in with her own reasons for cheerleading. So, was it any wonder that the most famous cheerleader in Sunnydale High's history was a fool for the spotlight. "Your heart has spoken to me, Cordelia."

Her heart? Was *that* what the touching had been about? Reading her heart... and reading her mind too?? Despite the magical paralysis, Cordelia shivered. What could be coming next?

"This one," Catherine said, moving over to grab hold of Xander and drag him into Cordelia's line of view. With a whispered word and subtle gesture, Xander was floating into the air, free to move all the parts of his body about, but not to travel from the spot in midair he occupied.

"Pyro." With that simple invocation from Catherine, Xander's clothes burst into flames. He screamed and tried to swat the fires out, but they always spread back.

Cordelia's eyes teared up, but they couldn't look away from that horrible sight. She had loved Xander - maybe loved him still. And that, obviously, was why Catherine was doing this - to put leverage on Cordelia.

"No," she whispered hoarsely. "I'm not gonna knuckle under to an evil witch."

"Yes you will!" Harmony responded, in a teasing singsong voice. "Maybe not for a while. But I've got plenty of time. First I'll burn his skin off." She giggled as a horrible shudder rippled through Cordelia's body. "I'll try something completely different at that point, if I have to. With a little magic and an evil cause, there's just about no limit to the kind of pain a person can be put through. I'd actually like to see it all... but somehow I doubt you're gonna let me." She walked confidently over to Cordelia's side and whispered towards her ear.

"There's only one way this ends, you know, Cordelia. You let me into your body, and I let Xander stop hurting. It's a fair deal, after all, and quite inevitable. It might happen now, it might happen in a few days, but that's the way it's gonna be. I mean, if you don't agree at some point, *you're* the one condemning the man you love to death or eternal torture. I always knew you were cruel, but are you really that cruel??"

Cordelia didn't, couldn't, answer that.

 

Act Four

"Wake up, Buffy!"

Buffy didn't realize what was happening at first, just that she had been asleep, and that someone was shaking her, and that she *hated* that. It was only when she realized that the voice was Tojo's that the rest fell into place. She had agreed to get some rest once the sun rose, thinking that Gwen Post would be less likely to try something in daylight. Baddies never seemed to do anything nasty by the light of day.

"What is it?" she groaned.

"Listen." Buffy shook her head in frustration at her Watcher, focused all of her attention on her sense of hearing, and suddenly there it was. A motor, close. And getting closer.

"That's... that's in the graveyard," Buffy said. "Oh, no. Ms Post!" She grabbed up her narrow short sword and swung down to the ground, already having figured out what had happened.

Sure enough, a old-looking boxy car was racing along the widest footpath of the cemetary, heading straight for the Death Star Vault. Apparently, this time, Gwendolyn wasn't pussyfooting around. Well, that was fine. Neither was Buffy. She took off, running with every ounce of speed her Slayer strength could afford her, which was considerable. But she was no match for even so tired a car as Ms. Post was driving.

On the other hand, Buffy had the advantage of being able to move through the whole of the graveyard. She wasn't too far away from the vault. And she had other tricks up her sleeve. She was twenty feet away from the footpath as the boxy automobile approached the spot she was nearest to. Taking only a moment to aim, Buffy heaved the sword out into the car's path. Car and spinning sword intercepted each other, or, to be more precise, sword and car's windshield. The windshield shattered into a thousand pieces. Blinded for a critical second, Ms Post crashed her vehicle into several gravestones, and it managed to wedge itself crosswise along the path with room to proceed neither ahead nor behind.

Vocalizing her frustrations loudly, Gwen wrenched her door open and took off for the Vault on foot. Buffy followed, dodging around the damaged car and noticing that Tojo had caught up by this time. But the time Buffy had cost Gwen didn't seem to be quite enough. She dodged into the Vault a good twenty feet ahead of both her pursuers, and she knew exactly where to go for the Star. The skeletal guardians had apparently put it back in its original place after the dybbuk caper, because it was from that centrally located tomb that Ms. Post grabbed it. Buffy and Tojo, as luck would have it, had just stumbled past the threshold as she put her fingers on it, and the curse of the Vault activated the force walls, and animated the skels. But Buffy's attention wasn't on the walking skeletons, but on Gwen Post.

"To borrow from your own generation's slang, Buffy," the ex-Watcher declared, "you are *so* dead. I know exactly how to use this little trinket."

* * * *

"Okay," Cordelia screamed spasmically as the flame burned, ever so painfully, at Xander's clothing and over his skin. "You... you can do... you can possess my body or whatever. Just stop hurting him!"

Harmony/Catherine looked at Cordelia and smiled. "I just *knew* you'd see things my way!" With the offhand gesture of a finger the flame went out and Xander collapsed onto the ground in a painful heap.

Catherine walked around and turned to stare Cordelia directly in the face. "Now, this won't hurt a bit." She chuckled diabolically with Harmony's vocal chords. "Well, not for me, at least." Harmony's hands reached out to lift Cordelia's head up a few degrees, so that she was meeting the blonde girl's gaze squarely. "The eyes are the window to the soul," Harmony muttered absently. Then she reached down to hold Cordelia's fingers in her own. "As the hands are the pathway to the spirit. From one vessel to the next, let me be transferred."

Suddenly, Cordelia felt a horrible, capriciously malevolent THING... It was in Harmony's eyes, looking directly into her own, and in the fingers touching Cordy's own. *This*, she suddenly realized, was Catherine's spirit, transpossessing itself from Harmony's body to her own. Somehow she had thought it would be like the Slayer spirit that had possessed her for a day, even though she knew that that spirit was benign, mostly instinctive.

Catherine's spirit was quite different. It was fuller, more complete - every bit as complex as the personality and character of a living human being. And there was a horrible sense of evil in it - the evil that did not spring fully formed out of demonly nature, but evolved slowly out of human frustration, month by month, year after year.

*THIS* was what Cordelia had agreed to let into her body. Somehow, Cordelia was faintly aware of the possibility of resistance, of shutting her awareness off from Harmony's gaze and touch, of retreating into herself and keeping a firm grip on her body until Catherine had to break off the attempt. But to what long-term effect? Catherine would just return to torturing Xander, and Cordelia knew that the old witch had been right - she could not endure the sight of that forever. So she simply tried to hold on to her self-identity as Catherine's spirit moved into her body, took it over, locking Cordelia's own spirit within a dark, evil corner of Catherine's horrible psyche.

To Oz, the change was remarkable quick. One moment Harmony was taking hold of Cordelia's hand, the next moment Harmony was falling to the tile floor of the corridor in a dead faint, as the telltale expression of arrogant cruelty took over Cordelia's face.

"The power," Catherine/Cordelia exclaimed in surprise. "The sheer energy that was lying fallow in this unassuming host! I took Cordelia for merely a pretty and athletic body. Now I have found so much more! With her power and skill, none will dare to oppose me!!"

"This is not good," Oz murmurred to himself with trademark understatement.

* * * *

"I hate the daytime," Terinnon announced listlessly to Angel and Willow.

"Oh, yeah," Angel replied with feeling.

"I, uh, actually, I suppose I should turn in. Don't feel much like sleeping, but I suppose I can find something to do. You two can probably entertain yourselves better if I weren't here, right?" He grinned lewdly at Angel, who tried to smile salaciously. It didn't really matter what this fool thought, but if he left Angel and Willow alone, they didn't need to worry about keeping up the act any more. They could also plan strategy about getting themselves, and the unfortunate Mister Chase, all out alive.

Terinnon almost made it to the door before I thought of something. "Oh, where are my matters? I'm not being a very good host, Mister Angelus - I haven't offered you anything to eat." He opened the door and called out. "Hey, littlefoose! Go fetch up Emelia!"

Angel had to work hard to mask his dismay. Sure enough, all of the other vampires soon tramped back into the room - along with a grimy-looking young teenaged girl. "While the sun shines, all vampires share, Mister Angelus," Terrinon said cheerfully, pushing Emelia towards him. "Drink all you like from her."

She had been fed from before, Angel could tell, maybe twice, but she wasn't in a state of serious anemia yet. Nevertheless, she would probably be killed before sunset, and Willow and Angel couldn't afford to start a fight right now. With only the two of them against six vampires, one or both would be likely to die. And, unless, the situation was handled exactly right, to refuse to feed of this girl would generate enough suspicion that they would be attacked, or taken prisoner.

Willow was apparently ready to try it, though. "My Angel doesn't take handouts," she declared proudly.

"Handouts?" Terinnon scoffed. "Just the sharing of food, by the ancient traditions. Your Angel isn't proud enough to dismiss those, is he?" Telling blow - Angel had gotten in here by citing ancient traditions - he couldn't afford to insult them.

"Besides, you're hungry, aren't you, Angelus?" Angel *was* hungry... he had forgotten to feed before they arrived, having gotten too used to the mysterious sustaining energy of Limbo, and he was getting ravenous. He would be obviously starving by evening, if he didn't feed. Was there any other source of food?

"I... I could go out," Willow started hesitantly. "Fetch something for you... if you liked, love."

"Ooh, that'd be great hon," Terinnon gibed. "Could you fetch me something too? Someone young and fresh?"

That wasn't the answer either, Angel realized. To bring in new people would hardly change the situation, and if Willow showed up with butcher blood, and Angel drank it instead of Emelia, it would be as good as announcing his soul to the other vampires. "No, darling," he told Willow. "I don't want you to be gone all day."

"Then you'll drink her?" Terinnon pressed. Angel rapidly realized that that could be his only option. He had told Buffy, when she first realized his nature, that he had never fed off of a living human being since he had had his soul. That was a point of pride for him - pride in his self-control, in his mastery over the demon. But, it looked as if he would have to right now.

Without saying a word, Angel took the shell-shocked Emelia in his hands, let his face return to its natural vampire state, and marked his target on the girl's neck. Just enough to satisfy yourself, he reminded himself, just enough to make it until sundown. You don't want to kill this girl.

But as his fangs broke through her skin, and the taste of the warm blood hit his mouth and filled his nose with aroma, the demon within him took control, sucking harder, delighting in the blood, the violence, the sheer irony of the situation...

TO BE CONTINUED... (In episode nineteen: "You can't go Hellmouth again.")