Demona

Demona was a major villain in the TV series Gargoyles and was an archenemy of sorts to the clan due to her intense hatred of humanity.

Story
Demona was born in AD 938 in Wyvern, Scotland. By the time she was 37 human years old (18 1/2 gargoyle years old), she was the mate of the male gargoyle who would eventually be known as Goliath. She was also the apprentice of Castle Wyvern's resident wizard, the Archmage. He had her do various unscrupulous tasks for him, including stealing the Phoenix Gate from Princess Elena in AD 975. At that point, she was approached by a time-travelling future version of herself from the year 1995. She showed the young Demona a vision of her future in the year 994, where the clan was smashed in their stone sleep and her love Goliath was in permanent stone sleep. Her future self wanted her to use the stolen Phoenix Gate to rule the world, but the young Demona swore that she would never be like her corrupt future self. The Goliath of 1995 had travelled with them, and stopped the 1995 Demona from trying to beat her 975 self into doing what she said. Goliath told young Demona to obey her vows of love, to do nothing to prevent that future, and not to dwell on it. Young Demona used the Gate to teleport her future self and Goliath back to 975, where Goliath took himself, the future Demona, and three other time travellers, David, Petros, and Fox Xanatos back to 1995.

Upon her return, she was attacked by the Archmage, who believed that Demona had lost the Gate. She was protected by the Wyvern clan's leader, the gargoyle who would become known as Hudson. After that, young Goliath and Demona watched the marriage ceremony of Prince Malcolm of Wyvern and Princess Elena of Normandy, and exchanged tokens- the halves of the Phoenix Gate- to seal their vows of love, pledging to be together "now and forever." Goliath began calling his love his "Angel of the Night."

By AD 984, Demona was attempting to convince Goliath, who was now Hudson's second-in-command, to take over leadership of the Wyvern clan, but Goliath refused. Demona accompanied Hudson and Goliath on a mission to recapture the Grimorum Arcanorum from the Archmage, so that the Magus could use it to cure Prince Malcolm, whom the Archmage had poisoned. Demona was reluctant to go along, but she did, and the three successfully retrieved the Grimorum and Prince Malcolm was cured. During the battle, however, it was Goliath that saved the day, while Hudson was blinded in one eye. Hudson gave leadership of the clan to Goliath, and Goliath made Demona his second-in-command.

Later, between 984 and 994, Goliath and Demona conceived at least one egg between them, which was placed in Wyvern's rookery.

In AD 994, Demona, who was fed up with the humans of Castle Wyvern's ill treatment of the gargoyles, made a bargain with Castle Wyvern's Captain of the Guard. The deal was that Demona would have Goliath lead the clan away from Wyvern, so that a group of Vikings led by Hakon, could ransack the castle. The lack of gargoyles defending the castle combined with acts of sabotage enacted by the Captain would allow the Vikings to take the castle easily. Unfortunately, on the night before the attack, Demona was unable to convince Goliath to take the entire clan, and he only took himself and Hudson to supposedly scare off Hakon's vikings. In their absence, Demona, at the last minute, made a minor attempt to warn to of her rookery siblings, the gargoyles who would become Coldstone and Coldfire, of the Vikings' attack, but when the vikings were visible to her in the nearby forest, she lost her nerve. The Captain of the Guard swore to protect the gargoyles, but Demona, who didn't trust the Captain, hid in a seaside rock ledge below the castle, and spent the day there. When she awoke, she found the castle ransacked and her clan smashed to pieces. Terrified by what her plan had resulted in, she could not face Goliath, who had returned to Castle Wyvern along with Hudson and found what he thought was the shattered remnants of Demona. Panicking, she left the castle and decided to return later, planning to tell him that she had gotten lost looking for him. However, when she returned, she found, to her further horror, that her love, as well as the other surviving five gargoyles, had been put in permanent stone sleep. She blamed the entire disastrous night on the humans, and, after kissing Goliath goodbye, she left Wyvern.

Demona began taking her revenge on humans, first by slashing the face of a young boy named Gillecomgain. Little did she know the repercussions this act would have in the future...

During the next 26 years, Demona gathered the remants of other shattered Scottish clans into a clan of her own, which she led on raids to steal food and supplies from humans. She usually slew any humans who defended their food stores. Her clan wandered from place to place. Eventually, she began being hunted and attacked by a man known as the Hunter, who, unbeknownst to her, was Gillecomgain, the boy whose face she had slashed soon after the Castle Wyvern massacre.

In 1020, she tracked the Hunter to Castle Moray, where he had been hired and sent to assasinate Findlaech, the High Steward of Moray and the only person that could help his son, MacBeth, take the throne of Scotland away from Prince Duncan, who was the one who had hired the Hunter. During the battle between Demona and the Hunter, who succeeded in killing Findlaech, MacBeth and a young woman named Gruoch were in danger of falling to their deaths. Demona, who had apparently not yet fully overridden the gargoyle instinct to protect, saved the pair, which allowed the Hunter to escape. As a result, MacBeth felt that he owed Demona for saving his and Gruoch's life.

12 years later, in 1032, Demona was informed by three mysterious female gargoyles that the Hunter would be at Castle Moray, and they also tried to convince her to make an alliance with MacBeth. She refused, saying that she would never place her trust in a human again. However, she did go to Castle Moray to battle Gillecomgain. MacBeth helped her during the battle, and helped save her life, while Gillecomgain, their common foe, fell to his death. Before he died, Gillecomgain revealed that he was the boy whose face she had slashed just after the Castle Wyvern massacre. To his shock, however, she neither remembered nor cared about what she had done. Demona was curious why MacBeth had saved her, and he said he owed her. She then said that they were then now even, and Demona left.

8 more years later, in 1040, Demona and MacBeth had another common foe to face, the formerly Prince, but now King Duncan. He had taken on the identity of the Hunter, and moved against MacBeth, now the High Steward of Moray, Gruoch's husband, and the last threat to King Duncan's keeping the throne. The Weird Sisters manipulated events so that they would be willing to make a pact- MacBeth would give up his youth to Demona, in exchange that she and her clan would help MacBeth against Duncan. They both agreed to one another's terms, and the Weird Sisters cast a spell to not only give Demona her youth back, reverting her to the physical age of 70 in human years (35 in gargoyle years), but to also link the two so that each would feel the other's pain, and both would be immortal. In addition, the only way that both could finally die would be if one killed the other.

As per their agreement, Demona helped defeat Duncan, and MacBeth became the new High King of Scotland. He proclaimed that a new golden age would begin for Scotland, for all the clans in it, both human and gargoyle. MacBeth then made her his primary advisor, and he gave her her name, Demona, to which she said, "I like the sound of that." For the next 17 years, Demona and her clan protected Castle Moray, and Demona and MacBeth became good friends and allies.

In 1057, everything fell apart. Duncan's son, Canmore, who had been exiled to England, returned as the newest incarnation of the Hunter, and led a force of English to take over Scotland. The English were supposedly helping Canmore because MacBeth was aligned with gargoyles, whom the English saw as evil demons, and had supposedly eradicated them entirely from their lands. Demona and her gargoyles managed to keep the English at bay for a time, and after one of these battles, MacBeth's old friend Bodhe advised MacBeth to forswear the gargoyles, so that Canmore would lose his English support. MacBeth's son, Luach, thought that was out of the question, but MacBeth, who wanted to teach his son about being a king, told him that a wise ruler must consider all his options.

Unknown to them, however, Demona had heard the entire exchange, and now believed that he would betray her. To protect her clan, she made a deal with Canmore and the English. In exchange for their deserting the castle, thus allowing MacBeth to be easily defeated by the English forces' superior numbers, her clan would be safe from Canmore and the English's wrath. Thus, her clan left the castle, and Castle Moray was conquered. Fortunately, MacBeth escaped with Gruoch, but they were confonted by Canmore and Demona, who accused MacBeth of planning to betray her clan. He vehemently denied it, and while they argued, Canmore fatally stabbed MacBeth, killing him. Demona died as well, proving to Canmore that the rumors of their being linked by sorcery were true. He assumed that when one died, both died. Canmore left Gruoch alone, having no quarrel with her and mentioned that he had smashed the rest of her clan as well. Soon after he left, Luach and Bodhe came, and saw that MacBeth was dead. Luach became the new High King of Scotland, and as he and Bodhe left, leaving Gruoch a moment in peace, the Weird Sisters appeared, and informed her that Canmore had it backwards. It was not that when one died, both died, but that while one lives, both lives, and Demona came back to life at that point. Furious at Demona, Gruoch told her that the English had destroyed her clan. Demona did not at first believe her, but she left. MacBeth revived at that point, and Gruoch told him, so that Luach would not lose his loyal Scotsmen, who would now fear MacBeth as a sorcerer, MacBeth would have to leave his old life behind. Thus began an over 900-year enmity between the two immortals Demona and MacBeth.

For the next 937 years, Demona travelled widely. She further studied sorcery and hoarded wealth. At some point, she met the Child of Oberon known as Puck. She was also hunted by numerous Hunters, descendants of Canmore, who carried on the feud, even though after a while, they no longer even knew why they did so.

In 1495, Demona started constructing a master plan for her ultimate goal- the total and utter annihilation of the human race. She believed, and still believes, that for the gargoyle race to survive, all humans must be wiped from the face of the earth. To that end, she traveled to Florence, Italy, where she picked up the Medici Tablet, which was inscribed with a incantation called the Fulfillment Spell. The spell was too powerful for her to control then, but, being an immortal, she had plenty of time to wait. As she left, she was attacked by a Renaissance version of the Hunter, but she escaped him.

At some point after this, she traveled to America. In 1980 she traveled to the Notre Dame Cathedral, in Paris, France. She picked up another vital part of her master plan, the Praying Gargoyle statuette. She was attacked by another Hunter there, Charles Canmore, whom she quickly threw off the Cathedral to his death, in front of his three children, Jon, Robyn, and Jason.

After this, she was introduced to David Xanatos by Owen Burnett, who had met her centuries earlier as Puck. The two formed an alliance, and she agreed to help him in his endeavor to move Castle Wyvern and reawaken the six remaining members of the Wyvern clan, whom they would control.

In 1994, the clan was reawakened. Demona hid for the first few days they were there, waiting for the right moment. A few days after they awoke, Demona revealed herself to them, and lied, saying that she had went after Goliath and was caught far outside the castle and became lost. By the time she returned, she claimed, Goliath and his clan were in permanent stone sleep, and she begged the Magus to freeze her in stone too, so that they would awaken together. Xanatos then claimed that he saw her statue and was impressed enough to put it in his private art collection. When he rose the castle above the clouds and saw what it did to the rest of the clan, he claimed, he deduced that bringing Demona to Castle Wyvern would have a similar effect. Of course, this was entirely a fabrication.

Supposedly in gratitude for bringing Goliath and herself back together, Demona convinced Goliath to have his clan "retrieve" three computer disks from Xanatos Enterprises rival Cyberbiotics. Demona and Goliath went to the Cyberbiotics Air Fortress, a massive airship, to retrieve one of the disks. Extreme anti-human actions Demona took while here, culminating in the destruction of the Air Fortress, made Goliath realize that the Demona he was with now was not the "Angel of the Night" he had known in 994, and he told her of this. This made Xanatos conclude that the gargoyles were too difficult to control. Demona was convinced of this too, and she convinced Xanatos to test the real reasons why Xanatos wanted the disks- gargoyle robots called the Steel Clan- against her former clan. The Trio of Brooklyn, Broadway, and Lexington were caught by surprise, but thanks to Goliath, the clan defeated their robotic replacements. Demona revealed her true nature, nearly hitting Goliath with a bazooka shell, and giving him one last chance to join her against humanity. He would not, and she concluded that if he was not her ally then he was her enemy. Just as Demona was about to eliminate Goliath once and for all, NYPD Detective Elisa Maza came in, and tackled Demona, throwing off her shot so that she hit a castle tower above them, which crashed down and caused both Demona and Elisa to fall. Goliath had to choose between saving Elisa or Demona, who was unable to glide due to falling rubble. He saved Elisa. Demona managed to survive, but now held a special hatred for Elisa Maza, who had disrupted her plans and whom Goliath had saved instead of her.

Her next plan against the clan was to trick Brooklyn into helping take mental control of Goliath with the Grimorum Arcanorum. When her true intent was revealed, Brooklyn turned against her and, with Elisa's help, removed the spell over Goliath. She did manage to tear a handful of pages from the Grimorum, the spells in which she used in the future.

She later tried to poison Elisa Maza in an attempt to lure Goliath to his doom, but, unknown to her until later, she missed. To prevent Demona's knowing of this, Hudson and Goliath still came to her trap, and fell into it. However, Hudson protected a wounded Goliath until dawn, and the next night, he was fully healed and too much for Demona to handle. She remained convinced that Elisa was dead for a short while, but she soon learned that the detective still lived.

With Xanatos, she created the cyborg gargoyle Coldstone from the shattered remains of three gargoyles, with the missing parts filled in with cybernetics. The creation of science of sorcery was convinced to fight with Xanatos and Demona against Goliath and his clan for a while, but he soon changed sides, and Demona nearly killed Goliath. If Coldstone had not blocked the shot, Goliath would have died. She wished to continue fighting the clan, but Xanatos took her away from the battleground against her will.

After the Coldstone incident, Demona's plans took on a grander scale. She next stole Titania's Mirror from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and used it to summon the Child of Oberon, Puck. Her plans regarding Puck were "misinterpreted" by him, however, eventually resulting in the populace of Manhattan being transformed into gargoyles, and Goliath's clan being transformed into humans. She attacked Goliath's clan while they were human, but she was defeated thanks to the help of Elisa Maza, who had also been transformed into a gargoyle. Goliath released Puck in exchange for restoring Manhattan to normalcy, and when Puck left, he took Demona with him, seeking to "reward" her for giving him such a good time. She simply wanted the annoying fay to leave, which insulted him. So he gave her a wish she had mentioned earlier, that of not turning to stone by day. So he granted it- she now turned into a human by day.

She next attended Xanatos's wedding to Fox, and tricked Goliath into giving her the other half of the Phoenix Gate, which she used to transport herself, Goliath, and David, Petros, and Fox Xanatos to the year 975. She showed her 975 self the carnage of the Castle Wyvern Massacre of 994, and attempted to convince her 975 self to use the Gate to manipulate time to her bidding, but her 975 self refused, refusing to become like her 1995 self. The 1995 Demona was about to beat her 975 self into doing what she said, but the 1995 Goliath, who had been taken along to 994, stopped her. After the 975 Demona took the three back to 975, Goliath returned himself, Demona, and the Xanatoses to 1995.

Her next plan was one of her grandest in scale. She tricked Xanatos into allowing her to broadcast, on all New York City television signals, a magical spell that turned all who saw and heard it into stone at night. She then proceeded to smash all the petrified humans she found. However, she was tracked down by another Hunter, who attacked her at Pack Media Studios when she confronted Xanatos there. She managed to escape this Hunter, whom she quickly realized was actually MacBeth. The next night, Demona snuck into Castle Wyvern, where she planned to smash the stone statues of Owen Burnett and Elisa Maza, but was stopped by Bronx. So, instead, she altered a countdown sequence on Xanatos's computer. He and the Manhattan clan came up with a plan to undo her spell, which was designed to end when the sky burned. So, by gliding across the sky and spreading flammable gases in the air, which would then be set afire by exploding Steel Clan robots, the sky would temporarily be set afire. However, the explosions were set to go off after a certain time, and Demona tampered with the countdown, causing it to be accelerated so that the explosions would not set the sky on fire, but would instead kill Xanatos and the clan.

Right after she altered the countdown, however, she was confronted by "the Hunter," whom she told to reveal his true identity of MacBeth. MacBeth and Demona then engaged one another in a highly destructive battle, which Goliath, Xanatos, and then the trio of fay sorceresses known as the Weird Sisters interceded in. A fall to the Arboretum level of the Eyrie Building knocked Demona unconscious, but the Weird Sisters convinced him to let her live, even though after over 900 years of immortality, he wanted to die. The Weird Sisters managed to convince her that much of the bad things that had happened to her were her own doing, and this convinced her to give away the passcode that would allow Xanatos to correct the accelerated countdown, the word "alone." She was not convinced for long, though, and she quickly resumed her previous mindset that humanity as a whole was responsible for her pain. The Weird Sisters then took Demona and MacBeth, and left. Afterwards, Xanatos changed the countdown back, and Demona's spell was undone.

After the Weird Sisters abducted Demona and MacBeth, the two became the Sisters' unknowing servants. They were influenced to steal the Grimorum Arcanorum, Phoenix Gate, and Eye of Odin from the Manhattan clan, and they reactivated Coldstone, allowing his third, evil personality to gain control. The three then captured the clan, and Demona revealed that she now turned to human by day to Elisa, and told her that she was at Belvedere Castle in Central Park. She gave her a choice- if Elisa came to save the clan, she would surely die. If she didn't come, Demona would use that to demonstrate the untrustworthiness of humans to Goliath before she killed him. Elisa decided to come to Belvedere Castle at high noon, and Elisa and the human Demona fought. During the battle, the primary, good persona of Coldstone was able to regain control, and he turned on MacBeth and Demona. MacBeth and Demona escaped. They returned to MacBeth's manor, where the spell began to wear off and their animosity towards one another began to manifest once more. Before they could attack one another, however, the Weird Sisters paralyzed them, picked up the three mystical talismans they had stolen, and took them, once more in their thrall, to the watery gate of Avalon.

They were given to the Archmage as his puppets, and he used them to attack the Avalonian gargoyles. When Goliath was brought to Avalon to help, he made an appeal to their better natures, briefly breaking their enchantment, but the Archmage simply reinforced it. Demona single-handedly wounded a large number of the Avalon clan's members while enchanted, but she was eventually taken out by Princess Katherine using Demona's own laser cannon. Goliath forced the Weird Sisters to remove their spell on Demona and MacBeth, and they were sent adrift into the mists of Avalon, with no recollection of anything they had done while under the Sisters' spell.

They appeared in Paris, France. There, Demona met Thailog, a clone of Goliath with a Xanatos-like outlook on life, and, as she said, it was "love at first flight." She began using her daylight humanity to her advantage, creating the human identity of Dominique Destine. She and Thailog concocted a plan to gain a large amount of wealth from MacBeth. As Dominque Destine, she began romancing MacBeth, who used the identity of Lennox MacDuff. She eventually became engaged to be married to him, and they were to be married at about the same time Goliath, Angela, Elisa, and Bronx appeared on their Avalon journey.

The Avalon travellers became entangled in the plan, and managed to help stop it, although Demona did manage to marry MacBeth. Unbeknownst to her, Thailog planned to have MacBeth and Demona kill one another, so that he, as Demona's sole business partner, would inherit both Demona's and MacBeth's wealth. The two did try to kill one another, but Demona was temporarily killed by Elisa using one of MacBeth's electron discharge guns. Elisa did this to prevent them from killing one another and so that Thailog's plan wouldn't succeed. Demona briefly got a glimpse of Angela, who, though she didn't know it yet, was hers and Goliath's daughter. As soon as she did, though, Thailog picked her up and the pair left, for Demona did not yet know of his treachery.

During the fiasco in Paris, Demona and Thailog (in their guises of Dominique Destine and Alexander Thailog, respectively) combined their wealth to form a new corporation, Nightstone Unlimited. They also discovered that Angela was the daughter of Demona and Goliath, and Demona began composing a plan to convince her daughter to join her side.

After the Avalon travelers returned to New York, Demona began her plan to recruit Angela and create her own clan. She hired Dr. Anton Sevarius to make a number of clones of the clan, including clones of Brooklyn, Lexington, Broadway, and Hudson, which she named Malibu, Brentwood, Hollywood, and Burbank, respectively. She then deliberately attracted the clan's attention with robberies of high technology, and allowed herself to be captured. She was imprisoned in the Labyrinth for the next several months, while the clone clan grew and she told Angela her life from her point of view. She began to have affectionate, maternal feelings towards her daughter.

Eventually, over three months after her capture, Thailog broke her out, and, taking Fang with them, they led the clan, along with Talon, into a trap in a carnival funhouse. Inside, the clones took out their originals, Fang took out Talon, and Thailog and Demona captured Goliath and Angela. Thailog let slip that Demona was trying to convert her to her side, and Angela was furious at that seeming betrayal, as it now seemed that the warmth that Demona had shown to her was all a falsehood. At that point, citing Demona's failure to convert her, Thailog threatened to kill her, but this made Demona attack Thailog to protect her daughter. Thailog had anticipated this, and unveiled her replacement, a hybrid named Delilah, created from the combined DNA of Demona herself and Elisa Maza, and designed to be his ideal, subservient mate. When he ordered Delilah to kill Angela, Demona released the clan so that Goliath would protect Angela. Demona then battled Thailog, and their battle wound up being on a roller coaster track. The track was set afire by electrical blasts from Talon and Fang, and eventually, as they fought, the track collapsed, and both were seemingly killed.

Both Demona and Thailog survived, but it was never revealed how. Soon after this incident, Demona's 501-year-old plan to annihilate humanity came to fruition. She had thugs steal the disinfectant solution DI-7 from a Xanatos Enterprises warehouse, and hired Dr. Anton Sevarius to create a carrier virus designated as CV-1000. Her plan was that, on holy ground, specifically St. Damien's Cathedral, on the night of the Hunter's Moon, she would use the Fulfillment Spell inscribed on the Medici Tablet to merge the CV-1000 carrier virus and the DI-7 disinfectant into a plague that would wipe out all sentient life on Earth, save gargoyles, who would be protected by the Praying Gargoyle statuette. Unfortunately, she made two fatal errors. One, she recorded all of this information onto a computer diskette, and two, she made the mistake of hiring a woman named Robyn Correy as her new assistant.

Unknown to Demona, Robyn Correy was actually Robyn Canmore, one of the three current Hunters, who had come to Manhattan searching for her. They were drawn there by urban legends and rumors of gargoyles in the city. When her thugs failed to steal the DI-7, she got it herself, although the Trio tried to stop her. Meanwhile, the Hunters attacked Goliath's clan, and nearly killed Angela, whom they thought was Demona. Demona and Goliath formed a temporary alliance against the Hunters when both Demona and Goliath, with Brooklyn and Lexington, snuck onto the Hunters' aircraft. Upon seeing the presently enraged and vengeful Goliath, who wanted revenge for the attack on Angela, she noted that Goliath and herself may not be so different after all. After they seemingly killed two of the three Hunters, Demona left the other three gargoyles' company and began to bring her plan about.

Unfortunately for Demona, "Robyn Correy" had figured out that Dominique Destine was Demona, and stole the disk that contained the information about her plan. The Hunters, who had just suffered the seeming loss of their leader, Jason Canmore, attacked her as she entered St. Damien's Cathedral. However, they were attacked by the Manhattan clan, who wanted revenge for Elisa, whom they thought had been killed. This allowed Demona to move into another room of the cathedral, but before she could fully cast her spell, she was attacked by Brooklyn, but she defeated him and managed to cast her spell, but Goliath smashed the Praying Gargoyle, forcing Demona to give up her 501-year-old plan. She managed to escape the clan, and escaped to battle another day.

In the Goliath Chronicles, Demona allied with a man known as the Assassin, and, having him try to kill Goliath, tried to make herself look like she'd reformed in the eyes of Angela. Unfortunately, the Assassin, who was working with the Quarrymen, ruined the deception, and Angela once again felt betrayed, something for which Demona felt true remorse.

In the "Future Tense" reality, Demona joined the resistance against Xanatos, and eventually fell in love with its leader, Brooklyn. She had somehow learned that Angela was her daughter, as well. During the final assault on the Eyrie Pyramid, she was disintegrated by Xanatos in cyberspace. She may have been able to regenerate from even that, but it was never seen.