Page 78 of Guardian

“—which was later proven incorrect,” Wes interrupted quickly.

“Yes,” Virginia conceded. “But at the time, I was furious. At him, at the demons. I wanted to kill Wes, so I raced to his cell and opened it. I made the mistake of stepping inside the lead cell…”

Logan nodded. “It diminished your powers, sucked out your strength.”

“That was my luck,” Wes said, “or I would be dead now.”

“Anyway,” Virginia continued, “a demon attacked us while we were in the cell. I wasn’t strong enough, but Wes saved me in the end. He proved to me that he wasn’t with the demons.” A tender look passed between them. “When the self-destruct alarm sounded, we raced to the portal. We were the last two people in the building. We managed to get in, but it seemed to take forever for the portal to close. The countdown had already started.”

“What did you concentrate on when you were in the portal? What location?” Logan asked eagerly.

Virginia shrugged. “I don’t know. I just wanted to get out of there before the whole place blew. I was angry at the demons. I wanted to kick their asses.”

“Yeah, we all did when we heard about it.”

“That’s all I was thinking about, and then suddenly the portal shook, and we got tossed around. At first I thought we’d been blown up with the portal and were buried in its rubble, but we realized pretty quickly that the portal had transported us to the Underworld.”

“It was a pretty big explosion,” Wes added.

“Tell me again exactly what you were thinking when the portal blew up,” Logan demanded.

Virginia sighed. “I already told you. I wanted to kick the demons’ asses. I wanted to go down there and beat the shit out of them.”

Logan jumped up. “That’s it!”

Virginia stared at him, saying nothing.

Wesley asked, “What?”

“Virginia said she was thinking of going down there to beat the shit out of them. She was furious, full of anger and hate, and then the portal blew.”

Wes rose. “I think I know where you’re going with this.” Excited, he continued, “The reason we landed in the Underworld were three things: the explosion, Virginia’s anger coupled with the thought of wanting to go into the Underworld to beat their asses, and voila: you’re in the Underworld.”

Logan nodded. “A strong emotion, a release of massive energy, and concentrating on the location while in the portal. Put these three things together, and you can enter the Underworld.” He looked at Virginia, who hadn’t said a word since Wesley and he had started making their assumptions. “Don’t you think it will work, Virginia?”

“You mean sticking you in a portal and blowing it up?” she asked with a raised eyebrow.

“Exactly.”

“It won’t,” she claimed.

“But it worked for you and Wes,” Logan protested. “We just need to try. It has to be it. It has to work.”

“You’ll end up dead,” she said.

“You can’t know that.”

Virginia shot up from the couch. “I do know.”

Her words made him pause for a second. “What? What are you saying?”

Virginia huffed.

“What are you not telling us, babe?” Wes asked, walking toward his wife.

Virginia looked at Wes then back at Logan. “Goddamn it! We tried, okay? The council figured it out after we got back from the Underworld. When I was debriefed, I met with the brightest minds of our species and we dissected what had happened to me and Wes. And we figured it out. But it didn’t work.”

“How can you know it didn’t?” Logan asked.