Demona

Demona is a fictional character in the animated television series Gargoyles, voiced by Marina Sirtis. One of the primary antagonists in the series, Demona was once Goliath's lover and part of the Gargoyle Clan. She is consumed by a hatred of humanity, and has attempted several times to destroy it.

10th century
Demona was a member of the Gargoyle clan at Castle Wyvern, Goliath's mate and second-in-command. Like the rest of the clan, Demona originally had no formal name (though Goliath frequently referred to her as his "Angel of the Night".) The two mated and eventually had a daughter, Angela, who would join the Manhattan Clan 1000 years into the future.

Resentful of human prejudice toward her clan, Demona conspired with the Captain of the Guard to betray the humans inhabiting Castle Wyvern to the Vikings; However, Demona failed to convince Goliath to get the gargoyles away from the castle - her end of the bargain - and the clan was slaughtered during daylight. When Goliath returned with Hudson, he was devastated to see the murder of his clan, which he believed included his lover. Demona abandoned the castle with the intent of coming back once he had calmed down, returning only to find six survivors, including Goliath, under the Magus' stone sleep curse. This broke her heart, beginning the downward spiral in Demona's life of loneliness and pain.

Thousand-year interim
Alone for several years, Demona had an encounter with a child named Gillecomgain, (based loosely on Gilla Coemgáin of Moray), scarring his face during a petty theft. Gillecomgain becomes The Hunter, a mercenary and assassin seeking revenge against her.

She is later joined by surviving Gargoyles from other clans in 997. During the year she encounters a time lost Brooklyn, who convinces her and the clan to help Kenneth III to fight against Constantine. Though she agrees, she plans to retrieve the Grimorum after it is taken by Constantine's sorceror Brother Valmont. After Kenneth's side has won the battle, the Phoenix (from The Phoenix Gate) is about to take Brooklyn to another time period. Knowing he can't leave the Grimorum with Demona (since she wants to take over Scotland with it), Brooklyn offers to hold it while she takes out her half of The Phoenix Gate and while Brooklyn is whisked away.

Demona allies herself with a young Macbeth to kill their common enemy of Gillecomgain.

Later, an elderly Demona enters into a bargain with Macbeth; Macbeth entered it to protect his kingdom from his cousin Duncan I of Scotland, while Demona wanted her youth back so she could lead the last of her kind. The pact is facilitated by the Weird Sisters, with several side effects: pain felt by one is shared with the other when in close proximity, and both are immortal unless one is killed by the other (as long as one of them is still alive, the other cannot be killed through any other means). Little did they realize that they were becoming pawns as part of a greater plot by the Weird Sisters and the evil Archmage from Castle Wyvern to take over the mystical island of Avalon in the 20th century.

Macbeth himself soon comes to admire Demona's combat prowess, and eventually becomes heavily dependent on Demona's clan for support in the war with Duncan's forces. In the final battle with Duncan, Demona's devastating attacks so impress Macbeth, he exclaimed "You fight like a demon!" After becoming king, Macbeth calls her "Demona" (She-Demon) for the first time, a name she finds very pleasing, and simultaneously declares her as his primary adviser. The two become fast friends, and it appears that Demona's life may turn around for the better.

Eventually, Demona's trust in Macbeth evaporates after overhearing Macbeth's courtier advising him on severing their ties with the Gargoyles in order to win the support of the English. Fearing that this would come to pass (though Macbeth strongly denies it), she abandons his forces to Duncan's son Canmore and the English armies. Canmore, in turn, betrays her, killing the last of her clan.

Demona would not enter into another alliance with a human for almost a thousand years. During the intervening time, she amasses a substantial fortune, while plotting her revenge on humanity; all the while being hunted by Canmore's descendants, who take up the mask of the Hunter. One hunter attacked her in Florence in 1495. According to Greg Weisman: In 1920, Demona would encounter a hunter, Fiona Canmore in Paris, France. This event would have been seen in the unfinished Team Atlantis series. She encounters and kills another hunter named Charles Canmore in Paris in 1980.

20th century
Some time before 1994, Demona allied herself with David Xanatos, gets him the Grimorum Arcanorum, and tells him about the spell put upon the Gargoyles at Castle Wyvern. This leads Xanatos to bringing the castle to Manhattan and waking up Goliath and the rest of the clan. Despite her and Xanatos's efforts to manipulate them, the clan refused to join her vendetta and actively opposes her. She later assisted Xanatos in resurrecting one of the dead Gargoyles from Wyvern, Coldstone, attempted to murder Elisa Maza, and also tried to exterminate humanity on numerous occasions; first by having Puck destroy them (which failed: he impishly "destroyed" the humans by turning them into gargoyles), and then used magic to turn them into stone during the night, allowing her to go on a vicious murder spree. When magic and sorcery failed, she turned to science by hiring geneticist and villain Anton Sevarius, to help create a virus that would destroy all human life on Earth. (Though knowing Demona to be genocidal, it is unclear whether or not Sevarius actually gave her what she asked for, though she assumed he had.)

When she was invited to Xanatos and Fox's wedding as the bridesmaid, with Goliath as the best man. However, it was a plot to restore the Phoenix Gate. The four traveled back to 975 AD, where Xanatos will fulfill his own destiny while she showed her past self her clan frozen during the night. These events lead up to her hatred of humanity.

Demona is also granted a "gift" by the magical being Puck: after requesting that he make her able to walk in daylight without turning to stone, he arranges that Demona transforms into a human during the day ("The Mirror"). The transformation is incredibly painful and it hurts Macbeth when he is in proximity as part of their binding spell. Though initially furious at Puck's trick -she had wanted to be a gargoyle during the day, not a human- she realized the positive uses of her human form as she later took up the alias of Dominique Destine. Using the immense fortune and resources that she acquired over the years, she formed a company called Nightstone Unlimited and became its CEO. She uses the company to further her goals when she cannot as a Gargoyle. She allied herself with Goliath's evil clone Thailog to first, steal Macbeth's fortune, and when failing that, creating their own version of the Manhattan Clan through cloning. Though, the ever treacherous Thailog had other plans and betrayed her, leaving her for dead after a fight with the Manhattan Clan. She was later revealed to be alive.

At the end of the show's run, she was still trying to successfully execute her ultimate plan of the destruction of the human race while trying to reach out to her daughter Angela, and win her over to her cause.

Demona was last seen on Halloween in St Damien's Cathedral recovering the crystal ruins of the Praying Gargoyle.

Powers and abilities
Demona possesses most of the standard superhuman attributes common to all members of her race. Demona is superhumanly strong, sufficiently so to easily crush or shatter guns in her grasp. Demona's agility, reflexes, and stamina are also much greater than those of a human. Her body is somewhat tougher and more resistant to certain kinds of injury than those of humans. She can withstand great impact forces, such as being struck with a blunt object or falling from several stories or being struck by a superhumanly strong being, that would severely injure or kill a human being. However, Demona can be injured by conventional bullets, bladed weapons, or more advanced weaponry, such as lasers, just as easily as a human can. Also, Demona's eyes glow a deep red when she is angry, unlike male gargoyles, whose eyes glow white.

Demona, like all Gargoyles, has a physiology that is a hybrid of human and reptilian features. While she has all of the mannerisms and most of her physical characteristics are human, some of her bodily functions are distinctly reptilian. For example, Gargoyle females lay eggs just as most reptile species do. Demona possesses large, bat-like wings that she is able to use to glide on currents of air, though she can't actually fly. She has to be a good distance above the ground in order to take off. Her fingers and toes end in very sharp and powerful claws. Combined with her great strength, her claws are capable of rending most materials including stone and most types of metals. Demona also has a long, prehensile tail that she uses to help keep herself balanced while in flight or while running at high speeds. She can also use this tail as a weapon and even to wrap around objects and grip them if she chooses to. As seen in a number of episodes, items held by a Gargoyle often will turn to stone as well. This can be seen with Demona in the episode 11 "Long Way To Morning" where her laser gun turns to stone with her.

Due to the spell cast upon her by the Weird Sisters, Demona is functionally immortal in the sense that she no longer ages and cannot die through conventional means. The spell that binds her and MacBeth states that they can only be killed by one another. Also, they can experience one another's pain if they are in very close proximity to one another. For instance, if they're in the same room and MacBeth is struck or injured, Demona will feel it and vice versa.

Demona no longer transforms into stone during the day as other Gargoyles do. Due to a spell cast upon her by Puck, she physically transforms into a human female during the day and back into her true Gargoyle form at night. The process takes only a few seconds but is extremely painful to endure, likely because her entire body is literally reshaping itself every time the transformation occurs.

Demona had secretly studied with the Archmage and had developed an aptitude in sorcery. Also, due to her greatly extended lifespan and experience, she has also become quite adept at understanding and using advanced technology. Demona is also a highly formidable combatant, both armed and unarmed. She is particularly skilled with a broad variety of weaponry ranging from swords to the most advanced firearms. She also has a general understanding of chemical compounds, although she is nowhere in the league of the likes of Anton Sevarius.

Her skills in other fields such as driving, or any other of the more mundane human activities taken for granted by humans are unknown. Although she seems to have a keen business sense (Nightstone Unlimited is still in business even by the end of the series, with Demona as the CEO), this may not translate into knowledge of other human skills. She has however, learned over the millennium of her life things which proved difficult for Goliath and Hudson to adapt to, although Brooklyn, Broadway, and Lexington were quick studies.

Demona at one point possessed a number of pages torn from the Grimorum, the majority of which are presumably still in her possession, which leaves her with formidable magical weapons she can bring to bear against the Manhattan Clan and humanity in general. She has thus far invoked three different spells from the Grimorum, two of which were ripped out of the book after the failure of the first. The first such spell was an attempt to turn Goliath into a slave of whoever held the spell which ensnared his mind. Originally this spell was contained within the book itself, but Brooklyn tore it from its pages in order to keep her from using Goliath any further. The second spell she used was taken from the torn pages of the grimorum, and was used during the four part 'City of Stone' story arc. The last spell was used in the Hunter's Moon episodes in which she intended to use a mix of sorcery and science to destroy all other intelligent life on Earth except for the Gargoyle species. Although each attempt at the use of magic to achieve her goals has been thwarted, the remaining pages she possesses, if any, means she has many other methods by which she might yet achieve her desire for the elimination of mankind. Whether or not she ever used them are unknown, as the series came to an end after the events of the third season spinoff The Goliath Chronicles. In one of the spin-offs originally pitched by series creater Weisman, Demona would have eventually reformed during one of the Gargoyle spin-off ideas set in the far future. This would indicate that whatever weapons or plots she had at her disposal, they either failed, or she simply did not use them.