It was going to happen tonight, again and again. Sunnydale was a one horse town with three legs but he had always made it work for him. It had been so long since his last hunt, his last kill. He stalked his prey with finesse, he knew all about them and their habits.
This one was a blonde, it wasn't really important. What was important was that it stuck to Harry's rules. The same rules that helped him survive and evade. Know your target and know their weaknesses.
Night was his cover; it was in fitting to the hole that resided inside him. Empty, that's exactly what he was.
This one was a true monster, seven kills in five days. A whole family devoured by the beast. It was exactly what Xander needed. It was a way for the emptiness inside him to be slightly satiated if only for an hour.
None of his friends were out tonight; he had made sure of that. Buffy had come down with some kind of bug and she was in bed resting. With the slayer out of the way there's not much chance of any of the others picking up the slack.
Dawn, Willow and Tara were watching movies at the Summers residence. Giles was categorising his entire collection of demon literature in some sort of archaic referencing system. Spike was busy pretending to be the killer he once was, probably scaring up some blood from a demon he could still hurt.
Tonight was Xander's night.
He had to go by the book, which was the way Harry had taught him but Harry had been blind to the world back when he was still alive and the book was obsolete. You could tell these monsters apart from the kind Harry had hunted, their disfigured faces clear for the world to see and hide from.
They still bleed.
Maybe one day he would turn to another outlet, another kind of prey. Maybe one day he would even turn against humans. But when the world is filled with the horrors that he now knows exist, there's plenty of things to kill to sate the hunger inside.
There wasn't much of a chase when it came to vampires. They all had this built in god complex thinking they were untouchable. He had proved them wrong on so many occasions, the bathtub of holy water in his secret place having devoured many beasts in its lifetime.
His face was his real one tonight. The mask was removed for these special occasions. He didn't have to pretend to feel anything when he was hunting. He didn't have to pretend to care about Willow's day or Buffy's new haircut. Pretending was the way he survived; nobody could really know or understand the darkness that he carried with him.
Even the soul less beasts that roamed the streets of Sunnydale didn't really understand the thrill of the kill. They perpetuated their own mythos, a circle of death spiralling out of control. Xander was always in control, he hunted not because of some tired old story of vampires ruling the earth. He hunted because it filled him up.
He was like a junkie with an addiction. A dark passenger was along for the ride of his life, always whispering and cajoling. It always wanted more, more and more.
There are plenty of toxins out there particularly meant to paralyze living things, but disabling an unliving thing was an entirely different concept. Through the back streets, shops and doors of the world you could find almost anything.
Xander jabbed the needle into the jugular of his prey, feeling the exertion and exhilaration of the world feeling right. The vampire fell without a murmur and he dragged its lifeless carcass to the back of his car and deposited it in the trunk.
It would wake up in time for the party, wrapped in copper wire that had been soaked in holy water.
Tonight the dark passenger was free.