The double doors to the club's main meeting room swung open to admit a slightly dishevelled figure wearing a crumpled suit; he had the weary face of a man who had just travelled a long way at short notice. He looked around at the forty or so men and women gathered there and subconsciously attempted to smooth out some of the wrinkles in his jacket.

"Am I the last to arrive?" he asked without apology. Spender stepped forward from a small group stood huddled in the centre of the room and nodded curtly.

"Now that Dr Reynolds is here we can begin. You have all heard that Alex Krycek was found dead this morning?" Spender addressed the room. There was a general murmur of assent from all around. "Our group is being targeted. I have also received the same note that Krycek and Dr Scanlon received in the days before their deaths." He reached inside his jacket and withdrew the note from his pocket. All around him, the other assembled members began rummaging in pockets and purses, one by one they each drew out a note. Each was the same, the same three simple words written in an identical feminine, cursive script in the centre of the paper. There was a slight murmur of conversation as notes were shown around, whispered comparisons of when and where they had been received. Eventually all eyes turned back to Spender who had returned his own note back to his pocket. "Clearly we are all in danger," he told the room.

"Do we know the manner of the threat?" a crisp male voice asked, several heads turned to its source.

"We believe it to be vampire," Spender replied.

"Vampire?" exclaimed a woman on the other side of the room. "Why would they choose to attack us now? They have always chosen to remain neutral, or deigned to ally themselves with us for financial gain occasionally. They have no concerns for our politics, our plans."

"If they were to learn of the plans for colonisation, then they may not feel so neutral," the first man replied. Murmuring broke out again. "We do not know what the aliens' plans for their population would entail but we can be certain that the vampire population would not go down without fighting." There was a hum of concerned agreement.

"They could be a great ally," a second man suggested. "Have we tested a vampire in battle with one of the colonists?"

"If you can find me a vampire who would willingly walk into one of our research facilities then I will happily accept that pigs fly," the first man retorted, "they may not care for us or our plans but they know what we tried to do to them once. They would never ally themselves with a group who work hand in hand with the colonists; even if they were to survive colonisation their food source would be destroyed, tainted with alien DNA. Not all are content to live off animals."

"How then, do you feel we should proceed?" Spender asked the room as it grew quiet again, extinguishing his cigarette into an ashtray on a nearby table.

"We need to establish if the killer is indeed a vampire," a third man suggested. "Talk with our contacts in their community. If the killer is not vampire then we must find out who is behind this and stop them."

"And if it is a vampire?" asked the woman, all eyes turned back to the third man.

"Then we must find a way to destroy the one responsible."

"Oh I don't think you'll ever manage that," a musical female voice announced from the doorway. Everyone turned to look and several people gasped in fright. A redheaded woman stood leaning against the door frame. She appeared to be surveying the scene with mild amusement.

"No," Spender breathed.

"Oh yes," she replied to him, "you can't get rid of me that easily." She sashayed forward into the room, eyes fixed onto Spender's. Several people began shuffling back toward the walls, no ones eyes ever leaving the woman as she approached Spender. She broke eye contact with him and addressed the room. "Did you honestly believe you could control the future of the human race from inside your offices?" she asked. "Did you think you could sell out your own species to save yourselves and no one would find out, no one would try to stop you."

"We did what we did for the benefit of humanity," a woman replied, her voice small and unsure. "To try and salvage what we could."

"And did you ever consult humanity?" the redhead asked. "Ever bother to give us the opportunity to decide our own fates? You tried to bring about colonisation but you failed, tried to save yourselves at the expense of the rest of mankind. Did you ever, ever think you would be allowed to get away with it? Did you think for one moment that the universe itself would allow such a betrayal? The hope of the world in exchange for the lives of cowards?"

"If you kill us now, there will be no one to stand against them," the first man told her. She smiled.

"Once again you underestimate your own species," she told him. "Humanity is strong, people are not the cowards you find in this room. You have sought each other out to justify your cowardice and now," she paused for a moment. "you will pay." She stepped towards Spender again and someone screamed. Several people suddenly broke for the exit but before they could reach it the double doors once again swung open, this time revealing twenty beautiful men and women. The vampires didn't appear to think, they simply moved, cutting off all the exits and taking down the group member by member. In the middle of the room, Spender stood unmoving, his blue eyes locked with the ruby red eyes of the redheaded woman. They heard the noises around them, the screaming and the thuds as bodies dropped to the floor but neither turned to look.

"You told me once that you'd been a destroyer all your life," she told him, "I see now how true that is."

"You think that by destroying us that you will save the world somehow?" he asked her.

"Maybe, maybe not, but humanity deserves to know the truth. The human race can be vicious, cruel and evil, but it can also be capable of the greatest acts of self-sacrifice and love. To deny humanity the chance to make the right choices for themselves is to permit the greatest indignity against it, if the human race is doomed to extinction, then they deserve the opportunity to go down fighting, not be betrayed by a shadow, who sold them out for his own benefit." She closed the space between them, so close now he should have been able to feel her breath on his skin. Its absence caused him to feel fear for the first time, as he looked into her eyes and truly realised what she had become.

"You're not a killer," he told her. She laughed at him.

"I wasn't when you knew me. I had killed men back then but only to save others, its different now. I know what I have to do." Her eyes shone dangerously. "You deserve to die. I should make you suffer, should make you beg for death but even now, even in this body I could never be as cruel as you have been." Spender looked into her eyes and felt a shudder of fear as he began to understand her. "You made me what I am," she told him, "you robbed me of my only child, my hope for a family of my own. You destroyed the man I loved before my eyes, broke him piece by piece until he had nothing left but me. Then you took my life as well, just to destroy him. You stole away the things that made me human, you left me to die just to destroy your own son. But it didn't work. I found a way to keep fighting and I took it. I became this, less than human but a better person than you could ever hope to be. And Mulder? He kept on going, you tried to destroy him and you failed because he was never yours to destroy. He had the chance to kill you many times and he never took it because he was too good a man, stronger than his fathers, either one, because he was always on the side of what was good and right and just. But I'm not Mulder, and now I'm not even human because you took that from him too. It doesn't matter to me about being good anymore, all that matters is that I stop you."

"You'll never stop them Agent Scully," Spender told her, defiant to the last, "and you'll never save Mulder, he can never be the man you need him to be. He will never be that strong." He had broken the final barrier, but before he could see the pain in her eyes he felt the pain in his own blood. The stories were true, he tried to scream in agony but the venom paralysed him and seconds later he welcomed the blackness as it descended upon him. Scully let his body drop to the ground with an unceremonious thud. She wiped the back of her hand across her mouth and sneered in disgust. Then she crouched down over the body and looked into the vacant eyes.

"My name," she said slowly, drawing out each word, "is Dana."