"A dragon," Harm asked.
"Hey it was a dream. You can have anything in a dream."
"But a dragon."
"There was worse to come."
"Than a dragon."
"Well yeah OK, that was bad."
*
They danced back into the corridor to join Teal'c, Carter and the prostrate Mulder, waving their weapons over their heads triumphantly.
They were covered in soot. They wore dopey grins.
"What happened?" Carter asked. They had been gone about three seconds. There had been a gout of flame that lit the place up like a fusion bomb and then there was a barrage of gun fire and then nothing.
"It went down after about the second bullet," O'Neill explained. "The rest was just overkill."
"Sorry," said Mackenzie contritely.
"Well at least we know the guns work."
"You didn't know before you went in?" Carter asked appalled.
"I was pretty sure."
"Jaaack."
"I was pretty sure."
"Now what?" asked Teal'c bringing everyone back to the task at hand.
"We keep going."
"I was afraid some one would suggest that," Jackson said.
"Bring it on," chanted Mackenzie. She was still on an adrenalin high.
*
" 'Beware the Vampire,'" read Daniel Jackson. "Is." He finished. "I don't think I got the grammar of that quite right," he added softly.
"Oh great," moaned Carter. "First a dragon and then a vampire. Just what sort of man has those sorts of demons in his head? Where is all the sexual imagery and such? Freud would have a fit if he saw this."
"Remind me," said Teal'c. "How do we combat vampires?"
"They're easy," said Jackson. "We pin it to the ground, stake it through the heart and cut its head off."
"You wouldn't do that to me, surely," purred the voice that the producers really wanted for Jessica Rabbit, but had to settle for Kathleen Turner when Aphrodite was unavailable.
"OK," muttered Samantha Carter. "That answers that question."
The woman in charge of the voice stepped into the cavern where the SG-1+ team was waiting to decide what to do next. She brought with her a sort of personal sphere of illumination that outshone both the gentle background light from the cavern walls, and the feeble glow that hovered above Jackson's hand.
Sarah Mackenzie summed the newcomer up reasonably quickly. She was pale of flesh, but with ruby lips and large dark eyes. Raven hair fell in long silken tresses to her waist. Her face was delicate; her mouth was sensual, with pursed lips and a teasing smile. Beneath that haunting visage was the body that the plastic surgeon had in mind when he set about re-manufacturing Pamela Anderson. She wore a series of gossamer fabric sheets that seemed to clothe her more by accident, than design. They gave the impression that a reasonable breeze would blow the whole ensemble into the next county. To any man with a smidgen of imagination, she would appear to be quite naked, despite the cloth that hung from all the protruding bits of her anatomy. Neither Jackson nor O'Neill suffered from that particular lack, imagination was there in abundance when presented with that kind of conceptual necessity. Teal'c on the other hand wasn't even aware that such a thing as imagination existed, let alone whether he had any. He raised a single eyebrow questioningly.
The newcomer transfixed both Jackson and O'Neill, and considering the way Mackenzie and Carter were decked out that was seriously saying something.
She stepped forward and placed a delicate and perfectly manicured hand onto the centre of Daniel Jackson's chest. Well not central, it was slightly to his left.
"You haven't see a Vampire around here?" Jackson asked. His voice had one of those little squeaky noises at the end of the question. He was having a problem with shortness of breath, palpitating of the heart and other biological manifestations of a physical desire to engage in propagation of the species. We shall be grateful for the voluminous draping of his robe so that we can avoid speculation upon that statement.
She smiled sunnily and revealed a set of canines that might have been more appropriate in the face of Lassie. "What, you expected some old guy with slicked back black hair and bad dental work," she said in one of those voices that tickles the earlobes and cause goose flesh all down the backs of males the world over.
"Well now that you mention it…" Jackson began weakly.
She stepped up closer and examined Jackson's neck intently. To Mackenzie's eyes the vampire seemed to be trying to decide the answer to such pressing questions as whether she should tilt her head to the right or the left when she bent to rip his neck open and suck the life out of him.
Jackson wore an expression similar to that seen on the faces of small furry animals. You know the one they wear when they are caught by the headlights of transcontinental transport vehicles. They wear it for a moment just before the first of those nine sets of wheels on the left hand side of the eighteen wheeler smears their pathetic little body along twenty five feet of tarmac.
It seemed that the committee for attending to this monster was electing itself. Mackenzie pushed Jackson aside roughly and stood in front of the vampire. Her hands rested on her hips, right beside the two holstered guns. "Perhaps you should try someone with a different set of hormones," she suggested.
"Don't mind either way," said the Vampire cheerily.
"Urk," said Mackenzie, unprepared for that response. Those eyes really were the most amazing colour…
They suddenly weren't in front of her any more.
"Don't look into her eyes," Carter gasped out. She was struggling on the ground with the Vampire. Mackenzie shook her head a couple of times and then pounced into the fray. She pinned the struggling legs of the Vampire to the ground as best she could.
"A stake!" cried Carter. "We need a stake."
"Where the hell are we going to get a stake here?" Mackenzie spat out, while she was struggling to restrain what looked like a reasonably slender pair of legs but appeared to be made from some sort of carbon fibre composite, and operated by an industrial hydraulic system.
"Teal'c," Carter called out. "Your spear. Use you're spear."
"Certainly major Carter," he agreed and stepped forward. Carter struggled to find a way to sit on the Vampire's chest, wrap her hands around the things throat and leave enough room for Teal'c to get a good shot at the thing's heart. It was a bit like playing a game of twister with a boa constrictor.
Teal'c grunted manfully, and shoved the tip of his spear into the struggling vampire, pinning it's chest to the ground. It continued to struggle.
"You missed Teal'c," Carter shouted. "Have another go, and hurry."
The Vampire kicked and bucked a few times.
"Hey you guys could come and help," Carter called to O'Neill and Jackson who were leaning against the gurney carrying Fox Mulder. They seemed to be staring at the conflagration without any signs of intelligence, at all, in the expression on their faces. "Jack, Daniel," (Yeah I know we could all use a drink at this stage, but don't mention that joke under any circumstances, OK?) "Get you head out of your ughn…"
Whatever she was going to say, she was interrupted by a blow to the jaw from Teal'c's fist when he finally managed to get the spear out of the Vampires chest. The vampire had been hanging onto the shaft for dear li…(undead? Maybe…) and it had finally slipped from her grasp.
"Yes Major Carter," Teal'c said. He pulled the spear the rest of the way out of the vampire's chest. It came free with a meaty sucking noise as the wound healed up. No one heard that sound over the frantic struggling, heavy breathing and the gutter-mouthed curses of the Vampire, and Samantha Carter. Still struggling to hold the vampire's legs through the slippery diaphanous piece of confectionary that it wore, Sarah Mackenzie thought that perhaps Samantha Carter had been hanging around the barracks of the airforce pilots and the SGC teams altogether too long. Her language was very colourful under stress.
Teal'c had another go, slamming the spear into the Vampire's chest. She screamed again, but nothing else changed.
"Again Teal'c," Instructed Carter.
He was ready for the Vampire grabbing hold of the shaft of the spear this time. So was Carter, she managed to get her jaw out of the way the second time.
Teal'c lunged with the spear yet again.
Everything stopped. The Vampire was still.
"Oh thank god for that," Carter sighed and slipped from atop the Vampire's abdomen and sat on the cavern floor.
"OK! Good!" said O'Neill in a vaguely disquieted voice. "That appears to be over then." He shook his head a few times to clear the cobwebs from his brain. He blinked a few times as though trying to get the world back into focus again.
"The head," reminded Jackson. "We have to cut off the head."
"How are we to do that?" asked Teal'c.
"We could put a grenade in her mouth and pull the pin," Jackson suggested.
"Daniel," O'Neill said patiently. "You've forgotten one thing."
"What's that?"
"We don't have any grenades."
"There is that, yes. Rocket launcher? Then again, no."
Sarah Mackenzie rolled off the vampire's legs and onto her back. She was breathing like she had just won the Boston marathon. Some thing hard and metallic dug into her back, but it wasn't uncomfortable enough to make her change her position on the floor. That could wait until her breathing was less deafening.
"We need and axe, or a saw," suggested O'Neill.
"Hey all I've got is what you see here," Jackson said and held his arms out at his sides. Not a lot of detail was revealed by that gesture. There wasn't much light after the vampire's neutralisation and his robe was almost black and it was voluminous anyway. He could have hid half the cast of the move 'Fame' under that robe and nothing would have been visible. But he meant well.
"It's not as though I have much to offer," suggested Teal'c who was wearing just slightly more than the wardrobe for the movie 'Showgirls.'
"I don't know about that," said Carter, and then remembered her self. "Sorry, uncalled for."
Sarah Mackenzie had her breath back. She sat up and rubbed the bruises to her ribs and hips. She began to feel self-conscious when she realised that everyone was staring at her. She knew this outfit was going to be a problem. She checked to make sure all of her bits were still in the right places. They seemed to be.
"Um, that is a pretty big knife you have there," suggested Carter.
Oh, so that was the reason for their staring. For some reason she was vaguely disappointed. There had been something about that incident with the vampire that had upset a delicate balance in he psyche.
Mackenzie climbed stiffly to her feet and pulled the machete from the sheath on her back. She stared at the knife as though she had no idea what it was for. She tried to hand it to Jack O'Neill. He shook his head. She followed his sight line and saw the vampire on the ground. She looked like some-one had pinned a school girl to the floor like she was a butterfly in a entomologists display. Her face was remarkably ethereal, as though she was the supernatural supernatant stereotypical angelic schoolgirl that might advertise milk on television. OK, so you would feel like a right monster for even touching that angel.
"Oh give it to me," muttered Carter and snatched the knife from Mackenzie's hand. Carter knelt on the floor beside the prostrate Vampire. The impossibly perfect dark eyes followed the motion of the knife intently when she raised it above her head. The imploring look on the vampire's impossibly symmetrical features was not feigned in any way.
Mackenzie looked away as soon as she saw Carter begin the down stroke. There was no way she wanted to watch this, even in someone's dream. There was a thud, like a butcher hitting a slab of beef with a cleaver.
"Damn," said Carter, bitterly. "I only got about half way through."
"Oh gross," said Jackson.
"You'll have to have another go," said O'Neill. "The last thing we want is for that thing to come after us with it's head half off. I can just see it there, flopping around against it's back while it tried to run."
"Now there's an image that I would rather not have in my head," said Jackson.
Mackenzie had to look back; she couldn't help herself. She resisted for a while, and then gave up the struggle. She was just in time to see Samantha Carter struggling to pull the knife from the vampire's neck. "I think it's stuck between two vertebrae," Carter said.
"Just pull harder," suggested O'Neill.
Carter put her foot on the Vampires forehead and strained her back until the knife came free. She toppled off her precarious hold on the Vampire's head and fell on her butt. The tip of the knife described a perfect arc from the Vampire's neck to land behind Carter. All eyes followed the passage of the knife with hypnotised intensity. It hit no-one on the way past, more through good luck than good management.
"Here, let me have a go," suggested O'Neill. He took the knife from Carter and lined up the first blow.
Mackenzie couldn't watch.
Thump! Hack! Curse!
Wait.
Grunt, grunt, grunt.
"God, this thing is tough," in an undertone.
Thump! Hack! Mutter!
Grunt, grunt, grunt.
Wait.
Thump! Thump! Hack! Groan!
"It's not a wood chopping contest Jack," Commented Jackson.
Thump! Clank!
"It might as well be," grunted O'Neill. "At last," he breathed and stepped away from the vampire's corpse just in time for it to turn to dust and blow softly along the cavity.
Mackenzie finally managed to turn her head so that she could see what was going on, having been unable to watch O'Neill's attempts to part the head from the neck.
If that thing bled at all, she told herself, I am going to throw up.
All she saw was a waft of fine ash powder and she breathed a heavy sigh of relief.
"Now what?" asked Teal'c.
"First I'm going to get my breath back," said O'Neill. "Here," he handed the knife back to Mackenzie. There was no blood on the blade, just a few scratches and dings from the occasional contact with the stone floor.
Holding the knife with as little of her fingers as she thought she could get away with using without dropping it onto the floor, Mackenzie managed to put the knife back in the sheath she had fastened to her back without cutting herself.
"I think we need to go that way," suggested Jackson.
He pointed past the place where the Vampire had emerged.