Mal paces back and forth in the well of the theater, pouring over maps and intelligence reports. Vampires constantly approach with questions and information. Mal appears to listen, talk, read and write all at the same time. Then Lou comes running down the aisle. Mal looks his way, and the other vampires move aside as Lou approaches.
"Gang bangers think we playin' favorites," Lou announces.
"I killed six Latin Kings last night. Didn't that balance the scales?," Mal asks.
"That's not it. Crips say you favorin' the Bloods."
"Bloods are red, Crips are blue, right?," Mal asks to make sure. That's what he called them before he knew their names, so he's stuck with it. Lou plays along.
"You iced the Blue's leader last night. You ain't taken out any big-time Reds."
"You're right. I have made an oversight. But we will correct that. Bring me the new leader of the Blues. Tell him I will make the leader of the Reds to pay me blood tribute."
"He's gonna pay you in Bloods?," Lou asks. Mal gets the pun. He doesn't like wordplay.
"Just bring him. The rest of you, find out where I can find the head Red. I need that information by the time Lou returns. Try not kill anyone. You can eat on your own time." Dozens of vampires race out every exit. They know that not giving Mal what he needs will result in a massacre. Or, as Mal has threatened on more than one occasion, he'll delegate and let his demon-hunting enemies use the unlucky vamps for target practice. Alone at last, Mal gets back to work on deployment, expansion and the new chain-of-command. He wants everything to be in place before he kills the Los Angeles vampires' two most-feared enemies.
While Buffy's at the Bronze, Dawn, who's up in her room, gets a call from Connor.
"Let's go away," Connor abruptly suggests early in the conversation.
"When?," Dawn asks, thinking he's talking about the distant future, or the summer at the earliest.
"Now. Don't you ever want to do that?"
"Connor, what's wrong? What's happened?"
"Nothing."
"You're not telling me something."
"Fine. But it's nothing new. Just the same old stuff. I always fight to stay alive. And nothing really ever gets better. Just more pain. That's all there's ever been."
"No. It's different now. You fight so other people can be alive. Do you have any idea how many lives you've saved?"
"But they still keep dying. I can't change that."
"Fine. You're right. Evil keeps popping its head up. You knock it down in one place, it sprouts up somewhere else. But things would be so much worse without you. The demons would win by default."
"World's been around a long time. Demons never won before I got here. It's not like I was needed. Except by you. You need me, right?"
"Of course. I mean, I love you."
"So why don't we leave? Go somewhere quieter. We'll be happy. No one will miss me."
"You can't run away from your problems."
"They're not my problems. They're somebody else's. I'm a stranger here. I never belonged."
"This isn't the man I love."
"What!? Now you're just giving up on me, like everyone else?"
"You're giving up on yourself. And the scariest thing is, you won't even tell me why."
"Because nothing's changed. The only time things were different, the only time they were better, was when I was with you. Since I came back here, it's been the same old stuff."
"So what? The demons don't give up, and you do? You're just gonna let them beat you? Come on, lover. That's not you. That's not my Destroyer." Dawn's trying to boost his spirits, get his blood flowing again. It works.
"You're right. I belong here. They don't. Time I started setting them straight."
"You mean it's time you and ANGEL set them straight. It's always easier when another super hero's got your back."
"That's true. It is easier that way. Thanks, lover. Every time I'm down, you always bring me back up."
After Connor gets off the phone, he runs down the stairs to the second floor balcony, then leaps into the empty lobby before walking out the door. "It is easier with Angel. But I'll find a way to get the job done without him." Dawn didn't quite understand that she had brought Connor out of his malaise by re-awakening his dark side. If she were there, she could have seen it in his eyes and nipped it in the bud. One of the perils of a long-distance relationship.
Mal walks into a warehouse all alone. There's seven men in front of him. When he gets within thirty feet, six of them open fire, letting lose almost forty bullets in three seconds. Twenty-two of the bullets strike Mal. Eleven bounce off of him. The eleven which enter his body don't knock Mal down. They don't even really seem to hurt him. He flexes all of his muscles. Over the next five seconds, eleven bullets pop one-by-one out of his flesh and fall to the concrete floor. The six shooters, duly impressed, put away their guns. Lou enters with the new leader of the Crips. He was the lackey in the strip club whom Mal chose not to kill. The six Bloods pull out their guns yet again and point them at the one mortal enemy in the room who was, well, mortal.
"Put those noisy, useless things away, or I'll start killing," Mal warns.
"Chill," their leader commands. Two more Bloods enter.
"They're clean," one of them tells their boss about the new arrivals. He thinks about this. His adversary has walked into certain death with only Mal to protect him. And yet, Mal could just as easily kill this Crip, along with possibly every Blood in the building. He realizes that Mal must be up to something sophisticated. Something which wasn't going to result in the death of either gang leader. That was reassuring.
Mal begins his pitch. "It has been brought to my attention that, while I have killed your counterpart among the Blues, I have not killed you. Does that strike you as unfair?" The leader carefully thinks this question over before responding.
"It don't matter if I think it's unfair. Or if they think it's unfair. What matters is if you think it's unfair." Mal greatly appreciates the deference. Clearly this leader is a man whose life is worth sparing.
"I do. I really do. I suppose I could kill you right here and now. Wrong. I KNOW I could kill you right here and now. And there's nothing your men and their noise makers could do about it. We BOTH know that. However, I have come to the conclusion that killing you would be wrong." Mal smiles when he sees the look of relief on the gentleman's face. Now for the catch. "Instead, I will kill five members of your gang. You chose them. You counterpart approves." He does this to make sure the victims are neither too insignificant or too important. The Bloods do not like the catch. Mal didn't think they would. "In exchange, there will be peace. Peace between you and him. Peace between you and me. And if the police choose to violate this peace that I have worked so hard to build, I will kill them until they learn the same lesson you have learned, the same lesson he has learned. Your territory will also be defended against all competitors. If they chose to fight me, you will get THEIR territory."
"Nice dream ya got there," the leader responds to Mal's pitch. "Everyone makin' money. Nobody dyin'. And I guess you want a cut in exchange for your, peacemaking'?"
"I promise to take a little less money than I can. Also, I promise to take a lot fewer LIVES than I can." To say that Mal preferred to negotiate from a position of strength was clearly a gross understatement.
"And where does you takin' five of my soldiers fit into this dream?"
"You have a point. The five dead Reds are unnecessary. But you will hand them over."
"Like hell I will." He pulls out two very large pistols. The six men around him draw their weapons, as do the two Bloods keeping watch over Lou and the Crip. Not to be left out, Mal goes bumpy. There's something about a vampire with three inch teeth which demands respect. On top of that, he lets out a low, rumbling growl. After a few seconds, the leader puts both of his guns away. Mal smiles and returns to his human face.
"You're a very smart man. Is there a room where the two of you can work out this peace treaty?"
"We'll talk in there." The leaders of the gangs go into a room along the wall to the left of Mal. He and Lou are alone with the eight Bloods. They still have their weapons drawn. Lou's bumpy, as he was throughout the meeting. It's his way of showing he doesn't need to be packing, and that it's pointless to cap him.
"Are you hungry?," Lou casually asks Mal.
"I believe I am. But I was planning to grab a bite after this. Weren't you?"
"Yeah. But I just kept getting hungrier and hungrier. I think I need a snack right now."
"But we're guests," Mal replies, keeping up the tongue-in-cheek dialogue. "It would be very rude. These nice men would be very upset."
"Who do you think would be most upset?," Lou asks.
"I don't know. You're the hungry one."
"I think he would," Lou says, pointing to one Blood. "Or maybe he would," he adds, pointing to another. "I'm certain it would be him. No," Lou continues, flashing a grin. "I am certain they would all object quite fiercely."
"Some much less fiercely than others, if experience is any guide," Mal replies. "Would you mind sharing?"
"Not at all. It would be rude not to."
"Good. Because I too am quite famished. And our hosts did forget to provide refreshments. I do hate it when they have nothing to offer me."
By now, the eight Bloods have taken the hint and fled the premises. Mal and Lou laugh. A few minutes later, the leaders return. The Blood is not happy to be missing his bodyguards. Mal goes outside with the leader and brings them back in. The eight men serve as hostages while their boss and Lou round up the five agreed-upon sacrifices. Of course, he doesn't tell them the truth. Instead, he leads the five unfortunates to a parking lot and abandons them just before Mal leaps out and devours his blood tribute. The Crip leader watches, just as he watched Mal kill his leader and second-in-command the night before. Now that the scales have been balances, the Crip heads off. Having put the fear of Mal in both leaders' hearts, he walks off with Lou.
"They really seemed excited about you takin' care of the cops," Lou notes approvingly.
"We are entirely beyond the law. That is our advantage over the mortals when it comes to these matters. They simply cannot compete. He gave one hundred thousand cash. Is that a lot?"
"100 G's? Hell yeah! And the jewelry the Crip guy gave you's worth 200. Though if you pawned it you'd probably only get 100 large."
"Two hundred thousand in currency. Will that be enough to cover operational expenses for this week?"
"Unless you're planning on springing for some choppers."
"Good. There will be much more money in the future. We have yet go after shops and businesses. Night clubs look like an easy target. Make them pay up or I massacre their patrons."
"You really got this extortion thing down."
"There's a lot more to it than that. At first everyone pays out of fear. But later, they pay out of gratitude. Pretty soon, the only murders in this city will be committed by us. To succeed in life, the people who love you must outnumber the people who hate you. You can only eat a tiny portion of the human population in a metropolis such as this. Let most of the people know you will never hurt them. Help them out, and when you are in danger, they will help you out."
"So we gonna start frontin' like we good guys?"
"Not it. It' smart. No point in making people you can't ever kill hate you. But in this town, it's especially smart. We defend the outcasts. We," now Mal starts chuckling. "We help the helpless!" Both of them laugh.
"We steal Angel's fans."
"We can help them in ways he cannot. What's more, we see the big picture. He goes one person at a time. We impress whole communities."
"This why you're doin' the thing with the hookers?"
"In part. I also detest pimps."
"Then why'd you make yourself head pimp?"
"You bring the water slowly to a boil so the animal doesn't know it's being cooked until it's too late. First I promise them security. I pledge to protect them, their women, and their customers from the police. In exchange for a cut."
"And when they refused, you ripped off their, you know, and shove it down their throat."
"It makes an impression on the others. But once I can provide security, the pimps become redundant. Those who fail to notice this are eliminated. The women are freed. In exchange, I receive one-tenth of their earnings."
"Piece of advice, Mal: round here you could take triple that and still be seen as generous."
"It's not about the money. It's about the women. If I am ensuring that they aren't attacked vampires, or by men for that matter, our enemies lose chances to be heroes. What will the heroes do when the outcasts they have always helped no longer need their protection?"
"So who do we feed off?"
"The wealthy and the powerful. The smart ones will pay to keep us away. The foolish ones will send their useless bodyguards after us. Which merely provides us with that much more blood to drink. Before long, the town is ours. The powerless love us. And the powerful fear us."
"You hear of a law firm called Wolfram & Hart? They think they run all the bad stuff in L.A."
"No, I haven't. But whatever they are, I sure we'll be more efficient. Let's say you're a powerful human criminal. Or someone powerful yet legitimate. You have to choose between us and them. You pick us. Because you know we can kill you faster than the other guys. That's all it takes. Fear is the root of all behavior."
"Good to have you back home," someone Gunn used to roll with tells him.
"Good to be back," Gunn replies. Morale is high. Too high, Charles fears. "I know ya'al have heard rumors about how great this vampire is. The rumors are wrong. He's better. Mal is stronger and faster than anything you've ever seen. If you let your guard down for even a second, he'll take your head off. I ain't exaggeratin'. It's happened. We need to be faster and stronger than him. We move fast and we back each other up. Mal tries to attack one car, someone else comes at him from behind or from the side. Be patient. Wear him down. Confuse him. And don't no one leave your ride until I've stepped out of mine. Once your feet are on the ground, you're playing by his rules. Let's make him play by ours."
After finishing his business in South Central, Mal ran up to Beverly Hills and took out the four people staying on the top floor of the Four Seasons. In addition to terrorizing the very well-to-do, Mal made off with a good amount of gold and diamond jewelry which he deposited back at the Orpheum. He continued south until he reached the neighborhood of Downey. This was where the working-class outer edge of the inner city met middle-class gentrification. Where Latino, white and black neighborhoods intersected. A few miles east of the ghetto, and a few miles south of the barrio. And right off the Long Beach Freeway. In other words, a perfect spot to draw the attention of the diverse assortment of demon fighters Mal hoped would be hounding him tonight. Mal needs to create a scene. Something they won't be able to miss. Problem is, this is L.A. No one's on the sidewalks. It's a residential area, so there aren't any large stores or restaurants. And everyone's at home. Someplace he can't get into. But Mal knows how to fix that.
He stands on the sidewalk in front of a particular home. He can hear the loud, animated chatter inside. They're eating dinner. At least four people. Maybe more. Mal prepares two molotov cocktails and lights them up. He tosses the first firebomb into the living room, across from the dining room. It goes up in flames, and he can hear the panic. They run into the kitchen and the hallway to find their fire extinguisher. Now that it's cleared, Mal hurls the second firebomb into the dining room. Within seconds, the entirety of the one-story ranch-style house is engulfed in flames. The family runs outside to escape the conflagration. Three small children, crying and terrified. Plus their mother, father and aunt. Mal kills the three adults. Then he walks away, leaving the children orphaned, homeless, but alive. He believed taking their lives was excessively cruel. However, it didn't occur to the soulless vampire that ruining those young lives he spared was also excessively cruel.
Fire trucks, police cars, ambulances, neck trauma – if this didn't get the demon hunters' attention, nothing would. Now, Mal had to prepare for the inevitable attack. He rushed up to a club two miles to the north. There was a line outside. Mal leaps over the people, lands next to the bouncer and drinks him dry. The people scream and run away. When he's finished with the bouncer, Mal chases after the mob and grabs a young couple, taking the back of the man's neck in his left hand and the back of the woman's in his right. He proceeds to suck the life out of the fellow while holding his hysterical girlfriend in the air. She has her back to Mal. She can't get a good view of what's happening to her boyfriend. The more mystery, the better for Mal. When she screams, he puts his right hand over her mouth and pulls her in towards his right shoulder. Once he's done with the fellow, Mal returns to his human face.
"No screaming, and I promise I won't kill you."
Mal uses alleys and side roads to carry the woman a half mile south. He leaps up and punches out a street light. She's at that point where she fears for her life, and even worse, she doesn't know what she's afraid of. Mal keeps her quiet and hangs back in a dark street corner, where the busted light provides extra cover. He's sure the White Hats raced to the fire and found evidence of a vampire attack, probably around the same time he bit that bouncer. Then perhaps they'd pick up something about the chaos at the club a little to the north. (Other vampires told Mal about how the good guys used police scanners to learn about vampire attacks.) So now they'd be heading his way. Hopefully, they'd be there any minute now. Mal hates spending long stretches of time with petrified humans. He'd rather kill them right away than get off on their fear. Lucky for him, he only has to wait three minutes for the cavalry to arrive.
Because of all the mass killings over the previous two nights, especially the numerous murders of people riding in automobiles, folks are staying home on this Tuesday night even more than usual. This leaves the residential streets more deserted than usual. Which allows Gunn to lead his men in squadron formation. Charles is front and center in his truck. Two more trucks are behind him on the left and right. Three more are behind them. The triangular formation allows the other five cars to easily follow Gunn. It also looks really impressive as they cruise in formation, keeping their eyes peeled for suspicious activity, and fully prepared to trample any enemy who was foolhardy enough to come on out into the street. Six cars, twenty four men. Against one vampire. Gunn knew the odds were stacked against them.
Lurking in the shadows, Mal watches them drive up. When Gunn passes by, he leaps out onto the street behind Charles and to his left. He's holding the woman. When he lands, Mal lets go of her and jumps back to the sidewalk. The woman screams as a Ford Explorer bears down on her. The driver slams on his breaks and swerves to the right. He misses her. But his SUV overturns. Gunn spins around. The other four vehicles stop. While this occurs, Mal climbs onto the roof of a four-story building. Before torching the house, Mal left his bow and seven arrows up here. Now he goes to work. The first shot hits the gas tank of the overturned vehicle, causing it to explode. The second arrow smashes through the driver's side window of the car on the left of the back row. The point travels down through the driver's chest, rips though the seat and lodges itself in the chassis, leaving the driver impaled by a four foot arrow and screaming out in pain. The third arrow is aimed at a man standing on the flatbed of the truck in the center of the back row. He happens to be equipped with a flame-thrower. The flame-thrower isn't Gunn's. This guy made it himself a couple years back. He's proud of it, and thinks it would be helpful against a super-villain. Gunn agreed. But once the arrowhead smashes into the propane tank on his back, the poor guy goes up like a Roman Candle, immolated for all to see. The explosion knocks the man standing on his right to the ground, though he's not badly injured.
Once the overturned truck exploded, Gunn got out of his truck. He knew they'd be sitting ducks inside their vehicles. The other fighters follow suit. But it's hard to maintain order amidst the chaos. The fourth arrow is aimed at the driver in the back row on the far right. (Mal attacked the back row first to make sure the stragglers didn't beat a hasty retreat.) It passes through the driver's skull and into the lap of the man riding shotgun, pinning him to his seat and very nearly neutering him. The fifth shot is aimed at the Jeep Cherokee on the right side of the second row. All its occupants have escaped. Mal shoots one of them through the heart. Travelling with the force of a catapult projectile, the arrow sends the guy six feet backwards through the air and pins him to the driver's side passenger door. Gunn's spotted the shooter. Four men aim and fire their crossbows at Mal. Two bolts hit his chest, but they are fired from so far away that they bounce right off. Mal lets loose his sixth and final arrow. It enters the left eye of the crossbowman standing three feet to Gunn's left, exits out the back of his skull and passes through another man's right thigh before the iron point crashes into a manhole cover and becomes imbedded in it. The six shots were fired in fifteen seconds. That's all the time it took for Mal to go from being the prey to being the hunter.
In fairness to Gunn, he didn't know about Mal's super-bow. The newspaper reports didn't say how the Crips' leader had been killed. So Charles had no reason to suspect that Mal was in any position to devastate him with a barrage of sniper fire. Mal's killed seven and wounded two. But two men somehow managed to escape from the overturned Ford. So Gunn has fifteen fighters. He does his best to get them organized amidst the carnage. They form a compact body, which Charles front-and-center, wielding the battle ax Mal bent two nights ago, but which Gunn has found the time to repair. Mal drops his bow and sails to the ground. As he does this, the other fourteen fighters stand just as resolute as Gunn. They know Mal's too fast for escape to be an option.
When Mals' feet hit the asphalt, five men step forward and fire their crossbows from a distance of twenty feet. Mal catches one bolt in his right hand. One goes into his right pectoral. Another into his stomach. A third enters just underneath his sternum, while one shot, on its way to hitting the heart, bounces off Mal's sternum. Just like what happened to Cordy. The five men retreat behind their comrades and grab their hand-to-hand weapons. Mal throws the bolt in his right hand at Gunn, hitting him in the left foot. Forgetting about the pain, Gunn leads the attack. The hope is to surround and swarm Mal or, failing that, present too dense an array of weapons for Mal to break through. Once again, Mal utilizes the third dimension in ways his human adversaries cannot. He leaps twenty feet into the air, flies over the charging mass, and lands behind them. Now he can attack them in the rear. But Gunn is savvy enough to conduct a crude sort of wheeling maneuver so that, once again, his best men were in the front line facing Mal. The vampire flexes his abs and pecs, causing the three arrows to pop out of his chest. Angel needed to use his hands to pull arrows out of his body. So Gunn is slightly impressed. But only slightly.
"Okay. We get it. You're diesel," Gunn deadpans. "Why don't ya quit posing and come at us like a real man." Charles does find Mal's use of long-distance super-bows to be a tad unchivalrous. He prefers to settle things face-to-face. Better to have your neck snapped than get an arrow in the eye. At least with the neck-snapping, you know you had a chance to kill your enemy. Mal knew that Gunn would want such a head-on encounter. So he was determined to avoid it as long as possible.
"Dead men can't be real men," Mal impishly retorts, alluding to his winning is everything ideal. (Not to the fact that he's a dead guy, because Mal doesn't think vampires are dead.) Mal leaps diagonally, forward and to his right. Once again, he's avoided Gunn. Mal goes straight to work on the left flank, catching these fighters by surprise. He knocks one man back with a right roundhouse kick. Then he bobs in and out, avoiding their swords, axes and baseball bats, but unable to land another blow. Gunn takes advantage of Mal's gambit by enveloping him with the front-line fighters Mal was seeking to avoid. This is Gunn's other plan: pin Mal down, surround him and hope someone gets lucky. Mal leaps up and does a split kick, hitting a man on each side in the head. He lands a right hook kick to someone in front of him carrying a baseball bat, then ducks a sword slash coming at him from behind before elbowing the swordsman in the nose. But he gets hit by two baseball bats and a flail. Things are beginning to get dangerous. The fighters close to within five feet of Mal on all sides. He wasn't expecting them to work so well together. Evidently Gunn had given them a little training. Mal needs to fight his way out, and that requires a weapon.
While Mal is preoccupied with the shiny, sharp, decapitating ax and sword blades, a fighter steps up and thrusts a sharpened pool cue towards Mal's heart. He could smell wood from a few feet away, which was fortunate, since he didn't see the cue until it was nine inches from his heart, which might have been too late. Mal grabs the end of the stick with his left hand. And then it occurs to him. This is his weapon. It's longer than all the others. It could deliver quick, fatal stab wounds. And there was a certain amount of irony in a vampire killing humans with a wooden stake. Mal grabs the middle of the stick with his left hand and rips it out of the young man's hands. He swings it around like a helicopter propeller, coming at his adversaries with the thick end. They get a foot further back. Mal then steps towards the man he stole the weapon from and shoves the point into his chin and out the top of his head. Two men with swords swing at Mal from behind. He uses the cue to parry the flat edges of their swords before stabbing one through the neck and the other through the heart. His hands are far too quick for these mortals. As are his feet. Mal jumps up, does a forward flip and, when he's upside-down, drives the stake through the top of someone's head and down into their neck and chest. All that, and he pulls it out of the guy before landing on his feet.
Now he's broken out of the circle and caused several graphic and demoralizing split-second fatalities. But the remaining eleven men don't try to run. They know Mal will catch them. So they charge him en masse. Mal stakes two axmen in the chest before they can land their blows, hits a few guys in the face with the fat end, dodges the sharp weapons and kicks a few men to the ground. Charles comes at Mal with his ax above his head. Mal stabs for Gunn's heart. Gunn brings the ax down and blocks the blow. He then strikes the left side of Mal's face with the flat back side of the weapon. Mal takes the cue in his left hand and hurls it to the his right, like a javelin. It enters a man's mouth, and the front three feet come out the back of his head.
"Fight like men," Mal tells Gunn. "No weapons." Gunn takes two swings with his ax. Mal dodges both of them, then knocks Gunn down with a leaping left hook kick. He turns to face the other seven remaining fighters. Two-thirds of those who had attacked him were casualties. Now the rest start to break. They attack one-by-one. Mal tosses one, snaps another's neck, punches out a third. Gunn comes at Mal from behind. Mal sweeps his left foot back and cuts Gunn off at the knees. While Gunn's down, Mal takes his battle ax and raises it over his head, as if about to strike Gunn, or one of the other fighters. For the moment, they hold back. Mal merely hurls the weapon one block to the south. Now, finally, he goes bumpy. The six fighters on their feet are clearly frightened. As Gunn tries to get up, Mal kicks him in the stomach. Then he leaps at one of the young men, pins him to the ground and rips his throat out. The other fighters rush to stake or slash Mal from behind. But he's too quick. He gets up and moves out of the way before they can reach him. And instead of looking down at Mal, they're looking down at one of their friends, who's been mauled. Mal ducks under a man's sword, gets behind him and sinks his fangs deep into the guy's neck. Four of the remaining fighters are seriously considering flight by now. The fifth, being Gunn, is considering no such thing. He hobbles to Mal and lands a right hook to his face. Mal throws a right hook, but pulls back at the last instant. Having distracted Gunn with this fake, Mal decks him with a left hook. The other four fighters run south. Mal easily cuts them off. So they run back to Gunn and towards his car, which by now is the only possible means of escape. Mal cuts them off again. He nails one in the nose with a right jab, decks another with a left uppercut, takes down the third with a straight right kick and floors the fourth with a vicious left roundhouse kick. He drinks a little from two of them. Just enough to make them too weak to escape. But before he can touch the other two, Gunn hits Mal in the nose with two left jabs.
"Go!!," he orders. "Get the hell outta here!" Mal smiles. He likes the bravery.
"You are willing to die for strangers?," Mal asks before landing a right uppercut to Gunn's stomach and a left hook to his rib cage. He follows these up with a right roundhouse kick that puts Charles on his back. He's had just about all the punishment a non-Slayer, non-Connor mortal can take from Mal.
"Least I'd go down making a difference," Gunn responds as he struggles to rise to his feet.
"I would rather watch you die for people you love." Mal picks Charles up and hurls him southward. Gunn's body slams into the pavement and rolls for close to twenty feet before coming to a stop. The two young men have made good their escape. Mal has plenty of dead and near-dead bodies to drain. Gunn contemplates trying to save more lives, but realizes that would be futile. Slowly, Charles rises to his feet and limps into an alley. The problem is that Mal is between Gunn and his truck. He has no choice but to wait until Mal is finished feeding. For whatever reason, Mal does not overturn, or even touch, Gunn's wheels. Once Mal's gone, Gunn has to hobble past twenty one corpses. As he sits in his truck and starts the engine, Gunn realizes that he's in a lot of pain. But something in him insists this isn't over. He's not going to let Mal end it like this.
After feeding, Mal got his bow and one remaining arrow and headed north towards downtown. So does Charles. Meanwhile, Wesley loops around the center of town, waiting for Mal to return to his base after a night of feeding. Perhaps Gunn and Wes will end up working together after all.