Angel enters Connor's bedroom. He's lying on the bed, staring up at the ceiling.
"Dawn's happy you're okay," Connor reports.
"At least someone is," Angel pointedly responds.
"What's that mean?," Connor asks defensively. "We're all happy."
"You don't look too happy."
"It's not because of you. The world doesn't revolve around you." Connor stands up, walks over to the window and looks out, which means he's turned his back on Angel. He slowly walks over to his son.
"I know what happened. What Mal did while I was away. And I know how tough it is to face him alone."
"I'm used to getting beat up," Connor dejectedly responds. "I can take it. But this was different. I had people counting on me. And I let them down."
"I let them down," Angel retorts, trying to cheer Connor up.
"I know," Connor replies. Angel's a bit taken aback by the sudden shift from pity to blame. "You left me alone, fighting something I couldn't beat, protecting people who don't trust me. Or even like me that much."
"That's not true. They like you. Most of them. Some, more than others, maybe."
"Do you know how hard it is when everyone's depending on you but no one's by your side?"
"I'm sorry. I'm sorry I wasn't here. But I'm back." Connor turns around and walks past Angel towards the door.
"You weren't the one I missed." Connor goes into the hallway. An obviously hurt Angel follows.
"What's that supposed to mean?" Connor stops and turns around.
"You know what it means. You know who I'm talking about." Angel sighs in frustration and exasperation.
"No offense to her, but how is Dawn going to help you kill Mal?"
"Who said anything about me killing him? He's in your city."
"You want to run? You think that's the answer?"
"What's this place ever done for me? Why should I die trying to save people I don't even know? Haven't I done enough already?"
"It's never enough, Connor. It never ends. That's the nature of evil."
"For you, yeah. But you're making up for all the people you killed. What did I do? Why should I suffer? That's all I've ever done: suffer for other people's problems. I'm through being controlled, and used."
"You're right, son. You do have a choice. No one's going to make you fight."
"Good," Connor tells Angel before walking towards the stairs. Angel runs after Connor, grabs his left arm and spins him around. Connor hits Angel with a right hook. "Liar! So much for letting me have a choice."
"I need to tell you one more thing before you go. Then you're free to do whatever you want. I promise."
"Go ahead," Connor listlessly responds"
"Do you really think Mal's going to let you get away? He came here to kill us. Both of us. And when he's done with me, he'll come after you. And he'll find you. No matter where you go. In this world or any other. He'll track you down, and he'll kill you. When Mal wants something, he won't stop until he gets it. Or, until someone stops him. That's your only option." Connor thinks about this for several seconds. He looks down at the floor, realizing his father has a point.
"Why me? Why, always, me?"
"I'm sorry Connor. I didn't bring you into the world for this."
"You didn't bring me into the world at all."
"You know what I mean. This isn't what I wanted. I wanted to protect you. To keep you safe. But I failed. Yet one thing hasn't changed. I'll still lay down my life before I'll let anything rob you of yours."
"You're not even alive." Angel slaps Connor's face with his right hand as punishment for being so obnoxious. Connor goes to punch him but Angel blocks it. He grabs both his son's wrists.
"I'm serious. Just because I haven't always succeeded doesn't mean I'm ever going to stop trying." Angel pushes Connor back. The boy calms down. "I don't care if you're mad at me, or if you think the world's given you a raw deal, or even if you don't love me and wish I were dead."
"I never said - "
"Shut up!," the newly assertive Angel commands. "None of that matters. There's only one thing that matters: I can't kill Mal without you. And you're the only person on this planet who can help me. Without you, I'm dead. And without me, you're dead. And then, well, Mal can do whatever he wants to anyone you care about."
"You really mean that?," Connor asks.
"Every word."
"The part about me being the only one?," Connor asks with a smile.
"Especially that part."
"What about Buffy?," a smirking Connor inquires.
"Slayers are old hat for Mal. He came here for the best fight he could find. And that's you and me. Together."
Connor pauses for a few seconds. Angel can tell it's sunk in. "So, after we kill him, you'll let me drive your car?," Connor jokes. He couldn't let the moment become too sentimental. God forbid if the two of them bonded.
"Sure," Angel responds with a smile and a shrug. It didn't seem like much to ask for, given the stakes. "Now let's get going."
"You wanna fight him already?"
"No. We need to do some recon. Check on what Mal's been up to." The two of them walk down the stairs.
"Can I have my own car?," Connor asks.
"I guess," Angel haltingly responds. "If you pay for it. And it's legal. No stealing cars from vampires that they stole from someone they killed."
"I save your life, and you won't even buy me a car? What a jip."
"Look," Angel begins, realizing that Connor is trying to exploit the moment. "If someone bought us a car every time we saved their life - "
"Maybe they should," Connor jokes. "By the way, how did you get your car?"
"Let's get off the subject of cars for a while," Angel says as they walk outside.
Mal strolls around the supermarket. He finds it very large and bright. To him, the ceilings seem unusually high. Then there is the muzak gently wafting down from the speakers. He can't understand why the store seeks to torture its customers. Mal spends a few minutes trying to locate the man who controls the music, so he can kill the torturer in an especially gruesome manner. But he can't find the music's source. Oh well. He won't have to listen to it much longer. Mal heads over to the butcher's section. A young man is putting away empty metal bins. He spots Mal, who wears gray sweatpants, black sneakers, a white tank top and a gray hooded sweatsuit jacket with the hood down and the jacket zipped three-quarters of the way up. He also wears a small silver cross around his neck.
"I can't take this music," Mal says to the man. "It makes me want to do awful things to whoever created it."
The man laughs. "Tell me about it. And I have to listen to this crap ten hours a day. Talk about torture."
Mal laughs. "Fresh meat?," he asks with the smile.
"Sorry. We closed an hour ago."
"I don't think so."
"Sorry. Open at nine. Close at eight. You can come in tomorrow morning and -" As the employee carried the bins back to the storeroom, he looked into the convex mirror behind the counter, and saw nothing. He glances back at where Mal was. The man screams and drops the bins.
Angel and Connor hit the Orpheum Theater. "Spartacus" is playing on the screen, but there's no sound. The auditorium is empty, just like the lobby. Angel finds a few papers scattered around. He picks them up and tries to read them by the light of the screen. Angel tells Connor to help him grab any more pages lying on the floor. They snap up about a dozen. Then Angel looks up to the projection booth. Someone had to be playing the movie.
The go into the lobby, where Angel sorts through the sheets and tosses away duplicates. The fragments appear to spell out some colonization plan. The door to the projection roof is locked, but Connor easily kicks it open. The two of them rush upstairs and burst in upon the mild-mannered, middle-aged vampire Petey. He is understandably startled.
"Well, well, well," Petey begins. "If it isn't the men of the hour." Angel picks Petey up out of his chair and slams him into the wall. "Hey! Hey!!," Petey exclaims. "Can't we sit down and talk like civilized adults?" Angel punches him in the gut and walks back over to Connor. Petey groans in pain.
"Looks like your master has some big plans," Angel declares. By now, Petey has recovered from the blow.
"All of them after your deaths." Connor's about to rush the vampire, but Angel holds him back. "Ergo, no point in telling you two the details."
"You're right," Angel responds. "And since Mal already wants to kill us, what reason do we have not to kill you? What possible threat can you make that would deter us?"
"Morale," Petey responds as he calmy sits back down. "You can't ice the big guy, so you take out one of his hapless flunkies. Only underscores your weakness. Like the soldier who's scared of the enemy soldiers, so he leaves the battlefield and goes into town to butcher the women and children. The sort of thing that makes a true warrior feel like a real loser."
"In other words, you're not worth it," Angel remarks. "So where's your master?"
"He has a place at the end of Mandeville Canyon. One of those modernist boxes. But don't know why you'd want to seek Mal out. Unless you're looking to end things quickly. No more anxious waiting."
"We're just being polite," Angel nebulously responds.
"Suit yourself," Petey responds. "By the way, do you wonder about what he'll do with your corpses? Because Mal is a very creative guy. Also, you can imagine how many vampires want to sink their teeth into sonny boy. He could end up being nothing but holes."
"Let's stop wasting our time with trash," Angel says to Connor as he restrains his son. They turn around and walk out. Connor flings a stake over his shoulder. Petey holds up an empty film reel and blocks it. "Relax," Angel tells Connor as they head down the stairs. "Just imagine how fun it will be to see him again. After Mal's dead."
On the way home, Mal stops off at a Jack in the Box in the San Fernando Valley. He kills everyone: customers and employees. Usually, he prefers to leave a witness or two to tell the tale. But sometimes it's nice to leave only corpses and let the police scratch their heads, trying to figure out who perpetrated the atrocity. Silence can be very powerful. Other than that, he doesn't stop. In fact, he barely gets below fifth gear. Mal races down the Pacific Coast Highway at 120 miles per hour. When he gets to the Palisades, he slams on the breaks and shifts straight into neutral. The Porsche screeches to a stop, and the transmission falls out of the chassis. Mal leaps out of the vehicle and sees Nina standing at the edge of the cliff. He smiles.
"I think you broke it," Nina tells him, pointing at the expensive car.
"I can get another," he casually responds. "Machines can be replaced. Unlike more important things." He caresses her left cheek with his right hand and pulls her head towards his. She stops an inch from his mouth and puts her right index finger between their lips. "First, promise me you didn't touch her."
"I'm saving all my touches for you, baby," Mal jokes, putting his hands on her hips pulling her closer. Mal left the key in, and Prince's "Sexy Motherfucker" still blares out of the speakers.
"So you liked my suggestion?," Nina asks.
"Oh yeah."
"I knew you would."
"A little after my era, but the boy can play."
"The only thing I don't like is how he changed his name to that symbol that can't be pronounced. That's a bit crazy."
"Can't be pronounced?" Mal goes back to the car and picks up the cd case. "You mean this thing? It says Nilz Arn-Shurash."
"What?"
"Nilz Arn-Shurash. It's Kelgik. From the Magada dimension. Same place Little Richard's was from."
"The Artist-symbol-guy isn't from this world?"
"Does that surprise you?"
"Not really. What's it mean? The name."
"Let me think. Nilz means "son." Arn is "most high." And shurash can mean "leader," or "ruler." "Son of the highest ruler."
"Prince?" Nina slaps Mal's chest. "You're kidding!"
"No. I'm pretty sure that's how you translate it. There you go. He didn't change his name. He just went back to its original spelling."
"I wonder if I should tip him off, tell him to go home before I ruin this world."
"You could ask him to do an all-day concert for us while we are," Mal smiles, "having a performance of our own. We can make him play the piano and sing while we're on top of it. And if he refuses, we can threaten to kill him. Who would say no to that?"
"Would you really do that?"
"Kill a good musician? Never. You?"
"Couldn't do it. And that's the problem."
"But he doesn't know know we'd never go through with it. Once he sees what we're capable of, no way he'd refuse. And wouldn't that be great?"
"Very hot. Speaking of which, you ready? Or do you need something more to eat?"
"All filled up. Ready to dive right in."
"Just what I like to hear." Nina unzips her jumpsuit and lets it fall to the ground. She doesn't have anything on underneath. Mal quickly tears off his clothes. They stand at the cliff's edge, looking sixty feet down at the surf crashing into the rocks. Nina takes Mal's right hand in her left. "Let's go." They both leap off the cliff and gracefully dive into the ocean, disappearing under the waves.
Four miles to the north, Angel and Connor stand outside Mal's place. "This is a pretty famous house," Angel tells his son. "Designed by Richard Neutra in the early fifties. Mal definitely has taste."
"Doesn't make him any less evil," Connor responds. Unlike Angel, he hasn't tried to create a more complete and well-rounded profile of their adversary.
"I know. But it helps tell us figure out where he'll strike. It's important to know what your enemies value." Angel opens the unlocked front door and they both enter. Angel flips on the lights and sees the wholesale destruction. "I guess he didn't care for the previous owner's decorator."
"He trashed it. Real tasteful." The two of them walk around. Angel sees the destroyed balcony, the cracks in the concrete, the holes in the windows. No way Mal could have had that much of a struggle to take the place over. As Angel snoops, Connor sniffs.
"Do you smell him?"
Angel pauses for a few seconds. "Yeah. I noticed his scent."
"There's someone else," Connor reports.
"Probably the old owner. It hasn't been that long."
"No. It's not human. And it's all over. Just like his scent. They're together. He stayed here with someone else."
Angel's nose isn't as discriminating as Connor's when it comes to scents he's never smelled before, so he'll take his son's word on that. "A girlfriend?"
"Maybe."
"Or just some vampire he's banging on the side. He still fights and hunts alone."
"So she doesn't matter?"
"I wouldn't worry." Angel looks around the place and gets distracted. "Such high ceilings. But why did he rip out the chandelier?" Spike would be glad to explain. And fantasize. And perhaps ask Mal for pointers. But Angel's not big on sex that causes catastrophic property damage. "One thing's for sure – he's not coming back here." Connor sniffs some more as they walk out. He finds the second scent to be extremely peculiar.
Buffy waited until 11 for the fourth vampire to rise. This was one of the reasons Mal dusted him. His idea of a playful practical joke. What he did after leaving the cemetery was anything but playful. And the next morning, Giles and the others awoke to the jolting headlines.
"I don't believe this," Xander confesses as he sits at the breakfast table in the kitchen with Giles, Willow and Anya. "Even in Sunnydale, it's still – twenty eight dead! The Mayor didn't eat that many people. And Angel sure as hell didn't. Not in one night."
"I took out twelve in one afternoon," Anya reminds them. "Granted, they were taken back later on. And Spike killed ten over a week. You know what? I'm surprised this hasn't happened before. A gang of vampires, or a bunch of demons wanting to make a name for themselves. Buffy can't be everywhere at once. But, since it hasn't happened, it is surprising that it has. In the sense of violating the accepted norms of demon underachievement."
"Maybe it wasn't a demon," Willow proposes. "What about Nina? Like you said, prove Buffy can't be everywhere at once. It could be a taunt. An extremely bloody taunt. Which is just up her alley."
"Exposing vulnerabilities. Goading Buffy into a fight," Giles muses. "But we need to know how they were killed. What sort of wounds they have. The papers are even sketchier than usual."
"Probably happened right before their deadline," Anya suggests. "It's too big a story not to mention, but they don't have time to learn the details."
"Look at these eyewitness statements," Giles points out. "A blur. A gray and black blur.' No one could see a face. Or even give the most rudimentary description. "
"It," Xander comments. "As in one?"
"At each location," Giles answers. "But the killings occurred at five places all around the same time. Twelve at the Stop-n'-Shop. Five at the video store. Four at a Rite-Aid. Two inside a gas station, though a man who was outside pumping gas was unscathed. And four inside the bus station."
"All indoors," Willow notes. "Any pattern to the sites?"
"Only that they are all within one mile of each other," Giles answers.
"So let me get this straight," Xander begins. A gang of five things comes to town, splits up, makes a bunch of quick killings, and then runs away?"
"That would be the simplest explanation," Giles responds.
"Doesn't mean it's the right one," Anya reminds.
"I still wouldn't rule out Nina," Willow argues. "Or, the First could have more ubervamps. Or, it could be the Reapers. They're fast. I'm sure they could chop a lot of people up real quick."
"Except the First has never gone after the general population," Giles counters.
"News flash: They're Evil," Xander responds. "The ultimate evil."
"Which means we can't put anything past them," Anya adds. "Even a prolific but conceptually pedestrian massacre."
"I need to see the bodies," Giles insists.
"Ooh. We could break into the morgue again," Willow suggests.
"Or, I could call the Mayor and see what she knows."
"The Mayor?," Xander instinctively asks Giles before figuring it out. "Ohhh. Right. You mean your girlfriend."
Estella came to work early this morning. Giles gets a hold of her on her cell phone in her office. "I don't know what to tell you," she says to Giles. "No. I do. But I don't know how to say it. These attacks were . . . different."
"In what way?"
"First of all, the assailant was invisible. No. It was unfilmable. The surveillance cameras show people being killed. They don't show what is doing the killing."
"But the attacker was visible?"
"Yes. People saw something. None of them are sure what. On the one hand, it sounds like this thing's fast. On the other, the people were terrified. You can't expect them to make sense of something like this."
"This may come across as indelicate. But have you seen the bodies? Or read the preliminary autopsy reports?"
"As you can expect, I have seen my share of bodies over the years. But these, these were different. There are the bite marks."
"Bite marks. They were mauled?" At least Giles can rule out Nina.
"No. The wounds were more precise. Like the killers carefully chose them. We're not dealing with wild beasts. Though we are dealing with something that can bite like a wild beast. Also, there appears to be substantial blood loss in most victims. But we don't know why. The wounds are large enough that the people could have bled to death after being bitten."
"Any chance they were drained?"
"It's possible. But these aren't vampire bites. Severed heads. Arms. Legs. This thing can tear your limbs off."
"Which doesn't sound like the work of vampires," Giles concedes. "Would it be possible for me to take a look?"
"Let me think. I'm pretty sure I could sneak you in about an hour and fifteen minutes from now. The ME's worked all night. He'll need a rest. And the people from the county won't show up until ten thirty."
"Thank you. I know this is unorthodox, and entirely irregular. I have no business being there. So I appreciate this."
"Please, Rupert. You're the only one who could make sense of it. I'd be a fool to keep you out." Giles gets off the phone and returns to the table.
"Are we going to the morgue?," Anya asks.
"I am going to the morgue."
"So only the boyfriend gets to see the dead bodies? That's not fair."
"Did she tell you any inside information?," Willow wonders.
"Not much," Giles fibs. "She hasn't taken a look. But after I have, I promise to give you all a thorough and, most likely gruesome, report." Giles doesn't want to worry them with comments about severed limbs.
"Did someone say gruesome?," Dawn asks as she enters the kitchen to grab a quick bite before going to school. The others clam up, reverting to their old instinct to protect Dawn from unpleasant, dangerous demony things.
"We were just talking about Nina. And the First. You know, rehashing. Nothing new, Dawny," Willow reassures her. Dawn can tell they're hiding something. Then again, she's also hiding something. So Dawn just gives them a suspicious look before heading out the door.
The bodies take up all the remaining drawers at the morgue, with eight left out on the tables that were brought in to hold them. Giles is very intrigued by what he finds. When he shines a light into the wounds, Giles can make out two tusk-like teeth that extend several inches beyond the other bite marks. So the assailant had fangs of some sort. Albeit, fangs more than twice as long as a normal vampire's. The locations of the wounds was interesting. Most of of them were near major blood vessels. It crushed sternum bones to get at the aorta just above the heart. Leg and arm wounds all seemed to provide access to arteries. It appeared that after biting off arms, the attacker bit into the opening itself. No flesh had been eaten. So the only explanation could be that the attacker was after the blood. There were other signs. Parts of bodies were collapsed, like a juice box that's been sucked on to get those last few drops. Also, many bodies had bite marks across the spinal cord, indicating the attacker killed or paralyzed them with a single bite. However, these bodies had other bites. Which meant the attacker went back to feed off them. After ten corpses, Giles had seen enough, both in the sense that it was an unpleasant task and in the sense that further investigation wasn't going to show him anything new. First, Giles went to Estella's office and called Wesley, who was in his apartment.
"Rupert. This is, certainly, a surprise. Is something wrong?"
"Living on the Hellmouth, something's always wrong. Was Mal in Los Angeles last night?"
"At one point, definitely."
"What I mean is, were there any more killings?"
Wesley looks back at the morning paper. "Not in the city proper. Which is unusual. For this week. There were more than a dozen suspicious deaths at a restaurant in the northern suburbs. Why do you ask?"
"I have reason to suspect Mal was in Sunnydale last night."
"Really?," Wes asks with a gulp. "What reason? Did Buffy see something?"
"No. None of us did. But something murdered twenty eight people. It went store-to-store, killing at will. To put it bluntly, could Mal handle that kind of volume?"
"He has to. Mal drains upwards of forty humans a night."
"Interesting," Giles nervously replies. "Now his wounds. Are they deeper than most vampires'?"
"Considerably. His fangs are at least six centimeters in length. Possibly more."
"And can he bite off limbs? And heads?"
"Yes. I've seen the corpses myself. His jaws are strong enough to crush bone."
"And he bites in unusual places?"
"The chest? The back? Going for the aorta or renal artery?"
"It's him. It has to be. Whatever killed this people was obviously feeding off of them. It must be Mal. Did you know that he can't be filmed?"
"Excuse me?"
"Or, videotaped, to be more precise. The surveillance cameras show people being bitten. But it doesn't show what's biting them."
"Obviously I've never tried to tape him. So this is news to me. Why would that be the case? As a rule, vampires can certainly be filmed."
"But consider the optical illusion which makes it possible for them to have no reflection. It's really not so different from what would be needed to keep from showing up on videotape. Just a slightly tweaked optical signal could do the trick."
"I suppose some vampires could be immune to filming, but no one's noticed on account of the fact that most vampires are never filmed. Or, it could have something to do with his age. Though, for our needs, I suppose that tidbit if merely trivial."
"True. What time was that attack you mentioned in the suburbs?"
"Let me check." Wesley flips through the paper. "Around 10:30."
"The tapes show the attacks in Sunnydale occurred between nine and 9:30. Mal must have returned."
"Which is good news for your side."
"Trust me. With have enough to worry about even without him. There is still the question of why he came here. It is a bit out of the way. Certainly there were plenty of victims left in Los Angeles." Giles pauses. "We were out when he attacked. Buffy, myself and Faith. He could have attacked us. We were at a cemetery. He would know where Slayers spend their time. There was nothing to stop him from completely taking them by surprise. Hold on one minute. Spike was sure we were being watched. Which, by itself, is worthless. But taken in conjunction with Mal's confirmed presence in town. And that strange, high-pitched whistle we all heard."
"Excuse me. Whistle?"
"Yes."
"Did the sound change pitch? As if it were caused by something moving extremely fast?"
Giles thinks for a few seconds. "Yes. Yes, I suppose it did."
"His arrow."
"His what?"
"Mal has an incredibly strong bow. More of a hand-held, rapid-fire catapult. He uses it to deadly effect. The arrows can shoot clear through a thin sheet of steel. You can only imagine what they do to humans who are out in the open." Giles gasps. "I'm sorry, Rupert. I didn't mean to."
"You're saying he could have killed us all before we even knew what was happening?"
"More or less. So if he wasn't firing at you, what was he firing at?"
"That vampire. The one we thought didn't rise. It must have risen, and Mal shot it dead before we even noticed. Would that be consistent with his character?"
"Entirely. Mal likes to play tricks. He also enjoys showing his enemies that he had a chance to kill them but decided not to. It's a way of asserting control."
"Lets you know you're only alive because he wants you to be."
"Mal does have rules," Wesley explains. "Brutal and unsparing as he is, he lives by a code of honor. Which reminds me. Were any children killed?"
Giles thinks. "As a matter of fact, no."
"That's one of his rules. For whatever reason, Mal only kills adults. Not only won't he seek children out, he won't kill them even if they're at the place where he's feeding. But for his worthy' adversaries, the ones he takes most pleasure in killing, he constructs elaborate games. That's the only reason all of us are still alive. He's not an opportunist. He separates us. He attacks Angel and Connor in detail. But he spares them. As if that's not sufficiently challenging."
"He needs to make it interesting?"
"At this point in his very long life, it's how he kills his opponents that matters. Not if. Which means Mal would never shoot Buffy or Faith. If he was going after them, he would toy with them for several nights. Deposit bodies on Buffy's porch in order to compel her to fight. Then, having lured her out, he would construct elaborate ruses. Create set-piece victories to demoralize her."
"In other words, if Mal wanted to kill Buffy, he'd let her know well in advance?"
"Exactly."
"Could these killings be part of letting her know?"
"Were the bodies carried away from the scene and taken to her house?"
"No. Of course not. We didn't know until we read about it in the morning paper."
"I'm sorry to say it, but Mal doesn't appear to find Buffy to be interesting enough for him."
"Thank Heavens for small favors."
"Perhaps Mal wanted to avoid Angel and Connor last night. Make them waste time searching the city for him. The Hellmouth is a place where a demon can make a name for himself. Mal does love publicity. And he needs to be top dog. This was a way for him to show all the vampires and demons in Sunnydale who the top dog really is. Since he came here on Sunday, Mal has gone to great lengths to prove his superiority to every vampire and demon in the metropolitan region. Now that they're convinced, he could be seeking to expand his audience."
"Let me get this straight. You believe this was merely an extremely bloody stunt? A way for Mal to enhance his notoriety while satisfying his gigantic appetites."
"I'm saying he's not your problem."
"Not yet, anyway."