I went back to the hotel room and thought about Rupert Giles. Everywhere I tried to look, he was there controlling the flow of information. For all I knew, he was the reason why the Sunnydale Police Department acted so squirrelly as soon as I mentioned the name Buffy Summers. I tried to look up Rupert Giles in the phonebook but didn't find an entry. I thought about calling Principal Snyder and asking for Giles' address and phone number. I didn't think Snyder liked Giles very much, so I thought my chances were pretty good.

I was picking up the phone when there was a knock on my room door.

Given the established weird nature of the SPD, not to mention the more subtle warnings from Rupert Giles, I picked up my gun as I stood up and held it against my right leg.

"Who is it?" I said.

"Someone who knows something about Buffy Summers, Mr. Spenser."

I didn't recognize the voice, so I stood to the side of the door and opened it up a crack. Two people were standing outside the door. The one who spoke was a skinny guy, probably in his mid twenties, just below medium height with thick, black, curly hair. He was wearing a black suit with a starched white shirt and a black tie. The other was a woman with light curly brown hair down below her shoulders, about the same age, conservatively clad in a black dress that went below her knees, with red shoes. They reminded me of a couple of kids I once protected while they were handing out campaign literature for Meade Alexander's failed Senate campaign.

Then the man put his hands out and shoved the door, harder than I ever would have guessed someone his size could. I was pushed and fell back across the bed. The man jumped on me.

"Not that I'm going to tell you about her," the man said as he straddled me. His breath smelled coppery, like blood.

Then his face changed. Ridges popped up on his forehead. His blue eyes turned yellow, and his upper incisors and particularly his upper canines lengthened.

"I'm just going to kill you," he said, his head dipping down towards my neck. As he dropped his head he growled. The growl didn't sound human at all.

Jesus Christ, it's a vampire, I thought. The guy was strong, actually stronger than I was. But he was also a lot lighter than I was, so I was able to throw him off me and stand up. The woman, whose face now also had ridges, fangs, and yellow eyes, grabbed me by the shirt and the leg and threw me to the far wall, by the bathroom. She scrambled towards me extremely fast, but I caught her with a left hook and knocked her down. The guy was back up and moving towards me, so I brought up my gun and shot him three times. He grunted and fell back on the bed. The woman was back on her feet. She wrenched the gun out of my hand and tossed it on the bed. She grabbed me by the throat with her right hand and lifted me off my feet while holding me against the wall.

Thunk!

The woman staggered forward. I saw the feathered shaft of an arrow projecting from her back. She let me go and I fell back to the floor, landing on my feet. She looked up. Her face, hair, skin, clothes, even the arrow all turned into an extremely fine grey powder, then the powder dissipated, leaving for the briefest of moments a skeleton also consisting of a slightly coarser grey powder, then that powder dissipated and fell to the floor as well. The guy I shot made his inhuman growl again, got up from the bed, and started towards me. Two other guys grabbed him. One of them was Xander Harris. The other was a really short guy with spiked red hair. The vampire shucked Xander off him, throwing him onto the bed. Then Rupert Giles was there putting the vampire in a reverse chin lock.

"Spenser!" Giles yelled. "Open the drapes! Now!"

I found the rope to the room drapes and pulled. Sunlight streamed into the room and onto the vampire.

"Oz! Let him go!" Giles yelled.

Giles and the short red headed kid, Oz, let the vampire go. The vampire's skin immediately turned red, started to blister, and sizzle. Then, the vampire erupted into flame. He turned around and tried to run out of the room, but Giles hit him in the face with a very nice, short right handed punch, knocking him back. The vampire then tried to run into the bathroom, but even as Giles started to yell, I stepped between him and the door and hit him with a similar, also very nice short left handed punch. The vampire rocked back, then suddenly the flames went out and there was just grey powder swirling in my room.

"Jesus Christ," I said.