A new female vampire who will play a major role later in the story appears on the scene. Gunn tells Angel about Gretchen. And Deb and Dev get even rougher than Spuffy.

Jeta, a tall, dark-complexioned young woman with long black hair and big, frightened doe-y brown eyes walks down an empty street in downtown Hamburg at one o'clock Saturday morning. Dressed in black, her hands are in the pockets of her floor-length black leather jacket, and she glances nervously to either side. She hears screams from up ahead, and shudders. Two teenage girls fly past her, running like the wind. A quartet of male vampires has attacked two women. The Slayer on the right knocks a vampire down with a leaping right kick. The other Slayer pulls a vampire off one of the girls, throws him to the ground, spins round and stakes a vampire who attacked from behind. The fourth vampire punches her in the face, and she punches back. The vampire she threw down double-teams her, but the other Slayer comes to the rescue before returning to her own opponent. The two terrified women run away, taking the first left that leads towards a busy, well-lit street. Suddenly, something unseen grabs both their necks and lifts their feet off the ground. It's Jeta, who no longer needs to pretend to be scared to throw the Slayers off her scent. (You think a Slayer wouldn't make the mistake of assuming every vulnerable-looking teenage girl is a damsel.) Jeta squeezes their throats, preventing them from screaming as their feet dangle, and gazes up at them with her now-yellow eyes.

"Men are clumsy with women," she says in German. "They lack the touch." She twists her right wrist, snapping a woman's neck and dropping her body to the pavement. She lowers the other victim's feet to the ground, clamps her jaw shut with the left hand, and puts her right hand under the victim's shirt, caressing her stomach before lowering her hand further down and grinning wickedly. Jeta pulls the woman's hair back with her left hand and leans in to bite the left side of her neck. After the attack by the male vampires, the running, Jeta's ambush, watching her friend die, and getting molested by this evil monster, the woman's heart is racing a mile a minute. Which makes the vampire's job even easier. She quickly finishes drinking, drops the corpse, and takes a second or two savor the experience. Then she picks up the other woman's body, holds it in front of her, leans against a wall, bites the corpse from behind and furtively drinks, listening all the time to the Slayers, who fight just around the corner and fifty yards away. When it comes to surviving super-powered enemies bent on your extermination, Jeta knows as much as anyone alive or undead. Coexisting with hundreds of Slayers was difficult, but Jeta had been through worse.

The vampire fighting solo is Rudolph, the gang's leader. He's more than a century on, nearly a decade older than Spike, and still displays the martial abilities of the Prussian grenadier he once was. A few nights after marching triumphantly into Paris, and shortly before an armistice was signed, he got bit in a Parisian brothel. The Slayer he's fighting just happens to be French, thus combining his ancient hatred for Gallic women with a new-found loathing for pesky Slayers. The other Slayer has trouble slaying her opponents, who fight in tandem, each one doing a good job of keeping the other one from getting staked. But as Rudolph's fight drags on, Wolfgang begins to worry about their boss losing. Then he'd have to fight a Slayer one-on-one, and end up staked for sure, perishing at the tender vampire age of fifteen, a full decade less than he lived as a human. Deciding that survival is the better part of valor, Wolfgang makes a run for it, leaving the other two vampires to their fate. Fifty yards on, something trips him. He falls on his face and slides several feet across the damp pavement.

"How does it feel to be lonely?," Jeta asks, pouting her full, ruby-red lips. "Myself, I don't like it very much." She helps him up. He smiles at the sight of an immensely attractive female vampire. She pushes him up against the wall, further exciting him. "I prefer to share." She gestures her right arm towards the corpses behind her. He recognizes them right away. Killing the innocents the Slayers thought they had saved – Wolfgang likes her style. Jeta caresses his left cheek with her right hand. He smiles, thrilled by the come-on, though confused as to why this brown-skinned woman is speaking perfect German. She runs her right thumb along her lower lip, picks up some blood, then sticks the thumb in Wolfgang's mouth for his culinary and erotic enjoyment. "I won't let a couple Slayers ruin MY fun." She pulls her right thumb out of his mouth, but more than compensates by momentarily grabbing his crotch with her left hand. It's as easy as seducing a human male. She gets a kick out of that. "One is German."

"French."

"I know. The other is German."

"Turkish," he snorts.

"She speaks like a native."

"Can I have a bite?," he asks about the victims. When she said she liked to share, that was a lie.

"Wouldn't you like something fresh?," she asks with a flirtatious smile as she leans in. By now, the Slayers have killed their opponents, Rudolph getting double-teamed shortly after Wolfgang left Helmut in the lurch. The two remaining vampires can hear these Slayers approaching. Jeta grabs Wolfgang's left hand with her right and takes off towards the more crowded street, hanging a right when she gets there. The railroad station is one block up. Without warning, and seemingly without reason, she lets go of his hand and slaps his face. "What are you, a moron?" He looks at her. She went back to her human face when they started running. Now, he follows suit. Best to blend in when you're trying to disappear into a crowd.

"Sorry. I forgot." The two Slayers find the dead women and soon recognize them. They feel angry and cheated, as Jeta had hoped they would. But also even more motivated to find and kill the rest of the gang. After an exhausting fight, Jeta scavenge kill gave them a second wind. The Slayers head off after the vampire or vampires who undid their good work. When they arrive, their targets stand on the sidewalk, Jeta leaning against the side wall of the station. She pulls Wolfgang close in order to block his face with her own. Nothing like cuddling with a hot woman while running for your life to turn a guy on. Wolfgang felt like some sort of dashing action hero. "This way they won't recognize you," she whispers into his right ear. He smiles and starts kissing the left side of her neck. Hiding from Slayers just keeps getting better and better. But, as with human men who fall victim to a vampire's seductions, he should have known it was too good to be true. Jeta looks to her left, sees the two Slayers eighty feet away, and screams. "You bit me!!!," she shrieks. The two Slayers run towards them.

"You stupid cunt!," he yells. She grabs his jaw with her right hand and squeezes, nearly breaking it. Then she smiles, slowly shaking her head back and forth.

"No. You are the stupid one, little prick." She throws him ten feet to her left, towards the Slayers. They make quick work of him, then look at the vampire girl. She wipes a trickle of blood off her chin with her left thumb, then sticks it in her mouth, grinning down at them with satisfaction. They ran right by Jeta in order to save two women, thereby making it possible for Jeta to kill those women. "You cannot save them all. And you cannot kill US all." The two Slayers lunge for her. She turns into a raven and flies up, perching on the station's roof fifty feet above the ground. The Slayers gasp in amazement. Then they hear sirens. Passers-by had reported a fight, and possibly a murder. The girls flee. The raven flies over to a corner, then turns into a vampire again. From this elevated vantage, Jeta surveys the scene and ponders her situation. These infernal Slayers are everywhere. And always in pairs, making it impossible to take them on alone. She needed help. Too bad the one male vampire she knew would be up to this challenge, the one vampire who could help her defeat her enemies, as he had done before, was dead. Or, if he wasn't, he might as well be.

"Depressed?," Harmony asks Spike. "Buffy problems got you down? You feel sorry for her crippled minions? And the funny thing is, you once wanted to shoot a Slayer. Maybe Devlin does think like you. Except the Slayer he lust puppies after doesn't sexually torture him."

"There was never any torture. What, you think Buffy got out the holy water in bed and threatened to pour it on my - "

"Eww. Eww, Spikey. Gross. I meant torture you sexually by not giving you any. Not that she made torture part of the, eww. Ewww."

"There are no winners here, Harm."

"Yes there are. Devlin twelve. Buffy zero."

"Buffy was stupid to send the Slayer SWAT team. Herman is stupid for going after her. It's a tragedy all round."

"Herman? That's his human name?" Harmony giggles. "I shouldn't laugh. Not every vampire was successful and popular like me before they were sired. Weren't you also a total dweeb?"

"I don't bloody believe it. You're hot for him!"

"Am not! Jealous, Spikey?," she asks with a smile. "He's totally not my type: into Slayers, AND competent. You know I don't go for successful guys." Spike snorts and storms off. Harmony's havin' one helluva fun day. Angel, who is not, calls Gunn.

"Charles, just so you know, it's fine if that Andrew kid rots. You don't have to help him. Just the Slayers."

"The injured Slayers are in no legal danger."

"I thought five of them were foreigners without visas."

"Punishable by deportation back to where they came from. Which is exactly what these girls want."

"I see your point. Just help Buffy."

"You ever think she has connections of her own?"

"I suppose," Angel haltingly responds. "But not in the government."

"She couldn't do what she's doing if she didn't. Or, if she didn't know people who did."

"Rupert Giles?"

"Gretchen Oden. She used to be with the American Foreign Service. Rumor is, she's dating that Giles guy. They've been seen together at a few functions."

"That I didn't need to know." All of a sudden he fears for Gretchen's safety.

"Our Rome office calls her the Valkyrie. She seems to be on a life-long mission to destroy this firm."

"Sounds like someone I'd love to hire."

"Even though she's probably the one who turned Buffy against you?"

"Figures. My life's a series of painful ironies. Did Wolfram & Hart do something to her? I hate to think she's one of those people who fight evil out of vengeance."

"The Firm's never done a thing to her or anyone she knows. I don't know what turned her into a crusader. Maybe she came from a bad neighborhood. Back to business. Gretchen, or Gretch,' as she likes to be called, has cultivated a wide cross-section of the Italian government. That's what's kept the police out of Buffy's compound so far. Naturally, Gretch has friends at the State Department. Unfortunately, Buffy's problems are with the Justice Department."

"Which is your territory."

"It's the territory of people I know. I'm three thousand miles from Washington, Angel."

"But you're trying."

"Of course. We have all weekend. Relax. This isn't demon fighting. Or apocalypse-preventing."

"Which means we can't make our problems go away by killing something."

"OUR problems?"

"Her. Sorry. I meant Buffy's problems."

"Don't mean to sound harsh, but when was the last time she lent you a hand? We do have our own problems to worry about. For instance, Eve's still at large, and we're still out of touch with the Senior Partners."

"Good point. Why haven't they taken care of both situations? All this time with no one keeping tabs on me and trying to betray me. I'm almost beginning to feel abandoned," Angel jokes.

"Crazy thought: Would Eve ever try to hook up with Devlin? Kid's gonna have quite a rep after what he pulled off last night."

"I always figured her for a one vampire girl," Angel quips.

Debbie comes home around five. Devlin, who's sitting on the couch, looks to his right and sees her. "You're late," he says like a bored house husband. "Something going on I don't know about?," he asks with a smirk.

"Just hanging with my friends."

"Next time remember to call," he adds in mock disappointment. She laughs, leans down and kisses him. Dev grabs her and pulls her down onto his lap. They wrestle for a little while on the couch. Deb eventually gets on top, pushing his face into the cushions and twisting his right arm behind his back. "Okay. Okay! You win." She lets go. He sits up and rubs his sore arm. "But only because I let you." She pounces on top of him. He grabs her arms. They continue going at it. "The police called," he reports. Deb stops. Dev sits up. "It's good news. They don't need you to testify against Andrew."

"Why? Did he confess? No, wait. He couldn't. He wasn't guilty."

"We're all guilty of something. Though usually not Class B felonies. Andrew Wells was a wanted fugitive up north. Turns out he took part in a botched armed robbery back in Sunnydale."

"No way!"

"The D.A. up in Santa Barbara is very grateful to you."

"Is there a reward?"

"No dice." Debbie feigns disappointment. That would be a little too much good luck. "But if you're ever up there and need a favor - "

"How far are you planning on travelling to look for vampires to kill?"

"I didn't mean it as a proposal."

"At this rate, six months from now I'll be patrolling in San Francisco."

"Then the vampires would come back down here to exploit your absence."

"Oh, thank God!" She laughs. "Not that I want northerners to get bit, but I'm only one Slayer. There's a limit to how much ground I can cover." Devlin grabs Deb and pulls her close.

"There's about thirty million people in this state. You look out for ten million of them. Spike, and Angel, look out for ten million more. And the other ten million will have to find someone else to look out for them."

"Damn right. I can't be everyone's super hero," Debbie jokes.

"Just mine."

She rolls her eyes. "God, that is so cheesy."

"No. Me singing you a song would be cheesy. That was heartfelt."

"It's okay. We've become lame. But I've stopped caring."

"Lame!? After last night?"

"I like this night better. When we stay home and no one tries to kill or kidnap us."

"Hold on, Deb. What about the party?"

"We can have more fun alone."

"What did you have in mind?"

"Let's rent some videos. Curl up on the couch. Eat cookie dough ice cream." That wasn't what Devlin had in mind.

"Or we could train." If he wasn't getting any lovin', at least he could get some exercise.

"More work? I wanna relax."

"There's still a lot of room for improvement."

"Please. It's been, like, three weeks since a vamp even hurt me. I'm kicking ass like never before."

"You still can't kick my ass."

"Wanna bet?" Deb stands up. So does Devlin.

"Until you're good enough to kill me, you can't rest on your laurels."

"Well then. It's time I took care of that." She walks over to the weapons chest and takes out a stake. "What should we rent?," she casually asks, blithely planning ahead. "I was thinking maybe Bend it Like Beckham'?"

"You're supposed to use the blunted stake when we're training."

"Training? You said you wanted me to kill you." Deb leaps across the room, takes Dev down and gets on top. She drives the stake down with enough force to actually kill him, but Dev grabs it with both hands when the point is two inches above his heart. This opens up his face, and Debbie lands three quick left punches to his right eye, nose and mouth.

"Okay then. If that's how ya wanna play it." Dev goes bumpy.

"I see you've been flossing," Debbie quips before throwing a left jab for his mouth. Dev lifts his head up, and she hits him in the forehead. He then throws her to his left. They both stand up. Dev blocks a left hook kick. When Debbie tries a right hook, he grabs her right forearm and throws her through the open door into the training room behind the living room. He enters.

"Never lead against a good opponent," he explains.

"Since when were you one of those?" He charges in. She throws him into the wall. The room's fifteen by fifteen feet, with mats on the floor and along the walls. This had once been Debbie's parents' room. Then it was her Aunt's and Uncle's room. After she kicked them out, and took Devlin in, he redecorated. Like most single-story homes in the area, it lacks a basement, and Dev thought they needed somewhere indoors to train. Deb throws a left hook kick for Devlin's chest. He leaps back, climbs onto the wall, then crawls up onto the ceiling until he's directly above the Slayer. "Like that would ever happen in a real fight. And just so you know, the whole Fly thing is really revolting." He drops his legs down, wraps them around her neck and rolls to the ground, flipping her over. He gets up before she does and lands a right kick to her face. "Ow! That almost really hurt." As she rises to her feet, Dev catches Debbie with a right roundhouse kick to the nose. "Hey!! I thought we were practicing." He connects with a straight left kick to her chin, causing her neck to whip back. "Well if that's how you wanna play it." She hops in the air and lands a straight right kick to his nose, following this up with a left kick to his groin.

"Beyond the pale," he yelps as he puts his hands to his crotch. "There are certain lines you don't - " While his upper body is exposed, Debbie lands two left jabs, a right hook and a left uppercut to his face. Brandishing a the stake in her right hand, Deb goes for the kill. Devlin grabs the stake with his left hand and throws Debbie down to his left. "I wasn't even close to ready."

"Worth a shot." Devlin corners her, landing a right hook to her ribs and a left uppercut to her stomach. When she tries a straight right kick, he backs away, then quickly counter-attacks with a swift right kick to her face that sends the back of her head slamming into the wall. Dev grabs her arms and leans in to bite her neck. She head-butts him in the nose, then lands a left cross to his mouth. Devlin counters with a right hook to her left eye. Debbie retaliates with a left cross to his right eye. Then she grabs his hair and slams his face into the wall. Dev gets her away with a right elbow to her mouth and a right backhanded slap to her nose. They circle each other in the center of the room.

"You timed the head-butt really well," he compliments. "You used to try it too early. Then I could back my head away, miss it, and lean in again to bite you."

"Like how you time my stake thrusts." He attacks and lands a left hook. She drives him back with a left uppercut. He blocks her right hook kick.

"Most vamps grab too early, when you still got plenty of bend in the elbow, and can put your other hand behind it to drive the lumber home." She lands a left kick to his stomach. He responds with a left roundhouse to her chest, sending her into the wall. When he rushes in, she catches Dev with a left jab to the nose and a right hook to the jaw. He answers with a left kick to her chin. When he goes for a right hook kick, she sweeps his left leg and kicks him in the spine as he stands up.

"You didn't get greedy, give me a chance to sweep you," he comments approvingly about her restraint when he was down.

"Stop analyzing." She kicks him in the stomach. He grabs her arms and throws her into the wall behind him so her body hits it parallel to the floor, about four feet up. But, as she falls to the ground, Deb puts her hands out to block his right hook kick to her sternum. Dev's impressed. Debbie notices. "Okay, you can analyze that," she offers as she stands up. Deb blocks Dev's left hook kick for her head, then drops the stake from her right hand.

"Surrendering so soon?," he asks with a smile.

"You wish," she replies before landing a leaping right kick to his chest, sending his back slamming into the opposite wall. "Ya got the whole elbows out, hands in' defense, just waiting to catch it, so there's no point even trying to dust you 'till I've beaten you down and knocked you out."

"I win by not losing. You'll tire first."

"Wanna bet?" She lands a right roundhouse kick to his head.

"I'm not the one sucking wind." He knocks the Slayer down with the back of his right hand. As Debbie stands up, she picks up the stake with her right hand.

"Go for it, tiger," she dares, twirling the stake between her thumb and index fingers. Devlin fakes left, towards the stake, as if planning to disarm her, then attacks right, grabbing her left wrist with his left hand and getting behind Debbie before she can stake him. Deb counters by spinning round so that, while Dev had her left arm behind her back one moment, she has her stake behind his the next. He reaches his right arm back and grabs the stake, ripping it from Debbie's grasp and causing it to fall back to the floor. Debbie puts her left hand hand under his chin and her right hand on top of his head, as if trying to snap his neck. Devlin reaches both arms back, grabs Debbie's head and flips her forward and to the ground. She bounds to her feet, hitting Dev's face with a unexpectedly swift left reverse kick. She hears Dev's back slam into the wall. As Debbie turns around, Devlin leaps at her, the exhausted vampire pouncing on top of the tired Slayer. He puts his hands around her neck and tries to strangle Debbie. She digs her fingernails into his wrists and forearms, drawing some blood and causing enough pain to make him stop. Then he struggles to pin her shoulders down so he can lean in to bite her. While Debbie works to keep her arms free, she wraps her legs around his torso, pulling it down towards her.

"What's the point of that?," he asks. Debbie grabs his t-shirt with her right hand, pulls his head down and kisses him.

"Let's call it a draw," she suggests. Dev smiles and returns to his human face.

"The kind where everybody wins." She wraps her arms around him and they kiss some more. Then she rolls on top and sits up. Devlin looks to his left and sees the stake on the ground, less than two feet from Debbie's right knee. He sweeps his left leg under her knee and kick the stake into the corner. Deb looks confused. "So that's how you planned to beat me."

"What?" He points to the stake. "Not everything's a goddam stratagem," Deb declares as she takes off her shirt.

"It better not be," Dev jokes as he stands up and drives Debbie's back into the wall as they lock lips.

"I'm definitely a one vampire Slayer," Debbie says in between moans as Devlin kisses her neck. She rips his black t-shirt in half, puts her hands on his chest and pushes him across the room into the opposite wall.

"That would make you the first," Devlin jokes between smooches. She undoes his pants and wraps her legs around his back. Dev's jaw trembles as he gazes up into her eyes. "Lucky, lucky, lucky, lucky me."

NEXT: A werewolf attacks a Slayer, bringing together Deb, Dev, Angel, Nina and Oz. And Angel was hoping to spend a quiet night alone with Nina, away from his work-related problems.