At the Fisher Funeral Home in Los Angeles, Rico, an undertaker, is in the basement, preparing to embalm a man who died in his late twenties. He puts in one needle to drain the blood, and another to pump in the embalming fluid. When he inserts the second needle into the corpse's skin, the eyes open, and it sits up. Rico, a short, light-skinned Chicano, jumps back in horror. His wife just kicked him out, his life is falling apart, he hasn't been getting much sleep, so this must be a hallucination. Or a nightmare. The naked corpse rips the needles out of its arms and stands up. It turns, sees Rico, growls and charges. Rico yells for help. The corpse pushes him into the wall, puts its right hand around his neck and starts choking him, lifting Rico's feet off the floor. This is no nightmare. He struggles desperately to break free, and wheezes for breath. He is finally able to grab a scalpel with his left hand and drive it into the corpse's right forearm. He growls and backs up. Rico sinks to the floor, grabs his throat, gasps for breath and stares up at the living corpse, who seems to have grown very large teeth and developed swelling on its forehead. Also, its eyes have turned yellow. This was not covered in any manual.
The monstrous corpse runs to the door and opens it. Ruth Fisher, a tall, thin woman in her fifties, is doing the laundry. "Rico, is that, aaaiiiiggghhh!!!" The monster runs at her. She throws her basket of clothes on its head, and it trips and falls. She runs up the stairs screaming. Rico staggers out of the embalming room in time to see her close the basement door.
"Mrs. Fisher! Mrs. Fisher!! Mrs. Fisher!!!" The animated corpse is between Rico and escape. She reluctantly opens the door.
"Rico? Rico, what is going on?"
"I need help! Get Nate and David!! The corpse turns and faces Rico. Ruth grabs her new husband's precious Persian table from the kitchen and hurls it down the stairs, hitting the vampire in the back. Rico runs past the fallen vampire, who grabs his left ankle. Rico steps on the hand with his right foot and breaks free. He races up the stairs, closing the door behind him. "Mrs. Fisher." He embraces her.
"Rico, you're welcome." They hear the vampire banging on the door. Ruth screams. Both of them put their backs to the door and try to hold it shut. Nate Fisher rushes over to them. He is tall, in his early thirties, with floppy, boyish light brown hair and slight stubble on his chin.
"Mom, I heard screaming. Rico, what the hell are you doing?"
"It's alive. It's alive!" The vampire bangs his shoulder into the door.
"What is alive?"
"Mister Peterson."
"I'm not in the mood for jokes. I don't even want to be here." The vampire puts his fist through the door.
"Apparently, neither does Mister Peterson," Ruth replies. David, Nate's younger brother, comes over. He is short and seriously-looking, with thinning hair. He wears a well-tailored, dark three button suit, and looks constipated.
"Can somebody please tell me what all the commotion is about?"
"Your corpse tried to kill me!," his mother explains. "For God's sakes, get some furniture over here to hold the door." Despite her hysterical outbursts, she's by far the most resourceful and effective person on the scene. Slaying has always been woman's work.
"What are you hiding? Mom, please step away from the door."
"Not on your life!"
"She really means it, David," Rico concurs. The vampire now grabs the table Ruth threw at him and uses it as a battering ram, breaking off large chunks of the door.
"Will you help me!?," she implores.
"Why did I agree to come back here?," Nate wonders.
"Who are you keeping down there?," David asks.
"I just told you!," Rico screams. "Eliot Peterson!!" More chunks of the door are broken off. Ruth and Rico must retreat. The naked vampire emerges.
"What the fuck happened to him?," David asks.
"Ya got me," Rico responds as the four of them retreat into the kitchen. Just then, George Sibley, Ruth's new husband, comes in from his afternoon run. He is a tall thin man in his early sixties with wispy gray hair.
"What's the commotion? Vampires!! Everyone outside!" He grabs Ruth and pulls her out. Rico and David follow. The vampire grabs hold of Nate, but George and Rico pull his into the sunlight, and the vampire retreats with a burnt hand. George hugs Ruth. "Thank God you're safe."
"Did you just say vampire?," Nate asks, looking at George as if the old man were insane.
"What do you think was attacking you?," he retorts, looking at Nate as if the young man was denying reality.
"Rico, what the hell happened?," David asks.
"I was just about to begin draining Mister Peterson when he got up and attacked me."
"Corpses do not get up and attack people," David responds.
"Did you see his face?," Ruth ask.
"Embalming kills vampires," George explains.
"I can't believe I'm listening to this bullshit," Nate responds.
"Did he happen to die from a stab wound' to the neck?"
"Yes," David answers. "But this is ludicrous. Vampires do not exist."
"Then go back in there and tell that to Mister Peterson," George retorts. "When did he die?"
"Three days ago," David responds.
"That's more than enough time for gestation. After two days, they'll often wake up when threatened."
"George, how do you know this?," Ruth asks. Her new husband does have a habit of hiding parts of his past.
"I've read about this sort of thing. It's quite common. Especially in this city. There are professional demon hunters who take care of infestations for a fee. They're listed in the phone book."
"Why don't we just call the police?," Ruth asks.
"Because they'd hang up on you cause you'd sound like a fucking wacko," Nate responds.
"There has to be a reasonable explanation for this," David maintains. "We have a naked madman who took Mister Peterson's place on the table. Rico, you'd never seen him before, so you wouldn't have known."
"He was cold. And not breathing."
"I'm calling Keith." David takes out his cell phone to dial up his boyfriend.
"And what about the rest of us?," Nate asks. "Are we locked out of our own fucking home?"
"Sunlight will kill him," George explains. "It's our best protection." He looks up. "Until it sets."
Keith answers his phone. He is a well-built black man in his late twenties, with a bald head and a mustache and goatee. "Keith, you have to come to the funeral home. It's an emergency."
"I'm on a job."
"This is a little more important than walking Celeste's dog." Celeste is a pop star Keith is helping to guard. He is a former member of the LAPD. "There's a crazy man inside the house. He attacked us."
"Okay David, slow down. I know you're going through some stuff because of the attack. Just relax." A few weeks earlier, David was carjacked for several hours at gunpoint, brutally beaten, doused with gasoline, and terrorized in numerous other ways. The horrible trauma only heightened his need for a protector, a hero, a champion to keep him safe and to comfort him at night.
"It's not just me!" He hands the phone to his mother.
"Keith. It's Ruth. The man was awful. He nearly killed me and Rico. We can't go back inside."
"Have you called the police?"
"Let me handle this," George says, grabbing the phone. Ruth hates it when he's bossy. "We are dealing with a vampire. Everyone here knows that, though some of us are still in denial. But we all saw its teeth, its eyes, its monstrous face. We all witnessed how the sunlight burned its hand. So be prepared. Don't come here unless you're carrying a cross and a wooden stake.
Keith hangs up. "Fucking crazy family." David immediately calls back. "Is this your idea of a practical joke?"
"I swear to you Keith, This is no joke. I'm fucking serious. Something very dangerous is in there."
"A vampire?" Keith laughs. "I knew a detective who got booted off the force because she believed in those. It's just a way explaining the unexplainable. Some crimes are so horrible, we like to think they couldn't have been committed by human beings. It's classic scapegoating."
"I am not fucking scapegoating!"
"You're buying this vampire bullshit?"
"No. But I do believe there is something inside this house that the five of us alone cannot deal with. And God forbid a few prospective clients walk in." He rushes around front. This is his worst nightmare: grieving relatives killed at his funeral home. The publicity would be fatal to their business.
"Right now we're just buying time," George declares. He starts ripping branches off a tree.
"George! Don't destroy that tree. David planted that for Claire on her tenth birthday." He holds a five foot-tall branch upwards and crosses it with a two foot-tall branch. Nate laughs.
"You can't be serious. We're gonna drive that maniac away with God?" After the calamities that have befallen him, especially the recent suicide of his wife, the already cynical Nate can't help but deny God's existence.
"A vampire cannot enter a home uninvited."
"Hello! He's already inside," Nate points out.
"Not the living quarters. And we can't give him the run of your first floor. He could easily set in on fire to try to draw you back in. Or simply trash the place."
"We're going in?," Ruth asks.
"Follow me."
"And if this God Almighty crap doesn't work, what then?," Nate asks.
"He'll kill one of us, and the others can escape while he's draining the body."
"And you'll be in the lead?," Nate asks with a grin. Like the rest of Ruth's children, he's not crazy about the new stepdad. David comes back.
"The rest of you should also make crosses," George suggests.
"What did I miss?," David asks.
"George here is playing Van Helsing," Nate jokes to his kid brother. Ruth grabs Nate's arm.
"You are coming inside. I am not letting my house get ransacked by some maniac." George gets in front, followed by Ruth, then Rico, with Nate and David bringing up the rear.
"Things just get weirder every day around here," Nate comments to his brother. George marches forward and opens the door. Once he steps out of the light, the vampire leaps at him, but cowers before the cross. "I don't fucking believe this," Nate says with astonishment. Ruth opens the windows and the vampire retreats into the entrance hall. George slowly steps forward. Ruth runs for the bay window. The vampire grabs her around the waist, but she gives him a quick left elbow to the nose, and he lets go long enough for her to pull back the curtains and flood that half of the room with light. George tries to force the vampire out of the room, but he snarls, reaches out and pulls away the man's sticks. The hungry vampire leaps on top of his victim.
"George!," Ruth calls out, grabbing a vase and smashing it over the vampire's head, then pulling on his hair to get his fangs off her husband.
"When did mother turn into Xena?," David asks Nate. Rico takes off the crucifix around his neck and presses it into the vampire's left cheek, causing him to flee into the chapel and pull shut the sliding doors. Ruth opens all the shades before rushing over to help George to his feet.
"Are you all right, honey?"
"I'm fine. It's just a scratch," he replies, embarrassed that he had to be rescued by his wife.
"What do we do now?," David asks.
"We go on with our lives, and wait until sundown," George intones.
"Bullshit," Ruth interjects. Her children are surprised to hear her swear. "That thing is not invincible, and I will not let it hold my life hostage. We can draw it into the sunlight in the front hall. We can open the door and try to push it out onto the porch. There are five of us. If we work together, it doesn't have a chance."
"I think you're right, Ruth," George responds. "But I also think there's a high probability it could kill one of us."
"Which one?," Nate asks with a devilish grin.
"What do we tell the Petersons?," David asks. "Hi, your dead son's running around attacking us. See you at the funeral tomorrow, when, hopefully, he'll be on his best behavior."
"I hate this business," Nate gripes. Everyone sits down and waits. Nate and David go into the living room, open the shades and turn on the television.
"Should we lock the doors?," David asks.
"Why?," Nate wonders. "Eliot doesn't seem too eager to leave."
"So people think we're closed. How are we going to explain this to prospective customers? We can't show them the chapel. We can't show them the coffins. And a crazy guy's making all sorts of noise."
"I wonder if he's sleeping in one of the display coffins?" They both laugh, until they realize they're joking about a vampire as if it's real.
"This is so fucked up."
"Completely fucked up."
Deb and Dev sit in front of the television in the living room as she eats dinner. "Have you had anything to drink today?," she asks.
"I had something this morning."
"You're not hungry?"
"I can go long stretches without feeding. I once went dry for eight days, just to prove to Spike that it could be done."
"You're like a camel vamp," she jokes.
"Except prettier, and better smelling. I hope."
"I do too. So what do we have planned for tonight?"
"Nothing."
"Isn't there something we should kill?"
"You need to do homework. Also, I'm still trying to find the remaining hideouts in San Diego."
"So you get to go have fun while I have to work?," she complains. After last week's multiple thrills of the Slayers' visit and their collaboration with Angel, domestic routine has returned for this couple.
"I won't be killing anything. And you wouldn't get the chance. The ones who are left know what you look like. And they're smart enough to run away."
"So we ambush them."
"If I could find where they live. Even then, they could escape to the sewers. We need your friends."
"How will they help?"
"As bait." She looks shocked.
"You are NOT using my friends as bait!"
"We'll pop out and save them before they get hurt. These vamps are alert. The only way to kill them is the catch 'em in the act. You think your friends will mind?"
"Actually, I think they'll get off on the danger. Which is the scary part."
"Hopefully we can take care of San Diego before Friday. Because that's when we're going to Las Vegas."
"What!?"
"You know we have to kill those vampires who put a hit out on you. I decided we should make a weekend of it."
"Do you know where to find them? Cause I'm not wasting a weekend walking up and down the Strip."
"I should have the names and addresses by tomorrow. Since the bastard's probably got friends and cronies, we'll need to take the whole gang. You don't think your friends would mind?," he asks sarcastically.
It's been more than an hour. Everyone's getting tired of waiting, knowing that a vampire is stewing thirty feet away. Rico looks at his cross. "That thing physically burnt the guy?," Nate asks.
"Yeah."
"Does that mean Christians are right? What does that say about other religions."
"They all have protective talismans," George reports.
"So the Unitarians and the Bahai are right?," David asks.
"It's only magic. That these objects work in no way proves the existence of a deity."
"Now you're an expert on magic?," Ruth asks.
"I'm hardly an expert. I've merely read a few things."
"So now we're also supposed to believe in magic?," Nate asks. "In addition to believing in men who rise from the dead and don't like sunlight."
"I believe they're called vampires," his mother replies.
"Yes, I know what they're called. I just didn't want to say it because it makes us sound either really crazy, or really gullible."
"How else can you explain what has happened?"
"I'll admit, strange things can happen." Recently, he thought his dead wife had been reincarnated as a talking dog. "But why should they fit some pre-conceived fairy tale version of reality? So the dead may come back to life. Why the fuck would they follow the rules set down in some Hollywood movie?"
"The folkloric version of vampirism is quite different from that prevalent in popular culture," George begins.
"I'm sorry, but I really don't need a lecture right now," he tells the college professor.
"Rather than being immortal and dashing, they are portly, usually live for only a few months, and attack those they knew in life."
"Can you shut up?"
"Nathan, please," he mother says. "I know we're all getting a bit testy."
"I was only trying to explain that Eliot Peterson might make a run for it when the sun goes down and attack his family."
"Good," Rico replies. "Then he doesn't kill us."
"Bad," David counters. "His family members are the ones paying us." Keith enters. David runs over and embraces him.
"Honey, I'm home," Keith jokes.
"You have no idea what we've been through."
"It's okay. Now where's the punk?"
"It's not that simple," Ruth cautions.
"You're dealing with an individual far stronger than yourself," George explains. "And you'll need this." He hands Keith a wooden stake he whittled out of a tree branch.
"This is a joke, right?"
Rico points to his neck wound, and to George's. "This ain't no joke."
"Whatever."
"He's sequestered himself in the chapel," George reports.
"Be careful," David warns.
"Try to draw him out here, into the light," Ruth requests. Keith chuckles.
"Whatever. Let's see what I'm dealing with." He opens the sliding doors. "What the fuck!?"
"That pretty much sums it up," Nate quips. Keith ducks a right hook, then lands a right cross and a left jab. The vampire counters with a left cross than staggers Keith, who wasn't expecting such a powerful blow. The vampire grabs Keith and throws him into the middle of the chapel. He crashes down, shattering several chairs. As the vampire runs over, Keith hits him in the stomach with a right uppercut while still on one knee. He stands and lands a left hook. The vampire counters with a right hook that sends Keith into the wall. He bites the right side of Keith's neck, but Ruth, who entered the room, breaks a chair over the vampire's back. It turns around. She's holding the stake Keith discarded in her right hand.
"Come and get me, you bastard." The vampire lunges. Ruth raises her stake. Keith grabs the vampire from behind and throws him across the room. Ruth grabs his left wrist and helps him out of the room. The vampire attacks, as the shifting shadows have made part of the entrance hall habitable for him. Ruth, David and Keith rush halfway up the stairs. The vampire is stopped by an invisible barrier at the edge of the staircase. He turns to his right and tries to attack Rico and George, who open the door and retreat into the light of the entryway. Unable to reach any prospective victims, the vampire leaps up, grabs the ceiling with its hands, and retreats like a spider back into the chapel, leaving the door open. George and Rico race onto the stairs. Keith lies down, and David tends to his injuries.
"I'm okay, David. Can't say the same for your mom. What's gotten into her?"
"Whatever it is, I love it," George declares with a big smile on his face. "You were amazing."
"So now you notice," she jokes with a sneer. David and Nate don't know what's worse, their mom's warrior persona, or how turned on it makes George. David goes upstairs, gets a towel and brings it down to put on the wound on Keith's neck.
"Looks like that cop wasn't as crazy as everyone said she was," Keith realizes.
"You've come around to accepting the obvious," George condescendingly notes.
"I accept that there's a strong, scary-looking guy with big teeth just a few feet away who wants to kill us."
"Sunset's in a half-hour," George notes pessimistically.
"What are we going to do?," Rico asks.
"I'll tell you what I was going to do," Ruth offers. "I was going to stake that vampire through the heart before Keith threw him out of my way."
"I saved you!"
"No Keith. I saved you." George grins lustily.
"He can't harm us in our bedroom."
"Oh give it a rest, George"
"It's okay Keith," Rico offers. "She saved my life, too."
"I don't think I've felt this emasculated since high school," David confesses to his brother Nate.
"Women just handle stress better than man," Ruth theorizes. "We rise to the challenge of protecting our offspring."
"I don't know if I've ever felt this emasculated," Nate says to his brother. "I wonder if all women react this way." He recalls the bar fight in which he got his ass kicked. Except now, Brenda – his tempestuous on-and-off lover – enters the saloon and beats the shit out of the big dumb bruiser who was pounding on Nate. He grins, totally turned-on, not realizing this is exactly what George is thinking about his own mom.
"I was just thinking about what would happen if one of these things attacked Celeste," Keith reports.
"You think she'd rise to the occasion?," David asks.
"Nah. I don't think she has it in her."
"We're runnin' outta time." Rico reminds them.
"I need to get a phone book," George says.
"It's in the kitchen," Ruth notes. "Which means you'll have to cross that strip of shadow. I'll get it." She walks down the stairs and stares down the vampire. He leans back and forth, as if about to pounce, but lets her pass by. "That's what I thought," she says to the monster. When Ruth returns, George flips through the Yellow Pages, while Keith takes the white pages.
"Here it is," Keith announces.
"A law firm?," David asks.
"A law firm that's involved in some freaky shit. I know a few guys who've done security for them. They're our best shot."
"Harmony, cancel my seven o'clock," Angel announces.
"It's just one measly vampire."
"It's not just one measly vampire. It's six human lives that need protecting."
"It's that Help The Helpless crap again. Fine. Have fun playing hero. Is anyone else coming along?"
"Wesley, Charles and Fred all have work to do."
"Because they have real jobs. Like me. And, apparently, not like you."
As Angel's driving there. Things get more complicated. Soon after the sun sets, a second vampire kicks in the front door. The two vamps make themselves at home in the sitting room, as the Fishers cower up on the landing. Angel calls. Ruth answers. She explains this new development.
"It's probably his sire."
"Wonderful. Now we're just not fighting one monster. We're fighting a family of monsters."
"You don't have to do any fighting, ma'am. That's my job."
"Don't call me ma'am!"
"I'm sorry."
"Well you should be. And frankly, I'm not sure you can take care of matters on your own."
"I've done this plenty of times before."
"You men are all alike. You leap into the fight full of macho fury, and end up needing a woman to save your chesnuts from the fire."
"Just sit tight, I'll be there in ten minutes, tops." He hangs up. "I see she's familiar with the concept of Slayers," Angel jokes to himself.