"When is Claire coming home?," a worried Ruth asks.
"Pretty soon," David guesses.
"Hopefully not too soon," Nate adds. They wait eight agonizing minutes. Having spent the last hour or so whittling stakes and finding as many crosses as they could get their hands on, they are ready to help Angel, or rescue Claire. Ruth is especially anxious to save her baby. Angel parks in their driveway, and sees a young woman walking to the door.
"Stay back!," he calls out.
"Who the fuck are you?"
"It's not safe to go in there."
"You wanna know something? It never is." She walks up the stairs to the porch. Spike zooms in from out of nowhere and parks on their lawn.
"What are you doing here?," Angel asks.
"I got the message. Figured you were too busy to save people. Bloody hell," Spike says as he watches Claire open the door. Elliot's sire grabs her and spins Claire around. She screams. Spike leaps inside and puts the vampire on his back with a right hook before his fangs can touch her neck. She tries to stop hyperventilating. She was attacked, then saved by a whirling ball of blonde hair and black leather jacket. What a rush. Angel enters and engages Elliot. Spike and he both go bumpy as they fight. Spike leaps on his opponent and wails away. Angel uses a more controlled approach, blocking Elliot's blows and landing his own, easily taking control of the fight. Ruth runs in between the combatants and embraces and comforts Claire.
"It's okay, baby. Mommy's here." How does that make it okay?, Claire thinks to herself. What made it okay was that white-haired knight. Claire turns around to watch Spike do battle. Such ferocity. Such passion. For a moment, she forgot all about Edie. Pretty soon, Spike knocks his opponent onto his back and stakes him. Angel throws Elliot's back into the chapel door and stakes him. The onlookers gasp as the two vampires turn to dust.
"What the fuck is going on!?," Claire asks, completely bewildered.
"Do you people always swear this much?," Angel wonder.
"There were only two of them, right?," Spike asks. He looks at Claire. "You okay?" She shrieks. Her family backs up the stairs away from Angel, except for Ruth, who's with Claire.
"It's a trick!," George announces.
"You picked the wrong family to prey on," Ruth tells Angel before hitting him with a right hook. He grabs his jaw. The punch was harder than he expected. But what hurt Angel more was the hostility from the people he came to help. Ruth looks at Spike. "And you! You get the hell away from my daughter."
"Women!," Spike says with a smile, hoping the girl takes after her tough mum. Spike sees Angel return to his human face. "Am I? Oh!" He switches back. "How bloody embarrassing." This doesn't put the family at ease.
"It's okay," Angel announces. "You can come down." He steps towards the stairs and hits the invisible barrier. "Hey Spike, check this out." Angel had never seen a barrier that was not at a doorway. "We're good vampires," he assures the family.
"With souls," Spike adds.
"But I had a soul first. More than one hundred years before he did."
"Wolfram & Hart sent you?," Keith asks.
"I'm the CEO." They look mystified. He hands Ruth a business card.
"Are you a lawyer, Mister . . . Angel?"
"No. It's a long story." George's eyes get big and he walks down the stairs.
"Are you Angelus?"
"Angel. I used to be Angelus." David and Keith look at each other. The name change thing sounds really gay to them. They stare at Angel and smile.
"Angelus is one of the most legendary vampires of modern times," George tells Ruth.
"How do you know this, George?"
"My second wife specialized in late nineteenth-century literature. Were you the inspiration for a Baudelaire poem?"
Angel smiles bashfully. "Well I, don't like to brag."
"You were friends with Toulouse LaTrec and Auguste Renoir."
"I traded poetry with Rimbaud," a snippy Spike feels compelled to reveal.
"And he hated your work," Angelus pointed out.
"Well you liked it. And that wusn't my point. I hung with Rimbaud, and then a hundred years later I talked about Rimbaud with Patti Smith, who idolized the bloke. Angel here stopped being culturally clued-in when the Rat Pack broke up."
"I'm sorry, who are you?," George asks, infuriating Spike.
"Spike."
"Doesn't ring a bell. Wait. Yes, I do remember that name." Spike looks pleased. "You were Angelus's longtime ingenue." Spike does not look pleased.
"Like bloody hell! I wus always my own man. Carrying this old bag of bones halfway across the Old World only slowed me down."
"They really go at it like two old queens," David whispers to Keith.
"One of my ex-wife's former colleagues mentioned you in a paper. Were you the inspiration for Dorian Gray?" Spike does not like George.
"Actually, that rumor was started by Oscar Wilde," Angel – who does like George – reports. "Oscar and I were friends, but he didn't care for Spike. So he came up with the story that Spike was Dorian. With Spike being a vampire, it worked perfectly. However, Oscar didn't meet Spike until after the book was published."
"You knew Oscar Wilde?," David asks, walking down the stairs towards Angel.
"Stop!," Claire orders. "Can someone please tell me what the fuck just happened?"
"Elliot Peterson rose from the dead," Ruth calmly explains to her daughter.
"You people do realize it's a little early for Halloween."
"I know it's hard to believe. I suppose you had to see it to believe it."
"Or felt it," Rico says, pointing to his neck. Claire looks around, noticing the many injuries. For instance, Keith's left eye is nearly swollen shut. After a long silence, Claire bursts out laughing.
"This is so typical." No one was expecting that. "The world really is gong to end." This is something she had been blithely claiming ever since Edie said she found Claire's artwork "apocalyptic."
"Not if I can help it," Angel assures her. Claire's disturbed by the fact that he takes her literally.
"What are we going to do about the body?," Nate asks.
"There is no body," Rico points out.
David looks alarmed. "What did you do to Elliot Peterson?," he asks Angel. Suddenly he's no longer in thrall to the tall, handsome vampire.
"I staked him. And he turned to dust. That's what usually happens."
"Tomorrow afternoon, his family is expecting an open casket funeral. What the hell am I supposed to tell them?"
"We accidentally cremated the body?," Nate suggests. His deceased wife's family wanted her body cremated. So Nate gave them someone else's ashes and buried his wife's remains in an unmarked grave on top of a hill, as she had requested.
"They could sue us."
"What other option do we have?"
"We could sue THEM," David replies, pointing to Angel and Spike. Angel can't believe what he's hearing.
"We saved your lives."
"Couldn't you have put him to sleep or something?"
"So he could wake up during the funeral and attack his family?"
"Keith, they're a law firm," Nate reminds his brother. "We'd get our asses kicked."
"Usually they wake up after they're buried," Angel explains.
"But this man was about to be embalmed," George reports. That doesn't mean anything to Angel and Spike. "Embalming kills vampires!"
"It does?," Spike asks with a shrug.
"Wouldn't you die if we drained all your blood and pumped you full of preservative?"
"I suppose I might."
"Are the two of you supposed to be good' vampires?," Ruth asks.
"He's good. I'm bloody fantastic," Spike quips.
"How common is this?"
"We're the only ones," Angel says, grimacing when he has to say "we."
"How precisely did that happen?," George inquires.
"I was cursed by Gypsies."
"Really! My fourth wife was a Gypsy."
"Of the Kalderash clan?"
"Yes! From Moldavia by way of London."
"I happened to earn back my soul," Spike points out.
"How'd you do that?," Claire asks.
"Killed a bunch of monsters. Endured extreme amounts of pain."
"That doesn't prove you're good. It just proves you're a sadist and a masochist."
"Though I gave up the sadism when I switched sides."
"And the masochism?" Spike raises his eyebrows and doesn't answer. Claire laughs.
"How much disbelief do you have to suspend before you make yourself lobotomized?," Nate asks about their easy acceptance of so many ridiculous things. "I'm going to get a beer."
"Can you get me one?," Spike asks. Nate glares. "Fine. I'll get it myself." Angel watches Spike enter the kitchen.
"That's weird. He shouldn't be able to go in there uninvited. Is your kitchen a public accommodation?"
"Claire's friends seem to think so," Ruth quips. "Thank you for handling our . . . little problem. It was good of you to kill them without damaging any of the furniture."
"Sorry to spoil all these good vibes, but what am I supposed to do about the lack of a body for our funeral?," David asks.
"That's not my fault," Angel claims. "It's the fault of whoever bit him."
"That would be this pile of dust near the credenza," Ruth points out.
"The way I see it, some vampire has to be help responsible, and you're the only one left." David pauses. "Did I actually just say that?," he asks Keith.
"It's been a supremely fucked-up day."
"I've got it!," Angel declares. "Do you have a picture of the deceased? And his height and weight?"
"The coroner would have those."
"I need to make a call." Angel walks out onto the front porch. Spike comes back into the front hall, swigging a beer. Claire walks up to him.
"I can't believe I'm asking this, but, how old are you?"
"A little over a hundred and twenty."
"So, you've been a vampire for, like, eighty five years?" Spike does some quick arithmetic and appears alarmed.
"I've been a vampire for a little over a hundred and twenty years."
"But before that - "
"I wus human." She laughs.
"A little sensitive about your age?"
"Why so curious about this particular matter." Claire realizes they've gone off-track.
"How much of that time were you like that guy you just . . . disintegrated?"
"Never. If it wus me attacking your family, you'd all be dead." Spike finishes his beer and goes back into the kitchen for another. Claire's left to think about what Spike's disturbing boast. Angel returns.
"What time is the service?," he asks David.
"Three O'Clock."
"We can have it here by one."
"Have what here?"
"Your corpse. A wax model of your corpse with surprisingly life-like skin. Our lab is getting the vital information from the coroner right now."
"This isn't Madame Toussaud's."
"We're a lot more than a law firm. This sort of thing is not terribly difficult for us to pull off. The grieving family won't notice the difference."
"You've done this sort of thing before?," David asks with some concern.
"Not precisely. But we can handle your problem."
"Since you obliterated Mister Peterson, isn't it your problem as well?"
"Say, did you happen to know a detective named Kate Lockley?," Keith asks. Angel looks concerned.
"Did you here something about us? Because there was never an us. We were, just friends." Keith and David giggle. They find Angel's protests a tad ludicrous. Spike returns to the room, his new beer already half-drunk.
"You've killed people," Claire says to him.
"It's not something I'm proud of."
"A lot of people."
"I don't like to brag. Well, not about that. At least not anymore."
"What's it feel like?"
"You don't wanna know."
"Try me. I'm a big girl."
Elektra walks down a noisy Chicago street. She wears a black corset and dark blue jeans. Regan follows close behind. She is an inch shorter than Elektra and has short black hair, wears a spangled gold top and black leather pants. "You made the mistake of stopping in Cleveland?," Elektra asks.
"There was supposed to be something big going on. Demons were pouring in."
"So were Slayers, I bet."
"They had this ax thing that freaked everybody out."
"Cleveland's a boring town, anyway. The Slayers want it, they can have it." They watch two attractive young men exit a club. "On the other hand, I want them."
"You drink things other than beer?," Claire asks. "I mean, you, umm, you drink blood, right?"
"Animal blood."
"That's too bad." Spike worries where this is going. "See, about two months ago, our pipes backed up, and blood started pouring out." Faucets flowing with blood. Sounds like an interesting fantasy. "Blood from the embalming. It was like The Shining.' There was a pool of blood in the basement that must've been ten feet wide. I have some pictures of it in my room, if you want to see."
"Sure. But, why? Were the photos for insurance?"
"I'm an art student. Photography's my thing."
"Ahh. An art school girl."
After taking the boys dancing and drinking for an hour, Regan and Elektra duck with their victims into two nice quiet alleys on the way back to the guys' respective apartments. "I don't know how to put this, but I just can't wait any longer," Regan whispers into the man's right ear before kissing and licking his neck while she puts her right hand up his shirt and her left hand down his pants. He kisses her, putting his left hand on her butt and his right hand on her left thing. After ten seconds of smooching and groping, Regan's ready to go and turns bumpy. The man's eye bug out and he pulls his head back. "What? You thought I was just easy?," Regan jokes before sinking her fangs into the right side of his neck. Like all her victims, Regan thought he should have known she was too good to be true. The man cries out in pain and yells for help. "Cowardice is such a turn-off!," she kids, biting his right cheek and licking up the blood before digging into the left side of his neck. As she gleefully guzzles away, Regan fails to notice that she has company.
"You should've stopped after your fourth," a young woman says.
"Binge eating is never good for your health," the woman next to her adds.
Spike looks at the picture. "What do you think?," Claire asks. He involuntarily goes bumpy, but quickly changes back.
"You can almost taste it," he comments, embarrassed by his reaction. Claire's not.
"Can you do that again?"
"I'd rather not."
"Why? Cause you might hurt me?"
"No. Cuz it's not my more attractive side." Claire stands next to Spike, looks at her mirror, and sees that Spike's absent. She looks at him again, then at the mirror, just to make sure.
"How do you do your hair? How do you shave? Do you have to shave?"
"You're quite the curious little kittie."
"It's not everyday I get to meet a vampire. What am I saying? It's never! You shouldn't exist, but here you are." She grabs his right forearm with her left hand and puts her right index and middle fingers on the underside of his wrist. "No pulse. And you're cold."
"One follows from the other."
"I'm sure you get this sort of thing all the time."
"No. Maybe that's because I keep to myself."
"Figures. The lonely, ennui-filled vampire. Don't you think that's a cliche? You're playing right into a typecast," she jokes.
"You don't want to try looking inside me. There's too much ugliness."
"Actually, I think you're rather superficial, and this deep, tortured, complex act is just a smokescreen."
Spike looks at numerous pictures on the wall of a very attractive young blonde woman. "This your girlfriend?"
"We're just friends." Redhead college student. Blonde "friend." Spike thinks he knows what's going on.
"But she's gay?"
"Yes, and how is that any of your business?"
"And you're, how shall I put it, sitting on the fence?"
"Don't try and understand me," she replies, parroting Spike's own pleas. He smiles.
"Guess I walked into that one." They stand for a few quiet and awkward seconds in her bedroom. "I think I should go check on Angel."
"Why? He seemed to doing fine. David seems to like him, which is predictable. But mom also likes him, which is disturbing."
"She seems like a tough bird."
"Yeah. Nate said she saved Rico's and George's lives. Guess you never can tell."
Regan looks at Rosario - a short, skinny Puerto Rican, and at Tiffany - a tall black girl with strong shoulders, and sighs with disappointment. "Don't you gals ever stop to have some fun?" She returns to her human face, tosses the man at Rosario and sprints away. Rosa drops the ghost-white, barely alive victim and follows Tiff. Sixty feet on, Regan pulls a dumpster into the middle of the alley, slowing Tiffany down. She turns left when she gets to the street, and races down the sidewalk, darting around passers-by. At the first street crossing, a car making a left has to slam on its breaks. After Regan runs out of his way, the driver starts up again, blocking Rosario's and Tiffany's path. At the second crossing, Regan runs across the hood of a car making a quick right. At the third street she makes a left. "Leks!! Leks!!!," she screams as she runs. A hundred yards down the street on Regan's left, Elektra leans back against the wall, kissing and grinding with an arrogant, dapper young investment banker who is about to get most unlucky. Leks musses up his hair with her left hand and rubs his chest with her right as she thrusts her pelvis forward, rubs her right leg against the back of his left and plants a hickey on the right side of his neck, feeling his pulse with the tip of her tongue. "Leks!" Elektra hates it when people bother her while she's in the moment, so she ignores her friend, and patiently waits for her victim's heart rate to peak. "Slayers!"
That Elektra will stop for. "Sorry stud. Four's a crowd," she whispers in the happy man's right ear before spinning him around and going bumpy. With her right hand, she unzips his pants and goes to work. When trying to stay alive, it's always helpful to gross a Slayer out and make her not want to touch you. With her left hand on his chest, she pulls him towards her. "Make that five." He looks out, sees three hot girls, and wonders what's going on. Does Alexa like to have others watch?, he thinks to himself. The Slayers grimace and look away from this decrepit, perverted vampire. "You touch my friend, and he dies," she warns them. The man's eyes bug out.
"He dies, you die," Rosario replies. "Actually, you die either way."
Elektra giggles. "You're gonna choke on those words." She snaps the unlucky fellow's neck and steps out to fight. Tiffany charges Elektra, who ducks a punch and kicks Tiff in the back with her left foot, sending her face-first into the wall. She spins and lands a left roundhouse kick to Rosario's shins, tripping up the second attacking Slayer.
"Ya know, they're crediting me with your kills," Regan reports.
"Which ones?"
"All of tonight's."
"You should have known there was more than one vamp sucking up that much blood. But you girls weren't counting on a fair fight." As the Slayers circle, Regan and Elektra stand back-to-back.
"Did Spike ever give you any tips for fighting Slayers?," Regan asks.
"Yeah. Don't get staked."