Valerie slowly pushed the door open, trepidation written in her every movement. "Dad?" she called hesitantly, stepping inside. As grateful as she was that he hadn't started demanding to know why she was home so early, she couldn't help but wonder where he was. He was supposed to have had the day off. "Dad!" she called again. She could hear the television; maybe he'd fallen asleep on the couch.

Why was the house so cold? She checked the thermostat on her way to the living room and pronounced it broken. It clearly was not seventy-three degrees in the house. "Dad, I'm home!" she said to the top of his head from over the easy chair. "Are you awake?" Suddenly very worried, she added, "Are you okay?"

There was an oppressive feeling that weighed her down. It was almost as though something was sitting on her chest. She walked around in front of the chair to find Damon, eyes open and staring. They moved slightly in her direction as though out of instinct rather than interest.

"Dad?" she whispered. She reached out to touch his shoulder.

Suddenly, her wrist was caught in an iron grip. She yelped and jumped back, breaking free as he lunged to his feet with a wordless moan. Watching him shuffle around like the walking dead, her training temporarily failed her. She scooted away from him, babbling like an idiot for him to stop, to snap out of it. Behind him, so clear that she wondered how she had missed it, the dragon crouched; its body was partially phased through the walls and ceiling.

Valerie reclaimed her feet and stumbled away from her father. "What have you done to him?" she demanded.

That low, mega-bass laugh again. "I am the Wind of the Necropolis," he answered. "I am the god of death…and life. Your life will be mine, soon. But for now, you amuse me." The being vanished, although the heavy atmosphere took somewhat longer to dissipate.

She dodged out of the way as her father tried to catch her again, then fled the house. "Don't worry, Dad," she muttered, more for her own benefit than his. "I'll save you." She put her ghost hunting gear on one last time. For better or worse, she wasn't taking it off again until the dragon had been dealt with.

Outside, she was surprised and somewhat scared to see a dusting of bright green fog over the ground. All around her, people shuffled about aimlessly. "It's…life," she realized. That's what the fog was: life that had been drained from its vessels. The dragon was clearly responsible…

She heard a pained shout and turned quickly. The lifeless people had formed a mob around someone who, somehow, remained unaffected. She charged forward, shoving people out of the way, hitting them just hard enough to stun them. "Come on!" she yelled, somewhat amused to see the man who'd been so rude earlier.

"Love to!" he called back, backhanding one of his attackers out of the way. He kept his left hand very close to his body, Valerie noticed. It seemed rather stupid when he was being attacked on all sides, but maybe he'd been injured. After much pushing and shoving, they finally extracted themselves and ran to the relative safety of a nearby parking lot.

"Okay, you," Valerie began. "What's going on here? I know you know!"

He sneered slightly and held up his right hand in mock surrender. His left was still close to his side, and she had no idea why that bothered her so much. "First of all, my name An…Sandruu, not 'you'."

"What did you almost say?"

"Absolutely nothing. Second, I don't know much more than you about what's going on because someone had to go and chase off my contact." He paused, but Valerie chose not to respond. She wasn't sure what she could say that wouldn't be admitting she was wrong. After a moment, he shrugged and went on. "All I know is that creature calls itself Necrowind, and it can drain the life from the living to reanimate the dead, turning everyone into zombies."

"I noticed that, thanks," the ghost hunter said dryly.

Sandruu looked down at her with an expression of amused irritation. "Well, I was brought here to help, but maybe I'll just go hang out in some bar until my ride comes back to pick me up."

Valerie looked him over, apparently unarmed, and scoffed. "You? Help? How?"

He flashed a knowing smile and adjusted his eye patch. "You should know better than anyone that appearances can be deceiving, Miss Grey."

Valerie grabbed a handful of shirt and yanked him down to eye level. She spared the barest second for satisfaction at the astonishment in his face, then snarled, "How do you know my name?"

She was rewarded with suddenly nervous half grin that reminded of Danny for some reason. "Uh…lucky guess?" She shook her head. "Okay, then. Vlad sent me?"

"You should have said that the first time. I might have bought it. And how do you know about him, anyway?"

Sandruu sighed and closed his eye. "Okay, fine. We'll do this the hard way. I'm going to grab your wrist. Either let go, or watch in amazement as I crush it."

Valerie was about to make some smart remark when he did, in fact, catch one of her wrists with his left hand. It was with dawning horror that she realized why he had not used to against the people who were attacking him; he was more than capable of making good on his threat. She let go, unable to repress a quiet grunt of pain as the blood rushed back into her hand. She hadn't even realized it had gone numb until it started complaining loudly. "What the heck are you?" she asked, backing away as she rubbed her sore wrist.

He gave an uncaring shrug and turned to go. "Thanks for your help," he called back over his shoulder. "I was worried I might hurt somebody."

And he was back to reminding her of the ghost kid. He was hiding something; that much was obvious. After a moment's thought, she narrowed her eyes and ran after him. "Hey! Wait up!"

He didn't stop walking, but he did turn to watch her catch up. "Something else?"

"You bet there's something else! I can't just let you walk around unarmed; there's ghosts around, you know."

He muttered something about his parents being idiots when they were young. "Yes, well. Like you, I'm never unarmed. But, hey! Who am I to refuse backup? Last time I tried to go it alone, I got shrapnel in places I didn't even know existed." He made a noise that was half exasperated sigh and half amused chuckle.

"You were in a war?" Valerie asked, her attitude mellowing ever so slightly.

She was once again treated to the nervous grin, so like Danny's. "A war?" he laughed, completely unenthused. "Me? Ha, yeah. Nah, I'm way to lazy to ever be in a war."

She crossed her arms suspiciously. "Then what was that about the shrapnel." She could almost hear the cogs turning in his head as he tried to figure out how to talk his way out of the hole.

"Uh…yes, well…um…wow, there aren't too many ghosts around, are there?"

Valerie rolled her eyes at the change of subject, but it did remind to turn her ghost alarm back on. "All right, fine," she announced. "You want to be mysterious, whatever. I've got more important things to worry about." And at the top of the list was the fact that the alarm had started beeping quietly. They were being followed.

"Where is it?" Sandruu whispered.

Valerie glanced at him out of the corner of her eyes. It bothered her that he seemed to know so much about her. Maybe Vlad really had sent him. "Behind us," she whispered back. "About ten feet; I think it's just following."

"Could be…uh, Phantom. I think it wa-is."

"Could be anybody," she pointed out. "Why do think it's the ghost kid?"

"Um…lucky guess?" He turned his head to look at her through his single eye, doubtlessly wishing that she were on his other side. "I'm just digging myself in deeper and deeper, aren't I?"

"Uh huh."

He laughed bitterly. "Oh, yes. It just had to be me, didn't it? Couldn't have been Lucy, oh no. She's the smart one. She's too smooth."

"Who's Lucy?" Valerie interrupted, curious in spite of herself.

"Lucy in the sky with diamonds," Sandruu explained with a wry grin. "She's my little sister. Loves the Beatles. Calls herself Kaleidoscope Phantom on occasion." He shook his head. "That girl could win a political debate with the President."

"Well, the President is kind of an idiot," she pointed out.

Sandruu opened his mouth to respond, seemed to think better of it, and said, "Of Japan…I meant…"

Valerie narrowed her eyes again. "Japan has a Prime Minister."

Then he looked like nothing more than a deer caught in someone's headlights. "Did I say Japan?" he asked, laughing. "I meant…uh…oh, forget it. I give up." He pulled off his left glove and tossed it to the ground, then reached up with a hand like silver bone to pull the off his eye patch. Valerie gasped, and stumbled away as he turned the eyeless socket in her general direction. She had just enough time to notice that it was surrounded by some kind of metal frame before he snapped a thin, red square into place over it. After a moment, the red began to glow.

She relaxed considerably as she realized that it was not bone, but metal that comprised his arm. It was a prosthetic of some kind. She hadn't realized medical science was capable of something like that, or his eye, yet. "Geeze, what happened to you?" she asked.

He smiled, and she noticed for the first time that the entire left side of his face didn't work properly. He wasn't trying to seem snide; he couldn't help it. "I told you. Shrapnel." He kicked off his boots to let her see that his feet were the same type of prosthetic as his arm. "Amputated both of my legs, my left arm, eye was deflated as you can see. Some pretty heavy internal damage that I won't go into to." He sighed sadly and started walking again, leaving his boots behind. "Best five months of my life…"

She couldn't have heard that right… "The best?"

He nodded his head. "Yeah. I still had one eye and one hand, so I could feed myself and play video games, and everyone waited on me hand and…well, hand." He chuckled at the girl's expression. "Anyway, then a family friend convinced her father to make these for me, and I had to go back to Greenland for another three years, where my other lung got deflated by a bullet…" He trailed off as he realized that, once again, he had opened his mouth and said something he shouldn't have.

"Greenland?"

"Can we just…oh, I don't know…stop talking before I say something that gets us all in trouble?"

Valerie acquiesced, but she continued to keep an eye one him. There was something very, very wrong with him.

A/N: Oh, I forgot to mention to all of you that are wondering. The prologue? I made that up. And now I need to talk about Sandruu because, like Ebony Angel, he's been in my head for years, and I love him. Ahem.

Sandruu is a necromancer, although not in the context of this story. The original fic had it as he was the one who summoned Necrowind for much the same reason Vlad did, and with much the same result. However, Necrowind is the one that damaged the left side of his body, not shrapnel. Anyway, he went on a journey to seal the dragon away again because the Grim Reaper showed up and blackmailed him with eternity. I later scrapped the piece because he was such a bloody Sue (or Stu, if you prefer). I'm hoping his characterization is better here, and, I'll admit, this fic serves a dual purpose. I would like to eventually finish the original piece, and I'm hoping this will help jump start my brain.