A/N; Rumours about my early demise have been greatly exaggerated. It's just been hard to find any time to write, for a number of reasons. For those who are interested, a list follows below;

My life the past six months;

Lost my job

Got a new job

Got dumped by my boyfriend (after three years)

Went to Morocco

Got stuck in Morocco because a bloody volcano in Iceland decided that this would be a good time to explode.

Took a bus from Greece back home (toured 10 countries in three days. Belgrade is really pretty at night... Or I'm sure it would have been, if I had in fact seen any of it!)

Got a promotion (Which means more work, less writing...)

Any way, enough of my ramblings. Here is chapter 23. It's not exactly action packed, but I promise to do better next time.

Hope you're still with me!

(Warning! This may contain spelling mistakes. And nuts.)

"I really can't tell you what's wrong with him", the doctor told Barnaby about fifteen minutes after he had been notified that the suspect swordsman was awake. "He's entirely unresponsive to any form of stimulation, he doesn't react to sounds, sights, smells or pain. I have no idea why, though. I can't see any serious damage to his head, other than a few bumps. It's like someone just flipped a switch and... shut him off. He's clearly awake though. We know, because when he dozes off, he seems to be dreaming. Rather violent dreams, I'd say. " He referred to the thrashing, moaning and pleading mister Horner began as soon as his eyelids fell closed. The pitiful sounds had made even the most hardened of the policemen cringe, and they would have felt sorry for him if not for the fact that the dreaming man in the hospital bed had beheaded at least two people with a sword.

The young doctor looked so bewildered and lost that the DCI felt a large twinge of sympathy for him. He was however not the only one confused by the current situation. Barnaby himself couldn't remember any time in which he'd been more rattled.

A tall tale of vampires, demons, and girls with superpowers had been spun to him. There was no way he was going to believe any of that! He was a rational, level-headed and above all realistic man, and such things as vampires, ghosts or witches did not exist, of that he was absolutely sure!

And yet...

It was hard not to take mister Giles seriously when he talked about it, the middle-aged gentleman with his glasses and a tweed jacket that clearly had seen better days had sounded completely calm as he'd related his bizarre tales to Barnaby and Jones. And when Sinclair had walked into the room and changed... He could have sworn the young man's clear blue eyes had turned yellow!

His musings was brutally cut short when he spotted a familiar figure at the end of the corridor. Brenda Packard was walking towards him, albeit rather slowly because of her age. Her face was closed and unreadable, but he could recognize the unmistakable twinkle in her eyes that meant she'd stumbled on a case she found utterly fascinating. He shuddered involuntarily. The cases Brenda favoured was always the most gory, violent and unusual ones.

She had finally sidled up to him, and now he noticed the plain brown paper envelope she clutched to her chest. She grabbed his elbow with her free hand and began pulling him along in search for an empty room.

"I heard you got the swordsman." Her tone was clipped and short, but he could hear the excited, almost giddy tone to her voice she tried to hide. "I've got some information for you."

"On Paul Horner?"

She stopped and frowned at him, looking slightly bewildered. "Who?"

Barnaby quirked an eyebrow at her. "The decapitating swordsman?"

Now she looked even more bewildered. "The swordsman's name is Paul Horner? But I thought... When you mentioned William Sinclair to me I pulled some strings to get the information on him, and after I read it I assumed he was the perpetrator. He wasn't called William the Bloody for nothing, you know."

Now Barnaby's eyebrows hit his hairline. "William the bloody?"

She sighed and began to pull him along again. "Come on. I'll fill you in on everything."

Barnaby followed, somewhat reluctantly but extremely curious about the prospect of finding out more about the mysterious William Sinclair.

William the bloody...

Emma woke up in a room she didn't recognize and with a violent hang-over she couldn't remember bringing upon herself. Not that this was an unusual occurrence for her. It usually happened about every third weekend. This time, however, something was not quite as it used to be.

She was apparently on a train.

That had never happened before. Usually when she woke up after a night out she'd be laying in a strange bed with a strange man. She'd never hopped on a train before. Now taxis, on the other hand was a completely different matter. When she became to much of a handful her friends usually put her in one and got it to drive her home.

She could feel her eyes starting to drift close, and her last thought before passing into oblivion was that she'd better get of at he next station...

Emma was a girl that enjoyed life. Thoroughly. "Live hard, die young, become a beautiful corpse" would have been her motto, had she ever stopped to consider her lifestyle long enough to put a label on it. That was the problem really; she never thought. She just did. If it seemed a good idea at the time, she jumped right at it. Men, jobs, drinks, drugs...

At the age of twenty four she'd already developed a liver that would have been more fitting a 60-year old alcoholic, lungs that should have belonged to a coal-miner from the seventeenth century and eating disorders a super model would be envious of. On the other hand, she didn't look like she was on the verge of death. Oddly enough she had a healthy, glowing complexion, long, shining auburn hair and a figure most women would give their right arm to have and most men would give their left arm to posses, if so only for one night. Her almost constantly smiling face was equally attractive, her mouth only slightly to broad and her nose just a little bit too big for that perfect, symmetrical appearance. The constantly vacant look in her eyes made the prowling men (and some women) hopeful that she was easy prey, sufficiently low on the IQ-scale to be easily persuaded to take the conversation 'somewhere more private.' And for the most time they were right. Only lately, something about Emma had changed...

She had prepared all her potential puppets months before she had decided to take up temporal residence in the mind of Paul Horner. Her thorough pre-work had ensured that it took her only a minimal amount of effort to completely overrun Emma Stevenson's psyche and take control of her body. It didn't hurt that the girl was thick as a yard of lard...

The people around her victims would have notices slight changes in their behaviour. They would have become more reclusive and withdrawn, quieter and more unaware of the world around hem as she bit for bit corroded their minds to give herself room in there. She always kept their more basic personality traits as not to make the people around them too suspicious.

So far, no one had noticed anything. Of course, almost everyone who would have noticed was long since dead. There was no one left who knew what she was.

She was just about to change that.

The file she gave him was thick. The first thing he saw when he opened it was an old photograph, yellow with age. It was a picture of a young man standing behind a chair on which an older woman sat. Their clothes dated the photo to the end of the nineteenth century.

The young man looked no older than perhaps twenty five, the woman could have been around fifty. Mother and son, perhaps? The man had a head full of unruly locks, slightly too long to suit him, and he was wearing round glasses. Even though his appearance definitely had changed, Barnaby recognised the image of William Sinclair straight away. There was no mistaking those cheekbones.

That was the only photo of him in the file. On the other hand, there was a lot of documents, detailing in rather dry and bureaucratic wording 'William the Bloody's' whereabouts and dealings between 1880 and 1949. there were some gaps in the time line, but never more than two or three years. After 1949 however, he seemed to have disappeared, only to resurface again in New York in 1977 where he'd apparently been responsible for the death of a slayer. After that there was noting until 1996, when the report said he'd been sighted in Prague along with his sire. Then there was nothing again. Apparently he had disappeared off the face of the earth for about a decade before he turned up in Midsomer, apparently completely reformed and repeating his past crimes.

He had a hard time connecting the face of the man he'd met to the monster described in the file in his hand. It couldn't be. He would have be over 150 years old if it was true. The handsome features of William showed a man no older than 25.

But his eyes had looked old. World-weary and dead tired. Barnaby had seen that look before. He'd met a lot of people with their pasts shrouded in darkness, but only the ones who'd managed to pick themselves up and step out into the light on the other side got that look in their eyes. That look that showed shame and remorse.

From what he'd read in the file, Barnaby wasn't sure all the regret in the world would be enough for salvation in William the Bloody's case.

After getting the news that the swordsman had awakened, but been told that they were in no circumstances allowed to go in and see him, Buffy and Spike had once again retreated to the waiting room. Buffy had a sleeping Heather on her lap, and he herself looked absolutely exhausted. Spike sat on the chair next to her. She was leaning against him, resting her head against his shoulder. They sat quietly, both content with the silence, and both unsure of what to do next.

The peace was broken when Buffy yawned. Heather squirmed a little in her sleep and Spike looked at both of them with concern clearly written on his face.

"You look totally knackered. When did you last sleep properly?" he whispered in her ear.

She shrugged. "the night before last; I think. Yeah, the first night in the cottage. Even Heather slept almost a full night, and that's pretty unusual."

Spike frowned at her. "You look dead on your , pet. We should get you home."

"Home where?" she asked tiredly. "the cottage is sealed off as a crime-scene and so's probably the B'n B by now. And I'm not that tired."

"Can't fool me, slayer. I know you. You're practically asleep in that chair."

"I've been longer without sleep before, Spike. You know that." She sounded a little annoyed now, and he couldn't help the little smile that touched his lips. She really didn't like people fussing over her.

"Yeah, I know. But plenty's happened in just two days. Moving out of London, finding decapitated bodies, police-investigations, crazed swordsmen..."

"You coming back..." she whispered. He just looked at her. She sighed. "Yeah, I'm tired. More than I'd like to admit, but there is nothing I can do about it now." She looked down on the little girl perched on her lap and smiled. "Besides, I don't wanna disturb Heather by moving right now. Let's let her sleep while she can."

"She's not a sound sleeper normally then?" He asked, looking down at the toddler. Buffy smiled.

"No, she likes to keep me up at night. I suppose it's in her genes."

He didn't answer, but the brilliant smile he aimed at her was better than any words he could have uttered.

She closed her eyes and sighed. "We should go and find one of the policemen. Barrabas or whatever he's called. I want to find out about Paul, then I want to get out of here."

Spike kissed her forehead. "I'll go look for someone to talk to. You just stay here with the little one, y'hear? "

Buffy smiled gratefully, but didn't have the energy to open her eyes. "Just don't punch anyone again, okay? Better stay away from Ben altogether."

Spike frowned. "Ben? The git from the hotel room?" He snorted. "I won't go looking for him, don't worry about that."

She still smiled. "I'm not worried. Now go, so I can get out of here sometime today, please!"

"I'm going", he said, and stood up slowly. He then closed his eyes before inhaling deeply, and then proceeded to follow his nose towards Detective Chief Inspector Barnaby.