BtVS by Whedon and Mutant Enemy. Shadowrun RPG by FASA, WizKids, FanPro, Hare-Brained Schemes.

My apologies if it's a slightly AU Shadowrun that the causal agent is pulled from. Inexperience on my part, plus the many editions and my personal taste are probably enough to throw it somewhat off :)


-2000 AD, The Janet Arms Apartment Complex, Cleveland-

A minute or so into the draining it occurred to the woman she could resist the vampire's pull.

Her fear quickly changed to anger and she thrashed about, enough to disrupt the process momentarily.

Unwilling to let go, the vampire took a deep breath and called upon inner reserves of strength. His victim had nearly made it off the bed before he suddenly twisted and pinned her down with immense force.

Her ribs nearly crunched under the added strain.

Despite her gasping protests he resumed the process and, all too soon, she found her rage dissolving into ecstasy and lust.

A few minutes later and she was begging him to drain her dry, take all of her...

##

Those were her last words before he realized he'd drained her completely.

"This is so weird," he said to himself. "She still has blood, her heart is beating, but there's no-one left behind her eyes. I've consumed her will to live. Maybe I've eaten her soul. I don't have anyone to talk to about this."

He dropped her limp form carelessly onto the bed and began to pace around the room in a panicked state.

"I've just been operating on autopilot. I'm not sure this is what I want. I'm alive, but I'm still a vampire. I'm a better vampire," he said, stopping his nervous pacing in front of the door leading to the bathroom. "And, if so much else has changed..."

Steeling himself, he opened the door and walked over to the sink.

The bathroom mirror reflected his approach.

"Huh," he said, absent-mindedly wetting a towel to mop up the slight trickle of blood running down his cheek. "Myself in the mirror. Long time no see. I think I'll name you Jonas. No. I mean I'll rename myself Jonas. Better to assume a new identity from the ground up than be bound by what I've done as a human or as a demon."

His ears pricked up as, in the other room, the woman's vital processes began shutting down.

"Oh, really," he asked aloud as he moved to stand over her. "No long coma for you, eh? Oh, hey... Fear, rage and lust. From the flow of you into me I know that those are the keys to consuming another person... Without strong emotion my efforts are useless. Thanks."

He sat down next to her on the bed and lifted her head up so he could stare into her sightless eyes.

"I have changed, and this world has never seen the the like of me. I wonder if you'd like to join me. I don't know all about myself, but I could learn faster by watching you... Okay, it's settled then. The breed that I now found by turning you will be called," he said, twirling her long black hair about his fingers for a moment as he considered his options. "Windfell, for this truly has been a lucky break; it sounds nice, and it's vague."

That said to his satisfaction, the newly-named Jonas focused his will and pushed himself into her, metaphorically speaking.

It was a long and slow process, ending with his first victim's body being driven far, far beyond coma... Down to the deepest state of hibernation possible without immense cold.

He left her there, her heart only beating rarely and faintly. Her heart had become less of a natural, vital organ and more of a rough-edged tool pumping only the blood necessary for change.

She lay there for three days, untouched and unmissed.

The sun and moon caressed her face in their turn, her few neighbors too strung out or too self-involved to notice anything amiss.

With the darkening of the third night, she jerked into a sitting position.

Her eyes were free of conscious thought and showed nothing but a ravenous hunger.

##

Jonas was there to greet her.

"Ease my pet," he said, patting her hand, which flinched away at his touch.

Examining the half-seen radiance within/throughout her skin, he was quietly impressed that she could be aware of her surroundings even while being so empty inside.

"You'll feel more like yourself after a good meal," he said, grinning as he pulled a bound and gagged person up to her side.

She accepted the gift with a rudimentary gratitude.

Hours passed before she managed a 'Thank You' at his next offering of 'food'.

Another day came and went before her transforming brain connected with her newly recharged soul...

And Jonas was there to 'help' her with that too.

##

...Weeks passed...

##

-A Small Half-Buried Pyramid, Newfoundland, Canada-

When a gift is created, the idea implies the existence of a giver. The more powerful the gift, the more influential the backers, the more likely that the faith in the concept will either spontaneously create a new being or that something or someone will be merged into it so closely that the difference does not matter.

Either way, an entity that, for all its intents and purposes, was the thing that it protected, sat alone at its stone desk and frowned at a single piece of paper.

Originally, the paper was blank, but for the words of Truth. For hundreds of years, a single point of light had made a constant home upon the page and that was Good, for it represented the hope that the gift might someday be Received...

If one or more had shown fitfully and disappeared, before or during that constant pulse, the knowledge had been lost with time.

##

The giver was annoyed and slightly afraid, because lights were scattered all over the surface of the paper, nearly crowding out some of the words and that was Wrong. The words could mean one or be stretched to mean several; in the case of one Earning the gift the disbursement was simple. In the case of a few, one could be picked alone to Receive, or the gift duplicated, or the original gift divided evenly between... The choice was not up to the giver or the gift, but its backers. In the case of many- If the backers knew that the potential for Receiving was Many...

The being that was both the Shanshu Prophecy and its giver shuddered, splitting down the middle to reform as twin beings the same size as the original.

One of them picked up a piece of paper with the previously written words of Truth. If parts were roughly translated, it could be read as: 'The vampire with a Soul will play a pivotal role in the Apocalypse and be Rewarded with humanity to [possessive pronoun] tastes... Heaven and Earths will bent by this gift... so that the Receiver might become both human and content to be as such-'

The sheet this being held had, besides the unchanged Prophecy, only a single grain of light glowing brightly on it. Knowledge of its continued safety brought pleasure to the being's cold heart.

The other half of the freshly split being found itself no longer able to submerge its own identity in the certainty of the prophecy it carried and, with a sigh, became female.

The anthropomorphic personfication rose to her newly created feet and strode across the room, clothed in a hooded robe and holding a piece of paper. The sheet was blank but for myriad points of light and a sparse sentence of Truth, way down at the bottom of the page. If the footnote was roughly translated, it would read: 'The Souled vampires that have this and these running through their blood in amounts that define them, by benefiting from this new Prophecy, forfeit that one named Shanshu. So it is Written. So is it Done.'

The being that was both the unwritten Prophecy and its giver ascended the stone steps that had never held a foot before, to stand outside.

As a breeze brushed her face and she reflexively shut her red-irised eyes, a thin smile spread across her chiseled, green face.

Rather than forced to wait for my main event, as my 'brother' is waiting even now, she thought to herself. I am free to walk about the surface, for a long and interesting duration.

The Unwritten Prophecy opened eyes upon the world set before her and, in high spirits, strode out to greet the dawn and make a name for herself.

Literally.

##

-Room 303, Somewhere in Cleveland-

Cain Dennings woke up in a darkened room, shades drawn against the night.

He sat on the edge of the bed and, head pounding, tried to piece together shattered memories.

His life was clear, right up to the point where he had been drained by moonlight, his spirit flowing out of him until nothing was left.

Beyond the impression of his being awake since then, he wasn't coming up with much.

He sat there, trying to convince himself that it was just a bad dream, but the fact that he could hear all the noises in the street below him, smell in richer detail than he had ever imagined and, despite the absence of light, see everything around him in shimmering waves of heat.

All the enhanced senses were pointing to one conclusion, but he rejected it in favor of his sanity.

Sure, he thought. I'm a vampire now -or some kind of alien- but that does not mean I have to be a bad guy. My soul was drained, but I can see it now, within myself, flowing at an appropriate level. So I'm okay. I'll just had to watch my diet... Butcher's blood if I can stomach it, or willing victims that I'll want to leave alive and compensated...

"Oh, great," he said aloud, giggling hysterically. "I'll need money for that. I'm undead now, maybe I can ghostwrite."

In his laughter he moved his hand slightly and, when it touched something slightly sticky on the bed, he rose to his feet, buoyed by what his senses were telling him and what his mind refused to keep from him any longer.

"I know there's something wrong here. Beyond the things I'm not letting myself see I have the nagging realization that I can't have regrown my soul back to this level of sanity completely on my own."

Prompted by his own words, he crossed the pitch black room to the light-switch, which he found too easily despite his lack of conscious memories concerning the place.

His heart beat rapidly with the scent of his own fear.

When Cain flipped on the light and turned around, his screams were loud and long and heartfelt.

##

-A Sidewalk in Sunnydale-

A vampire named Fred had snuck out of Cleveland because he was sick of how Jonas was ruling his breed with an iron fist.

Fred needed to make a name for himself, so he caught a flight west and sought out the Slayer, intending to be the first of his kind to confront her.

He hoped he would be the last foe she would ever face.

Before confronting her, he stalked and drained a fresh soul so his powers would be at their strongest. Not only did he make no effort to infect the victim, he had broken the man's neck to remove even the faintest possibility of him rising again.

If there was anything Fred did not want, it was competition.

##

Quietly, the Windfell vampire watched the blonde woman approach. He knew in an instant that it had to be her, the Chosen One, from the brightness and vitality pulsing within/throughout her skin.

He lightly dropped to the ground from his perch in the tree, silently dissolving as he fell.

Buffy stiffened as she sensed the presence surrounding her.

When air movement signaled a blow aimed for the back of her head from behind, where no-one had stood a second before, she was able to react slightly and avoid the full force of the blow.

Despite being slightly dazed, she managed to avoid his next move to grab her.

She ran, with Slayer speed, to a better position. Whipping out a sharp and pointy object she spun to face her attacker.

Fred, his moderate but effective fangs bared at her in challenge, decided to burn the fresh energy coursing within his veins on increased speed and, by doing so, easily dodged the thrown stake.

At a heart-stopping rate he charged in for the kill, but even his enhanced blows were met one by one with enough resistance that her blocks actually began to push him back. Without increasing his strength he could not make headway and that was something he could not do in a single battle once he had focused on speed.

It occurred to him to change tactics.

##

Fred stepped back out of the Slayer's reach.

At her advance, he stepped back again and again, then pulled out a white handkerchief.

After dodging yet another thrown stake, he mopped his brow and, sitting down in front of the surprised Slayer, changed into mist.

That was not something she had ever expected a real vampire to do, but she adapted accordingly.

Unfortunately for Fred, he was neither smart enough nor skilled enough to plan effectively.

Buffy's head whipped around in seemingly futile search, tracking the faint cloud without appearing to, so she was completely prepared for his reforming a few feet above her.

She twisted and thrust upward.

A free-falling Fred impaled himself rather violently upon the wooden stake.

Buffy was shocked when he did not disintegrate into a pile of dust and instead landed on her with his full weight. She barely remained standing. Despite his injury, he even managed to grab hold of her arm. She could see the heart pulse against the stake lodged within it as his skin attempted to knit together and cover the wound.

However, when the regeneration process brushed up against the unvarnished wood, it reacted violently and shut down his enhanced healing factor throughout his entire body. Barely able to sit up, he gnawed weakly at her flesh.

In pain and in complete disgust, Buffy shoved another stake through his eye, piercing his brain.

He let go of her, slumped to the ground, shuddered and finally died.

##

After Buffy had buried the body, she ran to the house of her Watcher, Rupert Giles.

He looked up from his research and was less than impressed by her babbled report.

"Buffy, I'm sorry, but I have more important things to do than deal with you on this," the ex-librarian sighed, removing his glasses as he began to polish them. "What you have slain is likely nothing more than a vampire-obsessed human mage armed with possibly homemade spells that mimicked his favorite thing. Even going so far as to set off your senses. You would think that a man that intelligent and creative would be smart enough to avoid the True Slayer completely, let alone..."

He froze, having listened to what he was saying. "On the other hand, considering that the regeneration was apparently proceeding without conscious control and was repulsed by the wood, he'd probably already invested himself with something along the lines of a blood spirit thereby rendering himself nonhuman and beyond saving. What you did was both self-defense and, in all probability, a mercy killing. I hope that you took the proper precautions to avoid further interest and that you'll never wind up in the same position again." He looked up at her, his eyes filled with concern and sympathy. "Did you say you buried the body in a graveyard?"

"Yes," she replied, dryly. "In two graves."

##

-Room 303's Bathroom, Somewhere in Cleveland-

Cain Dennings, a recently risen vampire coming to grips with his soul, remained bent over the toilet bowl, feeling like he'd been in that position for an eternity.

Fighting off the last remnant of the waves of nausea that had coursed throughout his being when he had seen the broken... bodies in the next room, he stood up, slowly and carefully. He stared at his haggard reflection in the hanging mirror and came to a decision.

"The first thing I'm going to do," he said to center himself. "Is destroy the crime scene. I'm not going to jail over something my body did while my brain was on vacation. The second thing I'm after is research. Knowledge is power. The third thing will include some random acts of kindness, hopefully netting me a blood donor I won't need to kill. The fourth thing will be to find the guy or guys that did this to me and make their non-lives as hard as possible.

"This is no longer a simple matter of dealing with an odd hunger. This is a matter of redemption."