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• "Are you Jerrold Irvine Smith?" the man asked with a deep voice.

(Dominique) Previously on Doomed – Story of a Vampire…

(Giles) And previously on Buffy the Vampire Slayer…

• "And you are with…?" Jerrold asked. "I am Mr. Robinson. Social Services," the man answered. "I had some information about the Turners, the family you’ll be living with in LA as soon as you finish your classes here in Sunnydale."
• "So, this Jay was an evil vampire," asked Giles. "He was no Angel," said Spike. "…there was a bit more to Jay than just a soul. Jay was born from a girl named Lena, the Slayer at that time… gypsies cursed her and she produced Jay, a vamp-kid who was human by day, vampire by night sorta thing."
• "Hello Isis." Isis was a metamorphic demon. She had the ability to transform into different demons after draining the blood out of the creature, and absorbing its DNA to transform into the creature. Isis’s smirk and revealed a couple of sharp teeth. Isis gripped the vampire and squeezed her tight and suddenly opened up her mouth to reveal five large rows of sharp, long teeth. Isis snarled and sunk her teeth into the vampire’s neck.
• "About eight hundred years ago," said Anya, "there was a sorcerer who achieved ascension; became the embodiment of the demon lohesh. It decimated the village." "Lohesh was a four-winged soul-killer," said Wesley. "They weren’t that fierce, for the demons we’ve faced."
• "Taking orders from a low-life lohesh- a demon thought to be dead," growled Isis. "The Lohesh," corrected Damien. "You’ll figure out what that means later."
• "…The name’s Damien." "Damien what?" asked Jerrold slowly. "You could always call me Damien Hunt if you want. It’s a last name passed down to me through my sire, who passed it down through a chain of vampires. The original Damien Hunt was a vampire who hunted down the Slayer-" "Lena," finished Jerrold slowly. "I’m familiar with her work."
• "And what might your name be, friend?" growled Jay. "Kali." "Telekinesis. You’re a psychic vampire."
• "I rank you my second in command Kali," growled Lohesh, "giving you an army of asanbosam vampires and you get six of them dusted!" "These vampires tend to look generally human shaped with two exceptions: its arms are made of a steel scythe, and their teeth are made of iron."
• "I pulled out a demonic creature from a savage, demonic, world, summoning great powers and magicks to empower this creature, and you both get it killed… Twice!!" growled Lohesh. "In order to make this up, you will need to provide an extremely deadly debt to me." "Kali and I have already discussed a plan to take down Jerrold," said Damien. "A summoning," said Kali, "When we know if it’ll work, we’ll bring her to you."
• Buffy walked up the steps of her home… She quickly glanced up to see Riley standing in front of her. They quickly embraced in an intimate and romantic kiss which would eventually lead them upward into Buffy’s room.

Sabrina Alexis seemed older than she looked. For a fourteen-year old, Sabrina was pretty tall and had managed many dates with older guys, which she found more acceptable for her than the boys in junior high, whom she enjoyed being with. But what she did tonight seemed much more irregular than what she usually did. Sabrina, who was hanging out with some friends at the Bronze, had stayed there passed her curfew, and wandered out with a boy as well who she didn’t even know. His name was David-something, who she had just met.

And, unlike most of her other dates, David was bringing her to one of Sunnydale’s cemetery, which were all apparently keen make-out spot for people, or so he had told her.

But there seemed to be something odd about David, something that Sabrina just couldn’t put he finger on. So she figured, when that odd thing occurred, she’d be able to deal with it, as she had dealt with so many things in her hellish years in Sunnydale.

David had his arm around Sabrina, as they moved through the cemetery. Eventually, David stopped Sabrina and they began kissing and kissing, quickly getting caught in the moment, totally unaware of the various creatures watching them.

As David’s lips moved down along Sabrina’s neck, she gave a little moan, when she heard David give a strange, low growl.

And that was the last thing Sabrina remembered before David collided into her, and she fell to the ground, knocking her head against the hard ground, as her consciousness faded…

* * * *

It had definitely not been a slow week for Jerrold Irvine Smith, also known as Jay, the Doomed Vampire or the half-human half-vampire. It started out as any other week in Sunnydale: a little sleep, summer school, some slayage, and then homework before dozing off. But then, Jerrold’s run-in with the Vampire Slayer changed everything. He was promptly captured by several vampires afterwards, and then pitted against a vicious, demonic, beast, apparently from some other dimension. After killing it, the next day he learned that it had been revived, and he, again, was forced to face off against the demon, along with several other demons.

But luckily, by this time, Buffy, the Vampire Slayer, had realized that she was on the same side as Jerrold, and they joined forces, instead of fighting. And, somehow, they managed to destroy the revived demon, as well as several vampires, including some asanbosam vampires.

Now, for the last several days, the Doomed Vampire had been forced to patrol Sunnydale’s cemeteries, which were filled with dozen of vampires, all seeming to target one thing: him. And worst off, ever since he, Buffy, and Isis- his demonic informant- disposed of the revived demon, he hadn’t heard anything from the Slayer ever since. So, he was forced to patrol alone, risking his life while Buffy was off doing something apparently more important than her calling.

And tonight, a vampire was targeting someone he knew, though someone he wasn’t particularly close to; it was Sabrina Alexis. She was a student that went to the same summer school as him, though she and he weren’t too close. This was mainly due to the fact that she was the annoying, stuck up, class bitch, and he was a half-vampire that kept to himself. It was like two different worlds.

Though, several days back, Sabrina was "checking her answers" on her test by looking at Jerrold’s answers through her hand mirror, which lead to the unfortunate incident when she caught a glimpse of Jerrold, who, had accidentally vamped out. So, when she didn’t see any reflection, she quickly freaked out and began screaming. That was the only real interaction either of them had with each other all summer.

Up until now anyways.

Jerrold, hiding up in a tree, watched Sabrina wandered deep into the cemetery, with a vampire holding her close to him. She also wasn’t aware of the other five vampires that were swarming around her.

As the vampire turned around and began kissing Sabrina, which the sight of slightly disturbed and disgusted Jerrold, the Doomed Vampire stood up from his hiding spot, and quickly vamped out, revealing Jay, his darker, demonic side of him.

As the vampire’s lips moved from Sabrina’s mouth to her neck, Jay gave a low growl and jumped from the tree, slamming into the vampire, pushing Sabrina and the vamp to the ground. There was a loud THUD as Sabrina’s head in the ground and as the vampire’s teeth slightly grazed her neck. The impact had knocked out Sabrina, luckily. Now Jay didn’t have to explain to the girl why he slayed a bunch of guys that exploded into dust.

"Slayer," growled the vampire darkly, as he felt Jay push down on the vampire.

The Doomed Vampire’s original mother, Lena, who was cursed by giving birth to Jay, was the Slayer in her time. When she gave birth to the half-vampire, she passed down her Slayer strength and abilities into him, which gave the half-vampire incredible strength. Unfortunately, in incidents such as this one, his "Slayer-strength" was easily confused with Buffy’s, making moments like these somewhat embarrassing.

"Okay, that’s like the third time tonight," complained Jay, as he grabbed the vampire by the back of his collar, lifting him up off of the injured Sabrina and tossing him into a nearby tree. "Just because I’m strong, doesn’t always equal a Slayer."

"Jerrold," the vampire sneered darkly.

"Right now, the name’s Jay," corrected the half-vampire, as he reached towards his belt, where he grabbed his newly designed dagger-like stake out of its holder, and held it up towards the vampire. His previous dagger-stake was ruined, since Buffy had jabbed the stake through the Drokken, covering it with demonic blood, giving it an odd stench that he didn’t want to bring into the house.

The vampire roared with angry as it spun around away from the tree, to face off with the Doomed Vampire, when it suddenly froze in place, attempting to hold itself together as Jay pulled his stake from out of the demons heart. It tried, but the vampire couldn’t remain stable for too long and quickly crumbled apart and exploded into dust, leaving the half-vampire with five other vampires honing in towards him.

The half-vamp gave a little sigh, tossing his stake up in the air and catching it with his other hand, waiting for the five vampires to get in closer to him. "Ah the patients of the Doomed Vampire… it’s truly endless."

Jay tapped his foot, waiting for the vampires to come closer, when all of a sudden there was a wail coming from one of the vampires, and one exploded into dust. Jay swiveled around to find Spike taking out one of the vamps, and preparing to take out the next vampire.

Spike, a de-fanged vampire, thanks to the help of the government, and an annoying little chip, had known the Doomed Vampire back in the days when he was originally vampire, after his mother gave birth to him. Now, in Sunnydale, Spike and Jay had become allies, after facing off against several vampires together. Plus, Spike was patrolling with him, since Buffy had gone off and disappeared somewhere, so he and Jay had grown slightly closer.

Course, he was slightly pissed that Spike had interrupted this particular night, because he was somewhat bored and he could have easily taken out these vampires.

"Spike," growled Jay, as the de-fanged vamp punched one of the vampire lackeys in the face, stamped on its foot, and elbowed the creature in the face. "What are you doing here? Isn’t Passions on or something?"

As Spike lifted the vamp up by the shirt and tossed him to the ground, quickly swiveling around as another one of the vampires came in towards him, kicking the undead in the face, and beginning to pull out his stake. "Not till the morning time. What’s wrong little vamp?"

Jay groaned with annoyance. Though, he probably would have preferred Spike or Buffy to help him out from time to time, and though he’d wanted Buffy to eventually start show up again, he didn’t really want any help right then. But he figured Spike wouldn’t understand. And from what Isis told him about Spike, Buffy wasn’t all too kind to him, so he figured he’d just let the de-fanged vampire have his fun for now. "Nothing Spike."

The half-vamp glanced around, checking to see where the fifth vampire had gone, but it had seemed to disappear off somewhere. So he decided to head over to Spike, who had interrupted his slayage, and help him out.

That was until the half-vampire’s eyes locked onto Sabrina, who was being dragged away by the final vamp.

"Spike butted in," muttered Jay, quickly rushing towards the unconscious body of his classmate, "he can handle three vamps by himself." As the half-vamp continued towards Sabrina and the vamp, the fleeing-vamp glanced back just in time to stop Jay.

As soon as he was within distance, the fleeing-vamp, dropped Sabrina’s arms, and shot out its leg, kicking the incoming Jay, sending the half-vamp soaring backwards, landing on his back.

"And to think, Damien and Kali’s lackeys couldn’t even finish you off." The shaggy-hair vampire snickered as he moved towards the half-vamp as he tried to pull himself together. "Oh, please, don’t get up." The shaggy-vamp growled and kicked Jay in the ribs, turning the half-vamp over on his back. The demon quickly shot out his foot, and pressed the Doomed Vampire to the ground. "Pathetic."

"Ouch, that hurt," muttered Jay, as the shaggy-vamp, continued to press down harder on the fourteen-year old. "But trust me, pathetic won’t ever be as bad as the insult I have for that mop on your head…"

The shaggy-vamp’s foot slid up from Jay’s back, to his neck, as he felt the pressure of the demon’s foot begin to come down on his neck, feeling as if his head would pop off.

The half-vamp quickly lifted up his arm and swiftly shot his hand out towards the vamp’s leg. As the shaggy-vamp’s leg dug deeper and deeper into his hand, Jay tried pulling the vamp’s leg off of him. Unfortunately, it wasn’t working, as he began to slip out of consciousness, until he heard something crack over the vampire’s head, as the pressure lessen as the vampire collapse on the ground next to Jay.

Jay quickly reverted to Jerrold when he saw who had rendered the vamp unconscious: Sabrina.

"Hey Sabrina," said Jerrold, quickly standing up, and then quickly dropped his stake from his hand and kicking it aside. "Uh, thanks for knocking out that creepy guy for me-"

"What did you do to David?" growled Sabrina, quickly raising up that rock towards the stunned Jerrold.

"I-I-I… I jumped him when I saw him about to steal… something of yours- your purse!" exclaimed Jerrold, giving a little nod as he glanced around, and murmured, "Your purse, which you do not have with you tonight, huh?"

Sabrina sighed and walked forward, shaking her head, and putting her hand on Jerrold’s shoulder. "Irvine."

Jerrold cleared his throat and murmured, "Uh, it’s Jerrold-"

"Okay, I don’t really care," interrupted Sabrina. "What I am aware of though is that you are apparently…" Sabrina sighed again as she put both of her hands on Jerrold’s shoulder, dusting off some dust (probably from a vampire- which she would assume came from the scalp) off of his shoulders. "You’re attracted to me."

Jerrold, keeping a straight face, eyed Sabrina for a moment. "Yeah… right… If that’s what you’re telling yourself…"

"And I know you’ve had problems with that whole breakup with Dominique and all," explained Sabrina, putting one arm around Jerrold and starting to walk with him, "and then there’s was that whole April thing you had to deal with last year-"

"Hey!" protested Jerrold, pushing away from Sabrina. "I never dated April!"

"Yeah, I was gonna say that April went all stalker-like last year," explained Sabrina, "which may be the reason why you feel you have to go all stalker-like with me now. I mean, especially acouple weeks before I’ll be leaving for San Francisco, and you’ll be trapped here in this hell-hole of a town."

"I’m leaving for L.A. after all this," replied Jerrold dryly.

Sabrina stopped walking and shrugged. "Still not caring. And besides- Ah!" Sabrina suddenly released a horrifying shriek when suddenly the vampire from before was making its way towards Jerrold, but before the demon could attack the half-vamp, it cringed and shuttered right before it exploded into dust, revealing Spike with a stake standing behind the demon.

As Sabrina continued to scream, the half-vampire gave a sigh of relief as the girl ended up fainting afterwards.

"Who’s she?" asked Spike curiously, as he wandered up from behind the Doomed Vampire.

"This girl I go to school with," answered Jerrold, giving a big yawned as he checked his watch. He had specifically not called her a friend, since they weren’t on a very friendly basis.

"I don’t suppose you’d let me eat her?" wondered Spike curiously, hovering over the frightened girl.

"I’d say yes," replied Jerrold, beginning to lift up the unconscious Sabrina. "Course, she’s not dead, and I’m not killing her for you, so I guess you might as well help me carry her to her house."

Spike gave a little groan as he bent down and lifted up Sabrina’s legs. "Fun, fun."

* * * *

After dragging the conscious Sabrina to her house, and leaving a little note next to hear, apologizing to her parents for keeping her out so late. Jerrold and Spike headed back out into the cemeteries for another couple of rounds of patrolling, fought several vampires who worked with Lohesh, but that was about it. And, none of the asanbosam demons shown up, nor did Damien or Kali.

It was pretty much a dull night, other than the massive vampire encounters, which the Doomed Vampire had hoped would go away after he got rid of the Drokken, but that wasn’t the case.

Extremely tired, but happy it was the weekend and that he wouldn’t have to deal with school until Monday, Jerrold dragged himself up towards his flat in Sunnydale, which he’d be leaving in acouple of weeks when he moved to L.A. to live with his new family, the Turners.

As he dragged himself up the stairs, and opened the door into his house, he felt a sudden chill as he stepped into his house. Jerrold hesitated and stepped back outside of his house, glancing around. He peered around his street, checking to see if there were any vampires lurking around, but nothing was there.

Jerrold turned back around and stepped through the door, as another chill shot down his back. The half-human quickly vamped out, growling in annoyance as he peered around the street, trying to find something with his vampiric vision. But, he still failed to find anything. As he spun around to head back into his head, he froze as his eyes locked onto the door of his next-door neighbor, which stared back at him, slightly ajar.

Jay quickly reverted back to Jerrold and stared at the door a moment and closed it shut. As he stepped through his door, the chill had lessened, but it was still there. He wasn’t sure what was below him in his flat, but he knew something was wrong…

"That’s why your boy Chris was cheating on you with your friend Melissa," muttered Chris, slowly making his way towards her. "Yeah Melissa… Michelle… even Kelly, but that didn’t last too long- you know, with the death and all." Chris growled lowly, as Tami tried to pull away, but the demon used its vampiric speed and slammed the girl into the tree. "Though, you probably shouldn’t be looking to get revenge on any of them, since you know… they’re dead."

* * * *

Isis’s eyes quickly shot open as she propped herself up from the terrifying nightmare she was having about Tami, a vampire she had killed several days ago by draining her of her blood.

Isis was a metamorphic demon, who, if she drained a demon or a person, could take on the shape of that demon or person. She appeared pretty plain in her natural demonic state, small, gray, thin, no hair, pretty basic. Her only deadly features were her teeth, which she had several rows of concealed within her mouth, and her eyes, which would momentarily flash red and stun a victim so she could drain it.

Isis herself had been a young girl who had gone to Sunnydale’s main junior high school. The metamorphic demon needed an identity to disguise herself with for awhile, so she took her form and act as if she was a human and hide in her human form. That ended up being a mistake, because that’s how she met Jerrold Irvine Smith, or Jay, the Doomed Vampire. Also, staying in her human form for so long was affecting her dreams as well. Isis’s conscience and soul, the actual person Isis, would feel sorry for these demons and monster and people and that would be reflected in the dreams she had.

Now the demon didn’t have all that much guilt for killing them, and she had buried that guilt long ago. These nightmares of these creatures’ pasts just seemed to be a source of information for her- and that was fine with her, because it was free information she could get without having to pay any sort of price.

As Isis groaned with the annoyance, and from the slightly tiring dream, there was a knock on the door as the knob quickly began to turn.

Isis gave a little yelp as she fell off the bed, and landed on the side facing towards her window (away from the door), as her mother opened the door.

"Isis? Honey? Are you awake?"

"Yup," mumbled Isis, as she quickly transformed into her human form and stood up. "What’s the what?"

"One of your friends is on the phone," explained her mother. "It sounds rather… well, urgent, I think you better take the call."

Isis gave an awry smile as she rubbed her eyes and wobbled out of her room. She moved into the hallway, where the nearest phone was and picked it up. Groggily, Isis mumbled, "Uh, hello?"

She was actually surprised by who was on the other line of the phone. She hesitated as the person spoke for a moment. "Oh, um, okay. So you think we should meet tonight? It’s that important."

Isis waited for the person to finish and she gave a little nod. "Right. This thing must be dealt with right away." She gave a long, tiring yawn, and mumbled, "As long as right away is tonight, right?" The person continued on for a moment and then Isis replied, "Cool. I’ll prepare for tonight. In the meantime, you just rest up. It’s gonna be a hell of a ride."

Isis hung up the phone and turned around to see her mom hovering behind her. "Oh, yeah mom. What’s up?"

"Who was that?" her mom asked curiously.

"Uh, no one you know," replied Isis, still with that awry grin. She moved passed her mom and headed towards the bathroom.

"And where are you going tonight?" asked her mom, following behind Isis.

"You know, out." Isis closed the bathroom door behind her, desperately attempting to get away from her mother.

* * * *

"Okay, I think you all know why I called you all here," said Giles, as he stood in front of Willow, Xander, Tara, and Anya, who were all sprawled across Giles’s couch, attempting to stay awake. Giles had a book opened that he had been reading through all night about that mysterious half-vampire that had shown up recently in Sunnydale.

"To deprive us of our much earned sleep we were about to have before you called?" muttered Anya.

"B-before?" asked Tara sleepily.

"Well yes," said Anya, with a little grin across her face. "Once every month Xander and I stay up all night having-" Anya winced as she glanced over at Xander, who was being to turn red again, starting to sink into Giles’s couch, and she cleared her throat and replied, "we were having a nice, long session of meaningful… uh, ‘talk.’ And then this morning in our last moments of ‘talking,’ the phone rang and Giles spoiled it all."

"Ah, yes," murmured Giles. "That is… quite interesting Anya. But please, in the future, never inform me as to what you and Xander are doing when I call."

"Fine," muttered Anya. "So tells us about this demon that we have to kill for Buffy since she’s gone AWOL- again."

Giles momentarily glared at Anya, who had- as she often did with everyone- insulted his Slayer, who had disappeared for the time being. But Buffy’s ex-Watcher figured that it wouldn’t be anything too alarming to worry about.

"Well it’s not like she disappeared out of thin air," mumbled Willow, yawning tiredly, rubbing her eyes. "Riley came back acouple nights ago, and from what Buffy’s mom said, they won’t be coming down any time soon. She figured that they should spend some time with each other for awhile, now that this whole Initiative thing is settled- and I agree, Buffy and Riley just need some time to be together and to enjoy each other’s company and to-"

"Boink?" finished Anya dryly, angry that Willow was trying to disprove her theory about Buffy disappearing.

Willow’s eyes narrowed as she looked at Anya, and then Tara shot a glance towards Xander, who was still sinking into Giles’s couch, attempting to escape the embarrassment that Anya was presenting. Tara nudged her head towards Willow and Anya, and Xander gave a little sigh and shrug. "Uh, ladies. I think our friendly neighborhood Watcher was trying to tell us something."

"Ex-Watcher, dear," reminded Anya bluntly, turning towards Giles and flashing a brilliant grin.

"Yes, quite true," murmured Giles dryly, put his book down onto the table, turned to a page with the title "Doomed" across the top of the page. "This is your foe."

All four twenty-somethings leaned forward, peering at the book and quickly exchanging slightly confused glances before Anya bluntly asked, "Where are all the pictures?"

"From what the readings tell of the Doomed Vampire," explained Giles, pacing back and forth, "also known in many cultures as the legendary ‘dhampir,’ which is apparently a half-vampire. This demon has an immortal spirit, and after it dies the demon acquires another body no too long prior. But what’s illusive about all this is that demon won’t always return as a vampire- it’s been demon, monster, even human in the past. Thus, it has no pictures."

"Ah," awed Xander, leaning back in his chair, "so the spirit takes over an innocent bystander, corrupts the body and somehow it turns into some monstrous, demonic, vampiric creature, or what not." Xander shot up and nodded. "Am I right?"

"Quite wrong actually," replied Giles, as Xander fell back into his seat. "Jay- as the vampire calls itself- didn’t have any memories right away, if at all, when it took over its new form. And it didn’t as much take over the form, as kick out the spirit before it was brought into the world. So in a way, it’s like the original spirit within the body had never actually been placed there."

"Yeah," agreed Tara, "it says here that Jay would only regain his powers he had as the ‘Doomed Vampire’ if he were human and that human had became a vampire. But there weren’t any records of him every getting vamped."

"He was careful," murmured Willow to herself.

"Careful not to let his guard down," insisted Xander. "He was probably waiting for the right time to take on the Slayer- our little Buffy."

"Xander’s right," agreed Anya. "I’ve heard of this guy in my demon days. It wasn’t good. Apparently, in his borrowed demon form, he decimated a village I was planning to curse- though I managed to get away with saying that he was my curse, so I got off on that one."

"So, h-he’s dangerous then?" stuttered Tara slowly.

"Yes," answered Giles. "And from what Buffy and Spike have told us, he’s extremely deadly."

Xander sighed, shaking his head. "Attacking us during the summer, instead of the start of the New Year, this guy has no respect for the old Big Bad standards."

"How will we track down this guy?" Willow asked curiously.

Giles sighed and shrugged. "I hadn’t heard of his arrival until several nights ago. It may be necessary to simply patrol, and if we bump into him, we’ll do away with him."

"How will we know it’s him?" asked Tara, continuing to read the book. "He could be anybody."

"Well, Buffy said that this current ‘Jerrold’ had several features similar to his original origins as ‘Jay,’" explained Giles.

"Meaning?" asked Xander slowly.

"Well uh… well, we won’t know," finished Giles anticlimactically.

"Whatever brought him back may have consisted of powerful magicks," suggested Willow. "There may be something at the magick shop that we could use to locate this guy."

"Right," said Giles. "You and Tara head over to the magick shop and come back by sundown. Then we’ll begin the patrolling."

* * * *

Within the underground of Sunnydale, California, not too far away from Lohesh’s domain, Damien, Kali, and several other vampires and demons were preparing for "the Crystal Night" or the summoning spell to call forth the demon they were conjuring.

Damien and Kali paced around the current spell ingredients they had in order to open the portal into the dimension in order to pull out the demon, but as they impatiently waited, both vampires quickly realized that there was something wrong.

Kelly, a vampire Damien had sired a year ago, bent down near the sacred circle they had creature for the summoning, but gave a little groan as she rose up and shook her head turning to the two commanding vampires. "We have a little problem."

"What?" Kali growled darkly. "Time’s a wasting Kelly. If Lohesh hears that we have yet to perform the summoning of our demon then-"

"It’ll be on one of our heads," finished Damien, nudging his head towards Kali. "But trust us Kelly, we’ll take you out first before we face Lohesh."

"We’re missing a spell ingredient," explained Kelly, cautiously stepping back. "That’s all." Kelly shrugged and swiveled around and picked up the black rock within the center of the sacred circle drawn on the floor of the underground cave. "We need a special summoning crystal in order to free this demon- not just a simple conjuring crystal such as this one." She slowly shook her head and quickly spun around and hurled the rock against the wall of the cave, shattering the useless rock. "The crap you and Kali are giving me to work with is pathetic! All you need to do is go to the magick shop and get a summoning crystal, and then we can perform the summoning tonight."

Kali snorted and shook her head, walking away. "Testy, testy, testy… Some vamps just never should’ve been sired…"

"Fine." As Damien grabbed Kali by the arm, as a reflex, the psychic vampire propelled a force that ended up slamming the other vampire against the wall of the cave. "Sorry, forgot hands off."

"You should know better," replied Kali darkly. "I’m far stronger than you."

"And props to you," muttered Damien, quickly standing up and grabbing Kali by the arm again, this time without getting slammed against the wall. "Need I remind you that we’re in this whole thing together- mainly to save your neck, I believe."

Kali stared coldly and darkly at Damien, as her eyes seemed to stare right through into Damien’s eyes, giving off some sort of psychic disturbance as she stared. Or maybe she was just trying to intimidate him. "So?"

"If we simply head off to the magick shop for this summoning crystal, and fail to get the right crystal again, it’ll be our heads that I believe Lohesh will be having," explained Damien. "So…"

"So we should bring Kelly along with us," murmured Kali. "In the day-time… great!" Kali’s eyes quickly shot passed Damien and fixed onto Kelly, who had her arms crossed and was tapping her feet. "We’ll be needing you to come along with us."

"Figured that much," replied Kelly. "And you better hope we don’t have any sort of problems or run-ins tonight- Slayer or Jay or Spike or another. Because if anything disturbs the Crystal Night then not only will the spell go wrong, we may unleash something else."

Damien gave a little nod and simply shrugged it off. "Don’t really care. Let’s go."

After the strange disturbance from his neighbor’s house, and the previous encounter with the vampire who broke into his house at the start of that week, Jerrold figured it was time for him to start stacking up on magick supplies; mystical alarms and stuff to warn him of entering demons. He was also curious as to what was happening down below him in his neighbor’s home, so he figured he could probably cast some sort of spell to indicate if there were hordes of demons below him or whatever. If he simply stepped into the house and walked in on Jennifer and Kyle, they would not be all too pleased with him for his remaining stay in Sunnydale.

Though he couldn’t perform the spell by himself, Angelique Lawrence was quite a powerful witch and he would often seek help from her when performing spells like this. Though he had to be extremely discreet because Jasmine, Angelique’s younger sister who was in his class, from time to time saw him passing by and she’d quickly get suspicious- especially since her best friend was Dominique. And even though he wasn’t dating Dominique at the moment, he wouldn’t be too thrilled if Jasmine told her this, and she found out that he was hanging out with an older girl instead of her.

He just wanted to stay out of harm’s way.

And it was always strange when Jasmine picked up the phone and he asked for her sister… very odd. Luckily, when he had called early Angelique had picked up and there wasn’t much tension to deal with. She had given him the ingredients over the phone, and she said she’s come over in about two hours.

As Jerrold stepped in the Magic Box (one of the local magick shops within Sunnydale) the annoying little bell on the door rattled and dinged as he stepped into a dark, and virtually empty shop. Peering around the shop, he only saw two girls- a redhead and a blonde- and then a group of two girls and a guy in the further corner of the shop, looking at some crystals.

Jerrold sighed as he examined the ingredients on the list and began his search for the magickal items. As he searched for his items, he overheard the two girls talking as the owner ran up their items. Apparently they were doing a location spell in order to find some strange and mysterious demon. Though he was eavesdropping, the half-human could hear the blond attempting to drop hints that they could find another spell for locating this thing, but the redhead seemed reluctant to give in.

Jerrold would have been interested as to what the demon was and how he could help if he didn’t have more important things to do: The spell, homework, patrol, as well as some good old fashion sleep (you need it when you’re trapped at school during the summer).

But Jerrold’s interest quickly locked onto the others in the shop when they cut in front of the two girls.

"Hey! Excuse you," said the redhead, rather loudly, as one of the girls and the guy pushed the two aside. The two girls landed on the floor, and the other two swiveled around, quickly revealing that they were vampires. Course, they weren’t just any old vampires.

"Damien and Kali." The two vampires’ yellow eyes quickly darted from the two stunned girls straight towards the half-vampire. "Man, I haven’t seen you guys in ages. What’s it been? Two, three nights now?"

Kali growled darkly as Jay approached the two vampires. His eyes locked onto the crystal that the psychic vampire held in her hand, but he quickly focused his gaze back onto the two vamps, making sure they didn’t realize that he knew about the crystal they had. "Well, well, well. Our little vampire’s come out of his cramped up little den."

"Funny," replied Jerrold dryly.

Damien smirked, as his eyes locked onto some of the ingredients Jerrold was collecting. "Well, it seems our Jay’s doing some sort of spell- and from the looks of it, it’s a demon alarm of some kind." Damien growled darkly and as Kali continued to watch Jerrold, Damien quickly made his way around the counter and grabbed the frightened Magic Box owner and held him up by the throat. "Careful what you do now Jay. Can’t get help without him around, huh?"

Great, Jerrold thought to himself, slowly backing up. "Damien, Kali, now I know our recent relationship in Sunnydale has been a little- uh rocky, one might say, but killing a magick shop owner- isn’t that going a little overboard?"

"I think so," the Magic Box owner managed to agree, as Damien snarled angrily and lifted the owner a little higher up into the air.

Kali smirked as another vampire wandered over towards her and whispered something in her ear. "None of them?"

"They’re not the right crystals," explained the other female vampire. "These are simple conjuring crystals like the one back in the cave. In order to perform the Crystal Night we need a-"

Kali gave an angry, demonic growl, and in a blink of an eye the psychic vampire had propelled the other female vampire soaring across the Magic Box, slamming against the wall of the shop, and landing on the ground limp. "Quiet!" Kali’s eyes quickly shot straight towards Jerrold, as well as the two shoppers, and a smile spread across her face. "Apparently, you’re not the only one fixing up a little spell…"

"No," murmured Jerrold, slowly vamping out and slightly giving in to his darker nature, Jay, "I suppose I’m not." Jay quickly grabbed the two girls and shoved them back onto the ground behind him. He quickly rushed towards Kali, and as he did, the psychic vampire smiled and using her abilities she quickly froze the Doomed Vampire in his track, unable to move a muscle.

"Sorry Jay." Kali smiled, reverting back to her human state, which appeared to have some descent from India, and tilted her head to the side, eyeing the two girls who were still on the floor behind the frozen Jay. "Good, food. I was getting kinda hungry."

"Let’s not forget our priorities," reminded Damien, turning towards the counter and dropping the terrified magick shop owner onto it. "We need that summoning crystal."

"Yeah, yeah, we need the crystal or Lohesh will have our heads," muttered Kali, rolling her eyes, still moving around from in front of the frozen Jay. The psychic vampire slowly made her way towards the two girls, still with a grin across her face. "But he won’t mind if we have a little bite-"

Suddenly, the redhead murmured something under her breath and all of a sudden a small explosion of fire appeared in front of Kali, almost igniting her on fire. She stumbled backwards and crashed into the glass counter, landing next to the stunned shop owner.

"Witches, even better," murmured Kali as she pulled herself up, brushing off the glass shards that had jabbed into her. "Nothing like a girl’s power within the black arts to fulfill a psychic vampire’s hungry…"

"So, you may be a psychic vampire," began the redhead.

"But you’re still a vampire." Suddenly, the blonde pulled out a cross from her pocket and quickly held it up towards Kali, and she hissed with angry, quickly stumbling backwards.

"No!" roared Kali angrily, as the suspended Jay quickly dropped from the ground. The girl’s cross appeared to have neutralized Kali’s psychic energy throughout the room and along with her psychic energy, Kali’s psychic grip over the paralyzed Jay swiftly ended, releasing the Doomed Vampire from her deadly grasp, freeing him and allowing him to fight back.

Jay’s dark, fiery, red eyes locked onto the powerless Kali and snarled angrily as his fist shot out towards the psychic vampire, forcing the stunned vampire to go soaring over the counter and slamming into several shelves behind the ground, landing on the ground next to where Damien stood.

The other black vampire growled angrily and slammed his head into the owner’s, knocking the older man unconscious, and quickly hopped over the counter. As Damien landed on the floor in front of the Doomed Vampire, Jay snarled darkly and swung his fist out towards Damien, who immediately grabbed it, and pushed Jay back into the glass counter of the shop.

As Jay tried to get up, a hand shot out from behind him and lifted him up, hurling him upward towards the ceiling as he landed on the shattered counter, feeling several pieces of glass shards slicing through him. Kali and Damien were managing to double team him.

The half-vampire gave his low demonic growl, and as Damien grabbed him by the collar to toss him over towards the girls, Jay punched Damien in the face, swiftly grabbing the arm the was holding him up and twisting it back, breaking the grasp of the vampire. The younger vamp sneered darkly as released Jay and he landed on the ground, swiftly smashed Damien’s foot with his own, causing the vampire to howl out in pain.

Before Jay could strike Damien again, Kali leaned over the broken shards of what had been the Magic Box’s counter and quickly lifted up the Doomed Vampire and shoved him forward into Damien, right next to the two girls.

Kali shook her head and jumped over the broken counter, landing in front of the two vampires and the two girls, eyes quickly darting amongst the four of them, and she shot out her hand, grabbing the blonde one by the neck and lifting her up into the air.

"Summoning crystals!" roared Kali, extremely pissed off that her simple plan of raiding the magick shop had gone so wrong, slowly stepping back to get far enough away from Jay so that he could not save her. Kali moved the girl in front of her, so that if Jay tried to attack, he’d have to go through the bystander first. Kali’s head tilted from behind the girl, revealing that she had vamped out, and growled, "Tell me where the summoning crystals are now or I break her neck!"

"Tara!" cried the redhead in terror.

"Tell me, now!" roared Kali darkly, tightening her grasp on the girl, who the redhead had referred to as Tara, who was attempting to cry out in fear. Kali’s head quickly shot towards Jay, who was beginning to get up and said replied, "Make one move towards me or Damien, or if you pull any sort of weapon out, I will kill her."

Jay gave another demonic snarl as he stared deeply at Kali, who was waiting for the redhead to get up. The Doomed Vampire glanced over his shoulder towards her and murmured, "I’d suggest you’d get that crystal."

"R-right, right," stuttered the redhead nervously, watching as her friend was being strangled to death. She glanced around the tiny shop, looking for the crystals, though something told the half-vamp that she had a plan of her own. "Uh, one second. Summoning crystals can be easily mistaken for conjuring crystals and energy crystals for elemental spells and stuff-"

"Just get me the summoning crystal!" shouted Kali.

"Oh, uh, okay." The redhead quickly made her way towards a small shelf of crystals and orbs, collecting several of the crystals, but as she did, all three vampires her something crack and break and the girl gave a small little cry of terror, quickly glancing up, making sure Kali hadn’t killed Tara. "Sorry!" She quickly grabbed the crystal and stood back up, and quickly made her way passed Jay and Damien, and straight towards Kali, who was still strangling Tara.

"Let her go!" cried the girl angrily.

"Fine." Kali gave a maniacal chuckle and shoved Tara into the other girl, who quickly dropped the several crystals in her grasp to the floor in front of Kali. The two girls quickly began to leave, as the psychic vamp began picking them up. "Just as long as we have the crystals we need." The psychic vampire bent down and started to pick up the crystals, and as she touched them the holy water that the redhead had "accidentally" spilled on the crystal and hissed in pain as the water began to burn her.

Before Damien could strike, Jay quickly threw out his elbow, pinning the older vampire in the face, and majestically swiveling around and hitting Damien in the face with his palm, sending him soaring upward towards the ceiling. Damien went fly towards the other vamp, who was just beginning to get back up, pinning both of them to the floor of the Magic Box.

This gave Tara and the second girl a moment to escape, but as they quickly rushed towards the door, the female vampire grabbed Tara by the neck, and quickly lifted her up again, preparing to snap her neck.

Before Kali could do much else, the redhead girl swiveled around, murmuring something, and before Kali could react, she released a bright, illuminating light that blinded both Tara and Kali, but with her sensitive vampire eyes, Kali was harmed more. The redhead, apparently a witch, grabbed Tara by the shoulder and they quickly fled.

Meanwhile, Jay’s eyes quickly darted around and found several jars of holy water near the counter and grabbed two of them as they fled. The Doomed Vampire continued to rush towards the entrance of the door and slowly reverted back to Jerrold. As he headed towards the door, Damien and the second vampire appeared, quickly blocking the door, but not moving fast enough in time to dodge the two small glass jars of holy water that Jay held in his hands.

As the jars shattered on the two vampires, smoke quickly started to rise as the holy water began to burn through the unholy creatures.

Jerrold quickly tried to tackle the two vampires, only managing to hit the other female vampire, and Jerrold and the female vampire went flying out the back door of the Magic Box, into the back of the shop, into the little shadows that remained in the day.

The extremely angry, pissed off, boiling, and not to mention vamped out, vampire snarled angrily and lunged at Jerrold, pinning him against the wall. She didn’t seem all threatening to the Doomed Vampire, but the fact that she was outside in the middle of the day wasn’t good for Jerrold, since she could ignite at any moment.

Before the two could even begin to start fighting, both Jerrold and the vampire felt a strange presence of energy, and all of a sudden the female vamp seemed to be sucked straight back towards the door of the Magic Box, as if drawn by a magnet. As Jerrold heard the vampire hit something in the ruined magick shop, Kali appeared standing in the back entrance of the shop.

"You’re pretty lucky Jerrold," growled Kali dryly. "Both those girls managed to escape, as well as the shopkeeper I might add. No blood on your hands yet."

As Kali turned away, stepping away from the harsh light of day, Jerrold snorted and quickly shouted, "What’s wrong Kali? Now not the time for confrontation?"

Stopping Kali dead in her tracks, the psychic vampire shook her head, not even turning around, knowing that the Doomed Vampire wasn’t worth it. "Well Jerrold, I could kill you at any time. And with the spillage of the holy water on me, my psychic energy’s a little drained. So, when the time comes that we bump into each other again, I should be at full strength, without any of your little tricks, and then we’ll see what happens during our confrontation."

"So you’re afraid you’ll lose?" replied Jerrold with a smirk.

"Not. Just more interesting that way." Kali swiveled around, vamped out and angry, just as the slammed shut the back door.

* * * *

Kali walked back into the ruined Magic Box, disappointed that there were no victims left- unless she counted the three vampires, which had been harmed by holy water, as well as by the redhead witch and the Doomed Vampire. Kali made her way over to Kelly, who was pulling herself up, after getting trashed by Jerrold.

"Well?" asked Kali, standing over the vampire as she slowly rose up.

"The crystals that witch got are the summoning crystals," murmured Kelly, rubbing the back of her head that had been slammed into the remains of the counter. "But with them drenched in holy water, it may cause a problem with the spell."

"Well," replied Kali darkly, "get more then."

"This is the only magick shop in town that has these types of crystals, I believe," murmured Kelly slowly. "If we can’t find it here, then we’ll have to do something else in order to perform the summoning."

"Well then," said Damien, touching his forehead, still quite raw from the burning of the holy water, "the witch got it from over there. I’d suggest that you check to see if there are more."

"B-but she spilled holy water over- Oh." Kelly frowned as she walked over to the shelf that the redhead had been at, and after a moment of searching, the female vampire shrieked in pain as smoke began to rise and she backed up away from the shelf.

"Is it that hard to avoid the puddle?" asked Damien.

"She drenched all the crystals in holy water," replied Kelly in annoyance as well as anger, as she shook out her hand, waiting for it to stop sizzling and smoking. "We’ll need to perform a ‘cleansing’ for the crystals before we perform the spell."

A wide smirk spread across Kali’s demonic face, as she slowly shook her head, reverting her face back to her human form. "Not a total let down."

"What’s a cleansing?" asked Damien slowly. "And how will it counteract against the holy water?"

"Blood ritual."

* * * *

"Angelique!"

With light streaks of blonde coursing through her already light hear, the older and powerful witch slowly turned around to see the young, tired, sweating Jerrold rushing towards her, while she was actually heading towards his house. "Jerrold?"

He rushed up towards the older Lawrence sister, as he gave a faint moan as he stopped in front of her, with his hands dropping to her knees, trying to regain his energy- something he usually didn’t have a problem with when he was all vamped out.

"Uh, you okay Jerrold?" asked Angelique slowly, as her eyes scanned the worn out Jerrold, as he tried to catch his breath. "You look… well, sweaty, and um, beaten." Then she put her arms on her hips and quickly noted, "And it looks like you don’t have the ingredients for the spell."

"Not my fault," insisted Jerrold briefly, as he continued trying to breathe. "Magic Box hit by vamps… three against one… ass kicked- I mean, kicked ass…"

"Always manage to get the important facts out," murmured Angelique with an amused smirk. "So, could get go back there now, assuming the vampires are gone."

Jerrold sucked up a little of his pride, when he replied, "I kicked ass… but if I stayed they would have kicked mine… Psychic vampire."

"They still have those?" asked Angelique curiously.

"Apparently," muttered Jerrold, pushing his hands off of his knees and standing up tall, still with his heart racing and slightly out of breath. "And I fled while they were still in the shop. I’m sure someone heard the racket, and the shop is probably totaled. And even if someone didn’t hear the shop owner-"

"He’ll complain, and there’ll be a scene," murmured Angelique in annoyance. "Well, in that case, we won’t be able to get all of the ingredients from we need from most other magick shops here in Sunnydale."

"Most?" asked Jerrold slowly.

"None actually," explained Angelique, "but the one ingredient that we won’t find in a shop, we can find in another store at the Sunnydale Mall." Angelique shrugged. "Some kind of special herb."

Jerrold nodded. "Okay, good. Will you be able to perform the spell tonight?"

Angelique nodded. "I have a later curfew than my sister. I’ll just tell my parents I went to a party or something."

"Ah, a party. Good cover-up for a casting," noted Jerrold.

"Wouldn’t want my parents to get suspicious," replied Angelique with a smirk. "You know, just my wild, teen-adult social life."

Jay gave a little nervous smile, as he replied, "Sounds like fun."

Angelique sighed, as she replied, "Now if I only had a wild social life with parties and all that…" She gave another sigh, and shook her head, giving a kind smile at the younger kid, replying, "We might want to move fast. My sister’s off to the mall tonight. I wouldn’t want to get her thinking that’s there’s more between us than magicks."

"You might not want to use those exact words, may only confuse her." Jerrold sighed, apparently rested from his run from the magick shop. "Where to first?"

"Two other magick shops, then to the mall."

* * * *

Finally finding a way to carry the summoning stones without burning their hands, Damien, Kali, and Kelly managed their way back to the location where they’d cast the Crystal Night spell, summoning forth the demon.

As Damien and Kali walked into the dim lighted den, the two vampires froze in terror as Lohesh stood before them, with their vampire lackeys huddled behind the powerful demon.

"M-master Lohesh," stuttered Kali and Damien in unison, both quickly dropping to one knee and lowering their heads.

"Kali, Damien, where have the two of you been?" asked Lohesh curious, drawing out his sword. "And why hasn’t the Crystal Night begun?"

"There was some complications," explained Kali slowly, glancing back towards Kelly, who remained in the shadows of the entrance to their cave. "We apparently weren’t prepared for the summoning."

"And what took you so long?" asked Lohesh, glancing up towards Kelly who was carrying the summoning crystals in pouch. "I’d say robbing a simple magick shop wouldn’t take this long. Especially when it’s almost so close to twilight, and we’d have to wait another whole day to perform the summoning."

"Jerrold was there," explained Damien. "Unbeknownst of us until… we made a scene at the shop. He, and two witches, ended up helping the shopkeeper escape, and them themselves escaped, and in the doing they totaling the shop. One of the witches also poured holy water on the summoning crystals we needed so before we can even call forth on the civatateo demon, we’ll need to do the blood ritual."

Lohesh nodded and dug his sword into the ground in front of Kali and Damien. "Get up."

Damien and Kali quickly rose up to their feet and in unison they chanted, "Yes?"

"I don’t care about your excuses at the moment, as long as you do the spell," explained Lohesh, watching as Kelly walked in with the pouch, and all the other vampires hissed darkly, sensing the holy water that she carried. "And I’m not leaving until the spell is done."

Though neither said a word, Kali and Damien were both thinking the same thing as they momentarily glanced at each other and then towards Lohesh. Great, was the sarcasm they were thinking, but the words that they spoke were simply, "Yes Master."

"So, you’re sure this was Jay you ran into?" asked Giles, as Willow and a scared Tara sat on Giles’s couch in his home. "Could you tell he was really a half-vampire?"

"W-well," stuttered Tara, still nervous from the vampire grabbing her by the neck, "he w-w-walked into the shop in broad d-daylight."

"And he didn’t seem to react when Tara brought out her cross," explained Willow. "But, of course, many vampires can withstand crosses, so I guess that’s not exactly positive proof. But I guess Tara’s point is valid enough…"

"Jay seemed p-pretty scary," murmured Tara, "but he almost acted like h-he was protecting us in the beginning. And he seemed to be against the other vampires in the shop."

"From what the other two vampires said," murmured Willow, "Jay was looking for some ingredients for a spell. And the female vampire was the psychic vampire, like the vampire you said Buffy mentioned before." Willow thought for a moment and her eyes slowly locked onto Giles and said, "What if Jay was going to use us for a spell?"

"Though we cannot be positive of that option, if Jay and these other vampires are both casting spells, we’ll have to prepare ourselves for the worst," insured Giles.

"You think?" commented Anya from the stairs, with Xander skimming a book on a step below her.

"Do you know what either one was doing?" asked Giles.

Both Willow and Tara remained silent as they tried to recall what any of the vampires had said, but it was Willow who remembered the first thing. "One of the vampires said that his ingredients list was for a… demonic alarm of some sort. Apparently he’s excepting creatures to be approaching his house or crypt or something."

"And these other vampires?" asked Giles.

"The Crystal Night," exclaimed Tara suddenly. "They were t-trying finding a summoning crystal for the C-crystal Night."

"The Crystal Night?" repeated Giles, somewhat bewildered. "Are you sure?"

"Yeah, that’s what they said," replied Willow. "Why? What is it?"

Giles walked over towards the steps, and grabbed the book Xander was looking at. Ignoring Xander’s brief rant about that was his book and how Giles should be more polite when grabbing books, Giles flipped through the pages, until he found a picture of a strange looking demon. He walked over to Tara and Willow and placed the book on the table. "The Crystal Night, or also known as the summoning of Crystal. It’s a magicks ceremony that will tear away Crystal, a civatateo vampire, from its hell-dimension it’s concealed in and do the bidding of the person or demon who called forth it."

"Civatateo vampires?" repeated Anya curiously, leaning over the railing to see the book Tara and Willow we looking at. "Aren’t those, you know, that witch-vampire species?"

"Yes," answered Giles sternly. "One of several species of witch-vampires. These are a particularly deadly species, and of them Crystal is amongst the deadlier ones."

"Hey," protested Willow, obviously hurt by Giles’s words, "just because a vampire can have mystical powers, that doesn’t make it a witch! That’s a stereotype mister-"

"Uh, Willow." Tara pointed her finger towards the top of the page.

Willow leaned forward and briefly read the text. "Oh."

"What’s it say?" asked Xander.

"Civatateo vampires," read Willow, "considered to be a type of witch-vampire that was commonly found among the Aztecs in Mexico." She glanced up and gave a forgiving smile. "Sorry Giles. Sometimes I just get defensive about, ya know, some stuff sometimes, ya know?"

"It’s fair," murmured Giles with a shrug. "But if Jay was getting materials for a demonic warning spell, then he could have known about this whole summoning ordeal."

"And if the Magic Box is still all messed up because of Damien and Kali, then Jay will need to look elsewhere for some of the materials," explained Willow, as she started thinking about several of the herbalist and magick shops she had visited and gave a little sigh. "I’m not entirely sure, but several of the ingredients for those warning spells aren’t found in many shops."

"If we look fast enough at these various shops, we can probably find Jay," finished Xander, proudly standing up that he had managed to figure the plan. He glanced down and smirked at Anya.

"Good work honey," replied Anya, with a little nod and a pat on the back. "Very manly, almost sexy. But not enough to work me up." She titled her head and smiled, as Xander started to turn a deep red and slowly sunk down back towards the starts.

"Fine then, it’s settled," replied Giles, picking up the book and sliding it back into the shelf the ex-Watcher had pulled it from. "We’ll split up. Anya and Xander can check the other local magick shops throughout the city, while Willow and Tara search through the herbalist shops for Jay."

"What’ll you do?" asked Anya. "I mean, being all bossy and all, you should do something." She glanced over towards Xander. "That’s hypocritical, right?"

"More to it than that," murmured Xander, then pointing towards Giles. "But, for now, we should listen to Giles."

"I bare various connections throughout Sunnydale that deals with magicks and mystical activity," explained Giles, attempting to ignore the annoying words of Anya. "They may be supplying this vampire, or could possibly inform us as to where one might obtain these various items for the spell."

Xander, Willow, Anya, and Tara all knocked and quickly rose up. Following Giles, the four other Scoobies headed out of Giles’s home and headed out into Sunnydale.

* * * *

Stepping out of her mother’s car, Isis glanced around the entrance of Sunnydale Mall. She skimmed the area, searching for Dominique Washington and Jasmine Lawrence who had called her early the morning. Dominique, who was remaining in Sunnydale upon completing summer school, wanted Jasmine (who had been her best friend for many years) to get along with Isis, since they were both moving to San Francisco, and going to school at Hawthorne High School. Though shopping was somewhat of a lame "bonding activity" for Isis and Jasmine, Isis was in need of some clothes (since, from time to time when she transformed into big beasty demons, she’d rip and grow out of her clothing).

Though, from the way Dominique had said it on the phone that morning, this whole bonding thing sounded quite urgent and important. From what Isis figured, Dominique just needed some clothes for the last day of classes next week to impress Jerrold with. Though when it came to his special abilities and skills, realizing that a girl had worn a specific outfit especially for him was not among his talents as the half-vampire. But since these were his last acouple of days with her before he left for L.A., he’d pick up on the obvious hints.

"Hey!" shouted Isis across the crowd of people. It was Isis’s third "hey" that finally caught Jasmine’s attention, and the two girls made their way towards Isis. Isis smiled at Dominique and replied, "Ah, yes, Saturday afternoon shopping. Very urgent."

"I’d never doubt it," replied Dominique exchanging a warm smile. Dominique gaze moved away from Isis and towards her mother. "Hey Ms. McCafery."

"Dominique." Isis’s mother gave a little nod, and quickly turned towards Jasmine. "I’m afraid we’ve never meet…"

"I’m Jasmine, uh, Jasmine Lawrence," the girl introduced, holding out her hand as Isis’s mother grasped it and shook it. "I think we’ll be meeting again. I’m going to Hawthorne with Isis next year."

"Oh," said Ms. McCafery happily. "Who’re your-"

"Mom, now really isn’t the time," interrupted Isis, slightly annoyed by her parent, even though Isis was actually a demon and this wasn’t actually her biological mother. Guess this is part of playing the role of a human. "You can call Jasmine’s parents later. They’re in last year’s school roster, you can yack all you want later, but now it’s time we shop." She grabbed Jasmine and Dominique by the arms and began pulling them away. "All right, let’s go."

And without another word, Isis walked away from her mother, who gave a sad frown as she turned away from her daughter and moved into her car, leaving her daughter again. Ms. McCafery gave a little sigh, as she quickly buckled up and drove back home in her car…

Happily departing from her mother, Isis let go of Jasmine and Dominique and gave a little sigh of relief. "And she’s gone."

Jasmine and Dominique exchanged a silent look of worry, realizing that the way that Isis was acting was slightly odd. Isis quickly noticed that too, and eyed the two of them for a minute. "What?"

"Nothing," replied the two girls in unison. Both realized that the way Isis was acting seemed somewhat inhuman in a way, but Isis hoped that neither of them was sensing anything. But the way Isis acted was the only human way she felt towards her mother; it was from the original Isis that she was picking up these feelings and emotions. So it felt odd not acting that way.

But Isis didn’t care, and simply shrugged it off. "All right then, let’s go." Isis began walking forward, but as she moved passed Dominique and Jasmine, she felt a sharp chill strike her and she suddenly froze in terror. The sudden urge to revert back to her demonic form washed over her after that feeling, but she clinched her eyes, attempting to conceal her true self from Jasmine and Dominique, and as she stepped forward away from the two girls, the chill slowly passed.

"What’s wrong?" asked Dominique slowly, as she and Jasmine moved towards Isis. As Dominique touched Isis’s shoulder to comfort her, the chill suddenly return, and she clinched her eyes again. But just as soon as that chill had come, it quickly passed.

Isis’s eyes shot open, and glanced around. In front of her stood Dominique and Jasmine, staring at Isis in confusion. "Sorry, I just got a little dizzy. I’m tired… and a little hungry too. Can we get something to eat after we’re done?"

"Sure?" replied Jasmine, as a little smile spread across her face.

But, as Jasmine smiled, Isis could feel the smallest hint of that chill beginning to return, but he passed by.

Whatever it is, it’s not important right now, Isis thought. "Positive. Let’s shop." Isis began walking, and the two girls followed behind her this time. Isis, Dominique, and Jasmine walked up the stairs of the mall, and stepped through the door of the building and stared into the crowd that they saw before them.

Oddly enough, the three girls felt a sense of power and dominance as they gazed out into the crowd of summer shoppers. In a way, they felt superior. They knew how to shop, they knew how to accessorize, and they knew what was in and what was out. They knew all. They knew what the stuck-up shoppers would be doing, what the style-less shoppers would, and what the girls who believed they knew what they were doing were thinking. They knew all when it came to this sort of stuff.

Isis smiled as she glanced back and Dominique and then at Jasmine and replied, "All right ladies, let’s do this."

* * * *

"Are the preparations almost complete?" asked Lohesh, as he paced behind Damien and Kali, who were watching as the various vampires prepared the summoning spell to call forth the civatateo demon.

Kali and Damien waited for a response from Kelly before answering in unison, "Almost done."

"Fine." Lohesh suddenly stopped pace and turned towards the two vampires, stretching out its four wings and staring at the two demons. "Now, tell me of these witches you encountered."

"Why?" Damien suddenly froze in terror, when he realized that he had questioned Lohesh, before answering.

Kali shot an angry look towards Damien and quickly replied, "Uh, I dunno. There were two girls, twenty-somethings, one was blonde and the other was a redhead. It was the redhead that seemed to be more powerful though. I could sense growing power within her."

"These witches you speak of," shouted a vampire, that was one of the four vampires standing around the sacred circle for the spell, "they sound like the witches that aid the Slayer."

"Slayer," hissed Lohesh lowly. "Did these witches recognize him?"

Kali and Damien hesitated for a moment, trying to recall what exactly had happened. It was Damien who answered, "It’s hard to tell. I’m guess no, since Jay and the witches never addressed each other by name. I don’t think they’ve met."

"But the Slayer herself has met the half-vampire," reminded Kali. "The fight from several nights ago, the Slayer was with the Doomed Vampire slaying my asanbosam vampires."

For the first time that day, Lohesh revealed a vile grin of satisfaction. "Perfect. And from what I’ve heard from the other vampires, the Doomed Vampire and Spike are the only ones patrolling at nights. The Slayer was last seen during the attack against the Doomed Vampire."

"The Slayer’s dead?" asked Kali slowly.

"Dead, missing, out of town, could be anything," replied Lohesh, release a little chuckle. "But, she failed to inform her allies about Jay, meaning…"

"They’ll probably think he’s the enemy," concluded Damien. He glanced at the sacred circle. "Maybe, we can trick the humans. Make them think, you know, our Jay was behind it."

"Exactly."

"We’re ready." Damien, Kali, and Lohesh all slowly turned towards Kelly, who stood outside of the sacred circle, with several other vampires standing behind her. She had a small pocket watch in her hand, and glanced up towards Lohesh. "The sun has officially set, and now we can begin for the Crystal Night."

"Has the blood ritual already been performed?" asked Kali curiously.

Kelly nodded, gesturing her head towards an injured vampire that was leaning against the corner of the cave, grasping his chest. As Lohesh eyed the vampire for awhile, it released its hand just in time to see a crystal-shaped hole in its chest. The blood ritual required the blood of a vampire to engulf the crystal while the proper spells were chanted, to dispel the holy water from the crystal.

"Of course." Now, in Kelly’s hands, the crystal seemed to illuminate with a red light from the blood of the vampire. Kelly’s eyes locked onto Lohesh and slowly asked, "Will you be remaining with us?"

"Why not?" questioned Lohesh.

"We’re summoning forth a demon that has been concealed for many years," reminded Kelly, glancing towards the circle. "And time moves by faster within almost all hell-dimensions, so Crystal has been trapped down there for many years. She may be vicious and she may be uncontrollable at first."

Lohesh’s eyes shot towards Kali and then to Damien and replied, "That was a possible factor?"

"It won’t happen," insured Damien, with a nod, shooting a glance at Kelly. "You can stay if you want, you’re in no danger. If anything gets within inches of you-"

"Damien and I will be there to stop it," finished Kali. She glared angrily at Kelly and darkly growled, "All right Kelly, let’s begin this already."

Kelly nodded and snapped her fingers. Three more vampires stepped towards her and stood behind three of the four vampires that stood outside of the sacred circle. Kelly walked up behind the idle vampires, and turned around. "I call upon the powers of the creators, Vili and Ve, to hear my plea. On this, of the darkest night, reveal your strengths of night and day to engulf this night in darkness. On this very night, I ask you both, Vili and Ve, to shatter the barriers that conceal the Crystal Night within it. Break the barriers, and let our crystal be free."

Suddenly, Kelly began to illuminate and glow, as she drew up her head, which revealed her twisted, demonic face. As she repeated her words, "Let our crystal be free," the other three vampires all began to glow as well, and started to quiver, but Kelly didn’t seem to care. Two of the vampires that formed the inner circle parted to allow Kelly to walk into the center of the circle. Kelly held up the crystal in her hand, still repeating her words, Kelly held the blood bathed summoning crystal up into the air above and the crystal began to radiate with a powerful light. The crystal suddenly levitated up from out of Kelly’s hands, suspending the gem up into the air.

"And now let it be, that the barriers encase her will set her free!" And with those words, the summoning crystal began to pulse and released a stream of energy that hit the three outer vampires and in a split second, the vampires began to crumble and exploded into dust. The dust of the three vampires began circling around Kelly, and entered the summoning crystal, enhancing the powers of the crystal.

Kelly abruptly stepped out from the center of the sacred circle and continued to chant. "And with no barriers encasing the night, I shall call upon Crystal to bring forth her glory and triumph throughout the Mouth of Hell. Crystal, this is your night for the hunt, and I call and summon you! From the deepest reaches of hell, I summon you to come forth me! Come forth to me… Come forth!"

And with those words, the red crystal stopped levitating and dropped to the ground. As it hit the center of the sacred circle, and crystal shattered and released all the energy it had stored. The energy rippled throughout the circle and the circle began to shimmer and a blinding light was released from sacred circle. Slowly, a dark shadow from the center of the light began to rise up from beneath the floor. When the creature had fully come out from the floor, the light quickly faded to reveal the sacred circle missing, but a demon standing before them. Within the center of the circle of four vampires was an old, crippled-looking hag, whose stringy, white hair engulfed her head. Ragged, torn "clothes" (if you could truly even call them that) covered the extremely old looking women. Her long, thick nails, and it looked as if death had already come to her, but the only way they could truly tell she was still alive was the twisted, demonic face she wore.

Crystal had risen, and so the Crystal Night had begun.

"So, this is the infamous witch-vampire you spoke of?" growled Lohesh darkly, as he examined the lifeless body of the demon Kali and Damien had raised.

"Apparently so," murmured Damien hesitantly. "But, Crystal was one of was the most powerful civatateo vampire, and she had enough strength to take down and manipulate its opponents and foes." Aiming his voice towards Kelly, Damien harshly replied, "This spell should have worked, but if there was any reason to believe that the spell failed, then it would not be Kali’s fault or my fault."

"Excessus!"

Before Kelly could explain what was happening, the civatateo demon struck.

"Sunguieneus vitalis…" As the four vampires moved in to examine what seemed to be a lifeless vampire, Crystal quickly drew forth her arms in towards her chest. Before the vampires could move away from her, she struck out her arms and her long, old, sharp and deadly nails sliced into two of the vampires’ necks.

Lohesh wince as he saw the civatateo’s long nail wriggling through the back of one of the vampires’ necks as it howled in pain.

Crystal swiftly drew out her nails from the vampires’ necks, and quickly grasped the two vampires by the necks, and spun around, hurling the vampires across the underground cave.

As the other two vampires attempted to escape, Crystal used her incredible speed to strike before they could get out of reach, and the demon held out her arm and swiveled around, managing to slash one of the vampires across its throat, while the other was able to escape. Crystal quickly rushed towards the remaining demon and grabbed it by the back of the neck. As the vampire squirmed to get free of Crystal’s grasp, the civatateo vampire squeezed the demon, digging her nails into the vampire’s neck, each nail piercing through its neck and digging right down to the bone, as the vampire howled in pain.

Crystal idly released the demon and tossed it to the ground, leaving four vampires bleeding from the neck and squirming in pain. And on the old, haggish, pale vampire, the bright red blood of the vampires shown on her nails- the only color that appeared on her. Crystal continued to chant her strange incantation. "Novo vivus-exanimus!"

Suddenly, the blood on her nails and the blood that trickled from the injured vampires’ necks began to shimmer and illuminate as the civatateo’s spell continued.

"So much for first impressions," murmured Lohesh as he watched with delight at the slaughter and mayhem Crystal had already caused. He glanced at Kali and Damien and replied, "You have nothing to apologize for anymore."

With the blood still glowing, Crystal walked towards Lohesh, who stood with Damien, Kali, and Kelly, and the old looking vampire glaring at the demon. "You are a lohesh, are you not?"

"The Lohesh," corrected the demon proudly. "After a sorcerer achieved ascension, all the lohesh were wiped out."

"And what makes you so special?" asked Crystal curiously.

"I was protected, since I was the offspring of the sorcerer, and the only remaining lohesh left," explained the demon. "And being the offspring of a full demon would make me… superior over other demons anyhow."

"Special, special," muttered Crystal sarcastically. Crystal watched Lohesh’s eyes as they shifted from staring almost fearfully at Crystal, to looking at the four injured vampires. Crystal waited for Lohesh’s attention to turn back to her, and she simply replied, "Well, aren’t you going to ask?"

"What have you done to them?" ordered Lohesh, still trying to have the upper hand in the situation.

"A transformation spell," answered Kelly, walking up towards Crystal and standing behind her. The vampire wore a proud smile across her face, as Lohesh quickly realized her betrayal. "Crystal will need a vessel, a power source, in order to come to full strength. These beings will be her means as to obtaining the power source."

"What’s going on!" roared Lohesh angrily, pulling out his sword and glancing towards Kali and Damien.

"Nothing we can’t deal with." Kali closed her eyes and before Crystal could move, the civatateo was trapped by the psychic vampire’s massive telekinetic skills. "Now, we brought you up from your little hell-hole dimension, so you could aid us in a problem that we have. Because if you don’t aid us, then you’ll end up dust."

But as Kali continued to conceal Crystal, the civatateo vampire began to move. Kali suddenly winced in pain as Crystal’s powers managed to surpass Kali’s own power, and as Crystal pushed her powers against Kali’s there was a brilliant flash of light as Crystal broke the grasp that Kali had over her. "You’ll find that I’m not easily manipulated."

"It’s always the old ones that get ya," hissed Kali, rubbing her temples as she felt the stress of Crystal’s power pouring down upon her.

"So what are you threatening, Lohesh," replied Crystal, walking towards the demon and getting up into the soul-killer’s face. "If I don’t join you, you’ll kill me? Because, I have to say, I got quite bored where I was for these past years."

"Bored?" replied Lohesh slowly.

"Tormenting the tormentors of a hell-dimension is quite some work," explained Crystal, with a little chuckle. "First it was all, ‘Let’s torture the vampire.’ And so they torched me for awhile but then, I got slightly fed up with it and killed them- which left be a whole hell-dimension to myself."

"You took over," murmured Kali.

"We won’t necessarily be your threat here Crystal," replied Damien lowly. "First of all we’re currently in Sunnydale now, also known as the ‘Valley of the Sun’ or-"

"The Mouth of Hell," finished Crystal rolling her eyes. "Should I care. What? Is the Master here or something? You his reject lackeys?"

"The Hellmouth’s changed a lot since you’ve been here," explained Damien, shaking his head. "And no, the Master is not among the vampires dwelling here. Why? Because of her."

"The Slayer," finished Kali.

"So." Crystal simply shrugged it off. "I’ve face several Slayers before, and none of them live to tell the tell."

"This could be because of the allies aiding this Slayer," explained Lohesh dryly. "Two witches, an ex-demon, a vampire, and her Watcher aid her here… But the real target here is the Doomed Vampire."

"A doomed vampire?" repeated Crystal slowly. "And what be that?"

"The Doomed Vampire," corrected Damien. "The half-vampire, born of a Slayer, whose soul will live on forever in the body of different beings. Now, the half-vampire has returned to vampire body, and he’s back to its old do-goody ways." Damien eyed Crystal, waiting for her to recall this story, but her expression didn’t change. The demon snorted and replied, "You weren’t around when this all began, were you?"

"Probably in my little hell-hole," replied Crystal dryly. "This ‘Doomed Vampire,’ is it anything of a challenge?"

"Took now a herd of asanbosam demons," said Kali. She raised an eyebrow and replied, "You have heard of those, correct?"

"Vicious demons, as I recall." Crystal nodded. She glanced back to Kelly. "Well?"

"This vampire will be a formidable opponent," insured Kelly, nodding. "It’ll be a good test subject to see if your powers have been fully restored. Plus, these vampires and this lohesh seem to have somewhat of a good idea."

"Fine." Crystal’s gaze turned to Lohesh and nodded. "We’ll make a deal, okay?"

"Depends," replied Lohesh darkly. "What’re the consequences of losing and winning?"

"Just getting to that." Crystal slowly walked towards Lohesh, Damien, and Kali, and the two vampires started to inch back in fear of the demon, while Lohesh stood firm. "Okay, it all depends if I kill this vampire you’re sending me after. If I lose, then I will vow my life in debt to you." Crystal gaze a little bow, but as she began to rise back up, the civatateo vampire quickly lunged towards Lohesh and grasped her hands around its neck. "If you kill him though, you will follow my every single order," replied Crystal, giving a slightly historical laugh before she abruptly finished, "or I’ll kill you…"

"Fine," replied Lohesh dryly.

"Good." Crystal released Lohesh from her grasp, as he quickly grasped his neck to check to see if the vampire had done anything to him. "Now, you can explain every single detail as to what’s going on, while my servants retrieve my power source."

"What servants?" asked Kali curiously, eyeing the various vampires around the room.

"One moment." Crystal turned around and held up her hands, which still had the glowing blood of the vampire on her dry white hands. She stood over the four injured vampires and began continue chanting again. "Coorior olim denuo." The blood on her nails, and the blood trickling from the vampires’ necks began to radiate even more and the vampires all started hissing and crying out in pain. "Natio… natio… natio!"

And speaking those final words, the four vampires cried out in pain and suddenly the vampires shuttered and exploded into dust, but as the dust cleared, four skeletons lay in the place of the four vampires.

"Arise," ordered Crystal.

And just like that, the four skeletons stood up, almost magickally resurrected. But all other demons could see the obvious difference between these skeletons and regular skeletons. These skeletons, first of all, had the teeth of a vampire; long, sharp, and pointed, the vampire-like teeth covered the skeleton’s mouth. Similar to Crystal’s long, sharp nail, these skeletons had long, curved, fingers, with sharp pointed ends, which resembled claws than much else. The skeleton’s feet had these similar claws as well. And then, there were the bone-structured wings that the skeleton had on its back.

"Now, my servants," said Crystal, slowly glancing at Lohesh who had a slightly amazed and terrified look on his demonic face, "I need a power source of magickal origin. Bring the source here to me, and you will be rewarded." Crystal slowly raised up her hand, and as she did, for the first time, let go of her twisted demonic face. And as she reverted to her human form, it hadn’t been only her vampire face that changed but her entire form changed. Crystal reverted from an old, haggish (seeming to be, well, dying) women vampire to a young, youthful, twenty-something human, more beautiful than anything Damien had ever seen. But amazement when her transformation was more of the thing that had caught her attention. "Go! Let the hunt of the Crystal Night begin."

The four skeleton-creatures screeched, giving a sign of obedience, and they spread their wings. In the blind of an eye, all four vampire-skeletons shot out of the cave, and soared through the exit of the cave.

* * * *

After shopping at some of Sunnydale’s stores (which were not all too extravagant), night had quickly overcome the day, and the stars and the moon had already overcome the light blue sky and the burning sun. The light of the moon could barely be noticed amongst the flashy store lights that were within this mall.

But the fact that it was getting somewhat late wasn’t the thing that was disturbing Isis as she walked with Dominique and Jasmine. That same feeling kept on coming back, and it was serious pissing her off. Though other things pulled her mind away from the chill, her thoughts would simply wander and would eventually lead her back to that strange feeling.

She never had to deal with so many feelings and emotions before, but she had to conceal her true form and her true nature from everyone. In order to keep hope that the creatures that had been tracking her would never find her, so she was forced to remain in her human form for long hours. Unfortunately, those long hours of being human, and adjusting and practicing being a human, was affecting the way she acted and felt. Her dreams were becoming one of those side effects, before she never felt so many things after she drained a creature, but now human emotion was butting in the way. The only thing that Isis could say that was slightly helpful was that her demonic skills were slightly heightened by her human side.

And this feeling she was getting was something that was from her human side; it was something she couldn’t feel or wouldn’t have cared enough about if she hadn’t spent so much time in her human form.

Still managing to try to shrug off the feeling, that suspicion of impending doom remained to wash over her. Luckily, her attention was turned away from that feeling and turned towards Sabrina Alexis and three of her friends, passing by the three girls. Not even noticing or acknowledging the fact that all three of them had been their classmates for several years, Sabrina headed straight towards another classmate of theirs: Daniel Jenkins. Not the most popular- or known- person who had went to their junior high, Daniel had managed through most of the year, until he started struggling towards the end of the year, which was how Daniel ended up in summer school with Isis, Sabrina, and the rest of them. Oddly enough, as his grades began to drop, he started to get more noticed- though that wasn’t too big of an accomplishment at the end of the year.

Course, he mostly got noticed as a new punching bag for some of the larger eight graders, but he was still noticed.

"Well if it isn’t the reject-nerd, Daniel," replied Sabrina, as she and several of her Sabrina-followers (who, luckily for Isis, were too broke for San Francisco, and chose to remain in Sunnydale where the rent was lower) walked up to the boy, attempting to restrain themselves from cracking up.

Dressed in plaid, with suspenders, thick glasses (possibly bifocals), and the rest of his clothes too small for him, the fourteen-year-old resembled somewhat of a white "Steve Eurkle."

Sabrina and her friends quickly engulfed the helpless Daniel in a circle, quickly beginning to poke fun at the kid, insulting and hating on the boy’s clothes.

"Poor guy," murmured Jasmine, as Dominique and Jasmine looked at Daniel in distress, while Isis’s eyes were wondering off to several stores they had yet to check out. Jasmine briefly stared at Dominique for a moment for her to realize that Isis wasn’t listening to what was going on. "Isis…"

"Hmmm? What?" Isis’s head turned to Sabrina and Daniel momentarily, and then turned back to the window she was looking at. "So what? Sabrina’s a stuck up brat that’ll be stuck up until the end of time. So what?"

"So, we’ll be going to the same school with her for four years," reminded Jasmine, as a grin began to surface, "might as well teacher her a lesson here, so she might possibly stop by the time we’re in San Francisco."

"Plus, it’ll be fun," chimed Dominique. "Think of the humiliation."

"True, true." Isis gave a little sigh and gave in to Dominique and Jasmine. "Fine, fine. I’ll indulge in the peer pressure."

"That’s the spirit," replied Dominique, with an amused smile. She took several steps back and replied, "I’ll be right back. Haveta freshen up."

"’Kay," said Jasmine and Isis in unison. They each turned their heard to each other simultaneously, and gave a little nod, as they prepared to step forward to intervene in Sabrina’s attempt to stop her bullying.

Isis’s mind was so set on stopping Sabrina, but she didn’t sense the strange creatures circling above them above the skylight of the Sunnydale Mall, preparing to strike…

Jerrold and Angelique glanced up and down the shelves of the small herbalist shop in the Sunnydale Mall. Though Jerrold didn’t mind a little running around town to pick up a few items, he could easily tell that Angelique was getting fed up and irritated with it all, and apparently had other plans than to hang out with Jerrold.

"Uh, listen, Angelique, I’m sorry about all of this," said Jerrold, as the two continued searching for the roots for the rest of Jerrold’s spell. "The runnin’ around town thing, and dealing with me all day."

"It’s fine Jerrold," murmured Angelique, not even glancing towards Jerrold. "It happens to everyone." Angelique’s face lightened up when she saw a strange, odd smelling, molding root in the corner. She picked up the jar with root inside of it and handed it to Jerrold. "And now we’re done."

Jerrold began to slightly tilt his head as he stared at the jar for a moment, and slowly asked, "What is that, exactly?"

"It’s an ulytres root," answered Angelique, "it activates the other ingredients of the spell in order to start the alarm." She smiled brightly and stared at Jerrold, while Jerrold’s face remained slightly confused, mainly curious as to what Angelique was doing.

"What?" asked Jerrold.

"You," answered Angelique.

"M-me?" stuttered Jerrold.

"You," repeated Angelique. "Root. Pay. Leave."

"Oh! Right, of course, paying, forgot." Jerrold smiled and turned around, heading towards the counter, with his heart beating slightly rapidly. Why am I so nervous around her right now? "Sorry again."

"It’s fine Jerrold," replied Angelique, as he continued to walk towards the counter. "Just pay so we can leave."

Jerrold turned around, but continued walking backwards towards the counter. "Again, I’m so-"

And with that, Jerrold collided into another customer, dropping the jar with the ultytres root, but luckily only cracking the case, not destroying the root.

In a flutter of confusion, Jerrold and the girl began to get up after their collision. Both embarrassed about bumping into each other, neither one recognized the other at first, as the jar still laid there on the ground. As the girl bent over to pick up the jar, she glanced up at Jerrold and her eyes quickly widened, upon looking at him.

It was then that Jerrold realized who she was; it was the witch who had been at the Magic Box with him and the other witch earlier that day when Damien and Kali had attacked.

"Hey Willow what’s-" The blonde witch, who he had remembered as Tara, rushed up from behind the redhead witch, and she swiftly halted when she saw Jerrold standing in front of her. "J-J-Jay."

Jerrold hesitated for a moment, briefly stealing at glance at both of them before slowly asking, "What?"

"Now what’s wrong?" Angelique slowly walked up from behind Jerrold and tapped him on the shoulder. "What is it now?"

"Listen," warned Willow, directing herself towards Angelique, "you don’t know what he is."

Angelique’s eyes narrowed in slight confusion. She cleared her throat again and replied, "And you think that you would have a better idea as to what Jerrold is." She pointed to herself as she said, "Me, I’ve known Jerrold for awhile." She pointed to Willow and replied, "You, I’m guessing, have only known Jerrold for a little bit now. Am I right?"

"You don’t know what you are talking about," murmured Tara. "Jay’s not- Willow, do the spell."

Willow pulled a small pouch out from her pocket, and she quickly opened up and grabbed some of the contents of the pouch. "Malus acclaro!" She flicked some of the powder from the pouch onto Jerrold’s face, and suddenly a surge of energy shot through the half-demon as he felt an overwhelming force come over him.

Jerrold had transformed into the vampire, Jay.

* * * *

"Sabrina Alexis." Sabrina, as well as several of her friends, glanced up away from Daniel simultaneously and turned to see Isis and Jasmine walking towards them.

Sabrina gave a mischievous smirk as the two girls approached her. "Well if it isn’t Isis- see, I don’t care enough to know your last names- and… uh, braids or whatever your name is." Sabrina gave a phony smile and replied, "So, how’ve you two been- no wait, I don’t care enough to want to know."

"I’m Jasmine," she replied darkly.

"And that’s good for you," said Valerie, with a little chuckle from the other girls.

Jasmine’s eyes narrowed at Sabrina, as she murmured to Isis, "We’re gonna have to listen to her talk like this for four years, huh?"

Isis gave a little nod as Jasmine pulled away from her. "It’s Isis McCafery and Jasmine La-"

"I don’t think she was asking for her first name," explained Dona, one of Sabrina’s lackeys. She snorted as she slapped Daniel on the back, sending his glasses flying several feet in front of him. "Now come on girls, we’re just screwing around with our friend Daniel here. He doesn’t seem to mind."

Daniel attempted to clear his throat as he tried to say, "Actually…"

"Listen, Sabrina," said Isis, walking straight towards her, when suddenly Dona and another one of Sabrina’s lackeys stepped in front of her. Isis rolled her eyes and pushed the two girls away and continued towards her, "We’re going to be at Hawthorne for four years, starting in the fall. We should make the best of them. And if you think you’re going to be screwing around with anyone you want, then you have another thing coming."

"And what are you going to do if I won’t," replied Sabrina, taking a step forward, attempting to confront Isis.

"Well, I’ll do this." Isis gave a light little chuckle, when she suddenly lashed out at Sabrina, grabbed her up by her expensive, pricey, blouse, and swiveled around and placed her down several feet away from Daniel’s glasses. "Now go and pick those up and hand them back to Daniel over there."

Sabrina glared angrily at Isis, as she tried to squirm free of her grasp, when she quickly realized that Isis was stretching out her new blouse. That bitch, she thought to herself. Giving in under pressure, she sighed and muttered, "Fine, fine, I’ll pick them up."

"Good." Isis released her grasp on Sabrina, dropping her to the ground. "Now, pick up. Before I have to do something else you will regret."

Sabrina rolled her eyes and brushed herself off. "Yeah, yeah. I’m frightened with your petty threats." Sabrina bent down and picked on Daniel’s glasses, and as she did Sabrina cringed, realizing that there was a slight crack in one of the lenses.

As she rose back up, she gave her casual phony smile, just in time for Isis noticed something flying above the skylight of the Sunnydale Mall. With only her human eyes, she could barely make out three very large creatures circling above the skylight. And it appeared as if… one of the creatures was rising up into the air- preparing to crash through the skylight.

"Sabrina!" Isis swiftly rushed Sabrina, who was briefly startled and appalled, just as she heard a loud shattering noise above them. Isis slammed into Sabrina, tackling her, and shoving her out of the way, just as tons and tons of shards of glass hit the floor of the mall that Sabrina had been standing seconds before.

Isis quickly spun around, and amongst the falling glass that hit the floor of the mall two skeleton-like monsters dropped down from the sky. The metamorphic demon’s eyes widened in horror as the winged skeleton-creatures lowered themselves from dark sky above. Though it would seem that the wings would be useless in a state like this, the skeleton-creatures seemed to mystically lower themselves, majestically moving their wings as they landed on the ground, glancing around the Sunnydale Mall.

There seemed to be a split second of silence, as the eyeless skeleton-creatures peered around the mall, seeming to almost search for a target before they struck. Isis could feel her heart pounding as one of the creatures’ gaze stopped on her, and as it did the monster released a high-pitched screech the rang throughout the Sunnydale Mall. And as the screech quickly simmered, the sound of horror and confusion surged through the halls of the mall as all of the Sunnydale-shoppers screamed and cried out as they began rushing away from the wreck.

And with that, the monster rushed towards Isis.

* * * *

"S-see," stuttered Tara nervously, as Willow’s spell began to take affect and alter Jerrold. "Look, h-he’s a vampire."

Angelique rolled her eyes. As she was about to explain what was going on, Jay turned his head towards her and gave a low, demonic growl, which made her momentarily gasp, unsure if the spell had actually worked. "Yeah, I know, I’m aware of it all. The whole ‘Doomed Vamp,’ half-vamp, yada, ya-"

But Angelique was quickly interrupted as Jay growled darkly as his twisted face stared at the older girl, with his dark, monstrous, red eyes, almost staring right through her. It was in that instant that Angelique knew that it wasn’t Jerrold who was staring back at her. But she knew it was only the demon.

Willow’s spell, the redhead witch, had gone wrong. She had "forced evil to the surface," making him vamp out, but that had not been the only thing she had done; she had also forced his darker side to become momentarily stronger and dominate over his human side.

"No," whispered Angelique in fear. "Get away, now!"

"Sorry Angelique," replied Jay, slowly making his way towards her, "as much fun as it would, I’m only available for a limited of time only. So, I should make my brief stay worth my wild."

"Listen Jay, whatever is going on, it’ll fade in acouple of seconds, sorry I guess I’ll apologize in advance." The half-vampire growled lowly and quickly began to approach Angelique, but as she did the witch turned her head held out her hand, chanting, "Inlustro!"

From the palm of her hand, an intense flash of light surged through the building, blinding Willow, Tara, and the vamped out Jay. Though the human’s vision would quickly clear up, vampire’s eyes were much more sensitive to light and would take longer to clear up, and Angelique’s spell had probably harmed him worst than anyone else.

Angelique turned her head back towards the half-vampire, who had his hands over his eyes and he cried out in pain, and a smile curved over Angelique’s face. "Sorry Jay." The witch reared up her foot and stamped the half-vamp’s foot, forcing him to cry out, and she then pulled back her fist and shot it towards Jay, punching him in the face, making him stumble backwards into the two witches.

As Angelique took a deep breath, preparing to chant another spell, she froze as a chill surged through her. There was a sudden crash outside of the store, elsewhere in the mall. As the crash echoed through the mall, it seemed as though silence had begun to engulf it. But the silence was swiftly broken as a blood-chilling scream rang through the building, and screams of terror and confusion erupted as Angelique heard people stampeding out of the mall.

But what seemed to have terrified her the most was who had cried that blood-chilling scream; it had been the voice of her sister young sister, Jasmine.

"No." Angelique moved passed both the injured half-vampire, as well as the two witches, and headed out of the tiny herbalist shop, and headed out to help her sister.

* * * *

The witch’s spell seemed to have had an ill-effect on Jerrold, making him push his human subconscious away, and making his demonic, vampiric side, Jay, surface and momentarily take control. Jerrold wasn’t completely aware of what had happened, but a surge of light shocked his eyes, and then he had been knocked down. It wasn’t too long after that that he had regained control once again, and he was on the floor next to the witches, that he feared still believed he was against them. But it didn’t have time to explain anything as he heard two blood-chilling screams.

One he instantly recognized as Isis, which frightened him that a metamorphic demon was afraid of something, and the second took him a moment to recall, but he recognized the voice as Jasmine, Angelique’s sister.

As the half-vampire, still vamped out, arose from the ground, he gripped his forehead, attempting to try to phase out the excruciating pain, he glanced around in time to see Angelique rushing out of the store. As he began to stagger after her, the two witches began to get up and shouted, "Stop!"

But before they could begin to chant anything, Jay swiveled around and roared angrily at the two of them, scaring them both mute. Jay snarled at them one more time before he began to chase after his allying witch.

Jay rushed after Angelique, who he had found standing in horror outside of the shop, watching as two winged skeleton-creatures were lifting Jasmine and Isis up towards the broken skylight atop of the mall.

"No!" cried Angelique, quickly breaking out into another run.

Jay quickly started after Angelique, but momentarily hesitated as he felt the witch beginning to absorb energy for a powerful spell. As he halted to a stop, he could see a brilliant light beginning to form in front of Angelique, and in another split second a large ball of fire was projected from her hands and shot straight up towards the winged creature that was carrying her sister away.

Jay was about to warn her to be careful, but he figured his voice wouldn’t reach her right now. But, Angelique’s spell didn’t seem to work. In any other case, a creature would have ignited on fire or have been harmed by the spell- but when the winged skeleton-creature was hit, the fire didn’t even seem to phase it. All it did was get the creature to lock its gaze upon Angelique, and then what seemed to be a vile grin appeared on the creature’s face. It released a high-pitched screech and suddenly a third creature shot down from out of the night sky of Sunnydale.

"Angelique!" Jay quickly started to rush towards Angelique, realizing that this third creature was now targeting her, in attempts to help her before it snatched her. But even as he got closer to her, Jay could feel strange and abnormal energy flowing through the air, and could almost her murmuring a spell, but it wasn’t sure. He was then positive when he saw bolts of lightning shoot from Angelique’s fingertips and surge through the bones of the winged creature. But again, Angelique’s magicks seemed ineffective on this creature as well.

"Your magicks aren’t working!" shouted Jay, though most likely stating the obvious. "Get down, now!"

He didn’t think she’d listen at first, but she reacted in time and hit the floor and the skeleton-creature shot right passed her.

Jay released his low and demonic snarl and he used his speed to get in front of the skeleton-creature in attempts to halt it, before it could double back and grab Angelique again. But to his surprise, the creature was extremely strong and as it plowed into the half-vampire, the creature grabbed Jay, sinking its sharp claws into the demon’s shoulders, and lifted Jay up into the air as it continued to shoot forward through the mall.

The half-vampire attempted to slow the creature down and dragging his feet on the ground, but the creature simply pushed harder as it continued to glide forward. And, unfortunately, Jay’s original speculation was wrong and the creature never did end up doubling back to attack Angelique.

As the skeleton-creature shot forward, and began to lift up Jay, making sure his feet were dragging against the ground. And for the second time that day, Jay was launched at Tara and Willow, as they emerged from the herbalist shop. The half-vampire collided into the two of them, knocking them to the ground. But before the three attempted to get up, the skeleton-creature started to loom overhead.

The skeleton-creature released another high-pitched screech and shot its bony claws out at Jay, Willow, and Tara. Half-expecting it to take him, Jay shot out his foot and kicked the creature. Normally, the powerful kick with the combined strength of a vampire and Slayer-like strength would have easily cracked and shattered bones. His kick didn’t even seem to phase it.

But it hadn’t even been Jay that the monster was going for; it attacked Willow.

The creature dug one of its claws deep into Jay’s arm, and without even gripping him, the creature managed to lift him up and with a flick of his hand shot the half-vampire soaring across the mall, slamming into a wall. It then grabbed Tara by the neck and tossed her away from Willow, leaving the other witch all alone.

Willow attempted to do a spell, but the creature grabbed her before she could complete it. As soon as it grabbed her, it spread its bony wings and gave its final howl before it took flight again, and headed straight towards the hole in the roof of the Sunnydale Mall.

Jay groaned as he pulled himself from off the ground, holding his injured arm as blood flowed down his arm. He moaned, quickly realizing how hungry his vampiric half was. Jay managed to shake it off when he saw the fourth and final skeleton-creature fly down from the broken skylight; this time it was heading towards Angelique.

"RUN!" shouted Jay to Angelique.

Without hesitation this time, Angelique broke into a run, rushing away from the skylight. The half-vampire’s eyes widened though, as the skeleton-creature seemed to acceleration and lunged towards Angelique.

"Dive!" shouted Jay.

Angelique nodded and hit the ground, and the creature should have shot right passed her, but it was prepared. It lowered itself to the ground, so it could get in range, and though it seemed like it would have passed right over her, it’s claws dug into Angelique’s back, and lifted her up as it passed overhead.

"No!" cried Jay in terror, as the creature began to turn around and started to carry her away. Jay quickly rushed after the creature, hoping that he would be able to catch up, but this creature was going much faster than the other creature had been going.

All Jay could do in the end was watch, as the skeleton-creature carried Angelique and Willow away, following after the two creatures that had Jasmine and Isis. Whoever had taken them had won this round; and he had failed.

Though the pain that was surging through her shoulders was one of the many things that were flooding the metamorphic demon’s mind, fear was also starting to settle in. This fear mainly consisted of where this creature was taking her, as well as the fear that it might accidentally drop her and kill her. It was a pretty high up in the sky.

Following behind the skeleton-creature that was carrying Jasmine, Isis squirmed and grabbed the skeleton’s legs, attempting to try to pull them apart. Though she would end up dropping- and her fear of heights would begin to escalate- Isis figured a few injuries and scratches wouldn’t be as bad as wherever this creature was taking her. But some sort of magick-essence seemed to be binding together its structure, making it impossible for her to disassemble it, at least in her human state anyways.

So, all she could truly do was squirm. And that’s what she did, squirm.

Isis began to squirm and thrash about, attempting to throw the creature off balance, but all that the moving and squirming seemed to do was piss it off. In an outburst of rage, the creature screamed in anger, and bent downward towards Isis, slashing the metamorphic demon across the face with one of its claws.

Though this wasn’t helping all too much, Isis’s pain in her shoulders was beginning to subside. Of course, this was only due to the fact that the creature had slashed one of her eyes, and now that seemed the focus of her pain and distraction for the moment.

But she realized that she might pass out in her human form if she remained in it for all too long. Plus, she wasn’t all too thrilled with what was going on with her eye. So she began to focus (she would normally close her eye, but she didn’t feel like causing more pain), taking several deep breathes, and Isis reverted to her metamorphic form and suddenly she realized how deep the skeleton’s claws were in her shoulders. Compared to her human form, Isis’s demonic form was much more frail and fragile and thin, so the creature’s claws felt as though they had dug much further into her than before.

"Arg!" cried Isis in pain, realizing she wouldn’t be able to stay in this form either, so she had to think quickly, attempting to figure out which form she would be able to use. Werewolf, she thought to himself. It’ll be too heavy for it to carry me, and it’ll be force to drop me. And the impact wouldn’t kill me- unless it somehow snapped off my head… Isis took another deep breath, as the skeleton-creature glanced down at Isis, and could almost feel the surprise from the creature as it realized that it was a demon the creature was carrying.

Isis glanced up from between the creature’s two legs, momentarily wincing once she realized what she was doing, but shook off the feeling knowing that it was all bones no skin, and revealed a devilish smile and she began to transform. Her pale, metamorphic demon form faded away as she transformed into what appeared to be a normal, Asian girl, who was in her late teens. But she didn’t remain that way for long. Hair coated her, Isis’s ears seemed to be stretched back, and her teeth enlarged as her mystical transformation began. Isis became bulkier (which, after meaning a teen girl for awhile, she learned wasn’t always the best thing to do), heavier, stronger, and her vision began to change and colors began to fade- and yet her vision and sense of smell seemed to heighten as well. She could feel her fingers turning into claws and then into, as her ears continued to move up towards the top of her head, and she continued to become more muscular and larger. Before she knew it, her consciousness and control was briefly fading and she had truly become the werewolf from within this girl.

All the while, while this was happening, the skeleton-creature holding her was losing grip of her each second she transformed. At first it just began to lose altitude, and it just seemed as if it were slowly sinking, but when the major transformation began the creature seemed to lose all gripe on the newly transformed werewolf. And Isis would’ve simply fallen to the ground and scampered away if its claw was stuck under the thick skin of the creature. And so as Isis plummeted to the ground, the skeleton-creature followed, accidentally still latched on to her.

* * * *

Dominique slowly wandered out of the stalls of one of Sunnydale Mall restrooms, and cautiously peered around. She was worried to leave the stall, since she had heard several loud crashing sounds, along with the cries and screams other bystanders as they herded out of the mall. Dominique slipped out of the bathroom, and entered the silence of the mall. There were only a few people left in the mall, scattering towards the nearest exits, and hoping the escape the… well, nothing that seemed to have been attacking them.

But Dominique froze as she saw what was left of the main skylight scattered in the center of the mall, where she had been standing only moments before. She see squinted for a moment and she could have sworn she saw Daniel’s glasses amongst the wreckage, but that didn’t seem all too important when she spotted Jerrold, still inside the mall.

But Jerrold didn’t seem to notice her. Her old beau seemed dead set on chasing something, and dashed right passed her as she stepped out of the restroom. That slightly pissed her off- as well as frightened her. What could possibly be so important for him to rush out so quickly, and now, after everyone else had left the mall? But that wasn’t the only thing that was frightening; his face. She couldn’t see it all too well, but Jerrold’s face seemed twisted and disfigured, almost monstrous, or maybe it just seemed that way since he seemed to zip by so quickly. Plus, his eyes seemed strangely darker than usual.

"Jerrold!" shouted Dominique, but he didn’t even glance back as he burst through the entrance of the mall. Dominique frowned and crossed her arms in annoyance, as she quickly started towards the door.

As she exited the thrashed mall, she entered the dark night and she was quickly surrounded by people, news reporters mostly, asking if she knew anything that had happened. Dominique kept on asking if anyone had seen Jerrold pass by, but no one had seen him. Eventually, one of the cops grabbed Dominique by the arm and dragged her (though she was willing to go with the cop, the crowd of journalist and reporters were attempting to pull her the other way) to where many of the other victims were waiting to be brought him. As she approached them, she quickly frowned when she saw Sabrina’s eyes lock onto her.

"You!" growled Sabrina angrily, getting up from the bench she was on, and rushing towards the girl.

Dominique frowned and Sabrina came towards her, replying, "What is it now?"

"It’s you and your boyfriend," replied Sabrina. "You ‘mysteriously’ leave, just before chaos and creepy things ensue, meanwhile Jerrold also seems linked to all this creepiness somehow!"

"I was in the bathroom," reminded Dominique, rolling her eyes. "Not much I can do from in there that would effect you all out there." Dominique gave a phony smile, and pushed passed Sabrina, checking who was there. "Plus, Jerrold and I aren’t dating." She glanced around a few times before she turned around towards Sabrina and asked, "Where’s Isis and Jasmine?"

Sabrina sighed and turned around, checking to see if any of the cops or reporters were listening, before she leaned in and whispered, "The skeletons took them."

"…Come again?" said Dominique. "Skeletons?"

"Yeah!" replied Sabrina, nodding shakily acouple of times. "Frickin’ skeletons! With bony wings and everything."

"…And they what? Flew down from the sky and took them?" asked Dominique doubtfully. "And Jerrold was there?"

"Yeah," replied Sabrina, not catching on to Dominique’s doubtfulness. "It’s not too surprising either, if you think about it." Before Dominique could even ask "why" Sabrina abruptly answered, "I mean think about it all; the local high school blew up; weird ass things always happen in this place; and we all can’t forgot Jerrold’s brief disappearing act this week."

"The disappearing act that you only saw," muttered Dominique.

"Yeah! What’s that all about?" replied Sabrina, with a little chuckle. "And they just shot down through the skylight and picked up Isis and Jasmine, and then two other girls. But Jerrold tried to stop them from taking the two other girls, and the creatures slammed him around." Sabrina rambled on for another minute before she stared at Dominique, reading her face, and gasping with disbelief. "You don’t believe me, do you?"

"Not a single word," replied Dominique, remaining to keep up her fake smile. "Especially since you said this winged skeletons flew off with them, and-" Dominique squinted and put her hand to her forehead, peering around "-as far as the eye can see, they aren’t here."

Sabrina frowned and rolled her eyes. "Yeah whatever." But as Sabrina started to walk away, she quickly swiveled around and grabbed Dominique shoulder and replied, "You don’t mention this to anyone, go it? Can’t have my friends, my future friends, and my future beaus thinking I’m crazy when I get to San Francisco."

"Right," replied Dominique, with a reassuring nod. She put on a phony serious face and replied, "Not a word." She then pushed Sabrina off of her and walked towards one of the vacant benches and sat down. "I’m sure they’ll think you’re crazy all on your own."

Sabrina rolled her eyes again and muttered, "Whatever."

* * * *

Jay was trying to follow the creatures out of the mall, but they seemed to be flying in the opposite direction of the entrance of the mall. That meant that he’d have to go outside, and go around the mall.

So, the half-vampire combined his vampiric and Slayer-based speed to zip out of the mall (passing by someone who looked remarkably like Dominique), and burst through the doors of the ravished mall. People’s attention was luckily turned elsewhere when Jay exited Sunnydale Mall, and managed to slip by without getting noticed. He rushed along the side of the mall, quickly getting out of sight of the crowd as he turned the corner of the mall, and continued to move towards the rear of the huge building.

Soon, the half-vampire reached the back of the mall, and as he arrived he saw the three of the four skeleton-creatures fleeing for the mall. The fourth one seemed to be sinking towards the ground. A huge beast-like creature, Jay was assuming it was either a werewolf or possibly a Palgorean demon he wasn’t sure, was clamped onto the end of the skeleton-creature and dragging it to the ground. It was Isis.

Dashing across the empty, somewhat abandoned, underused party lot, Jay sped towards the fallen werewolf and skeleton. As he quickly rushed towards them, the two mystical creatures slammed into the cement, causing a slight tremor. The half-vampire quickly lunged towards the skeleton-creature before it could retreat back up towards the sky. Jay slammed into the creature, pinning it to the ground, allowing werewolf (who he assumed as Isis) to attempt to get up.

As the skeleton-creature slammed into the ground, it quickly grabbed the half-vamp by the shoulders, digging its claws right into the same spot as the other skeleton-creature had before. Jay roared in pain, but instead of attempting to get away, the half-vampire attempted to drive away the pain into order to draw strength; the Doomed Vampire shot out his arms and grabbed the bony arms of the skeleton-creature, attempting to pull its claws out of his arms. But it didn’t seem to be working, and worst of all, the creature seemed to be pushing forward, and the claws were quickly digging deeper and deeper, getting pretty close to the bone.

But then, a powerful blow collided into Jay, ripping the creature’s claws out of the Doomed Vampire. The force sent Jay flying forward, and flipping onto his back next to the skeleton creature, and left him groaning in pain. Even before the vamp began to get up, he could hear Isis in her werewolf form viciously clawing and biting at the skeleton-creature.

The skeleton-creature released a high-pitched screech, calling for its allies to venture down and help the creature, but none of them seemed to respond.

* * * *

Crystal’s eyes had remained closed for several minutes as she attempted to contact her winged skeleton servants. Now she was cringing in pain and annoyance when suddenly her eyes shot open and she roared with anger. "NO!" The witch-vampire swiveled around punched her fist into the wall of the cave, causing a small tremor that caused Damien and Kali to both freeze instantly, in fear of their dwelling collapsing. Luckily, Crystal’s anger hadn’t overcome her.

"What’s happening?" commanded Lohesh, leaning against the wall closest to the exit of the underground cave.

"Some sort of metamorphic demon and a vampire are interfering with my search for my power source," growled Crystal angrily, as she hissed angrily, quickly glancing towards an idle vampire. The witch-vamp snarled angrily and lunged towards the vampire grabbing it by the neck and snapping his head from his shoulders and swiftly hurling the head towards Lohesh. Luckily, the head and the body both quickly began to crumble just before it exploded into dust.

"Things are going as planned," replied Kali with an approved smirk. "A little vamp giving you problems?"

"And this metamorphic demon as well," replied Lohesh slowly. Lohesh gave a low growl and shook his head. "This could become somewhat of a problem." Lohesh quickly shook of his concern and drew his attention back to the enraged Crystal, giving her a friendly smile. "Guess Jay was too much for you to handle."

"Wrong Lohesh," muttered the civatateo vampire, with a little chuckle. "These girls are simply my little power-up. Once they arrive, the real battle shall begin." Crystal, vamped out in anger, slowly turned to Kali and smiled. "Besides, all these two vampires have is their ‘strength’ and these asanbosam vamps that Kali speaks of."

"Don’t knock ‘em till you try ‘em," replied Kali with a little chuckle. "What’s wrong, anyways."

"One of my servants accidentally picked up a demon, instead of a girl," explained Crystal slowly. "A demon, such as yourself, would be useless in my revival of power. Unfortunately, it detected a metamorphic demon as a potential power source and took it since it was in its human transformation. And then, it morphed from human to demon to werewolf, and now she and this half-vampire that’s been bugging you all are mauling it."

"Why not just tell it to leave?" suggested Damien. "I mean, you are controlling it, right?"

Crystal glared at Damien and rolled her eyes. "These four creatures were all once vampires, and though they’re under my finger there is still some remnants of their demon persona. Meaning-"

"That if your connection fades, then they take control," finished Lohesh simply.

"But if it’s your magicks that are keeping that thing… well, one might consider it to be ‘alive,’" muttered Damien slowly, attempting to think about what he was saying, just to make sure what he was saying was true. "If it’s your magicks that keep it going, and then it breaks your connection, won’t it… ‘die’?"

"Eventually the magicks holding it together will begin to deteriorate," explained Crystal with a little nod, "which is what they’re doing, even as we speak. But no matter, the bones will simply explode into dust just like a normal vampire. Meanwhile, my other three servants will bring me my power source…" Crystal shot another glance towards Lohesh replying, "And then we’ll see what happens to our deal."

"Looks like your little flock left without ya," replied the half-vampire amusingly.

The skeleton-creature continued screeching and crying out for the other skeleton-creatures to venture back down and help it, but they seemed unable to respond. So, the creature finally decided to fight back against the metamorphic demon.

As Isis continued to viciously slash and maul the skeleton-creature, the creature quickly lashed out its claws and grasping her werewolf paws, beginning to push Isis off of the creature. Though it had easily managed to swat Jay around, it seemed to be having an unusually large amount of trouble with Isis. It was almost like it was weakened somehow.

The skeleton-creature was quickly losing strength, and Isis started to overpower the creature, pushing its claws downward. Isis felt a brief chill, almost as if the skeleton-creature was vilely grinning at her, when all of a sudden the creature lashed out. The skeleton-creature sunk its sharp teeth into Isis’s paw and she howled out in pain.

The creature hissed, quite similar to a vampire’s hiss and dug its nail-like claws deeply into Isis’s paws and pain surged through the metamorphic demon’s paws and dug straight through arm. The skeleton-creature quickly released its grasp on the demon’s paws and shot its claws out towards its arms, digging the monstrous claws into the arm and then, pulling the counterfeit-werewolf closer towards its body. And then, vastly similar to a vampire, the creature lashed out and sunk its sharp teeth into the werewolf’s neck. Though it couldn’t drink any blood, and he began to viciously rip and chew at Isis’s neck, before the metamorphic demon could attempt to strike back. The bony creature released its grasp on the demon’s neck and then kneed the back of Isis’ sending the demon hurling back towards Jay.

As Isis went flying through the air, Jay quickly dived out of the way so that the counterfeit-werewolf didn’t end up crushing into him. The metamorphic demon managed to gain some control as it flew through the air, and luckily landed on its feet, only sliding several feel before gaining endurance that managed to slow it down, instead of smashing side-first into the concrete ground. Jay quickly hurried to Isis, to see if she was all right when she reverted to her demonic form, but she remained in her werewolf form, with the side of her neck with deep teeth marks and blood flowing down it.

The skeleton-creature rose back up, turning towards Jay and Isis and spreading out its large, wide bony wings, and began to flap them. Both Jay and Isis figured that the creature would begin to flee, but instead as it rose off of the ground, the creature tilted its body parallel to the ground and quickly shot at full speed towards the two. As it passed by the counterfeit-werewolf, it dug its claws into her upper-back and slashed its claws right down her back. Meanwhile, as the creature shot by, it held out its huge wings and whacked the half-vampire in the face, making him fall backwards onto the ground.

Isis cried out in pain again, but this time the pain forced her to revert back to her demonic form, which was still bleeding from her previous wounds when she changed back to her demon side. Ten holes in Isis’s shoulders trickled black blood down her bare chest as she began gasping for breath, attempted to push away the pain.

"I don’t think your demon form can exactly help us out right now Isis," Jay muttered to her, as he started to pull himself up. The half-vampire glanced over at his ally, though he wouldn’t actually call her a friend, as the deep holes in her shoulders continued trickling her blood. "…You all right?"

Annoyed with Jay that he seemed to be sympathetic towards her, Isis shot an angry glare towards Jay and gave an abrupt snort. "Never been better." Isis closed her eyes, clinching her eyes shut, attempting to shun and block out the pain, as she started to transform again. Slowly, the pale-skinned demon began to bulk up and large muscle began to form all across her body. Her pale skin slightly darkened, becoming a thicker, tough, rubbery exterior. She was becoming the Drokken she had helped killed several days ago.

"Well okay," murmured Jay, as he observed her transformation, "you’re all demony then."

Isis snarled angrily and quickly rushed towards the skeleton-creature as it began to turn back around. Before it even saw the counterfeit-Drokken rushing towards it, the bulky creature collided into the side of the creature, forcing it back to the ground. As the skeleton-creature hit the floor, its right wing smashed into the hard cement, shattering the bone, and the creature cried out in pain once again.

"Whatever’s holding this thing together must be wearing off," murmured Jay to himself, with an entertained grin spreading across his demonic face. And with that, he swiftly rushed towards Isis and the skeleton-creature.

The creature, once again, swatted Isis off from on top of it, slamming down to the ground next to it. It grabbed one of its shattered bones, as it quickly rolled over to get up and quickly tried to stab Isis with the jagged bone. But before it could even start down on Isis, the Doomed Vampire grabbed the remaining bony wing of the skeleton-creature and spun around, tossing the creature away from the fallen Isis.

Jay quickly rushed towards the creature as it attempted to regain its balance and punched it in its face (or at least the face area). The blow knocked the creature backwards, sprawling the creature out onto the ground. The skeleton-creature hissed and shot out its leg, kicking the half-vamp in the stomach, and projecting Jay upwards into the sky, and landing on his back behind Isis. Though the structure itself was beginning to weaken, the creature’s power seemed to be amazingly strong at some points, and vastly weakening at the next points.

Jay quickly rose back up, and as did Isis, both ready to attack. But they decided to let the creature take the next move, so it wouldn’t counter their attacks again.

As the creature started towards them, both Jay and Isis noticed something moving behind it but couldn’t see what it was, and then suddenly the creature abruptly halted. With a loud snap, something tore off the creatures second bony wing, smacked the creature with it, tossing it too the side. And behind where the creature had stood was the tall, white, bleach-hair vampire, Spike.

"Hey kiddies, what’d I miss?" replied the vampire with a little chuckle.

But before either one could reply, the skeleton-creature started crying out and wailing in pain and swiftly rose up and rushed at Spike.

The chipped vamp simply snorted, took a little step back before he could rushed forward and snapped a roundhouse kick and the skeleton, hitting it on its side and sending it soaring upwards. It slammed into the ground, but managed to hold itself together, and quickly got back up.

Isis snarled angrily and rushed towards the skeleton-creature, but it saw her coming and quickly stepped aside, moving out of the way, and sent Isis flying up and missing the target. Isis landed, and quickly swiveled around and she lunged at the skeleton again, and again missed as the creature stepped aside. Instead of an aerial tackle, Isis simply charged, and attempt collide into creature’s bony legs, but the skeleton-creature bent down and jumped up, dodging Isis and landing on the ground as Isis slid passed it.

As Isis slowed down, huffing and puffing, the metamorphic demon reverted back to her more frail form, seeming too tired to sustain her transformation. Again, Isis had the feeling the skeleton-creature was giving her a creepy smile, and was about to attack her when Spike appear behind and kicked the skeleton, sending it stumbling forward.

The skeleton-creature swiveled around and there stood Spike and Jay, grinning vilely, as the two vampires headed towards the skeleton. The creature screeched darkly and as it started towards them, and strong hand grabbed the skeleton-creature by the neck. Isis, as her newly acquired vampiric form Tami, lifted the creature up by the neck, and attempted to crush the neck of the skeleton-creature, but she thought of a more simply idea. Isis growled angrily and used all her strength, ripping off the skull and its bony neck off from the rest of its body as it dropped and it the ground. As this happened, Isis’s hand suddenly passed through the bony neck as it simply began to disintegrate into dust, not even exploding- quite similar to a vampire.

"Man," replied Spike, reverting back to his human face, "what was that all about lil bits? Some sorta vampire-skeleton our what not?"

Both Jay and Isis hesitated as they thought over what it could have possibly have been. Jay was the first to speak up, as he to reverted back to his human form, and Jerrold replied, "I guess that would make sense. If it weren’t for those wings, and the fact that it was a skeleton and everything." Jerrold winced as he griped his arms, which had only begun to heal from the skeleton’s attack.

"I guess, in a way, it’s kind of like the zombie version of a vampire, but I recognize this from somewhere," murmured Isis, as she winced in pain as she continued to bleed. "How’d you get here?"

"I heard those things fluttering about from my crypt, but when I checked to see what was going on, they were almost out of sight and several vampires were already starting to appear," explained Spike, dusting himself off. He gave a little smile, replying, "I was checkin’ around the town, when I heard the commotion over here, and then I found you and the little vamp fighting the creature. And I just slipped in- a lil spot of violence before I go on with the Slayer’s patrolin."

"So you know where these creatures came from?" asked Isis quickly.

"Around my area, I believe," answered Spike slowly. "What’s up lil bit?"

"The other three creatures grabbed three girls, one was my friend Jasmine and her sister," explained Isis quickly, "the other was some redhead I didn’t know." Isis suddenly realized what she was doing- she was worrying over a human. A human, who she could’ve easily killed, but she was a "friend" as well as some women who she didn’t even know. She was staying in her human form for too long and it was beginning to rub off.

Jerrold wasn’t positive what was wrong with Isis as she froze in terror, becoming slightly catatonic, but he finished up what Isis was saying. "We know where your crypt is, so we’ll look around the area, and we’ll need you to find Buffy and meet us there to help us out. We’ll need all the help we can get for this one." Jerrold chuckled softly, as the pain that his vampiric side managed to subside, was beginning to kick in. "Very noble of you, with the whole detaching off the wing."

"Take out the noble bit," instructed Spike.

"Good detaching off the wing?" repeated Jerrold slowly.

"There we go," replied Spike, turning away, "I help you so the least you can do is treat me like I’m still the big bad vamp, and not a… de-fanged vamp." Spike sighed replying, "You kids have it easy ya know. You all are the only ones in Sunnydale that don’t have to pay for my services. You two and Buffy, since she chooses to pummel instead of pay. But she’ll get hers when my chip comes ou-"

"Did your guardians know that you went to the mall?" asked Isis abruptly, interrupting the reminiscing Spike. "Because I haveta check in with my mom before I can go out again. Though I can easily get out of a grounding, checking in and then sneaking out is some much easier than listening to her talk about consequences and whatever."

Jerrold groaned and nodded. "Yeah, Jennifer and Kyle got a little paranoid because of the social service guy, and want me to check in next time." Jerrold glanced at Spike and gave a nervous smile. "Would it be possible for you to get Buffy, and then we’d meet you there."

Spike sighed. "Sure, I suppose. In an hour, at my crypt?"

"’Kay," replied Jerrold and Isis and unison.

The three nodded, and went their separate ways.

* * * *

"So, what is the significance of these three girls?" asked Lohesh slowly, as he walked by Jasmine, Angelique, and Willow, who were all unconscious and being chained to the wall of the cave. Lohesh walked to Crystal and stopped. "How do they become your ‘power source’ exactly?"

"I will use one to drain her power and use it to energize my own," explained Crystal. Her eyes glanced passed Lohesh and onto the other three girls. "The other two will serve the purpose of food."

Lohesh turned around and looked at the three girls, asking, "So, which one are you going to use? Because my boys wouldn’t mind a late night snack." Lohesh turned back to Crystal, replying, "Care to share?"

"We might not be able to." Kali walked towards Lohesh and Crystal, pointing towards the redhead witch. "She was at the Magic Box earlier. She’s one of the Slayer’s allies." Kali growled lowly, hissing as she remembered what the redhead had done to them. "Witch…"

The civatateo vampire shook her head, reverting back to her aged, pale, corpse-like demon form. "She is a strong and powerful witch, I can see what the Slayer uses her." Then, she pointed to the youngest girl of them all, replying, "But there seems to be some sort of magick-energy stored up within this one…" A vile smile spread across the civatateo’s face, as her hand hovered above the girls head she could almost feel her power. "She’s fresh, and unbeknownst of her own power." Crystal’s eyes shot towards the older two girls, replying, "If the Slayer knows the redhead, then she can be used as a tool to convince the Slayer that this is all the Doomed Vampire’s doing." Then Crystal walked towards the final girl, and she smiled as she propped the girl up again the walk and lowered her fangs down towards her neck. She bit into the neck, not draining any blood, but just getting a little taste. "My minions saw this one with the Doomed Vampire. We may to use her to toy with him a little bit, throw him off of his game."

"So no feeding?" asked Damien curiously.

"Not for you." The civatateo demon smile vilely as she dropped the girl back on the ground and she began chuckling maniacally, as she walked towards the youngest girl, gripping her by the shoulders, and then quickly sinking her claws into the girl’s shoulders. Energy began to flow from Crystal into the girl, while the girl began to release energy into the civatateo vampire, which illuminated the cave for about a minute. When the light fade, Crystal dropped to the ground, and as she did her form started to change. At first, they all thought she reverted back to her youthful human form, until she rose up, to reveal her face vamped out. Jasmine’s energy had revitalized her.

Crystal rose back up, still giggling and snapped her fingers. Suddenly, Jasmine’s eyes shot up and she arose from the ground, and walked over to her controller. Crystal smiled, and glanced towards a random vampire standing off to the side. Jasmine, simultaneously, turned towards the vampire and murmured something quietly and suddenly the vampire couldn’t move. It started rapidly and violently shaking, until it ignited with flames and began disintegrating as the fire burnt up the undead body.

"Perfect," replied Crystal happily. "Everything’s in check. Jasmine is my power source, and together we’ll take out the Doomed Vampire and the Slayer." Crystal then left Jasmine, as she had called her, and walked towards the older girl she had bitten earlier. And with a sudden burst of speed, the witch vampire rushed towards the girl at a brilliant speed, lifted her up, and viciously dug her teeth into the girl’s neck, when her eyes swiftly opened in horror. She began drinking and drinking the girl, and as she did Crystal wriggled her head, ripping the girl’s neck further, and then squeezed her, so more blood one come out. As Crystal was finishing, she come up and dropped the girl on the ground, turning towards Lohesh, Damien, and Kali. "Do we know where the Doomed Vampire lives?

"Yes," answered Kali slowly. "Why?"

"Would it be possible for us to send this girl to him?" asked Crystal slowly, as she ran her sharp nail across her chest, cutting herself into to sire this girl.

Damien smiled in amusement. "We can send her if you want, but I don’t think she’ll be going into the house."

"Why?" asked Crystal slowly.

"Well, there won’t be much of a house left when she finally arrives…"

* * * *

Jerrold attempt to rush home, reverting to Jay in order to pick up on some speed. When he finally, he was Jerrold again, tired, and slightly out of breath. He rushed up the stairs outside of his home and frowned as he noticed the door to his neighbor’s house slightly ajar. This was the second time this had happened. He quietly closed the door, and decided to head up to his room first to change, before he confronted Jennifer and Kyle, so they wouldn’t be confused and questioning his tattered clothing.

But, what Jerrold was not aware of, as he opened up his door to his house, was the ten vampires that were dwelling below in Jennifer and Kyle’s flat, awaiting his return, in order to begin Damien’s plan…

Xander: You know, after awhile, you'd think Buffy would learn. I mean, can you really trust a vampire? I mean, after Angel went bad, Spike worked for Adam, and now Jay. Course, I might just be a little bias, but hey, that happens when the vamp knocks you unconscious and leaves you for his demonic enemies to capture. Hasn’t actually happened yet, but it’ll come.

Crystal’s hunt has only begun… Jerrold is about to get an disturbing welcome home, when Damien’s men attack his flat, as well as his neighbor’s flat, in order to throw him off of his game. And then, Crystal sends an injured Angelique to give him a message, while a possessed Jasmine uses her powerful magicks to slowly down the Doomed Vampire. Elsewhere, Willow has returned to the Scoobies, who are all convinced that Jay’s the one behind all this. Now, the Scoobies prepare to hunt down Jerrold, who may be the only means to destroying Crystal, who, allying herself with Kali and her asanbosam vampires, is preparing to take out Jerrold, Spike, Isis, the Slayer, and her allies… Doomed – The Hunt, part two.

And coming soon…

A powerful demon, with the ability to influence a creature’s darkest and most oppressed thoughts, will attack the Doomed Vampire in order to unleash his darker intentions upon Sunnydale. And with, the Scoobies are occupied with a demon infestation, that leaves only Jerrold’s friends, enemies, and loved ones to save him before he’s gone forever, in the first three-part DSV arch and Doomed Special event. Depression… (Events take place during Nancy Holder and Jeff Mariotte’s Unseen trilogy.)