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Late that night, Victor half awoke to hands on his face. And Amy was totally lowering his defenses by coming to him at all hours of the night, till he hardly ever woke up fully any more. It was bound to get him hurt one day. He pushed them away sleepily, murmuring sleepily "Let me rest, Amy." But the soft hands persisted, and Victor took the only refuge he could by making himself go back to sleep.

When he woke up, Amy was nowhere to be seen, which surprised him. Usually, she was still there when he woke up. Stiff, Victor stood up and stretched, hearing joints pop and feeling muscles ache in vague discomfort. "Don't tell me I'm getting old," he muttered to himself, in half bad humor. He rubbed at his neck and came away with blood.

"What?" he said, startled, and pulled a mirror out of his pouch. Sure enough, there was a distinct bite mark on his throat. "Something wrong here - " he said to himself. Victor had long ago had this admittedly one sided discussion with Amy. She was not to bite him, even under the most severe circumstances. So chances were it wasn't Amy... So... Victor opened the window to let sunlight in - and discovered that the sun was none too far to setting.

"What the hell?" he demanded. The slender young man bandaged the wound without any further thought and headed down to the common room.

"Hey Victor!" Shaper said, from where he was sitting in the common room, plate full of food balanced on his lap, because his feet were where one would normally put a plate.

"Hi Shaper," Victor said. "When did you get in?"

"Oh mid day," shrugged the risen. "I hear you're a hero already, and you haven't even faced the monster yet."

"Shut up," the dark haired drifter commanded pleasantly.

A few moments later he was trying to eat the food he'd ordered and finding it increasingly hard to think about eating. He sighed.

"So are you going to go against the monster?"

"I can't leave her infecting these people."

"Of course not." Shaper grinned. Angel spared a moment to be thankful that the risen wasn't wearing his mask. Shaper doing a full grin in his mask would ruin what was left of his appetite.

Abandoning eating for a while, Victor began pulling bottles out of his pouch, and called the bartender over to request a few empty bottles that had once held liquor. And one full one. When they arrived he began carefully mixing what was in the bottles that he'd brought out and pouring them into the empties - This was interspersed with drinking from the full bottle.

"What are you doing?"

"Rot vampires are susceptible only to fire."

"And?"

"Well, I'm going to burn the bitch."

"So what are you doing?" Shaper asked again.

Victor stuffed a bit of rag in the now full bottle. "This, Shaper, is what is commonly referred to as a Molotov cocktail - used mostly for burning down people's houses." He brandished it at Shaper, then set them in a neat grouping. "I was given a handful of places that the creature could have holed up and I have a bit of a feeling about two of them. One of them's an old house."

"So you're going to go burn it down? Isn't that a little excessive?"

"Lord, you're a ditz sometimes... No, I'm not going to burn it down, unless the creature is actually holed up in there. If she is, it'll be the only way to get rid of her."

"Well what about me?"

"What about you?" Victor said irritably, finishing off the bottle of liquor.

"What am I gong to be doing while you're being an arsonist?"

"You're going to be guarding the town Shaper." Victor stood up and stretched again, deciding to abandon his breakfast. It was past dinner time anyway. "I know that's a big responsibility, but I think you can handle it."

"You're trying to get me out of the way, aren't you?"

"Whatever gave you that idea?" Victor asked, dripping with fake innocence.

"Feh," Shaper said, and sat up straight. Victor gathered up the bottles, and headed out into the deepening dusk of the town. The residents were mostly going to bed, or at least getting behind closed doors, which was no bad thing, considering the creature. Suddenly from out of the darkness came a slim, white haired red eyed woman.

"Hello Amy." the albino vampires wiggled her fingers at Victor then moved towards him, arms open to give him a big hug. Amy drew back sharply and pinched her nose shut. "What? I stink?"

She nodded emphatically.

"Thanks," Angel said with a sigh. "I always appreciate your support, Amy." Without any further comment he walked past her and into the night to where the townsfolk had suggested he look for the creature.

Suddenly Amy turned to Shaper and quirked her eyebrows in concern.

"No, I don't know what the matter with him is." Shaper said with a shrug. Amy pointed after Victor. "No, he told me to stay here and guard the town. The albino vampire touched her own chest, and quirked another eyebrow. "No, I don't think you should follow either." Amy made a spitting gesture and folded her arms across her chest, cross.

Victor kept his hands in his pockets as he walked through the fringe of forest that rimmed the hill where the house sat.

'It's certainly a dramatic enough setting,' he thought to himself. 'Why can't I ever face any monsters in the middle of the day on a nice sunny beach somewhere...' Victor heaved a large sigh. 'They're always in an abandoned house, or the basement, or a deep dark cavern, and they never show their faces in the day time. So I have to go out and find them in the middle of the night.' he trudged up the hill to the front door of the house.

It was a big house, and might have been nice once. Victor idly wondered why it had been abandoned. The windows were boarded up, but the door swung open idly in the wind. Victor slowly moved up the steps and into the house. It was pitch black inside. With a flare of light Victor lit a clove. He'd been putting it off, hoping that his upset stomach would go away on its own, but it hadn't. There was a strange, vaguely familiar sickly sweet smell, that twisted his unhappy insides to a new level entirely. Something squished unpleasantly under one of his boots, and Victor lit his lighter again, holding it over his head to shed some light on the room. He almost lost what little he'd gotten down earlier.

"God above." Victor swallowed. "Give me guts, give me blood and murder and mayhem... but..." he finished his thought silently, 'if I never see another maggot again, I'll be thankful.' Victor moved a little further into the house - the floor was coated almost half an inch deep with a writhing mass of putrid maggots and other bugs. He dropped the lighter, and almost let it lie where it fell. However, he pulled out a flashlight, and used that to find and wipe off his enameled Zippo. The stairs looked slick with a substance that wasn't blood or ectoplasmic slime.

"Hello..." crooned a sweet voice. Victor turned swiftly and saw a slender, almost emaciated young woman in what appeared to be a bathrobe. Her eyes were a beautiful liquid brown, and her skin was as pale as the moon. "I'm glad you came to me," she said, touching the base of her throat, tipping her head to one side, letting the smooth coils of dark hair caress her face like water. Victor hated it when they really were beautiful.

"Came to you?"

"I visited you last night - and you came."

Victor put the flashlight away, and forced his eyes to adjust to the darkness. It made it all seem softer somehow - and at least he couldn't see the maggots. Under cover of that darkness he removed a bottle from under his coat and began pouring the contents over the floor, as he moved slowly back towards the door.

"You don't want to leave so soon do you?" came the soft voice again.

"I like my women whole," Victor said, and dropped a match. In the light that flared, he saw the figure transform from a winsome girl to a rotting hag. "Shit!" yelped the drifter as she tackled him to the floor, cruel rough talons digging through his leather coat, and into his arm. He screamed and rolled, trying to buck her into the fire that was swiftly spreading around the room and up the walls.

'Stupid Victor!' he thought to himself. 'Burn your bridges before you cross them!' Something ripped through the cloth of his pants as he managed to get free and run across the room towards the kitchen. The front door was blocked with flames. Over his shoulder, the dark haired man tossed one of the prepared bottles he'd made, hoping to hit the hag, but not wanting to take the time to aim.

'Visited me last night!' he thought. 'Aw, shit.' He whirled around a corner and found a boarded up door that probably would have led to the outside. He moved to break it down, and claws raked across the back of his coat. The slender man whirled locking his fists together and striking the rot vampire hard on the cheek. She rocked back and let him go for a moment. Victor scrabbled back slightly, and almost escaped her toe-taloned kick that tore open his pants, and the leg beneath them. Fire licked at the back of his coat, and Victor smelled burning hair. He shouldered past the creature again, tossing it in the general direction of the flames, and broke down the back door. He threw down another bottle of his arsonist's punch, and the back porch became wreathed in flames. Coughing on the smoke - the stink was unbelievable- he made it out into the back yard, and found the house ringed with townsfolk.

"Judging from your bloody state," Doc said wryly, "I guess she was in there?"

"Yup," Victor said simply and patted at his hair to make sure it wasn't still burning. Then he called to the people. "I presume you're here to keep the fire from spreading?" The townsfolk nodded. "Fine - but you have to let the house burn to the ground - and don't let anything escape the fire!" They nodded as one, and tightened both their jaws and the circle in resolve. Victor sat down and let Doc bind his wounds up.

"That's a nasty cut on your chest, Angel," he said "You want I could stitch it up? Looks like it cut across some scar tissue there..."

"Uh... no... just bandage it." Victor said, wincing as the doctor cut his shirt open.

"Shit, son, what did you do to yourself to get that scar?"

"Trust me - I didn't have anything to do with it," he said honestly, sliding out of his coat and wincing as his chest muscles moved. "God... I need some sleep." Despite that, Victor stayed until the wee hours of the morning, pacing around the burning house, jumping with everyone else and timbers fell into the foundation hole, and smoke poured up into the sky like a reverse water fall. In the first fifteen minutes there were screams every now and then, and once, a figure was silhouetted in an upstairs window. But Victor had fired a dragon's breath round into it, and it disappeared. Now little was left except for a slightly smoking mass of ashes.

The sky was painted with rosy red fingers of dawn, and Victor collapsed on a handy rock.

"You alright Son?" asked Doc.

"Never better," replied the drifter with a grin. "I just need a little bit of rest - then I'm gonna make sure the thing is dead."

"You're a through man, Angel."

"I try," he looked up at Dr. Peterson and gave a wry smile. He lit a clove and winced at the smell on his gloves. There was something about the smell of a burning house. It didn't smell like anything else. The scent of burning paint, wood and tar mixed to become a new scent - a flavor and texture as much as a smell. And It wasn't a good smell either. Something like the scent of lives going up in smoke, garnished liberally with memories. After he finished the first clove, Victor forced himself to his feet and moved towards the slightly smoking pit.

"You're not going in there are you?"

"I am," the drifter said, lighting another clove on the butt of the first to try and dispel the scent - at least around him. Being inside the house had permeated him with it.

"But... it's still hot!"

"I got good boots," Victor said with a shrug that hurt more than he showed. "Go back to town, and send my creepy friend out after me to help me get out of here, okay?"

"If you say so... but you should get some more rest, son, I don't like the looks of those wounds."

Self consciously, Victor rubbed at the front of the shirt he'd put on the cover the bandages, then clambered down into the mess of charred timbers and ashes that had once been a house.

Houses burn hot, fast and furious - and when left to their own devices, are very thorough. There wasn't much left. now up close with the smoldering wreckage, Victor could pick out pieces of what had once been a fireplace, now blackened and cracked beyond all recognition. Occasionally Victor's boots turned up still glowing coals under the packed ash. Even through the wreckage, Victor could tell that the basement sloped downward in one corner. By the time he'd worked it out, Shaper showed up.

"Hey there blue eyes!" said the rizen brightly. "You look like you had a fun night."

"Pass me a shovel." Bemused, Shaper did, and Victor began to dig. A few moments work uncovered a drain.

"Shit," said the slender young man, and dropped a match down the hole. It went straight down for a moment, reflecting off the sides, and fell at the bottom, sputtering for a moment in a pool of something that looked a bit to thick to be water. "Damn." A few more moments work filled that end of the pipe with as many red hot coals as he could find. Then Victor dumped the contents of one of his bottles over it.

"Holyee!" exclaimed Shaper as a plume of flame burst into the sky - then held steady for a moment before subsiding.

"Gimmie a hand," ordered Victor.

"What's the magic word?"

"Just do it." The rizen helped Angel out of the hole. "Back to town, I got some investigating to do."

"Sure, as my massah commands."

"Shut up."

"Why Victor, you're even more surly than usual."

A few town records showed where the tunnel was likely to come out. But Victor just wasn't up to going and investigating it now. He did tell the sheriff and shaper where it was though, in case he took another one of those day-long naps. And the way he felt right then, he wanted to. Nothing could be worse than the all over ache he'd become, especially coupled with the stink that the vampire and the fire had left on him.

Much later Victor got a chance to try and scrub the fire smell off of his skin and out of his hair. It didn't work very well - it hurt to much to move. The wounds had scabbed over a bit, even the one on his neck, but they were swollen badly, and hot to the touch. Victor wasn't sure what was worse, the stink of the fire, the pain in his body. It was worst where she'd slashed his chest across his scar. Angel was vaguely glad that the coals had scorched off anything that might have been sticking to his boots. And then the scab broke, and Victor realized exactly what was wrong with him.

"Hi Doc," Victor said roughly. Doctor Peterson turned and looked at the dark haired drifter, who had half collapsed against the doorframe.

"You look to be in a bad way," he observed.

"You could say that." Victor smiled with only a trace of his usual humor. "I need your help."

"Well, what can I do?" Before his sentence was fully finished, Angel had tumbled forward into the floor. When he came back to himself, the good doctor had moved him to a bed. "What's the matter?"

"She got me," Victor said simply and had to steel himself against pain and weakness to continue. "I'm gonna have to go out again to make sure she's dead - and before that..." he raised his hand and plucked ineffectually at the bandage at his throat. Dr. Peterson took the hint and carefully cut away the bandage.

"Lord almighty!"

"Yeah," Victor said with a weak chuckle. "It's worse on my chest."

"So you need done to you what you did for the boy?"

"Yes."

"Do you have enough holy water for that?"

Angel shook his head and winced.

"Well, that's alright, because I laid in my own supply after seein' what you did for the boy." Dr. Peterson left the room briefly and came in with a big bucket.

"You think it's that bad?" Victor asked, gritting his teeth.

"Son, I'm afraid it may be worse."

"Shit."

"Yep."

In short order, Edmund had stripped Victor to he waist. The slashes and the one bite mark on his neck were an angry, infected red, but scabbed over nonetheless.

"You're a fast healer," Doc observed.

"Please," Victor muttered. "Just do it." The doctor started to touch Victor's chest and the dark haired man exclaimed "Wait! My pouch - thin rubber gloves - don't want you to get infected."

"Thanks for your concern." A moment later, after a bit of stretching and swearing, Edmund carefully reopened the wound, mind braced, holding what he'd seen before to keep himself steady.

It was worse.