Episode 88: A Very Crowded Skull

Marcus Pope is admitted to the hospital with various emotional disorders. Juliet rushes at once to save him, as with Dr. Sanmartin turned into a werewolf, the hospital is not a safe place any more. Indeed, Dr. Herbert West, the Reanimator, is planning a series of exploratory tests of Marcus' brain tissue.

But in this case, the deranged Dr. West might be right. Because Marcus is not himself. Indeed, his mind has been taken over by an immaterial spirit from beyond the gulfs of time, controlling him like a puppet from a dry city four hundred million years in the past.

This entity, one of the Great Race of Yith, has come to our era to seek "the Peaslee," the being who causes Black Easter sometime in this century. The Yith is telepathic, but cannot read Juliet's mind, for she is trinitary, being several persons in one personality. So is Billy, and so is Alexandra. Diligence he can't see at all.

Fortunately (!) Diligence's mind is hidden from the Yith because of the silver spider-demon living in his skull. When Lolth, the Spider Queen, sank her legs into his head, she infused her essence into the spaces between Diligence's brain and skull and began weaving her silvery web therein. She is eventually removed by Father Renault using an exorcism ritual, but not before Diligence reacts very badly to having a cross placed against his forehead.

Meanwhile, Dr. West accidentally injects himself with his reanimation serum, and the veins in his arm become independently alive, thrashing about and drinking the blood of others to replenish their lost fluid. Juliet whacks off the living arm and that solves the problem, although Dr. West's mystery elixir is unaccountably lost.

Episode 87: The Ubiquitous Dr. Filk

Dr. Filk turns out to be not as dead as was generally believed. The clues are subtle, but many: three African nations drop dead in alphabetical order one morning, and 72 burning brass jars appear in a circle around the city. Billy recalls that Dr. Filk killed three African countries in 1955, but starting with A instead of Z. Dr. Armitage notes that there are 72 demons in the Greater Key of Solomon: it seems Filk’s summoned the entire Descending Heirarchy of Satan.

No one thanks either of the gentlemen for their wise observations.

Armitage thinks perhaps the 45th jar, supposedly containing Lolth, the Demon Queen of Spiders, is somehow different. It is – it’s an illusion. So although he summoned 71 of the Great Dukes of Hell, for some reason Filk wasn’t able to summon Lolth. Odd – she’s more of a mid-ranked demon. Of course, she has previously dealt with Bonaparte, as well as Bonaparte and Diligence himself. Perhaps there was a prior engagement.

Filk appears in Danny Ryan’s mind and turns him into a wolf. Dr. Armitage, thinking perhaps Filk plans to turn the wolf against his friends, sprays Danny with pepper spray, which in retrospect might have been a bit much. Danny certainly thought so.

Meanwhile, two sorcerors are fighting over the exact center of the brass circle. Sir James Jaspers Wordsworth, a black magician, is battling Martin Kramer, a possessed psychic, using armies of conjured spirits. Juliet calls Wordsworth her favorite poet, and he just goes OFF. Apparently people make that mistake all the time, and he’s sick of it.

So he summons William Wordsworth, the Romantic poet, from the past and prepares to cut off his head, so that no one will ever confuse the two Wordsworths again. Juliet saves William, and someone kills Sir James, so that William Wordsworth thinks this is all some rollicking fever-dream.

Filk shows up, riding astride GERYON, a crocodilian scorpion-demon with a human head. Juliet and Katrina face him with their swords, but Filk just yawns and commands GERYON to pinch off the heads of “those bints with swords.” Billy throws his own sword to Filk, Filk catches it, and GERYON immediately cuts off Filk’s own head. Then Danny eats it.

Filk cannot be killed by dismemberment, however. So his body is fed to the furnace below, where bored undergrads are burning rare books. But as long as his head still exists, yadda yadda, you know the drill. Danny must vomit the chunks of Filk’s head into the burning coals, marking the most complete and disgusting end to a major villain yet recorded in these chronicles.

Episode 86: The Rats! The Rats!

Rats pour out of the sewers, spreading plague wherever they go. They are driven by several Nosferatu, who compel them from their hiding place belowground. So there's no real alternative but to go down and root them out, which is what we wind up doing.

The Nosferatu try to ambush Alexandra again, but she stays close to the group. Then they ambush Danny and Walker and get mauled, so they retreat. Finally, Juliet can sense their ancient evil and almost walks into their trap -- a stagnant cistern full of dark, oily water. She pours holy water into the cistern and EEEYOW all the Nosferatu, waiting under the surface, bounce up like scalded cats! A tremendous brawl then follows. The Nosferatu never even got to use Albert Ball as bait for their trap; he's found, drained but alive, around a corner.

Meanwhile, Diligence is stalked by a Nosferatu who is bitten and drained by Marty Lechtansi, Diligence's old vampire snitch. Marty drinks his victim whole, liquefying his skin and bones and drinking those, too, absorbing the victim's entire essence into his being with a burp. He confirms that demons are abroad down here in the sewers, working in packs. Packs of demons are very rare; the only explanation is that a stronger will is keeping them from turning on each other. But who's strong enough to command legions of demons from Hell?

Episode 85: Plague Bringer

Cases of bubonic plague are surfacing in Arkham. After a quick check to see if it somehow became the Sixteenth Century, Juliet and Walker head down into the sewers. There, they encounter Albert the prizefighter, but also a pile of dust with small rings and buttons in it.

Albert says there might be a Nosferatu about. Nosferatu are sort of the boogeyman of vampires -- they are vampires so old and jaded that they cannot derive sustenance from mere human blood, so they prey on vampires instead.

Indeed, Albert is correct. He didn't know that Nosferatu are also horrid-looking, like Count Orlok in the movie Nosferatu, but that's not a pleasant surprise. Furthermore, the Nosferatu in question can hide in the slightest shadow, or behind spiderwebs, steam, or his own tattered cloak.

The Nosferatu says he and his cronies have come here to prey on the demons who are running loose in the sewers. But the odd vampire makes for a tasty snack. They also bit several Bouchers, who became hideous rat creatures who attack the rest of the team when they come looking for Juliet. Uncle Mike Boucher, the second-story man, is beaten up, but another Boucher is killed. Humans without wererat blood just get sick. Dr. Sanmartin, long suspected of being werewolf kinfolk, proves it by getting all wolfy under the full moon.

Juliet, however, manages to get close enough to behead the Nosferatu after a fierce battle -- the old vampire is extremely strong and his limbs are hard as iron. So is his neck, but a Slayer beats iron every time. The ratfolk subside into humanity, except for the dead ones, of course.

Episode 84: The Insidious Dr. Filk

As part of her role as the maybe, semi-sorta Doctor of the human village, Alexandra senses that Dr. Filk, the evil Doctor who killed three African nations in alphabetical order in 1955, is back among the living, and that fifty years in Hell have not mellowed him very much. Accordingly, as Juliet and Walker and Melanie go down into the sewers to investigate an outbreak of bubonic plague, Alex gets everyone else to go to Hangman's Hill and hunt down Dr. Filk.

Diligence's bright idea to use similarity to find Filk fails when Filk not only deflects the arrow used to find him but sends an arrow back at Diligence using similarity. Only blind luck prevents Dil from being transfixed through the heart, hoist on his own petard or something.

But Filk, in the guise of a travelling medicine man, is easy to find without magic. His giant assistant Lazlo tries to hold back our heroes, but really, he's over his head dealing with seasoned, unfair evil-fighters like the Arkham Volunteer Fire Company. Not one -- NOT ONE -- of our heroes tries fighting Lazlo by punching him with their fists. No, they use Mace, plant extracts, silver crosses, nasty little holy water sprayers spraying the nasty, nassty holy water which burns uss we HATES IT HATES IT yess ...

.. ahem. Anyway, Lazlo's not a factor. Dr. Filk uses various ingenious spells to repel and redirect the magical attacks on him, but when Werewolf Danny picks up a tree and swings it like a club, there's a little too much matter in motion for mere magery to mitigate. Dr. Filk is knocked into the distance like a baseball, except baseballs don't generally fall apart in mid-flight.

Episode 83: The Resurrectionist

A rare specimen is stolen from the Museum of Antiquities. Actually, of course, the Antarctic alien being wasn't stolen at all; it escaped when stupid theives cut the power to the building, allowing the alien to thaw out. Only our heroes know that the alien houses the mind of Nathaniel W. Peaslee, Diligence's grandfather.

A severed head on display in the museum is reanimated by Diligence and interrogated for clues. Dil insists on calling him "Headrick," when his name is actually Seabeck, so the head clams up. Dil starts slapping it around, to no effect.

Juliet follows the escaped alien trail to the Burying Ground, where Grandpa Peaslee has been raising the dead right and left! Most of the resurrections were clumsy, producing mindless zombies, whom Juliet slays. But some were more successful, and a couple of very bad people are now running loose!

However, it wasn't all bad. Gramps was evidently trying to raise his son, Orne Wingate Peaslee, father of Diligence. However, the alien form in which Gramps was trapped can't read gravestones, so he just went from one to the other until he found the one he sought. The alien also attacks Katrina, so it has to be slain, but Orne is once more among the living, although he seems to have severe heart problems in this second life.

Also back among us: Uncle Edgar Peaslee, the chaos-worshipping magician, and Dr. Wilson Filk, the evil Doctor from the 1950s. Joy to the world.

Episode 82: Coronation, Part Two

Juliet, Walker, Dr. Armitage, Thessaly and Danny Ryan head out to Napoleon's camp. Billy, Miles, Alden and Melanie remain in town to attend the investiture.

Juliet remembers that in the alternative world of "French Twist," Walker was a military genius. She asks him to plan their attack, and after a while, he comes up with using Harmon Creel's Innsmouth folk as the main body of the attack. The Creels will attract Bonaparte's main force into revealing itself, but Bonaparte will no doubt maintain a reserve. At that moment, Walker and the other investigators will attack the reserve, ignoring the main body altogether in a bid to cut off the head of the Empire and allow the body to die.

This plan goes pretty well, although Thessaly proves too excitable to stay hidden and has to be sent to join the Creel party. Bonaparte has erected a huge tent in the woods to live in during daylight. Juliet comes face to face with Natalia the knife-thrower, last of the false Slayers, and they fight. A LOT. Walker takes some knives for her, allowing Juliet to jump over Natalia and finish her off.

Diligence's astral grenade frees the spirits of long-buried Iroquois, sending them screaming into the sky along with panicked French troopers. A zombie created by Diligence is turned into a self-propelled target by Dr. Armitage, who puts a hot dog on the end of a spear buried in the zombie's chest. Most of the Frenchies shoot at the zombie, ignoring our heroes, until it is much too late.

Bonaparte retreats to his throne room, surrounded by 29 bodyguards. Juliet challenges him to a duel, then pulls out the demon gun from "Lords of the Gun" and fires! BAWHOOM! A blaze of fury hot enough to melt the gun itself blasts out of the muzzle, scattering Napoleon's ashes across two counties. Juliet remarks, "Napoleon Blownaparte," and wins the James Bond Post-Battle Quip Award.

Meanwhile, in town, Billy and the others are shown to a special box, in which twenty vampires wait to kill them. Miles, who is indeed controlled, cuts his wrist and sprays Billy and Melanie with extremely spicy, maddeningly tasty blood, which affects vampires like catnip. They go for them, and only Billy's dumping of a bag full of crosses keeps them back for an instant. Billy grabs the butler's staff and throws it through a window, letting sunlight in on the vampires, but it looks like he and Melanie are doomed.

Simon Ysidro, Prince of Mexico, offers escape through the Shadow of the Night Before, and lets Billy, Melanie, Alden and Julien run through his cape and into the dark. In the shadowy stillness of Limbo, they await the coming of morning, while back in Arkham, the vampire guests fry in the sunlight.

Episode 81: Coronation, Part One

Juliet rallies her allies against the darkness as vampire princes from all over America come to witness Bonaparte's coronation. She locates Albert Ball, who is drinking pig's blood in the sewer with Oliver Taint, vampire barkeep, and a bunch of deserters from Bonaparte's army.

Juliet convinces Albert to help her. He doesn't much care for Frenchies anyway. She tries to get him to want his soul back, but he's not sure how much he misses it. That's left on the table for now.

Dragoons, Bonaparte's military police, come around and bust the deserters, but Albert and Juliet bust them. Now we have some nifty Dragoon uniforms. And can use them!

Billy lets Miles know the plan: all the Darkwood investigators will gather at Rowan Laurie's investiture as Mayor of Arkham, and snuff him. Billy knows Miles was bitten by Bonaparte, and believes that word of the plan will get back to Bonaparte.

But the plan is a ruse. Actually, while a few investigators are at the investiture, most are going to go to Napoleon's camp in the hills and destroy him!

Episode 80: The Harwich Hammer

Juliet spots a vampire sidling along an alley. She gives chase, and with Billy and Melanie corners him in the old train station. Only it is she who is cornered, with fifty vampires waiting for her!

The one she saw, Jason Hungerford, is impossibly fast. He has arranged to pit Juliet against Albert Ball, a prizefighter from the Victorian era. He's a vampire now, but still huge and strong, and they start sparring. Juliet asks him how he feels about fighting a girl, and truth to tell, Albert's not keen on it. He asks if maybe she could have a sword or knife or something.

This makes Hungerford angry. When his audience gets bored, he urges Albert to fight. One of the guests, a Ventrue vampire, takes over Albert's mind and makes him fight. Melanie whacks the Ventrue, snapping Albert out of it, and he pitches in on Juliet's side. Our heroes manage to fight their way out.

Episode 79: Fire and Iron

Two demons are roaming the city. Both are actual demon potentates, members of the heirarchy of Solomon: SEERE, the Demon of the Forge, and MARCHOSIAS, Duke of Iron. Juliet and her friends split up, which means half of them fight each one. However, Billy gets in a conversation with SEERE, and gets him to admit that his summoner, a mortal named Benny Solomon, is hiding in the Old Whateley Place.

Billy goes there, but MARCHOSIAS is Benny's bodyguard, and that's just bad, because he's as tough as iron and twice as mean. Benny explains that the Hellmouth is weaker now, so this is a great place to summon really powerful demons. He's the first to arrive, but he thinks every black magician in the Western Hemisphere will be headed this way in short order.

While Melanie and Juliet keep MARCHOSIAS busy, Billy goes to the attic and erases the pentagrams binding SEERE and MARCHOSIAS. The demons immediately leave off fighting our heroes and turn their wrath on Benny Solomon, who perishes horribly.

Episode 78: French Twist

Everyone starts toward the Asylum, as they decided last episode, only to feel the world shift and shudder beneath them. When it's over, the buildings are subtly changed, it's broad daylight instead of dusk, and all the newspapers are in French!

Clearly, someone has altered the world using a wish, similar to "The Short Reign of Excellence" and other stories (including Buffy's own "The Wish" and "Johnathan" episodes). The fact that everything is French now suggests Bonaparte is behind it. And indeed, Alden shows up to confirm that Bonaparte is King of Arkham, and in fact is meeting several other North American kings (all vampires, of course!) to divide the world amongst them. Walker is the leader of a band of partisans harrying the Imperial armies from the woods, but he can't get close to Bonaparte himself.

A clue is that Alden has noted the absence of silversmiths -- the Emperor wants many crowns made of silver rather than gold. This implies that Lolth, the Demon Spider Queen, may be involved, as her talisman is a silver crown and she has used wish powers before. Our heroes bust into the City Hall, seeking the crown, but find many identical crowns, designed to hide the identity of the person who made the wish! Alexandra finds the real crown, and Diligence snatches it from Bonaparte's head, putting it on himself. The crown sinks silver tendrils deep into his brain, then withdraws, leaving him puzzled ... and bleeding.

Episode 77: Zombie Dawn

So everyone goes out in the street and there are zombies attacking the living. Everyone who dies in Arkham becomes a zombie and attacks the living -- this rapidly gets out of hand, and hundreds of zombies are beseiging a dwindling number of humans in isolated homes.

Meeting in Juliet's apartment, our heroes hear zombies breaking in next door to kill Carl, the shy grad student. Zombies can be killed by decapitation or brain destruction, as Melanie proves by shoving an umbrella clean through one zombie's skull. In a Wes Craven film, she would then open the umbrella, but fortunately we're not that depraved here in Darkwood. Juliet sticks to beheading, at which she's already expert.

Walker tries to contact the spirit realm and vanishes. Poof! Alexandra tries to see into the spirit realm and vanishes, poof. Diligence uses an astral grenade to send the zombies into the spirit realm, but it doesn't work. When he examines its innards, poof! He's gone too.

The streets are just jam-packed with zombies, but Billy manages to run to the chess club van and get it started before they get him. He drives to the hospital and sees a huge silver spider unfolding its legs from the roof. It's Lolth, the Demon SpiderQueen whom Excellence invoked to become Queen of Arkham in episode 6. Excellence thinks the Spider Queen can save us from the zombies, and she's right, although the cure may eventually prove worse than the disease.

Billy manages to wake up -- the whole zombie thing was a dream! He wakes the others and hurries to wake up Excellence. She's summoned the Spider Queen in her dreams, but unfortunately that works in the real world, too. Eventually the Spider Queen is banished by the power of the Runestaff.

Our heroes hurry to the Hellmouth to see if anything more is coming out of it. Alexandra sees wisps of evil energy curling off cracking brass bands -- the very same energy she used some weeks ago to power a desperate spell! Apparently she's tapped the Hellmouth and weakened its defenses, allowing all manner of evil to ooze up into the light. Hm.

While they're here, Diligence suggests they go over to the Asylum and kick Bonaparte's butt.

Episode 76: Lords of the Gun

A killer stalks the streets, but in violation of normal horror canons, he's carrying guns! Lots of guns. In fact, he's five infamous shooters from Arkham history, dug up and sewn together by the Arkannone, the Demon Lords of the Gun.

Our heroes locate him by following the noise and smoke of gunfire, and get shot at a lot for their trouble. Juliet slices off his hands, but surprise! He's got a lot more hands under his cloak. However, both those hands contained guns, and Melanie picks one up and takes aim at the Gun Demon. He flees, teleporting in a cloud of stinking powdersmoke.

Marshal, who has been shot up by the demon, explains that he's come to Earth to defeat the angels of the sword, which is basically Marshal, and his acolytes, who are basically Juliet. But he seems to fear his own guns, so maybe to defeat him we have to adopt his methods.

Melanie takes up Marshal's sword, intending to return it, and her vision doubles. In one side, it's daylight, and Marshal is clean and smiling. In the other, it is night, and he's shot up and bleeding. She chooses to hand the sword to the daylight Marshal, and he informs her that she has saved her soul from the Beast, that dark temptation that lurks in the heart of the vampire. Her in-between state is not cured, but she never need fear she will become one of the Undead.

The Gun Demon is taking over the police station, but he gets tracked down and shot. Good riddance!

Episode 75: Trick or Trap

Halloween costumes are becoming real. That's extra bad, because well, a lot of costumes are scary monsters. Batman costumes, well, that's pretty safe, if a little creepy. But ghosts, scarecrows, Spongebob Squarepants ... eek!

It's because of a new Halloween treat, Boiled Apple Hearts, given out by Mr. Aristole Nomonkleptos of Arrowwood Street. Mr. Nomonkleptos, of course, is the Soul-Thief.

Our heroes venture out onto the streets to try and get together for some Halloween cheer, but they encounter real Halloween monsters. Scarecrows with razor-sharp scythes. Ghosts. Batman. Spongebob Squarepants. At least no Sauron ...

Melanie manages to scare off some of the ghosts with her Dread Gaze of the Vampire, but other monsters are not so easily deterred. Billy, riding a bright white "rice-rocket" Japanese bike taken from the Lancers, races around town and rounds up nearly everyone.

Diligence buries zombies in the yard to scare trespassers, but Billy manages to warn the innocent children about "old man Peaslee's place," so no one is actually killed. Alexandra takes a wax-paper wrapper from one of the incapacitated child-monsters and lights it with a candle ... so long as it burns, an identical light burns within the Burying Ground.

Unfortunately, there are many Halloween monsters guarding the graveyard, including Frankenstein and Spider-Man. (For obvious reasons, no one in Arkham dresses as witches or Dracula, although the Zoth-Ommog costume is a perennial favorite.) Billy manages to hold his own in a fight with Spider-Man, eventually knocking the tricky arachnid unconscious. It would have seemed just so wrong somehow to stick a knife in Spidey!

Juliet jumps the wall and encounters the Soul-Thief! He's back from Hell and giving out sour apple treats which dissolve the soul. Diligence uses the Charles Dexter Ward Resurrection Process to restore the Soul-Thief to corporeal life, so Juliet can kill him. This she does. The kettle of boiling apple-sweets is overturned, and the souls of the children are released. Fortunately, Katrina has gathered all the scattered straw of the scarecrows together, and Juliet has put Frankenstein's amputated legs back on, so none of the kids wakes up in the hospital.

Episode 74: Incubus

In episode 74, an incubus, a demon who delights in sabotaging true love, is turned loose on Juliet and Billy. Juliet thinks Walker is leading her into the woods on a wolfy romp, but he's really the incubus in Walker's shape, getting her alone so he can kiss her and draw out her soul.

A bit later, Billy is looking for Excellence and finds her frantically studying old scary books, looking for the way to control the demon who is going around kissing everyone and drawing out their souls. He's about to kiss her (because true love's kiss breaks the spell), when Excellence arrives at the door, shouting STOP!

Excellence-at-the-door says that Excellence-in-the-chair is an incubus, wearing her form and features to deceive Billy. Excellence-in-the-chair denies it. They fight, and suddenly one of the Excellences yanks out her cellphone, which is vibrating, and chucks it aside with annoyance. Billy, who had dialled Excellence's phone, then knifes the other one. It breaks up into reddish steam, which the real Excellence would never do, being a 'winter' and not wearing red well.

To prove his bona fides, Billy asks Excellence to marry him. She is surprised, but on reflection she realizes that's what she wants as well.

Excellence: This is so out of the blue ... did your biological clock just stop blinking 12:00?

Juliet arrives just after the accolade, having been left for dead by the Incubus, and is reunited with the real Walker.

Episode 73: Interview with the Emperor

Juliet has prepared her allies as well as any battlefield general. If the King of Kings has invited us to the Cobalt Club, then his forces are either already there or waiting to pounce. And either way, surrounding it with allies will keep him penned in away from help.

Juliet is particularly concerned that the King might get away, as so many villains do when the battle swings against them. So she contacts Harmon Creel, and gets his clan of Innsmouthers to patrol the river, in case the King goes that way. If he tries to flee underground, we have the debased Boucher clan of Black Dog County, whom Walker is able to hire for beer and hard candy. The Cult of Zoth-Ommog agrees to spread an Elder Sign around the Club, and the Hub Pack, biker werewolves from Boston, come down to act as the cavalry if everything goes to Hell.

Thus prepared, Juliet enters the Club with Walker, Billy, Alex, Diligence and Dr. Armitage. Waiting for them are six young ladies with various archaic weapons, clustered around Toussaint. Kreutz is there, with Abby. Thirty big men in fur shakoes have taken the place of the band. And a shortish, round-faced fellow in a fancy gray coat is standing beside one of the tables.

He starts out speaking French and then Toussaint gives him a spell which switches him to English. He is the King of Kings, sometimes called Bonaparte, and he's using America as his staging ground to recruit and train a vampire army to return to Europe and conquer it. He's not planning to rule America, but will brook no interference with his plans.

Bonaparte confirms that Kreutz used the blood sample from Juliet to infuse the six girls with Slayer blood, giving them temporary Slayer powers. Juliet's quite put out by this, and while Bonaparte is trying to talk her into a division of powers, she stakes him in the heart!

Bonaparte gasps, but it's one of his Grenadier Guards who crumbles to dust. The Guards are sworn to die for him, you see, and each of them takes that oath most literally!

Fighting ensues, wild and confusing. Diligence creates a disk of sharp-edged wood over Toussaint's head, slicing it clean off. This breaks Toussaint's voodoo spell over Juliet, and she manages to stab several of the fake Slayers with the bone knife, draining her blood back into herself, taking back what they stole. Only the Russian girl, Natalia, who throws knives with wicked accuracy, escapes.

Kreutz uses pepper spray to incapacitate Walker and a stun bomb to stun Juliet. She kicks the bomb back at him, though. It explodes just below his belt, rendering him most decidedly out of action.

Outside, Lancers on motorcycles threaten Melanie. Alden, her protector, leaps into battle to save her. He gets pierced by a lance, but not through the heart, so he's okay.

Bonaparte barely escapes along with the Lancers. As the Hub Pack roar in on their cycles to give chase, they hit the Elder Sign around the Club and stop short, with their souls ripped from their bodies. Seems the Zoth-Ommog cultists were bitten by Bonaparte and sabotaged their ritual. Walker goes up into the Umbra to find their souls, leaving our heroes alone, bloodied but victorious.

Fallbacks and Escape Hatches

I don't think well in my head any more. Without writing or speaking the words, I can't hold together a single sentence, let alone a useful paragraph. Advancing age, perhaps, but I doubt it -- I'm supposed to have another decade or two. Probably fatigue, from the maintenance of Autumn and Ben.

Anyway. I'm working on tonight's episode, and I need a couple of hatches. Such as:

What if they kill the Emperor tonight? Well, then, the rest of the season is sorta moot. Or is it? The weakening of the Hellmouth brings forth monsters, some of which I already have on tap, like the Arkannone, etc. Those monsters can still arrive, giving me a few weeks to think of a capper to tie it all up.

But I'd rather not do that, so I'd like to find a way to get Bonaparte out alive.

The Double Siege is one option. You have me trapped in this building, but I have you trapped in this room. If we do not reach an accord, well -- there will be heavy losses on both sides.

The Double Agent is another. Jasper's been bitten and turned. His circle keeps out spirits, which means Deep Folk, Ratmen, Slayers, Werewolves -- everyone, in fact, but pure humans.

Grenadiers as his bodyguard, Lancers as reserves, mounted on motorcycles.

Toussaint and the Six.

Kreutz with his knife-throwing, sneeze-dust scattering, pepper-spray spraying tricks.

The Grenadiers are representatives from all the vampire clans. He has tasted their blood and assumed their powers. Ventrue toughness, Brujah speed, Nosferatu strength.

A timeline:

ENTER. Excellence sits at one table with Gerard, Toussaint and the Six at another. Grenadiers in the bandstand.

Bonjour, bon nuit, mesdames et mademoiselles! Ce me fait le plaisir complait de faire votre connaisance enfin.

Ah. Nous avons une difficulte avec la langue. Toussaint, quelque chose pour les oreilles, s'il vous plait. Les oreilles Anglais, oui? Ah -- that's better.

I have come to gather an army with which to reconquer Europe. I will leave America with very few remaining vampires, an outcome I imagine will not displease you.

The night is the hostage of the day, so naturally I must extend my control to the daylight hours. Hence my imposture as Mr. Rowan Laurie, and my co-option of Mr. Olmwood and Miss Caldwell.

Next move is up to you ...