The young man’s hands are still crackling with mystical energy. Magical energy. There isn’t supposed to be more magic in the world. There’s supposed to be less. But turning vampires into corpses? Not exactly magic. Not exactly normal either. Buffy Summers asks the man how it works, but he doesn’t know. He looks up at her, what looks like intense fear in his eyes. His still crackling hands are shaking. He’s trembling, Buffy notices. “You’re the Slayer,” he says, almost pleading. “You tell me.”

Without hesitation Buffy grabs a hold of him and begins to scale a fire escape leading to the roof. She is sick of getting blamed for all the corpses he seems to be leaving around, even though he protests that he didn’t intend to get her into trouble – he was genuinely trying to help. His name, he tells her, is Severin. Buffy tells him that if he really wants to help her right now, does he know somewhere where she can sleep, somewhere the law won’t catch up with her?

And Buffy’s apartment, Detective Robert Dowling and his colleague are knocking on the front door. Anaheed takes one look at the badge and asks if this is about the officers who ended up joining the party because they promised her they wouldn’t right up the noise complaint. Dowling’s colleague, Miranda Cheung gets into Anaheed’s space, insisting they need to talk to their roommate Buffy, about something else. Anaheed says she hasn’t seen her – maybe she’s at her sister’s, she suggests. Dowling hands her his card as they leave. Closing, the door, Anaheed looks at the card. She pays close attention to the word ‘homicide’.

Inside the business of a demon, Spike has wrestled the proprietor of the place to the floor. He’s questioning him, violently, about the identity of the thing after Buffy. The demon insists he doesn’t ask questions like that: he just finds places for them to stay. The demon Spike wants is on Alcatraz. He explains that that was the one place he could think of where no one would think to look, because this guy, the demon warns Spike, will kill him. He even mentioned that Alcatraz island, once the most secure site on Earth, would make him feel like home.

On Alcatraz, in one of it’s many haunted and quiet cells, the demon waits. He regards a newspaper about Buffy Summers with intense interest.

The next morning, Buffy wakes up in a strange place and grabs onto the strange arm that’s in her immediate eyeline. It’s Severin, bringing her coffee. Buffy remembers where she is and gets out of bed, thanking her host for the coffee. She looks around his apartment – it’s grandiose, with glass windows from floor to ceiling. They’re in a penthouse suite, the sun shining through the window panes and giving her an unobstructed view of the city, jutting outward to San Francisco bay. “How do I miss the schmanciest apartment I’ve ever seen in my life?” she asks him. Severin tells her that it’s the product of a large trust-fund and he has never seen anyone fall asleep as fast as she did last night.

Buffy looks at him, taking in the wealth around her. “Why would you risk this awesomeness to play exorcist to a bunch of vampires?” He looks down at the ground, unable to look her in the eyes as he speaks. “That’s the thing, Buffy. I never wanted to kill vampires. I wanted to be one.” He looks at her, briefly, and then looks down again. He breathes in deeply and then begins his story:

“My girlfriend, Clare, got me into it. She made the connections with the fanged community. At bars, nightclubs, wherever she could meet them. It didn’t take long. Turns out someone she went to high school with took the leap last year. She was going to sire Clare and then Clare would sire me.”

“But when the time came, I got nervous. I should have stopped her, but I didn’t. I stood there and watched my girlfriend die.”

He stops for a moment. He’s sat down and Buffy comes down to his level. “You didn’t want to be a vampire, did you?” she asks him. “That’s just what she wanted.” Severin looks at her with tears in his eyes. “No,” he insists, shaking his head. “I wanted to be a vampire,” he pauses slightly, bracing himself, “at least until Clare woke up.”

“She wasn’t like the vampires we saw on TV or at the clubs. She was mean, a bloodthirsty animal. She didn’t even know who I was.” The tears are flowing freely now, as Severin doesn’t even attempt to hide his grief from the Slayer. “I didn’t mean to do it. I didn’t know I could. I was just trying to protect myself.”

“As the power surged through my hands, I saw it in her eyes, for a split second. She was human and then, she was dead.” He describes what Buffy saw him do to the vampire they met the night before. Buffy remembers: it was almost as if the demon inside the vampire melted away, leaving a normal human corpse behind. It’s as if his hands ripped the very essence of the vampire out of Clare.

Buffy tells him with an honest look that life would not have been fantastic for Clare or him, even if the vampire process had worked the way it should. She would have killed them both without hesitation had she met them. Severin tells her that it wasn’t just Clare though – he’s seen other vampires that are feral and rabid. “They attack any human they see, like they can’t control it.” He looks down at his hands. “And whatever this is, I’ve been using it to kill vampires who are still turning people. And putting the mindless ones out of their misery.” He stops, looking once again at the floor, his guilty feelings obvious with a glance.

Buffy asks the date of Clare’s siring and from that she deduces that Clare was turned since the Seed of Wonder was destroyed. She puts her hands on the window and lowers her forehead toward the glass. “Sev,” she says, noting that it’s her turn to confess. “I think it’s my fault that vampires are going feral.”

At the apartment of Dawn Summers and Xander Harris, Cheung and Dowling have knocked on the door. Xander and Dawn both stand there. He claims to not have seen Buffy for days. Dawn tells the officers that as sisters go, they’re not really close. Cheung notices the couch made up, but Xander, tells her that it’s been noted, more than once this evening, that the couch is for him.

Cheung oversteps her authority, asking the couple why they’re fighting, but Dawn doesn’t even attempt to lie: Xander has forgotten her birthday. Xander objects, telling her that he hasn’t forgotten because it hasn’t happened yet! She insists on him planning it ahead, because otherwise he’ll forget, to which he again protests.

He turns to the officers and uses the pettiness as the reason their statements are true. “And now because we’re fighting in front of the police.” Dowling almost grins in sympathy for Xander and hands him his card. “Call us the moment you hear from Ms. Summers. Things will be much easier if she comes to us before we find her.”

As soon as Xander closes the door, Dawn answers her vibrating phone. “Buffy’s calling a Scooby meeting.” In her workplace, Willow‘s phone vibrates. She barely looks up. On a boat in the middle of commuter time, covered in his coat, desperately trying to not draw attention to his sizzling flesh, Spike tells the phone in his pocket that Buffy has “bloody crap timing.” Andrew, working on a robot arm, Lady Gaga’s Born this Way blasting through his work shop, doesn’t hear the phone over his own louder singing along.

In Severin’s place, only Xander and Dawn walk through the door as Buffy introduces Severin to them. She’s heard from Spike on the boat and she only sent the message to Andrew out of politeness, but she hasn’t heard from Willow.

At her workplace, Willow’s cell rings. She checks the caller ID. “Dawnie!” she smiles as she answers the phone. An unimpressed Buffy is on the other end. “You didn’t show up.”

Willow asks why she’s calling from Dawn’s phone, concerned, but Buffy tells her that after the way they left things, she wasn’t sure if Willow was avoiding her calls. Willow, less smiley now, tells Buffy that she’s at work and asks her if she shouldn’t be on the run from the police?

Buffy ignores her friend’s sarcasm and tells her that Willow is right: things are getting worse because of the Seed and they need to do something. Willow is surprised, and, as Buffy tells her that she isn’t saying she was wrong, only that there is fallout, Willow agrees, whole heartedly joining in the discussion, albeit on speaker.

Buffy and Severin explain the rabid vampires to the group, with Willow asking who Severin is. Buffy postpones that discussion for the next meeting. She needs to figure out why the vampires are more powerful and why they’re acting feral. Dawn reminds her of the ‘Vampyr’ book that Giles left Buffy after his passing.

Xander and Willow are stunned for the same reason. Willow things they should have thought about this sooner! “When someone becomes a vampire, a demon possesses their dead body. But without the Seed, demons can’t pass into this world. The demon has to possess the vampire’s body from another dimension.”

Buffy gets it immediately: “Which means anyone who’s turned since the Seed was destroyed is a zombie vampire.” Xander claps and yells loudly: “Zompires! I’ve named them. My work is done here,” he grins. Severin knows where there’s a nest.

Xander stops Buffy before she can start planning. This is where he and Dawn bow out of the mission. Buffy questions why, but he tells her that they came over to give her Dowling’s card. Dawn urges her sister to call the detective: “No one’s complaining about vampires right now. And you’re all over the news. The zompires can wait. But the cops, they’re willing to work things out before it gets worse.” Xander and Willow both agree.

Severin is cautious. “You can’t trust the police. They don’t want to talk. They want to lock you up! I can’t take out the nest without you.”

Xander and Dawn both stand in the doorway, preparing to leave. “Everyone knows about vampires and they like them. Maybe you need to work with the police to stop the zompires.” Dawn looks back before she closes the door. “Be careful Buffy,” she begs her. “I’d hate to see my big sister in jail.”

On Alcatraz Island, Spike finds the cell used by the demon who’s hunting Buffy. He looks down at the newspaper clippings. “He was here,” he whispers to himself. He glances slightly behind him. He knows what’s coming.

As the demon swings his curved blades at Spike, he tells the vampire that in his lands he would kill a blood rat for breathing the same air as him. Spike doesn’t care however, and throws the demon over his shoulder. He retorts back: “Well, where I’m from, I’d want to know why a beastie with lightsabre hands is looking for Buffy.”

The demon looks up from his landing on the concrete floor. “The Slayer destroyed the Seed.” Spike sighs. People are really going to have to get over the whole Seed thing.

The demon tells Spike that he misunderstands: “I seek the Slayer to show her thanks.”

Spike dusts himself down and lets the demon continue his tale. “Millennia ago, I was wronged, imprisoned in this realm by enemies, trapped by magic. With it’s fading, I broke my bonds and escaped my captors. By the code of the Nitobe, I, Eldre Koh, am bound to the one who freed me.” He seems contrite and genuine in his intentions. Koh asks him if Spike will take him to the Slayer.

Spike transforms his face, fangs bared and pins Koh against the nearest wall: he’s not buying it. “If you’re here to shake Buffy’s hands, why have I been hearing rumours that your trying to off her?” Koh looks back at him, unwilling to fight Spike. It is not he who is after the Slayer. The creature after Buffy is, he tells the vampire, known as the Siphon.

Spike’s never heard of it and rejects Koh’s explanation, but the demon warns Spike that his knowledge is vast. He has known of demons older than the vampire and they were all terrified of the Siphon. “It is a being who rips mystical energy from all he touches. All who possess power: vampire, demon, even Slayer.”

At docklands in the bay, Buffy and Severin are sneaking around a dark warehouse. Before they begin, Buffy checks that her new friend is okay. He tells her not to worry about him: every time he kills a vampire, he can feel himself getting stronger. By the time they take out this nest, he may even be stronger than Buffy herself, he jokes.

Buffy opens the warehouse entrance with a firm kick. The metal falls away easily and Buffy, cautiousness in every step, enters the shadowed space. She moves closer, slowly and, as her eyes adjust to the dim light coming from the moon, she sees them. She’s not sure at first, so she goes forward.

Every vampire in the nest. At least one hundred of them. All silent. All drained of essence. All dead. Buffy doesn’t understand. She tells Severin that they’re already dead, but as she turns around, he’s directly behind her, his eyes and hands glowing.

He has a sinister look on his face as he moves towards Buffy, energy crackling. “Oh, I know,” he tells her with a twisted grin.