The Reasons We're Not Dead: The Demon Days Soundtrack, Vol. 4 (Lucy's Playlist)

Here we are: the last soundtrack for our Hunter game. This one is a little different: it's posited as a playlist Lucy put together on her iPod -- suitable background music for writing her handwritten memoir, The End of the World. So these songs represent the characters as she sees them. Too high-concept?

There's only one song per character this time around, with six overall themes to fill things out.

1. "Outsiders," Franz Ferdinand
Hell knows we ride alone

2. "Us," Regina Spektor
They'll name a city after us
And later say it's all our fault

3. "Burning Down the House," Talking Heads
Hold tight -- we're in for nasty weather

4. "Signal to Noise," Peter Gabriel [Dean's Theme]
In this place, can you reassure me
With a touch, a smile while the cradle's burning?
And all the while, the world is turning to noise

5. "Keep the Car Running," Arcade Fire [Lucy's Theme]
There's a fear I keep so deep
Knew its name since before I could speak

6. "Section 22 [Running Away]," The Polyphonic Spree [Laura's Theme]
I feel so excited and collided today
'Cause you decided to be in my life
It's like running away with the wind in my face
It's like flying

7. "What You Live By," Harvey Danger [Simon's Theme]
We can talk about the lives we've lead
Count the reasons we're not dead
Or maybe we could talk instead
About the ways in which we are
Always nothing or too much to say
Only so many sides of the record to play
And the song that got stuck in my head
Said, "You die by what you live by"

8. "They Never Got You," Spoon [Sunday's Theme]
Back in that place where you could fall
Did it pay to play along?

9. "Thief," Our Lady Peace [Evets's Theme]
I can't see the thief that lives inside of your head
But I can be some courage at the side of your bed

10. "Surf Wax America," Weezer [Dan's Theme]
You take your car to work, I'll take my board

11. "Black Swan," Thom Yorke [Caitlin's Theme]
People get crushed like biscuit crumbs
And lay down in the bitumen
You have tried your best to please everyone
But it just isn't happening
No, it just isn't happening
And that is fucked up

12. "Alcohol," Barenaked Ladies [Willem's Theme]
I thought that alcohol was just for those with nothing else to do
I thought drinking just to get drunk was a waste of precious booze
But now I know that there's a time and there's a place where I can choose
To walk the fine line between self-control
And self-abuse

13. "Wipe That Smile Off Your Face," Our Lady Peace [The Queen's Theme]
See, I'm not your friend
And I won't pretend
That I've come here for peace
Well, I'm not afraid
I'm gonna make you pay
I'm gonna wipe that smile off your face
This is war

14. "The Reflecting God," Marilyn Manson [Mozart's Theme]
I went to God, just to see
And I was looking at me, yeah
Saw heaven and hell were lies
When I'm God, everyone dies

15. "Truth Hits Everybody," The Police
The only certain thing in life is death

16. "Tentative," System of a Down
No one's gonna save us now
Not even God

17. "Land of Confusion," Genesis
This is the world we live in
And these are the hands we're given
Use them, and let's start trying
To make it a place worth fighting for

Hunter: a quick (?) and dirty recap

If everything goes to plan -- and there's no reason at all to suspect that it will -- our Hunter game's final episode, "The Beginning," should be concluded in about seventeen hours. There isn't much left to do -- our last cliffhanger left the Hunters climbing a long black stair that (presumably) leads to their final confrontation with Wilhelmina Mozart, the self-proclaimed Vampire Goddess of the World. Of course, robbing the world of the sun and casting all into darkness -- to which she can give form and substance with a thought -- certainly gives her credibility.

Of course, I haven't written a recap in ages, missing the end of the third season, the entirety of the fourth, and now almost all of the fifth. How quickly and concisely can I wrap up everything I haven't done? Let's find out!

When we last saw our heroes, a Demon had just killed Edgar. The Hunters put him to rest, telling his sister the truth and fulfilling Edgar's last wish (that everyone team up to kick his brother in the balls). The rest of that season unfolded with the following bullet points:

• The briefcase that they took from the ghoul ended up containing a book, filled with ancient lore on how to deal with demons. The Hunters use this knowledge to dispatch the Man in White. (It involved Lucy singing to him. No, really.)
• Faith, the woman in white who arrived looking for Sunday, contacts the Hunters again. She claims to be Sunday's "niece," though Sunday has never heard of her before. But Faith says a password that Sunday only offers to close, personal friends (something about a monkey with a red hat, and I can't believe I forgot it). Faith finally reveals the truth: she's from the future, sent back by a "crazy, angry old mage." She needs Sunday to help her get back. Sunday eventually does, though not before Faith reveals something else about herself -- she's a fucking ninja, with preternatural speed and dexterity, and she wields a silver sword with stunning skill and precision. She's also "shy" -- she suddenly starts wearing a mask around Lucy and Simon, and will only talk to Dean on the phone. Hmm. In the season finale, she's finally sent home, after imparting a few nuggets about the future: humanity and the supernaturals end up in a full-scale war. Big surprise, huh?
  
• The subway bombing? It gets pinned on the Hunters. The feds show up to take them into custody, but our heroes slip away, as expected. This creates a dilemma for Caitlin Graves, the FBI agent who showed up in town only trying to find her sister (Dan's former girlfriend Hannah, who was turned into a vampire). The Hunters tell her everything, which she doesn't believe, of course. But while they're talking, a pack of werewolves arrive to slaughter them, and that kind of visual aid goes a long away. (The Messengers speak to her during his fight, attempting to Imbue her, but in her terror she fails to answer the call; this makes her a Bystander.) In the end, she decides that the Hunters are fighting a necessary battle, and abandons her job to join them.
• The political situation between the supernatural factions -- vampires, mages and werewolves -- becomes lethal. All sides blame the others for the escalation and violence, and everyone accuses everyone else of assisting the Hunters. Sunday and Evets lay everything out, and tell the Hunters that the only way to save them is to...kill them? The plan involves faking their deaths, and sending them way, way out of town. There are remote places in the world where the natural energies that run through everything have frayed (where the world has moved on, you might say), and it would be hard for even the Queen to find the Hunters if they hid there. So they implement Operation We Have to Kill the Hunters or They'll Die.
• But not before a group of magical bounty hunters find Evets at Wal-Mart (he's a wanted criminal, sentenced to death, remember). The Hunters fight them off, but one of them unleashes a nasty attack spell on Evets, causing his blood to erupt from him in torrents and practically killing him on the spot. Sunday manages to use her magic to heal him, but barely. Before Faith left, she told Sunday to "eat lots of chocolate" -- apparently, chocolate consumption can help a mage's healing spells, and its only that boost that saves Evets. While she's trying to heal him, Evets starts shrieking about his parents, calling for his mother and apologizing for his father. In the aftermath, Sunday confesses the truth: Evets is her son. She doesn't let him call her "mom" out of fear that other mages can use that kind of emotional connection against them. As for his father -- Evets's awakening (the moment he learned magic) occurred when he was a child, immediately following a horrible car crash with his parents. Without even thinking about what he was doing, Evets picked up his mother, used his magic to commandeer a car, and took her to safety. Unfortunately, he left his father behind, and he died. Though Sunday has always tried to convince Evets that it wasn't his fault, that his father was already dead and beyond saving, he still carries the guilt. This bit of backstory isn't really important in the overall arc, but I really like it. So there.
• The plan goes off without a hitch: Evets gives the Hunters his Hummer and they quietly depart, while Sunday and Evets pretend to have betrayed and murdered them. The Queen, however, is unconvinced.

In Season Four, the Hunters hide in a (very) small town in West Texas called Resurrection for several months, slowly going stir crazy. The main plot arc dealt with a cursed werewolf-like creature kidnapping pregnant women to use in a ritual to regain her original form. Of course, the Hunters found her and put a stop to her. Some other notable events:

• In a secret lab beneath an abandoned military base, a group of scientists working for Privera (Privera being the evil, vampire-linked company behind a lot of bad, bad shit) are trying to create a zombie army. Why? 'Cause they were told to. By whom? Who knows. The important thing is that one of their experiments goes awry and starts a full-blown zombie outbreak, which the Hunters are able to stop. At some point during this plot, Willem blows up a silver mine and Dan gets an Army jeep. Dean puts the evidence of Privera's evil activities on the web, where it has an immediate impact.
• They find a mage reading tarot in a trailer the next town over. Her name is Julia, but everyone (to this day) calls her by her professional name, Madam Shostakovitch. Evets spent some time in this town while on the run, and he and Shostakovitch are, erm, "friends." She supplies the Hunters with firearms and explosives, and gives Lucy an awesome silver sword. Hey, wait, silver sword?
• Lucy starts writing down everything that's happened, a book she calls The End of the World. She's not sure if the title is a joke or not.
  
• Dean learns an Edge that lets him use a flame to track down supernaturals. He, Lucy and Dan (I think?) follow a trail to an isolated house. Inside, they do indeed find a vampire. Unfortunately, they also find his terminally ill mortal wife and his precocious, adorable daughter Laura. The vamp emphatically demands to be left alone, and (if memory serves) the Hunters are about to comply, when his wife suddenly dies. The vampire, lost in grief and rage, frenzies and starts wrecking the house. The Hunters grab Laura to make sure she doesn't get hurt, but the vampire -- not within ten city blocks of his right mind -- thinks they're trying to abduct her, and attacks. The Hunters are willing to let him be, but he presses on, and eventually uses his vampire powers to summon a horde of brown recluse spiders. One bites Lucy, and she very nearly dies. Dean can be reasonable, but not when you try to kill his wife -- the vampire is destroyed. Laura is left behind, thinking that (surely) local law enforcement will show up to investigate soon, and they'll find her. Right?
• Willem drinks. There's a story Stephen King tells in On Writing, about an alcoholic who goes to counseling. "How much do you drink?" the doctor says. "All of it," the man responds. Yeah, that's it, pretty much.
• Hey, you know what we need? An unrequited love triangle: Simon likes Caitlin, but she likes Dan; but Dan is still recovering from the loss of Hannah (who, of course, was Caitlin's sister), so there's nothing happening there.
  
• Lucy discovers she's pregnant. She and Dean do some math and some deductive reasoning, and confirm their suspicion with Sunday: Faith is (will be?) their daughter.
• While doing, uh, something or other, Lucy spots Laura all alone in an abandoned neighborhood. Dean wants to leave her there, but Lucy puts her foot down. It turns out to be a trap set by that cursed werewolf-thing I mentioned before, but they fight their way out of it and rescue Laura. They take her to the sheriff with thoughts of having her sent to CPS, but in the short time they spend together, Dean finds himself enchanted with the girl. With Lucy's agreement, he asks Laura if she'd like to stay with them. She cautiously accepts. (They did kill her father, but Laura is smart enough to realize that her father was different, and not in any way that was good.) Over the next few months, the three of them become a rather oddball little family.
• A vampire shows up one night to take Laura, claiming to be her uncle. Laura confirms that he is, but she doesn't want to go anywhere with him. Of course, the vampire (and his gang of Kindred) don't take no for an answer, and are slaughtered.
• Remember the big red number on the wall in Bazemore? They find something similar in Resurrection, and Shostakovitch tells them that they're werewolf rituals -- "prophecy counters," she calls them. They, essentially, count down the events that must occur in order for a prophecy to come to pass.
• The Hunters destroy the werewolf-thing, gather together their belongings, and return to Bazemore. (Just missing the battalion of vampires sent by the Queen, who finally managed to deduce their location.) Shostakovitch comes with them.

In Season Five, everything steamrolled to its conclusion. Here are the necessary events, in extraordinarily brief fashion.

• In an effort to circle the wagons, Dean brings his parents to Bazemore, where he can protect them. Lucy and Simon's father comes along.
  
• The Hunters go on television and kill a vampire, showing everyone definitive proof of their existence. War is more or less declared.
• The vampires respond very quickly, with a televised announcement of their own. The Queen delivers a "If it's war you want, than war you shall have!" statement, and Mozart uses her shadow tentacles to turn an entire news studio into a bloodbath. Evets tries to teleport the Hunters to that studio, but someone has erected a magical shield to prevent exactly that -- a shield so powerful that the attempt to break it shatters Evets's avatar (the awakened part of his soul that allows him to do magic). Since then, Evets's magic has become completely unpredictable, often firing off spells without intending to, and occasionally casting spells he doesn't even know.
• The vampires disappear. They can't be found anywhere. There are suddenly zombies on every street corner, though.
• Crazy human bastards drop a biochemical weapon during a baseball game and kill thousands of people. They threaten to kill even more the same way if the vampires don't immediately surrender (with no food, obviously, the vampires would die). The threat is a bluff, of course -- the humans don't have that much of the virus. The Hunters discover that their leader is none other than Weathers, who was last seen madly waving a gun around a shopping mall. They make sure the bluff is nothing but a bluff, but Weathers makes a mistake common to NPCs is this chronicle: he tries to kill the Hunters. Well, so much for that asshole.
• The Hunters find a werewolf, a young boy named Joey, who is incapable of controlling his shapeshifting. Dan takes him to the only werewolf they know of that hasn't tried to kill them: the woman in the parking garage who keeps the chingas. (From way back in season three.)
  
• Dan finds a vampire, wandering alone. He kills it and steals its briefcase, which contains a program that allows them to decode those Byzantine e-mails between Bach and Mozart that they found months earlier. Essentially, they were plotting to overthrow the Queen. And the giant lizard monster under the subway tunnels? It was only the first of two -- the second is much bigger, apparently. The purpose of the creatures is still unknown, though. The e-mails also contain a cryptic reference to Edgar, which they don't understand. Also, Mozart is trying to acquire an object from the Queen.
  
• Willem steals a military truck. It turns out to be a trap, left there intentionally for him to find and bring back to the Hunters. A squirrel, controlled by the Queen, hides inside, and it sneaks out and lets the Queen talk to Lucy's father (who, of course, is/was her husband). The next morning, Dad is gone. All that remains is the squirrel, who delivers a note from the Queen inviting the Hunters to "finish this" that night. When the time comes, the Hunters arrive to find the Queen waiting for them...along with her husband, who she's turned into a vampire. Without hesitating, Dean kills him. The Hunters gang up on the Queen, who fights hard, but ultimately falls. Hey, no more Queen -- that should mean it's all over, right?
• Just as a side note, Dean has now killed the fathers of both his wife and his adopted daughter. No mercy, huh?
• After the whole biochemical weapon thing, the mages apparently feel that the vampires are a liability, and kick them out of astral space. So there.
• Several months later, Joey shows up at Dan's door. He says that the lady werewolf was killed by other wolves in league with the vampires. He also found the prophecy that the Big Red Number is linked to (the number having dwindled to zero), and it basically boils down to the world ending. Evets has a vision (or perhaps a dream) which focuses on Mozart and the phrase der schwarze vorhang steigt. Simon translates it from German to "The black curtain rises."
• Laura finds something that helps Joey control his shapeshifting: bananas. As long as he needs bananas regularly, he's fine.
  
• Mozart talks to Willem telepathically and offers to save his life in exchange for one thing: Laura. He doesn't accept the offer, though he doesn't really reject it, either.
  
• The aforementioned Giant Lizard Monster -- the size of a Brachiosaurus -- emerges from the sea and starts stomping through downtown. The Hunters track it down and destroy it when it gets a giant foot caught on a subway track. It bites one of Dean's arms off, but he manifests another Edge that lets him grow it back.
• Joey explains that to complete the prophecy, Mozart needs a few more things: a ton of captured souls, and a stone artifact -- the object she was trying to get from the Queen? But where would it be? They remember after the subway bombing, how Mozart's goons were trying to drill into the ground beneath the track. Could it be there? And -- wait, the GLM walked into the subway track...the trains have stopped...!
• Sure enough, more of her goons -- including a few werewolves -- are already there, and they retrieve the artifact. To try to track them, they find a den of wolves. No one there can help, and when the Hunters find that the werewolves have several children locked up in cages (for various vile reasons), well, the violence starts and doesn't stop until there are no more moving targets.
• Remember all those zombies? It turns out their undead nature is spread by nanomachines (probably created by Privera). Could the zombies be Mozart's way to capture those souls she needs? Maybe. The Hunters stop the zombies -- with the help of another Hunter, Bookworm55 -- but, again: too late. Mozart captures all television signals so that the world can watch her climb to the top of the tallest building in Bazemore -- in the daytime -- and cast her spell. Whoosh -- her inky black power flows from the artifact and fills the sky, choking out the light and covering the world in night. The skyscraper becomes a solid block of darkness, practically pulsating with evil.
  
• To protect them, Dean has Sunday send his parents and Laura into astral space; Dan sends Joey along, too, with a bunch of bananas. Sunday wisely has Lucy stay behind -- she's nearly nine months pregnant at this point, and could go at any moment. Dean, Dan, Willem, Caitlin and Simon load up into their vehicles and head for the Very Definitely Final Dungeon for the final confrontation.
• They battle their way through the tower, fighting off the various creatures with little difficulty. In the end, they dispatch Mozart's two werewolf henchmen and head for the staircase to the roof. As they prepare to ascend, Sunday calls Dean's cell phone: Lucy's gone into labor. 'Cause he needed to have that on his mind.

And that's everything. Sweet lord, that story is dense.

----------------
Now playing: Harvey Danger - You Miss the Point Completely I Get the Point Exactly
via FoxyTunes

I have funny friends

I don't know if I'm going get around to Hunter recaps again -- I'm writing several other things at the moment -- some dealing with you-know-what -- and all of them take precedence. (I can write these blog posts because they take ten minutes at the absolute maximum; a Hunter recap tends to take a great deal longer, and I'd rather spend time on other things.) I might briefly wrap up the remainder of the season if I get a chance, but no promises.

But I couldn't let this pass by without comment. In last night's game, the Hunters found themselves cornered and outnumbered by werewolves. The wolves did not mince words: they were there to kill the Hunters, for no adequately explained reason. (They found out why later, of course.)

The leader of this pack of wolves tried to make it clear that the Hunters didn't have to fight -- they were outnumbered by a superior foe, and there was no need for bloodshed and agony. Unfortunately for her, Willem -- the Dr. Smith of our little group -- undercut the seriousness of her little speech. To quote the episode:

"Now. We can make this painless--"
"YES!" *relieved fist-pump*

That right there became my new favorite quote for our Hunter game. It eclipses the old one, which was from back in season two -- the Hunters were investigating a ghost, and tracked down a woman who used to be a friend of hers...

"We were college roommates."
"Ah. Were you ever...you know...college roommates?"

I enjoy our Hunter game.

This Ain't No Party, This Ain't No Disco: The Demon Days Soundtrack, Vol. 3 (Music From and That Inspired the Game)

(The recap of our most recent Demon Days episode, "Not Dark Yet," will be posted next week. Steve's on his honeymoon, so there's no new episode this week.)

Yes, it's time for another Hunter soundtrack. I know, you're just excited as can be, huh?

Something a little different this time around -- this is closer to an actual soundtrack album, like you'd see for a real movie or television series. These tracks were all either used in the game or inspired certain parts of it; hence the title. Why the change in format? Because frankly, there are only so many songs to represent those characters.

Of the sixteen songs here, seven were actually used as soundtrack music in the game, and two more of them would have but weren't for various reasons I'll explain. The other tracks are songs that either I listen to when I'm running short on inspiration or songs that inspired specific elements of our game.

Here are your songs:

1. "It's the End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)," R.E.M.
The other night I dreamt of knives
The quintessential apocalypse song. Used in "The End" (Season 1, Episode 1), when Lucy's iPod decided to become ironic and pump this song through the speakers at the Drowning Swan after the Hunters' imbuing.

2. "Life During Wartime (live)," Talking Heads
This ain't no party, this ain't no disco, this ain't no fooling around
Would have been the third Whole Group theme on the last soundtrack if I'd had room. I almost always come up with an idea for the game when I hear this song, a tale of a few survivors in an urban wasteland. This song inspired several not-used-yet plot ideas for season four, as well as the three-part "The Black Hand" arc that opened season three.

3. "Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness," Smashing Pumpkins
A beautiful instrumental that I listen to whenever I'm stuck for a plot. Unfortunately, bad things usually happen to the characters when I'm inspired by this song -- if you'd like to blame My Most Evil Deed on a song, this is the one.

4. "The Luckiest," Ben Folds
I know we belong
Mikey's stunningly appropriate song choice for Dean and Lucy's first dance at their wedding, during "Nothing Bad Happened Today" (Season 3, Episode 6).

5. "The Boy in the Bubble," Paul Simon
There was a bright light, a shattering of windows, the bomb in the baby carriage was wired to the radio
Another song that inspires me in the vein of "Life During Wartime."

6. "Blame It on the Boogie," The Jacksons
The devil's gotten to me through this dance
Not only was this song used in a episode ("1": Season 2, Episode 11), it was the entire plot of an episode. A disco-dancing ghost would only appear when this song played, resulting in the characters (and players, for that matter) hearing it far more times than is considered healthy.

7. "Crazy," Seal
Miracles will happen as we speak, but we're never gonna survive unless we get a little crazy
This song always gives me visions of the Hunters working as a team in harmony to wipe out some menace. It doesn't last very long in practice, largely because of the working-as-a-team-in-harmony thing, but it's a nice vision.

8. "It's Not," Aimee Mann
And from behind the screen it could look so perfect, but it's not
This song was supposed to have been used as the mood music for the conclusion of "The Black Hand, Part 3" (Season 3, Episode 3), but my power was out and I couldn't provide the soundtrack. But it would have been very moody, trust me.

9. "I Don't Care Anymore," Phil Collins
Well, you can tell everyone I'm a down disgrace, drag my name all over the place, I don't care anymore
This was used during the press conference in "Not Guilty" (Season 2, Episode 10), when Edgar was exonerated, the police apologized, and then Edgar knocked his brother out cold.

10. "Not Dark Yet," Bob Dylan
But it's getting there
Edgar's favorite song, which he requested (long before the fact) Lucy sing at his funeral. Which she did ("Not Dark Yet": Season 3, Episode 8).

11. "I Want It All," Queen
And I want it now
Would have been used as mood music to the Vampire Slaughtering Montage in "Under Cover of Afternoon" (Season 2, Episode 3), but my computer wasn't available. You might also consider it another one of Willem's themes.

12. "Building a Mystery," Sarah McLachlan
You're a beautiful, a beautiful fucked-up man; you're setting up your razor-wire shrine
At Simon's insistence, Lucy did some karaoke at the end of "The Chamber of 32 Doors" (Season 3, Episode 5). This is the song she picked, and it can certainly be interpreted as another of Dean's themes, at least as far as Lucy is concerned.

13. "Revenga," System of a Down
My sweet revenge
I'm planning to use this in an upcoming episode.

14. "How I Could Just Kill a Man," Rage Against the Machine
Didn't have to blast him, but I did anyway
Hearing this song inspired me to create a quick-tempered, cocky, violence-prone character who smoked like a chimney. But I didn't want him to excel at violence -- he'd really be no better at fighting than an average guy, but he'd think he was a fearsome badass. Of course, this character later became Simon.

15. "The Only Living Boy in New York," Simon & Garfunkel
Hey, I've got nothing to do today but smile
"Some of the gloomiest music ever recorded." That's how Lucy described Simon & Garfunkel to Dean, and it's true. This particular gloomy track was used in "Green" (Season 1, Episode 7), over our first end-of-episode montage. A weapons deal gone south, a few characters shot, Lucy blaming herself, and Edgar having a very uncomfortable argument with this soon-to-be-ex-wife.

16. "The Threat," Skid Row
I wasn't put here to be treated like some disease you hoped would go away if left alone
An all-purpose inspirational song that might find its way into an episode. The lyrics don't necessarily fit, but the theme and sound certainly could make it another Whole Group theme.

17. "Kiss That Frog (live)," Peter Gabriel
Princess, you might like it if you lower your defense
The song that inspired everything, more or less. See, back when I was still developing the story arc for this chronicle, I heard this song and thought it would be cool to do an episode about a Hunter turned into a frog ("Your Fairy Fucking Godmother": Season 1, Episode 6). To do that, I needed a good-but-unlikable character to turn, and thus Edgar was created. I needed a witch to turn him, and thus Sunday was created. And I needed a princess to turn him back, and thus Lucy was created. And with Lucy came Lucy's mother, the other composers, and most of the game's storyline. So, if you like our Hunter game, thank Peter Gabriel. Bizarrely enough.

Demon Days: Season 3, Episode 7 -- "We Now Return to Our Regularly Scheduled Program"

[For earlier recaps, see the Hunter episode guide.]

Previously, on Demon Days...

• The Hunters had a few run-ins with a Bazemore police detective named David Weathers. At first, he went after them for their suspicious behavior; when he later lost his job and started to see the truth of the evil deeds going on in the shadows, he helped them exonerate Edgar. He was in bad shape emotionally then, and he hasn't been seen since.
• For all the strange things they've encountered, few have been as unsettling as the mysterious Man in White. They met him on the day of the subway bombing -- he was a normal guy before the explosion, but afterwards he became an unidentifiable supernatural creature, one capable of creating fire from thin air and, most disturbingly, able to sense the Hunters. He confronted Dan on the subway platform and, after watching television footage of strife around the world, told him, "You destroyed everything." Discern reveals only a feeling of heat and the scent of smoke.
• Dan got rattled when an FBI agent showed up at his door, especially when she turned out to be Hannah's sister. He got away without anything too ugly happening, but he's still nervous.

"We Now Return to Our Regularly Scheduled Programming"

It's a week since the wedding, and things have been quiet. The newlyweds, Dean and Lucy, are comfortable and happy in their home, far away from the den of thieves that Edgar's apartment has turned into. With four guys sharing it, it's become quite the dark and sweaty shoebox, especially since Dan has gone a little crazy -- he gave his entire marijuana stash away to pay a debt ("Nothing Bad Happened Today": Season 3, Episode 6), and rather than replace it decided to quit. The lack of cannabis in his system, combined with the FBI incident, has made Dan a little unhinged and extraordinarily paranoid. (Yes, not smoking pot is making him paranoid. He's having a bad week.)

While watching TV, the news breaks into regular television to bring the viewers breaking news: at the great big mall in downtown Westwood, an unidentified gunman has taken hostages. Simon calls Dean and Lucy, just to make sure they're aware of it. Dean is thoroughly apathetic...until a "special bulletin" is announced. The anchor reveals that someone inside the mall has just sent them a cell phone video of the gunman. They don't give his name on the air, but the Hunter recognize him just the same -- it's Detective Weathers (last seen in "Not Guilty": Season 2, Episode 10), looking considerably worse for wear. He's holding almost a dozen people hostage,
but has dragged one to the center of the mall floor. Pressing a gun to the man's face, Weathers is seen screaming, "I know who you work for, and I'm going to wait until it (?) gets here!" Hunter powers reveal that hostage to be a ghoul.

And then the news reveals the name of the video taker, and shows his picture...and it's the Man in White.

The Hunters gather at Edgar's apartment to discuss things. Simon and Willem want to go to the mall and find out what's going on; Dean and Dan (in agreement for probably the first time since ever) want to stay far, far away. Lucy is torn. Edgar seems to settle things by calling those who don't want to go "a bunch of pansies." This from the blind guy, who is raring to go in. There is, of course, one problem: there's no way to get inside. The cops have the building closed off, and there are news cameras everywhere. There is one way they could get in, though...

SIMON: Do you have a way of contacting Sunday?
DEAN: Not quickly, no.
EDGAR: Doesn't she have a way of just showing up whenever she's needed?
DEAN: Yeah.
*knock on door* [1]

Sunday explains that she could get them inside, yes, but it would take some effort. Dean is concerned, because he doesn't want their images on TV. Sunday places another call to Evets, who is more than happy to help: he casts a spell that disables all phones and cameras in the mall ("Someone at Radio Shack is going to be pissed tomorrow," Simon says). He does this, even though last time he cast a spell the Mage Police were on top of him in minutes -- they're not going after Sunday thanks to all of the Mage-Vampire-Werewolf drama; maybe they'll leave him alone, too?

Sunday opens a portal to the mall in one of Edgar's closets, and gives them a phone number to call when they're finished, so she can reopen the portal and get them back. Weapons in hand, they go through the door.

Coming from the level above, the Hunters spy Weathers and his hostages. Weathers looks like he's bad shape -- bearded and wild-eyed, he's clearly come a little unhinged. When Dean calls out to him, Weathers spins and trains his gun, but relaxes when he sees the Hunters. "Oh, it's you. Good." They try to talk him down, but he's having none of it: "I'm waiting." He reveals why he's taken this ghoul hostage -- he's been tracking him for several weeks as he receives his orders in a supposedly abandoned warehouse in Staunton. The ghoul is apparently a courier for his vampire masters, running messages and packages back and forth.

Weathers shows the Hunters what the ghoul picked up this time: a black briefcase, locked with a combination lock and -- to the Hunters' surprise -- a magical seal. Weathers decided now was the time to act, and took the ghoul hostage right then and there.

LUCY: So...your plan is to wait for the vampires to show up and take it from you?
WEATHERS: That's right.
DAN: ...In the daytime.
WEATHERS: ...

Clearly, he hasn't thought this through. But he refuses to leave.

In an attempt to (I suppose) calm Weathers down, Willem offers to go the smoothie store (which, like all the others, was abandoned by its customers and employees once Weathers started waving his gun around) and make smoothies for everyone. He makes his way to the store, which isn't far away, and immediately gets to the business of taking the money from the register. (Hey, his bar got burned down -- the man's gotta eat.)

While he's counting the money, he gets the unshakable feeling he's being watched. He looks up and sees the Man in White staring at him, a half-smile on his face.

"You're one of them."

The Man in White is certain he's seen Willem before; when Willem confirms they met on the train, the Man in White nods. "Ah, yes. He never forgets a face (?)." The Man in White wants to know how many of "them" there are, but it's not clear what he means, and Willem has no intention of answering him anyway. They have a brief, bewildering conversation, in which the MiW refers to himself alternately as "I" and "we"; when Willem questions this, he's ignored.

When the Hunters call back to Willem, the MiW tells Willem that he's going to kill all of them -- "And you're going to help." A blinding flash of light emanates from the Man in White, and when it fades, Willem finds himself face-to-face with the most terrifying creature yet.

The Man in White is now over eight feet tall, with obsidian-black skin like stone, glowing yellow eyes, and massive black claws on his -- its hands. It is bathed in fire, and giant bat-wings sprout from its back. Willem tries to duck behind the Smoothie counter, but the Thing rips it away and throws it across the room. When it speaks, its voice rattles the walls: "Kneel before me!" Panicked, Willem does so, and the Thing roars some more about placing his "seal" on him. The Thing makes to place its hand on Willem's forehead, but he ducks away and races from the store. The Thing spreads its wings and flies after him.

The Thing finds himself against the six Hunters, Weathers, the ghoul, and several hostages. The Thing informs the Hunters that they're about to die -- it also says that "They can't help you." "Who?" is the question fired back, but it isn't answered.

Dan tries to save the hostages -- he tells them simply to run the fuck away. They do so, but the Thing demonstrates another power: telekinesis. The hostages suddenly fly apart like so many bowling pins, spreading across the floor of the empty mall. One of them, though, sails directly into Edgar, sticking a Shawn Michaels-like flying forearm into his face. Edgar goes down hard, cursing at the innocent guy who hit him like a spear. But when he recovers from the shock, Edgar discovers something else -- he can see again!

What follows is the most futile encounter the Hunters have had yet. Dean tries his mind-weakening power, Insinuate, against the Thing, but it does nothing. They fire guns, but they have little to no effect. It materializes fireballs that only miss because of the handy Bluster Edge. They throw bombs, but the Thing uses telekinesis to defuse them or throw them back. They finally get one to go off in its vicinity, but it only does moderate damage.

And it pisses it off.

The Thing roars and starts telekinetically ripping the large marble floor tiles up and hurling them like fatal frisbees across the room. Everyone runs and hits the deck, or tries to get out of the area altogether. Dean hatches a plan and starts crawling under the tiles, trying to get close enough to the Thing to use Cleave, but out of the corner of his eye sees Lucy running for the door. She's going to make it just fine, but slips and stumbles. If she had stayed upright she'd have made it; if she had just fallen to the ground, she would have been fine. Instead, she touches the floor and springs up again, heading full speed for the exit. She's right in the path of one of the deadly tiles, and doesn't see it coming. Dean does, and is helpless to stop it.

Edgar, though, just got his sight back, and he sees it, too. He leaps from safety to shove Lucy out of the way...

...but takes the tile meant for her, in the chest. Blood sprays everywhere, and he's thrown to the floor as if shot by a cannon.

No time to worry about him -- Dean makes it to the Thing and uses Cleave, wincing through the pain from the flames that surround the enemy. This attack actually works -- the Thing roars in agony, and once again flares with a white light. When it goes away, the Man in White is back, badly wounded and looking terrified. Dean kills him immediately with a Cleave to the face, only realizing too late that he no longer registered as "supernatural." Oh well -- the crisis is over. Dean makes sure it's over by killing the ghoul, too (once again, Cleave to the face). Victory?

Lucy is sobbing over Edgar, who isn't moving. Or breathing. Dean pulls out the tile, to use his healing power, but the wound isn't bleeding, either. He's--

"You can't be dead," Lucy sobs.

Willem calls the number Sunday gave them, and she opens the portal again. Grabbing Edgar and Weathers (who initially refuses to go, but is coerced), they head back. When they arrive, they show Sunday what happened to Edgar, and ask if anything can be done. Tearfully, she says no. He's gone.

The Hunters have a pair of discussions: one about the Thing, the other about Edgar. Sunday has not idea what the Thing is, but based on appearances, the Hunters can draw an educated conclusion. Wings. Fire. Appeared to have possessed someone. Wanted to be idolized and moved to place a "seal" on someone. Sounds awfully...demonic.

Regarding Edgar, they're torn. They obviously can't go Weekend at Bernie's with him: he's good and dead, and people are going to notice, namely his sister, Michelle. What to tell her? The truth? How much of it?

Dan finds Michelle's phone number in Edgar's phone book. He also finds a note there, left by Edgar (theoretically before he lost his sight): If I'm dead, tell her everything.

On the television, the news anchor is announcing that the police finally gave up trying to negotiate and sent the SWAT team into the mall. They found the "two gunmen" dead, the floor horrifically damaged, and the hostages mostly unharmed, but badly shaken and with no memory of the events inside.[2]

The anchor wraps up the coverage, saying that the nightmare is over. "We now return to our regularly scheduled program, already in progress."

Dean abruptly turns the television off.

Footnotes: [1] This has been well-established, and is a result of her powerful Fate magic; such magic has also been well-established in previous encounters. [2] This isn't just convenient storytelling -- it's World of Darkness canon. Supernatural powers cause regular humans to freak out and later forget. And the Thing's powers were very, very supernatural indeed.

Storyteller's Notes: Demons 1, Hunters 0.

You understand now why I wanted a lighter episode last week. Response to this one was swift -- not fifteen minutes after its conclusion, I was dismissed by FRINAN as "mean" for killing Edgar off. This sentiment was seconded by the rest of the group, though Steve only thought it was mean to kill him mere seconds after he regained his sight. To them, I say: well, yeah. Of course it was mean.

The subtitle of this season is "Things Are Gonna Get Worse Before It Gets Better/Everybody Hurts," and it's an appropriate one, I feel. 'Cause things haven't finished getting worse yet.

Next week, the inexorable march to the season finale continues, with episode 3.08, "Not Dark Yet."

Demon Days: Season 3, Episode 6 -- "Nothing Bad Happened Today"

Previously, on Demon Days...

• Dean fell head over heels (or maybe flat on his face) in love with Lucy about seventeen seconds after meeting her for the first time. It took her a little longer to fall in line, but she did. Eventually, he proposed, and she said yes.
• Dan's girlfriend, Hannah, was abducted, turned into a vampire, and then destroyed in an act of mercy by Dan.
• Lucy got stabbed in the back and killed (for a few seconds, anyway) by a crazy Hunter named Hopper. He could do this because of the magic of a mysterious Woman in Red, who has some pretty serious problems with our Hunters.

"Nothing Bad Happened Today"

I don't get many things right the first time
In fact, I am told that a lot
Now I know all the wrong turns, the stumbles and falls brought me here
And where was I before the day
That I first saw your lovely face?
Now I see it every day
And I know that I am the luckiest
--Ben Folds

The last three weeks have been largely uneventful (Willem went back to North Texas to get more explosives -- explosives that actually work as advertised this time; Lucy began obsessively working out), but today is Lucy and Dean's big day, as they're getting married at the ice skating rink. Simon is taking a large part of the responsibility for the event himself -- he's going to pick up their wedding rings early in the morning, and he's arranged for someone to perform the ceremony ("I know a guy," he says). Lucy is nervous and paranoid that something will go wrong to ruin her day, and she's been pleading for a single day unmarred by supernatural horror. Before she leaves to spend the day with her father and Dean's parents, she looks into Dean's eyes and begs him: "It's very important nothing bad happens today." She stops him before he can tell her how futile that wish is.

Dan is awakened before dawn by a call from Bruce, his police contact. Bruce wants his payment for the information he provided during the search for Hannah ("Schadenfreude": Season 2, Episode 12); Dan had promised him his entire marijuana stash, and Bruce wants him to pay up this morning. Dan agrees and heads back to his house to collect it. But while he's gathering the pot together, he's interrupted by a knock on door: an FBI agent named Caitlin Graves is looking for Hannah. It's not part of an official investigation; Caitlin is Hannah's sister, and hasn't spoken to her in years. Now she's like to speak to her again, and managed to track her this address. Of course, Hannah's dead now, but Dan can't explain that to her. So he tells her that Hannah was abducted (true), and that the police haven't found anything (which is true only because they haven't been told to look). She expresses surprise -- kidnapping is a Bureau matter, after all, and she would have known had Hannah been kidnapped. Stuck, Dan expresses ignorance as to why it didn't get back to the FBI. Caitlin says she'll investigate and leaves.

In a panic, Dan returns to Edgar's apartment, where Simon (who has just returned from successfully acquiring the wedding rings), Edgar and Willem are discussing breakfast. Dan asks if he screwed up, and Simon thinks he kinda did -- the agent isn't going to find any police investigation because there wasn't one, and she'll come back to Dan for answers.

SIMON: Why didn't you just tell her she left you?
DAN: ...That would have been smarter.

They come up with a solution, should the agent bother them again: they'll claim Hannah left Dan without warning or explanation, and Dan, in the resulting emotional breakdown, has concocted a delusion in which she was kidnapped. There is little doubt as to whether Dan can effectively portray a mentally damaged man.

Speaking of mentally damaged men, the fun stops when Dean arrives. Dean is worried Simon hasn't retrieved the rings, which is part of the larger worry that something will happen to screw up this day and upset Lucy. He's also resentful as hell that the other Hunters are going to the wedding in the first place -- he can't stand them, remember, and only invited them at Lucy's insistence. (Well, except for Simon, of course; Simon's cool, not to mention Lucy's brother. And Edgar's much better since he quit drinking. And, really, as long as he's not stoned, Dan isn't too bad. So it's really just Willem he can't stand. But I digress.) He's worried that Mikey, Lucy's old friend who runs the skating rink, will pick a wildly inappropriate song for their first dance: when they had their first date, his choice for a romantic skating song was Pantera's "Cowboys From Hell." He's worried that Simon's "guy" to perform the ceremony won't pan out. He's worried that any one of the dozens of supernaturals that want to see the Hunters dead might attack his parents while they're in town. He's about to marry the daughter of the Queen of the Vampires. The guy is stressed, is what I'm saying.

Dean testily asks if Simon picked up the rings, and Simon happily answers in the affirmative, and points to the dining room table where he left them...

...and, of course, they aren't there.

Simon insists he had them, and insists he left them on the table. Odd chirping sounds are heard outside the (open) window near the table, and Dean looks out to see a small, green figure, vaguely humanoid, standing perpendicular to the wall. It's about a foot tall, looks like a Fry Guy, and it's clutching the ring box. When it notices Dean, it shrieks in bizarre gibberish and flees, running across the wall. When Dean shoots it (obviously), it leaps off the building and lands on a passing bus.

Dean races out of the building, the Hunters following. They chase the bus down the street, weaving through traffic to catch up. When they do, Dean leaps from the car to the bus's roof [1] and finds the Fry Guy still holding the box. He starts to close in, but the thing belches an enormous fireball at him and leaps onto a light pole, and the bus zooms away. Dean jumps down into a passing truck, gets back to the car, and they give chase again.

Dean uses one of his Edges, Muse of Flame, to track the thing to a nearby parking garage. They follow the trail to a small maintenance office on the second floor. Inside, they find the thing...and a young woman Discern reveals to be a werewolf. The thing -- apparently called a "Chenga" [2] -- is her pet, and she can understand its mutterings. She says it didn't have the box when it came inside, though she admits that Chenga are "mischievous" and are often prone to stealing things -- it's their way of "playing."

This Chenga denies taking the rings at first, then confesses. It says that it left them "by the rainbow," and refuses to elaborate. The wolf tells them that this is part of the Chenga's game -- leaving them clues to figure out, a puzzle to solve. Dean ain't having it, though, and uses Insinuate to make the poor little bastard cry. It points out a nearby puddle, and the light reflecting off it, casting a rainbow on the ceiling. The Chenga says it left the box in there, and even wrapped it in plastic to keep it from getting wet. Dean goes to the puddle, and, of course, the rings aren't there.

Across the alley, on the same floor of the parking garage over there, another Chenga is laughing. This one's red, and it's holding a small bundle wrapped in plastic. When Dean sees it, it starts shaking the package at him and dancing, and even does a backflip with glee. The Hunters find all of this absolutely hilarious...except Dean, of course. The wolf warns Dean that the red ones are dangerous -- "Green Chenga are just mischievous, but the Red Chenga are mean." The absurdity of the situation threatening to drive him mad, Dean runs to the other garage.

Simon uses his Edges to freeze the red Chenga in position, and Dean rips the plastic bundle from the thing's clutches. He opens it, but finds only a copy of Tom Clancy's Red Storm Rising inside. Upon demand, the red Chenga says that he threw it away...into a dumpster that's now being emptied into a garbage truck.

The Hunters -- well, Dean, mostly; the others are struggling to catch up while laughing -- chase down the garbage truck and run the drivers out, thankfully before the dumpster is dumped. Dean uses Cleave to carve the dumpster open, and the Hunters jump inside, looking for the box. Edgar is left outside as a (ahem) lookout.

Soon enough, the box is found, and the rings are inside and undamaged. They exit the dumpster to leave, only to find the Woman in Red ("The Black Hand, Part 1": Season 3, Episode 1) standing outside, looking at Edgar with curiosity. She expresses simple confusion as to why a blind man would be standing alone next to a garbage truck. She's probably curious about other things, too, but Dean doesn't give a damn -- he wants vengeance (being an Avenger and all), and proceeds to Cleave the woman's face off. The Hunters make their escape.

Back at Edgar's apartment, Dean wastes no time in leaving again, heading to the skating rink well ahead of schedule just to get away from the others. He's not gone long before Evets arrives, eager to talk to the Hunters. They tell him of the Woman in Red's demise, but Evets isn't so delighted -- the Woman in Red is apparently the leader of the city's mages. The Hunters are ecstatic, but Evets warns them of the coming power vacuum that will result from her death. This will destabilize the mages, making them desperate and unpredictable. This could be very, very bad.

But finally, the time arrives, and the whole gang heads to the skating rink for the wedding. Simon reveals that the "guy" he got to do the ceremony is...himself. Several years ago, while playing on a losing baseball team in an independent league in California, he became an ordained minister online (which is fairly easy to do) when the team fell into a massive losing skid. One of their players was an ordained minister; after he left to play for a minor league club, the team lost fourteen games in a row, so the other players pressured Simon into becoming "a man of the cloth," as he puts it. The team won nine straight after his stunt, so it worked out well for everyone.

And the wedding itself is a wonderful affair. Simon is able to resist the urge to do an Impressive Clergyman bit during the ceremony (aside from one line: "Have you the wing?"). Edgar gives his wish that Lucy and Dean stay together forever, than Dean not forget how much he loves Lucy, cheat on her, get framed for murdering his mistress, develop a massive drinking problem and eventually go blind. Mikey's song for their first dance ends up being extraordinarily appropriate: "The Luckiest" by Ben Folds, a great song, but one so syrupy and sentimental it seems written expressly for use at weddings. And during that dance, Lucy has only one thing to say to Dean...

LUCY: See? Nothing bad happened today.
DEAN: ...Yeah. Right.

Footnotes: [1] Yes, thanks to White Wolf's system for jumping, he was able to leap from the car to the roof of the bus. We did the math, and with good luck, maximum effort, and a running start, Dean could jump from the ground to the fourth floor of a building. Yay for goofy jumping systems! [2] Not to be confused with Jenga, the puzzle game, or "Chinga," the mediocre X-Files episode co-written by Stephen King.

Storyteller's Notes: Well, I wanted something less serious, and I got it. It may have been a step too far, but what's done is done. And yes, the Chenga was indeed inspired by the Fry Guys. And Gremlins.

Next week, the aptly titled "We Now Return to Our Regularly Scheduled Programming."

Demon Days: Season 3, Episode 5 -- "The Chamber of 32 Doors"

Note: In my recap of the previous episode, "House of Leaves," I made a rather egregious error -- I stated (repeatedly) that Willem and Edgar explored the house as a pair, when clearly it was Willem and Dan who did so. This has been corrected, and I give my apologies. (And thanks to Rene, who managed to spot the error I couldn't, even though he's recovering from minor surgery and is floating on Vicodin.)

Previously, on Demon Days...

• The Hunters found an emblem representing the names of Bazemore's vampire leaders. Later investigation turned up full sets of initials, which corresponded to the initials of four classical composers: Beethoven, Mozart, Bach, and Haydn. Further information lead them to believe Beethoven (LVB) the most important.
  
• Sunday was arrested by her fellow mages for aiding and abetting Evets, her fugitive friend. She was imprisoned in "mage jail" and left there to rot. The Hunters went in to rescue her, but quickly found themselves lost in the space-bending labyrinthine hallways. Lucy and Dean found her, but she was unconscious and unresponsive.
  
• Willem and Dan found a vampire named Victoria (or so she says...) locked in one of the cells. When she told them they need "dead flesh" to open the door to get out, they release her and drag her along. She quickly said too much for her own good, and Dean paralyzed her with a quick staking...but not before she could tell reveal a startling revelation to Lucy: "I'm your mother."

"The Chamber of 32 Doors"

Lucy is, understandably, rattled. When she says that this can't be, that her mother is dead, it's pointed out that so is the vampire before her. She doesn't have long to process the information, though, because Sunday starts coughing -- she's awake. She overjoyed to see the Hunters, though obviously unhappy to hear that Simon is missing and Edgar is blind. And then there are the problems with being stuck in a mage jail.

SUNDAY: I feel...naked. Powerless.
DAN: You don't have your raincoat.
SUNDAY: Yeah.
DEAN: Or your magic.
SUNDAY: Oh. Yeah. That, too.

Sunday does give them some good news, though: she's helped design a few of these mage prisons, so she has a good idea of how to get around. The bad news, of course, is that didn't help design this mage prison, so it's not going to be that easy. She does confirm that they'll need Victoria to open the door, though how much of her dead flesh they'll have to use she doesn't know.

Dean and Lucy reluctantly decide to remove the stake from the vampire's chest. Dean pins Victoria down and patiently informs her of the consequences of betrayal. She swears -- not for the first time -- that she would never betray the Hunters. Never.

Sunday remembers an, um, interesting way to navigate the prison. She has Dan put his face against the wall, and if he detects an odd feeling in the fillings in his teeth, then they're onto something. When he does so and detects an odd vibration, she happily leads the group in the right direction.

She tells them that in order to get back to the front door, they first have to find the chamber of 32 doors -- a final test they'll have to pass before reaching the end. One of the doors in that chamber will lead to the entrance; the other 31 lead back into the chamber itself.

Along the way, Lucy tells Victoria she can't be her mother. Victoria responds by reeling off Lucy's birth date, birthplace, birth weight, and even that she had a red birthmark on her left shoulder. "I don't know if it's still there," she says, though both Lucy and Dean know that it is. Lucy's rather tepid response is, "You could've gotten that information anywhere."

"Even the birthmark thing?"

The next puzzle room they find isn't the chamber of 32 doors, but it's a new room, and that's a good sign, Sunday tells them. Luckily, the puzzle isn't that hard -- it's a take on the old counterfeit coin puzzle, which they solve fairly quickly. They move on, with Lucy still glowering at Victoria when she gets the chance.

As Sunday pauses to determine the next route they should take, Dean talks with Victoria. He asks why she never returned to her family after her Embrace. She tells him he didn't have a choice, which he thinks is nonsense. "You wouldn't understand," she says, and Dean confirms that he doesn't. Lucy grills her for information regarding the night of her death, and Victoria has all the right answers. Lucy grows more uncomfortable.

Luckily, Dan gets a strange feeling in his fillings -- "You taste tomato soup. Good tomato soup, with cheese" -- and Sunday leads them on to the next puzzle. A door with no handle; the handle hangs above the room on a string. The floor is covered with sand, and six faucets line the walls. Lucy digs a bit into the sand and finds a drain buried near the door. Dean's idea is to shoot the handle down -- "You're going to shoot a string?" "...No!" -- but Dan has a revelation while building a moat for his sand castle (yes, he built a sand castle). Digging trenches into the sand, they lead water from each of the faucets to the drain, and the handle drops to within reach. (Ah, diverting water to open a door -- it's like Myst all over again.)

The next room is filled with fire. Dean pulls a fire extinguisher out of his bag and puts out the flames long enough for them to get to the other side. In the next room, they find no puzzle, but they do find a crazed mage out of his cell. He's got a gun, and he's decided to use it to shoot imaginary people sitting the corner. Dean takes no chances and simply shoots him.

The key to the next room's exit is guarded by a fierce lion, but Second Sight reveals the lion to be fake, so the key is easily retrieved. Sunday feels they're getting close to the exit.

The Hunters continue to idly chat with Victoria. When someone mentions "Mozart," she is puzzled for a moment, then remembers -- "Oh, right, the composers." Since she's from out of town, she doesn't exactly understand how it works, but says those aren't their real names. They simply noticed the coincidence and, at "Beethoven"'s insistence, starting referring to themselves by those names. She can't tell the Hunters who the composers are or where they are -- "I work for the Queen," she tells them. The Queen, apparently, is the most powerful of the city's vampires. She says that the Queen might be one of the composers, but she's not sure. "You don't ask the Queen for her name."

The possibility of Victoria betraying them comes again, and she denounces it again.

VICTORIA: If you knew anything about me--
LUCY: That's just it, isn't it? I don't know anything about you, do I, Victoria?
VICTORIA: That's what I mean. That's not even my real name, it's--
LUCY: Shut up! Shut the fuck up!

Finally, they reach the chamber of 32 doors. As Sunday described, it's filled with doors -- but only ten of them are at ground level. The others are built into the wall high out of reach, with no apparent access. Hanging from the ceiling is a small bowl-shaped disc; directly underneath it on the floor is more Greek writing. The Hunters still can't read it, and neither can Sunday, so they turn to the cryptography expert -- Victoria tells them it reads "440."

This is useless nonsense to them -- 440 what? There are only 32 doors, after all. After watching them futz around for a few more minutes, Victoria lets out a pointed sigh and gives them an answer: "It's a frequency." She stands in the center of the room and sings: a solid, true note, unwavering and in perfect pitch. Certainly like the kind of singer Lucy's mother was reputed to be.

DEAN: It's getting harder and harder to believe she's not telling the truth.
LUCY: ...Yeah.

The bowl above them (a magical microphone?) picks up her note. The room starts to shift around them. The doors shift around the walls like turtles in the ocean, with one door finding its way to the floor...and then onto it, ending up at the very center of the room. When it's opened, they realize they're standing above the chandelier in the entrance chamber. Lucy is worried about leaving without finding her brother, but Sunday assures her that the seals preventing her from using magic are weakest at the entrance -- if they can open the door, she should be able to use her spells to determine if Simon's still in the house.

They climb onto the chandelier and find the switch that lowers it to the ground. Back at the front door, Victoria removes her own flesh -- she rips off her right thumb and drops it onto the scale. Sure enough, the door unlocks and pops open. But the second it does, both Sunday and Victoria call out, "Wait!" Thanks to their supernatural powers, they've both detected the presence of a horde of Kindred waiting for them outside. (Yes, it's now nighttime, though they don't think they've been in the house long enough to get to sunset.) What's more, Simon is outside, facing all 30 (!!) of them single-handedly, holding a pistol up and challenging them to a fight. Even more surprising, they look out the door to see their old nemesis, the Stinger, leading the vampires. Guess they didn't kill him, after all. Victoria (using her vampiric disciplines to read the minds of the attackers outside) tells them that the vampires put a tracking device on Dan's van (again!) and followed them here. "They don't even know I'm in here."

Victoria tells them they'll never make it out alive, that there's too many of them, but offers a solution: "Trade me." It's unlikely to work, but they dragged her all the way from Nevada to Bazemore for a reason, and it must be a pretty damned important one. The Hunters aren't interested, though, and come up with plans of their own. Sunday's magic is still a little weak thanks to her imprisonment (and because she's lost her raincoat, which she uses as a magical focusing tool -- this was implied in the episode itself, but never stated directly), so she can't help, but the Hunters have it covered. Willem gives Dean some of the explosives he bought from the North Texas Militia, and the Avenger activates Hide and sneaks out.

In the few minutes that follow, words are exchanged between the Stinger and the Hunters, as he asks to come out and fight. Dean sneaks into position and lobs grenades, hoping to mass damage, but unfortunately Willem got ripped off -- the explosions are fairly weak and inefficient. Dean still has Hide activated, though, and walks through the vampires undetected, hoping to get to the Stinger...but then one of his wasps lands on Dean's face and stings him, and the Stinger locates him more or less instantly.

Things are bad and getting worse, as now Dean is in the middle of a couple dozen vampires with machine guns. He manages to use Respire to weaken the Stinger and take him hostage, but it's still a no-win. When the Stinger starts to heal his damage, Dean uses Cleave to kill him once and for all, but now he's lost his hostage.

Out of options, Dan takes Victoria's advice. He grabs her, holds a gun to her head, and drags her outside. She calls to the Stinger's second-in-command, a muscular Kindred named Adam -- "You! Adam, right? Let them go, and they'll let me go. Please. Please."

Adam thinks for a moment, and then...agrees? The other Kindred lower their weapons, which Dean promptly collects. The Hunters demand a car, and Victoria demands one for them, one with no bombs or tracking devices -- "A clean car!" Adam provides a car for them, which Dan inspects and finds to be clean.

Victoria is released. Simon sees her, and later dialogue makes clear that he recognizes her as his mother. The Hunters and Sunday get into their car and start to make their getaway, but the car is halted by a pair of blood-juiced vampires the size of bridge support columns. "Kill them!" Adam cries. They start to exit the car to fight, but--

VICTORIA: Wait!
ADAM: For what?
VICTORIA: Let them go.
ADAM: Huh?
VICTORIA: Let them go.
ADAM: I...I don't think that's wise.

And a new facial expression comes across Victoria's face. One of rage. One of disdain.

VICTORIA: I don't think I asked for your opinion, did I? Did I?
ADAM: ...No.
VICTORIA: Let them go! Now!
ADAM: ...Yes, Queen.

And the hulk Kindred let them go.

DEAN: Dammit! Dammit! Dammit!

They had the Queen of the Vampires in their grasp, and...

They return to the hospital, where they find Evets and Edgar playing Pictionary. Evets is beyond relieved to see his friend alive again, and volunteers to take the entire group out for a celebration at a place he knows downtown. (He gives them all a ride in his massive Hummer. "I can't believe they keep finding you," Simon says.)

At the restaurant, they cap the long, long day by gorging themselves on every kind of food imaginable and listening to bad karaoke. Simon explains that when he stepped through the door everyone else did, he wound up on the roof at night. When he jumped down (injuring his ankle in the process), he saw the vampire army and pulled his gun. A few moments later, the Hunters exited the house behind him.

They ask Sunday about the Man in White they met during the subway incident, but she has no idea. Dan also tells her about Faith, the woman in white who was looking for her, but Sunday also has no clue -- "I don't know anyone named Faith." Lucy asks Dean when he wants to get married, and he says he's waiting for her. "I could go tomorrow." He also states conclusively that there will be no open bar, much to Dan and Willem's dismay. Lucy says she wants to do it very soon: she wants "just one day" where they don't have to worry about any of this supernatural nightmare. "I wouldn't count on it," Dean responds. (You can always count on him for some good-natured cheer, huh?)

Simon goads Lucy into singing some karaoke. As she performs her song (Sarah McLachlan's "Building a Mystery," which could be interpreted as a song for Lucy's soon-to-be husband, if you read the lyrics), something that Victoria said occurs to Sunday. "That's not even my real name..."

SUNDAY: Simon? What was your mom's name?
SIMON: Victoria.
SUNDAY: And that was her real name? Not a stage name or anything like that?
SIMON: Well, yeah, it was her real name. It wasn't her first name.
SUNDAY: What was her first name?
SIMON: Lucia. That's where they got Lucy's name.
SUNDAY: Lucia...Victoria...Belmont.

LVB.

Storyteller's notes: Yes, children, he planned the whole thing like that! You'll remember, way back in the sixth episode, Lucy could lift the curse Sunday placed on Edgar. Why? Because she's the daughter of the Queen! Man, I've been waiting for this reveal for a long, long time. In your unoriginal note of the week, "The Chamber of 32 Doors" is a song by Genesis. (Written and sung by the band's original lead singer, Peter Gabriel, whose "Kiss That Frog" directly inspired the frog episode and indirectly inspired the chronicle as a whole.)

Next week we submit to my sappy nature and give the Hunters a little break. Yes, it's time for the obligatory wedding episode, entitled "Just One Day."

Demon Days: Season 3, Episode 4 – “House of Leaves”

Previously, on Demon Days…

• Sunday was arrested by her fellow mages for helping Evets, her fugitive friend. She begged to be rescued.
  
• A bomb went off on a subway car. In the aftermath, Edgar was left blind (a psychosomatic blindness, probably caused by the shock), and the other Hunters recovered the hard drive from a vampire's computer. It's unknown who set off the bomb, or why.
  

"House of Leaves"

The next morning, the gang gathers at Edgar's apartment (though Edgar is still in the hospital). Simon and Lucy are in a gloomy mood: today is March 9, 2007 – it was on this day, twenty-seven years ago, that their mother was murdered. It hits Simon a little harder, for he's old enough to remember her; Lucy was only a month old at the time of her death.

The Hunters crack into the hard drive. In addition to an endless amount of music and music videos (including many copies of LL Cool J's "Mama Said Knock You Out," for some reason), they find a stash of e-mails, all of them correspondence between the computer's owner – named "Jorge Bastille" – and a woman known only as "Wilhelmina." This would be a terrific find, fantastic for discovering information, but all of the e-mails are written in spy-movie gibberish: "The second baseman stands in the sun," or "The roses are in the vase, but they get no sunlight." They search the computer for anything more useful, but nothing is found. They do, however, note the oddity of Jorge Bastille's name – could the initials "JB" mean he's Johann Sebastian Bach? And could Wilhelmina be Mozart? The WAM Willem spoke to was a woman. They leave the computer for later.

At the hospital, Edgar is in poor spirits, even before Willem starts taunting him. He's still blind, and his doctor – "a bad House impersonator" – has been taunting him, too. As it turns out, Little House (ha!) is actually our old friend Evets, in disguise as a doctor. He wants to help them rescue Sunday, but can't – she's being kept in "mage jail," as he puts it, and if he were to step inside, magical wards would teleport him to a cell of his own. He can, however, tell them where the jail is, and give a few other pieces of advice. For instance, he says the jail probably won't be closely guarded – the mages in the city are busy dealing with a massive bout of supernatural bad vibes. See, each of the major groups of creatures blame the subway bomb on someone else, and massive conflict is brewing because of it. (And if anyone wasn't already sure why the three-parter about the bomb was called "The Black Hand," that's why.)

Evets gives them the location of the jail, and tells them to be careful: he's not sure what they'll find inside, but it's not likely to be pleasant. He also that says that, even if they manage to find Sunday, she won't be able to help them get out – magical seals prevent prisoners from using magic, and they're impossible to break. Other spells keep the prisoners without need for food or water, meaning they can just be left to rot in their cells indefinitely without interruption.

With all that cheery information, the Hunters head off for their rescue mission. They ask Evets to watch over Edgar, and he agrees, though he points out he won't be able to use his magic should trouble arise: that's how they found him last time, and if he does it again, they'll find him just as quickly.

The Hunters head off to the address given to them by Evets (3122 Ash Tree Lane). They find a nondescript blue two-story house, but Evets warned them that the house will be "much bigger on the inside than it is on the outside." They step up to the front door and find it locked, but a note is taped to the door: Three Blind Mice is a good rap number. They knock three times, and the door unlocks.

Once inside, the door closes and locks behind them, leaving them trapped in an enormous circular chamber that stretches several stories high. The room is lit by a giant chandelier with a diameter the same as the chamber; if it falls, no one gets out of the way. The door they entered is closed and locked. A small shelf (which they realize quickly is a scale) next to the door bears Greek writing, which they can't read. The scale depresses with the weight of whatever they put on it, but nothing opens the door.

That leaves the only other exit from the room: a huge wooden door opposite the entrance. It also bears Greek writing, but it's unlocked; opening it reveals a stone corridor. With nowhere else to go, they enter together…

…but arrive separated. Lucy and Dean are together in one version of the hallway, while Dan and Willem are together in another. (Simon is missing, but neither pair realizes that.) They can each return to the entrance, even at the same time, but can't find one another. Left still with no options, each pair ventures deeper into the house. They find several intellectual and logical obstacles waiting for them.

Each pair enters a room that would either be fatal or inescapable without the ability to see in the dark; luckily, the Discern Edge gives them that power. (The magical seals apparently do not suppress Hunter Edges, thankfully.) Lucy and Dean have to solve the old "Get exactly four gallons of water using only a five-gallon jug and a three-gallon jug" chestnut, though Dean cheats by just pulling several gallon jugs of water from his magic bag. That violates the spirit of the puzzle (as he'll be chided later), but it's somewhat fair – though they had to get four gallons of water into a bowl to open a door, they weren't given any water to start with; it's definitely assumed the user will be able to create water from thin air.

Willem and Dan come across a room of cells, which are unlocked on the outside but sealed on the inside. All are empty, save one…and its occupant is a vampire, a red-haired woman who screams for help as soon as they enter the room. "They've left me here to starve!" she says, and offers to help them escape, adding, "You can't get out of here without me!" When asked for clarification, she says she knows what opens the front door, and that only she can get it for them.

When they open her cell, she's overjoyed…for about a second, and then she recognizes them. In terror, she ducks into the corner of the cell as begs not to be killed. She's been "briefed" on the Hunters, she says, and pleads for her life (er, well, un-life, I guess). She knows, sort of, their names and recognizes their faces, but that's all – she was only in town for a few days before she was apprehended by the mages. But she offers to help them get out – the scale at the front door requires a quantity of "dead flesh," which she can provide. Not ashes, though – killing her won't help them. "You need me," she says. But after a longer discussion, they leave her in the cell and continue on their journey.

They find another door, one that leads to the roof of the house – another exit, and one they won't need the vampire for. But after only a moment, a spell kicks in and the door leads to somewhere else in the house – the destination appears random. Following the corridor in the other direction, they find another puzzle chamber – a room filled with near-freezing water, at the other end of which is a doorway blocked by a stone slab. At the bottom of the chamber, nearly 150 feet down, is a switch that, theoretically, opens the slab. They manufacture a clever way to cross the chamber (ripping the door of its hinges and using it as a surfboard), but they know that neither of them could survive swimming down to flip the switch. But someone who was already dead….

They return to the cells and retrieve the vampire. She thanks them profusely, and introduces herself as Victoria. She says that she is from out of town – her fellow "Kindred" (what the vampires call themselves) brought her in because she's an expert in cryptography. Why they need an expert in cryptography she doesn't know, because she was abducted before she had a chance to find out. She says she unknowingly wandered into what had been agreed was "mage territory," and was arrested and thrown in jail before she had a chance to defend herself.

Returning to the puzzle chamber, Victoria effortlessly swims down to the bottom of the well and flips the switch, opening the slab and allowing them to continue. She offers this as proof of her good intentions.

Meanwhile, Lucy and Dean explore their own puzzle chambers. They also find a room of cells, though these are occupied by sleeping mages – and one of them is Sunday, though without her trademark purple raincoat. Retrieving her is simple enough, but they can't wake her no matter how what they try. (In what I thought was an amusing moment, Dean deduces she may need her purple raincoat to wake up and goes looking for one in his magic bag, but all he can find is a copy of Purple Rain. I kill me.) Dean slings Sunday over his shoulder and continues on through the house.

Soon enough, the groups run into one another. Before the meeting, Victoria begs Dan and Willem, "You can't let him kill me [referring to the kill-first-and-ask-questions-um-never Dean, obviously]; you need me to get out, remember?" And sure enough, Dean and Lucy are not pleased to see a vampire walking with them: "I leave you guys alone for five minutes…" But the Avengers agree to let her follow them as they try to escape.

Unfortunately, the house seems to start folding in on itself – they travel through several rooms they're already seen, and not in the proper geographic order, either. Tensions rise, and when Victoria gets a little too chatty, Dean tries to stake her (Victoria having told them that staking a vampire will only paralyze them, not destroy them outright). He's unsuccessful, but only just barely.

The rooms again start to repeat, and the Hunters find themselves in the jugs-of-water room. Lucy, confused, pissed, and worried about her missing brother, lets out a string of profanity. Victoria chides her, "I don't think your father would like that very much." Lucy turns to her in a rage, and Dean tries to stake the Kindred before anything else can come out of her mouth.

Victoria pleads with Lucy, "You can't let him kill me, Lucy." She asks why not; Dean's stake finally hits home, but not before the vampire can answer her question: "Because I'm your mother."

Storyteller's Notes: Following this session, FRINAN generously pointed out that I'm an unoriginal bastard, which I've noted before. The title of this episode is, of course, a reference to Mark Z. Danielewski's novel House of Leaves, which is also about a house far bigger on the inside than the outside. The puzzle that opens the front door – the one about Three Blind Mice – is lifted verbatim from the game The 11^th Hour, which is also about solving puzzles in a magical house.

At the beginning of this game, I mapped out a vague mytharc, one I never really imagined would come to resemble anything close to the plan. It's with great delight to see that I have, in fact, managed to lead the game to a territory that at least looks like the one I plotted out at the beginning. (For example, I wanted to begin the third season with a bomb in the subway tunnel. And lo and behold, there it was, a bomb in the subway tunnel at the beginning of season three. The why has completely changed from my original intent, but the how is still there. Joy!)

Next week's episode: "The Chamber of 32 Doors."

Demon Days: Season 1, Episodes 9-13

Yes, the Hunter recaps are back. Largely because I enjoyed writing them quite a bit, and also because they served a good purpose: helping me remember what the hell is going on.

To keep things simple, I've just summed up the eighteen-or-so episodes I've neglected to recap, including "The Black Hand," the three-part episode that kicked off Season 3. Full recaps continue with this week's session, "House of Leaves."

Fair warning: it's been some time since most of these episodes. So I'm going to forget things. A lot of things. Feel free to correct when I screw up or forget something. (Of course, you'll have to e-mail me for now, until I get comments working again.)

To make them a little easier on the brain, I'm posting them in three parts, in reverse chronological order. If you scroll down after this one, you'll find parts two and three.

The last few episodes of Season 1: Some Kind of Monster

When we last left off, the Hunters had just killed a cop and battled a shadow monster that attacked them from underneath a car. You'd think the next few episodes would follow that plot thread. You'd be wrong.

After a caustic meeting with Detective Weathers, who thinks they're somehow involved in Detective Panam's death (perish the thought!), the Hunters investigate the Big Red 16 – the building in Glenville with the gigantic "16" painted on the side. Of course, for years the number was a 17, but it inexplicably switched a few months earlier.

Some internet research reveals a few interesting facts about the building: back when it was still in use (which was some time ago), it was a deli. Old newspaper photographs display two teenaged employees – Charlie and Rico, the two annoying mages. The deli closed after a fire, and the building has stood unused ever since.

The Hunters break into the building to discover a disturbing sight, perhaps waiting just for them: the corpse of their missing Hunter (whose name I've managed to forget again), hanging from his neck with wire.

That's pretty screwed-up, sure, but close inspection reveals the corpse is, in fact, not real – it's a very realistic wax sculpture. The Hunters crack it open to find a CD-R that contains a very eclectic playlist: Johnny Cash, Peter Gabriel, U2, even Jay-Z. They deduce that the songs represent a scavenger hunt-like list of clues; following them leads to a cemetery in Westwood and a VIP membership card for an exclusive downtown nightclub.

The card gets them into the private suite upstairs, where a vampire named Charlie (not to be confused with the Mage named Charlie) is waiting for them. He's got a tattoo of a dragon running down one hand – the Hunters ask if anyone calls him "the Dragon." He says, "Not to my face," which the Hunters see as an invitation. The Dragon says he left the CD to draw the Hunters to him – he wants to help them, he says, but "can't." He can't even say why, but the implication is that he's under some sort of mind control that prevents him from directly betraying his superior…who he claims is the "Haydn" the Hunters know about from the logo they found. (He also says that their missing Hunter is, in fact, quite dead, just like the wax sculpture they found.)

The Dragon tells them he'd like to help them destroy the other vampires, and offers to prove it by giving one of them up: a vampire who lives in an apartment building in Staunton. He gives them a location and assures them a lack of booby traps or decent security into the place. The Dragon informs them the vampire retains the entire fifth floor of the building as his haven.

The next day, however, the Hunters manage to kill the vampire without getting into his apartment when they run into him in the alley outside. Not finished, they break in and investigate the building – there are, in fact, a few security measures and booby traps: the fire escape, for one, is coated with a sharply acidic substance.

Making their way to the fifth floor, they find that yes, the vampire does hold the entire floor…and it's a good thing, too, because the stench of death is prevalent. Dead bodies are everywhere, in each of the floor's many apartments – all but one, that is. The last apartment is, instead, dominated by a large network of lines burned into the carpet. It only takes a moment to recognize it for what it is: a map. And a few more moments allow the Hunters to recognize several of the lines as matching Bazemore's subway tunnels.

More puzzling, though, is the large pile of ash sitting on one of the lines. Even stranger, it pulls itself back together when it's broken apart. And even stranger still, it occasionally moves along the lines all on its own.

The Hunters do a little inductive reasoning. They recall the large red eyes Dean saw in the subway tunnels (way back in the second episode, "Corpses"). They also remember Sunday's dire warnings to stay out of the subways. They infer that the pile of ash could represent whatever mysterious creature Dean saw that night. The bodies…its food?

The next day, they get their walkie-talkies and split up. Willem, Lucy and Dean (referred to for the next few paragraphs as the A-Team) head into the subways, while Dan and Edgar (the B-Team, naturally) remain in the apartment with the map, radioing directions the best they can.

Beneath the streets, the A-Team sneaks from the platform onto the tracks. They follow the line for a distance and eventually find an opening tucked into the wall. Inside, a long, stone staircase takes them far down under the city. Not only is the stairway completely unlit (so only Dean and Willem can see, thanks to Discern) but it's infested – humanoid "Lizard creatures" leap at them from the ceiling. They're dispatched fairly easily, though not without dousing Lucy in their pale blue blood. Yuck.

The B-Team does what they can to guide from their place of relative security. But they're interrupted when an old man starts banging on the door – he yells for the apartment's owner to open the door, and waits only a few moments before ripping the door off its hinges with stunning strength. The B-Team hides in the closet, but that doesn't work. As it turns out, the old man has little problem with them, and doesn't even seem too perturbed that they killed the guy he was looking for. He can't stay too long, though – birds start hurling rocks at him through the window (!), so he turns into a wolf (!!) and leaps out (!!!).

While all of that is going on, they can't instruct the A-Team on where to go, and things go from bad to worse. They have to unlock several hidden doors (pressure-sensitive triggers in bricks on the walls and floor) and avoid more lizard-things. They stumble upon a pit trap, and inside discover a secret room: a small space filled with archaic computer equipment. The Apple IIs still work, but demand a password.

At the end of a long string of hallways, the A-Team comes across a gigantic open space…and inside it, an enormous Godzilla-like lizard monster with glowing red eyes. It roars and attacks the Hunters, who each fight back in their own unique style: Willem runs around the corner and hides, Lucy tries to attack the beast's underbelly, and Dean leaps into its mouth. Willem hides successfully, Lucy gets stomped, but Dean pulls off the impressive gambit – he jumps inside and activates Ward. The massive protective shield rips the creature's head apart. Victory!

As quickly as possible, the A-Team gets out of the tunnels and heads back to the surface. The B-Team meets them as they exit the tunnel, and at that exact moment, Sunday gets off a train: "What'd I miss?"

Demon Days: Season 2, Episodes 1-13

Season 2: Trust No One

"Right. Because hubris always wins in the end. The Greeks taught us that."

Sam Seaborn, on The West Wing (episode 4.05, "Debate Camp")

The Hunters take a month off. Willem tends bar, Dan does his city tours, and Lucy decides to actually go on a date with Dean. As Sunday suggested, he takes her ice skating. They rapidly become an inseparable couple.

In this season, the Hunters meet other Hunters, find (and kill) more vampires, get help from an unlikely source, find out the truth behind one of baseball's most infamous disasters, and encounter several of Bazemore's other supernatural denizens. They also learn that the city's mages are in the middle of a territorial skirmish with werewolves – hence the birds throwing rocks at the guy turned into a wolf.

The notable incidents from the second season (in not-exactly-chronological order):

• The Hunters stop a ghost from killing people. Having died agonizing for an unrequited love, the ghost fed from passionate, romantic love, and in the process killed a few people.
  
• Dean starts leaving an arrogant calling card at the scene of each vampire slaying: a scoreboard. For instance, after their twentieth kill, he writes 20-0 somewhere at the location.
  
• Lucy's journeyman brother, Simon, shows up at her door. Unfortunately, Dean answers it, and Simon starts throwing punches, thinking him to be Lucy's cheating ex-boyfriend Brian. Simon's attack is, um, unsuccessful (he misses all his swings, slips on Lucy's Nintendo controller and smashes his head on the table), and the mistaken identity is quickly cleared up. They later learn that Simon is also Imbued, and he decides to stay in town to help.
  
• They meet another Hunter, who points them to hunter-net. They sign on with the call sign "Swan107." (Because of the Drowning Swan, where they meet. And I'm pretty sure that's the number.) The Hunter, whom they don't like at all, is known only by his call sign, "Driveshaft97." They have yet to get that name right once. ("Crankshaft! Spark plug! Carburetor! CO2 sensor!")
  
• They return to the club where they met the Dragon, but he's gone. In his place is a stern-looking business woman – another vampire – tapping at a laptop computer. She says the Dragon is dead, and accuses the Hunters of killing him. They kill her and take the computer. On it, they find only an exhaustive stash of Charmed
  slash fiction and a database listing the names and locations of over a dozen vampires. The following afternoon, they split into teams and kill everyone on the list, including one listed only as "Stinger" – the mysterious wasp-throwing villain who shot Lucy? It could be, and the apartment they find him in is filled – literally – with ferocious wasps. They destroy the vampire sleeping there with sunlight, but never get a look at him. Did they kill who they thought they did?
  
• Detective Weathers follows the advice of the Hunters and looks into Panam's background. When he finds things he's not meant to see, he's suspended. In vengeance, he quits the force and gives the Hunters a video tape he found buried in the evidence archives – security camera footage of the murder for which Edgar was tried and arrested. The video shows someone else committing the crime, exonerating him and giving him grounds for a lawsuit against the police department (which he'd been threatening to do for years, but would have lost – despite his acquittal, everyone thought he did it). Edgar sues the pants off the Bazemore PD.
  
• They also track down the real killer – a vampire with a shoe fetish. The whole incident is tied up in a massive, international corporate conglomerate called Privera. Cursory investigation into the company reveals a strong vampiric presence.
  
• Lucy's ex-boyfriend shows up at her door to try to win her back. But he's cheating – he's using a magic love potion. (You may remember a cut scene back in season one where Brian met Charlie at a bar. Also remember that Charlie once gave the Hunters a potion when they were trying to save Edgar from life as a frog.) Once Dean takes him out, Brian tells them he bought it from a "big German guy." Dean calls Charlie, demanding answers. Charlie admits that he did meet Brian at a bar several weeks earlier, and did direct him to a potion-maker, but he didn't know who Brian was. The Hunters visit the potion-maker – an enormous German with a He-Man-like broadsword – and kill him, though not without some disagreement.
  
• Willem buys the Drowning Swan.
  
• Sunday keeps leaving town for a few days and returning without explanation. Reluctantly, she fills the Hunters in: she's helping a friend of hers, whom she refuses to name. He's a pariah among mages, running from a nationwide manhunt – if they find him, they'll execute him on the spot. She doesn't say why.
  
• She doesn't have to – he arrives in town unexpectedly and meets the Hunters. He introduces himself, to Sunday's disdain, as "Evets Namtrab." This is a rather pathetic code for his real name, Steve Bartman. A lifelong Chicago White Sox fan and Chicago Cubs hater, he was responsible for a rather egregious incident in the 2003 National League Championship Series, for which he was sternly reprimanded – using magic in such a public fashion (on international TV, no less) is against magical law. But he didn't know when to quit: he used his magic again in 2005 to help the White Sox coast through the postseason. ("Oh, right, Scott Podsednik doesn't hit a home run all season, then in the World Series hits a walk-off homer off Brad Lidge? That's not magic? Come on.") Though the magical government managed to cover up the violation of their pact of secrecy, all patience with his rather public spectacles had run out, and he was sentenced to death. But Sunday has been protecting him in secret, knowing she'd be severely punished if other mages ever found out.
  
• Evets makes a mistake during his visit, however: he uses his magic. Within minutes, mage goons are knocking on the door of the Drowning Swan. The Hunters stall until he can make his escape. He hasn't been seen since.
  
• The Hunters find another ghost, this one haunting the ice skating rink where Dean and Lucy had their first date. (The rink is owned by old friends of Lucy and Simon.) This ghost only manifests when the song "Blame It on the Boogie" is played on the stereo, and it only speaks to those who are also dancing. After unraveling a murder mystery, the Hunters free the spirit and allow it to "move on." Happy times!
  
• But Dan returns home to find his house wrecked and his girlfriend, Hannah, missing. Scrawled on the wall: 57-1.
  
• Sunday's out of town, so the Hunters recruit Charlie and Rico to help them. The two mages owe them for…something (?), and agree to help. (Rico is upset, though, because he'll miss a rerun of his favorite show, Charmed. Hmm. Charmed. Where have I heard that before?) The trail of evidence leads to the Millhaven Home, where they've been before. Inside, they discover a vampiric infestation and an even more horrible secret: the vampires inside are using a magical artifact to steal the patient's souls. The Hunters destroy the artifact and find Hannah, but it's too late: she's been turned into a vampire. Even worse, she doesn't know – she's under some kind of mental control that blocks out that knowledge. With a broken heart, Dan does what he thinks is the humane thing: he kills her.
  
• But things get even worse soon thereafter: Charlie and Rico attack Simon and leave him in a swimming pool to be eaten by lobsters. He's rescued, but the two mages make the truth clear – they're responsible for Hannah's kidnapping and Embrace (and, thus, her death). Then they burn down the Drowning Swan. Betrayal!
  
• The next day, the Hunters find Sunday and prepare for vengeance. The mages taunt the Hunters into open combat, leaving a trail of clues that point to their location. After hours of searching and puzzling, the Hunters deduce the answer and head to Dr Pepper Park, the home of the Bazemore Fury, Bazemore's major league baseball team. Sunday asks the Hunters to let her talk to the Evil Mage Brothers for a minute before they start shooting; this will let her try to dispel any magical shields they have in place. But things get worse when they arrive, as Sunday realizes the baseball stadium is a Clearing: a place where the natural barrier that inhibits magic doesn't exist. Charlie and Rico can use their full magical powers without reality fighting back.
  
• Sunday tells the Hunters that, after the fight (assuming they're still alive), they need to break up and leave town for about a month or so, just in case the other mages want retribution.
  
• The hits just keep on coming. While Sunday does keep them talking long enough to disable one of their magical shields, Charlie also tricks her into admitting she's been aiding Evets…and the Mage Police descend from the sky. As she's taken away, she tells the Hunters, "Don't rescue me," but then screams at Dean telepathically, "Rescue me! You have to rescue me!"
  
• The mages try their best, but they're no match for six Hunters with Zeal edges galore. Charlie dies in seconds, and Rico only holds out for a little while longer. Victory!
  

The Hunters have won. This time.