Episode Eight (2/16/01)

Instead of her life flashing before her eyes, Silverbullet imagined her body becoming so much "goo" upon impact and that's what did the trick. Imagining her body in such a state turned the spot on her body where she assumed in that instant the bazooka was most likely to strike into liquid (or at least molten) silver. The werewolf's maw gaped in shock as Silverbullet still stood (albeit a bit shocked herself) except with a slightly smoldering hole in her belly roughly the shape of a cannon ball. Through it, one could see the ATM machine the bazooka did hit obliterate and spit burnt dollar bills in all directions. Once the shock value of what each had seen was spent, Silverbullet collected her senses first. After a brief glance toward the vampire lying nearby --quivering from having just been impaled -- Silverbullet joked nervously, "I guess everybody's 'holy' tonight." With there being only one shot in the bazooka and no time to reload, the wolven white supremacist lunged at Silverbullet. Recalling that these two were at Saint Michael's Cathedral to blow it to Kingdom Come, her righteous rage returned, and out of anger Silverbullet envisioned a whole pillar of silver coming from her arm and running through the beast.

It did. The pillar had the radius of a lamppost, except unlike most pillars, this was razor sharp with its tip emanating from the werewolf's back. Another unsettling discovery on the part of Silverbullet was that while entirely silver she evidently had greater physical strength than usual -- which accounted for how the werewolf, big as he was, was being held up off his hind legs while still skewered with but one of her morphed arms. Disturbed by all the blood now on the scene (and the sight of silver droplets almost involuntarily rolling on their own power toward her and settling themselves wherever on/in her body the bazooka had dispersed them), Silverbullet retracted herself from the dead beast and returned (once she was "whole" again) to racing to Rose's rescue.

Silver can hurt a vampire, this is true. But obviously it's not quite enough to kill, because no sooner had Silverbullet run out of view than the young (when bitten) vampire officer she impaled slowly made it to his jackbooted feet. He felt at the wound dealt him, looked as it was healing at an unnaturally, superhuman rate, and began to concentrate. Someone else can bomb this holy ground later, the Nazi thought while wincing from pain and magically transforming his blood-soaked body into that of a small, black bat. Once in bat form, the vampire flew in the general direction Silverbullet was sprinting in, except farther and faster (since he was airborne) and beat her to her destination: the Sin City Arena. Originally built by Sin City's corporate elite to distract the public from its sins with various events, the arena has become where the obese are taken by werewolves to be drained of their blood. The blood is then packaged and sent to vampires on the front lines. Only after this is done do the werewolves get to feast on the blood-dried carcasses (it's considered insubordination for a werewolf to complain about how dry such a body tastes).

The draining, packaging and delivery of the blood to vampires on the front is all done by "Leeches," humans the vampire officers have decided are Aryan enough to warrant possible future consideration for being drained by a vampire while alive -- in other words, help bleed your fellow man dry and be rewarded by becoming a monster. The young vampire officer changed from bat to "man" and landed near a group of humans in the middle of being given the chance to start off as Leeches. The vampire giving said chance looked back and grimaced in chagrin at the interruption. "Who stabbed you, lieutenant?" Then, remembering humans were still within earshot, the vampire superior quickly amended what he said, "Nevermind, I'll see to you as soon as I see to these people."

"You ain't got to deal with my ass!" A beautiful Latina stepped forward from the back of the small crowd. A werewolf strode toward her to block her path to the vampire who had been speaking to the group, but she simply, dismissingly slapped his furry arm aside out of righteous indignation and continued stepping until Rose DeVega was face to face with the new oppressor. "I don't even know how I got thrown in with this bunch! I'm not white, I'm Mexican!"

"Oh, really?" The vampire licked his ruby red lips with a forked tongue. "Well, that changes everything -- for you..."

TO BE CONTINUED