The music was loud, bass thumping heavy enough to rattle the glasses on the shelves and vibrate right through your chest like a fist. Wall inside the place were painted a deep purple so dark it looked black under the flashing strobes near the cage where a band was screaming an inarticulate obscenity of a song.

Josephine had sent out a small group of underlings under the leadership of Marcellus to keep an eye on the Granger girl and when the time was right to do to her what the Grangers had done to Kit. They'd been tracking Helena for a few nights, learning her habits, her haunts, who she hung around with, what she did with whom, anything that would help them do what their mistress had instructed. They were just waiting for the right time and the right place, and as immortals, they had all the time in the world.

These underlings, while not old and powerful, were at least more disciplined than Kit - at least while under Marcellus' watchful eye. Disobedience here meant disobeying their mistress Josephine, which meant death. They kept to the shadows, waiting as patiently as their hunger allowed.

Marcellus had fed early in the evening and unless one knew better, he appeared to be an ordinary human. The small group separated before heading into the club, so as not to attract any undue attention, silently in psychic contact with each other. Each of them knew precisely what was expected of them.

Outside, bikes were lined up like horses at a trough. Inside, bodies were crowded into a single living mass of flesh and sweat, beer and cheap whiskey, hoarse shout and raucous laughs. The guy who'd brought Helena inside had her pressed up against a cigarette machine near the door, his big ham of a hand inside her shirt and his tongue halfway down her throat. She might as well have been trying to push away the building.

The place personally disgusted Marcellus. He considered himself too refined for such a place, but he had to admit, if he was hunting, the crowd was ripe for the pickings.

Well, one vampire was less patient than the rest. "This is boring," he drawled, blowing a needless breath through stringy blonde hair. "No one's paying attention, right' We already got a suspect for the Watch," jabbing a finger at the biker groping their target, "just knock 'im on the head and leave 'im. Boom. Done. But look at this fancy *ss." He jerked his head at Marcellus. "Goes about Josephine's dirty work like it's the Mona f*cking Lisa."

Gigi had been a walking time bomb ever since Jon told her of the new threat to the branches of family she still cared about. "Move it, ." With the hood of her sweatshirt drawn over her head and a backpack slung over her shoulder Gigi shoved her way through the club. The in question stepped aside not because of the dealer's stature but because of the spiked ball mace she carried almost carelessly at her side. She had product to peddle.

"C'mon, Marcellus," Lucas crooned. He made a show of adjusting his sleeves, rolled just so halfway up his forearms. "You know I've got the finesse, for your art."

Marcellus rolled his eyes at the impatient one. He'd always been hard to control, but despite his misgivings, Josephine insisted he was useful. Like a bull in a china shop useful, Marcellus thought. He waved a hand to a couple of others to fan out and watch the renegade's back.

"Oh....oh, my my....is that the go ahead from our fearless leader?" Lucas' lips curled.

Marcellus rolled his eyes again and affected a sigh, since he really didn't have to breath anymore now that he was Undead. "You have no patience, Lucas. You have forever and you have still not learned patience. Very well, just don't leave any evidence behind." Evidence being survivors. He would have preferred to take matters outside, but this should at the very least prove entertaining.

Gigi palmed off a few small vials of the black-violet yola in exchange for payment from one customer when the sight of a face she'd recognize anywhere flashed into sight underneath the strobe lights. It wasn't the face that struck her but the context. "You've got to be kidding me." She stalked with deadly intent straight for the cigarette machine.

The small group fanned out to surround the girl and her molester. Hey, in a warped sort of way, they were coming to her rescue.

"Gracias, sensei." Lucas slithered out of his seat, trailed by two lovely ladies who were probably the closest things to followers he had. He hadn't sired them, but they still seemed to think the brash young Lucas could walk on water. One of them broke away to 'occupy' the bouncer, leading him outside for an old-fashioned tryst and maybe a quick nip. The other stayed with Lucas. "Uh-oh, darlin'. This just got messy," he said, spying the drug pusher moving in on their target.

The biker lifted Helena with the other hand so she was sitting on a piece of the machine that jutted out, insinuating his hips between her thighs and pulling one knee up and around his waist. She got one hand up in desperation to rake her nails across his cheek, a bloom of copper invisible beneath the clouds of smoke and liquor fumes - to most noses.

As the leader of the pack, Marcellus took a seat at the bar, in full view of the show, tapping his fingers against the counter, claws slowly replacing fingernails. He sighed as he watched the mortals groping each other. "Animals."

"Look, Delilah, look how polite these creatures are. They just might take care of our lady's little problem for us. Maybe patience is a virtue," Lucas smiled, walking his fingers along the vampiress' shoulders.

A random female stepped up to the bar and made the mistake of trying to start a conversation with Marcellus, that is, pick him up and he sneered with a mouthful of sharp teeth. "Piss off, darling, or I'll have you for dinner." The woman shrank back in fear and bumped into a biker. Marcellus sighed again. "Lucas....I grow restless," he told the younger vampire in his head. "What do you say we get this party started?"

"Get your paws off her, sweetheart, if you want to keep them and any other extremities in tact." Gigi snarled at the man groping Helena. She hadn't let the thought cross her mind that it might have been a willing entanglement.

With a movement graceful as a dancers, she withdrew a much-used wooden stake from the back of her shorts and slammed it into the vampire's chest, without even stopping to watch as the second vampiric casualty of the night turned to dust. A clawed fist caught her on the jaw, and she lashed out with a booted foot, finishing off that doubled up undead with another accurate stake to the heart. "What the hell is going on here?"

A few gunshots went off, but that did little to stop the group. Marcellus, meanwhile, was sampling the various blood types in the room. It was good to be the leader. He came to a sudden halt when he felt Lucas' death, like a shudder of pain rippling through him. He dropped the glass and it shattered on the floor, as he looked over at Gigi just in time to see Lucas turn into a pile of dust.

Delilah roared at Helena's counter-attack, enraged at the glass embedded in her face, then at the doorman grabbing her. She abandoned her primary target to pounce on the doorman, pressing him into an overturned table and burying her face in his neck with a sickening crunch.

Gigi yanked the ball of the mace back towards her side. Lena was too close to Delilah to risk swinging it again. Gigi ran for Delilah and tried to jump on her back.

Delilah nearly lost her footing just as she regained it, face dripping with blood. She struggled to disentangle from Gigi, rampaging into the middle of the room while the increasingly frightened crowd gave them a wide berth.

Lei's progress from the door was punctuated by a series of screams as vampires who attacked her ended their hopes in an explosion of fiery dust. Caked in the stuff, as well as the blood of those who had already been made victims, the Slayer jumped up onto a pool table, frowning around herself at the carnage. She leant down, grabbing a biker by the jacket. He struggled for a moment, but even in Rhy'Din, it's only an idiot who'll attack a small woman who can lift him off the ground with one hand. "Get them out," Lei hissed furiously. "Everyone who isn't bleeding or doesn't have fangs, get them out. Now!"

Her wrist was bleeding from the woman's nails, but aside from that and the fact that she was flashing her left breast for the room, Helena was ....so far ....unscathed. And she went right after Gigi for the woman because, bloody hell, she was pissed.

If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself, Marcellus thought to himself, and before anyone could follow his motion, he was standing behind Gigi, dangerously close to Lena. While Gigi was busy with poor dying Delilah, he reached out and slashed at Lena with a clawed hand, not really caring where he made contact. He only needed a moment and a lucky swipe and she'd be dead. Enough fooling around.

A moment he wasn't going to get. Lei had spotted the advance on the disheveled-looking Lena. She kicked a discarded pool ball in the direction of Marcellus - it wasn't going to do anywhere near enough damage, but hey, it might knock him off balance long enough to let the woman he was after realise her danger. However, that little moment of rescue distracted Lei just a little too long. Clawed hands grabbed her legs, yanking them out from under her, and she landed heavily on her back with a grunt, underneath 16-stone of pissed off, blood-hungry biker.

Gigi stabbed the knife through Delilah's shoulder in the hopes of pinning her to the ground and out of the way, if not killing her. She had kept a death-hold on the handle of the mace. She turned around and made a wide arc towards Marcellus' legs.

It wasn't enough to pin Delilah down, nor kill her, but itwa enough to get her stumbling away from Gigi. She was fortuitously close to the door, and in a bar with bikers who were increasingly fighting back. She stared uncertainly after Marcellus ....then decided to cut her losses.

The pool ball did the trick, but not in the way Shen Lei intended. It skipped off his hand and into the remnants of the bottle in Helena's. But it made her jump back enough that the swipe from Marcellus grooved a gash across her collarbone rather than her throat.

The breath knocked from her, it was only instinct and training that kept Lei from having her throat ripped out. Her stake discarded, she pressed her hand into the throat of the newly-turned vampire above her, holding him at arms' length. The other hand fumbled at her pocket, coming up with a bottle. She bit the cap off, and took aim ....and the biker-vamp screamed backward off her as holy water doused him from head to foot. Damp ashes, anyone"

Marcellus growled when Gigi's mace cut deep into his leg and he realized it was time to go. Live to fight another day. He stumbled to the floor, but before anyone could do further damage, he disappeared again, reappearing near Delilah's retreating back. Wrapping an arm around the younger vampire, both of them disappeared. They were gone.

Helena was bleeding like crazy, hissing and so angry her own family might not recognize her. She started to chase after Delilah when the woman cut and ran for the door.

Gigi almost wore a look of disappointment when she stood up. Not that it was easy to see much under the black blood on her face. "You stay right here, Lena." Her voice cut through what was left of the crowd. She spit on the ground and wiped at her face to no avail. The black blood and her own were impossible to clear away. Dark eyes stared at Lei.

Pushing up onto her feet, Lei fell into a crouch, breathing hard as she looked around at the carnage. The fight was over, it seemed; bloodied bodies lay everywhere, promising a bumper crop of patrols in the next couple of nights for her. Across the almost abandoned dance floor, she noted the upstanding pair of women who had held their own.

"Here." The small Slayer tossed what remained of her bottle of holy water toward Gigi. "It'll sting when it washes off. Either of you get bitten?" As she spoke, she scooped up her stake to tuck it back into her shorts, patting the dust from her arms and legs.

"No. Who the are you." Gigi said this instead of thanks even as she took the water. Helena was standing braced in the door of the bar shouting some ridiculously foul suggestions at the empty parking lot. It probably wouldn't be long before the Watch arrived. Only two of the clan had made it out alive to return to their mistress and explain what had happened.