3

Internal dating: As shown by Mulder's calendar in his office, this takes place in November 1994. It must be really early in November, if the dating of the next few episodes is to make sense. What he's been doing between Skinner reopening the X-Files in August and now is never explained. Even though he's not been in his office, he has been working, as he talks in this episode of having tracked the vampire killers for the last few months.

12.41 am, Hollywood Hills, Los Angeles. As fires rage in the hills, a man drinks red wine beside an outdoor pool as he prepares to have a one-night stand with a seductive young woman. "I'll do things with you no-one has ever done," she says, but suddenly she sinks her teeth into his flesh and draws blood. Two other men rush forward and together they attack him.

Mulder sadly opens the door to the basement office, which is all covered with plastic. He turns the calendar onto November (Scully was taken in early August.) He opens the filing cabinet and adds an X-File on Scully, along with her glasses and ID, and looks at her gold cross. Then the phone rings.

Mulder arrives at the crime scene in Los Angeles, pushing in despite the police department's insistence that they can handle it. Mulder says he has a file on previous similar murders, which always go in threes, and predicts there will be two more here unless something is done. The bodies have been drained of blood, all mirrors smashed, and a Biblical reference, to a verse about drinking Christ's blood has been scrawled on the wall. He calls the killers an unholy trinity, saying they kill in threes - father, sons and spirit. Impressed, the police officer asks him to join the investigation, but Mulder says he works alone. "An FBI agent without a partner?" the officer says, incredulously.

Mulder calls all the blood banks, pretending to be from the payroll department, and finds out that one of them has a new night watchman. From the pattern of the previous murders, Mulder works on the assumption that this is one of the killers. He goes to the blood bank at night and apprehends a man who is down in the dark, drinking the blood.

The man refuses to talk to the police, crying only "turn off the lights!". Mulder walks in silently and replaces the lights with a red lamp. The man then says he'll only talk to Mulder. "You know what we are," he tells Mulder, after the police have gone. "What are you?" Mulder asks. He says he's the son, and the others are the father and unholy spirit. He denies murder, saying they were acting out of a need for survival. "When a snake eats a fly it's not murder, it just is," he says. "Frogs eat flies," Mulder replies, then asks the man if he's dead. "I never will be," the man says. "Don't you want to live forever?" he asks Mulder. "Not if drawstring pants come back in style," Mulder replies, after giving the question some thought. The man says there' no after life, as he's seen the horror in the eyes of the people they've killed, and he never wants to experience this. Mulder asks if the man can be seen in a mirror, and the man says he can't, as Mulder watches him in a small mirror. He says only the other two can kill him, but Mulder says that, if he really is what he says he is, he knows what will kill him.

Mulder uncovers the windows, watching the man cower in the corner, hiding from the light. He tells the police officer to cover the windows if the man says he'll talk. "The man is clearly delusional," he says, but adds that they should play along with his delusion for now. The officer suggests Mulder should go and get some sleep, but Mulder says he hasn't checked into a hotel. "I don't sleep any more," he says.

As the sun moves across the sky if begins to kill the whole cell, and the prisoner falls to the ground, smoke rising from his body and burning horribly.

The pathologist says it looks like long exposure to extreme temperatures, and suggests it would be due to porphyria. Mulder says he's heard of this, but it causes only blisters when exposed to the sun, not fourth degree burns, and sufferers can have their symptoms eased by small ingestion of blood, but not the huge blood thirst he saw. Ignorance of porphyria is perhaps behind the vampire legend, he says. He'd dismissed the existence of such a mythical creature, but is prepared to accept he was wrong. "You are really upsetting me on several levels," the doctor says. Mulder finds the remains of an ink stamp burnt into the man's hand. It reads "Club Tepes."

Mulder goes to Club Tepes, where he looks very out of place as everyone else is in black leather and acting wild while he's still in his suit and tie. A young woman approaches him and asks him if he's wondering what a normal woman like her is doing in a place like this. "How do you define normal?" Mulder asks, then, "normal is not what I feel." "You've lost someone," she says. "Not a lover - a friend." She tells him she takes the live of others into her blood, and leads him from the room. One of the men seen in the teaser watches. When the woman (who introduces herself as Kristen) pulls out a syringe, draws some of her own blood and offers it to him, he stops her. "I wish I could die," she says, and goes off to find another man.

Mulder follows Kristen and the man to a restaurant and watches as she drinks his blood. His hiding place is revealed when a car goes past, and the man rushes out, knocking Mulder to the ground. "We're two consenting adults," he says.

The man goes back in, calling for Kristen, "It's my turn," he says, but he is attacked by three people, and is seen screaming.

Mulder and the police are at the crime scene, where they find some fingerprints. They also find some of the "blood" was raspberry sauce. The pathologist says there are bite marks of three people.

From the fingerprints, Mulder finds out Kristen's full name is Kristen Kilar, and she used to live in all the places the previous killing had taken place in. He deduces she's the "unholy spirit."

The police rush to Kristen's house, but find her gone. They find veterinary needles, and a snake bite kit which has been used to extract blood. In her oven, Mulder finds a loaf full of blood and promptly tells the police she's not coming back, so they'll go.

Later, Kristen comes home to find Mulder in her house. "They're after you," he says, explaining how he worked it out by seeing the blood-filled bread, which is a traditional way to protect yourself from vampires. He offers to take her into protective custody. "Why are you here alone?" she asks. "Because you think you're not afraid? Because you need to know - you need to know they are who you believe they are?"

Kristen explains she was beaten as a child, and started enjoying the taste of her own blood. Then she met John, the "son", who beat her too. Together they got into blood sports - tasting blood for sexual reasons. Then he met the other two of the three, and it became "unnatural". Since then they have followed her. "I'm tired of running," she says, "And you're here to protect me." She notices the cross at his neck. "It's from someone I lost," he says. "I hope you find her," she says. He then tells her John is dead, but they have picked up a third again. He urges her to come to police station but she won't, and he insists on staying with her to protect her. She says he should get cleaned up first.

Mulder has a shower and tries to shave, though it's hard without mirrors. Rather foolishly, given the circumstances, he lets her shave him. She nicks him, drawing blood, and takes it onto her fingers to taste it. "It's not who you are," he says, stopping her. "It doesn't make you happy." Then they kiss, and the camera discreetly withdraws.

Later, Kristen gets up and is grabbed by John who tells her it's true - he can't die. He says he was surprised as anybody when it happened. He says he can live forever too, and urges her to kill Mulder and drink the blood of the spirit. "But he's not..." she begins, but he says, "He is. The spirit is one who believes. He knows we're possible."

Kristen raises the knife over the sleeping (but strangely fully clothed) Mulder, but then stabs into the shadows, into the "father" who is lurking there. Mulder and Kristen then try to escape the house. John attacks, stunning Kristen, but Mulder wrestles him to the ground and ties him up. In the car, the "unholy spirit" drags Mulder onto the roof and prepares to bite his neck, but Kristen starts the car, impaling her on a peg on the wall.

Kristen doesn't want to leave without John, so Mulder goes back in to release him, only to hear Kristen drive away. He rushes after the car but finds it, abandoned.

Kristen has meanwhile gone back to the house and pours gas all over the place. She tastes her own blood and tells John she will be a vampire now, and she's tasted the blood of a believer (herself) and will have taken a life (also herself.) She strikes a match and the house explodes.

Mulder sits on the hillside as he's told that four bodies were found, all dead. He stars at Scully's gold cross as the episode ends.

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