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During a dinner of Chinese takeout Emma receives a vision which sends the group to a Los Angeles hotel
to deal with a slimy translucent snake creature in the hotel's pool. While Patrick, Jalen, and Ethan try and deal with
the creature, Dana and Emma are able to trace its source. The creature is an ectoplasmic manifestation which has leaked
into this realm through a dimensional crack that has opened in the hotel basement. After a few tries Dana manages to
seal the crack and the creature vanishes. Heading back home, the group discovers that the house has been broken into.
Following a trail of blood to the kitchen they find a badly wounded man who appears to be one of the commandos that
Patrick and Jalen encountered a few nights earlier.
The commando is barely conscious, but manages to tell the group what happened to him. He says that his
name is David and he was part of one of the vampires hunting commando teams. His team thought they'd found a vampire
nest but when they attacked the lead vampire turned out to be more powerful than they thought. The lead vampire and his
minions killed all the others and David barely escaped. He and the others had been briefed about Patrick's group so he
headed for the house since it was the closest safe place he could think of while fleeing. Before he passes out David tells
the group that they'd encountered the vampires in an old abandoned building... the Paradise Theater.
The group remembers the Paradise Theater as the place where Patrick's evil double was holding his
"auction" of the prophetic girl, Jennifer Guerrin. For Patrick, the site seems to hold a deeper meaning,
but he keeps his thoughts to himself for the moment. While Ethan tends to the commando's wounds, Jalen offers to
scout out the theater. At the Paradise, Jalen sees that the vampires are still there. The lead vampire, bald and dressed
in black robes, is directing the other vampires in digging a large hole in what used to be the theater's orchestra pit.
The bodies of the commandos they killed are still littering the theater. As the sun begins to rise, the vampires take
the bodies and head off into the back of the theater. Jalen returns to the house to inform the others what he has seen.
Meanwhile, Ethan has noticed something odd with the wounded commando's blood and makes a note to examine it more closely
when he has a chance.
When Jalen returns he describes what he saw, and what he says has a definite effect on Patrick. The scene
Jalen has described triggers Patrick's memories and he flashes back to a time shortly after he gained his powers, before
he met the others. Unknown to the group, they are not Patrick's first allies in his fight against the forces of evil. At
the start of his new career as champion he met up with three others who joined him on his mission. The three were
Englishman and occult expert Peter St. James, street-savvy vampire hunter Howard 'Helsing' Jackson, and goth-witch
Keri Prescott. For a few months the four of them battled evil in Los Angeles, until the fateful encounter at the
Paradise Theater. Much like the scene described by Jalen, the four heroes came across a group of vampires led by the
robed figure excavating something at the theater. They attacked, with Patrick targeting the robed figure. He leaped in
and with one swing of an ax decapitated the robed figure, but the being didn't dust. Instead the severed head rolled
to a stop and its eyes turned to look straight at Patrick. The group were distracted, fatally so. The headless body, still
under the head's control, snapped Peter's neck. Before the others could react the vampires attacked Helsing, tearing him
to pieces. Then the robed figure's head floated into its body's arms and it calmly placed its head back on it shoulders.
Within a few seconds the wound had sealed and even the trace of it began to fade. Patrick finally recovered from the shock
enough to act, but with a simple gesture the robed figure sent him flying across the decrepit theater and through a wall.
The last thing Patrick saw that fateful night as he lost consciousness was the robed figure grabbing the hysterical Keri
and taking her away. When he awoke the vampires and his friends' bodies were gone. All that remained was Peter's sword,
which Patrick still uses as his preferred weapon today.
Patrick doesn't go into details, but he does tell the group he has seen the lead vampire before and that
he isn't like other vampires, he doesn't die when his head is cut off. The group decides to head to the theater and see
what they vampires were doing before the sun sets and they return. At the Paradise a quick search shows that the vampires
aren't using it as a resting place, but they are apparently continuing the digging that Patrick and his friends had
first stumbled onto almost two years earlier. There is no sign in the pit of what they are digging for so the group
settles for filling the hole with debris to slow the vampires' progress. They then get into hidden positions and wait
for the vampires to return.
When the vampires arrive Patrick and Jalen move in to attack but, unsure of how to handle the leader,
concentrate on the other vampires instead. This proves to be a costly mistake as the vampire leader sends Jalen flying
with a wave of his hand. Before he can act, Patrick is surprised by the sudden arrival of his old ally, Keri, who he had
assumed was dead at the hand of the vampires' leader. Keri is apparently now a vampire, or at least one of whatever the
vampires' leader, who she calls Talan, is. She is also still a powerful witch and easily freezes Patrick in place before
the champion can attack Talan or her. Patrick's attempts to persuade Keri to turn on Talan prove useless and their
conversation only serves to reveal to the others the existence of Patrick's old crew and that he had gotten them killed
in this very theater two years earlier. Jalen attacks Talan again, this time cutting off his right hand, but while it
does hurt Talan it also angers him. Gesturing with his remaining hand Talan fries Jalen with a bolt of magical energy.
Dana and Ethan join in the fight, but Ethan's holy water attack on Keri proves ineffective and Dana's crossbow shot is
stopped in mid-air by Keri's telekinetic powers. Jalen makes a last ditch attack with a throwing star only to have it
telekinetically redirected back at him. The wound is nearly fatal and Jalen loses consciousness, and with Patrick still
magically paralyzed only Dana and Ethan remain.
As Talan sees to reattaching his severed hand, Keri blasts part of the theater's ceiling, causing it to
collapse on the balcony where Dana is and burying her. With another gesture she sends Ethan flying up and into a wall.
With their opposition taken care of, Talan and Keri turn their attention to the excavation. With the other vampires dead
they have no manual labor, so Talan reluctantly joins with Keri and they combine their power to telekinetically finish the
digging. The effort appears to tax them, but Ethan is concentrating on digging Dana out of the rubble and Patrick can
do nothing but watch as an ancient stone sarcophagus lifts out of the pit. The two depart with the sarcophagus, leaving
Ethan to tend to Dana and the badly wounded Jalen. By the time the holding spell wears off and Patrick can move again
Talan and Keri are long gone with the sarcophagus.
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