Episode 3: Twins

On the final night of St. Vigeous, Juliet and the gang are patrolling, but there aren’t a lot of vamps out. They try the Ravine, but on the way Prof. Armitage’s newly rented team van loses a tire. A white-haired man called Marshal comes to their aid, and says he came to help them in their destiny. There are indeed vampires in the ravine, and they attack the stalled van, but Marshal throws one 100 yards into a hillside and fights others while the gang use crossbows, spears and holy water from Dr. Armitage’s trove to defeat the others.

Armitage finds a reference to the demon Gemenos, who takes the form of twins on Earth and grants wishes to the dead; it may be that Ekaterina planned to sacrifice the Ryerstad boys to Gemenos, allowing him to duplicate their bodies. Indeed, this may already have occurred. Tracking Orsi to the “hearth of the star spawn” (which refers to the home of the wizard Whately, a half-demon sorcerer from the 1920s), they send Billy in through a window. Billy finds a huge lab of chemicals and bad guys engaged in occult rituals, so it’s Slayer time, and everyone slams in through the front door, except for Marshal, who hangs back and pushes a porch post through the front windows, and Juliet, who is knocked unconscious. Inside are Count Orsi, his gun-toting bodyguards Hans and Franz, and the Ryerstand twins, about to be sacrificed. All are dusted; Alexandra gets hold of a machine pistol and shoots Orsi full of holes, which doesn’t slow him down that much but does focus his attention firmly on Alex, so Billy can stake him.

The gang goes to the Ryerstad home, where the two boys – the same two boys currently asleep in the van -- are watching TV. They are actually the demon Gemenos, of course, who comes out of the house and attacks Armitage on the front lawn. Diligence and Alexandra try to keep him busy until Armitage can use the dismissal spell, but the demon is huge and tough and even Billy’s constant backstabbing attacks and Marshal’s head-on tackling can’t keep it down for long. Finally, though, the spell is complete and Gemenos vanishes.