ASHES TO ASHES

*****

Hamid: I'm through the stone.
Hashim: We only have an hour before the security patrol returns.
Hamid: You're sure it's middle sarcophagus.
Hashim: Yes. Look for the Re'-Atum... the sun god.
Hamid: (Prepares to break the seal, stops) What if the legend is true? What if Re'-Atum decides my soul is not worthy and I am destroyed.
Hashim: The only legend that concerns us, deals with the treasure.
(Hamid breaks the seal...probably not the best choice....)
Hashim: Hamid! What's going on?
(Hamid screams at whatever came out of the sarcophagus....)

Tracy: Jeffrey Daumer or John Wayne Gacy...it's a tie.
Reese: Betty Anne McKinsey.
Tracy: Most deranged serial killers. Who's Betty Anne McKinsey?
Reese: August 16th, '74, Betty Anne murders three children. She binds and gags the parents and makes them watch. Kills the children slowly. The parent's commit suicide in the next two years.
Nick: Why'd she do it?
Reese: She said it was fun.
Tracy: You're making this up, Captain. We would have read about it.
Reese: No, no. You gotta remember, back in those days, that kind of sickness was reserved for the underground tabloid rags. I mean, we bitch about the news nowadays, but we have things like Child Watch. We've got stalker laws now. First defense against evil--open your damn eyes.

Nick: Homicide, Detective Knight.
Divia: There's a corpse in the Raven.
Nick: Who is this?

Vachon: It's not what you think.
LaCroix: How disappointing.
Vachon: Actually its, uh...
Urs: I asked him to come here. I was afraid.
LaCroix: Of?
Urs: I was asleep downstairs and I had a nightmare of...children with their heads cut of. And when I woke up, I'm sure I was awake, and there was a headless child standing over me...and then she was just gone. So, I came up here to call Vachon, and that's when I felt a presence.
LaCroix: A presence?
Urs: Something was here. I don't know what but, it was evil.
LaCroix: Yes... well, this is all very interesting, but I do have a club to open.

Divia: Can you not feel another presence in here, father?
LaCroix: Yes.
Divia: What do you feel?
LaCroix: Evil.

Nick: Put your hands where we can see them.... Please.
LaCroix: I think you'll find what you're looking for here (Gesturing to the box)...and there. (Gesturing to the fridge.)

Reese: You have no idea how the body got there?
LaCroix: None.
Reese: No thoughts on who the victim might be, Mr. LaCroix?
LaCroix: No.
Tracy: Who has access to your club during the off hours?
LaCroix: No one.
Reese: You do have a staff don't you?
Tracy: Presumably the fridges where stocked up after closing time. When was that?
LaCroix: Six a.m. Although I don't recall any of my staff reporting discovering a...decapitated corpse in the beer fridge.
Reese: Assuming you didn't put it there after they left.
LaCroix: Yes, _assuming_ that.
Reese: You spent the night at home?
LaCroix: The club is my home. I went for a stroll shortly after sundown. I can only assume that the body was deposited while I was away.
Reese: Right. Someone breaks in, stuffs a corpse into a fridge and gift wraps its head for you, just for the hell of it.
LaCroix: It's my understanding that discovering a motive is your job.
Nick: Perhaps you should call a lawyer.
Reese: Of course, we'd have to read you your rights, in that case. The charge is murder one.
LaCroix: You may charge me with murder if you wish, based on the evidence, naturally.
Reese: I want him held as a material witness.

LaCroix: Your associates are not without character.
Nick: And your associates...who might have been sleeping in the basement?
LaCroix: They had nothing to do with this, Nicholas. You know that. I have a question for you. How did your people come to know about the body in the first place?
Nick: An anonymous tip.

Reese: He may not be guilty of this, but he sure as hell is guilty of something.

Tracy: Thanks for coming by on such short notice.
Vachon: You forget, time is relative.
Tracy: The guy who owns the Raven, LaCroix?
Vachon: Uh-huh.
Tracy: We got a tip about a murder there. All we found was LaCroix and a victim whose head had been severed from its body. We're holding LaCroix as a material witness.
(She turns...Vachon disappears. She picks up the coin he dropped, and Vachon's inside her car. She gets in.)
Vachon: It's warmer in here.
Tracy: Is LaCroix one of you?
Vachon: (After staring for a moment) No.
Tracy: Well, there was something there. It was a presence. It felt evil. If it wasn't LaCroix, then what was it?
Vachon: Tracy, its natural to get a little rattled by severed heads.
Tracy: Don't run me around here, Vachon, you know what I mean. Evil's a part of you. Maybe that's why we'd never work.
Vachon: What?
Tracy: It's in you. I can feel it and it scares me.
Vachon: What's that got to do with what happened at the Raven?
Tracy: I don't know. I was hoping you could tell me.
Vachon: Sorry.
Tracy: Would you do me a favor?
Vachon: Sure, anything.
Tracy: ...ah, give me a call when you get home.

Vachon: (Approaching a crying girl) Hey, you okay? Did someone hurt you?
Divia: (Turns on him, taking his arm in an unbreakable grip) Lucius hurt me, my father, my son. He betrayed me. Even after I raised him from the ashes of Pompeii. He will pay for his sin. (She attacks him and takes his blood, leaving him there.)

Nick: Yeah, Captain, what's the word?
Reese: (On the phone) The word is.... Are you sitting down? Egyptian police came back with a positive on the Raven fridge crasher. His name is Hamid Karam. He and his brother Hashim are um...grave robbers.
Nick: Egypt?
Reese: They were sacking a sarcophagus in a burial chamber or something, some priest named...Aya-Hotep in the Valley of the Kings. According to the report, the brother lost radio contact with Hamid about 24 hours ago. When he checked the tomb, there was no sign of Hamid. Only his radio and a little blood. Are you there?
Tracy: Yeah, Captain. Just a little dumbfounded I guess.
Reese: We have a major problem here, people. See, we're not the only ones wondering how in the hell an Egyptian national skips town, presumably dead, and winds up a day later in a Toronto beer fridge. Now what do you folks have?
Natalie: Ah, well time of death is about twenty-four hours. Cause of death...not to get to technical about it, I'd uh, say he was torn to shreds.
Reese: By what?
Natalie: Well, I was going to say that it was a...wild animal, but considering he was in a burial chamber, I guess that doesn't make much sense, does it?
Reese: Well, the time frame is enough to smuggle a body into Canada, and no wild animal did that. Figure out who did. Later. (Hangs up)
Natalie: Oh come on, there has got to be some kind of rational explanation for this.
Nick: I guess that clears LaCroix.
Tracy: Yeah. I guess so.

LaCroix: Clearly I have a future as a sobering influence on the disenfranchised.
Nick: You're to be released. Lack of evidence. Your refrigerated friend was Hamid Karam. A grave robber. He was looting an ancient burial chamber in the Valley of the Kings. The tomb of Aya-Hotep.

Divia: The tomb of Aya-Hotep. Chief Priest of the fair Aknenaton(?). The son of the sun god Re'-Atun, Lord of Heaven, or some such nonsense. His is the middle one, flanked by two other priests...or so the people believe.
LaCroix: Why have you brought me here, Divia?
Divia: It is him, my master, my true father. He chose me. Created me before Vesuvius erupted.
LaCroix: The healer. The ancient one.
Divia: Qa-Ra. Said to be among the first of our kind. He lived before the pyramids were built...long before.
LaCroix: Why is he in this place?
Divia: It is here that he was destroyed, staked, scorched by the sun, then interred with the symbol of the sun god to imprison him for all time.
LaCroix: But who did this? Did you take revenge on his killer?
Divia: I could hardly have done so, Lucius, since I killed him.

Nick: LaCroix?
LaCroix: Yes, well I've played according to your rules for long enough, Detective. If I'm to be released, release me.

Tracy: Javier? Vachon? I know you're here. (He attacks her) What are you doing?
Vachon: Ah, make them stop. Please, make it stop.
Tracy: Make what stop, Vachon? Make what stop?
Vachon: The killing, I can't stop the killing. Men, women, and children. Especially children. I see them killing and being killed. I can't stand the pleasure.
Urs: Vachon, look at me. Look at me.
Vachon: Urs....
Urs: Who did this to you?
Vachon: Daughter, mother, daughter....
Urs: What's happening? What's happening to you?
Vachon: I see her visions, her memories.
Urs: Whose visions, whose memories? Vachon, who did this to you, who attacked you?
Vachon: She was so strong--evil. Just a child ...aargh! Get out, Urs. Get out! Before you are destroyed here, staked, and scorched by the sun.
Urs: Javier...?
Vachon: Urs go...please?

Tracy: (Her phone rings) Vetter.
Vachon: Tracy, I know who's doing this. I know why that body was in the Raven.
Tracy: Vachon?
Vachon: Aahhh-
Tracy: Vachon?!

Nightcrawler: The cruelest evil is not some wretched entity manifested in cloven hooves and bleeding goat's head. But how like a child, its soft cries...the sound of all that should be cherished and protected. The father takes a child into his heart in pure love. Unawares.

LaCroix: Hardly a day passed that I didn't think of you and...your daughter. I had word that she was sick and then healed as if by magic.
Seline: Indeed. There came a healer. An ancient one sent by the gods. He asked to be alone with her...Divia rose from her bed that very night.
LaCroix: She's well then?
Seline: Very.
LaCroix: The gods be praised. I must see her.
Seline: No, Lucius, I'd rather that you did not. (Someone calls her name.) Well, I must see to my other guests.
LaCroix: (He stops her with his arm) Seline. We must spend time.
Seline: We shall, Lucius, we shall.
(Seline leaves and Flavius approaches)
Flavius: If that girl be alive and well, then I'm a gladiator. She's pale and silent. She never plays in the sunlight. There's a menace to her, I tell you-
LaCroix: (Seeing Divia across the room.) Divia? (Holds out his arms to her.) Divia? (She walks away.)
Flavius: Strange girl.

Nightcrawler: The child's innocence and purity knows no bounds. Neither does its cruelty when evil comes upon its soul.
Caller (Divia): Hello, Lucius. It's been a very long time.
Nightcrawler: Shouldn't all good little girls be in bed by this time?
Caller (Divia): But I'm not that kind of girl. You know that. Do you know what its like to be betrayed by your own child? To be left alone in the darkness? Hmm. I didn't think so. But you will know soon enough, as your friends die, and the fear of death drives those still alive away from you. Then you'll understand how it feels to be betrayed...and alone.

Nick: Hello?
Urs: It's Urs. I have to talk to you.
Nick: Come on up.

Tracy: Vachon? Vachon, what happened? Vachon?
Vachon: What are you doing here? You have to get out, now.
Tracy: Who did this to you? Vachon talk to me. You said you knew who the murderer is? Vachon?
Vachon: Her thoughts are becoming my thoughts.
Tracy: It's all right. It's okay. You're wounds will heal.
Vachon: I'm not healing. I'm dying.

Natalie: I still don't know what killed her.
Nick: Could it be what killed Hamid Karam?
Natalie: Sure, the probability is high.
Nick: Why didn't Urs regenerate? How could she be killed if she wasn't staked or decapitated? What exactly are we dealing with?
Natalie: Look, this might sound ridiculous but, could it be some new breed of vampire?
(Nick remembers the caller on CERK from earlier--'Hello Lucius, it's been a very long time....')
Nick: A new breed or a very very old one.

Nick: Who is she? The young girl, LaCroix. What is she to you? What is it?
LaCroix: It? It is something that I've never told you. Something too painful for even me to discuss.
Nick: She said you go back a long way. Did you bring her across?
LaCroix: You're still listening to the show? I'm flattered.
Nick: Urs is dead.
LaCroix: You see what my young friend is doing? One by one, people around will be killed until I am left alone, and as isolated, as I left her. The word is out. Being in LaCroix' company can be fatal. She will kill all of you, because of me.
Nick: Because you brought her across?
LaCroix: No. I did not bring Divia across.
Nick: Then who is she?

Flavius: General, General come quickly! The mountain, Vesuvius is on fire!
Divia: Do you want to die, or live? You only have moments to decide.
LaCroix: The gods cannot destroy me! They don't have the power! Come on, come on! I've defeated enemies more powerful than you!

Divia: Let go your mortal bonds, General. We must survive at any cost. Life can cheat death. It will always fine a way. Live or die, what is your decision?
LaCroix: To live, Divia, to live.

Nick: She brought you across?
LaCroix: Spared me the fate of countless thousands...buried alive under a mountain of ash.
Nick: Why did Divia save you?
LaCroix: She is my daughter. Now you understand why I never told you who my master is. One could say that you're related.
Nick: Well, if she saved you back then, why does she want to hurt you now? Where has she been?
LaCroix: Twenty years after Pompeii, I thought her dead and buried, along with the guilt, and the secret that one dare not share. But perhaps it is time to share that secret.

Divia: I've upset you. I didn't mean to.
LaCroix: Does it not trouble you to have killed your own master?
Divia: Why should it?
LaCroix: He was an ancient. His knowledge of our past, of our very beginnings was worthy of respect!
Divia: You think I was wrong. You think I'm cruel and unfeeling.
LaCroix: I didn't say that.
Divia: Yes, you did! I see how you're looking at me. After all I've done for you, how can you sit in judgment?
LaCroix: Divia, I know that I'm here because of you, and I am eternally grateful, but he made you!
Divia: He thought he controlled me! He said he brought me across because I was young, and my evil was as pure as he had ever seen. Then he tried to harness it. To make me in his image. That could not be. I would chose my own way. I did what I had to do to ensure that. Lucius, I want us both to experience everything that our nature offers, without restriction. You don't understand, do you? We are free to do as we please, to kill as often as we desire, bathe in mortal flesh and blood, to do everything that is forbidden. No one can stop us! Everything we lust after can be ours...including love. Let us do what must not be done. Make love to me father.
LaCroix: Divia, no!
Divia: Come to me, Lucius! Do as I say!
LaCroix: You are my daughter!
Divia: Daughter, mother, lover. Why can't I be all three? You need someone to love, Lucius, and I need you. (He turns, vamped out) Yes, come, touch me! (He decapitates her with a scythe)

LaCroix: What can be said about a man that kills his own daughter? I put her remains in the sarcophagus. The sun god on the lid acted on her in much the same way as the cross does on us. That grave robber must have broken the seal.
Nick: You had no choice but to destroy her.
LaCroix: I had a choice! I could have done as Divia asked.
Nick: And despised yourself for it?
LaCroix: No more so than I do now. As a general in the emperor's army, I visited suffering upon my enemies in unspeakable ways. I've seen evil on this earth in all its forms. And yet there was an evil in my own child that I couldn't bear to look upon. An evil that she inherited from me, magnified a hundred times by the one who brought her across. My beautiful daughter.
Nick: How did she regenerate, let alone survive all those years?
LaCroix: Perhaps the evil that permeated the tomb sustained her, I don't know. Does it really matter?
Nick: Do you think she'll come after you?
LaCroix: Not quite yet. There's more killing to be done, after all.
Nick: If you need me....
LaCroix: Thank you, Nicholas.

Vachon: You have to do it. You have to kill me.
Tracy: No.
Vachon: I'll die anyway, I know that now. Please, Tracy.
Tracy: No. Vachon, don't ask me again.
Vachon: There's a whittled stake in that box over there. Get it. Get it! (She gets it, and comes back to him.) Bury it deep. It has to go right through my heart.
Tracy: Look, I can't. (She walks away.)
Vachon: You have to.
Tracy: Vachon.... (She turns back to him.)
Vachon: (Throws himself on the stake, and is lowered to the ground) Tracy....
Tracy: Javier.**
Vachon: Wish me luck.

(**Could be 'I'm here, but I think it's Javier.)

Nick: We've got nothing on him.
Reese: You're telling me LaCroix doesn't exist?
Nick: Not to us, he doesn't. He's clean.
Reese: And his staff?
Nick: Well, we've checked. They're all accounted for. They're clean.
Reese: So we just write it off, huh? Shrug, and put it down to ghosts or aliens or something? Come on, Nick. The truth is out there.
Nick: Yeah, but maybe just not in our jurisdiction. Where's my partner, by the way?
Reese: She didn't tell you? No, of course not, why should she, she's only your partner. She said something about going to see a snitch.

Tracy: I never got to tell you how I felt about you. Maybe you knew. I hope you did. You changed me. You opened my eyes, and I'll always...I'll always love you for that. I'll take you to Screed, to be with your friend.

Nick: There was nothing I could do for her. And there's no one she can talk to about Vachon.
Natalie: I'm afraid that I'm going to find myself in exactly the same situation. You've got a 2000-year-old little girl who's out to kill anyone whose close to her Daddy, and no one is closer than you.
Nick: Don't worry. I'll watch my back.

Nick: Divia.
Divia: He told you about me? You know why I'm here?
Nick: You've come to kill me.
Divia: Don't take it personally, but you are LaCroix' son. Your death will be the final blow. It will be worse for you if you try to fight me. But that's up to you. Ready?

LaCroix: If I didn't know better I'd almost say that you had grown, my dear.
Divia: In all the centuries I've had to think of you and what you might be doing, I never imagined you would rise to the lofty position of innkeeper. But, in my as yet brief taste of freedom, I've found that nothing in the world is as I expected, or ever dreamt.
LaCroix: Why are you here Divia? To gloat?
Divia: Why not? I've won. You're alone. Now perhaps you can begin to feel what it was like for me. The centuries I'd expected to spend loving you and caring for you, spent instead in darkness and isolation. You cannot imagine the hatred I have for you. How can you have done that to me father? I loved you! (Throws him across the room)
LaCroix: You are a sick, depraved little girl! I always thought evil was a finite entity, until you showed me otherwise. Even I have my limits, Divia!
Divia: Then you are as weak as those we preyed upon.
(She throws him on the bar)
Divia: Say you're sorry.
LaCroix: You should have stayed dead!
Divia: You're in pain. How I wished to see that.
LaCroix: Now your wish has come true and all that remains is for you to kill me.
Divia: And deny you the pain and loneliness? No. You must exist forever with the knowledge that you destroyed everyone who is dear to you. Your friends, lovers, daughter, mother...and now your son.
LaCroix: What do you mean?
Divia: Nicholas, I believe was his name. One always recognizes family. But he was your favorite, wasn't he?
(LaCroix attempts to attack her)
Divia: Your son is dead! How does that feel? Tell me how it feels? (She scratches him)
LaCroix: I'm not going to let you leave here, Divia. There's enough misery in the world already.
Divia: Oh, but there's always room for more. (She kicks him) Are you going to stop me, General? You and, as they say, whose army?
(She throws him through the sound booth's glass, and then pushes his throat down on the broken glass)
Divia: Poor father, does it hurt? Tell me that it hurts. Do you feel this? Say you're sorry. Tell me that you love me. Go on. Say it.
LaCroix: If you kill me, my suffering will be over.
Divia: You know, I'm not sure that's true. Damnation, when I come to think of it, is a fitting sentence for your crime. (Pulling out scythe) Recognize this, father?
LaCroix: When we were mortal, I loved you more than the gods, but now...how can anyone love anything as grotesque as you?
(Divia raises the scythe, and Nick stakes her...she falls to the ground and Nick helps LaCroix up.)
Divia: Father?
LaCroix: Divia?
Nick: (Restraining LaCroix from going to her) No.
Divia: Don't let me die!
LaCroix: Divia!
Nick: No!
Divia: Father...?

LaCroix: They say that there's no greater suffering for a parent than to outlive his child. Fortunately, there are exceptions. I never thought I'd say this, Nicholas, but for once I'm glad of your insistent search for your humanity. Perhaps your resurgent goodness was all that was needed to defeat Divia's evil.
Nick: Urs and Vachon were young, they did not know how to deal with it. I'm sorry for your loss, LaCroix.
LaCroix: Thank you. Urs' body?
Nick: I've had Natalie take care of that.
LaCroix: And Vachon?
Nick: Tracy buried him next to Screed. She knows what they were.
LaCroix: Indeed. Is this going to be a problem?
Nick: Vachon once told me she's a resister. But, I've seen you work around that.
LaCroix: What exactly would you like her to remember?
Nick: That Vachon was a good friend. A vampire who decided it was time to move on.
LaCroix: A vampire?
Nick: The knowledge of our existence was Vachon's gift to her. We have no right to take that away.
LaCroix: If that is what you wish. I will stay here with Divia until her body is turned to ashes and then commit them to the wind. I may even say a prayer.
Nick: Goodnight, LaCroix.
LaCroix: Nicholas....