Nothing the Same, Ch's 2 & 3

“I’m really worried about Xander.” Willow set her books down on the table and looked at Giles and Buffy, who were leafing through books at the library table. Well, Giles was leafing. Buffy looked like she was just turning pages. Which, she supposed was leafing, but somehow “leafing” seemed to imply actually looking for something…

Bringing her wayward thoughts back on track, she continued: “He’s been skipping a lot of classes, and he hasn’t been doing any homework. I usually help him and…” she faltered, not wanting to say Jesse’s name. She knew how guilty Buffy felt about his death. “and he hasn’t been coming over to study lately,” she finished lamely.

Giles spoke reassuringly, “It’s not unusual for people to have a hard time dealing with supernatural encounters. Most prefer to pretend it never happened. I know that, at first, Xander was very interested, but the second encounter at the Bronze appears to have been too much for him. The bigger surprise is that you have continued to remain interested and helpful.” He gave her a warm smile, really she had proved most helpful with her computer skills. From what little Giles knew of him, he doubted that Xander wouldn’t have been able to bring anything useful to their work. It was undoubtedly for the best that the boy obviously couldn’t deal with the reality of the Hellmouth.

“I don’t think that’s the problem.”

“Giles is right, Willow. Xander has barely even spoken to me since that night at the Bronze. I’m sorry we haven’t become friends, but it’s probably for the best. I know he meant well, but it was pretty stupid of him to go charging down into the tunnels after me without any weapons or any way to help. He could have gotten us both killed. You’ve been much more helpful with your computer and researching skills.” She gave her friend a wide smile. Willow actually liked all the research stuff and having her helping with that end of things really cut down on how much Giles got on her about needing to learn more about demons. She already knew everything she needed to know about vampires and with Giles and Willow to fill her in on what she needed to know about the various demons and other weirdities, she was good to go.

Willow was torn. She didn’t want to bring up Jesse and hurt Buffy, and she didn’t want them to misjudge Xander that way. It was Buffy’s argument that swayed her. If she brought Xander into their little club (the “Slayerettes” as she secretly thought of herself and Giles, although she would never tell Giles that) he would insist on helping. Xander had never won a fistfight in his life, but he had gotten into several, defending her or Jesse from someone. He’d be like that as a Slayerette. And while Larry or Kyle wouldn’t kill him, vampires would. She sighed. Maybe she needed to figure out how to have two separate sets of friends, who didn’t overlap. “So” she said brightly. “What’s the demon du jour? You guys look all research-y.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

He buried the little vase holding Jesse’s ashes in a small park on the outskirts of town. It had never been much of a park, just a scrap of moderately tended lawn and a few benches, but he and Jesse had liked it because it was unpopular and they could hang out there and not be found. It was their place, not even Willow went there with them. They would lie on the grass and read their comic books and talk. It was their refuge when they needed guy time - wrestling and comic books and rude jokes that Willow didn’t approve of.

He didn’t even tell Willow what he was doing. He couldn’t. Not after she’d said she was glad that vampire-Jesse was dead. Maybe he was being unfair, Xander thought, as his shovel bit into the turf. He knew Willow missed Jesse but she seemed to be forgetting him already, and it hadn’t even been a week yet. Jesse’s death was still an open bleeding wound in his own heart, and seeing Willow laughing and talking with Buffy infuriated him. The few times they’d talked, all Willow did was go on and on about was how great Buffy was and how cool it was to be learning all this new stuff about demons. It felt like he’d lost both of his best friends.

Xander discovered that his angry, racing thoughts had been matched by similar shovel work and the hole was already well over a foot deep. Surprised, he stopped and decided the hole was deep enough. Setting the shovel down, he knelt and picked up the vase, settling it gently into the hole.

“I talked to your mom today, Jesse. I told her that the girl you left the Bronze with that night was one of the gang members that took over the Bronze and killed those people the next day.” As he spoke, he was scooping dirt back into the hole with his hands, patting it into place around the little vase. The afternoon was fading and he shivered as a small breeze began to rustle the leaves nearby. “I told her that I was afraid that you were dead, because I knew you would have contacted either her or me otherwise. I told her there was no way you had run away, that I would have known if you were planning something like that.”

“Sorry, man. That was the best I could come up with. I really needed you on this one, you were always better than me at coming up with convincing lies.” A lopsided smile twisted his lips for a moment “Yeah, yeah, I know you could have done better, could have come up with something colorful, with flair. Hell, you probably would have just told my parents that I was a vampire and that I would stop by one night to kill them. You would have left out the part where I was dust and couldn’t hurt them. But your mom is too cool for that.”

He sighed, his hands still absently smoothing the dirt in the now-refilled hole. “She misses you, man. She’s really hurting. She’s not the only one.” The last part was added in a shaky whisper that barely reached the ears of the just wakened vampire heading for the warehouse district.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

After his aborted attempt at conversation with the vampire, Xander walked home. Willow and Buffy were at the Bronze, he knew. He had turned down Willow’s invitation to join them. Right now, he wasn’t sure he would ever be able to go to the Bronze again. The thought of stepping on a missed speck of dust near a certain metal beam made his stomach churn until he was sure that just walking through the doors of the club would cause him to throw up. Even home was better than that.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Xander entered the library with his excuse ready. His shoes sounded loud in the quiet and no one was obviously present. “Hello?” he called, “anyone here?”

There was no answer from the silent stacks and he headed towards the librarian’s office. “Just little old me,” he muttered to himself, “nothing going on here.” From what he had learned, the librarian generally ate lunch in his office most days, but there was some sort of teacher’s meeting he had on Tuesdays during lunch period which kept him out of the library for most of the hour. Buffy and Willow always ate lunch together and he had been ducking Willow’s invitations to join them.

Until now, he, Jesse, and Willow had pretty much always eaten lunch together. He resented Willow including Buffy in their lunches. It felt like she was trying to replace Jesse and create a new threesome, but it wasn’t the same. He and Jesse could talk all day, and Willow had always been right in it with them. Even when they were entering their teens and boys and girls usually started hanging in same sex groups, they had remained the three musketeers. Willow would call them on their “boy stuff” and they would tease her about being “girly” but it had always felt like there was nothing they couldn’t talk about. Yeah, he and Jesse had their special “guy” times without Willow, but it had always been the three of them. Jesse’s loss felt like part of himself had been amputated and there was Willow, cheerfully telling him that the artificial limb she wanted to graft on in Jesse’s place was just as good as the real one.

With Buffy in the mix, awkward pauses were more common than not. He could tell they were holding back, keeping things from him, and both Buffy and Willow were the worst secret keepers he could imagine. They used transparent “codes” and had unbelievably lame excuses and explanations to cover what were obvious references to Slayer stuff.

He’d gotten pissy about it, the second time Willow had conned him into lunch with her only to bring Buffy along as well. Xander was already tired of Buffy’s attitude - it wasn’t anything she said, really, it was more the way she said it. It was obvious she thought he’d freaked and couldn’t handle the idea of vampires and the Hellmouth, and he was pretty sure she thought he was a coward. Other than Cordelia, he didn’t think he’d ever met anyone who was so sure they were right about everything.

So, he’d called them on it. Told them both to stop acting like he was too dumb to know what they were talking about. That he was neither brain dead nor an amnesiac and he could remember the events of last week just fine. “Do you honestly think I’ve forgotten that vampires exist and that Buffy is the Slayer?”

“Xander!” Willow hissed. “Not so loud.”

“Look, I get that you’re secret identity gal. But the two of you talk about it all the time and then act like you think I don’t know what you’re talking about and, frankly, it’s pissing me off.” He’d left and since that day had been avoiding Willow around lunch time. She and Buffy were pretty much joined at the hip these days, so he spent less and less time with Willow. And did his best to hide, even from himself, the flare of hurt that Willow didn’t seek him out, that she was obviously choosing Buffy over him.

The library office was locked. Well, he and Jesse hadn’t had a cool, barely reformed, ex-juvenile delinquent as a Scout leader in fifth grade for nothing. In addition to some of the more normal scouting activities, he’d taught the troop to hotwire cars and pick locks. He’d claimed they were useful skills for when you lost your keys. They didn’t earn many merit badges, and one of the parents got wind of the lessons and that was the end of the scout troop for several years. But he and Jesse had thought lock picking was cool and had practiced for months until they were both pretty good.

The lock on the door to the librarian’s office was child’s play.

Inside the room, were bookcases filled with old books, many of them leather bound. He scanned the titles quickly, those that had titles printed on the spine anyway. Terrific, there were at least 10 books titled “Vampyres” or something similar. Pulling one out at random, he opened it and checked for a table of contents. There wasn’t one. Nobody seemed to want to make this easy for him. He flipped through the book, reading a paragraph here and there at random and decided this one would do. He shifted the books on the shelf so the gap wasn’t obvious and slipped out of the office, tucking the book into his backpack.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Xander, wait up.”

He turned at Willow’s call and waited for her, glad that for once she wasn’t with Buffy.

“Where’ve you been? I’ve hardly seen you in classes all week.”

He couldn’t tell her that he’d been cutting school to read the books he stole from the library, so he just shrugged.

“Well, you missed a lot. Poor Dr. Gregory was killed but I’m so glad you missed the crazy substitute teacher we had for two days, she was horrible.” Willow couldn’t help but be glad that Xander had chosen to skip the two days that crazy bug-lady Natalie French had been their teacher. Seeing Xander drooling over her like every other boy in class had would have really bothered her. “But Xander, you’re going to flunk out if you don’t start going to classes again.”

“I know. Look, I’m here, ready to be all studious again.” Even to himself, his humor sounded flat.

“Do you want to get together after school? I can help you catch up with what you’ve missed.”

Xander smiled and Willow felt like cheering. It was the first time she’d seen him smile since Jesse died. “Be my study-buddy? That would be good. You’re right, I need to catch up.”

Willow continued cheerfully, “Why don’t you, me, and Buffy get together for a long study session this weekend? We can meet at my house and…” her voice faltered to a stop and she could have kicked herself as Xander’s smile died and his eyes hardened.

“Thanks, I’ll pass.” He turned to leave and Willow grabbed his arm to stop him.

“Why won’t you give her a chance? You’d like her, I know you would. Why won’t you even talk to her?”

“Because your wonderful Buffy damn near killed me the second day I knew her!”

“That wasn’t her fault! You followed her into the tunnels, she told you -”

“That’s not what I’m talking about. That night at the Bronze, she decapitated a vampire by Frisbee-ing a cymbal at it. Well, that vampire had me pinned from behind. She didn’t give me a heads up or anything. If I hadn’t turned and seen the cymbal coming at me and been able to duck at the last second, it would have killed both of us.” Xander hadn’t even realized how much that still bothered him until he heard the angry words spilling out of him. At the time, the incident had been forgotten immediately given what happened right afterwards.

“But you didn’t die. Buffy knows what she’s doing. I’m sure…”

“I don’t want to hear it. I don’t trust her and I don’t trust Mr. Giles and I haven’t seen any reason to change my mind about either of them.”

Willow watched him go with tears in her eyes. Why wouldn’t Xander talk to her anymore? Why couldn’t she fix things between them?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Xander had been sitting in the little park for some time, reading, or at least trying to. Reading implied comprehension, he thought with vague resentment, not struggling through paragraph after paragraph of long-winded boringness. Of all the books he'd borrowed from the library office, this one was by far the worst.

He'd taken to bringing the books to the little park and sitting on the grass near Jesse's grave while he tried to learn more about vampires. Sometimes, like now, he found himself talking casually to Jesse, like they were both sprawled on the grass, drinking sodas and reading comic books. Only, instead of debating the relative merits of Sabertooth and Wolverine, he'd argue out loud about Van Holtzing’s theories versus McCafferty’s. After four of the librarian’s books on vampires, his head was spinning with words like fledgling, minion, and childer. The only thing the books seemed to agree on was that vampires existed. Other than that, the various authors disagreed on everything - how vampires were created, their culture, relationships, feeding patterns, you name it, he’d read at least two different theories on it.

He sighed, putting the book down. "I’m not getting anywhere with these books. And Mr. Giles has like a thousand more. I’ve got to try something else. Plus, I really am going to flunk out if I skip any more school.”

Restlessly, he began plucking handfuls of grass and letting it trickle back down through his fingers. “I talked to your mom again. I offered to mow her lawn and stuff,

but I think seeing me just makes her feel worse.” Every time he saw her, Mrs. McNally looked like she was going to burst into tears. She tried to talk to him, but she just ended up crying and that made him feel worse. Frustrated, he picked up the book and shoved it into his backpack. “I’ve gotta go. I won’t be able to come by as often for awhile. There’s some stuff I’ve got to do.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Later that afternoon, Xander stood in front of his closet. There wasn’t a whole lot of choice inside, and most of it was unsuitable for what he planned on doing. He found himself yanking a lime green shirt off the hanger and tossing it onto the bed. One after the other, bright colored shirts and sweaters were thrown across the room to join it in a rapidly growing pile on the bed. When he was done, there were only a couple of things left hanging in the closet, all dark.

He took off the light blue shirt he had on and added it to the pile, then pulled one of the remaining shirts out of the closet. Buttoning it up, he studied the mess on the bed, wondering at the sudden revulsion he felt for all of his brightly colored wardrobe. None of it felt like something he would ever wear again, it felt wrong somehow, like he should be wearing mourning colors. As he went downstairs to get a garbage bag, he wondered if the thrift store would allow him to trade it all in for a couple of dark colored shirts.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

He was waiting outside Buffy’s house as the sun set. He’d learned from Willow that, most nights, Buffy climbed out her window in the early evening and went vampire hunting. Since the books weren’t helping, and talking to a vampire hadn’t worked, he’d decided to follow her and see what happened. At the very least, he figured she would know where the vampires were.

An hour later, he was still waiting and thoroughly bored. He could tell she was in the house, because he caught glimpses of her and her mother through the living room windows. He was sitting on the ground, leaning against a tree, fighting off sleep when he heard a soft thump of something landing on the grass not far away. Jerking upright, he saw Buffy straighten up from where she’d obviously jumped from the window of her second story bedroom. Straightening her clothes, she walked off down the sidewalk.

Xander gave her a minute before moving to follow. Staying a block behind her, he simply walked down the sidewalk at the same pace as her, not trying to hide. That way, if she spotted him, he could just say he was out for a walk and not following her.

She turned into the Restfield cemetery and began what appeared to be an aimless ramble through it. If she was following some kind of search pattern, he couldn’t figure it out as he trailed behind her, moving from tombstone to tombstone. They’d traversed at least half the cemetery when he heard voices and the sound of blows.

Moving closer, he saw that Buffy was fighting with a vampire. It was male, and wearing what the books called its “true face”, “demon face” or “game face”, and growling as it attacked. Buffy settled into the pattern he remembered from the crypt that night: a flurry of blows, then a pause while insults were exchanged, then more blows. Watching, Xander realized what a dumb idea this had been. He wasn’t going to learn anything except that Buffy was stronger and faster than humans, and he already knew that.

Buffy kicked the vampire again, then pulled out a stake and stabbed it cleanly in the heart. Xander gasped as the dark haired vampire vanished in an explosion of dust, pain twisting in his gut at the sight. The pain felt almost physical for a moment, and he doubled over, clinging to the tombstone. After a long minute, he straightened up, still clinging white-knuckled to the tombstone for support. He looked up to find Buffy staring in his direction, her stake ready.

“You might as well come out and face me. If I have to come after you, it’s just going to piss me off. And you won’t like me when I’m cranky.”

He briefly considered trying to sneak away, but then stepped out into the open, joining her in the patch of moonlit ground.

“Xander? What the hell are you doing here?”

“Just out for a walk?”

“Are you following me?”

He shrugged. “Guess so.”

“Do you have any idea of how dangerous that is?” When he just shrugged again, she stalked towards him. “Why are you following me?”

“I wanted to see what you did for a living.”

“Go home, Xander. Personally, I think you’re an idiot, but Willow would be really upset if you get killed.” She glared up at him, hands on her hips.

He crossed his arms stubbornly. “It’s a free cemetery.”

“I do not get you. You know vampires exist and you’re wandering through cemeteries at night like some kind of all you can eat buffet.” She shook her head in disgust. “Go home.”

“Fine, I’m gone.” Buffy watched him leave, wondering what the hell that had been about. She tucked the stake back inside her jacket and set off for her own home.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Two weeks later and Xander was getting nowhere. He’d read five more books he’d taken from Mr. Giles’ collection and watched Buffy stake another vampire, but he still didn’t really know anything more about vampires than he had the night Jesse died.

On the school front, things were getting deeply weird. The whole school was still reeling from Principal Flutie’s death. Sure, Sunnydale had always had a high body count, but three bodies on the high school campus in less than two months was bad even by Sunnydale standards.

He’d made arrangements with the guidance counselor to skip some class activities and use the time for make-up tests and extra study time, so he was caught up in all his classes and no longer in danger of flunking out. Ironically, all the time he’d spent reading books on vampires seemed to have improved his ability to focus on his school work. In the last few years, he’d gotten so used to studying with Willow that he’d gotten really lazy about doing his own work. Jesse and he had figured out years ago that, if they played dumb for long enough, Willow would give them the answers.

He’d found a balance that was working for now. He went to class, did his homework, and read the books he continued to take out of the library. He talked to Willow once in awhile, but they couldn’t seem to really connect anymore. The secrets they were both keeping from each other made a wall between them that they couldn’t seem to get past. He’d talked it over with Jesse - and how crazy did that sound? - but he couldn’t seem to resolve his conflicted feelings about Willow.

And then he overheard a conversation that shattered his fragile peace.

That afternoon, he fell into step with Willow as she headed home after her last class.

“Xander!”

He ignored her beaming smile. “I heard you guys talking this morning. Why is it that this Angel gets a pass? He’s a vampire, right? Buffy’s supposed to be a vampire Slayer. So how come she makes an exception for vampires she’s dating? Why him and not anyone else?”

Willow sighed. Well, at least he was talking to her. “It’s complicated Xander. Angel has a soul.”

“What?”

“He was cursed by gypsies. They restored his soul.”

Xander laughed. “Do you have any idea how stupid that sounds?”

“I know it sounds weird, but it was like 100 years ago. Giles says there’s no record of him killing anyone since.”

Xander shook his head. Anger had been growing inside him all day, ever since he had overheard the conversation between Buffy, Willow and Mr. Giles about the vampire Buffy had been dating. It was one thing to accept the concept of a Slayer whose role was to kill all vampires. Somehow, learning that she wanted to make an exception for her boyfriend seemed wrong on so many levels. It was like she was setting herself up as God, deciding who lived and who died. They had all shouted him down when he told them he could reach Jesse. No, Jesse was a vampire, he had to die. But not, apparently, Angel.

“You know,” he began, quietly enough. “I’ve read almost a dozen books about vampires now. Mr. Giles is telling you only one theory about them. There are several writers who believe the human lives on in the vampire. Some even think the human and demon eventually merge, so that the demon becomes more like the human.”

“Xander, we’ve been through this. The demon takes over the body. The memories are still there, but it isn’t the person anymore.”

“Did you even listen to what Mr. Giles said this morning? He said that vampires have the movements, the memories, and even the personality of the human. How can all of that remain if the person is gone?

“Maybe you’re right. But the person’s soul is gone. That’s why Angel is different.”

“Ax murderers have souls, Willow. Hitler, Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, they all had souls. Hell, my dad has a soul, not that he does much with it. Far as I can tell, having a soul doesn’t mean squat.”

“Ok, but Angel’s been helping us out. He’s warned Buffy about a bunch of things and helped save her life more than once.” She hurried on when it was obvious Xander wasn’t impressed. “Why don’t you join us in the library? You could help us research and maybe we could answer your questions. Maybe if you met Angel you could see how different he is from other vampires.”

“So, Buffy’s not going to stake him?”

“Well…, not as long as he’s not killing or doing anything bad. She’s going to let him prove himself to her,” Willow said hesitantly, she didn’t understand where Xander was going with this and she didn’t want to have another argument with him. He was always on the edge of anger these days. Moody and always wearing dark clothes, sometimes she wondered where her Xander had gone and if she would ever see him again.

Xander didn’t say anything for a long time, and Willow just walked quietly beside him. This was the longest they had been together in weeks and she would take what she could get. They were approaching her house before he spoke again.

“So, where does the souled vampire live, these days? A crypt like other self-respecting vampires?”

Willow shot him a suspicious look, but Xander was gazing straight ahead, his serious expression belying his flippant tone. Willow couldn’t see the harm in answering, it wasn’t like she really knew where Angel lived. “He has an apartment somewhere near the Bronze.”

“Does he work? You know, night watchman, late night phone sex operator?”

Willow laughed at the idea. “Somehow, I don’t think so. Even Buffy doesn’t really know much about him yet. He’s like 240 years old, isn’t that wild? I mean, imagine the history he’s seen.”

“Maybe Buffy can bring him to history class for show and tell.” They’d reached her house and were standing by the front door. Willow asked hopefully, “Do you want to come in?”

Xander smiled. “Let’s not push our luck. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Goodnight, Xander.” Willow stood on her porch watching him until he was out of sight, then went inside. Her parents weren’t home and Buffy would probably be out patrolling. Sighing, she switched on her computer. Maybe there would be someone fun in the chatrooms tonight.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“You know, you can back off any time now.” Buffy glared at Xander. Once again, Willow was upset and on the verge of tears because of something Xander had said to her and she was sick of it. Willow was fragile enough after the whole Malcolm/Moloch fiasco without Xander dumping on her too. And Giles had not been thrilled to learn that Xander had been reading his books and was now talking about moving all of the more sensitive volumes into the weapons cage for greater security and she just knew who was going to end up doing the moving.

“Everything is so black and white for you. Must be nice.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Exactly what it sounded like. You’re like: all vampires are bad, except for Angel, who’s 100% good. And that’s just idiotic. As I hear it, Angel got cursed with a soul and sat on his ass for 100 years and didn’t do squat for anybody. The soul didn’t make him good, just because he stopped killing, it just made him useless.” Xander’s latest purloined book had been an old Watcher’s journal that had made some passing references to Buffy’s boyfriend.

“Leave Angel out of this. Vampires are evil, soulless demons. It is as simple as that. That’s why the Slayer line exists, to keep them in check.”

“Yeah, well that’s why wolves exist, to keep the deer population from overrunning the world. Doesn’t make wolves evil, it’s just what they do.”

“What vampires do is kill people. That’s different. When wolves start killing people, they’re hunted down and killed.” Buffy raised her eyebrows at him, daring him to keep the analogy going.

“Ok, good point,” he conceded. Changing tack, he tried again. “Look, vampires are people who are possessed by a demon. That’s how your Mr. Giles explained it the first day I learned vampires exist.”

“For god’s sake, Xander, he was giving you the Reader’s Digest condensed version, just before telling you to butt out.”

“Buffy, I’ve read way more of his books than you probably ever will and the Watcher party line is just one theory, the one that best supports their ‘stake first ask questions never’ policy. Tell me, if all vampires are irredeemably evil, why do you have to protect the weekly blood shipment to the hospital? Why are the vampires even interested in bagged blood if they’re all evil?”

“It’s an emergency supply thing.” Buffy said dismissively. “Who knows, maybe it’s their version of snack food.”

“Has it ever occurred to you that most of the vampires you deal with have just risen? Maybe they’re the demon equivalent of babies - interested in only eating and sleeping.”

“Babies don’t kill people when they eat.”

Xander sighed, the argument hadn’t helped clear up anything in his own mind, and he could tell Buffy hadn’t really listened to anything he’d tried to say. And maybe she shouldn’t. It still came down to the fact that newly made vampires killed humans, live and let live just didn’t work as a policy towards them. “I know,” he said finally. “I’m not saying I have any answers, I’m just saying that there are questions that someone needs to ask.”

“And who made you that someone?”

He looked away. Jesse did. “Got nothing better to do right now,” he shrugged.

“Well find something better. Because you are seriously getting on my last nerve.” With that, Buffy spun on her heel and left.

Xander sat down at one of the desks and buried his head in his hands. What the hell was he trying to prove anyway? Buffy was right, who made him the advocate for no automatic death penalty for vampires? Ok, he did know the answer to that one but, if the theory was right, that the older a vampire was, the more control it had, he still didn’t have any solution. It wasn’t like they could let vampires kill anyone they wanted for however many years it took for them to stop killing indiscriminately. And how much better was a vampire who only killed selectively? If a vampire only killed one Hitler a week, did that make it ok? And who divvied out the scarlet V’s? Were there enough truly bad people in the world who deserved a vampire death sentence to support the vampire population?

Realizing that his thoughts had led him down a path where he was seriously contemplating the idea of a government agency appointed to choose vampire victims, worse, that his mind was busy coming up with acronyms for the new agency, he groaned and began beating his head against the desk. He’d known for a long time that he was unhealthily obsessed - not that there is anything unhealthy about a hobby of spying on serial killers with preternaturally sharp senses and twice my strength and speed - but he just couldn’t let it go. It was like the only way he could deal with Jesse’s death was to learn everything there was to know about the thing that had taken over his body. Because, god, he wanted so badly to be able to say, once and for all, that they had killed Jesse, and that his hands were clean. Maybe then the nightmares would stop.

~~~~~~~~~~~