Cage Match: Drusilla vs. Marlow

Sorry about the delay in getting back to this. See last post for explanation.

Well, unsurprisingly David went down to Eric Northman 15-5, but the bad boy vamp lives on as a tortured anti-terrorist agent. Perhaps it will turn out that Eric is actually the mastermind behind this season's monstrous conspiracy; he'll find a more difficult opponent in Jack Bauer, and that possible plot line has the added merit of being no more ludicrous than any other we've seen over the last eight seasons of 24. Though I have been pleased to see that Katie Sackhoff's character has turned out to be a badass double agent—I was concerned she would be the whimpering, whiny character she initially was for the entire season. Somehow that just seemed beneath the dignity for the actress who portrayed Kara "Starbuck" Thrace.

But I digress. Today's fight features everybody's favourite looney-tunes vamp, Drusilla from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Marlow, the leader of a pack of feral vampires from 30 Days of Night. When I told them to call the coin toss, Dru started chanting nursery rhymes and Marlow tried to eat the hand holding the coin. So I made an executive decision and shipped them off to Barrow, Alaska.

HOW I THINK THE FIGHT WILL GO:

The snow crunches under Drusilla's bare feet as she stalks through the night-shrouded town. She does not feel the cold, and with her pale skin and thin white dress she might easily fade into the snowy landscape. Only her black hair and silken crimson shawl, which she lets trail from her hands, stand her out against the background in stark relief. Somewhere deep in her addled mind, beneath the polyphony of voices constantly talking to her, she knows quite shrewdly the figure she cuts. She knows that, crazy as she may be, she has style.

Not so much her opponent, one of those voices whispers to her disdainfully. He emerges from the darkness, seeming almost to shamble as he shuffles cautiously toward her. An old, stained and ragged suit, and a fierce mouth full of sharklike teeth. Some might see the feral hunger in his dead eyes and feel dread, but Drusilla has long been insulated against such trivialities as fear.

She clucks her tongue. "Ugly, ugly child," she croons, "teeth so sharp, eyes so cold, so very very ugly and old."

Marlow pauses, cocking his head in puzzlement as Drusilla talks. He spits words back at her in a guttural and raspy tongue.

"Clickety click goes the ugly child," Drusilla responds, "so hungry, so base, so wild."

Marlow, unused to prey so unafraid of him and so indifferent to his hunger, feels an odd emotion well up in him—rage. With a high-pitched screech, he launches himself at Drusilla, his clawlike hands grasping for her throat.

Drusilla whirls like a matador, her crimson wrap goading Marlow, now practically gibbering with fury. She pirouettes, evading his lunges, all balletic grace in the face of his animal strength. As he grazes past her, she leaves a lithe foot in his path, and he falls face first into the snow. All at once Drusilla is on his back. Her wrap goes floating off on the wind, and she winds the piano wire she had secreted in its seam around Marlow's neck.

So fragile is the ugly child," she sings in his ear. "So silly to lose his head, so foolish ... that now he's dead."

With a strength that belies her tiny frame, Drusilla hauls back on the wire. Marlow's head goes rolling off into the snow.

Projected Winner: DRUSILLA