Cage Match: Eric Northman vs. Drusilla

I hope that Joss Whedon fans are pumped for the first semifinal, which after Angel's decisive thumping of Damon Salvatore 25-6, comes down to Angel and Spike. I'll tell you right now, that fight's going to be too close to call. I will leave it in the capable hands of my tens of fans.

But before we can get there, we have two more fights to get through, the first of them today between another Whedonverse favourite, Drusilla, and Eric Northman of True Blood. Drusilla won the coin toss, and has opted to fight in ... well, I'll let you see for yourself.

HOW I THINK THE FIGHT WILL GO:

Eric peers around at the surreal landscape, which looks like a cross between the fevered imaginings of Lewis Carroll and Christina Rossetti. Drusilla, he has learned, was cursed with clairvoyance in her mortal life in Victorian England, and driven crazy with religious guilt by Angelus before being turned. The result was a deeply unstable, highly unpredictable and exceptionally cruel vampire. Eric is confident in his own power and strength, but in his long life has learned to be wary of the caprices of an insane mind.

He senses her before he sees her.

"Pretty boy," she coos, her singsong voice echoing eerily around the murky storybook landscape. "I do so love my pretty, pretty boys. So much tastier than the repulsive child of the snow and dark."

Eric favours her with a long, appraising look. Drusilla stands about thirty feet away, under the branches of a gnarled and massive tree whose trunk, Eric realizes with a jolt, is twisted into a cruelly expressive face. Drusilla wears a simple white dress, and has draped over her shoulders a deep crimson wrap. She is barefoot.

"This is you, isn't it?" Eric asks, gesturing around him. "This place. This is some sort of manifestation of your own mind."

She gives a high, trilling laugh. "They said, they said, choose your territory. Where are you most at home, I was asked."

In your own mind, Eric thinks in reply. He peers into the gloom of the sinister cartoon forest, whose rustles in the nonexistent breeze sound like the whispers of a dozen voices.

Eric does not move, but stands with feigned nonchalance, staring intently at Drusilla. For the first time, she seems slightly discomfited.

"Will you not come and join me, my pretty boy?" she sings out to him, but he hears the slight quaver in her voice.

"I think not." Eric smiles. "I am very old, Drusilla ... much older than you, and I really have no need to hurry. I can stand here as long as is necessary."

She frowns, and clucks her tongue in annoyance. "So very, very boring. The ugly child of snow and dark liked to play."

Yes, I imagine that was his undoing, Eric thinks.

Drusilla emerges from beneath the tree, letting her crimson shawl trail behind her like a silken wound. "Do not be boring, my pretty boy. Come play with me."

Eric does not move. Drusilla flashes past him, letting the wrap float on the air. Eric raises his hand in time to block the loop of piano wire Drusilla had hidden in the shawl. As she yanks on the wire, he wraps his hand in it and hauls forward. Drusilla finds herself pulled toward Eric as he throws his head back to crunch into her face. Whiplike, he spins around, pulling the wire from her stunned hands and winding it around her neck.

"You know, someone once said that the definition of insanity was doing the same thing twice and expecting a different result," he says conversationally. "I've never quite understood that." He tightens the wire and watches Drusilla explode in dust.

Projected Winner: ERIC NORTHMAN