Hood reaches the body at the same time that Hy-Jinx appears at the clifftop overlooking the beach. As he rolls the limp mass over he breathes both a sigh of relief and a gasp of despair, for the body is Madeleine, soaked through and lifeless. Dragging her from the tidal grasp, he turns her head to one side and presses several times on her diaphragm, water dribbling out from the mask’s mouth. Then sitting cross legged he slowly closes his eyes and breathes deeply, centring his mind and concentrating. His voice murmurs, his hands weave the air, and a blue nimbus of light coalesces into a small spinning orb before him. Gathering it in cupped hands he leans forward over Madeleine’s body, and inverting his palms, presses them onto, and the energy ball into, her chest. Madeleine’s body shudders, shudders again and Madeleine suddenly sits up, retching out salt water and swaying weakly, before collapsing back onto the sand. Hood carefully leans over his friend, looking for the spark in her one good eye. Madeleine, her chest, rising and falling slowly - a very good sign - reaches up a hand and places it on the side of Hood’s face, before patting him gently. She takes the time to breath twice again before speaking:

“It seems that if one were to ask me what death is like, I would have to reply that it is like awakening to the shadowed face of a familiar friend.” she says weakly.

Hood knows where not to touch Madeleine for there is less to Madeleine than meets the eye, and what is there is riddled with pain. Indeed if one truly knew Madeleine, one might say that the smile on her mask is not a smile at all but a grimace. Hood places his hand gently on her right shoulder, an intimate moment of affection broken almost immediately by Hy-Jinx, shouting and dancing half way down the cliff path. Glancing up Hood sees Hy-Jinx waving her hands, pointing and shouting but can’t quite make out what she is saying…”…ind you!…ind you!”

A rising feeling of dread creeps up Hood’s spine and raises the hairs on the back of his neck causing him to turn. There, water dripping from its bald, pale purple body, eyes, golden slits of malice locked onto Hood, the vampir, moves with a cat-like stalking gait, hissing with vicious intent. Instinctively, without thought, Hood murmurs the incantation, rending the fabric of reality with clawed and twisted fingers. He feels the fabric’s resistance - knows that perhaps he does not have the experience to cast such a spell, particularly since he has just left himself drained from helping Madeleine. But Hood’s instincts are not to be ignored, he trusts them implicitly. Even though these doubts bombard his mind, they are assuaged by his faith in himself. Thrusting his fingers deeper into the etheric river, sparks break forth at his finger ends, twisting out and through one another. Built from the unseen rents that he has torn into the world’s fabric, rents that reweave the nature of what is and birth that which moments ago was not…a swirling ball of fire explodes forth from Hood's outstretched fingers just as the vampir begins to pounce.

Hood sees beyond the flames, sees them rush towards the monstrosity that has his death written upon its face, sees them impact and flow around its twisted form, watches as the flesh is seared from its body, watches as it burns and crusts into embers until only a charred and lifeless mass remains - the water beneath it bubbling and boiling. But Hood is not able to marvel, nor celebrate, nor indeed do anything, for his heart feels hollow somehow, his breath and lungs empty. His vision thrums brighter then darker, brighter then darker, a dull painful note ringing in his head which seems to be expanding, and as it does so he feels lighter and lighter yet at the same time heavier and heavier as he falls backwards onto the sand beneath him, lying gasping next to Madeleine.

The last thing Hood remembers is Hy-Jinx skidding to a halt above him, glancing first at Madeleine, then at him, before her attention is overcome with interest in the remains of what’s left of the vampir floating in the sea.

“Wow!” he hears her say…“I’m having that!”…before he slips into unconsciousness accompanied by a rather disgusting and disturbing noise.