Blood Ties: Bugged

By Nancy Mathews
‘Tis the season to have bugs in supernatural shows it would seem. A couple of weeks ago we saw bugs as killers on Reaper. This week they’ve infested our favorite vampire detective show (it’s still amazing to me that there are actually two vampire detective shows on this season).

We open on a couple of goth boys hanging outside a club and arguing about drugs – one of them is taking way too much. Goth Boy #1 leaves and Goth Boy #2 (aka: Crack Head Goth Boy) stays to drink the lovely glowing blue liquid called Venom. Don’t you just love ingestible liquids that glow? They practically scream, “drink me, drink me!” He has a bad trip, this somehow brings out all the bugs in the neighborhood. Needless to say, Crack Head Goth Boy ends up Dead Boy. Lucky for Dead Boy, Coreen is friends with the uber-goth owner of the club and gets Vicki to figure out what happened.

Meanwhile, Henry’s bat sense goes off and he opens his front door to discover…Dead Girl! (No relation to Dead Boy). It seems someone has left her as a message to Henry. This leads to the fascinating subplot of Henry actually asking for Mike Cellucci’s help. It seems that the body was left by another vampire.

Since vampires in this universe are solitary predators, this means a turf war is a-brewin’. Vampires go all the way when they fight for territory. Blood, death and suffering, all of which makes sense for vampires. They agree not to tell Vicki for her own safety.

Coreen is getting a kick out of helping Vicki except, of course, when it means accusing her friend of selling drugs in her club. Dead Boy’s demise appears to have been caused by an allergic reaction to hundreds of bug bites. The drug he ingested acts as a dinner bell for the little guys and they came running to enjoy the buffet. Sadly, they realize this after Dead Boy’s best friend dies exactly the same way. Damn! He wasn’t very bright, was he?

Off to our subplot, Henry and Mike track Dead Girl to a photography studio where she was a model. The place is abandoned and shows no sign of violence or vampires, except for a picture that Henry finds and doesn’t show to Mike. Their search is interrupted by Vicki – of course, she’d been tipped off by my favorite medical examiner (whose name I can never remember). She tries to get them to tell her what they are looking into, but both stay mum.

Vicki goes off to solve her case, putting a wire on Coreen and sending her into the club to “score”. Poor girl. She may do goth well, but streetwise? Not so much. She does manage to tip off the bad guy or gal in this case – the very hot Wynter, who is, sadly, a bug demon (not to be confused with a demon bug). She stabs Coreen with a very insect-like appendage, shooting her full of her venom, which is what she’s been selling, but now Coreen is getting it straight from the source.

Wynter tells Coreen that Vicki has a powerful enemy who is also lurking about. What? Collect some good demon karma or a bounty or something? This dovetails nicely with Henry comparing the picture he found earlier showing Dead Girl posed with a tear of blood to a drawing. He realizes it’s Christina, his sire, who is hunting in his territory.

Henry arrives to save the day for Vicki and then tells Mike and Vicki to butt out of his business, saying his vampire foe is too powerful. Mike gets upset, but Vicki starts putting things together and realizes Christina’s come to town.

This is actually the first episode I can recall that had a subplot and I think it tightened both plotlines up a bit. I don’t understand why we always have to have the sire come-a-calling story in vampire shows, but as long as it’s fun I won’t complain.

Next week we get to meet the woman who seduced and turned Henry Fitzroy! Woo hoo!

Nancy Mathews works very hard at masquerading as a grown-up to go to work and raise her two sons. Once the sun goes down she reverts to the 10 year old she is. You can follow her plans for world domination through the formation of an army of knitters at her blog, Bronxgirlknits.

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