Right. A one-shot plot that came out of nowhere. Hope you enjoy, as I'm not updating anything else tonight.

Nobody ever wondered how the demons that roamed the countryside came into being. Nobody ever wondered how it was that more kept springing up whenever our world thought they had been exterminated. Nobody ever wondered why, year after year, there were less slayers up for the job than the year before. Nobody cared, and simply kept killing them, killing them, never wondering if maybe, just maybe, they could save them instead. Nobody wondered.

Nobody, that is, except me. Curtis Reed, a scientist, a geek of the highest order with a degree in advanced chemistry from a top notch school. In between my actual job, sleeping, and spending time with my true love, I wondered.­ What had happened to those slayers, why were there no bodies, no clues? It was possible they had been eaten, of course, but why was there no blood left behind? Why was it only the slayers who disappeared? I wondered if, perhaps, they were not gone. If they had just...changed.

Sam had told me I was a damn fool, of course. I can't really remember when, but it must have been sometime in-between his annual shot and his good-bye kiss. When the doctors started dying and they couldn't be trained fast enough, those of us who had been in medicine-related fields, or even math related fields, had been contacted, asking if we could spare the time to tend to the populous in minor things. Shots, check-ups, pharmaceutical positions...those sorts of thing. It was convenient for Sam, who didn't see me enough due to our respective jobs. It was convenient for me because, for the first time in our relationship, I didn't have to argue with him to take his immunization shots for whatever new sickness had cropped up. As a chemist, I had always been just a bit paranoid when it came to diseases, or germs. But now Sam would get them, if only to see me. It made me happy, and I think it was perhaps the happiest I'd ever been in my less-than exciting life.

Sam was a slayer, had been for a decade at least before I ever knew he existed. When I met him, he was the most mesmerizing strong, beautiful, energetic man I had ever seen, with golden eyes and a perfect smile, and that's what drew me to him in the beginning, not what he did, had done, for years. I have no idea why he actually gave me the time of day, honestly, but I suppose it had something to do with his philosophy of "seeing the skin beneath," and, surprisingly enough, he was wonderful in more than just appearance. We had been together for two and a half years when I moved in with him, and the true chaos began. Slaying was...difficult, and more and more Sam was off somewhere else, saving people. And more and more I was off on my own job, living my own empty life, and wondering.

When Sam disappeared, I was devastated. I had never thought, never believed, that he would be one of the slayers who would go missing. I worked more than ever, wondered all the time, and, eventually, I gave up hope of ever seeing him again. For three years after he had disappeared, I cried for him, mourned the loss of the only person I had ever loved. I sat at his body-less grave, and watched the flowers I left for him each day wilt. I watched, and I worked harder than ever to understand.

Four years after Sam had left, disappeared, died, what have you, I met Eric. Safe, practical Eric. He didn't make my heart flutter, or my stomach twist, or my world seem alight with happiness, but he cared, more than I thought I'd ever find again. I don't deny it; I didn't love him, not like Sam. But maybe it was for the best; after all, he wouldn't disappear. Not like Sam. He was a banker, you see, and he thought I was beautiful, and understood me more than anyone else I knew. Even though there wasn't passion or mad love between us, I was content.

I was sleeping the day the demon crept into the apartment I shared with Eric, and was still sleeping when I felt the splash of blood cover my face. I slept through it all, dreaming as the demon left, and I never noticed that the body next to me had begun to grow cold.

The funeral service was the next day, and it was short and to the point, exactly as Eric would have wanted. I was numb throughout the entire thing. The body, or what had remained, had undoubtedly been the work of a demon, if the claw marks were any indication. But nobody could understand why Eric had died, and I had been left to live. Demons never thought in terms of mercy, never spared one person when there was the opportunity to kill them. It sparked a whole new chain of thought among them, and they began to toy with the idea I had had for years. But I was too numb, too lost, to care. Eric would have been happy I missed him.

When I arrived home, I stripped the bloody sheets from the bed, and burned them. I had already disposed of the clothes I had been wearing when Eric had died, but the bed...I had left it there, knowing that it was the last thing Eric had ever touched in life. And once I had finally gathered the will and disposed of it, I felt so disgusted in my surroundings that I began to clean like mad, working until my hands were raw to try and remove the blood stains from the carpet. I worked for innumerous hours, not knowing the time or caring. I still don't know. I only know that when I next stood, the demon was in front of me.

I knew it was the same one. Covered in blood, the liquid acting as a adhesive to kept the bits of pajama cloth stuck to it, it's pale gray skin clinging to a shapeless mass of bones and its rows upon rows of teeth stained black. I remember thinking that it had come to finish the job, to kill me as well, and not feeling nearly as afraid as I should have been. I remember thinking that, for such a murderous thing, that it looked quite miserable and very, very hungry. I remember feeling compassion, and that was before I noticed the eyes.

Beautiful golden eyes, eyes familiar to me after all these years. Eyes I had seen even when I tried to convince myself that I had forgotten their owner. Eyes that had been one of a kind.

I covered my mouth with my hand as it approached, the empty shell of the man I had loved. It made so much sense...the demon rise, the disappearances, the lack of blood. It was a disease, a sickness, and it effected those who came in contact the most; the slayers. And Sam had always hated shots.

It- he -didn't attack. Maybe in some way, he recognized me as a friend, or a lover from a previous life. Maybe despite his obvious loss of humanity, he knew that I was not someone for killing. I'm not really sure, and I couldn't have brought myself to ask. I didn't want to ask why he was in my apartment, because I knew I had let him down. He had probably come to me from instinct, searching for help while he could still think, and seen me fast asleep with someone else at my side. I didn't blame him for being angry, or even for killing Eric. Because what human part of him had been left, I had destroyed it.

He moved faster than I had seen him move as a human, coming close and raising his clawed hand to strike me down. I didn't move, because I couldn't look away from those eyes. They were the eyes of someone who had struggled with nature and failed, and, as his hand shook, I knew he was struggling again. Struggling with what his body, his destroyed mind, told him to do, and struggling with his own memories. I remember looking in his eyes, seeing the pain and misery, and then very calmly walking away, to the desk in the study, and pulling out a gun I had, just for emergencies. I walked back into the room, felt his eyes on me, and shot him four times, until he couldn't move any longer.

It wasn't magic. He didn't instantly come back to the man I knew after he was dead, and he didn't spring back to life. He was dead, and as he lay there, looking for all the world like just another demon, I no longer wondered. I knew what had become of all those who disappeared, and I pitied them, even more than I pitied myself for what I had done.

I had always loved Sam, and probably always would. It was why he had sought me out that day, knowing that, even though it hurt, I would have saved him, spared him from the life he was forced to live by an infection that he couldn't control. I knew what I had to do. To save all of them...I had to find a cure, and spread the word of what was happening. I could and would make a difference.

For Eric, and for Sam. Children of a lost world.