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A series of flashbacks show what has happened in previous episodes leading up to the
current situation, ending with the badly injured Lauren flatlining in the ER.
As Ethan watches the ER doctors frantically try and revive Lauren his second
sight lets him see the proverbial tunnel of light opening up and Lauren's spirit leaving her body
and heading for the light. Able to interact with her, Ethan gets the attention of Lauren during her
out-of-body experience, distracting her long enough for the tunnel to close, leaving Lauren a ghost.
The ER doctors manage to revive her, but Lauren's body apparently is too weak for her spirit to
re-enter it, leaving her a disembodied spirit that only Ethan can see and hear.
At Kronos Industries, Leland Richter is admonishing Cerne and Maalik for the their
failures. It is revealed that Cerne was once a member of the Shadow Walker clan like Jalen, and that
he hoped that killing the traitor would earn the clan's forgiveness and they would let him back in.
Maalik's failure involves the loss of the mystic knife, the Blood Drinker. Richter informs the
two that he has one last task in mind for them, and his guards then tazer both Cerne and Maalik into
unconsciousness.
Patrick and Dana arrive at the hospital and Ethan fills them in on Lauren's
predicament. Patrick and Dana then inform him of what they have learned, that the Five needed to
summon the Devourer are a five demons, not themselves. More importantly, Leland Richter has apparently
already captured the five he needs and will be performing the summoning. At first frustrated by her
ghostly state, Lauren changes her mind when at Ethan's suggestion she learns she can still use her
telekinesis despite her current "condition". The four gather Jalen from his
room at the hospital and head into LA to the abandoned Hyperion Hotel, the site of Richter's ritual.
At the Hyperion the lobby has been gutted to make room for the ritual. In the center
of the floor is a giant circle containing a pentagram surrounded by demonic symbols. Suspended above
the circle is a metallic pentagram with the five demons (Gordon Campbell, Lorne, Dave the Comic Book
Demon, Cerne, and Maalik) bound in each of the construct's five points with their heads facing inward.
Richter begins reading text from his pocket computer to start the ritual that summons the Devourer.
When he is finished he signals one of his aides to throw a switch, which triggers a set of spikes in
the metallic pentagram to impale each of the demons bound to it at the same time. The blood of the
Five flows down into the center of the mystic circle. Outside, the sky goes dark as an eclipse blacks
out the afternoon sun. Clouds gather over the hotel and within can be seen a large moving form.
En route from the hospital, the group sees the eclipse start. Once the sky has gone
dark they see a pillar of fire leap from the hotel into the clouds. In her shoulder bag Dana feels
the Book of Zar-n'Atoth shifting again. She takes it out and begins to read the newly revealed
passages. What she manages to learn does not help, that the Devourer's arrival seems inevitable.
Arriving at the hotel Patrick does not stop, instead he accelerates the car through the front doors
of the hotel knocking over several of Richter's zombie security guards.
While the others take on Richter's forces, made up of several zombie guards, vampires
and four more of Maalik's patchwork demons, the disembodied Lauren uses her telekinesis to knock
Richter's pocket computer away from him. Realizing there is an invisible foe nearby, Richter casts a
spell that lets him see Lauren, who he is shocked is here since he knows he sent someone to blow her
up. Lauren then begins using her TK to help the others fight the monsters.
The battle is tough but the heroes gain the upper hand. With the patchwork demons
defeated, Lauren turns her attention to Richter again and uses her telekinesis to push him into the
pillar of fire emanating from the center of the mystic circle. Richter flies into the fire and is
lifted up into the sky, into the waiting tentacles of whatever is trying to emerge into our reality.
Down below in the hotel the pillar of fire rises up after Richter and the battle stops as everyone
looks to see what happened. A minute later the silence ends as Richter is cast back down, crashing
into the pentagram and cratering the lobby floor.
When a badly burned and bloody Richter drags himself out of the crater, Jalen has had
enough. He runs forward and stabs Richter through the chest, then draws his sword upward and out,
slicing through Richter's right shoulder just below the neck. Richter stares in disbelief at the
wound, then in shock as a mass of tentacles begins the emerge. While everyone stares Richter is torn
apart from the inside as The Devourer emerges. The vampires flee but the zombies are not so lucky
and are grabbed by the thing's tentacles and tossed into its gaping maw.
With the Devourer growing larger and larger by the second the group struggles to
come up with a plan of action. While Jalen and Patrick fend off tentacles, Dana searches through
the reconfigured Book of Zar-n'Atoth for a solution and Ethan begins reading through Richter's
discarded pocket computer. Through their quick research Dana and Ethan discover that the key to
re-imprisoning the Devourer lies in the five of them somehow combining their own essences. From Richter's
notes and their own research Ethan realizes that the mystic knife they took from Maalik can help, and
Dana uses her photographic memory to think of a suitable ritual to bring everything together.
To buy time for the plan to work, Patrick uses all his strength to smash through the
already cratered floor of the hotel. He succeeds and he and the ever-growing Devourer fall into the
basement. With the Devourer temporarily contained, Ethan makes a desperate call to Oracle hoping he
can get the knife to them in time. Using a mystic "cargo cult" ritual, the Oracle manages to
mystically transfer the knife from its safe location to the hotel, where Ethan retrieves it as Dana
prepares to perform the necessary ritual.
With Patrick as the focus holding the knife, Dana performs the ritual and the
essences of all five are merged together. All around them the scene shifts and they are simultaneously
in both the shattered hotel lobby and in the extradimensional space that once held the Devourer's
prison. They can all perceive Lauren as well, surrounded by a white aura. Each of the others
possesses an aura as well, Jalen's is a black shadow, Ethan's a gray fog, while Dana's glows silver
and Patrick is surrounded by blue-white flame. With their abilities combined, the Five see how to
re-imprison the Devourer. With Ethan's senses they can perceive the Devourer's true form. From Jalen
comes the perception that in this realm the shadows have substance. Dana's knowledge shows how to
use the shadows to bind the creature and Lauren's telekinesis gives them the tools to create those
bonds. At the heart of this merged entity is Patrick, already a vessel for unearthly powers he is
now the vessel and the weapon through which his friends' abilities flow. Together they bind the
Devourer up in a new prison of black shadow. When the prison is complete the ritual ends, abruptly
thrusting the group back into the real world.
In the hotel lobby stands a great stone pillar in the place of the Devourer, which
begins to crumble within moments, followed by the entire east wing of the hotel. The group rushes to
the fallen pentagram to see if any of the five demons are still alive. Dana sees that Gordon did not
survive the ritual, yet another person close to her that has died. Of all the five, only Lorne has
survived (his unique physiology making him difficult to kill except under specific circumstances).
Back at the hospital, the ER doctors have stabilized Lauren and she feels her spirit being pulled
back to her body.
While Lauren slowly regains consciousness in intensive care, Ethan has taken Lorne
to his clinic to patch up the empath demon's injuries. Patrick and Jalen go to the Blue Plate Diner for pie and are
joined shortly by Ethan, but Dana bows out, instead going to a nearby park to be alone with her
thoughts.
Back at the remains of the Hyperion Hotel a construction crew has already appeared on the
scene, headed by Travis McCauley of Wolfram & Hart. As the workers pull a large, strangely-shaped
stone from the rubble McCauley is on the phone informing someone that they have found what they were
looking for. Taking a sledgehammer, McCauley breaks open the stone, revealing a man trapped inside.
McCauley helps them man up. . . and welcomes Andrew Cross back to Los Angeles.
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