Blood Ties

Teaser: (From last episode) Javier Mendoza, the self-styled agent of Canon Law, convinces Mike to help him capture Henry in order to teach him to control his murdering impulses. Worried about Vicki, especially after finding out that Henry drank her blood at one point, Mike places a device called Iluminación del Sol on Henry's chest that painfully drains him of his energy. Mendoza double-crosses Mike and takes the now incapacitated Henry with him, leaving Mike and Vicki prisoners in the sewers.


A manhole cover opens up from inside and Vicki and Mike climb out. As soon as both stand up, Vicki punches Mike on the jaw calling him "Stupid son of bitch". Mike takes it, then answers Vicki's questions about Mendoza and his deceitful proposal. Vicki reproaches Mike for his naïveté accepting the word of an unproven source just because it said what he wanted to hear, and Mike replies that, if she were still a cop, she would be doing the same thing and trying to stop Henry like him. Vicki then tells him that Henry is now her partner and she will get him back, but Mike points out that she cannot find him working alone and proposes a truce: to work together until they find Henry and Javier Mendoza, who is now Mike's primary objective. Meanwhile, Mendoza has carried Henry to some secluded location and chained him to a wooden X, tearing of Henry's rosary beads. He then introduces a small key on the device and half turns it, making Henry scream in pain. Henry calls him "Monsignor" and indicates that he remembers him. Mendoza shows Henry the remnants of the rosary and asks him if he also remembers her. Henry thrashes around in fury while Mendoza recites passages of Revelations that refer to the Beast's self-healing powers. He then cuts open Henry's forehead and watches satisfied as it immediately mends, confirming his words. Then he tells Henry that all that he wants is to save his soul.


Title Sequence


Vicki is talking to Coreen on the phone asking her to come to work because there is an emergency. Mike follows her and they agree that Henry could still be alive, since Mendoza did not kill him right away. Vicki asks everything Mike knows about Mendoza and the device used to bring Henry down and then sends him to the station to find as much as he can about Mendoza. By making him Person of Interest in the murder case of the young prostitute, Mike initiates an official search. Det. Lam offers her help and Mike asks her to cover for him for twenty-four hours, keeping Superintendent Crowley out of his back. Det. Lam also gives him the identity of the murdered woman: Amy Davidson, also know as "Champagne". Coreen arrives to the office still thinking that the emergency is related to the Windigo case and Vicki brings her up to speed. Coreen blames herself for telling Mike where to find Vicki and Henry, but Vicki tells her to focus on the device and what it does, and to work with Dr. Sagara.


Henry is in Mendoza's lair listening to Mendoza reading from a book. It is a record from 1742, two-hundred years after Henry's death, when Mendoza first started Henry's inquisition process. We see Henry in antique clothes being brought into a dungeon while Mendoza, wearing religious robes, identifies Henry by his old titles and accuses him of vampirism and heresy. Henry challenges him, but Mendoza seems confident. There is a third person on the dungeon, a young woman called Maria, who seems to be some sort of assistant and to whom Mendoza shows obvious affection. Back in the present, Vicki and Mike have found another prostitute, Cassis, who after much complaining, admits to knowing Champagne. She explains that Champagne was not the sharpest tool in the box, no wonder she got killed. Cassis also recognises Mendoza but not because of Champagne. It turns out that Mendoza asked Cassis first and he brought her to an abandoned church where a woman was chained to the ceiling, apparently voluntarily because as soon as Mendoza pushed Cassis towards her, she tried to bite. Cassis though it was a bit too bizarre for her taste and escaped using a pepper spray. She finally agrees to guide Vicki and Mike to that church.


Back in Henry's memories, we see him facing Maria and trying to get to her, first by asking her for a bit of water, which she carefully gives to him, then trying to use his hypnotic powers to make her set him free. She is able to resist however, and return to her prayers. In present day, Mendoza wheels his equipment to where Henry is chained and asks Henry to confess willingly. Henry defies him and Mendoza then proceeds with his "inquisition". He takes a long plastic straw and inserts one end into the device, making the sun face shine for an instant. Blood begins to flow though the straw and is collected in a vessel, while Henry seems to weaken. Afterwards, Mendoza loosens the chains a bit and offers a rat for Henry to eat, but Henry decides to let her go. This small defiant gesture of mercy seems to anger Mendoza who proceeds with the torture. Images from past and present torments mingle and, in the past, Maria looks at Henry full of pity and horror.


Vicki and Mike arrive at the church where Cassis was taken and find a woman in the one of the back rooms. It is Delphine, still chained and almost dead. Henry is still being tormented by Mendoza, who shows him a recording of Delphine confessing under torture of being a vampire and accusing Henry of turning her. Henry forgives her and asks Mendoza what he did to her, to which Mendoza replies that she is at peace now and that, though her confession, her immortal should might have been saved. Henry replies that Hell could not be worse than being in the hands of a crazy sadist like Mendoza, prompting another round of blows. Delphine is not yet dead but is too weak to answer coherently and asks for blood. Vicki, to Mike's disgust, cuts her hand with a razor and pours some blood into Delphine's mouth. She tells them that Mendoza is already gone and, before she can tell them more, an alarm bell rings and the curtains covering the windows fall down, letting the sun enter and painfully turning Delphine to ashes. Mike is very shocked after this display of his former associate's sadistic methods.


Coreen is in Dr. Sagara's office and they are both looking for the device, but find nothing similar in Spanish speaking countries. They decide to try another way and search for its origin in China, because the number of rays issuing out of the sun face, eight, is a lucky number there and the number eight, turned 90 degrees, is the symbol of infinity or eternity, which links it to vampires as well. At the church, Vicki and Mike find signs of a hasty departure: there are small trays of empty flower pots on the floor and a small chalice with rests of something inside. They bring it all to Dr. Mohadevan in forensics for analysis. Det. Lam gives them the results on Mendoza, but there is noting except a mere curiosity that she found: there was a Javier Mendoza who was a Grand Inquisitor during the Spanish Inquisition. Dr. Mohadevan then tells them that the pots contained a Chinese homeopathic herb revered as an immortality herb and that the chalice contained the herb and blood, but not from Champagne and not quite human either. Both Vicki and Mike say "Vampire" and Dr. Mohadevan smiles knowingly and says that she will not be writing that down. Putting all reports together: ancient Inquisitor, immortality herb and vampire blood, Vicki and Mike realise that Mendoza is not only on a Holy hunt, but is also capturing vampires and drinking their blood to keep himself alive without actually becoming one of them. That means that Henry might not be dead yet.


Mike and Vicki analyse the pattern on Mendoza's known locations and realise that his comfort zone is close to Chinatown, probably for his herbs. He also seems to feel the need of using some sort of Holy ground for his inquisition rituals as with Delphine, so their best bet is to search abandoned buildings of religious significance on that area. Back where Henry is kept prisoner, Mendoza is about to extract yet more blood from Henry. Henry asks what pact he has made with the devil to remain alive, but Mendoza smugly says that it is all scientific knowledge extracted from a captured prisoner, no doubt thanks to God's Will. While Mendoza blesses its concoction like a parody of church ritual, Henry mocks his arguments by telling him that it is not possible to use evil methods and remain pure at the same time, then accuses Mendoza of being the real vampire as he greedily drinks. Mike and Vicki are searching buildings that meet their criteria but dawn approaches and they need to move faster in case Mendoza wants to finish Henry next morning. They decide to split, even if Mike is concerned that Vicki seems to be taking more reckless risks since he got her tattoos, like they make her invincible. Vicki replies that they are probably just saving her for something worse, but that gives her an edge right now. She promises to call him if she finds something and not rush in by herself.


Invigorated, Mendoza resumes Henry's torture while Henry hallucinates about the past. He sees himself asking Maria for help and her resisting him, until he manages to get hold of her and then release her, showing her that he is more merciful than his captors. Maria tests him by giving him her rosary beads, the same ones that Henry carried with him until Mendoza tore them off, and asking him to prove himself, to which Henry replies with a prayer and a genuflexion. Convinced, Maria sets him free but after he thanks her, he is overcome by his instinct to restore himself and bites her, almost killing her. Realising what he has done, he gives her his blood to save her. Coreen and Dr. Sagara find a reference to a Chinese artefact made for a warlord's daughter who committed suicide and returned as a Jiang Shi or Chinese vampire. The device was meant to control her impulses, but had some secondary effects. Vicki finds some of the same flower trays outside one of the churches she is investigating and, forgetting her promise to Mike, she enters the building and is immediately captured when her cell phone rings.


Mike is calling Vicki on her cell phone (opps!) but gets no answer. Vicki awakens and she is tied to a chair in the same room as Henry, who tries to attack her and is only prevented by the chains. When he realises that it is Vicki, he barely manages to control himself. Mendoza goads him by dragging Vicki's chair towards him and sending him again into frenzy, while Vicki tries to calm him. Mendoza demands confession again, but this time he wants Henry to confess that he killed Maria. Henry replies that this is not true: he came back for Maria the following night, to guide her in her new life, and saw from a window Mendoza hovering over her and waiting. As soon as she woke up and called to him with words of love, Mendoza drove a stake into her heart. Mendoza insists that it was the devil speaking but Henry affirms that these words were the expression of Maria's true feelings for Mendoza and not a trick. Enraged, Mendoza takes Vicki's hand bandages and baits Henry with the scent of her blood until he agrees to confess in order to save her.


Mike calls Coreen to find out if Vicki called to check in, but the answer is negative. Coreen and Dr. Sagara tell Mike that the Iluminación del Sol does not control vampires but rather steals their immortality, which is why Mendoza draws the blood though it. It would also destroy Henry's heart if the key that releases it from his chest is turned anti-clockwise. Only turning it clockwise will be safe. Mike decides to retrace Vicki's steps until he finds her. In the meantime, Henry is finishing his confession to a self-satisfied Mendoza. Vicki has managed to reach her razor and is trying to cut her bindings while encouraging Henry not to give in. Once he has finished, Henry asks Mendoza to free Vicki but Mendoza has no intention of doing so. With perfect troll logic he explains that letting Vicki go would mean that Henry's confession was not valid because it was extracted under duress, and that they will talk again after Henry has eaten. Vicki tries to pinpoint Mendoza's fallacies to no avail, and finishes by contemptuously calling him a murderer, after what Mendoza pushes her chair to within Henry's reach and leaves. Henry asks her to forgive him because he cannot control himself and leaps forward, but Vicki tilts the chair backwards and rolls out of the way. Freeing her hands, she smashes the chair and takes a leg as a stake for her defence. Frenzied, Henry snaps the chain of one of his wrists, then the other.


Mike has found Vicki's location and has reached the other side of the door where she is kept. Mendoza is there, watching through a grid, when Mike points a shotgun to his head and asks for the device's key. Mendoza stalls him and, when Mike loads the gun, he says Mike would shoot because he is a policeman, not a killer. Mike agrees, then knocks him in the jaw with the gun and leaves him on the floor, taking the chain with the key to the Iluminación del Sol from his hand. Vicki calls frantically through the grid to him for help: Henry is now loose and ready to attack. As Vicki and Henry wrestle for the stake, Mike breaks the door open and points the gun at Henry, but instead of shooting, he lowers it and pushes Vicki away, exposing himself to Henry who bites him on the neck. Vicki tries to separate them and then pleads to Henry to let Mike go. Slowly, Henry regains control and complies. They both fall to the floor, Mike half fainting and Henry to his knees, still drained by the artefact. Vicki checks on Mike, who gives her the key to the device and tells her to turn it clockwise to unlock it, which she does, throwing the bloodied thing to the floor. Henry regains his strength while Vicki returns to Mike to staunch his wound and berates him for risking his life. Henry stands up and goes to where Mendoza lies, then and drags him by the scruff of the neck to a side passage. Mike and Vicki hear a scream and get out, Vicki half carrying Mike. Henry joins them, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand and with his wounds almost healed. Vicki hands Mike to Henry and returns to the room to check if they have forgotten anything, then picks the Iluminación del Sol from the floor. After some hesitation, she puts it in her pocket.