

Season 9, Issue 3
Written by Christos Gage
Pencilled by Rebekah Isaacs
“‘Happily ever after’ isn’t what’s coming for me. A stake through the heart is. Until then, I have things to do.”
Angel

The music is thumping. Vampires are feasting on their willing victims. Demons pass drinks around. Most of the clientele this evening appear to be having a smashing time, including the two patrons who have just entered Mal Fraser’s fine and versatile establishment. One customer, a minty-shade of green in colour, is being strangled by Angel, who along with Faith, has just walked into the bar. He has a question for Fraser, who can be found where he can be found every night: at his table in the VIP section. Angel asks him where he can find the Mohra blood. And, honestly, he insists, he could wreck the whole place looking, if Fraser would like: would that be good for business?
Fraser doesn’t even leave his seat, where he has two women draped all over him. He doesn’t even put down his champagne glass. “On the contrary, sunshine,” he states at the vampire, his cocky tone of voice irritating Angel even more. “It’s bloody fantastic for business.”

He tells Angel that his clientele come here for a taste of magic, the very magic that is now missing from their lives, thanks to Twilight and his mates. He charges a lot of money for magical artifacts or demon-groupies, but for a floorshow like the one Angel and Faith can give him? He could charge triple! As Faith throws another demon to the ground, he looks at her. “Of course, there comes a point of diminishing returns,” he states, his demon tusks almost shining like a disco ball. “I’ll have you nicked. Selling magic ain’t illegal yet, but smashing up a legitimate business most definitely is.” Fraser transforms into a stronger version of himself. and grows wings and horns, almost resembling the actual devil. He taunts Faith, but before she can prepare to make a swing, Angel stops her. There’s no Mohra blood on the premises: he would have smelt it by now. And he doesn’t want to deal with the police if he can help it.

As the customers all begin to turn and pay attention, Fraser transforms back to his original form. He tells them that he doesn’t blame them for looking for the Mohra, mainly because whoever has it would be a mighty popular person around town. As Angel and Faith leave, Fraser yells after Angel with a job offer: he can see many Angel-groupies coming his way, if he would like?

Climbing back onto the rooftops, Faith is angry. “Why’d we even go in there if you were just going to stake block me?” Angel tells her that after the way Fraser just rubbed their noses in it, the whole club now knows he has the Mohra blood – and they’ll start itching to buy it. And Fraser, being who he is, will be too greedy to resist. When he moves, Angel has him. Faith gets it, but asks that in future he could, you know, maybe, actually tell her his brilliant plans? He grins at her: “Sure,” he smiles. “Soon as I start coming up with them more than two seconds in advance.” She smiles back at him. For a minute, it’s nice. Happy. Faith asks him if he ever thinks about using the Mohra blood to become human, like he did before?

Angel leaps over to another building, partly to prove his next words. “Nothing’s changed. I still have to do things a human can’t.” Faith follows him and declares that everything has changed now! And Giles told her all about the Prophecy, the Apocalypse thing… Angel looks at her. “Shanshu prophecy. It’s kind of off the table. Anyway, there’s always an apocalypse.”
Faith tells him that, because of him and Buffy, the magic is gone, so those apocalypses he’s talking about can’t happen anymore. And maybe it’s time for Angel to get what’s coming to him. Angel looks at her. “‘Happily ever after’ isn’t what I’ve got coming. A stake through the heart is.” He jumps off the building, into the night, leaving Faith watching him go. She’s concerned: Angel actually thought about using the Mohra blood, even if only for a second. But he doesn’t think he deserves it. But what if I shoved that Mohra blood down your throat and made you human? Would you finally cut yourself the same slack you gave me? Or would he get himself killed, doing the same things he’s doing now?

Faith is later sat in the sunshine, in Regent’s Park. The sun is warm today, and has attracted many to the area. A woman is sat on a bench, talking to Faith about her son, who was dying. She heard Fraser had a cure-all, and she paid him in cash for something that was delivered in a glowing green bottle. Her son has been in remission ever since.
Angel talks to a man who’s brother lost his leg in a car accident six months before. He became addicted to pain killers. Fraser’s cure regrew his brother’s legs, but didn’t remove the pain killer addiction. Since then, his brother has been missing for a month.
Another woman tells her that her husband was shot. As a drug dealer he couldn’t risk going to the hospital, so he went to Fraser. She hasn’t seen him since: she thinks he’s either dead or on an island somewhere. Either way she’s screwed.


Later, Faith and Angel are back in her apartment. Four clients they talked to are fine, but eight more are missing. Could Fraser be taking the money, not supplying due to limited supplies and then killing the customers? Angel doesn’t think so: besides, he knows the blood is there – it’s the genuine deal. Also, nobody they’ve talked to knows where it comes from. They could also use more information on Mohra demons, but there’s so much information in Giles’ archive that they need a Giles to sift through it all! Without Giles though, there are other options Angel says, looking at a photograph in one of Giles’ books.

Not long afterward, a man in his sixties answers his front door. He’s the man in the photograph, but older. He introduces himself as Alasdair Coames and, acknowledging them both as friends of Rupert Giles’, he bids them to enter and invites them in.

The apartment is small and cramped, but instantly reminds Angel of a second hand book store, one of those ones where books of all shapes and sizes are arranged in some sort of chaos. There’s magical creatures in the room with them, including a tiny baby dragon, orange in colour and a few Faeries sitting on a shelf. One of them flies down – and Faith has to stop it from flying down her shirt. Coames shares that he has changed from the young man in the photograph. “The end of magic has made me just another doddering old fool with a house full of rubbish and dreary stories of days gone by.” He holds a steaming cup of tea in his hands as Angel pets the cat – the only normal ‘pet’ in the room. He asks Angel and Faith to forgive his friends – he’s been gathering the last vestiges of magic together – endangered species, he calls them. “So,” he says, heading for a large book case. “What type of demon were you interested in?”
Angel tells him that Fraser may have a Mohra working for him, but Coames shuts him down immediately: Mohra to not work for anyone. They are the warrior-assassins of the Hell dimensions, he says. “They consider it a sacred calling. They return to their home plane upon completion of a task.” If Fraser has a Mohra, then it’s a captive, he concludes. He reminds Angel that a Mohra needs salt to survive. “Magic can be cloaked,” Alasdair says, “but truckloads of salt delivered to a private home leave a paper trail, hmm?”
As Angel and Faith leave, Angel offers to pay Alasdair for his time, but the old professor shakes his head: he’s just pleased to be useful again. He offers his condolences on Giles’ death. Faith has wandered ahead – she’s on the phone. As Angel catches up to her, commenting on how Coames’ life must have changed overnight without magic, Faith tells him that Daphne, one of the Slayers, has called her and she needs to go. Angel offers to help, but Faith shrugs him off. “Female problems,” she tells him to dissuade him.

In a sports bar, Nadira in battling some fans. She’s clearly the instigator of the brawl, and currently, much to the other Slayers’ concerns, has a bar stool wrapped around the head of the nearest Arsenal fan. They explain to Faith that Nadira just went ballistic, picking a fight over nothing. And she’s not letting up. Faith comes up with a simple solution and tells the girls to grab Nadira when she gives the signal. She picks up two beers and calls the sports fans. The boys take one look at Faith and hear her declaration of “Drinks on the house,” and they immediately leave Nadira’s side.
Outside, the Slayers have Nadira in their arms. She’s kicking and screaming. Faith asks her what the problem is, but she tells her to ‘piss off’. Daphne tells Faith that everything was going fine this evening: no vampires, everyone following the rules, until Nadira decided to question, rather loudly, Arsenal team players’ sexual preferences regarding sheep and that was that: bar brawl.
Faith addresses Nadira, pointing at herself: “We’ve talked about fighting humans. Only when necessary. They break too easily. You wanna blow off steam, you fight me.”

Nadira angrily goads her on, but suddenly stops, realising what and who she’s threatening and sinks to the ground in despair. “What’s the matter with me? I could have really hurt someone. Why can’t I just get drunk or run up my credit card like a normal person?”
Faith gets on her knees beside Nadira, placing a comforting arm on her shoulder. “Because you’re not. You were jonesing for a fight. For us, that’s normal. Power like ours, you gotta let it out. You just have to be smart about how. You can’t try to turn it off, pretend it’s not there. As long as you have power, you’re gonna feel the need to use it.”
Nadira questions whether that means she should use it. “I know I’ve got issues. What if I can’t be trusted to do the right thing?” She suggests going cold turkey from slaying, in case she can’t come back from it. Faith tells her to go for it, but Nadira tells her that she’s the experienced one. She’s the grown-up. Tell us what to do.
Faith reacts in horror to that statement: “If I’m the grownup, we’re screwed.” She needs to go. Nadira tells her as she goes that they trust her.

Faith goes behind a telephone box that’s just off the street corner, dragging a man in a trench coat and a fedora hat out of the shadows. It’s Alasdair Coames. Faith drags him into the light and asks him what he’s doing here and whether he followed her. Coames reassures her that it’s nothing sinister or seedy – he just needs to talk to her without Angel around. Faith mistakes his interests until he confirms that if he read the situation correctly when they visited, then he is here to warn her specifically: resurrecting Rupert Giles will be more hurtful to the world than his death was.

Faith isn’t buying it, telling Alasdair that while she appreciates his concern, frankly, it’s none of his business. Coames stops her. “On the contrary, the forces Angel tampers with could bring disaster, even moreso in a world without magical defences. He must give up his mad quest.” Coames says that Angel will never listen to him, but he will listen to her. Faith swears at him.
“Who went and made me the responsible one all of a sudden?” Alasdair chuckles at her question. “Why, my dear girl,” he replies. “You did.”

At a country mansion, sometime that evening, Angel and Faith are walking into a party. The place is filled with people, demons, vampires and other creatures, all looking their best, dolled up to the nines. It’s an auction for demon artifacts. Faith wonders how they got in so easily, but Angel warns her that when they do what they’re here for, everyone will recognise them and they’ll be outed. When sat down, with a seemingly human couple, awaiting the event, Faith has them questioning whether the Mohra blood is what it’s advertised as.

Soon, Fraser, in full demon form enters the room, telling them that the rumours are true and he does have a limited supply of Mohra blood. The demons demand proof that the blood is the genuine article, to which Fraser responds by clapping his hands. He signals his henchmen to come forward, and they drag a Mohra demon onto the stage, tied to a board with mystical bonds. As Fraser prepares to start, Angel, game face on, rushes forward and, using his sword, decapitates one demon while Faith takes out the other. Fraser screams at them: “Don’t hurt the merchandise!” Angel frees the Mohra from his bonds and tells the Mohra it’s free to go – providing it can help them fight their way out.

The Mohra thanks Angel for freeing him, as a Mohra demon cannot suffer a worse fate that slavery. He claims to be too weak for battle however, and he plunges his own weapon into the red crystal in his forehead. He chooses death with honour and melts into a gloop of liquid, nothing left but particles in the air where he was standing.
The whole room has gone quiet. Everyone’s eyes are on Angel. Faith asks if that was part of the plan. The demons, realising they have nothing left to bid on, are ordered forward: the Mohra is dead – take his blood!

Angel yells at Faith, who leaps straight for a table full of vials of the glowing green blood. She tips the table over, the vials clattering to the ground, the demons screeching in horror. They start scrambling over each other, desperate to save some of the precious elixir. Faith has her hands on some, ready to escape, but before they can, there’s a sudden boom of sound and a showering of sharp glass! A green glow emanates from the broken window – as Pearl and Nash float in towards Angel.

“Why, look dear sister,” Nash grins. “Not only are we just in time to claim the blood of eternity, we get a bonus. Our very own false God. The man who cruelly exploited us and crushed our dreams.”

Pearl is upside down, floating closer to Angel. “And he looks so much easier to kill these days, doesn’t he?” Her eyes are glowing green and she licks her lips as she stares in anger at the vampire. Angel realises that they are radiating more power than he saw when they worked for Twilight. Angel believes that he owes the world for unleashing these two on it and doesn’t hesitate, grabbing a pole as a makeshift bo staff and launching himself at his former employees. He snarls at them. “You’re psychotic. And you need to be put down!”
Nash fires energy from his eyes, which Angel swiftly dodges, turning sharply to counter Pearl’s next blow with his sword. Faith sees the two newcomers and can see why Nadira is so screwed up over their attacking her Slayer Squad. And as she’s fighting, Faith has more thoughts. Thoughts that are running through her head as she battles the demons, almost on autopilot.

For two hundred and fifty years, he’s been creating monsters… Drusilla, Spike… worse. Then having to deal with them.
That stops now.
I’m gonna help him get rid of these monsters. Then I’ll get rid of one myself.
She looks over one more time. Straight at Angel. Yes, I’ll get rid of a monster.
Him.
CONTINUITY
Angel was infected with Mohra blood, and became human as a result, in I Will Remember You.
Angel apparently signed the Shanshu Prophecy and his stake in it away in Not Fade Away, but Wesley informed him during After the Fall that the contract was never filed.
Faith references infiltrating Genevieve Savidge’s mansion in No Future for You (Part 2). She also remembers that incident as the last time she wore a dress.
COVER GALLERY


WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?
ISSUE
Live Through This (Part 2) / Live Through This (Part 4)
STORY ORDER
Live Through This (Part 2) / Live Through This (Part 4)









