Highgate Cemetery in the dead of night. Angel is lurking and, as usual, brooding, on his past. He read The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, sometime in the 80s, after finding a copy in a dumpster. It kept him from going crazy back then so Angel decided to pay respects to the author, buried in Highgate. He is also aware that vampire in a cemetery? Not the most original look.

He’s been following something. It was in the cemetery, but now it’s gone. Damn. That’s a problem. Because I can smell blood up ahead.

Moving through the ritzy portion of Highgate, Angel avoids the rich celebrity parts. He’s more interested in the Holly Lodge estate on it’s borders: not the poshest part of town, newly-made public housing for the elderly specifically. And this is where the trail leads.

A police officer outside asks him why he’s lurking, joking that Angel is too young to be living in this area. Angel says he was looking for a friend. He enquires after the officer’s presence, and he tells him that there’s nothing unusual happening, as far as he’s aware. A pensioner didn’t call his daughter, so she called the police, asking them to check on the older gentleman. They both walk into the establishment together, Angel heading in first, in case of attack. The officer stops him, reminding him of who is wearing the uniform. Angel apologises and steps back, but as the officer goes to open the apartment door, he already knows what they’re going to find. The smell is already overwhelming and the officer holds his nose together to try and block it out. He warns Angel to get back and opens the door.

Inside, a mad man, wearing spectacles and a staff uniform, has butchered the residents. There is blood everywhere, three victims in Angel’s immediate view, all with a deep cross cut into their foreheads. The man has a long blade in his hand, a serrated saw, that he’s using to make the marks in the poor people’s heads. He has one victim yet to finish, one more line to ‘draw’. “It’s out,” he yells in delight. “They had the disease. But I cut it out!” He’s almost gleeful.

He jumps down from the table he’s standing on, telling the officer he can fix them too, swiping his saw at the officer and cutting a gash in his arm. Angel is getting irritated now, grabbing the saw from the killer and telling anyone who can hear him that trying to help him never ends well. He picks up the killer, twists his arm and slams him into the table, where he’s knocked into unconsciousness with a thud.

The police officer thanks him, complimenting Angel on his moves. But then he asks if one of the victims is Angel’s friend, the one he was here to see? Angel muses. “No,” he says, “No, I don’t think he’s been here in a while.”

Highgate Cemetery in the dead of night. The year is 1972. Rupert Giles is running, as usual, for his life. He clutches his precious books, prepared early for class – he would much rather be in class than running through a cemetery. And his stake-wielding pursuer? Not the sharpest tool in the shed. He briefly considers the absurdity of his situation before focusing on the more pressing matter: survival.

He trips his pursuer as he jumps over a gravestone, smacking him into the stone with help from his heavy volumes. “One. Telling the undead to die is an oxymoron. Two. I’m very much alive, no thanks to your idiocy. And three. Pay bloody attention to the task, Phillip!”

Phillip rubs his head. “What crawled up your bum and died Rupert? Five Watchers against a single vampire! This is meant to be fun.”

Giles looks at his classmates, with an extremely serious undertone. “Not Watchers. Not until we’ve passed the final, which you seem determined to cause us to fail. And I remind you that any vampire is a potentially lethal threat, to be approached with the utmost caution.”

The other teenagers laugh at Giles’ speech. They’ve killed plenty of vamps! Giles reiterates that they’ve always been in controlled environments. “This is our first field mission. We know nothing. The tabloids may call it the ‘Highgate Vampire’ but for all we know it could be a nest of them.”

Phillip interrupts his friend. “Yes, or a drunken sailor.” He tells Giles that being their head boy doesn’t mean he has to be so tightly wound. One of the other students, a young girl with ginger hair and cute freckles on her nose, agrees with Giles and stands up for him. Giles catches her eyes and the two share a slight smile. Their gaze is only broken by another student, yelling loudly, asking them to look. He points towards a gloomy part of the cemetery. In front of them, a tall figure stands in the dark, trench coat covering his body, a hat on his head pulled down so that the youngsters cannot see his face. Giles knew from that moment. In fact, years later, he recalled in his Diary that “the moment I saw it, I knew something was very wrong.”

Phillip launches himself, stake prepared, straight at the newcomer. He is convinced it is evil, not simply by the look of the dark figure, but also in the very air around him. He asks Giles if he can feel it too? Evil. Pure evil. “It’s our final exam,” the boy tells his classmates as he races forward, ignoring Giles’ attempts to warn him.

Giles’ writings, from decades later, explained what happened next: “Poor Phillip, who, despite what he thought, I had quite liked, misunderstood my warning. I was not afraid it was a human being, or a vampire for that matter. I feared it was something else entirely.”

As Phillip’s stake crunches and breaks rather than entering the figure’s chest, Phillip is surprised. In that moment, he knew that Rupert Giles had been tragically right.

“A Lorophage demon is far stronger and deadlier than any vampire,” Giles’ notes continued. “Using its proboscis and needle-like fingers, it draws sustenance from it’s victim’s minds. A process that is usually fatal.”

As the hat falls and the trench coat opens, the demon is revealed. It has the appearance of a humanoid mosquito – flailing nose-like appendage, big black eyes. His fingertips are longer than knitting needles. The appendage on his face strikes at Phillip, straight through his head.

His friends race forward, but the Lorophage is stronger than the teenagers. It feeds on trauma and of course, five Watchers-in-training had already seen the horrors of reality. They were easy pickings for the creature.

The younger Giles had brought a weapon, a small dagger, and he launched himself at the demon, hoping to save the freckled girl, Charlotte, who he never did ask out for tea.

Before the demon can kill Giles, the only one of the group left, its tackled to the ground and drops the young boy: Rupert looks up in relief. Adult Watchers, the ones who should have intervened before this, who were standing there ‘evaluating’ their performance, arrive on the scene, his father among them.

They were no match for the creature either, but it’s hunger sated, and full from it’s young meal, it fled. Rupert’s father held onto him as he grieved his classmates. But in his Diaries, Giles wrote down that that was the day that something inside him died. “Whatever innocence I had left.”

Later that night, Giles is confronting his father about the incident. He thinks his father is a murderer, claiming that they were sent in blind, as if “they were covered in raw meat and led into the lion’s den!” Giles’ father barely looks up from the volume he’s reading to listen to Rupert, never mind answer him. “A tragic mishap,” he tells his son, which only happened due to faulty intelligence. They believed the so-called ‘Highgate’ vampire to be a fabrication. If they had known that some creature was in the cemetery, they simply wouldn’t have been there. This does nothing to placate the angry teenage Giles though, who yells that his classmates weren’t ready for the test!

His father raises his voice slightly. “I wasn’t ready at my finals. No one can ever truly be. We of the Council have taught you all we know, hoping to spare you our mistakes, but even so, we are Watchers. The spectre of death is part and parcel of the life we’ve chosen.”

Giles reacts badly to this, turning towards his father and angrily pushing his papers off his desk! “Chosen? I never chose a bloody thing. As I recall I was informed at the age of ten that I would become a Watcher, then summarily packed off to study horror and death alongside Latin and geometry!”

Giles father stops him. “A poor choice of words. The supernatural is our heritage, our destiny. We cannot escape it, so we must be prepared to meet it.” Giles continues yelling, despite his father’s cool temperament. “To Hell with destiny and to Hell with you! I am making a choice now father, for the first time in my life. What you do, what you are, is an obscenity and I will have no part of it!” With that, the younger Giles slammed his way out of his father’s office, with no intention of looking back. He would dabble in magic over the years, but for all intents and purposes, Rupert Giles, at 16 years old, walked away from his father and the Watchers.

In the present day, a young woman is on the floor, surprised that the vampire she was making out with has bitten her, without her permission. Faith looks over her wounds whilst Nadira and another Slayer, Daphne, take out the vampire. As Nadira prepares to plunge her stake into his chest, Faith grabs her arm to stop her.

“What the hell?” Nadira asks. Faith tells her to take a good look at the guy they’re about to stake. No bumps. No fangs. This guy is a wannabe. He instantly denies this, telling them that he had asked a woman to sire him, but she wouldn’t, saying it was against the rules. So instead, he ‘sired’ himself, decided to drink the blood first. Faith tells them to call the cops and an ambulance. The guy is clearly crazy. Nadira is horrified that she almost staked a human. She instantly turns to Faith and apologises, but Faith tells her that there’s no need. She thinks it’s a good thing. In fact, the only reason she saw it tonight was the fact that she’d been there before.

“But,” she adds, “I dealt with it. Did time. Paid my debt. Now I actually used it to save a life. Five by five, right?” She helps the victim up and asks the Slayers if they know who this woman is, the one the guy seemed so enamoured with. Nadira has heard rumours of a woman named Mother Superior, who has become the new ‘it’ vampire in London. She asks Faith if this incident means they can go after her. She’s told that they have no probable cause, but Nadira tells her that being a Slayer gives her that right. “Is it even illegal to kill a vampire?”

Faith tells her it’s a grey area right now, and they need to be seen playing by the rules too. If they want to go after this Mother Superior person then they’re going to need definite proof before they can dust her. Faith smiles at them though – vampires very rarely have no skeletons in their closets.

On the rooftop of her apartment, Angel and Faith are sparring, reflecting on their different encounters that night: Angel doesn’t want to bother Mother Superior, whoever she is, if she’s not doing anything wrong. Faith says he doesn’t want to deal with it, as she blocks a move from his blade with her own.

She tells him the guy she met wasn’t just a vampire wannabe: he was full blown wacko. “A few beers short of a case,” she says. Angel is more interested now, comparing her guy with the crazy in the residential home. Faith is surprised Angel was focused on something other than bringing Giles back, but he tells her it’s kind of related. The Lorophage demon from the last Watcher Diary entry he read: it’s been asleep for decades, according to lore, but a prophecy says that it ‘will wake and feed when the stars of the Old Ones who birthed them align.’ Angel has looked it all up and done his research: the time is now.

At the home of Alasdair Coames, Giles’ former best friend and ex-mage, Angel and Faith sit as Coames reads from a volume about the Lorophage species. It could cause an epidemic of madness, he thinks, but it’s not very likely. He turns to Angel. “The Watcher Files are correct. There have been cases of their victims going insane, from all their trauma being forced to the surface at once.” But only if the attack is interrupted. Faith points out that Giles’ attack was interrupted and he didn’t go crazy or die.

Coames tell her that Giles went through a period using dark magick when he was known as ‘Ripper’. Faith says that being young and stupid around magic doesn’t make you Charles Manson either.

Angel notes that if they’re not interrupted, the Lorophage always finish and kill. So why would it leave any victims alive now? It can’t be constantly interrupted! Faith wonders if it’s being controlled. Alasdair confirms that the creature could be hypnotised, but he has no knowledge of what could possibly be powerful enough to do so. Angel points out that some vampires have been known to use hypnosis and could have given the demon a guiding hand. Coames understands, telling Faith that he hopes this is taking priority over other, more fanciful, pursuits. “Yeah, Defcon One. Got it. Thanks for the 411.” Alasdair looks at Angel as Faith heads towards the door. He has no idea what she just said.

Following Faith, Angel asks her if she’s okay, since she seemed to bite Coames’ head off back there. Faith is narked, telling Angel that the guy talks too much and they need to shut this down. The Slayers have found more people being admitted with psychological issues: a war vet, a rape survivor, an abused kid – people with huge amounts of trauma in their lives. Faith asks if Angel sees the pattern?

He nods. “Gourmet meals for a Lorophage demon.” What’s more, Faith adds, is their families all confirm prior contact with Mother Superior. Like they had joined some sort of cult. Her Slayers have a location for the mysterious woman as well: an old deconsecrated church, which has been turned into a nightclub. In Highgate, funnily enough. “You wouldn’t think a vampire’d be into church stuff. I get it though. Spent three years in Catholic school,” Faith tells Angel. “Once nuns get in your head there’s no getting them out, know what I mean?” Once she’s finished, Angel doesn’t say anything else. He simply tells her that it’s time for them to move.

At the nightclub, Angel and Faith, weapons armed, burst through an old stained-glass window. There’s people inside, some humans, some vampires, all wanting to see Mother Superior. Faith demands to know where she is, as she and Angel make their way through the mob.

In the White Hart public house, close to where the Slayer Headquarters are, Nadira and Daphne are enjoying some time out. A man approaches them from the bar. He asks them if they’re Slayers, like the bartender told him.

Angel thinks back on his past and Angelus’ obsession with nuns. He was a monster back then. He hates remembering the nuns. In fact, being reminded of nuns really pisses him off. He vamps out, beating back more of the mob. “Where is she?” he growls.

In the White Hart, the man, older, balding on-top, asks Nadira if she knows of a Slayer who lives around here, goes by the name of ‘Faith Lehane’?

In the nightclub, Angel kicks through heavy oak doors to the back of the former vestry. The ancient doors are remarkably sturdy considering their age. He calls out to Mother Superior, telling her that it’s time to explain everything. He looks up at the room, where a group of followers are quietly worshipping Mother Superior, who sits atop a red velvet chair, a pedestal-like throne. Angel looks straight into Mother Superior’s eyes as she tells him that she knows what comes next.

It’s Drusilla.

Angel stops. “Oh.”

In the pub, Nadira is suspicious, telling the man that she’s never heard of anyone named Faith. And if they had, why the hell would they tell a complete stranger in a bar?

Drusilla gets up from her chair. “Father,” she coos at Angel. “Isn’t that right?” Angel nods at his creation. “Drusilla,” he whispers.

In the White Hart, the man pulls a photo out of his pocket. It’s of him and a young girl, clearly Faith. But she’s only a child. “Why tell me?” he asks the Slayers, “Best reason in the world. I’m her daddy.”

In the club, Angel notices something different about Drusilla straight away, something unusual that he can’t quite place. He listens to her speaking.