You can’t beat the view in this place. Right at the top of old London town. I didn’t pick the place cos of the ambience: there isn’t any. Sure, there’s a couple of guys sitting at the counter, who were talking about sports and soccer like they were the only things in the world. The pair clearly never met a woman.

I can feel him coming as I wait. The bricks of the walls of this place are old, but not as old as you’re meant to think. All part of the act. The image.

I listen as the staff serve another drink to the jocks at the bar. Larry and Mo are starting to get slightly tipsy. Servile idiots. They’ll be the first to go.

I hear the ‘ding-ding’ of the bell and look up. Crikey, he really is kinda handsome. Say what you like about the overhang and the hair – and the stuck in the 90s vibe – but put it all together and I see why the chicks dig him. Must be the Irish in him.

As much as I want to take my time here, I am kinda on a clock so, I raise my glass – only the good stuff today – and beckon the Dark Avenger over. “Angel, over here,” I say to him, not caring that I’m the only other person here apart from the tweedle twins at the bar.

“Grab a slice,” I tell him. It’s the only authentic New York pizza he’s gonna get here in English town. And that’s not a capital ‘A’. They try, by filtering the water through the dough to match the Big Apple, capital required. “You’re gonna love it.” I tell him. I haven’t smiled yet. I’m waiting for Mr. Broody to give me my cue.

“Your working with Pearl and Nash? Are you crazy?”

And there it is. No hello, no ‘how are you,’ no damn apology for tripping up months of plans. Nope. He calls ME crazy.

“That’s not a very nice word.” He then, get this, has the gall to grab a hold of my leather jacket – as if he knows how much the damn thing costs – and proceeds to order me (imagine!) to, and I quote, “Tell me where they are. Now. I need to take them down,” I think the next word would have been ‘before,’ although truth be told, I only half-heard.

It’s a very expensive jacket.

So I grabbed his wrist, nearly snapped it clean off. He didn’t appreciate that, but I think I got the guy’s attention. He’s not that dumb, right? I have loads to get on with, so I tell him to park his butt in the booth, whether he likes it or not. After all, I left him one hand to hold a beer with! Jeez!

Eventually, after what seems like forever, he sits down in the booth. I finally get a slice of pie and ask him if he knows what the date is? He tells me it’s our anniversary.

“That’s right,” I tell him. At least the important moments are remembered.

Because it defined him.

I defined him, like they defined me.

It’s been years now, I remind him, since I found him in that alley way. Ninety-something, six, I think, wallowing in garbage and feeding on rats. The day I took him from all that. Fifteen years ago now, round about.

And not only that, I didn’t just save him from bad cuisine and homeless-chic fashion. No. I gave him a reason to live. I took him to Hemery, I showed him the girl. The Slayer. I remember thinking she must be pretty, since he went goo-goo over her as soon as he saw her.

Of course, I didn’t know then, what I know now.

I recap it, just in case he’s thinking differently, but mostly to show off.

What can I say, I like a drama.

“Twenty years you spent living like an animal. In agony from the memory of what you done. That musta been Hell, man. And all you hadda do was watch the sun come up! Poof! It’s all over.”

I look at him, grab another slice. “How come you never went that route?” He looks at me, almost looking tired. He so does not want to be here.

“I felt like it wasn’t finished yet. Like there was something I still needed to do.”

“Or someone, am I right? You and Buffy, once you met, it was a done deal. You were gonna die together, kill each other, or change the whole friggin’ world. It was destiny.

“But not predestined. There’s a difference. You always had a choice, both of you. I saw to it you made the right one, that you found each other, killed and died for each other, fell in love. Embraced the power you had coming and used it to make a new reality. A better one. Where everyone could evolve. Fulfil their destiny.”

I will admit, at this point I lost my temper slightly. Not much. Although I did break the table apart. The only casualty, fortunately, in this case, was the crappy pizza.

I’ve so lost my appetite.

“And you threw the game in the ninth inning!” I yell. I’m not accustomed to yelling.

And damn, the beer went too.

Fred and Ginger at the bar get a bit frisky and look like their coffee’s been whizzed in. “Sorry, my bad. Got a little carried away.” They don’t really care anyway. They haven’t seen or heard a damn thing in three hours.

What? I ain’t paying for the meal. I entranced them. What am I, deficient? I am certainly not a sadist, like the Donny and Marie from Hell he’s now forcing me to work with. While I’ve got him here, I may as well ask him.

“I gotta ask, why, man? After all the work you did. No, we did. Why’d you toss it all away?”

“Our friends were in danger.”

I’ll give you, gentle reader, two seconds to process that.

Ready?

Okay!

Oh, Jesus, how friggin thick is that forehead?

“You’d created a new universe! It was yours! All you hadda do was decide what it should look like, then you could’ve brought all your friends over! You coulda saved the whole world!”

And why didn’t he? Because Buffy wasn’t buying it. Sheesh. Think with the brain in your head instead of the one in your pants, huh? It’s got enough space!

“She wasn’t buying it. Because it wasn’t true, was it? The Hell dimensions were invading Earth. No matter how fast we worked, there were going to be casualties.”

Well, duh!

“Well, duh! You could’ve kept ’em low if you’d moved fast. But c’mon, you thought it was gonna be a cakewalk? Evolution’s a bitch. That’s why they call it Darwinism… ’cause that dude was ugly!”

“I never thought it’d be painless. But you didn’t tell me I’d make things worse. Because you knew I’d never go along with it. You figured by the time it got to that point, Buffy and I would be so drunk on power – and each other – we wouldn’t be able to notice. Or be able to make the choice she made. Admit it, Whistler, everything you did, from that alley to Twilight… you were using me. Using us.”

“What the Hell d’you think destiny is, kid? It’s the universe using you.”

He sits at the bar and looks kinda upset by that one. I plan on cheering him up the best way I know how, but he won’t care. Let’s hope, for his sake, he pays attention.

“Lemme tell you a story…”

You think you and blondie knocking boots was radical? A vampire and a Slayer? Try a pureblood demon and an agent of the Powers That Be. Evil incarnate and a servant of good. Or, as I call them, mom and dad.

Sure, the history of the occult’s full of strange alliances, but this… this was way outside the box. It was also kinda revolutionary when demons and higher beings teamed up to kill my folks. But they weren’t making some statement about unity.

They were cleaning up a mess, wiping out a couple who broke the rules – who tried to change the way the universe works – for love. Course, there was one loose end.

Me.

The demons wanted to eat me, big surprise, but I guess the Powers felt bad – killing one of their own ain’t near as common for them. And they saw I was something new. Unique. A foot in each world, kinda like you.

So they decided instead of killing me, they could use me. To make sure the natural order never fell too outta whack again. They gave me the sight. Precognition. The ability to see what possible futures were coming down the pike. And they told me to make sure the pendulum never swung too far either way. To help, where I was needed.

Not personally, that wasn’t my style. I operated behind the scenes, found promising candidates. If the Dark Ages got gloomy, I let in some light. Sometimes, I hadda go the other way, too. Not often, but people have a way of screwing things up on their own. But I couldn’t get sentimental about it. Balance.

That was what counted.

Even if it meant sometimes doing things that left a sick feeling in my gut. I know about making hard choices, kiddo. And I always chose the greater good.

“Think about how that felt. For thousands of years. Helping good people put it all on the line to change the world. Knowing at the end of the day they gotta fail.”

“Balance is important. It’s in my blood. It’s gotta be maintained, or else. But I’m not made of stone. It got to me. There had to be a better way. A way to keep things even and still make them better.”

“And I finally found it. You. You and Buffy.”

He looks at me, finally getting it. It’s about time, jerkwad.

“I like to think the universe got the idea to bring you together from my folks. That their death wasn’t for nothin, y’know? You could’ve birthed a new universe where good and evil, magic and science, light and dark merged together. Where the balance is maintained cause everyone evolved, into something higher.”

But you got cold feet, threw it all away and the planet with it. Buffy destroyed the Seed of Magic. Cut Earth off from the mystic planes, cut me off from the Powers and took magic right outta the world.

It’s like having a stroke, being struck blind and deaf – like losing a part of myself. And if that’s how it was for me, imagine what it was like for the Earth. And that ain’t the worst part…

Now, I turn to look at Angel. No showmanship now, no soapbox. Just truth. Plain honest truth. It’s deadly important that he knows I’m not jostling’ him here.

“Before my precognition cut out, I got one last vision. A look at the future of this world. It was dead. You think you’ve seen Hell dimensions? This? This was HELL!”

“Every vision I ever saw was a maybe. It could be changed. This can too… I gotta believe that. It’s not too late. But every day the window closes a little. Like the ads say, act now.” I put my hand inside the jacket, carefully.

I pull out the shiny blue globe I got. “There’s still a lotta magic items with charges in them. Like batteries in a blackout. I’m trying to get ’em before people use them up.”

My plan is to grind them all together, into one big distilled pile of pure, uncut magic. “Then, I’m gonna spread it around the world. Like Johnny Appleseed.” He’s looking away from me now. I can see the cogs moving in his oversized head.

“It’ll get inhaled, absorbed, into every living creature on Earth. No need for a Seed. Magic’ll just be a part of everything. And it’ll evolve.”

“The world will evolve. Into something beautiful.”

So I offer him the deal. I tell him the truth, that some people won’t make it, two billion, maybe three tops. But he’s got to start thinking about the bigger picture – the world’s overcrowded, icecaps are melting. Either some die now, or the world dies along the road? The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few? Hasn’t this guy watched a movie in forty years?

“Do you think I like working with Pearl and Nash? Hell, no. You’re the guy. You’re my guy. I want to give you the chance to make things right, Angel. To clean up the mess you made. Save the world, like you always wanted.”

“I want you with me on this.” He’s smiling. At least I think it’s a smile. Have I got him?

“Whistler. You’re right. I owe you everything. You gave me a purpose, a chance at redemption. You gave me her. I owe you more than I could ever repay. Of course I want to help you.”

Really? That was easy.

“But you have to let me. The end of magic. It did something to you. Affected your mind. It had to, the balance being thrown off like that. I’ll fix it. I’ll find a way. Get you thinking clearly again. Just say you’ll let me help you.”

What a douche!

“Screw you, man,” I tell him, pushing his hand away. How can he not understand?

Knowing now that there’s no point hanging around, I head for the door. He calls after me, but I don’t care. He tells me that he can’t let me go through with whatever, but once again, I don’t hear the next words out of his mouth. I can’t hear anything now except the rage in my head.

The stupidity of these people!

I must admit, I didn’t expect to push my fist all the way through his stomach. It was only meant to be a demo, but never mind, I did it. Pushed my hand right into the abdomen of the vampire with a soul and ripped his stomach out.

He screamed. Don’t really know why. It’s not as if vampires need it.

But I’m still angry. Unbelievably so. This takes me very much by surprise. I pull a leg off one of the chairs. Surprised at myself, I move forward as he lurches away from me on the floor.

This is my great Champion?

I drop the stake. He’s too pathetic there on the pizza place floor. I make sure he knows why. I tell him, he’s my favourite. I can’t kill him. I could never kill him.

I bend down so he can see my eyes from beneath my hat. I make sure he looks straight in them. “So don’t make me.”

Like I said earlier, I’m not heartless. I tell him that once his stomach’s grown back, he should try the eggplant parm. “It really is to die for.”

As he leans up against the counter, I give him one last look.

“And don’t ever let me see you again.”

Fine then. Guess I’ll do this myself. I hear the ‘ding-ding’ of the bell as I leave.

The year is 1935. It’s April 14th, and the dust bowl has engulfed Oklahoma. This day would become known as Black Sunday, the worst day of the dust bowl.

In a barn, a demon, stinking of brimstone, appears from the sigil on the floor. He’s been summoned here for no reason he can decern. He’s a large brown creature, with a long tail. Clawed hands and sharp teeth primed, he looks around the room and almost feels the need to roar.

“Oh, Hellfire.” He sighs. There’s a woman, thin and frail, naked save arcane tattoos that she’s inked onto her flesh. The woman holds a dead chicken in one of her outstretched hands, clearly the sacrifice required. The demon looks at her with absolute disgust.

“Wonderful. Another barely literate human finds a book of magic and manages to decipher a summoning spell. Thank you, Mr. Gutenberg,” he sighs. “Your printing press was such a wonderful invention.”

He looks down at the woman. “Very well,” he tells her. “Thanks to some ridiculous rules that I, frankly, don’t understand, I am bound to perform one task before I leave your miserable hovel.” He looks around, talking aloud about what he thinks it could be. An end to the terrible weather perhaps? Or a cure for some revolting disease? He would even, he says, be willing to redecorate her home so it has even a modicum of taste, but the woman just looks at him.

In a quiet, shrill voice, she answers him. “I want you to make me pregnant.”

The demon licks his lips in anticipation. His other jobs could wait for tomorrow.

Five years later, 1940. The woman now sits on her front porch, educating her children, two pale twins, with crystal clear blue eyes and pointed ears. They have white hair, the lightest shade.

“Humanity’s maggot food,” she tells them, innocently shelling peas into a bowl. She says she saw their entire family die of sickness, hunger, or violence. Humans are not made to live, she reckons – they’re just made to breed, suffer and die.

“After I buried my last children, I dreamed of a better way. You’re it,” she says looking at the smiling twins. “The two of you are gonna birth a new order. Not together, of course, that’d be deviant. You’ll have babies, lots of them. And not with just anybody. With demons, like I did.”

She looks back to the bowl, still smiling. “Every new generation’ll be stronger. With magic part and parcel of them. Folks who can make something of life, grab it by the stones and own it.”

She tells them it won’t be easy, but it won’t be as hard on them as it was on her. She’ll have the satisfaction of knowing her children will make the world better than it was. “Your saviours, is what you are.”

There’s a voice from the front garden path. It’s a police officer. He comes up to her, without offering any pleasantries, and tells her that she, Susan Finney, has been evicted for non payment of rent. Susan looks at her children with a smile. “Kids,” she says and suddenly both twins look up at the police officer. Their eyes glow a macabre light green and beams shoot from their eyes! The beams slice straight through the police officer, leaving him nothing but a pile of goo on the front steps.

Susan looks down at the children with pride. “Such good children,” she smiles. “I just know you’ll make wonderful parents.”

1970, thirty years later. Pearl and Nash are screaming. Pearl lets her eyes glow and fire, but cannot contain her dismay any longer, screaming at the attacking men. “You’re killing my children!” she yells.

There is chaos around them. Men have burst into their home, taking them and their children by surprise and shockingly, begun to massacre them. Pearl’s children are literally being sliced to pieces around her, and she’s still screaming, Nash desperately trying to help her.

The lead man stabs Nash through the back with his sword, but is shot in the head for his trouble: Susan Finney is still alive, armed with a shotgun and keen to protect her family. Another man comes forward as they start to disappear, magically teleporting. “You’ve won nothing, crone,” one tells her as he fades “Your grandchildren are all dead and you’ll soon follow.”

Susan is not scared in the slightest, and attempts to get in a shot at the man before he fades, to no avail. “You always had a mouth on you, Alasdair Coames,” she warns. “One of these days, I’m gonna weld it shut. Run, ya yellow sissy.”

The Watchers gone, Susan looks around at the carnage around her. She’s not that bothered: “Guess we’ll just have to make more,” she sighs.

Pearl is cradling one of her children. She’s crying, as is Nash. “Mama, I can’t. I can’t go through this again,” Pearl wails, but Susan shrugs off her pain. “Hush up, child,” she snorts. “I lost my share of babies before you two came along. It hurts, all right, but you buck up and carry on.” She stops for a moment, clearly thinking. Her cigarette sits on the outside of her lip precariously.

“Maybe instead of demons, we try humans with strong magic.” This might help them blend in more, she thinks. Nash seemingly agrees, but he’s tired. “To think they can do this. So much of our lives gone in one day. There has to be a better way.”

Susan doesn’t turn to look at her children. “Mayhap there is. I charted the best course I knew. But you two are beyond me, my loves. Might be you can figure something I can’t. I wish you luck, I truly do.”

With that, she lets her cigarette fall and the whole building bursts into flames around them. As she leads her children out of the inferno, she tells them to take one last look. Let it live in their hearts so that it reminds them of what they’re fighting for. “An inspiration to do better next time.”

A year ago, close enough. Pearl and Nash are floating in mid air with Twilight. They bring up evolution. If, as he says, the world is about to evolve, what does that mean, exactly?

In that gravelly, disguised voice, Twilight unfolds his arms as he hovers. “I can’t reveal the details of how, but the world as we know it is ending. The most suitable candidates will enter a new universe, where magic and science, demon and angel, dark and light, merge to create something new. Does that sound like something you might be interested in?”

Pearl looks at Nash and nods enthusiastically. “It does,” she says, “It really does.” Twilight warns them that there will be battle and there will be blood. The twins look at each other. “What’s the down side?” Nash asks.

Now, the present day. Nash is crying. “All that time wasted.”

Pearl isn’t crying, but she looks desperately sad. “We are so sorry. We failed you.”

In the bed below them is Susan Finney. She’s ancient now, impossibly old, older than a normal human. She’s linked up to monitors, but not normal ones – there are mystical symbols all around her, demon medicines, and even a spider-demon on her bed. Only the twins know the chemicals being pumped into her.

The frail woman struggles to turn her head and look at them. “Hush up, child. You didn’t fail me. You tried. It didn’t work. So you got up, dusted yourselves off and tried again. That’s what life’s about.”

Now Pearl is upset, tears flowing freely. “But it’s because of us magic ended. Because of us, you’re going to die.” She can scarcely believe this is happening.

Her mother’s emaciated form tries to smile. “It ain’t either. A hundred years of smoking, drinking and rutting. I should have keeled over ages ago. If anyone’s to blame, it’s that Twilight fella. I told you to be careful of him. Someone so powerful, new on the scene. I smelled a rat from the get-go.”

Nash holds his mother’s decrepit hand. “We wanted you to see it. What you’d worked so hard for, finally, coming to pass.” Susan tells him that there was no need to: she knew her kids would come good. She tells them to hurry up now, as she doesn’t want to spend the last few days in pain.

Together, his arm around his sister, Nash and Pearl use their eye beams and completely incinerate their mother there and then. As he comforts his sister, he tells her that this time, they’re going to get it right for her.

Pearl smiles through the tears. “Angel was right too. There will most certainly be blood.”

“Salvation and revenge,” she whispers quietly. “I scarcely know which I look forward to more.”