Her boots squelching on a wet substance that she doesn’t even want to identify, Faith Lehane aims her weapon ahead of her into the dimly lit-cavern. “Damn, you were right. These creepy-crawlies regenerate from pretty much anything.” She’s talking to Angel, who’s ahead of her, swinging his sword as strange lizard demons nip at him with sharp teeth. “Except being burned to ash,” he says, dodging another strike by severing the demon’s hands. “So, as soon as I’m clear,” he signals to his companion.

Faith interrupts him, clearly in a hurry. “Yeah, yeah. Let’s make this fast,” she says, pulling the trigger on her weapon: it’s a flame thrower, and a stream of fire sprays everything in her path. Before they can be overwhelmed, Angel stops in his tracks as another creature appears in his face. He slices the demon apart as it attacks, warning Faith that he can’t slow it down for long. One of the demons roars in pain over the cacophony of flames and battles and screams, still alive and on fire, moving towards them. Faith tells Angel to move his undead ass.

Before he moves, Angel snatches what they came for from it’s treasured altar and the pair both run. Faith, firing another blast of flame back into the cavern, tells Angel that she’s running on fumes. Angel reassures her: they’re almost there.

Just as the flame thrower runs out of gas, Angel and Faith meet the end of the road. Angel has grenades in his hand, and, shouting “fire in the hole”, throws one straight at the cavern entrance, just as one of the creatures is roaring to escape.

Vampire and Slayer leap for cover as the grenades explode, taking the entrance to the cavern and half of the Peruvian hillside with it. “I’ve always thought that sounded dirty,” Faith admits with a grin. “I mean seriously, if I worked demolitions, I’d be giggling like a twelve-year-old every time I said it.” Angel returns the grin. “If you were working demolition, I’d be running for my life.”

As they get up, they observe their surroundings. They’re somewhere in Peru, high in the mountains, looking for a particular magical artifact. Faith asks, now that they have it, what the hell it is. “It’s the Crown of Coils,” Angel tells her. “Most people think those things regenerate biologically, but it’s really because of this.” He holds up the artifact, a round, metallic ring, evidently a crown, coiled like a spring. “And it looks like it’s still charged.”

He holds the Crown up to the light, but the dull metal has faded with time and doesn’t so much as shine in the dim light of dusk. He doesn’t even look at Faith when he asks her to grab one of the victims – preferably not a fresh one.

Faith picks up one of the many old, withered corpses lying around. Some are older than Angel, nothing left but bone and dust, but some are more recent: people wandering too close to the creatures presumably. “So much for respecting the dead,” Faith sighs as she drags one of the bodies to Angel’s side. Angel doesn’t agree: “The guy was with a drug cartel. Respect only goes so far.”

Pulling the body over, Faith looks at him with contempt. “So he was scum. He still had family. People wondering where he is… if he’ll ever come back. Maybe they’d want to give him a decent burial. Not see him used as a lab rat.” She emphasizes the last two words, a slither of anger in her tone.

If Angel notices the tone change, she can’t tell. He holds the Crown, looking at it and then the body. “We have to know this’ll work. We need an adult human being, not a rabbit. Maybe this is crossing a line, but it’s not the first time and it won’t be the last.”

As he looks over at Faith, she drops the body to the ground, clearly not in a good mood. Angel tries to reassure her. “Look, now that the lizards are buried, we can tell the police about this place. Give the families some closure. If that’s not enough, move over.”

Faith doesn’t look at him. “I’ve got it,” she says, walking away from the corpse. “Do your thing already.”

Angel walks over and places the Crown of Coils on the corpse’s head. At first nothing happens. Angel watches on, mouthing the words. “Come on,” he whispers, barely audible. As Faith and Angel look on, the corpse’s features continue to change. They’re no longer skeletal. In less than a minute, the bloodied remains go from bone to scarred tissue to a healthy pink colour. Faith looks at Angel in amazement. “I’ll be damned,” she whispers. Angel looks just as surprised as her – the Crown worked.

“He’s still dead,” he tells the Slayer. “Without a soul, the body’s just going to rot all over again. But we’ve almost got that solved too.” He looks up at Faith as he removes the Crown from the dead man. “I know where the rest of Giles’s soul is. All we have to do is get it.”

Faith has moved up the hillside a bit. “How do you know this won’t go wrong? Like Mohra blood?” She feels bad thinking it, but her realism has to win out: after all that is what she agreed to and it’s a fact that magic is gone from the world. Angel sighs and shakes his head. “I don’t. That’s why I’m going to leave the Crown with Alasdair, so he can study it. We’ve got other things to worry about. Starting with something that’ll be a lot harder than this.”

Faith stops in her tracks now, as Angel slowly begins walking down the mountain. “Oh. Right,” she exclaims, realising what he means. She sighs again, this time more powerfully. “We gotta dig him up.”

A few hours later, Angel is asleep, dozing in his air plane seat, covered in layers to stop him from becoming ash. Faith sits awake. She gazes intently out of the window. She’s remembering the recent past. If she only closes her eyes for a moment, she could almost be there.

“Man, you still don’t get me at all!”

“Ah, yes. The aggrieved lament of youth, stretching back to James Dean. Faith, I was not insulting you.”

They’re back in a Slayer base. Rupert Giles is in front of her. She can see his disapproving face as clear as day. “Merely pointing out that, while you are quite guarded with people, once you do become attached to them, your loyalty is extreme. To the point that you place their interests above your own, even when it causes you harm.”

The former librarian smiles at her. He removes his glasses for a moment, wipes them with his handkerchief and replaces them. He smiles, this time broadly.

“Jeez, if I knew you were gonna get all Dr. Drew, I’d never let you jump my train. Mentoring problem Slayers was my idea, remember?” Faith looks away, but Giles continues to smile.

“Indeed it was. And a good one, given the state of the world. I still believe it is crucial these girls receive guidance.” He pauses, moving slightly closer to her. “But you’ve seen, first hand, that there are those who cannot be helped. As one who’s worked with Slayers for… well, the exact amount of time isn’t relevant… I promise you there will be more. Those so damaged they can only drag anyone who seeks to aid them into their morass of pain and destruction.”

He leans in, close enough to whisper to her. “Faith, I would never forgive myself if I allowed that to happen to you.”

She smiles, brushes off the emotional undercurrent, and wraps her arm around his shoulder. “Damn, G. You are, like, the prince of dragging a two-second convo into a six-hour miniseries. Lemme save you some time.” She breathes in slightly, remembers her best fake British accent and mocks him. “You: ‘Watch your ass,’ Me: ‘Copy that.’ You: Good, I’ll shut up now.’”.

They beam at each other, neither one quite in a hurry to let go of the embrace. “We cool?” Faith asks him.

“Yes, we are most definitely cool.”

Faith, still in her air plane seat, swears she can hear Giles’ last words echo around the cabin. “Yes, we are most definitely cool.” She clutches the bourbon glass in her hand and, knowing Angel is asleep next to her, quietly sobs for a while.

Sometime later, in London, in a cemetery somewhere in the city limits, Angel and Faith are beginning their grim task, shovels at the ready. Angel tells Faith to keep an eye out. “I can do this on my own.” Faith tells him that she has super-strength too and jokingly accuses him of showing off. “We don’t need to get arrested is all I’m saying,” he whispers back at her. “So dig faster,” is her earnest reply.

Angel’s shovel suddenly strikes something in the ground. He looks at Faith, nerves etched on both their faces. As he reaches down, he hauls the object up from the hole they’ve dug and brings up the coffin of Rupert Giles. As Angel places it level, he turns to Faith. “You don’t have to look,” he tells her. “Just open it,” Faith tells him, her voice trembling.

As Angel opens the coffin, Faith prepares herself for the ghastly sight she’s about to see. She opens her eyes, not realising they were closed, and sees Angel peering inside. “What the…” she starts in confusion. Angel is reeling, surprise on his face.

The coffin is empty.

“Where the Hell is he?” Faith cries out.

A short time later, back in Faith’s apartment, Lavinia and Sophie Fairweather are both seething with anger. “You lost our nephew?” Lavinia cannot believe what she’s hearing. “We didn’t lose him,” Angel offers sheepishly.

“Seeing as poor Rupert’s dead, I’m not going to mention at whose hands…”

“Yours,” Sophie interrupts.

“…I find it extremely difficult to believe he absconded on his own.” Lavinia places her hands on her hips, staring at Angel. Faith gets in between the pair, urging the sister to listen with her calm voice. “The grave was untouched. We checked cemetery records, security tapes… It’s been that way since he was buried. Which means, his body was stolen. Before that.”

“By who?” Sophie questions her, but Angel looks at her blankly. “We were going to ask if you had any ideas.”

Sophie stares back at him angrily, her arms folded. “How rude. We certainly don’t associate with anyone who’d do something like that.” She stops for a moment. She looks at Lavinia for a second, the cogs in her head making an almost palpable noise, Faith imagines, as they screech into motion. “Wait, yes we do, don’t we?”

Lavinia nods. “Rather a lot.”

Faith rolls her eyes. “Make a list. It’s been months. The trail isn’t exactly hot. We’ve got to pull out all the stops on this.” Her speech and instructions are interrupted by a pounding on the front door, one that as soon as it happens, signals the person outside on the other side is angry. A voice comes through the thick wooden door. “Faith! We know you’re in there.” Squinting through the peep hole in the door, Faith can see Nadira and the other Slayers, Nadira with a face like thunder.

Faith looks back at Angel, who is already half way up to the roof. “Buy me a couple of seconds,” he asks, racing upward. “Damn it, Faith!” comes Nadira’s impatient roar through the panelling. “We know Angel’s with you. Now open the door before I kick it in.”

Faith and Angel both stop and look at each other. She knows. The message goes between them with no words. Faith swings open the door suddenly, almost tipping a leaning Nadira into the property with a thud. “Since when is what happens in my house any of your damn business?” Faith demands, Slayer temper rising, but controlled.

“You made it my business,” snaps Nadira. “You lied to me about knowing where he is. Then the two of you fought Drusilla back to back, in a burning church in front of dozens of witnesses. He murdered an entire unit of Slayers last year. My sisters.”

Faith sighs, although she tries not to show it. “He was under the influence of Twilight, which I know you think was him, but it was, like, this massive cosmic force of… Look, Jesus, even I don’t understand it.”

“None of the matters. Not right now. We’re not here about squads of dead Slayers. We’re here about one.” The Slayers part ways and reveal they’re holding a makeshift cot, carrying the corpse of their fallen member Marianne. “Now,” Nadira questions, “Are you going to let us in or not?”

As the Slayers enter, laying the body on the couch, Lavinia shoos Sophie to one side, insisting they leave, despite her sister’s objections.

Nadira removes a scarf from around the dead Slayer’s neck. Nadira explains to Faith that they had been waiting for her to get back, waiting for days. They kept their dead friend in a freezer like a piece of meat because Faith wasn’t around. Nadira is angry, spitting her words in Faith’s face. “What happened? She was murdered. Killed by a vampire.”

Nadira spits out what comes next, pain writhing through her voice, pulling the word from her throat. “Drusilla.”

Angel is stunned. “When?” Nadira, finally face to face with him, yells at him now. “Right after you bloody let her go!” Angel looks regretful, but tells her that in the confusion, Dru slipped away. There was nothing he could have done.

Nadira doesn’t accept his explanation, pointing her finger at him, shaking in rage. “Oh, of course not. You kill demons and monsters and elder Gods like you’re swatting bloody flies, but one vampire keeps getting away from you.” She moves closer, shoving herself straight into Angel’s face. “One vampire you sired, isn’t that what you leeches call it? One vampire you shagged. One vampire you spend a hundred years slaughtering people with.”

She lets her words hang in the air a moment. She takes a beat. Then she speaks again. “Now another girl’s dead. One more body on the pile. And here you are, full of excuses, reasons why it’s not your damn fault!”

One of the other Slayers grabs Nadira by the arm, gently coaxing her away from Angel. Nadira first looks back in anger, but then softens. “Right, we’re not here for that. We’re not even here for you,” she says, turning to Faith. “We’re here for her,” she says, looking at the body.

“Her name was Marianne. She was twenty-three. And she was the best of us.”

Faith slowly walks closer to Nadira. “Not as a Slayer. Poor kid never had a killer instinct. The moves were okay, technically, but you could tell her heart wasn’t in it.”

Nadira looks up at her as she speaks. “She was the kind who takes spiders outside instead of stepping on them. I tried to talk her out of the life, but she wouldn’t hear it. Funny thing is, I don’t thing she stayed because of the slaying. I think she stayed because of the Slayers. She’d lost her parents. Didn’t have family. And all of a sudden, she did. And she could see you needed her as much as she needed you.”

Faith’s face is full of emotion, as is Nadira’s. Nadira tells them more about Marianne, about her parents, how they threw her out. “She had a crap little flat. Used to let us stay there. As many as needed it. The ones who’d been through Hell and needed a place where no one would judge them or ask them how they bloody felt. We loved her and now she’s gone.”

Nadira falls silent, looking at Marianne one final time. Then she angrily points at Angel. “But you’re going to bring her back.”

Angel stares at the Slayer, stunned by her sudden request. “We’ve been asking around,” Nadira explains. “About both of you and what you’re up to. We’ve torn up demon dens from here to Scotland. We know. You’ve been looking for a way to resurrect the Watcher who used to live here, Rupert Giles? And rumour has it, you’ve succeeded or come damn close.”

She approaches the picture of young Rupert with Lavinia and Sophie, his time of childhood and innocence. “Why him?” she yells, gesturing at the portrait. “Why does some old bloke deserve to live more than our friend? Would even he think that he does? Or is it not about him at all? Is it just about what you want?”

Neither Faith or Angel answer her. Faith doesn’t even match her gaze. “Let me spare you answering. Whatever this resurrection trick is, you’re not going to use it on him. You’re going to use it on her. Or I swear to God, I will kill you both.” She walks over to them both, squares them both in the eyes. Her anger makes it clear: Nadira means every word she’s saying.

Angel looks her up and down and, finally, speaks to Nadira. “Let me ask you some questions, about you friend.” Nadira shrugs, having nothing left to lose. “Did she use magic much? Spells or artifacts?” Nadira shakes her head. “What? No. Why would she?”

“Did she have any ties to any magical beings? Demons? Witches?” Nadira looks at him with confusion. “No, she was a girl from Cardiff who’d barely been out of bloody Wales until a year ago! So what!” Angel can tell she’s getting frustrated. He looks at her, then down at the floor.

“I’m sorry. I can’t help you. What we’re doing with Giles – it’s only possible because he was so involved with magic. There are items, beings, that have connections to parts of his soul. And even with that, there’s one important thing that makes Giles different from anyone else, something that kept his soul from moving on when he died…”

Angel doesn’t get the chance to finish his sentence, even if Nadira had been paying attention. She elbows him in the face with a thud, smiling as she hears the satisfying crack of her bone on his chin.

“Don’t lie to me!” she rages. “We were cut off from the magic dimensions when the Seed was destroyed! No one’s soul can move on!”

Angel grunts and begins to pull himself off the carpet. “I’m pretty sure it doesn’t work that way. Death is a natural process. I don’t know the specifics, but souls still go where they belong when someone dies. It’s not magic. I don’t know exactly how it works, to be honest. But it’s part of the life cycle. That doesn’t get interrupted just because the Seed’s gone.” Before he finishes rising, Nadira holds a stake to his chest.

Fellow Slayer Daphne comes behind Nadira and softly places her hand on her friend’s shoulder. “Nadira, hang on. I got a text from that ghoul I leaned on. Plan B’s a go, but we need to move fast. While the intel’s still good.”

Nadira doesn’t take her eyes from Angel, who doesn’t move. She reluctantly puts her stake away and sighs. “Fine,” she says, addressing Angel. “You get to think about this. See if maybe you can come up with an answer that’ll keep you from getting dusted.”

She turns to leave, but finally, before she goes, she turns. “One last thing. Faith,” she says, looking her former mentor in the eyes. “We trusted you. And you lied to us.” The look of pain on her face and in her eyes is palpable. “You looked into my face and you lied.” She points at Angel, who looks away from her glare in shame. “For him.” The other Slayers move behind her now. “You made your choice. Now live with it. We want nothing more to do with you.” With that, the Slayers all file out the front door, Nadira last, never once taking her eyes from Faith.

Angel is stunned. He goes to place his arm around Faith, just as Giles used to, to comfort her. “Don’t,” she tells him as she sits on the stairs and stares at the open front door. Angel leaves her to her grief and the pair both feel miserable, away from each other, separate and alone.

In Guildford, later that evening, Nadira and the Slayers walk up a long drive way to the front door of an exquisite mansion. Two tall security guards wait by the door. Nadira walks straight up to them and tells them that she is expected. She asks the guards if they know who she is. The Slayers are still carrying Marianne’s corpse on the stretcher behind them. The guards nod and Nadira smiles, pulling out a long blade. “So you know what’ll happen if you try anything stupid.” The security men don’t even blink. “Right then,” she replies, walking past them confidently. “Take us to your bloody leader.”

Walking into the mansion through corridors loaded with wealth, Nadira fails to get any response from the security escorting them until they reach a plush office space. He gestures inside. “Here,” is his only response. “Lovely chatting with you,” Nadira quips as she enters the room first, the Slayers filing in behind her.

They approach someone sitting on a high-backed chair. “Hello,” the mysterious figure says, thanking them for coming all the way from London. “Brisk evening, isn’t it? Can I offer you a spot of tea?”

Nadira looks at him with confusion. “Tea? Seriously? We come in here carrying the dead body of our friend and you offer us tea?” The mysterious figure insists that they were just trying to be civil, but Nadira answers back in her resolute and ever-rebellious tone. “Sod civility. We’re not here to chat. We hear you know something about resurrecting the dead?”

The mysterious man gets up, placing a steaming cup on a table next to him. “Why yes,” he says turning to face them.

“You might say I have some experience in that area” says Rupert Giles, smiling, replacing his glasses on his face.