1970’s Soho breathes low and filthy, like a drunk exhaling into a puddle. Pavement twitches beneath a single flickering streetlamp – more rust than glow. Across the street, Ray’s buzzes in cheap red neon, casting its glow across the wet bricks in colours that stick to your conscience. Curtains hang limp in the windows, velvet and exhausted, while faded posters peel at the edges, whispering promises better left ignored. A man slumps by the alley wall, curled like punctuation at the end of a sentence. Passed out or high – it hardly matters. The night doesn’t care.

Silence tries to settle, sickly and dense. Then comes the scream. Sharp, shrill, and human. It slices the stillness. A cat bolts from under a car, smashes into a bin with a crash that rattles the street. The slumped man groans and stirs, twitching into a half-conscious haze. The city is awake again – and it’s not feeling merciful.

Three floors up in a building whose best years rotted decades ago, the apartment sits boarded and broken. Light leaks in through the cracks – thin slices of orange that catch the dust like secrets. Candles flicker around the room, uncertain. It smells of plaster and incense and damp regret. Ethan Rayne tightens a strip of cloth around Dierdre’s arm, hands steady, eyes gleaming with self-congratulation.

“I told you this might hurt a bit,” he says, not looking up.

Dierdre watches the ink settle into her skin, eyes fixed, jaw tight.

“I don’t know, Ethan. I’ve done some reading on this demon. It’s dreadful. And every bit emphasises how deadly he is.”

He peels away the cloth with ceremony. The mark glows – dark, curved, old. The lines twist just above her wrist like they’ve been waiting for centuries.

“Yes, of course,” Ethan replies, voice casual but dripping with derision. “Here’s the key to power. Now don’t use it. That’s what all the books say, don’t they? We’re breaking down the old barriers. Making the occult serve us, not the other way around. I’ve done it all myself. We all have. Actually been possessed” – he leans into the word – “by a being who was old when the world was young.”

He chuckles, quietly. It’s the kind of laugh walls listen to, just in case.

“It’s the most incredible high.”

She looks up, nerves flickering across her skin.

“But what if something goes wrong?”

“Nothing will go wrong. I told you about my mate, didn’t I? He spent years at the Watcher Academy. All the training you could want.”

That’s when the man in the corner jerks upright with a violent tremor. Saliva sprays through the air, catching in his beard and soaking the front of his filthy white vest. Dierdre yelps, stumbling back.

“Randall!” Ethan shouts.

“What’s wrong with him? Did he get a bad dose?” Dierdre asks, panic rising.

“I told that berk not to cut it with tannis root,” Ethan mutters, watching Randall seize.

Randall isn’t awake. His eyes are glassy, his body twitching like strings are pulling from beneath his skin. Dierdre steps forward, unsure, then retreats as he convulses harder.

“Hold him!” Ethan barks, fumbling with his sleeves. “There’s an incantation for
this. If I can just remember the bloody words.”

His voice lacks conviction. Panic seeps through the cracks in his confidence as he raises his arms.

“LUPUS SOTHAL RECIDO… No, wait… REPRESSUM.”

Dierdre screams.

Randall’s flesh ripples – melts – pulls away from itself. His face blurs, distorts, reshapes. A demon emerges through him, using skin as a doorway, a canvas, a cocoon. Its mouth stretches wide, teeth too sharp and too many. Its eyes glow blood-red and bloated with something wrong.

“Oh my God,” she gasps, frozen.

Then comes the light.

A cascading blue flare floods the room, holy and wild. Randall convulses mid-transformation as the glow strikes him. A voice cuts through the chanting air—clear, cockney, certain.

“LUPUS SOTHAL RECESSSUM!”

The demon recoils. The light fades. Randall lies groaning, sweat-soaked and broken. The floor beneath him creaks with exhaustion.

Ethan crouches beside him, annoyed. “I had it,” he says, frustrated by the theft of his moment.

Dierdre, recovering, catches sight of the figure in the doorway and smiles with more sparkle than fear.

“Oh, hello. Ethan’s told me quite a bit about you. I’m Dierdre.”

She rubs the back of her neck with one hand, the other settled on her hip. Her voice flirts on the edges of charm.

The newcomer stands with worn leather, tousled mousy hair, a Union Jack shirt clinging to his chest, a guitar slung across his shoulder like a challenge. His belt buckle gleams. He smells of pubs and power.

“Lovely to meet you,” he says with a crooked grin. “I’m Ripper.”

And the look he gives her doesn’t ask for permission. It declares intention.

The home of Faith Lehane, London. Now.

The door’s still open – cold air bleeding in through the frame as though it knows it’s not welcome. The Slayers are gone. Their absence rings louder than their voices ever did. Faith sits, unmoving, knuckles white against the edge of the armrest, staring past the guilt, past the shock, into whatever part of herself is still left untouched.

Angel watches her for a moment, then steps forward. Quiet. Careful. She rises slowly, more out of obligation than intent, and closes the heavy oak door without ceremony. Her eyes never meet his. Instead, she drifts across the room, settling in the farthest chair like she’s trying to outrun the radius of his shadow. Angel follows. He always does.

“Maybe if you give them some time…” he offers.

Faith turns her head just enough for him to see her expression – tight-lipped, hard-eyed. It’s the look that says Are you kidding me? without needing the words.

“What part of ‘We want nothing more to do with you’ sounds like ‘maybe’ to you, Angel?”

He opens his mouth – too late.

“SHUT UP!” she spits, the words exploding before he can retreat. “After you killed Giles – after your breakdown, whatever you want to call it – y’know why I took you in? Because I owed you. Because when I hit bottom you helped me, so I helped you.”
She’s standing now, pointing at him, her movements jagged with all the things she’s swallowed down over months.

“I backed you on this whacked-out mission to resurrect Giles. I lied to the girls about you. Started blowing them off when they needed me. ‘Cause I was busy almost getting killed. I pissed away any friggin’ purpose I had in my miserable excuse for a life. Everyone I gave a damn about is gone. Because of you.”

She lets the silence bite for a second, then softens slightly. Only slightly.

“So you know what? Debt paid. Now you owe me.”

Angel lifts his arms, eager to respond, voice strained.

“Of course. Tell me what…”

“It’s easy,” she cuts in, feral and quiet. “You’re gonna see your quest through, come Hell or high water. After all you’ve taken from me, you’re gonna give me one thing back. Him.”

She holds the word long enough for it to cast a shadow.

“No pussying out. No ‘It’s too dangerous.’ No ‘we’re tampering with forces yadda, yadda, yadda…’ You started this. Now you’re damn well gonna finish it.”

A beat.

Then another.

Then another.

“I will,” Angel says at last, voice thick. “Or I’ll die trying.”

Faith nods once. “Works for me.”

Angel breathes in the rage and moves past it. He thinks aloud now, eyes scanning the room for purpose.

“We need to find out who stole his body. Probably best to start with the funeral home since that’s the last place anyone saw it.”

“Good. Great. Let’s go.”

Faith’s voice has no softness. Her pace is fast, body tense. She doesn’t offer any pleasantries, and Angel knows better than to expect any.

Some thirty miles away from London, in Guildford, Surrey. A country mansion sprawls against the dusk, its walls too clean to be honest. Beneath its polished exterior, the basement hums with candlelight and quiet dread.

Marianne lies on a stone altar, her skin pale against the swirls of sacred oil and carved symbols that shimmer in the gloom. The statues that watch over her wear expressions of forgotten gods. Daphne shifts uneasily, eyes flickering between shapes that feel too alive.

A man stands at the altar, his resemblance to Rupert Giles uncanny – down to the curl of his mouth and the austerity in his posture. Nadira studies him. “You look familiar,” she says.

“I look like half of Parliament,” the man replies dryly. “Nadira, wasn’t it? Shall we continue making small talk, or should I set about resurrecting your friend? I can see you’ve been keeping her in a freezer. Well done. But now that she’s out, decay can set in quicker than you know.”

Blue ink bleeds onto Marianne’s skin as he paints more symbols – slow, deliberate strokes that mean everything to him and nothing to them.

“What do you need us to do?” Nadira asks.

“If there’s anyone else who cared for her, bring them here. The more of you there are, the more likely we’ll be able to draw her soul back to her body.”

“I’ll call the others.”

A beat. Giles’ staff glance at Nadira with practiced disdain.

“So how can you bring people back to life?” she presses. “What with magic being gone and all?”

“I have certain occult artifacts that retain their mystic energy.”

“Like what?”

His smile falters, voice sharp.

“My dear. The persistence of your questions makes me wonder if you’re here for your friend at all. Perhaps you’ve come to steal from me.”

“Nadira!” one of the Slayers hisses, grabbing her arm. “Stop it! You’ll ruin everything!”

“Fine,” she mutters. “It’s not as if I’d understand what the hell he was talking about anyway.”

Giles continues with the symbols. “Don’t misunderstand,” he says smoothly. “I admire you performing due diligence for your friend.”

“Then you won’t mind me asking what exactly you’re doing to her.”

“Applying symbols. Ancient Sumerian pictographs. Designed to bind the returned soul to the body. Go on, take a look.”

Nadira leans in, squinting at the ink. He watches her the whole time.

“I trust everything is in order?”

“Yeah, sure. Nothing wrong here.”

She doesn’t see it. Doesn’t know what it means. But there it is – on Marianne’s left arm, just above her wrist. Fresh. Stark.

The Mark of Eyghon.

The main entrance of Boyd and Son Funeral Directors feels too clean, too forgettable. Angel and Faith stand opposite a desk laminated in tasteless brochures and old flowers, their energy bristling beneath forced civility. The funeral director, a man built from paperwork and polite deflection, shrugs.

“Records don’t go back that far,” he says, voice clipped. “Sorry.”

Faith doesn’t respond. Angel offers a nod that barely passes for patience. They step outside into the wind, which has started to pick up – an omen with timing too perfect to be ignored.

In the car, Angel slides into the driver’s seat. Faith shuts her door harder than necessary.

“I was… out of it at the time,” Angel admits, his gaze on the road ahead. “Walk me through the funeral arrangements.”

Faith stares at the dashboard like it’s asking too much. “Last anyone saw Giles’s body was at the viewing. There were two, same day. One for people like us, then a second one, for normal folks. Family, friends, anyone who’d raise an eyebrow at a cyclops sobbing in the back row. I was out of the loop on that one.”

They drive. The trees whip past, leaves dancing like warnings across the bonnet. The air is thick with more than weather.

“People still sign guest books at funerals, right?” Angel asks.

“Sophie and Lavinia would’ve been there too,” Faith replies. “I say we brace them, jog their memories – even if it takes a smack upside the head.”

She says it with a hint of sarcasm, but her eyes are dark, angry.

“’Cause after the viewing, the coffin went straight to the cemetery,” she adds. “So between the funeral home and the hearse, someone snatched G. And they’re long overdue for some payback.”

Guildford. In a parlour room, Slayers sit in a circle nearby, breathing shallowly. Giles stands at the door, composed.

“Right. I need you all to focus on your late friend,” he says calmly. “Call her back to you. Reach out to her with all the love in your hearts.”

“Why can’t we be in the room with her?” Nadira asks.

“The ritual requires me to be naked,” Giles replies. “And I don’t fancy getting my kit off in front of girls a third my age, thank you very much. It’s not as if I’ve taken your money yet. I have no motive to abscond. Now do as I told you. It will be over before you know it.”

He leaves.

Minutes pass. Meditation begins. Nadira’s resolve evaporates.

“Bollocks to this,” she mutters, getting up. “Exposed wrinkly bits or not, I refuse to leave her alone with that perverted, old…”

She’s stopped cold.

Marianne walks into the room, smiling. Giles is behind her, beaming. The air doesn’t ripple. It contracts.

“I told you it would be quick,” Giles says. “A joyous reunion is called for, don’t you think?”

Faith’s apartment is heavy with tension again. Lavinia and Sophie Fairweather sit around a coffee table stacked with black-bound memories. Angel flips through the guest book. Faith looms behind him.

“Who’s ‘Olivia Williams’?” Angel asks.

“An old flame of Rupert’s,” Lavinia replies. “Quite devastated she was.”

“This is a waste of time, I assure you,” Sophie sighs. “When everyone left, Rupert was still snug in his coffin.”

Angel exhales. “Obviously he was taken after the viewing. Before the coffin was loaded into the hearse. That’s a short window. Lots of people around. I checked out the mortuary workers. No criminal records, no money problems, no ties to the supernatural… It wasn’t them. So whoever did it needed an excuse to be there. Like being a mourner, okay? Can you leave the planning to someone who’s actually done detective work?”

“Clearly someone isn’t aware of my tenure at the Disco Doll Detective Agency in the Seventies…” Sophie mutters, dryly.

“She’s got a point though,” Faith says to Angel. “If I was gonna steal a body, I don’t think I’d sign a guest book.”

“Oh, I saw to it everyone signed,” Lavinia announces breezily, her back to them. “Largely because I couldn’t recall any of their names.”

Angel squints at one particularly scrawled signature.

“What’s that say? It’s a scrawl. I can’t make it out.”

“Here, old man, let me…” Lavinia snatches the book gently. “Ah, that’s one of Rupert’s mates from his misspent youth.”

A pause.

“Ethan Rayne.”

Angel and Faith exchange a look that lands like a punch. Angel rises, fast, hands clamping Lavinia’s shoulders.

“You’re sure it was Ethan Rayne? You’d recognise him if you saw him?”

“I should say so,” Lavinia replies, caught off-guard. “Cheeky little bastard spent years trying to get into my knickers. He was older, of course, but it was him.”

Angel curses under his breath. “Damn it. I didn’t even think, after what happened…”

“I heard about it later,” Faith says. “But you ran that facility. I mean, Twilight did. What did they do with…”

“I don’t know,” Angel cuts in. “I was completely out of it. I assumed the government took over, scrubbed the place and everything in it.”

Sophie folds her arms, now fully unimpressed. “Could one of you please speak in something approximating a coherent sentence?”

“What’s got you so bloody agitated?” Lavinia asks.

Faith turns to her, voice flat. “Ethan Rayne’s dead. And he died before Giles.”

“You were misinformed,” Lavinia says calmly. “It was definitely him.”

“He knew us,” Sophie adds. “We talked old times.”

“He’d actually become quite handsome,” Lavinia muses. “Cut a dashing figure in that old-fashioned hat. I almost hoped he’d make a pass.”

“At a funeral?” Sophie scoffs. “You are a trollop, aren’t you?”

Faith’s eyes narrow. “Let me guess? The hat was pulled low?”

“Yes!” Lavinia exclaims. “Like Humphrey Bogart!”

“It wasn’t a fashion statement,” Angel says. “He was covering up a bullet hole.”

“Probably used a hair piece for the head wound,” Faith adds.

Angel nods grimly. “Ethan Rayne was being held by the U.S. Government. A general – working for me – shot him in the head. Murdered him. The security in that place… standard procedure was to cremate all remains. I never imagined he could’ve made it out.”

“Hang on,” Lavinia interjects. “I know a zombie when I see one.”

“He wasn’t a zombie,” Angel replies, already walking toward the bookshelf. “Not the way you think.”

He pulls a book from the shelf – its cover cracked, the design unmistakable. The Mark of Eyghon glints in the light like it knows it’s been found.

“I was already pretty sure who was behind this,” Angel says quietly. “I just didn’t know how to find him. Now I do.”

The Guildford mansion shakes with relief as Daphne throws her arms around Marianne, the room spilling over with joy – at least on the surface. The other Slayers crowd in, their emotions swelling, their eyes stinging with the miracle. Except Nadira. Nadira stands apart, arms folded, eyes narrowed. She’s staring at Giles. He’s staring right back.

“Oh my God! It worked! Marianne!” Daphne cries.

Marianne, visibly overwhelmed, looks at the circle forming around her. “Is all this for me?”

Daphne nods, tears streaming. “Of course it is. We missed you so much. Everyone’s here, everyone who loves you.”

Giles steps forward, measured and calm. “Easy now. The transition can be jarring. Some confusion is normal. It should resolve in time, but treat her gently.”

Nadira closes the space between them, her tone sharp. “Marianne? Do you remember what happened to you? How you died?”

Marianne hesitates. Her brow tightens. “I… something… violent.”

Daphne rounds on Nadira, protective. “Back off, Nadira. Give her time. We’ll get after the psycho bitch who did this soon enough.”

“Right,” Nadira says, unimpressed. “Just one more question, Marianne. What’s your last name?”

Marianne raises her hand to her chin, thoughtful. “How odd. I can’t recall.”

“You are risking doing her irreparable harm,” Giles warns Nadira, stepping closer.

“I’ve told you about confusion.”

“But her own name?” Daphne replies, doubt beginning to creep into her voice.

Nadira’s patience collapses. She grabs Marianne by the arms, almost too hard.

“Marianne. Tell me something about yourself. Anything we haven’t already said. Anything at all.”

Silence.

“I knew it,” Nadira snarls. “That’s not Marianne.”

She rips the scarf from Marianne’s neck, exposing a hideous wound – an ugly gash, still deep, still raw.

“She’s still dead!”

Giles sighs. “Well, if you’re going to be prejudiced about it…”

He opens the thick wooden door and calls down the corridor. “A little help here, please!”

The “butlers” who enter now are anything but. Security agents in disguise, armed and blank-eyed. They descend on the Slayers, fists swinging. Nadira turns to face Giles, blades drawn.

“Bastard! You lied to us!”

They both reach for ancient swords mounted on the wall. Steel meets steel with a shriek of old metal.

“You wanted her restored to life. You didn’t specify her,” Giles huffs. “I’d hoped to do this the civilised way – take you while you slept, through your friend. Saves wear and tear on the hosts, certainly, but I must admit… the messy way is more fun.”

The far oak doors creak open. A mass of zombies shambles in, groaning, limbs twitching, hunger palpable. Chaos ignites.

Faith’s apartment, London.

Faith’s fingers fly over the laptop keys. Angel looms behind her, the Fairweather sisters close at hand, their expressions flitting between curiosity and annoyance.
“Ethan Rayne died in top-secret custody,” Angel mutters. “He was never declared dead. There’s nothing stopping him from buying real estate. Which he did. Guildford. Right after Giles’s funeral. I can’t believe I didn’t think of this.”

“I can’t believe you comprehend the internet,” Lavinia snaps.

Angel ignores her, crossing the room toward the weapons cabinet.

“Rayne was too risky to keep using, with the physical damage. You have to figure the big guy got himself more passable hosts.”

“Big guy?” Sophie echoes, confused.

Faith slings a mace over her shoulder. “So when you said you knew where the rest of Giles’s soul was…”

“Hang on,” Lavinia starts, but Angel interrupts.

“I knew who had it. I just didn’t know where he was.”

“You beat him before, right?” Faith asks.

Angel nods, gathering weapons. “He won’t make the same mistake. He uses the people you care about against you. That’s his strength.”

They grab their coats. No words. No promises. Just silent purpose. Lavinia watches them go as Sophie shouts after them.

“Who the bloody hell are you talking about?”

But they’re already gone.

Years ago, Soho.

A broken room bathed in flickering candlelight. Randall thrashes, tied to a chair, bones snapping under strain. His flesh splits, erupts – demonic spikes drive out from his spine. Eyghon is emerging, green eyes glowing, his body mutating into something ancient and hateful.

The demon screams its own name. Giles chants, hands raised, voice cracked with urgency.

“EXORCIZAMUS TE, OMNIS IMMUNDE SPIRITUS!”

“It’s not working!” Dierdre shouts.

“Perhaps because Eyghon isn’t a bloody Catholic!” Ethan barks. “He’s Etruscan, remember?”

Giles looks at him, desperate. “No. We discovered him in old Etruscan writings. But he is far older, and I’ve tried every other rite of exorcism I’m aware of. I… I don’t know what to do.”

“I know,” Eyghon snarls, his voice crackling with death. “You all wanted me inside you. And that is what you will have. What your entire world will have!”

“He’s breaking free!” Dierdre cries.

“Ripper! The Pelleris Spell!” Ethan shouts.

“That’s meant for objects, locations… It could kill Randall!”

“If we don’t do something, we’re all dead.”

Giles, voice steady but heart breaking: “I’ll speak the words of banishment. You do the cleansing ritual.”

“You can never be free of me!” Eyghon screams. “You’ve put my mark upon you! YOU BELONG TO ME, BODY AND SOUL!”

The spell activates. Eyghon and the remnants of Randall erupt in a sickening explosion – organs, blood, dark magic spilling across the floor.

Ethan wipes his brow, panting. “Well done, mate. I thought we were buggered for a moment there.”

Giles doesn’t smile. “We are, Ethan. Sooner or later, we’ll pay for what we’ve done.”

Now, in the Guildford basement.

Nadira holds her ground, voice loud and cutting. “The heads! Cut off the heads!”

Giles, watching with a crooked smile, barely flinches. “Yes, that will prove quite an inconvenience. Fortunately, we have very effective recruitment methods.”

A zombie cracks a pipe into Vanessa’s skull. Another Slayer kneels beside her – but it’s too late. Vanessa rises again, eyes dead, mouth slack. No trace of humanity.

“Careful!” Daphne yells. “If you’re knocked out, they take you over!”

Nadira snarls. “We studied zombies. These aren’t ordinary zombies.”

She swings at Giles. He blocks with elegance.

“No. We are not,” Giles says.

“And you’re not the leader.”

“Well, I am one of the special ones,” he shrugs. “But no.”

Nadira grins. She vaults past him, legs flying, blade slicing the air. She skids along the stone floor, ducking and weaving through the battle, crashing into another door.

“You’re just a pawn,” she shouts. “I want whoever’s in charge.”

The door bursts open. Giles watches after her.

“Why, my dear…”

A voice, not his, finishes the thought. It oozes through the air, thick as poison.

“You only had to ask.”

Nadira freezes.

Inside is something immense – a demon atop a black throne, claws cradling a bowl of blood. Yellow eyes burn in sunken sockets. Its teeth are jagged, talons nearly a metre long. A tail lifts behind it like a waiting execution.

Half-eaten corpses litter the floor. Twitching. Reaching. And beside the demon, smiling, bullet hole centre-frame…

Ethan Rayne.

“I am Eyghon,” the demon says. “And very soon… you will be too.”