It was a cloudy day, in 1816 when they came for them. On the Remy Plantation, just north of Owen County, in Louisiana. Or, as Roux remembers it, ‘Hell on Earth’.

She remembers the overseer came with the Sheffield twins. She remembers her family on their knees.

She tells Giles her story, in hushed tones, as he conjures images using a spell to observe her tale. “I was dead long before they killed me. But they sure killed the Hell outta the rest of me that night. Slavery binds flesh and conceals its wounds. The outside may survive, but the soul, if it has good sense, will run for its life. That day midnight came early. We never stood a chance.”*

As he watches, Rupert ponders his current, rather confusing situation.

As I listen to the vampire, Roux, I realise I was her captor, her audience, her interrogator and her boyfriend.

Modern dating is thorny.

Next time, I’ll just swipe right.

I create a vision spell, a window if you will, and attach it to Roux’s words so I can see her story. I regret it.

“Rumour was Master Remy reneged on his gambling debts. Now, payment was due,” Roux continues. “But the bondsmen didn’t want money. They wanted blood.”

“But you were a slave.”

Giles interrupts her tale, and the vampire turns to him, annoyance on her face. “A what?”

“Why would the bondsmen take your life if they could sell you or..?”

“Dunno. Sometimes you can’t be told.”*

Giles hesitates. “I see…” He continues to watch, thanking Roux for releasing him from his bonds. She tells him the night is young. But the images swirling above them become more violent, the past piercing through time on brightly coloured sparks – too pretty to waste on images of blood and gore.

Giles waves his hands and the swirl vanishes. They find themselves back where they were when Roux started her tale – in her plush apartment, on the docks in San Pedro.

“I can’t watch this.”

“Some monster hunter. If I can live it, you can watch it. And don’t my dying make you a living?”

“That’s harsh, Roux.” She sighs. Tells Rupert to remove his shoes, which he does. He makes a comment about her being a Buddhist, activist vampire. She rolls her eyes at him.

Why did I go home with her? Yes, she tied me up, but still, why don’t I leave?

It’s curious. I desperately wanted to spend time with her. Not as a foe, but as a real girl and boy. Here we can both pretend, or so I thought… Now I’m beginning to feel the very real nightmare she has dropped me into.

He turns to her. “You said ‘Night came early.” Was that literal or a turn of phrase?”

Roux whispers back, quietly. “Both.” Giles resumes the swirl and the images of Roux’s human life ending appears again. “Even the sun hid from this day. But night tells the truth of us all…” She motions to Giles at the image. It slowly starts to ‘play’, Roux continuing.

“My family was dead. Now it was my time.”

Her parents were dead at her feet. The Sheffield thug grabbed her by the hair and pulled her back, a knife at her throat. And then a voice from above got their attention. A man, wrapped in red, the colour of blood, his eyes yellow in the night and his gravelly voice echoing, threatening to stop the wind with it’s eerie tone….

“You are doomed.”

The human girl looks up and a dark light blocks out everything in her eye line. When she recovers, the vampire is circling her. His name, he said, was Baldwin.

He had left the two thugs alive. “They are a gift to you. Or a nightmare. Shackled to your conscience. For their sins. And my amusement. They will shadow you. Bound. My star. My taara. You are weak in life, but no more.”

He picks her up and severs her bonds. “You are stronger than men. You always were.” And then he sinks his teeth into her neck. Roux shakes in his grasp.

The vampire tells her that her god-awful life is over. She can now reach for what she has searched for her entire life. “Power. Freedom.” He sinks her teeth into his own flesh and commands her to drink slowly.

Then she sleeps.

He took her somewhere, Roux doesn’t know where. It was dark. She was buried alive. It took her a while to realise she didn’t need to breathe.

“I stayed in that hole for twelve years, with nothing but mud, bugs and sludge to feed me. Ruminating. But now I had the power of life in death. I just didn’t know it. It took a lifetime for me to work up the nerve to live. Once I got up, I got out and never looked back.”*

By 1828, she had been working at a plantation in South Carolina. She kept herself to herself, but wherever she went, she found she wasn’t welcome. “Truth was, I was still living like a slave. But I was free.”

At the battle of Fredericksburg, in Virginia, 1862, she fed on the enemy during the Civil War.

By 1872 she had moved to colder climates in the North, up to Pennsylvania. “If I fell off the edge of the Earth, I’d still be in the way.” She repeats her words from the day before to Giles. “Like I said, there ain’t many places for a black girl to be.”

In 1892, burdened by the world and its reaction to her, Roux once again decided to go underground. “If I couldn’t change my face, my world would have to change its mind.”

And so she slept again. “Still, the future took forever,” she jokes.

She opens her eyes. She’s lying next to Giles, face to face. He stops her quietly. He asks her if she believes in reincarnation. Roux smiles. She’s proof something like it exists.

Giles stops. He shuffles closer, and his volume lowers, as if he’s telling her a secret. “What if I told you that I’m not a teenage boy. That through magic I died, was resurrected, then recreated in my teenage body. My mind is three and a half decades older than me.”

She doesn’t say anything for a moment, but when she does, Giles can hear her smile in her tone. “No wonder you aways look so confused Rookie.”

“Oh yeah?” He jokes. “Well, I just realised I’m too young for you, missy. At two hundred years plus, you’re an heirloom tomato compared to my fifty year old tenderfoot.”

They haven’t realised that they’re both holding hands. Neither of them move. He looks at her, straight into her eyes. “You must be exhausted.” They’ve talked for hours.

“Careful. I’m getting hungry,” Roux says, but he can’t tell if she’s joking or not. Now, she looks straight back at him. “So… Who are you now?”

Am I that guy?

“I’m Giles. Rupert Giles.”

They move closer to each other again. Giles closes his eyes. Roux smiles. And then a voice shouts out across the room.

“Whoever you are, Rupert Giles, don’t kiss her! She bites!”*

Giles recognises the face the voice belongs to before Roux can shout at the newcomer.

“Truman?” she yells. “You’re alive? Where have you been?”

“To Hell and back,” Truman sneers. “Thanks to you.”

Giles is stunned. “This is Truman? The missing student? Thank God you’re not dead. That’s very good news. Whatever happened to you, mate?”

Truman points rudely at Roux, fury blazing in his eyes. “She happened. Well – her and a peach-eating demon. Roux and Blue served me up like an entrée. Now I’m Seed’s errand boy. But soon you’ll all be taking orders from him.”

He turns back to Roux. “Tell lover boy about Mister Crowe. And Blue – in detention. Blue’s a murderer.”

Roux lunges at Truman, shouting for him to shut up. He laughs, encouraging her, but Giles steps in, telling them to play nice. That’s when he notices his missing book bag nearby.

Truman straddles Roux, pinning her down. In his hand is a glow-in-the-dark cross. He waves it inches from her face and she snarls.

Giles doesn’t hesitate. He grabs his bag, wraps the strap around his hands, and swings. The blow catches Truman square in the face. The cross slips from his grasp and dissipates into smoke.

Truman bolts, fleeing the way he came. Giles shouts after him, threatening to kill him if Roux doesn’t get there first. He holds the vampire back as Truman disappears, yelling about the blood to come.

After he’s gone, Rupert and Roux begin putting the apartment back together, furniture overturned and scattered. Giles asks about Blue – about the accusation.

“She couldn’t,” Roux says firmly. “Blue wouldn’t hurt a flea.”

Then Roux stiffens, turning as if listening to something only she can hear.

“Blue’s calling me,” she says. She tries to explain, then snaps again at the unseen voice.

Giles urges her to slow down, to talk. “I need to know what happened to Truman.”

“The demon,” Roux says quietly, not looking at him. “Seed got him. We were in the basement and I – he came out of nowhere. I thought Seed killed him.”

Giles reactivates his spell. Images bloom in the air.

“And now he works for Seed,” Giles says. “But Roux – why were you there? What’s the truth? Are you telling it now?” He guides her gaze back to the images. “You said, ‘I was dead long before they killed me.’ But that isn’t the whole truth.”

The vision shifts. “You were nearly dead already. And you knew your maker. The brand on your wrist – AIX – you already had it when the men came to the plantation.”

The images change again. The Remy Plantation, 1816. The moment she was sired.

“He was my hero,” Roux whispers. “He caught me watching him. I thought I’d lose my life. He didn’t want to kill me. I wanted to be like him.”

Giles nods. “Some vampires take apprentices. Recruits. They feed, and in return are sustained. The bond is parasitic. Not always amicable. But the high creates loyalty – beasts of burden.”

The vision shows the branding. Giles doesn’t look away. “He was a murderer.”

“He killed people who needed killing,” Roux counters. “Down South, he could’ve gone until Kingdom Come.”

“You became a slave,” Giles says.

“Again.”

“Feeding him. Luring prey. And if you were good enough, he’d turn you into a – ”

“A monster,” Roux finishes.*

Giles sits cross-legged on the floor. “Debt. Disappearances. That chaos led to the slaughter of your family and everyone on that plantation. Baldwin caused it.”

Roux turns to the window. “That night I became more than a vampire. Baldwin rescued me. I crossed over. He recreated the Sheffield twins – the two thugs – and bound them to me.” Her voice hardens. “I hate them. Then he vanished. Left me alone. With shadows.”

She turns back. Her skin glows in patterns – etched names. “I hurt so when I glow.”

“Glowing,” Giles whispers. “Those are names?”

“The ones I regret.”

“You are more than a vampire,” Giles says.

“I’m no monster.”

The voice in her head finds her again. She grips Giles’s arm. “Look up, Rupert Giles.”*

He does – and goes still. Silent. He has time to speak to God.

On the ceiling: her life. Painted. Waiting through another century. A friend.

“Ebba,” Roux says softly.

The voice again.

“She’s calling me.”

“You’ll go to her,” Giles says. “But first – why bring me here? Forgiveness?”

“From a monster killer?” she almost snarls.

“No,” Giles corrects. “From yourself. So you can rest. You’re exhausted.”

The vision changes.

Pennsylvania. 1920. A cotton factory. Roux scrubbing floors on her knees. A blonde girl – Ebba – tells her it’s quitting time. They bond.

“She was my friend. I would have done anything for her. We were alike. I had old scars. She had new ones. She loved horses and fairy tales. Too much.”

Then the fire.

Ebba used as bait. Tied to a stake. Roux exposed days earlier, saving her life. Roux offers herself instead.

They lie.

“I killed them all,” Roux says calmly. “They killed my friend because she was my friend. Called me the monster. They tried to run. The factory became their tomb.”*

The images fade. Light floods the room – clear, radiant. Giles stares in awe.

Her hair turns icy, powder-blue before his eyes. Crowned.

“Come back,” Giles says.

She looks at him. “Monsters. Men. How do you tell the difference?”

“Without borders,” he answers, “the difference tells on you.”

“Are you sure?” she asks. “You kill monsters who hunt men. But what if you’re wrong? What if men are the scourge? Join us. Save the hunted.”

“Save yourself,” Giles says softly. “Save the haunted. What happened to Mister Crowe? And Ms Wong?”

“I watch Blue,” Roux says. “Nothing else matters.”

Giles turns away. “My job is to fight vampires, demons and the forces of darkness. And there is darkness in this school. But you…” He exhales. “You may have a soul.”

Roux stares at him, then rolls her eyes. “A boy – man – who murders for a living questions my soul. Fine. Rupert Giles. Judge me.”

“Two vampires I know had souls,” Giles says. “They suffered for it.”

“Verdict?”

“Vampires are undead. They have no souls.”

“Watcher,” she says, stepping closer. “Look at me.”

Her gaze overwhelms him. Vega’s words echo:

When you can see yourself outside the mirror, you will solve the riddle within.

And then Giles kisses Roux.

They seem to float, wrapped in light, like Heaven itself. Then they separate, and the apartment snaps back to normal.

Giles smiles. Dawn has come. Dogs bark in the distance. He notices a flask on the floor, marked with the name CROWE, and he remembers Truman’s warning.

Roux is half asleep on his shoulder. He whispers, asking what she wanted to be when she was growing up.

“Happy,” she murmurs. Then, drowsily, “You?”

“Happier.”

“Did Sunnydale make you happy? What was that like?” she asks, already fading.

“Just a typical city,” Giles says softly. “Full of monsters… and men.”

He wraps his arms around her, leans back, closes his eyes, and listens to the birds welcoming the morning sun.*