Angel: Day One

My name's Angel.

I was born two two hundred and forty-four years ago in Ireland. A small town, good family. Twenty seven years into an unremarkable life, I met a woman. Her name was Darla. She told me she could show me a world I'd never even dreamed of. She wasn't kidding.

That night she turned me into a vampire. When I opened my eyes and rose from the grave, I did what all good sons do. I went back home. It was Emily, my youngest sister, who invited me back inside. She had buried me only that morning, but thought me an angel, returned to her from heaven. First her, then my mother, my father, the village.

After we'd razed the township to the ground, my sire and I left for Europe, where between us we left a trail of bloodshed unlike the continent had ever before known. In my prime I was feared even among other vampires- who themselves christened me Angelus- the demon with the angelic face.

Pretty, right?

Life as a vampire was a constant thrill: the power, the danger, the outfits. Never getting old, also a

plus. But in the end, it was all about the kill. The kill was everything. Until I killed the wrong girl.

Gypsies, in my experience, are heavily into vengeance. The girl I'd fed on was a favourite of theirs. In revenge, they cursed me. They gave me back my soul. You see, when you become a vampire, the demon gets your body, but it doesn't get your soul. That's gone. Now alone even among the undead, I had to live with everything I'd done, and I had to live forever.

You have no idea what it's like to have done things I've done... and to care

Eighty years of solitary darkness. Eighty years of drifting from city to city, living out of hotel rooms, crypts, cellars, anywhere to keep out the sun and company alike. Eighty years of nothing but memories and the occassional sling of bottled blood to keep the thirst at bay. It really helped hone my brooding skills.

But when a demon named Whistler found me hunting rats in the alleyways of New York City, thirsty out of my mind, struggling to reconcile the monster inside of me with the soul the gypsies had shoved back down my throat, I wasn't even a shadow of what I'd once been. Caught between demon and man, haunted by the faces of those I'd tortured and killed for the sheer kill of it, I was a lost hope.

And I was far from angelic.

It took another woman to show me that my endless life might actually be worth living. Her name was Buffy. You might actually know her.

This is the story of when I first laid eyes on her, of how, for the first time in a lifetime, I dared to hope that I could make a difference. That I could make amends.

Whistler took me to a school in Los Angeles. I didn't take much convincing. The demon knew my name, knew my history, and I was curious. We drove the highway for three days and nights to reach it. Along the empty midnight highways of Illinois, through the dustbowls and six-foot high corn fields of Kansas, and finally into the deserts and neon of Nevada, where just before dusk we took a cheap motel on the outskirts of the strip. There was blood dried in the sand of the parking lot and the rooms on both sides of ours were occuppied by hookers and a steady stream of John's that filtered in and out as the night went on.

Around ten, Whistler went out to get a beer and a card game. I stayed in, enjoying the cool night air, the quiet dark, supping from a little bag of pigs blood we picked up from a back-alley butcher in New Orleans. All things considered, Las Vegas seemed like my kind of place. Nobody really belongs there. It's a mecca for people like me. A place for souls. Everybody's on the hustle, everybody's searching for something or someone to make them feel like they belong. Everything's a facade, a show. The days are long and hot, but the nights are neverending.

In another life, I might have called it home.

Whistler came back around three, just after I'd drew the blinds. Sunrise wasnt all that far away. The sun comes early in Nevada. I could smell the drink on his breath before he even opened the door. Whistler was a balancing demon, and two days before, that was the first I'd heard of his kind either. He wasn't a demon of the traditional horns and scales kind you're probably familiar with, but he was far from human. No human could have sustained the amount of Jack Daniels bubbling away in his blood and still be walking and talking.

"You're not human," I'd told him when we first met in one of the Big Apple's many grim backstreets.

"Look who's talking."

"You're a vampire?" I'd asked, and he smiled.

"A demon, technically. But I'm not a bad guy. Not all demons are dedicated to the destruction of life."

Whistler walked past me and took off his jacket, burped out a mouthful of two-hour old whisky. Sometimes, it's not the soul, but the vampire's keen sense of smell that's the real curse.

'You've got potential kid,' he said, and toppled over onto the bed, started pulling at his boots. He was short and squat, looking a little like James Cagney in Public Enemy if Jimmy'd had a bad barber and a worse dentist. 'Potential. Wait until you see her. This girl... She's gonna make you feel like...' he slumped down onto the sheets. I didn't wake him.

When that morning he rose of his own accord, Los Angeles was another three hours away. We drove in silence mostly, the painted-black windows of the rusted old Camaro wound all the way up to keep out the sunlight. A couple of times, I asked him about the girl he'd taken me to see, about what was so special about her, about what was so special about me come to think of it.

'Are you happy?' he asked, and popped another couple of pain pills. The demon really had seen to enough liquor to put down a baby elephant the night before. But it's all relative, I suppose. 'Are you happy Angelus?'

'Happy?' I thought for a second. 'No. And it's Angel.'

'Right,' he smiled, and for some reason I didn't like that. 'I don't see it personally, but the guys I work for...'

'You work?' I raised an eyebrow. The little man really didn't seem the clock-punching kind.

'I dabble,' he said, not taking his eyes from the road. 'And the people I answer to, they see something in you. You were a big bad once upon a time right?'

'Once upon a time.'

'And now you're all... well...' he looked me up and down.

'I get it.'

'Well maybe what my employers are offering you is a chance to put things right.'

'I just want to be left alone.'

'And how's that been working out for you?'

We passed a sign welcoming us to Los Angeles. The City of Angels. 'Just drive.'

We parked the car a safe distance from the school. Cops can be funny about that kind of thing; two guys, one reeking of drink, the other just reeking, hanging around children. It was the end of the day and sthe kids were flooding out of the school and down the steps toward us.

'There,' said Whistler, and I unrolled the window just enough so I could peer up to where he was

pointing. 'That's our girl.'

'Where?'

'Cute little thing in the red skirt,' he said, and I saw.

The girl was walking down the steps in the LA sunshine, cradling an armful of books and talking to two friends that walked with her. She was young, young enough that the candles on her fifteenth birthday cake might still be smouldering, and pretty like a fairy. But there was something else behind it, something heavy, sad.

'Who is she?' I said, not taking my eyes off her. The sun was bright, but I'd have let it burn my eyes out rather than look away.

'That's the slayer,' Whistler said, and I drew breath.

'But she's so...'

'I know right,' the demon popped another couple of pills. 'Hot.'

'Young,' I said, and watched the girl walk into one of the yellow schoolbuses lined up around the block. 'She's so young.'

More than most people, I know that the world isn't a nice place. There's evil everywhere, not just in the dark where things like me have to live. This girl was going to have to face it all, was going to have to stand alone against the forces of darkness. She wasn't ready, I knew. I could see it in her eyes. They'd eat her alive and pick at the bones.

'She found out yesterday,' Whistler said. 'Poor kid's gonna have the weight of the whole world on her shoulders. You ever actually seen a slayer before?'

The schoolbus carrying the future slayer trundled out of view. I rolled up the window and looked at Whistler. 'I've killed a couple.'

'You did?' The demon seemed incredolous.

'I wasn't always like this.'

'Like what?' he laughed. 'A bum?'

'That's right.'

'You were a monster. A real mean son of a bitch if any of the people I spoke to got it right' Whistler lit a cigarette, blew the smoke into my face. I looked at him. 'What, you're gonna bite me? I'm not afraid of you Angelus. Remember that.'

'What do you want from me?'

'That fire you've got burning in you right now, if that sweet little thing you just lost half a pound of drool on has any hope of seeing Christmas, she's gonna need friends. Allies.'

'I'm no good to anybody like this,' I said, and sunk into the old leather carseat.

'Then fine. Lock yourself away for another hundred years or so and see if that helps. You think that by doing nothing, by hiding yourself away from the world you're doing any good?'

'I'm not hurting anybody.'

'Tell that to Little Miss Red Skirt when the first vamp with a little experience pulls her throat out. Let me tell you something, you stupid mutt,' Whistler stubbed out his cigarette and lit another. His hands were shaking. 'The people I work for, they don't get involved with just anybody. You've got potential. I can't see it myself, but the word on the street is that when you were playing for the other side, you were a real menace. When you came, you brought Hell with you. That so?'

'Yes.'

'Then do it for us. Do it for her.'

I thought about the girl, about what lay in front of her.

'What's her name?'

'Buffy,' said Whistler, and turned on the engine. 'Buffy Summers.'

'Buffy,' I said, and for the first time in a long time smiled. 'It's a pretty name.'