Part Two

When Doyle regained consciousness, he found himself stashed in a supply cupboard and handcuffed to a radiator. He groaned. 'Man, this can't be good.' He reached up with his free hand and touched the tender spot on the back of his head, where he had been hit. 'Oh man,' he groaned again. 'Ow.'

He brought his hand back round and peered through the gloom at his fingertips, squinting to see if there was any blood. There didn't seem to be - that was something, at least. And he wasn't dead - so he had that going for him as well. But on the other hand - the registrar turned out to be a crazy person, and Doyle was now kidnapped. And he still didn't have the marriage license.

The handcuff was cutting into his right wrist - biting and painful, he twisted around, trying to wriggle free of it - but he knew it was hopeless. There was no way he could slide his hand out, that was the point of them. He tried tugging on them - hoping he could break the rings linking the two cuffs together - but that didn't work either. With a surreptitious glance at the door, he morphed into his demon face and tried to pull the cuffs apart using his added demon strength. But even in the spikes - he just wasn't that strong - not strong enough to break metal, anyway. He wasn't actually sure that Angel would be strong enough to bust apart handcuffs - or Cordy, for that matter. He didn't have a hope.

But he did still have his phone, he realised, becoming aware of the weight of it in his pocket as he thought about it. Clearly he was Evan's first kidnap victim. The registrar had probably panicked, once he'd knocked the Irishman out; dragged him to the cupboard, chained him up. But he'd forgotten to rifle through his pockets and get rid of his cell phone. Rookies.

Doyle twisted again, this time pulling himself away from the radiator and angling himself upward in an attempt to reach his pocket. His phone was in the right hand pocket of his brown leather jacket - and if he could just stretch his left arm across… but it was no good. The pocket was deep and his arms were short - and restricted by the jacket itself, and the awkward position he was in. He took a deep breath and tried again - willing his fumbling fingers to stretch just a half an inch further.

He grit his teeth and screwed up his eyes and forced his hand as far into his pocket as he could reach, tilting his body to try and get the phone to fall into his stretching grasp. Nothing. And the pain in his wrist, from straining against the cuff, was becoming unbearable. He slumped back down - and tried pulling on the cuffs again.

The lights blinked faster and the beeping intensified. 'Did you see a trip mechanism?' Knox asked Wesley. 'You mean the one I just tripped?' Wesley barked back at him. 'Get everyone out of here! We have to evacuate the entire building.'

Everyone in the lab began to flee towards the door. Spike pushed his way through them - panic on his face - and then came to a stop and shook his head, chuckling. 'Wait, what the hell am I worried about?'

Wesley was still poring over the body of the cyborg - frantically trying to decipher the symbols and work out where he had gone wrong, how he could stop this. People were still streaming out of the lab from every direction. 'Look for an incident device,' Fred said from beside him, 'a switch or a circuit breaker.'

'There's nothing,' he replied, rooting through the corpse, ignoring the reflexive urge to draw away from the slippery feel of the guts. Then his brain clicked into place, he stopped what he was doing and stared at Fred. 'You have to get out of here,' he told her, grabbing her arm and dragging her towards the door - pushing a path through the other escaping people. 'Get away from this building,' he told her urgently, 'as far as possible. We have no idea how powerful the blast could be.'

'What about you?'

'I'll stay with the bomb. Try to diffuse it. It could be our only …' There was a sudden, deafening silence as the device stopped beeping. The hush crashed onto the lab, like a heavy fog, settling on them all. Smothering them. Wesley looked up - over to the body, to find his father standing calmly by its side. 'What did you do?' he asked.

'These symbols were in fact Dutrovic in origin,' Roger told him. 'Not Moracian, as you surmised. When interpreted correctly, these symbols spell out the proper procedure for handling the cyborg's power core, including this fail safe - in case someone trips the self-destruct device. Quite simple really.'

Wesley stared at him - and felt the sudden familiar sinking feeling of failure. Another failure. In front of his father. In front of Fred. In front of everyone.

Cordelia was on a coffee break, a robe wrapped around her knitwear, protecting it until she was in front of the camera. So far - today was good. No one was evil. They were shooting outdoors - in the sunshine, so she knew for a fact there were no vampires and no guys with horns. Today was something she could put in her portfolio - and the more she built that up, the more work she would get.

Yeah, today would be great - if only Doyle would ring her and tell her how the appointment had gone. She reached into her pocket and pulled out her phone, frowning. Still nothing. He should have picked up their license hours ago. And he knew she was fretting about it - so she would have expected a call once it was all done, even if he couldn't reach her and just left a voicemail, she would expect him to tell her he had it and everything was fine.

It just wasn't like Doyle to not call her and tell her everything was fine. To not realise she would be worrying. So that could only mean that maybe everything wasn't fine. Which only made her worry all the more.

'Cordy - we're ready for you,' the photographer called to her. She put down her coffee, stuck her cell back in her pocket and shrugged off the robe. Maybe he'd had a vision, and was too busy to call, she thought to herself - as she leaned against a fence and showed off her sweater. Or maybe he'd gone to have a drink to celebrate and lost track of the time - though she would give him a piece of her mind if that turned out to be true… or maybe there really was something wrong, the little niggling voice in the back of her head whispered to her.

She smiled brightly - and had her photo taken.

For the second time that day, Wesley had been pulled into Angel's office. Fred was with him this time, and Spike, and Angel was seated behind his desk - instead of pacing and glowering. He didn't seem angry, either - just confused. 'What happened?'

'I can explain,' Spike stepped up, eagerly. 'Apparently, when Percy here was younger,' he jerked a thumb in Wesley's direction. 'He used to be known as … Head. Boy.' His face was lit up by a delighted grin.

Angel sighed, wearily. 'Yeah. I already knew that.'

Right,' Spike nodded. 'I have nothing else to report,' he took a step back.

It was Wesley's turn to sigh. 'I accidentally tripped the cyborg's self destruct mechanism,' he admitted.

'Anyone could have made the mistake,' Fred immediately jumped in to defend him. 'Wesley was just trying to interpret some symbols for us.'

'Luckily my father was there to correct my error.'

Angel nodded. 'Right, your father - where is he anyway?'

...

Roger sat in Lorne's office, his hand resting on his brow, as the demon regaled him with stories of his life among the starlets of Hollywood. 'So there I am - covered in cherries. The police are pounding on the door and Judi Dench starts screaming "oh that's way too much to pay for a pair of pants",' he laughed out loud. Roger rubbed his head.

...

'Maybe I should go and rescue him,' Fred wondered, thinking about the situation. She headed out of the door. 'I'm finished here too,' Spike said. 'If you want, I can have someone type up the report about head boy.'

'Get out.'

'Suit yourself.' He followed Fred out of the door, leaving Wesley and Angel alone. Angel leaned back in his chair and stared at the watcher. 'What went wrong?'

'It was a stupid mistake,' Wesley told him bitterly.

'Yeah, well - your father's visit has rattled you.'

Wesley nodded. 'I can't think straight when he's around.'

'Gets inside your head - stops you seeing the big picture. I get it. I do. I lived in terror of my father when I was alive. I was a constant disappointment - he told me that frequently. You know I named Connor after him? Guess I was feeling sentimental that day - and now I look at him and just hope I don't make all the same mistakes my old man did... You'll get through this, Wes. Your father's visit can't last forever.'

'He wants me to go back to England,' Wesley told him, 'to join the newly reformed watcher's council. Or at least - he's here to assess whether or not I'm good enough for them.'

There was a long silence. 'Do you wanna go back to England?' Angel asked him, quietly.

'No. This is my home now. My family. You, Connor, Fred…'

'But your father's the only one you've got. Even if he does make you fall over your own feet.'

Wesley didn't answer and - after another quiet moment - Angel reached into a drawer in his desk and pulled out a folder. 'In the meantime, you should see this,' he said. 'Came from your department. Reports of assassins that sound a lot like your cyborg.' He handed the file across and Wesley began to read the report, his brow puckering into frown lines as he read.

'Hmmm. Group of them took out a demon cabal in Jakarta. Another group destroyed the Tanmar Death Chamber. Sounds like they're doing our work for us.'

'These are good guys?' Angel sounded surprised.

'I don't know,' Wesley told him - there wasn't enough evidence to go on as yet. 'I should reference this with the markings we found. Find these clues as to their origin.'

'Get on it. If these guys are on our side, then someone should tell them that before they start trying to kill us again.'

As he left Angel's office, he came across Fred walking his father down the hall - away from Lorne. She was laughing as he regaled her with stories from Wesley's childhood. 'He was how old?' she giggled.

'Oh - 6 or 7. He must have taken the scroll from my library.' He turned to his son. 'I was just telling Winifred about the time I caught you with the resurrection spell.'

Wesley worked to suppress the memory of his father's anger, that day- of being dragged from his room and locked under the stairs for hours, whilst Roger hissed at him how stupid he was, how much damage he could have done, how much trouble he caused, how he would never be good enough. Not for daddy and not for the council. He held himself stiff in order to stop himself from flinching. 'Oh right,' he said - his voice calm but cold.

'I couldn't remember. Why were you doing that?' Roger asked him. Wesley felt Fred watching him, a warm smile on her face as she waited for an answer. 'A bird had flown into my window pane,' he said. 'I think I was trying to bring it back to life.'

'I can't believe you could read a resurrection spell when you were seven,' Fred said to him, her voice was full of admiration - and still held the trace of laughter in it. She liked these stories of little Wesley - he could tell.

'Oh his mother thought he was quite the prodigy,' Roger told her. She didn't catch it - but Wesley did. Mum thought. Not him. No. Never him. He never thought there was anything special - anything worthwhile about his son. And he made it sound like Mrs. Wyndam Pryce was nothing but a daft, doting mother - wanting to believe that her unremarkable son was special - whilst he could see the truth, clear eyed. Wesley was nothing. Roger didn't have to say all that out loud for Wesley to get the message - he heard in it what wasn't said as much as what was. And he had a whole lifetime of understanding the nuance in his father's words - recognising the debasement in just his tones.

'Well luckily I caught him, or we'd have had zombie birds pecking out his little eyeballs,' Roger finished up. Fred giggled in delight. Just like Lorne and Gunn earlier, she didn't hear the sneer. Maybe it was because they were American - weren't used to decoding every sentence the way the British did, understanding that they weren't really saying what they were saying. They were saying what they weren't saying. Americans just said it as it was - they didn't have a lifetime's experience of filling in the gaps to get to the true meaning.

Or maybe it was just because they didn't know Roger. Didn't hear the way the older man made himself the hero of the story - saving Wesley from himself. Didn't realise he was simply telling another story of a time Wesley failed at something, made a mistake, caused mayhem and had to be rescued by his father, had his error corrected, had Roger put it right. Fred didn't look beneath the surface - connect the dots and see that, coming on the tails of the near explosion in the lab, Roger was simply doubling down on the fact that Wesley always failed, and his father always put it right - that that had been the case 30 years ago, it was the case now and it would be the case forevermore. Wesley was a failure - always had been and would be until his dying day. Never as good as his father. And Mr. Wyndam Pryce was telling this story purely to remind Wesley of his place - and to undermine him in front of his friends, even if they didn't realise what was going on.

But he swallowed all that down and didn't say anything, didn't let on. After all, his father was not the only Englishman in the room. Wesley could repress his feelings and talk in opposite speak as well as the rest of them - no matter how long he lived in the States. 'I was hoping to enlist your expertise in some research,' he said to his father. Beside him, Fred beamed - at the thought of the two Pryce's - the two great watcher's - hitting the books together. She didn't understand that he meant he would rather drive an ice pick through his eye than spend time with his father, and he neither wanted nor needed his help.

His father got it though. He knew they were fencing. 'Oh no,' he chuckled, 'you're not going to try and blow me up again are you?'

'Probably not.'

'Well then, my expertise is yours.'

Fred laughed again. She thought they were joking. She was mistaking this for friendly banter, completely missing the passive aggressive Olympics taking place right under her nose.

...

Wesley showed his father towards his office, away from Fred - and she watched them leave, smiling after them. 'I don't know what you're smiling at.' She turned her head and saw that Lilah had come up beside her, and unlike Fred, she was not smiling. 'Oh..um...' the smile slid from her face.

'You have no idea, do you?' Lilah asked her, 'what that man is? What this visit is doing to Wesley.' It was her turn to smile then, her dangerous, mocking grin. 'But then I guess you just don't know Wesley like I do.'

Doyle didn't know how long he had been locked in the cupboard, or how long he'd been unconscious before that. It was too dark to make out his watch hands in the gloom, but he was guessing it had been a long while. He was hungry, thirsty and he needed to pee - the coffee in the waiting room must have been a good few hours ago by now. But, frustrating as being kidnapped - yet again - was, and as much as his wrist hurt from all the straining, he carried on wrestling with the handcuff trying to work his way free. 'Stupid son of a …' he muttered to himself, twisting his hand inside the metal, trying to force it through the bracelet. 'Just a bit … ughh ngghhh… dammit!'

He stopped for a moment, allowing himself to take a breather. Literally. He took a few deep breaths, working up the willpower to keep going. Dear sweet Jesus. How many kidnappings was this now? He wondered. Must be at least 4. Plus that time he got sucked into Pylea and then sold as a slave and put in prison. The only person he knew who had been abducted or held hostage more times than himself was Cordy, and he wondered if this final time would make them equal. No… surely not. Cordelia had been kidnapped every other week back in Sunnydale. He had a long way to go before he topped her total … assuming he made it out of this one alive.

He twisted again so he was leaning against the radiator and leant his head back against it, closing his eyes. It came as a surprise that Evan the registrar was crazy, he thought to himself. He seemed like such a normal guy, doing a normal job - but here he was stashing folks in stock cupboards. He should have realised something was wrong when his appointment was delayed and he was made to wait until there was absolutely no one else left on the entire floor before he was taken inside. That seemed obvious enough now. But why? Why had Evan selected him? Was it because the registrar knew who Doyle and Cordy were? Or was it completely unrelated to the demon underworld. Maybe Evan had picked Doyle because he was the only person who had turned up alone.

'Well that would be ironic,' he muttered to himself, '...and really embarrassin'.' To spend his life facing off against demons and monsters and unspeakable evil, to save the whole world from an insane former higher power's enslavement - and then be taken prisoner and killed by some regular Joe, Son of Sam type serial killer. 'Jesus, I'll wind up being talked about on true crime documentaries,' he realised, 'me Ma bein' interviewed, tellin' the world what a good lad I was, though I never did make altar boy, and she should never have let me go to America in the first place… man, please let this guy be a demon!'

He jumped - suddenly banging his already sore head against the radiator, as he felt the phone in his pocket begin to vibrate. He twisted again to try and reach it - come on, just an inch further … but it was no good. Eventually the ringing stopped. Then five minutes later it started up again. It would be Cordelia. She would have expected to hear from him hours ago, she must be getting worried. And he felt guilty that he was making her worry but - in these circumstances her concern was justified, and there was nothing he could do about it.

But if she was already worried, then it wouldn't take much longer for her to start to panic. And then she would come looking for him. All he had to do was sit tight and wait to be rescued. He just hoped he would be left alone until she turned up…

The door opened, and he groaned. So much for that hope. He brought his free hand up to shield his eyes from the sudden light from the room next door - he could see out and realised that his cupboard adjoined Evan's office. Then a dark shape blocked the light - as the registrar appeared in the doorway.

Wesley led his father into his office, 'the Dutrovic markings suggest an eastern origin,' he said, heading for his desk and the templates he kept there. 'There might be something in the journals of Saitama.'

His father had stopped and was perusing a bookcase, he didn't appear to be listening. 'That … uh … Winifred, she seems delightful,' he said - his voice casual. Wesley straightened up. 'Yes, she's a very special person,' he replied in clipped tones.

'So … you think a lot of her,' he pulled a book from the shelf and flipped through it, not looking at his son. 'Does she know how you feel about her?'

'I'm really not going to discuss this with you.' He selected the template he wanted and then turned to face his father, his expression closed and uninviting.

'Oh you already have a girlfriend do you?' Roger glanced up and saw the look on his son's face. He put his own book down and when he spoke, he sounded exasperated. 'Well, Wesley, how am I supposed to know these things?'

'For starters you might have asked.'

'Well I'm asking now.' Then he laughed, 'what a surprise you're being defensive.'

Wesley sighed and leaned against his desk, 'You want to know about me? I ended the last relationship I was in about a year ago - we fought on opposite sides of the war. Since taking this job I have to see her everyday - and she is not allowing me to forget the … complicated path I have chosen to take.'

'And Winifred?'

'Doesn't come into it.'

Roger nodded thoughtfully, 'is that so?'

'Considering this is the most personal conversation we've ever had about me - that has not directly revolved around me being fired by the council - I think that is enough for now.'

Roger took off his glasses and began to clean them. 'Quite so quite so … look, all I'm saying is that if you like this girl then you should tell her.'

'I have work to do, father.' He lifted the spine of his book up to his lips and whispered. 'The Saitama codex,' then he opened the book and watched the words magically scrawl across the page.

Roger frowned. 'What did you just do?' he asked, indicating the book. Wesley looked up from his book and began to explain the templates, how they could be used to call forth anything from their archive.

'So you can simply call forth something as powerful as the Saitama Codex?' Roger asked, looking troubled. Wesley nodded. 'Yes, our archive is quite extensive. We have … well, almost any text you can think of.'

Roger was looking more than troubled now. 'Do you realise how dangerous those books are,' he asked, incredulously, pointing at the tome in Wesley's hand.

'Well, in the wrong hands of course,' Wesley shrugged, flipping through the pages, scanning for the text for anything that matched the markings on the cyborg.

'Yes, yes - of course. So you have them displayed - open, on a table.'

'The most powerful items in my department I keep in my vault,' he said, wearily. 'I know what I'm doing father.'

'Well I hope your vault is safer than this room. Do you even have a lock on that door over there?'

Wesley lost the last of his patience - it had been a long time coming. 'Gaining access to this building isn't easy,' he snapped. 'Believe me, the books are safe where they are.'

High above the building, a helicopter hovered over the roof. Six ropes were let down and then six black clad figures scaled down them and landed, silently, on the roof of Wolfram and Hart.

The elevator door opened and Lilah stepped inside. She pressed the button and the doors slid shut. But before she had even begun to move, Spike appeared by her side. 'You're getting pretty good at popping up out of nowhere,' Lilah remarked. 'I see you're getting the hang of the ghost life.'

'You do see don't you,' Spike replied.

'Beg pardon?'

'Not to sound self absorbed, but you can't seem to keep your eyes off me.'

She raised a sardonic eyebrow and laughed, 'perhaps I'm just comparing cheekbones. You know, I'm not used to the competition.'

'Uhuh - and perhaps there's something more to it than that. Aint that the truth, shady lady?'

'I can't even be bothered to ask you what you mean.'

Spike made a scoffing noise in the back of his throat. 'Don't give me that.' He peered at her intently, she stared straight ahead - as if to block him out. 'It was you that gave Angel the amulet, wasn't it?' he said, 'the shiny little bauble that flash fried me in a pillar of fire and then left me a bleedin' Casper - spiriting the knick knacks around Angel's 30 floor castle.'

'I gave him the amulet,' Lilah agreed, 'and I think it helped save someone's life. Who was it again? Someone called … Buffy? You're welcome, by the way. But I didn't know what it would do. I was just the messenger. Don't shoot me.'

'As if I could,' Spike said, he waved his hands at her, 'having a little trouble interacting with the corporeal world as of right now, but see - here's the thing, Lauren Bacall, I don't believe that you're a nobody in this - a little Betty Joan. You're a player.'

'You give me too much credit - I'm a liaison - nothing more,' she shrugged.

'Right,' he scoffed again. 'To The Senior Partners - the big wigs in the sky.'

'Oh I think they're a little bit lower than that.'

'But they delivered up the amulet - through you - to Angel. Meaning it was him they always intended to make a ghost. Not me. So why don't they just let me go?'

Lilah turned her head slightly so she could see him better, she glanced at him - raking him over with her eyes. 'Who ever said the amulet was intended for Angel?' she smirked. And then the elevator ground to a halt and the lights went out. 'That's irritating,' she muttered - jabbing at the buttons, but with no success.

'I know what this is,' Spike muttered to himself, looking around at the sudden darkness. 'You'll never take me to hell, Pavayne!' he yelled out. The emergency lights kicked in, casting a sickly green glow throughout the lift, and in this new semi-light, he saw Lilah staring at him, a very amused smile playing on her lips. He blushed. 'Oh, well… uh… that's just something I say, when it … gets dark,' he explained.

Out in the lobby, the loud siren of the alarm sounded - blaring out into the greenlit space. Angel marched out of his office, determined to find out what the hell was going on. 'We've lost power, communications,' Gunn told him, coming out of his own office.

'All right - can somebody please shut off the …' the alarm stopped screeching. Angel nodded in satisfaction. 'That's better.'

'I'm not sure it is,' Gunn told him, 'I think that means we lost security too.'

Spike suddenly appeared in the lobby, apparating to just outside of the elevator. 'Uh - there's something wrong with the lift,' he announced. No one paid him any attention.

'Get security online,' Angel barked. 'Find out if this is a false alarm.'

A back clad cyborg rappelled down from the ceiling and knocked out one of the swarms of lawyers milling around. 'I don't think it's a false alarm,' Gunn said - as more dark figures dropped down to the floor behind Angel.

Wesley and his father had been working away in Wes' office when the lights suddenly died and the alarm sounded. Roger looked up. 'Does this sort of thing happen very often around here?'

Wesley got to his feet, frowning. 'We should…' he was cut off by a cyborg bursting into the room, wielding a chain - as they had done the night before. 'Down!' Wesley yelled at his father, pushing him to the ground, so that the chain passed harmlessly over their heads. Then he scrabbled across the room and grabbed hold of a sword, hanging on the wall. He launched himself forward, attacking the cyborg, now he was armed - but the cyborg just shoved him out of the way, sending him flying across the room. He smashed into the bookshelf and landed on the floor in a crumpled heap.

With Wesley out of the way, the cyborg ran towards the desk - right towards the templates. Roger was rooted to the spot, just watching. 'Father!' Wesley threw his sword to Mr. Wyndam Pryce, who caught it - and immediately went on the offensive, engaging the cyborg. As the two of them fought, Wesley got back to his feet, lumbered towards the dark figure and thumped him hard. It staggered backwards and fell to the ground. 'What are you doing?' Roger demanded, 'I had attack priority.'

'We're not fencing!'

'We still observe the niceties.'

By now, the cyborg had got back to its feet. Wesley snatched the sword from his father's hand and plunged it into the robot's gut. It fell back down again - this time emanating blue sparks and crackles of electricity. 'There may be more of them in the building,' Wesley said. 'We should get moving.'

'That thing went straight for the templates when he burst into the room. You can't leave them like that.'

Wesley sighed as he considered his options. 'Grab them,' he said, 'come with me.'

Doyle took a deep breath. Try not to act like he's crazy he thought to himself. Keep it pleasant. 'Uh - hey, Evan,' he smiled, 'how's it goin'? Listen. Bud - I - uh -' he chuckled, 'I can't help noticin' I appear to be chained to a radiator, a little bit. I mean - if y' could just tell me what's goin' on … maybe there's been some kind o' misunderstandin' or…'

'There's no misunderstanding.'

'Ohhhhkay. So, if you don't mind me askin',' he held up his hand, revealing the handcuffs that chained him in place, 'why?'

'Nobody else saw it,' the registrar told him. 'Nobody else understood. But I did.'

Great Doyle thought, an evil monologue - just what we need. This better be quick, 'cause I am dyin' to pee.

'Your blood tests,' Evan said. Doyle slumped back and closed his eyes. 'They came back wrong,' the registrar explained. 'At least - everyone thought they were wrong, they didn't make sense. There was something ... extra there. Something that wasn't identifiable as human.'

Doyle opened his eyes again and looked up at the man standing above him, 'look, bud…' he started to say.

'But that's impossible, right?' Evan said, he gave a little laugh. 'You can't not be human. You didn't have any of the diseases and stuff they were looking for, you weren't related to your wife to be, so they shrugged off the weird stuff - signed off on your marriage license. But me … I knew what it meant. You're not human. Not completely anyway. Are you, half breed?'

'How do you know about this stuff?' Doyle asked him.

'When I was kid - just six or so - my dad left us. It happens to lots of kids. Except - most dads don't leave their wives for broads with lilac skin and bright pink hair. I'd go to his house for the summer - she'd taken him right the way across to Florida, they lived in this festering swamp - and see her, and all the freaks just like her. And then one year I had a new baby brother. He looked just like me. Except he had electric pink eyes. Next year it was a sister - she could pass even better than my brother could, especially once she was old enough that people believed she dyed her hair that colour. And I had to see them - these freaks - playing happy families with my dad, when he abandoned me and my mom, to go live in the swamps with a load of demons. And then I saw your blood test - and I knew you were just like them, pretending to be human - passing. But it's all a lie - you're part demon as well.'

'Yeah, I am,' Doyle said, 'and that's a great villain origin story - really, but … I'm still a little confused as to why a marital breakup twenty years ago is the reason I'm handcuffed to a heater.'

Evan laughed. 'Because there are people out there who hate your sort as much as I do. Who will pay good money to get their hands on something like you. I've rung them already - they're coming.'

Doyle felt his stomach lurch. 'The government? Are you selling me to the U.S government? To their Demon Research Initiative?'

'Oh you'll wish it was the government,' Evan told him. 'No - it's not the feds coming for you, and it's not the military.'

'Then who?'

With their arms loaded with the leather bound books, Wesley led the way over to a bookshelf against the far wall. He selected a book from the shelf and pulled it out - and the shelves slid back, revealing a hidden security door. Then he pressed his hand against the security reader and whispered the password: 'Elysium.'

The door slid open revealing a hidden room, Wesley led his father down inside. There were locked boxes stacked all along one wall of the room. Wesley selected a key and began to unlock one.

'You know,' Roger said, watching him. 'In my day we fought werewolves, vampires and the occasional swampman. And now we have protohuman cybernetic chain fighters.'

'Yes well, we live in more complicated times,' he stashed the books in the locked-box and closed the door.

'Yes- I'm beginning to realise that. You handled that fellow … quite readily. At least you haven't gone soft. What's our next move?'

'Are you asking me what I think?'

Roger chuckled, 'don't look so shocked boy.'

'Well - I think we should contact the others. Find out to what extent …'

Roger reached into his inside jacket pocket and pulled out a gun. Before Wesley even noticed what was happening, he had pistol whipped his son across the back of his head. Wesley fell to the ground, unconscious, and Roger stepped over his body. He took the keys from his son's prone form and then unlocked another of the secure boxes, taking out a small wooden staff. Then he brought up his hand to his earpiece. 'Phase 1 is complete, begin phase 2.'

'They're going to be really pleased with you,' Evan said to Doyle. 'When I saw your bloodwork I looked into it - to find out what type you are. Looked your people up.' He whistled. 'Yes, sir, they're gonna be real pleased with you, you see…' he squatted down so his eyes were level with Doyle's own. 'They thought they had already eliminated all your type - that the whole of North America was cleared of them, back in '96. There was even a massacre here in L.A.' He leaned forward, 'Mr. Doyle, you're the last of your species - the one that got away - and they are going to be very pleased to put right this oversight.'

Doyle's heart had been hammering away in his chest the whole time, but at Evan's words he suddenly felt his whole body gripped with a cascade of ice, his stomach lurched and his breath stopped. He closed his eyes - and in his memory, he saw a single, pink shoe - a little girl's sneaker - lying abandoned on the floor.

Suddenly everything made sense. The dead bodies - the brutal murders of the weaker demons, those just trying to eke out a miserable existence on the margins of human society. And the words of the departed spirit of the Roishnik - killed by one of a thousand. An army. And the reason he had been getting visions of these murders after they had already happened - when he was already too late to save them.

Because The Powers did blame him for these deaths. He was supposed to have stopped them already - sacrificed his own life, so long ago now, to save thousands of others. He knew exactly who was butchering these demons, whose deaths he'd been investigating - and exactly who was coming for him, right now. 'The Scourge,' he whispered.