Interchange

Interchange

Chapter Three:

He was dressed in a loud Hawaiian shirt, and hummed off key as he walked quickly down the dark LA streets. He was searching for one bum in particular out of the many that populated the alleys and park benches of the city, and had already accidentally scared the crap out of several members of the homeless population.

I don't know why I couldn't just get him last time Had his location scouted out and everything. What a waste of stakeout time! He pushed his hands further into his pockets to ward of the cold, and ventured into yet another dark alley. Y'd think the powers were trying to get me killed. He frowned. Or just mugged.

He heard someone scrambling around in the piles of crap, and the frightened squeak of a rodent that had just realised that its time had come. The sounds were followed by the oh-so-pleasant view of a guy in full vamp face sucking the life out of a big hairy rat.

"Please, I just ate."

The vamp dropped the rat suddenly and backed away, startled. "Who are you? What do you want with me."

"Just to talk. And maybe walk a little, the smell in here" Hawaiian shirt guy wrinkled his nose in distaste.

"Why should I?" The vamp didn't trust him. No surprise there.

"Because, I wanna talk to you about destiny, man. And I think you really oughta listen."

"Alright I'm listening." Angel nodded curtly and followed Whistler out into the street.

"First of all, it wasn't supposed to happen like this." Whistler sighed as they walked slowly past empty office buildings. "The powers, they had it all set up so that The Slayer would die, and the next one would be called. An' they sent me to prep you, so that you could get ready for the whole desitiny thing. But at the last minute Someone changed everything, changed the fates of a whole stack of people. Including yours."

"Your point being?" Angel frowned back. "How could The Slayer not dying affect me? And why shoud I care?"

"Trust me. If you knew how it was supposed to be, you'd care." Whistler shook his head. "But I'll get to the pointy part of all this. The powers have plans for you, and you need to be ready. Because weather you want it or not, she's gonna need you, and you better be there."

"Why?"

"You're a walking bucket of guilt, am I right? You've got this whole 'I have to suffer because I killed a lot of people' thing going on. But really, eating rats and living in alleyways aint the way to get redemption."

"And you're saying this is?"

"Nope. The powers are. I'm just the messenger, buddy."