Disclaimer and notes: see chapter 1



For a moment Connor stared at Angel, across the lobby, who was managing to avoid his gaze by fiddling with a ring on his hand.

"But you're too young!" he burst out, eventually. "You're less than twice my age. Nice try, but I'm not believing that."

"I … I understand if you're angry," Angel said, hesitantly. "I imagine it's a lot to take in all at once …"

Cordelia went over to Angel and steered him over to the round sofa in the centre of the lobby. "Sit."

"Cordy …" He tried to protest.

"Sit, and shut up." The brunette crossed the room to Connor and took his arm too, and forcibly pushed him to join Angel on the sofa. "Sit too." She stepped back, and folded her arms. "Now. Connor, meet your dad. Angel, start talking."

Angel looked up at her with eyes full of protest. "Cordy, I don't know whether that's the best idea."

"He's come all this way to meet you. The least you owe him is an explanation. We are going for coffee. Aren't we, guys?" She turned a glare on Fred and Charles Gunn.

"Coffee's good," offered Fred. "Almost as good as tacos. Come on, Charles."

"Talk to him, man," Gunn said to Angel, as he was being towed out by the two women.

They were alone in the lobby, and Angel stood up again and started pacing. Connor watched him.

"Look," Connor said, fidgeting on the sofa, "it's obvious you've got something to explain."

"Do you love your parents?" Angel asked suddenly, spinning round and meeting Connor's eyes.

Connor, taken aback, took a second to respond. "Yeah. I guess. They're cool. I have everything I want, I suppose."

"And school? Friends?"

"I do okay at school. I'm better at sport. I'm on the track team and the baseball team. Got friends too."

Angel's face twitched, and Connor had the impression he was trying not to show some emotion. "So why'd you come here, then?"

"'Cos … I don't know." Connor considered. "It came suddenly, you know, finding out I was adopted. I wasn't upset, or anything. It was … it all happened because of blood groups at the hospital, you know? Then I wrote to the agency and they sent me that letter, and for a moment I was so angry with whoever had given me away – that was weird, it was almost like my eyes changed colour or something – and I just decided to come." He watched Angel pace. "Can't you stand still?"

Angel paused for a moment. "What can I say to you to make you believe me?" He took another three paces, and then changed direction and headed towards the stairs. "Come on."

Connor picked up his bag and followed Angel up the red-carpeted stairs; two flights and then along a dark corridor with a lamp lit at the far end. Halfway along, Angel pushed open a door and wordlessly stood back for Connor to enter. He found himself in a large, dim room split into two halves – kitchenette and bedroom. The bed was spread with a deep burgundy duvet and there was a book lying on the bedside table. Connor glanced at it: Dickens.

Angel was reaching up inside his closet – which seemed to be filled with almost exclusively black or near-black clothes – for a cardboard box, which he dumped down on the floor. It was covered in dust, and Connor noticed he hesitated for a while before opening the lid, which made dust fly everywhere.

He came and squatted on the floor next to Angel and the box, and watched as Angel lifted out a smaller box and opened the lid.

"Your baby photographs." He passed Connor the bundle, and Connor flipped through them. A small baby with wild black hair, in the arms of a younger Cordelia, a younger Fred, a younger Gunn; the baby on its own; the baby with another dark-haired man wearing glasses and looking a little fearfully down; the baby with a man in a red suit who had green skin … Connor flipped past that one and then, pausing, flipped back. He held it up.

"What's this?"

"That's Lorne." Angel's voice showed no surprise that there should be a picture of a green man and a baby in the collection. "He runs a karaoke bar."

"He has green skin." Connor looked closer. "And horns!"

"I suppose he does."

Connor frowned and carried on flicking through the photographs. He got to the end. "That's me?"

"That's you."

"So where are you?"

Angel didn't answer, but pulled clothes wrapped in tissue paper out of the box. "I kept everything. I couldn't bear to look at it, but I kept it." Toys followed the clothes. "You were spoilt rotten."

"What about the photos?" Connor waved them at him. "Where are you? Where's my mother? Normally parents like to have their photograph taken with their child. My parents have hundreds of me and them at home."

Angel stood up. "This is why."

He pushed open a door leading into a bathroom, and Connor scrambled to his feet and hurried to follow him. Angel looked at him. "I'm sorry, Connor." He seemed to brace himself, and then pulled down a piece of cloth covering a mirror on the wall.

Connor looked into the mirror, seeing his own unruly dark hair and eyes and expecting to see Angel's next to him. He looked sideways, and saw Angel at his side; looked forwards and saw nothing.

He yelped and moved fast out of the bathroom. Angel followed, sorrow in his eyes. "I don't reflect. Cameras don't work. And I might look as if I could be your elder brother, but I've looked like this for two and a half centuries."

He took a step towards Connor, but Connor retreated backwards. "Hey! Stay away … what are you?"

"I won't hurt you. Not you."

"What are you?" Connor demanded.

"A vampire." The words fell heavy in the room, and Connor would have laughed if he hadn't been quite so terrified. "But … but I haven't … I haven't killed anyone for a long time. I'm cursed …"

"Like Dracula?" Connor hung on to the part he had understood. "But … that's a bed. Not a coffin?"

"Dracula has a lot to answer for," Angel said tersely. "He liked coffins. Capes too. The whole haunted castle business. Idiot."

"You met Dracula?" Connor asked, amazed.

"Briefly. Once."

They regarded each other, Connor trying to match up Angel's features with his own. "You're really my father?"

Angel smiled, very slightly. "I really am."

Connor nodded. "I guess I knew anyway. When you came down the steps … kind of recognition, I suppose. Is that a vampire thing?"

"It could be."

Angel moved towards Connor, hesitant, and stopped a metre away from him.

"I didn't know vampires could have kids."

"Neither did I. You were a miracle."

"I didn't know guys could have kids without women. Where's my mother? Who is my mother? Is it … Cordelia?"

Angel actually laughed, though briefly. "Cordy? No! No. She's my best friend, that's all. I couldn't manage without her. Your mother's dead."

Sticking his hands in his pockets, Connor looked at the floor. "I suppose I guessed that. Who was she? Did you love her?"

Angel – his father – sat down on the bed and rested his elbows on his knees. "No. Our relationship wasn't about love. It was about blood, if anything. Her name was Darla." He got up, and went across to a bookshelf against the wall, still talking. "She was the one who turned me into what I am. It's a long story …" He thumbed through a book. "After I was cursed, we met again here in the States. I … I killed her. But she was brought back to life, as a human. Perhaps I loved her then. I felt I owed her something." He found a page in the book and brought it to Connor. "Here. This was Darla."

Connor took the book and looked at the open page, which showed a portrait of a young woman. She was pretty, and her eyes danced out of the picture. Her hair was ringleted under a bonnet. Underneath the portrait he read, "Darla. Painted in 1876."

"She's pretty," he said, looking at it.

"She was pretty. She bewitched me when I first met her. She held a part of me ever since." Angel gently took the book back. "She was reborn, human again, but she was dying. I wanted to help her. But they turned her back into a vampire."

"And me?"

Angel slotted the book back into place on the shelf. "I … you know about …"

"I'm fifteen!" Connor said. "Of course. Go on."

"Well, we …" Angel waved a hand in the air. "Nine months later, I found out she was pregnant. It made no sense. Nobody had ever heard of a vampire bearing a child before, still less a child produced by two vampires. It's not the way we reproduce. Darla … she knew by the end of her pregnancy she wouldn't be able to give birth the normal way. She knew it would have killed you."

Connor waited, silent, watching Angel closely. His father's hands were clenched and his eyes seemed to gaze into nowhere. "So at the last moment … I was there, in an alleyway … it was raining … she said to tell you that you were the one good thing we did together. And then she staked herself. Killed herself, to give you life."

Angel seemed not to have noticed that he was crying. Connor felt a lump start in his own throat.

"I swore then, swore I would never give up on you. You were mine. Small, defenceless, you depended on me. But I wasn't to be allowed to watch you grow up. We were being chased, hunted. There was a man after you. Everyone wanted you, the miracle child. The only way I could keep you safe from harm was to give you up, hide you with some normal family, a family where you'd have two parents who could walk you in the park in the sun, and sing to you, and keep you warm just by holding you. One day we packed a bag and took you to the agency, and they took you off me and that was that. I thought never to see you again." Angel raised his head. "But here you are, my boy, and grown so tall and good-looking."

Connor smiled, a trickle of salt water running down his own cheek. "Here I am." He grinned, suddenly. "I thought you hadn't wanted me."

His father shook his head. "I always wanted you."

Their eyes met, and Connor took the final few steps forward and tentatively put his arms around Angel's waist, and felt himself enclosed in a bone- crushing hug against a solid, still body.

"Hi, Dad," he said, his voice muffled by the sweater. "Dad."