Summary: A story about how Angel comes to want to help people. Angel is wandering the earth after being expelled from Darla's company. In London, he witnesses the reality of the oldest profession at work.

Rating: PG

Comments: Karl Landsteiner was an Austrian medic who won the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1930, for his turn of the century work on blood groups. He discovered that transfusions sometimes killed people because they have different types of blood (O, A, B, etc.)

Polymorphism

[Polymorphism (n) a range of forms within a species]

Guy's Hospital, London, England, 1903

"I can't!"

Angel backed away from the kindly face in front of him. Suddenly, the atmosphere in the hospital seemed oppressive; his sense of the pain and death that surrounded him on all sides was heightened. For a moment, he felt he might vomit, for the first time in over a century.

"It's not without danger, my friend, but the risk is almost entirely hers. You will be very safe, and I will minimise the pain as much as my skill will allow."

"You don't understand. It's not the pain, I assure you. My blood..."

"Is the only thing that can save her now."

"...is not... compatible."

The surgeon regarded him with amazement, "I apologise Sir, you did not tell me you were... a physician?"

Angel took deep breaths and tried to steady himself.

"A surgeon, then? A scientist?"

"No."

The man shook his head, "Then your knowledge of the scholarly literature astounds me, Sir. Even our most eminent doctors have only just begun to assimilate the exciting news coming from Vienna. How can it be that a layperson is aware of it and its implications?"

Angel looked at the prone body of the girl he had pulled from the Thames a few minutes before. "Is there any literate person completely unaware of... the news. Tell me your thoughts on it and how it affects this case?"

The surgeon clapped his shoulder, "I shall, and willing, Sir, but first we must help this unfortunate girl. Time is of the essence. We must ask her brother. He is very young, but it may be that this will not be as detrimental as I feared. Perhaps his young blood will better restore her to health. And Mr Landsteiner's work tells us that family members are likely to be the best candidates for a transfusion."

The surgeon looked at her pallid skin. "I would offer my own blood willingly, but I have already been a donor twice this evening. I cannot risk a third without a colleague present, and as you see, there is no-one."

Angel nodded, and the surgeon left the room. He hesitated, and then took the girl's hand in his own. It was cold. As cold as death. As cold as his own.

If only he had acted when he'd first seen her, this could have been avoided. He had been walking down the Embankment. The early evening mists were swirling under the cast iron and stonework of London's bridges, and society at its grandest was swirling from dinner to carriage and from carriage to theatre.

He managed to avoid the worst of the crowds by ducking into alleyways at intervals, and waiting for the larger groups to pass. It was in a particularly narrow, filthy passage that he saw her for the first time. She was dressed like a respectable young woman, but her presence alone there could mean only one thing.

She was so young, at first he couldn't quite believe his eyes. Not more than twelve, surely, or thirteen. Not much older than Kathleen had been when...

As he debated with himself over her age, she was approached by a man. She spied him from her position looking into the street at the far end of the passage, and watched him as he approached. A gentleman, maybe fifty or more, with a silver topped cane and whiskers, and a carriage waiting a few yards away. After some conversation, she went with him. Angel felt a sense of disgust at these proceedings, until the visions of all the young girls he had killed in alleyways like this rose, overwhelming his righteous anger. Nothing that would happen to her could be worse than the things he had done.

He turned away. Behind him, just a few yards distant, stood a boy of nine or ten, watching him, watching the girl, watching the man.

The boy gave him a disgusted look, and pushed past. He walked the length of the passage, out into the road the other side, and followed the route taken by the carriage carrying the girl, who was clearly his sister.

The next night, she was there again. Angel watched her from a doorway this time, and when she had gone, remained hidden as her brother sped past in pursuit.

And the next night. Only now, with bruises around her left eye and a cut lip. The gentlemen seemed put off by this, because several hours later she still waited. As the clocks stuck midnight, her little watcher appeared, and took her hand, and they walked away together. Angel came from his hiding place and saw them, arms around each other's waist, leaning on each other, as they left the alleyway and went home. He fought the urge to follow them and offer to help. He had no help to give.

The surgeon came back, leading the boy by the hand. His face was as white as a sheet, and his eyes were wide, wide, wide, as if they had to be wider than normal to take in the size of the room, the still body of his sister and all the dreadful paraphernalia of modern medicine.

"Now, do not be frightened, my little friend. If it can be done, you will save her. We will save her together. It only requires bravery on your part, and we could depend on no better person. I will give you a draught, and you will instantly feel better. And then we will let your sister have the blood she needs, and, with God's help, she will wake up feeling as well as you."

The surgeon turned to Angel, "Will you hold him? While I make the necessary incision."

He indicated a chair that was placed by the side of the bed, close to the girl's head. As if in a dream, Angel sat in it, and the boy climbed into his lap. Angel wrapped his strong arms about the lad, and held him as the surgeon fed him the opiate, waited for it to take effect, and then made a small cut in the boy's arm, at the bend of his elbow.

Blood flowed out and Angel turned his head away. By the time he looked again, a rubber pipe lead from the incision to a similar cut in the girl's arm, via a glass apparatus where the blood frothed and bubbled. He closed his eyes and gripped the boy tightly.

After the night of the bruises, the girl didn't return to the alleyway for a while. Then, a week later, she was back, and so was her escort. The same dreadful sequence of events. A carriage pulled up. A hand beckoned from it. The girl came forward. A head protruded from the window. And Angel recognised a face.

It was a vampire. Not one of his order, but Angel knew him. His name was Bortel. They had fought over territory in Prague.

Paralysed, Angel watched as Bortel opened the carriage door, the girl climbed in, and the carriage pulled away. A moment later, the boy ran past, and Angel finally managed to move his feet. He lurched forward and caught the child by his arm.

The boy fought like a demon, kicking and biting and flailing until Angel managed to pin his limbs down.

"Your sister..."

"Let me go!"

"She's in great danger... you must let me help you..."

"You're one of them..."

"She'll be killed if you don't let me help, and maybe you too!"

The child went limp in his arms, and Angel relaxed his hold, and set him down on the cobbles. The oldest trick in the book. As soon as Angel had lessened his grip, he was rewarded with a vicious kick to his left shin, and the boy slipped away, leaving him to clutch his leg and hobble behind.

The pursuit was on. The carriage trundled its way through the straw and excrement of the London streets. The boy flitted and dived behind it. Angel followed them both, gaining on them all the time. And then...

The boy fell, rolling on the filthy ground in agony. Angel didn't stop to find out what was wrong, but picked the child up and slung him over one shoulder. He raced after the carriage again, as if his own life depended on it.

As the carriage passed a quiet stretch of road beyond Westminster bridge, it slowed. The door opened, and a bundle was thrown, with supernatural strength, into the river.

"Sir?"

Angel's attention was called back to the present. The surgeon was taking the boy gently from his arms, and putting him in the bed next to his sister.

"I need hardly say, it is not usual for us to place boys and girls together, but I think, in this case..."

"Yes," Angel said, "They should be together."

The man put a hand on Angel's shoulder, "We will know, soon enough."

Angel looked at him, puzzled. "Know?"

"Whether they are compatible. Mr Landsteiner tells us we have a better than one in four chance."

Angel gulped. "And, if not?"

The surgeon shook his head. "A fever will be the first sign."

The man left the room, and Angel tried to collect himself. The boy was sleeping peacefully. The girl made a low moan.

He rushed to her side, and took her hand again. It felt warmer. He willed her to live. Angel put a hand to her forehead. To his cool fingers, she already felt hot.

"I'm so sorry."

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