a.connor  a.doyle  a.lindsey  a.oz  a.spike  a.wesley  a.xander  a.other  three.somes  het.fic  character.study           
Title: Mercury and Moon
Author: Kismet
Rating: NC-17
Setting: Fanged Four Days

 

"Come in," they told him with red lips and beckoning eyes. "Come in and rest." Angels with dead white faces and mouths rouged to blood-red. The warm, hot smell of them smothered in cheap perfume and the flutter of painted fans over hungry lips. It seemed to him if he blinked he would see the sickness in them mingled with the fierce animal life that flowed through their veins. Webs of blood like the traceries of a delicate vine, suspended in warm flesh.

Blood flowed through him too, stunning in its velocity, but it could not warm his cold flesh. That which animated him was infinitely more harsh, more terrible in its intensity. It was the Rider that drove the Wolf of Hunger that propelled him onward.

Heat rushed up in him suddenly, the heat of anger crashing like a wave on the shore. He slid into a run, the heels of his expensive boots clicking on the stones as he sped past the dimly lighted doorways and the painted women who dangled their affections and their charms for sale, hiding the dead disillusionment in their eyes behind their smiles. Their cries and calls slid off him like the faint drops of rain which had begun to fall.

They must have thought him mad or drunk, a richly dressed young gentleman running as if he was being chased by the Devil himself. What a capital joke, since he WAS the Devil and the young man was nowhere to be seen.

His cheek stung and his body still ached from the beating it had taken. No matter that, that would heal. This cold dead body of his would always heal. It was the heart that scarred.

**"Don't you ever presume to command ME, ever !" The blow had thrown him to crash against the wall. "I raised you from the gutter I found you in, and I can cast you down again."**

They always fought, that was normal. But this fight had not been like any of the others. This fight had been about dominance; it had been about a cry of protest against the smothering mixture of love, obsession and possession that had shaped him, birthed him and formed him.

The rain lashed his face, the looseness of his hair flapping to stick over his eyes like a curtain. He had lost the ribbon some way back.

**The sheen of death was over the unseeing blue eyes of the young man even before the heart slowed and stopped, never to pump again. The feel of his waistcoat was slick, the waistcoat of this dead boy with the pretty face and the foolish arrogance which had earned him the attentions of two of the night's deadliest killers. The head of fair hair had flopped back, wonderful hair so pale it was almost white, and he had let the heavy body slip from his fingers only to look up and see Angelus' furious face.

It should not have come to this; they had shared numerous kills before, enjoying the sensuousness of feeding together on the same struggling sacrificial lamb. This boy...this boy now lying dead in the gutter somewhere. The boy had looked like him enough to have been taken for his younger brother.

The gasp that came from the boy's pale pink lips was like the fevered cry of one with a lover as Angelus bit down on his neck. His eyelids fluttered half-closed over those blue eyes, eyes that looked right at William as Angelus lifted him nearly off his feet.

And what was it that he had seen then? Flashes, scenes of a London alley filthier than this in all respects into which a young cutthroat and murderer had led a client, a moneyed young gentleman supposedly looking for the pleasures a woman could not provide. The first shock, the spark as the knife had hit the wall at the end of the alley. The shouts and curses of a man fighting for his life against one who laughed mockingly. Then being in that position, being crushed to the hard, unyielding body of the predator and the subjugation of having his teeth sink into your neck.**

And he had shoved Angelus aside and wrenched the boy from his grasp, not caring that blood spattered as his Sire's mouth broke it's suction on that slender neck. His teeth had clamped down and he had drunk desperately to prevent Angelus from cementing his hold on him through this act of drinking down the life of his young doppelganger as he watched, hungering and helpless and inextricably bound.

It could have gotten much worse if Darla had not come back just then. As it was, when she walked in he had been trying to crawl to his hands and knees and not succeeding.

He didn't need to breathe and could have run forever, if he had not burst out onto the main road and nearly been run over by a carriage. The horses reared with screams like the guardians of Hell's gates, great hooves scything the air just above his head as he ducked, resting on toes and fingers like a cat in disorientation. The swaying carriage lamps made shadows and shades dance crazily across the whole scene and the few people out on the wide pavements stopped to stare as the coachman's yell of warning rang out into the cold night.

He backed away, lifting one hand in a foolish human reflex to shade his eyes from the glare of the lamps. Then two figures leapt off the back of the carriage and rough hands had hold of him, shouting abuse and wielding short truncheons.

Full of fury, he struck, feeling the satisfying crunch of shattering bone under his blow and hearing the high-pitched scream of one of the footmen even as he whirled and backhanded the other across the face so he fell rolling on the muddy stones of the road. The horses whuffed and backed away uneasily, steam spurting from their nostrils. Snatching up the truncheons, he snapped them across his knee like bunches of twigs and flung them at the head of the cloaked coachman.

They struck the coach with heavy thunks, causing a female voice to rise from its shadowed interior. "What is happening ? Jerome ? Flaubert ?" His acute hearing picked up the sound of hinges creaking as the door opened, then a light step on the cobblestones.

"No, milady ! Stay in the carriage !" The coachman vaulted from him seat, brandishing the horsewhip.

Ah, to protect with such valour........

"Yes, milady !" He raised his voice in a shout. "Stay in your carriage that would have run me over  like a dog in the street, while your footmen try to pick themselves up out of the mud that they're eating at this very moment !"

"Yer a ravin' lunatic, ye !" exclaimed the coachman, making as if to step forward when  a delicate hand was put on his arm.

"You are not looking properly, Havish," came that low, musical tone again like the coo of a wood-bird. "Look at his coat, his boots. Listen to the way he speaks; this is a gentleman we have here, and I am sure he will treat us with the courtesy befitting a gentleman if we apologise for the inconvenience we have caused him. Good sir," the voice now addressed him. "Do forgive us, but the footmen did not see you run out onto the road, and later mistook you for a robber. Are you hurt ?"

That voice, that voice like the strains of some half-remembered lullaby took the strength out of his anger. It soothed, lulled and cajoled like the song of some nightingale in the woods at night. It arrested him and made his eyes search for it's owner. "Who am I speaking to ? Let me see your face."

"Why, ye ill-mannered cur..." the coachman's round red face nearly exploded from this impudence, but the owner of the hand moved him aside.

She was young, perhaps 17, 18 years of age, pretty with rosy cheeks, a small straight nose and a rosebud of a mouth. She was dressed in pale pink, cut low to reveal a splendid expanse of bosom and with flared, sumptuous skirts embroidered with rosebuds. Under the velvet folds of her hood he caught sight of blond ringlets and she smiled at him with a bold slant to her eye.

The strength of his disappointment surprised him faintly. With that voice he had been expecting something more, something he could not put his finger on. He thought for an instant about making a kill just to erase the spinning in his head but decided against it. This was a main road in an upper-class neighbourhood and there were too many people about. He felt like killing, like tearing and hearing screams of horror and fear, but the felt he owed her something for the gift of her voice.

William bowed from the waist, hair falling in a black cloud about his face. "I'm sorry for the scuffle, milady. It was a mistake and I will not trouble you a moment longer." Turning on his heel, he made to stalk away.

"Wait." The one word arrested him in midstep and he swung around in surprise. This was not the voice he had heard earlier. This voice matched her, high and girlish and....ordinary.

She had taken a step forward, one hand held out to him. "Where are you going ? You look, if you will forgive my forwardness, as if you have had an altercation or some trouble of some sort. You have neither horse, hat or cloak and you look as if you have been running for a while."

His eyes narrowed on her. There was something wrong here..."And what would you have me do ?"

She gave a pretty little shrug which made her breasts shift deliciously in their tight sheath. "I have a carriage. You could come with me." The invitation in her voice was unmistakable, and so was the admiring, daring look in her eye.

Then he heard it again, the Voice. It said, "Milady."

She stepped out from behind her mistress, a figure so slender and lanky at first he thought it was a young lad. Then the light of the lamps touched her and he saw that she had an immense, glowing coil of red hair wound neatly around her head and big eyes of such a dark blue that they were almost violet, and that she was wearing a man's breeches and coat.

His breath caught at the back of his throat for no reason as her eyes settled on him and widened. The chit was not beautiful, with a mouth too wide and a face too pale and angular, but something about her drew him immediately in a way her mistress could not and he felt the thirst rise suddenly in him. He knew what he wanted at that moment; he wanted to let the demon come through, snatch this girl of 14 or 15 away with him into the night and have her as completely as it was possible to have another.

"Milady," she was saying in that voice of hers. "Lord Dowling will be waiting for us."

"No he won't," said her employer, never taking her eyes off the young man who stood before the carriage, everything in his stance proclaiming tension and wildness and the cold fire that flashed in his eyes. "He has decided to go to the opera with his fiancee tonight." There was a tartness about her words and William realised all at once who she was. Laura Lanset, one of London's most famous beauties and a professional mistress. All the more odd that he did not find her as striking as her immodestly attired hired help.

Laura was smiling at him. "Will you come ?" the look in her eyes was seductive, telling of her attraction to him. He looked straight at the girl as he made a bow of acceptance.

Yes, he would kill tonight.
 
 

**"Stop it !" seethed Darla. "Angelus !"

He could barely make out what she was saying as he drew in a sobbing gulp of air. Had to rise to his feet...had to stand tall.....look the tosser in the eye and...

The boot caught him under the ribs with inhuman force and he dropped to the floor, game-face snarling at the pain that exploded through his system.

He heard the lovely sharp rapid clicking of her shoes as she came down the stairs and caught Angelus by the arm. With a growl Angelus whirled on her, baring his teeth......and there was a sharp crack as she slapped him across the face with all the strength of her arm behind it.

The shock must have got through to the wanker, because the next thing he heard was Angelus' "Why ?"

"This has been going on every night for a week !" snapped Darla. "I never approved of you turning him in the first place but you did, AS YOUR CHILDE ! If you want to kill him, then...." He heard the splintering of wood as if it came from far, far away. "Take this and push it hard and swiftly through his young heart, but do not treat him as you would a minion and expect me to stand by and watch it!"

He looked out of the corner of a swollen eye and images swam around him, doubles and triples of everything swaying like trees in a storm. Faintly, he made out the shape of Angelus holding something long in his hand, poised right over his fallen Childe. Faintly, he made out Darla's lovely silhouette and the light cast by the fire, then everything turned black.**

"Tea ?" Laura Lansing indicated the tray a maidservant had brought in. "Or wine ?" Her smile was warm, wicked.

Just a glassful of the blood of that young chit standing by the bookshelf glowering at me, William wanted to say. Instead he gave Laura a narrow, mocking smile which must have made her heart palpitate faster. "Wine, milady, if you please."

"A man of robust and refined taste," she teased as the ruby liquid splashed into crystal glasses. Her breast strained against the taffeta and lace of her corset as she leaned forward, it's plumpness beckoning for a man's hand to strip away the band of fabric binding her so tightly. The gilded clock on the mantelpiece ticked rhythmically. The young girl's purple-blue eyes bored into him like awls.

"Tell me," Laura handed him the glass, brushing his fingers with her nails. "How is it that a man like you has a trace of an accent in his voice that reminds me of exotic climes ? And how do you remain comfortably nameless so long while enjoying your hostess' hospitality ?"

"Is it a game we are playing ?" He caught her fingers and felt her shrink a little at first because of the chill of his hand. "Then you must answer my questions first before I satisfy your curiousity and any other desires you might have."

She flushed becomingly at the blatant innuendo. "I asked you first."

"And you are my hostess so I'll hear no protest." He brought her fingers to his lips and brushed them over her smooth skin. A glance saw the young girl's mouth tighten with displeasure and he chuckled inwardly, already feeling in a better mood. "Is it the fashion to keep female pages about?"

The fingers of Laura's other hand fluttered on her skirt as he rubbed his thumb over the joint of her fingers. "Lilias, you mean ?" Her eyes looked at him languidly from under her lashes. "She is my personal bodyguard; I thought it makes quite an impression, non ?"

He set aside the wine and moved closer to her on the couch on the pretext of speaking low in her ear. "But is this young girl capable of safeguarding your beauty ?"

"More than capable with words, swords, pistols or any other weapons of your choice," Lilias rejoined, a trace of acid in her mellow, rich voice. "I would rather you keep an appropriate distance between yourself and my mistress, sir."

Laura let loose with a peal of laughter, lifting her wine glass to rest on her forehead. The light of the candles sparkled on the glass and refracted through the liquid, making her face look as if it was awash in blood.

"William Mornay," he inclined his head to Lilias and to Laura. "Unfortunately I profess no skill with most of the weapons your Amazon has mentioned. "He was playing with her; slipping easily into mimicry of the habits and tones of the gentry, using words that would have meant as much as Urdu verses to him in his youth. And all the while the girl with the violet eyes watched malevolently. He could smell her with all a predator's senses, feel her as palpably as if she was already pressed up against him in a fragrant jumble of succulent little limbs.

"Ah," Laura's hand caressed his cheek, tracing the sharp angle of his cheekbone. "Your skills must lie in other directions, some of which must be able to warm your cold skin."

His dark blue eyes flicked down her form and up again with utmost insolence. "You wish to see me warmed, milady ?"

Her pearly little teeth shone as she smiled, and who knows where it might have gone if the knock on the door hadn't come just then.

The maid that came in, curtsying hurriedly, was ashen-faced and panting. "Forgive me, M'Lady, but its Lord Dowling !"

"Here ?" Laura's eyebrows raised as she sat up swiftly.

"No, milady. He's at the opera. Lord Fielding is outside askin' for ye, Milady."

"Ah !" Piqued, Laura plopped back down boldly into the crook of William's shoulder, fingers fanning out on his silk waistcoat. "I'm not running to him when he crooks his finger, not after he had the temerity to cast me aside without warning tonight. What happened; did his darling fiancee runoff on another man's arm ? Someone with a larger fortune and more estates, I suppose. And he dares to send his friend instead of coming to me himself?"

The sound of a man's shouting came faintly to them in the salon, and Laura's pretty mouth hardened into a thin line which rather intrigued William. The little woman had some steel in her spine.

"It would be advisable to go to Lord Dowling, Milady." Lilias' voice curled around him like opium smoke, seductive and intoxicating. "He is a rich enough man to give us our luxuries and our living."

"Do not presume to lecture me !" Laura snapped suddenly. "You reach too far above your station, Lilias !"

"Perhaps she has a point, my dear." William watched the flare in Lilias' eye before the fan of dark lashes dropped to curtain it, and he felt his hunger for her rise steeply. "Your...paramour...might be less than pleased if he discovers you have been entertaining strange gentlemen in his absence. "The shouting outside came closer. "Perhaps you should see what Lord Fielding has to say before he bursts in here and catches us."

Her fingertip traced his lips, a delicate set of bones encased in flesh and soft skin. "How discreet of you, William Mornay, though we haven't yet begun." Her hand was warm on his thigh as she turned back to the blushing maid. "What is it, Mary Ann ?"

"It's....it's....Milady, Lord Dowling has had an accident. His horse threw him," the maid stuttered.

William barely kept his lip from curling as he saw Laura Lanset start and pale. He could practically read her train of thought, that as a mistress she had everything to lose and none to gain with Dowling's death. And that if she was there with him in illness or quite possibly at the end, she could stand to inherit some tidy 'gifts' from him. She was merely an avaricious little mortal bitch, of little interest to him, and her leaving the room without even bidding him farewell was hardly soon enough for him.

The door closed behind her and the maid, leaving him in this luxurious little solar with the silence and the crackle of the fire. And the girl with the nightingale's voice and the stormy eyes.

He raised his glass and drank down the wine, barely noticing it going down as he watched her over the rim of the glass. Her eyes barely flickered as she stared at him, and he thought he saw something coiling in their depths, something almost like recognition.

"It looks like we're alone then, Lilias."

She turned and laid a hand on the doorknob. "Come with me."

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

** "He loves you, you realise."

He had woken up surrounded by softness, suspended in it. The pillows were a white mountain in the huge bed, the dark blue of the satin sheets very familiar to him and holding their scent in their fibres still. The fire crackled in the hearth, and he had been lying in Darla's arms as she sat back against the pillows, playing with his hair as he slept. He felt the smooth, firm roundness of her cold breast against his cheek and the lace of her thin white gown.

He had tried to pull away immediately, confused and wary. Darla had never approved of Angelus turning him, and all he knew of her was that she was Angelus' Dam, the favourite Childe of an old and powerful Master, and whose strength was such that she could kill him easily if she wanted to. She had only smiled at him, her face so very pretty, stealing colour from the light of the fire.

"His love is so complete, so savage that he would kill you to keep you to himself. My Angelus, my darling boy is tormented by his need for acceptance and his prior experience with loss, and yet he knows as we all know that to open ourselves is to invite hurt."

He still hurt, ached all over from the beating. The bruising was still there, some of the deeper cuts might take a day to heal and he felt the throb from healing fractures. Yet someone had cleaned him up and stripped him down to his breeches. His demon hissed in distrust at the thought that she had had him so vulnerable. "Why're you telling me this ?"

She looked at him, a lovely little crease forming between her delicately drawn brows. Then she reached out and took his jaw in her delicate fingers, fingers which clamped down with an iron strength when he tried to jerk his head away. "So beautiful," she breathed, her eyes holding him. "So viciously, savagely beautiful. Like an angel too, an angel with torn wings cast down from the sky. Is that why he took you ?"

Her tone, her beauty made the hairs prickle on his neck and he had an overwhelming urge to strike her, claw at her to make her let go and to flee the place. He knew that to do so was to invite death. She was his Sire's Dam.

Darla touched a finger to the pale skin of his chest, pressing hard enough with her nail to draw blood as she dragged it downwards slowly in a straight line, making him inhale sharply as the blood welled and they both smelled it. Her eyes watched the ruby red rise, fascinated.

"My love for him was like that, but he left all the same. Sooner or later, my sweet boy, they all leave you, the Children you make. Remember that. They all leave, no matter what you do or how much you love or hate. When I heard he made you, I wondered whether I should kill you. He would have let me, you know. A Dam's prerogative. I could have staked you or set you on fire in front of him the first time I met you and he wouldn't have lifted a finger to stop me."

"And is this why I'm soddin' here in the bloody bed with you now ? So you can kill me ? Might as well have done it outside..least you won't get dust in the sheets." Her finger across his lips stopped him.

"Shhhh, my sweet boy. Beauty has a Purpose." One cold, long-fingered hand pressed him back down onto the pillows and she rose above him, golden hair falling to brush his skin as her cold, wet tongue licked the trail of blood. There was unmistakable command in her fingers and her eyes, and there was nothing for it but to submit to her the way he submitted to Angelus, except that here there was no desperate, furious unsatisfied love between them.

She was calculative, cunning, and sublimely expert in the struggle for supremacy on the battlefield of the bed. After all, she had not been the Master's favourite Childe for nothing, and she had finished Angelus' education. Yet the sex was more tender than it had ever been with Angelus, no less a way to exert control, but it was experimental, almost curious. Angelus could strike him till it felt like a lover's caress, but with Darla......the pain she gave was balanced on a knife point at the edge of Pleasure. It was because she felt no caring for him, and would kill him on whim if it suited her.

"You will only get your freedom with his permission," she told him after, when the sheets were stained with blood and the room smelled of them and their coupling. "He owns you, body and mind and soul."

He had struggled into his clothes as if he was fighting them. "I'm going out. If I have to bloody stay in here with you another second I'll go insane, like the bloody pillock himself went insane."

"Yes, go," she told him, frowning with that delectable little crease again, those brows coming down over her pretty eyes. "Go out and kill. Let the Blood run Red and Warm."

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

The horse was warm between his thighs, the creak of the leather saddle audible to his ears. Riding never ceased to raise some amazement in him, the way it felt to have all of that powerful, warm creature coiled like a spring between his legs. Life ridden by Death.

She rode ahead of him on a dappled mare, her body long and lithe in the saddle. The sound of the horses' hooves was loud on the cobblestones of the narrow alleys they were making their way through.

"And I thought that you were to escort me home," he said to her back, feeling his hunger coil in him, waiting.

Her voice was like Desire made liquid. "We stop here." The dappled mare drew to a halt under the command of her fingers on the reins.

William did not need to look around to know that the alley dead-ended in front of them, and that it was dark here, the only light coming from the moon above. It was perfect.

He slid off his horse easily, stroking one hand down the side of the beast's lovely head as he watched her dismount, the fabric of her breeches cleaving to her legs indecently. "As you wish, my pretty." With this one, he wanted it to be more than a simple kill. Her voice, he wanted to hear her voice as he was draining her, perhaps even as he was taking her in the age-old way up against the damp walls of this filthy little sinkhole. He felt the desire molten in his veins, laced with the remnants of his anger and rushing to flood his groin.

It was only his vampire reflexes that gave him a split second's warning as the sharpened stake flew through the air towards him, and he bent over backwards, back arching as it passed through the air above him. He felt the wind of the passage of her sleeve. Then he had her by the wrist, snarling, and she whirled and struck him full in the face with her other fist.

He tasted his own blood in his mouth and realisation exploded in his mind.

"A Slayer." He had never met one before, never thought in all his dark dreams that he would meet one so soon.

She stared at him as they circled each other, violet eyes as cold and hard as flint. "I'll kill you tonight, you monster."

A shadow passed over his eyes as the demon licked it's lips inside him, full suddenly of tingling anticipation. He was young, he knew, but he was of a bloodline that had never made anything but strong Children, and he had been a cutthroat on the streets since before this girl had been born. This Slayer, ridiculously young and vulnerable.

"You're welcome to try, pretty maid." He straightened and spread his arms, smiling mockingly, infuriatingly at her with that grin which had always driven Angelus mad. It had much the same effect on her.

He sidestepped her rush and whirled, the back of his leg thumping squarely across her shoulders and flinging her against the wall. She wasn't even stunned, just whipped around and came at him again, another stake in her long fingers. He was marginally surprised, and surprisingly pleased. Her next flurry of blows backed him up the alley, making the horses snort and back away, tossing their heads nervously. A fist connected in his solar plexus, sending a shooting pain straight through him and she followed swiftly with an uppercut, snapping his head up.

Her strength was incredible. She was perhaps even stronger than Angelus, definitely stronger than him. He backhanded her and kicked her down the alley, feeling no uncertainty though he was very well aware that he might die here tonight. Just this determination to win flooded him, the hunger to taste her blood. Death did not matter. Life was glorious only if lived on the razor's edge, and here he could win, unlike with Darla and Angelus.

The thought of Angelus, the image of a dark, sculpted face and those mocking brown eyes filled with the sense of ownership sent a bolt of white hot rage through him. The Slayer's blows thumping into his chest as he sprang on her, forcing her up against the wall, did not have any effect. Almost as if his body was absorbing the force and using it to feed his anger.

Her head cracked against the wall. He saw her glorious eyes open wide suddenly at the feel of his hard, cold body pressed so intimately against her soft warmth, every inch of them touching, one knee between her thighs as he pinned her wrists up on either side of her head, feeling her hairbrush his fingers. He felt her pulse suddenly speed up for a moment and smelt the sudden nervous tang to her sweat, and his lips peeled back from his fangs in a cold smile. He knew her weakness now.

How young was she ? 15 ? She had never felt a man's touch this way, and her knowing that he found her desirable as evidenced by the hardness against her belly, was confusing her.

His head snapped forward like a snake's and he kissed her hard, fangs cutting into her lip so he tasted her blood. One hot, sudden flash as if lightning had struck him, the power of it galloping through his system, making his demon hiss.

It was as if she was waking from a trance and she abruptly began to struggle again to shake him off, but it was too late. She would have won the battle if it had not been for this. As it was, he brought down the blunt end of the stake he had snatched from her shock-loosed fingers on her head, and when she still refused to fall, he did it again. The smell of blood rose as her scalp split where she had been hit and she fell to her hands and knees, shaking her head and trying to fight the blurring. The next blow was to the back of her neck with all his strength behind it, and she slumped to the ground, knocked unconscious.

The makeshift bludgeon in his hand trembled as he fought the desire to raise it again and strike, to beat his opponent to a bloody pulp. For a moment he stood there, legs spread as he stared down at her, a hazy idea forming in his mind.

Why ? He never answered such questions.

With one arm he lifted her and walked up the alley to where the horses were standing together almost at the entrance. Their ears twitched at the sound of his heels on the ground, and the black shied at the smell of blood, and shied again when he reached for the bridle.

The dapple mare stood still, looking with big soft eyes into the ridged and fearsome face of the killer standing before her. Her thick lashes, as pale as those of the girl slumped over his shoulder were dark, trembled slightly as if she was trying to speak to him, to whisper some secret to him like a woman as she put her muzzle on his shoulder in the dark.

He felt the warm felt of her nose and the caress of her sensitive lips, the whoosh of her warm breath by his ear. It calmed him somewhat, this touching trust from an animal whose instincts should have told it that he was unnatural and to be avoided. He was one of the shadows of the night, the killer slipping through a window, into a bedroom, to pinch out the candle's flickering flame and extinguish the dancing patterns thrown on the walls.

He flung the girl up over the mare's strong shoulders, then climbed into the saddle. Incongruously he stroked the mare's silky neck gently, then gave her a slight nudge with his heels. She moved off into the night.
 

---
 

*****************

  "Aren't  you going to speak ?" he asked her through the dirty glow of the carriage lamp.

The violet-blue eyes never blinked, the soft red mouth never twitched as she stared straight up above her at the ceiling of the carriage-housewhere the unlit lantern swayed to and fro on its hook in a draft. The creaking came and went like the rhythm of a pendulum.

"You know, pet, I always thought a Slayer would've more to say. Especially before she dies in a particularly gory, bloody way," he continued conversationally as he pushed off from the wall and sauntered up to her, admiring his handiwork. "The usual things, love, like why am I here, what are you going to do tome. Or maybe even please. Please please please..." He pulled experimentally on the chains that bound her spread-eagled on  the broken-down door that he had propped up on bales of hay. She twitched then, her mouth tightening slightly, and William grinned.

"Please," he bent over to whisper in her ear, smelling the clean, pungent scent of her, her fine hair tickling his nose. "How are you going to say it, pet ? In a soft whisper, in a moan, in a scream ? Do you want me to make you scream bloody murder, or do you want to keep quiet like a good little girl ?  Cor, I think either way's equally erotic."

As he had expected, this gained a rise from her.

"I'd rather die than give you any pleasure !" she all but hissed at him, but he saw the fear behind the anger in her eyes. The fear of the unknown. His demon laughed in glee at the prospect of untouched, untutored flesh.

He had never been a blank slate for Angelus. No, he had seen a good bit of the black o' the world even before the soddin' toff got him in that alley.

"Death. You sound like you couldn't bloody care less, pet, but do you?" He clicked his tongue, a soothing sound one might use with the horses that stood in borrowed stalls, munching hay. He had unsaddled them and taken the bits out of their mouths; he might be here a while and he didn't want the dapple mare to be uncomfortable.

"Death, what does it mean ? What've you seen in your short life, Lilias?" Her name came between his teeth naturally, as if it belonged there. "How many sunrises, how many full moons. How many people have you loved? You'll never know what it's like to kiss a man, to take a blinkin' rollin the hay so it feels like the stars are explodin' behind your eyes. To feel anger and hurt and rage at betrayal, to grow older. To live. Tell me, love, have you ever done any of those things ?" He laughed low in her ear, smelling the anger that was rolling off her like warm myrrh. "Bad luck, love. You'll not be there to feel when I kill all the people you love, all the people you care about. Parents..."

"I don't have any." There was the small note of triumph in her voice, her goddamn stroking, intoxicating voice. Then she shivered, started as his fingers ran over her outstretched arms, the sound of nails scraping the velvet of her coat audible in the silence. The cold fingers trailed up her neck as she fought to keep still, then stroked down again to her collarbone, the pressure of the nails raising faint red marks on the cream of her skin.

"No parents, pet ? Well, there's always friends, employers..Watchers. "He smelled the tinge of uncertainty then, the sharpness of fear. "We're gettin' somewhere, are we ? Good, I don't like bein' bored."

"I won't tell you, not ever !" she said vehemently, those long lashes trembling with indignation.

His hair brushed her cheek as his lips touched the shell-edge of her ear. "I'm tellin' you, love, by the time we're done, you'll be bloody begging to tell me." The smell of fear rose sharply, not because of his words but because he was slowly unbinding her hair. Intimacy, she was afraid of intimacy. "Either that or I'll make darling Laura tell me. I think she'd do it for a kiss. Or maybe she doesn't know. Sure, she wouldn't know what you are, will she ? But she'll know where your old 'uncle' or your 'father' is, the one who sent you to her."

Like him. Like them all. He knows that to open himself is to invite pain. So you fought and you resented and you longed to possess, till love became so mixed with hate that you didn't bloody know which was which anymore...

She was trembling uncontrollably as the knife slid down the fabric of her breeches, splitting the cloth and laying bare her skin. Against her will her emotions flickered across her face. Embarassment, revulsion, anger, helplessness. William loved it all as much as he loved the idea of having a Slayer in his control. Control, fucking control was heady...

"Tell me, what does he do to you ?" Darla whispered in the shadows of the bed as she draped herself over his back, her hand a vise of pain and pistoning pleasure around his length, squeezing him till he felt he might burst with it. "Does he whip you ? Bite you, cut you ? Kiss you over the lash-marks...what does he do to drive you insane ?" She sank her teeth into his bruised shoulder, making him emit a half-whine, half-growl, and laughed that pretty tinkling laugh. "Pretty Childe, pretty William. On your back. Now."

Then it was another night, another bed, another city, another country. But it was the same again. Control. Games of control and the love that suffocated and breathed for him at the same time.

His fingers gripped the chains till he thought he heard the iron links creak under the pressure. He wasn't sure because he was making the sounds, giving them up to Angelus as if they formed the words of a prayer. Yes, Angelus was his bloody God and he was the frigging worshipper at the Doors of the Shrine. Whimpers, sobs, growls. Whispered words of incoherence forced out with every thrust of his Sire's hips, every burst of splitting pain and consuming pleasure as he was forced down into the mattress, nails shredding the sheets now as Angelus' fingers dug into his flesh mercilessly.

"You're mine, my lad." Yes. "Nothing but Mine." Yes and yes and yes and yes... "Nothing but what I make you." Oh damn it to Hell, yes. Anything, anything. Just harder, faster, and the whining coming from his throat like the plea it was. How he hated himself in these moments when thoughts tangled like string, but he had to have it... "Feel me in you, because I'll always be there. I own you." YES, push deeper, drive the Pain Absolute and give me what I want. Give me this, hit rock bottom and make me howl. Make me frigging scream into the slap of flesh on flesh. Tear me and stroke me, kill me and make me, you bastard, you...you....you. Angelus.

Angelus.

She screamed. She screamed to the roof, to the sky and to anything that would listen. The horses tossed their heads and danced and kicked in their stalls as the smell of blood rose. Funny, that. Always the smell of blood in all his dreams, in all the beds. Now here too.

It was too bad he hadn't had more time to prepare. Some things he needed he couldn't have, like a brazier of hot coals, irons. Salt water. Well, you had to make do with what you had.

"You're so young, darlin'. So bleedin' young." So young.

He used the knife again. He was an artist with the knife. The screaming of that lustrous nightingale's voice made his demon purr with pleasure. The blood snaked down the valley between her breasts and along her belly, pooling in her navel where he licked it up with his tongue. He felt the brush of the dark red curls between her legs as the muscles leapt reflexively in those white thighs, and felt himself rock-hard.

William licked his lips. This was FUN.

She sucked in a sobbing breath as he straightened. Sweat beaded her face, sweat and tears. There was blood too, drooling from her mouth from where she had bitten through her lip. He kissed her roughly, forcing his tongue into her mouth and tasting her blood and fear as he squeezed the dainty roundness of her breasts, raking bloody trails in that delicate tissue and making her arch against him in agony.

"Oh God," he heard so faintly as he lifted his mouth from hers. An almost broken whisper. She was strong, but too young. Too young. He didn't know they had Slayers this young. "God, please...."

"What is it, love ?" he asked silkily as he looped her fine wool scarf around her neck. Fine sapphire blue. A strong color. "Tell me. You can tell me, love."

"Holy Mary, the Sainted Ones..." the nightingale sang so softly, so exquisitely tiredly. "Make the pain stop, please. Make it stop."

"Don't worry, pet. No use asking those that never hear for anything. I'm here, pet. Talk to me. Tell me how much you love me." He kissed a gentle trail down her skin, licking up the blood delicately with his tongue, pausing to suckle at a pale pink nipple and hearing her small, unwilling gasp. Slowly he licked his way downwards, enjoying the salt fragrance of her skin as his fingers wound themselves in the ends of the scarf, pulling it snug around her neck.

He reached the heated folds of her hidden secret just as the scarf pulled taut. The smell of her musk was all mortal, blood-rich and just bloody tantalising. He touched her with reverent fingers, opening her like a flower, feeling her muscles tense again at this unexpected gentleness and the feeling of it. Oh yes, the pleasure beginning to unfold itself. That was always strange and always good.

He licked her with a cold tongue, her taste exploding against the roof of his mouth. Her gasp turned to a gag as the scarf around her neck tightened before loosening abruptly.

Oh yes, sweetheart. Sing for me, breathe for me.

He licked her, sucked slowly, tenderly as the scarf tightened and loosened, tightened and loosened again and again. Control. He was controlling even her breathing, her racing pulse. He was teaching her things she had never even dreamed of before. William thought he was liking the teaching more than he had expected.

Her hips moved slightly under him, and he caught her nub gently between his teeth, hearing her suck in her breath. Good girl, 'cause she wasn't going to breathe for a while. He pulled tight on the scarf, cutting off her air as he increased the rhythm and pressure of his tongue sharply, forcing the finger of his other hand into her passage.

She was gagging and choking, mouth gaping open to suck no air in as she pulled uselessly against her bonds. Under his lips and tongue she grew slick and wet.

The seconds ticked by agonizingly. There was surprisingly little sounds as she suffocated, face reddening. How long could a human last without air?  William couldn't quite remember as he continued his ministrations, loving her heat and her flavour.

Poor little nightingale. You can't sing anymore, can you ?

She bucked desperately, quite the only thing she could do as he pumped his wet fingers in and out of her. Her eyes were almost popping out of her head as her face darkened alarmingly and her fingers clenched and unclenched quite outside of her control.

He squeezed her bud between his teeth, not too hard, and she came with a burst of fragrant fluids into his mouth. The scarf loosened immediately, and the suck of breath into her lungs was like the cry of a child being born.

The taste of her in his mouth was so different from the taste of blood, clearer and lighter, tasting of forbidden fruit. He licked his lips as he stood up slowly, watching the sweat-sheen shine on her skin, making her glow in the light like the secret winding inside of a shell plucked from the wet sand by the sea. He wondered briefly, drunk still on the headiness of Slayer blood, whether if he put his ear to her he would hear a secret song too, the way one could with shells.

The salt of tears streaked her furious face, but she was broken now. He had heard it when it came like the snapping of a violin string drawn too taut. Broken, shattered like a china doll smashed on the ground.

"What do you think we are ?" Darla asked him in the privacy within the curtain of her glorious unbound hair spilling over the both of them as she rode him, squeezing with muscles the like of which he could not remember feeling before. "Dead things, essentially. Animated porcelain dolls, pure and white and brilliant. Hard, and brittle. So many of us break so easily; and then there are those who don't. Those few who have eternity in their veins, like my darling Angelus. Which will you be, sweet William? The thing which shatters, or the hammer dealing the blow ?" She whispered the words against his lips before biting, the red of the blood like the juice of the cherry between them.

Broken. She was broken. He had a tendency to break his toys.

He trailed a hand up one lean flank, collecting the wetness of sweat as  he leaned over and kissed those reddened, bruised lips one last time, tasting her blood before bringing his fingers to his mouth and licking the salt of her sweat. In the distant, unforeseeable future he would drink tequila that way, licking the salt held in the crook of finger and thumb. He saw in her eyes her desperation, heard her soft begging for her life.

"Goodnight, nightingale," he whispered to her as he cupped her chin in his hand. Then he forced her head to one side and sank his teeth violently into her neck, allowing himself at last the full draft of the blood of his first Slayer. Taking her, this girl, as Death would take a bride, and consuming her totally by drawing her into himself.

***************************

Gripped lightly between fingers with nails decorated in chipped black polish, the piece leapt in a rapid succession of jumps over the board of red and black squares. Click, click, click. Then the fingers removed three of the red pieces, stacking them neatly beside the board.

"Your move, Slayer." He let the mocking, easy grin come over his face as he leaned back and sucked on his cigarette, knowing how much that riled her. The cherry of the slender tube of tobacco glowed red, exuding trails of grey-white smoke.

"This isn't fair," Buffy growled as she leaned forward on Giles' couch, brow furrowed in concentration. "You've got a hundred years of experience playing checkers."

"I go for the kill, Slayer." He cocked one dark eyebrow at her. "Say uncle."

"Say what ?"

"Uncle. You know, when you bloody give up ?"

"You are so stuck in the bygone days that you couldn't pull your ass off the linoleum in That 70's Show if the sun was reflecting off your face." Buffy sucked at her glass of juice, and he found his eyes suddenly drawn to the plumpness of her pouting lower lip. "And it figures; if you can't even hurt a fly anymore, you'd have to get your happies some other way."

He bit back the sharp retort, the face of a violet-eyed young girl with the voice of a nightingale superimposing itself over Buffy's golden one suddenly, shockingly. To kill her....would she beg or her life ? Somehow, he did not think so.

He flicked the ash of the end of his cigarette. "Hurry up, Slayer, I haven't got all day."

She snorted. "I want to win, Peroxide Boy, then you'll have to tell me about the two Slayers you killed or I'll kick your ass into next week, literally."

Would you, he wanted to ask. In the unlikely event she won, would he tell her ?

Perhaps. Perhaps not.
 
-End


Feedback