He remembered balancing in just this spot when his girl had been grounded, forbidden to venture forth from her room beyond the requirements of school or the bathroom.
Forbidden to come out to play, she and Angel had bowed to the letter of Joyce’s interdict: the young Slayer had stayed obediently within her room, but Angel had perched at her windowsill, leaning in to his imprisoned love.
They had feasted on each other’s lips in the portal that opened their two worlds to each other – the window that led to his shadowed world of night and to her warmly lit realm of the modern teenaged girl.
Even diluted through the soul’s perceptions, Angelus had shuddered beneath the exquisite onslaught of passion and hunger. Buffy, sweet virgin that she had been at the time, had already learned how she could drive her lover nearly wild with desire by nipping and then sucking on his lower lip before drawing his tongue into the heat of her mouth.
On previous trysts between the two, Angelus had desperately tried to snap Angel’s control of their body, but despite his passion for the young Slayer and his ever-growing affections for her, Angel’s control had never wavered. Certainly there had been instances when his vampiric nature had been aroused, but not moments that released the demon imprisoned within.
Resignedly accepting that there was no release in sight from the hell that was his existence, Angelus had concentrated on enjoying the sensual torture of…making out?…necking?….seducing a young lover.
That night, amidst the sensual carnality of mating lips and tongues, there had been the tempting scent of flesh.
Buffy often smelled of vanilla and jasmine, scents left on her skin and in her hair by the lotions and shampoo she used. But that night she had smelled of feminine desire, a heady tantalizing musk that let him know just what effect their heated caresses had on her, and while that feminine musk was exquisite, he had smelled it other nights. No. What made that night special had been the other scent…the intoxicating scent of Slayer blood.
And then Angel had had a thought – an erotic fantasy that had shocked the demon Angelus before he too was entangled in the idea.
That evening, Buffy was the most female that she was all month and her menstrual blood mixed with the scent of her desire.
Angel fantasized about crawling through the window and laying his young lover down on her bed. He envisioned tugging her cotton pajama shorts and her panties down her sleek trembling legs and then stroking that silky flesh until she moaned his name.
He fantasized about sipping from his innocent girl, parting her sweet, tender folds and pleasuring her with his lips and tongue so that frenzied feminine entreaties for more rained upon him even as he was able to drink exquisite and powerful Slayer blood mixed with honeyed feminine desire. He wanted to feast from the delicate flesh between her thighs until she thrashed and moaned beneath him, all without ever once having to pierce her flesh.
Angelus was, to say the least, stunned at the idea. It had simply never occurred to him. Certainly he had pleasured his lovers that way before, but it had never once occurred to him that at the proper time of a girl’s cycle, he could feast upon that blood, without ever once sinking in a fang…and the idea had come from his souly-self.
The dark-haired vampire shifted uncomfortably. He stared through the thin glass into the room where his mortal lover slept. The fragile shield forged from the mysterious alchemy of molten sand was no impediment to his strength; if all it took to gain access to his lady was brute force, then there was nothing on earth that would have halted his progress. What held him back from entering his girl’s bedroom, when no physical obstacle could ever have dissuaded him, was the mystical house barrier.
What held him back from claiming her as his golden goddess were her moral inhibitions. She would be his. There was no doubt in his mind that with lips and flesh, whispers and blood, he would lure her away from the unfeeling righteousness of light, but to lure a champion would take time. And in the meantime, while he waited, he was trapped on the other side of the window.
He clenched his teeth grimly, loathing the fact that he, the Scourge of Europe had been reduced to the role of Peeping Tom at his own woman’s window.
Fool, he berated himself. Only a few weeks ago he had had free reign to her home and unperceived access to her person. And how had he used his Invitation? He had sketched her while she slept. He had stroked her hair while she dreamed, blissfully unaware of his presence, brushed fingers over her petal-soft cheek and been bewitched by the unfamiliarity of the…tenderness that accompanied his passion and been enthralled by the sight of her turning more fully into his caress as she slept.
Looking back now, he could see that he had wasted the advantage her ignorant vulnerability had afforded him. If he hadn’t been so intent on making her feel that vulnerability, if he hadn’t made her realize it existed by leaving her the sketches he had done of her and her oblivious mother, then she would never have rescinded his invitation. Without that arrogant bit of idiocy he would still be free to enter her room whenever he pleased. He could have entered her room this very night, joined her in her innocent’s bed, and drowned her senses in his passion…or had his senses drowned in hers.
He growled in frustration. Truthfully, how could he have known that they would be able to retract his Invitation? Hell, he hadn’t even known that an Invitation could be revoked. Then again, he had never had a victim that he’d afforded time to counter his moves.
Perhaps it was just as well. Until three nights ago, he hadn’t truly decided how best to deal with Sunnydale’s Slayer. The idea of killing her had held a familiar rightness: Slayers kill vampires, vampires kill Slayers. The fantasy of bringing her mortal warmth to his bed had also been an erotic titillation, but one that was unlikely to bear fruit. And now, that forbidden fantasy had been his briefly. Angel’s beautiful and dangerous love had taken Angelus into her arms and body and given him ideas that he never would have dared consider before.
Angelus wanted what Angel had had. He wanted her innocent passion, but more than that, he wanted those glowing looks that told him that he was the only male in her whole world. He wanted that biting tongue and the teasing coquetry that had brought Angel to his knees with jealousy. He wanted her enraged protectiveness, her tender concern for his health and the silent love that lived in her eyes. He wanted everything with a newborn hunger that alternately enraged him and terrified him with its intensity.
He rumbled softly in his throat as he scanned her bedroom; the surface of her dresser was empty. He descried his flowers and note on her vanity and sighed in relief. She had not thrown them away; progress had been made.
She was confused, unable to differentiate between him and his soul: good.
Her devotion and love would transfer to him. Her passion three nights ago proved that her desire endured his change. Physical lust, although sweet, was, however, just a tool to gain access to the citadel of her heart.
Buffy still lived in the realm where sex was indistinguishable from love. Sex, for her, was an ultimate expression of love. If he could just maintain his possession, literally and figuratively, of her body, her heart would follow. What her body desired, her heart would desire; what her body loved, her heart would love: a plus b equaled c. Her innocence left her weaponless in this arena of their battle.
He closed his eyes, remembering. He remembered his soul-dominated body taking possession of hers, guiding the delicate innocent over the precipice and into womanhood. He remembered her breathy moans and her mewling whimpers as she arched into his every thrust, clasping his hips tightly between her sleek thighs and raking his back with her nails as she hoarsely demanded more of his ardent attentions.
He also remembered the night at the hospital, when she had guided her demon lover’s hands over her lithe body and in a throaty whisper, described how he had made her feel the night he had possessed her…and for a time, the dainty virginal girl had taken possession of him.
He, Angelus, one of the most brutal fiends ever unleashed upon the Europe, possessed by a diminutive mortal girl. He would tolerate it. If the only way to possess her was to be possessed by her, then he would tolerate it. He would simply so befuddle her, so dominate her senses in every carnal act known between heaven and hell that she would never realize the power she held in her small hands.
It was all the damn soul’s fault.
When he had first taken possession of young Liam, the boy’s experiences had consisted of drinking, wenching and carousing. There had never been an experience of love left imprinted on Liam’s memories to taint the purity of the demon’s complete lack of humanity.
Other vampires, such as William and Drusilla or James and Elizabeth were infected from their first night of existence, their cold and cruel hearts contaminated from the start by their human host’s memories of the ambrosial poison known as love.
Angelus had been blessed by young Liam’s dogged pursuit of self-indulgence. The hedonistic lifestyle, further heartened by the boy’s father’s disgust with his offspring and then spiced by early memories of abuse at that father’s fists had made a perfect birth place for a demon. Oh, yes, pleasure-seeking, cynical and embittered Liam had been an ideal and pure repository for a demon’s appetites for carnality, cruelty and death. The boy had wanted such things himself, in a dark hidden corner of his mind, he’d simply lacked the fortitude to pursue his less than convivial desires.
When those damned gypsies had cursed him, young Liam’s soul had been returned from the aether, the limbo a vampire’s human host’s soul resided in until the True Death of the body, and been reborn in Angelus.
Just as Angelus had been born amongst the memories of Liam, the boy’s passions and desires providing the foundation for the demon’s existence and future growth as the Scourge of Europe, so the returning soul was reborn in the cauldron of Angelus’ memories. The demons passions and desires had provided the same foundation for the newly embodied soul, but rather than being guided by the memories, Liam’s soul had been horribly traumatized and scarred by the century and a half of rapine, torture and murder that he had and had not done.
The soul’s rebirth in the undead body redefined Liam and reforged him as Angel.
As if that rebirth was not bad enough, unlike Angelus’ conception where Liam had been expelled from his undead body, leaving the demon as the sole tenant, Angelus was not exiled from his corporeal being. Still trapped in his body, Angelus had been dominated and subjugated by a weak, guilty and ultimately repentant human soul.
For nearly a hundred years the demon had resided as a passenger in his own immortal body, unable to express his growing rage and humiliation as the soul Angel made a mockery of his existence. And worse, Angelus had shrunk beneath the soul’s dominance, aware that while his memories and demonic presence might infect the spirit, its proximity might also taint his demonic purity.
Now, nearly a hundred years later, when Angelus again held sway over his own body, he was all too aware that the soul Angel had not been expelled back to the aether where he belonged.
Damned gypsies.
Angel now existed in subjugation, his soul in shock and in a state of near catatonia from the trauma of recent events.
Things had changed, but not back to the way it had been. He would never again be completely free from the soul’s presence, not unless the soul itself was destroyed.
The demon was all too aware that the damned human soul had contaminated him. Now he, like other vampires, was susceptible to the pernicious ambrosia of love. Now the sweet passion and intoxicating devotion of a girl called him, dominating his thoughts as no infatuation or obsession ever had before. Now he, after centuries of immunity, had at last been infected by love – and hell help him, he was never going to recover.
Angelus laid his palm against the cool glass.
Buffy slept peacefully, her hyper-perceptions quiescent at the familiarity of his presence. She held a stuffed pig tightly to her, tears trickling from beneath her lashes.
She grieved for his loss.
The handsome vampire curled his lip in helpless fury: bloody soul. He may have to share the body with the damned spirit, but he would be damned if he would share the girl.
Angel may have seen her first. Angel may have paved the way for Angelus’ affections with his love, but Angel was out of the picture and Buffy would be his.
Aside from the fact that he, Angelus had his own agenda with Buffy, Angel owed him reparation for the decades of restraint and abstinence of both blood and sex. A demon needed passion, he needed hunger and pleasure to infuse him with vitality; sensual denial had nearly driven him mad. For decades he had hoped for a moment when instinct and passion would overcome Angel’s control so that he, Angelus could slip his leash and be free, if only for a moment. But there had been nothing; nothing to inspire any powerful hunger or desire in Angel until L.A. two years ago.
Angel had seen and Angel had loved an untouchable girl bathed in forbidden sunlight. He had loved with an all-consuming and nearly worshipful passion that the demon had wallowed in, grateful for even the poisonous affection after the decades of apathy and self-loathing.
These last few months had been the best…and the worst. They had been filled with exquisite torturous moments: moments of sleeping on a floor when a willing girl slept inches away in a virginal bed; moments of staking his ravishing Sire in defense of a succulent plum of a girl who was the arch enemy of his species; and memories of nights when he’d pressed her unbearably ripe body against tall monuments and ravished her mouth while pressing his loins into the warm cradle of her hips. A thousand kisses and caresses: there should have been an instant when the soul’s control over his vampiric instincts to possess and ravish her mortal body should have slipped. Those moments had all passed by while Angelus had been unable to act, unable to claim, unable to defend and unable to possess. No more. No more would he be denied.
Within the confines of the bedroom, Buffy dropped the pig off of the side of the bed as she rolled to her stomach and clutched her pillow tightly.
Angelus growled as he watched in bitter jealousy; her slender shoulders shook as she wept, even in her dreams, for his damned soul. It would not always be thus, he comforted himself. She would eventually turn to him.
He removed the ankh from his pocket and laid it carefully on her windowsill.
Roses, a necklace, and a broken boy: three tokens of his regard in one night. Yes, she would eventually realize that his intentions were in earnest and turn to him.
The demon muttered several profanities to himself when her remembered his girl throwing herself into his arms the night after his rebirth. Idiot, he though, jumping lightly to the ground below. If he’d just taken her then, if he’d just carried her back to his bed, stripped her clothes from her and brought her to pleasure using his lips, his tongue, his hands, his cock and yes, even his teeth. If he’d just brought her to orgasm after orgasm until she was too tired to move, too tired to think, he could have brought her across while she’d still trusted him.
But no. He had been sure that his disgusting love-sick thoughts were a temporary residue of the soul’s domination. He’d been sure that his hunger for her touch would dissipate. It would dissipate and he would no longer crave the silken glide of her skin against him, he would no longer yearn to hear her breathy moans of encouragement, no longer ache to hear her whisper his name – any variation of it she damn well pleased to utter.
Idiot.
He’d gone to the hospital with every intention of burning her out of his system. She had been weak and it was entirely possible to do whatever depraved carnal act it took to force her out of him. He’d planned to rip off that ineffective hospital gown and tear into her near-virgin body with his cock and teeth. He was going to pump into her brutally until she begged and pleaded for him to stop, and then he was going to spill his dead seed into her warm body as he drained every drop of her powerful Slayer’s blood.
He was thankful that she’d seduced him instead. He would never have realized until it was too late that his cold heart was already in her keeping; Angel had placed it there for both of them and killing her was no way to regain possession of it.
Forever was what he wanted. Centuries of hunting together, a millennia of nights to lose himself in her arms and passion.
Forever. That was the whole point.
>>>
A soft breeze ruffled his blood-matted hair, bitingly cold despite the fact that it was Southern California
Xander shivered.
The bushes and trees swayed softly, leaves whispering, branches creaking. Insects clicked and night birds trilled and hooted their eerie nocturnal cries.
Xander trembled.
Consciousness returned to him slowly, fuzzily. Instantly he wished that it hadn’t returned to him at all. He hurt everywhere, from his hair to his toes, his head ached and he was afraid that he was going to vomit. Not that vomiting was a major fear, because after a year of demons and vampires, his definition of fear had definitely changed, it was just that he didn’t think he had the strength to move away from it if he did.
Things moved in the night, indistinct bodies flashing, atavistic eyes glowing red as they watched, but they, whatever they were, stayed away from the porch, illuminated as it was by the street lamp.
Blinking blearily, he tried to lift his head, but the pain that rippled through his body signaled that that was a very bad idea. His eyes shifted, taking in as much of his surroundings as he could.
He was laid out on a concrete porch. Had he been there for minutes?…or maybe hours. The cold surface was like ice beneath him, slowly, but steadily, leeching the warmth from his body.
A door was only about a foot and a half away from him, but that foot and a half looked so far away.
The dark-haired boy inhaled slowly, every breath agony as he felt sharp things poke inside his chest. His face and head throbbed. His right wrist ached and the index, middle and ring fingers of his left hand hurt with a pain so intense it brought back his earlier reflections of tossing his cookies. The dull grinding pain in his hip didn’t bode too well either.
He blinked, studying that door for a moment, or at least the bottom half of it as he was unable to shift his head to look at the rest. His gaze flicked to the right of the door and the three ferns lined up in a row. They blurred for a moment and he blinked again to bring them back into focus. Just behind the pots, he could make out a green goo encrusted sneaker.
Green goo. Buffy’s door.
Why was he laying at Buffy’s door? How did he get here?
Ah yes. Now he remembered. Angel. Buffy’s soulless, blood-sucking evil creature of the night boyfriend had beaten the living hell out of him and left him as a lover’s gift on Buffy’s doorstep. A gift for Buffy….And a lesson in how to treat Angel’s girl to Xander.
Unless he wanted the soulless bastard to return, he had better keep his tongue tucked behind his teeth and never tell the young Slayer just what he thought of her failures to himself and Miss Calender. Rage burned in the pit of his belly. How could she love that monster?
Pain rippled along his nerve endings and into his throbbing skull. Unable to contain it any longer, Xander vomited on the ground next to him; the acrid stench wafted to him and he moaned, unable to shift away from it.
She loved the bastard still. After all that the soulless beast had done, she still loved him. Xander could see it in the pained expression of her eyes.
The Chosen one, the one girl in all the world loved a monster. Well that was just too bad. She would have to get over it and do her duty by sending that bastard to hell. And regardless of just how much pressure he had to bring to bear, Xander would make sure that she did exactly that.
The pain in his body called his attention back to the fact that he would not be doing anything if he didn’t get some medical attention soon.
“Help,” he whispered soundlessly.
His pants felt cold and damp and he distantly remembered why.
It hurt. Everything hurt so bad. He was bloody and broken, a sick care-package left for the Slayer by her demonic ex-honey. Considering Sunnydale’s multitude of roaming predators, he hoped that he was still there in the morning.
Xander shivered in the night air and didn’t know whether he should be worried or relieved when his body began to go numb.
He drifted, sleep pulling at him...
His eyes snapped open Slowly, his muscles quivering, Xander stretched his broken throbbing arm toward the front door of the Summers’ residence. Weakly, he tapped on the wooden panel.
“Help,” he whispered softly, the burning in his chest not allowing him to scream.
His head ached and he closed his eyes as he continued tapping on the door.
Buffy did not open the door. Buffy did not hear him.
What was wrong with her he wondered angrily. She was a super-hero, she was supposed to rescue him.
Superman would have rescued him by now. With his super-hearing Superman would have heard him and saved him. As a matter-of-fact, the Man of Steel would have heard him screaming…across town in the graveyard, while Angel was kicking his ass and would have flown to his rescue.
So where was Buffy? She was Sunnydale’s super-hero? Super strength and all that.
…Superman was way better than Buffy.
Hell, even Spiderman or Batman would’ve rescued him by now. Spidey had super hearing and that sixth sense thingy. And Batman had…things.
C’mon. Super-strong, super-healing, super-hero. Where was she?
He was bleeding in the dark while she was snuggled up safe in her bed.
That’s not how it was supposed to be.
Xander faded out and forced his eyes open again. He had stopped tapping on the door, he realized. If only they had a screen door he could open and let go; that would make more noise than his weak SOS. He went back to tapping.
Not how it was supposed to be, he thought resentfully. Not how it was supposed to be. He was the one who was supposed to be safe in bed while she…
What? Should be bleeding in the dark?
His mind flashed to her laundry pile, focusing on the rips and blood stains on her clothing.
Bleeding.
He thought of the rolls of gauze, the bandage tape and the basket of antiseptics hidden behind the toilet paper underneath her bathroom sink.
Bleeding…and broken.
He thought of the numerous bruises he’d seen her show up to school with, but had discounted because by lunchtime they were usually gone. And hadn’t she shown up limping one day but had been better by the time they went to the Bronze?
Super-healing. He had never really bothered to put it together that super-healing went hand-in-hand with often-wounded.
No, he wasn’t supposed to be broken and bleeding in the night; she was. She was supposed to be there, bones broken in fights with demons, wounds bleeding from talons or knives or fangs.
He had never given her much thought after he went home. Well, much thought beyond his illicit fantasies and his all to often and all too embarrassing wet dreams.. He’d just assumed that since she’d shown up at school, everything was hunkey-dorey, that the vamps were dust and that the Buffster – the Buffinater, as he’d called her before, was as immune to pain as the cyborg assassin from Terminater
Xander blinked, arrested by the sudden realization: while he slept, she bled.
Perhaps it was simply poetic justice that now the tables were turned.
>>>
Joyce opened her eyes for the hundredth time and glared impotently at the glowing red numbers on her alarm clock: 2:30.
She groaned. Two thirty in the morning and she couldn’t sleep.
Wearily the Slayer’s mother rolled out of bed and tugged on her robe. Perhaps a mug of hot chocolate would help, and if not, well there had to be something on Late, Late, Late TV.
She walked quietly down the hallway, nearly tip-toeing past Buffy’s bedroom before continuing downstairs. No point in waking Buffy up. After her nasty bout with the flu, Angel’s flowers and note, along with Xander’s vicious treatment, her daughter needed all the sleep she could get.
The honey-haired blond woman yawned again as she padded into the kitchen. She set about making her mug of hot chocolate absently, heating the milk and then stirring in the chocolate.
Sunnydale was not turning out to be the white-picket-fence perfectly normal life that she wanted for her daughter.
After the whole arson nightmare, Buffy’s arrests for fighting and then hers and Hank’s very messy and nasty divorce, Joyce had sincerely hoped that the quiet small-town atmosphere would allow Buffy to return to the sweet, popular cheerleader she had once been.
Somehow Sunnydale didn’t seem any better than L.A. Buffy still cut her classes, always seeming to have a good excuse for her truancy and always appearing wounded when Joyce punished her.
It wasn’t that Joyce wanted to punish her daughter, she was just trying to nip the bad behavior in the bud before Buffy went out and joined another gang, returning to the brawling arsonist she had become in L.A.
The psychiatrist had said that Buffy’s acting out was all a cry for attention.
Joyce could certainly concede that she and Hank had been lousy parents, the both of them more concerned for their cocktail parties and fundraisers than in raising their daughter. To her shame, Joyce knew that there was many a night that she and Hank had been walking out the door while Buffy had been snuggled on the living room sofa eating popcorn with a young man. What was his name…Bobby? She had never even bothered to find out.
To top it all off, she’d been indifferent to the hours that Buffy had kept, completely uncaring if she had arrived home at ten o’clock or two o’clock regardless whether it was a school night or not.
All that had changed when her marriage had started to fail. Buffy was all she had left and she would not allow her broken marriage to mar her perfect daughter. Buffy had been the epitome of the perfect, blond, cheerleading teenaged girl and she would be again.
Rules and discipline were the answer for Buffy’s delinquent cries for help, but she always looked so betrayed whenever Joyce put her foot down.
Joyce flinched.
She could bear anything so long as Buffy never again looked as betrayed as that one time.
It had been a terrible mistake to handle it the way that they had, but what were they to do? Buffy had come home from another fight, she had been hysterical, babbling about vampires and sacred duties.
It had frightened her to see her beautiful, self-possessed daughter talking about monsters as if they really existed, but in retrospect, she should never have agreed with Hank to have Buffy committed.
It had only been two weeks. Two long and painful weeks before Buffy had recanted every unbelievable thing she had said and the doctors had okayed her to come home, but in those two weeks, something in her daughter had changed.
Buffy had never looked at her mother with complete trust again.
Joyce could always see her daughter carefully weighing what she told her. Tonight had been the closest in two years that Joyce had been to knowing her daughter’s heart, but despite Buffy’s confidences, Joyce knew her daughter was still holding something back.
Bitterly she wondered if she had waited too long to bestir herself to try and form a relationship with her daughter and then betrayed too quickly for her daughter to ever trust her again.
She only had Buffy’s best interests at heart. She only wanted her baby to have a happy, normal, white-picket fence, 2.2 kids kind of life.
Joyce sighed and sipped her tepid cocoa, staring blankly ahead.
Slowly, the sound of a repetitive tapping noise began to penetrate the fog in her brain. She frowned and sat up straight, searching her thoughts for what so soft a tapping noise could be. Not the refrigerator…didn’t sound like mice…God please, not the plumbing.
She stood and walked around the kitchen, trying to identify where the noise was coming from. Step by step, she was drawn through the kitchen to the living room and then to the front door.
Joyce frowned as she unlocked the door and opened it.
“Oh, my God!” she cried out.
Xander lay on his side, sprawled on her porch like a broken doll.
She quickly snapped on the porch light and knelt to feel for the boys pulse. There was one.
“Buffy!” she yelled up the stairs. “Buffy, wake up!”
Joyce rushed over to the telephone to call 911.
>>>
“It’s not your fault,” Angel whispered, cradling her to his quiet heart. “No matter what he’s done or what other people say, it’s not your fault. We didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Buffy!” She looked over her shoulder at the distant voice and Angel clenched his fists in her hair to turn her back toward him. “I love you. It’s not your fault. Do you understand baby? It’s not your fault.”
“Buffy! Wake up! Bring some blankets, now!”
She snapped awake suddenly, displeased to have been dragged from dream-Angel’s arms.
Bemused, the young Slayer rolled from the warm cocoon of her bed and began to quickly move to the hallway linen closet. From one step to the next, her mind snapped from dream-fogged grogginess to highly alert emergency mode.
She jogged down the stairs, seeing the front door open and her mother on the phone, kneeling at the open door.
“Mom?”
Joyce shifted to the side, glancing back at her daughter, giving Buffy an unobstructed view of Xander laying on her front porch.
Buffy froze in horror. “Oh my god,” she whispered. “Is he…” Had Angelus decided that in the absence of a dog, Xander would have to do?
“He’s alive. Get the blankets over here.”
Buffy rushed over and shook the blanket out to cover Xander.
“At last,” Joyce muttered. “This is Joyce Summers at 1630 Revello Drive. I have a young man on my porch. He looks like he’s been badly beaten. Send an ambulance.”
Buffy knelt next to her friend, carefully tucking the blanket around him. Paper crinkled under her knee and she curiously picked it up. She recognized Angelus’ handwriting immediately and she shoved the paper into her pajama pocket to read later.
“Yes, he’s breathing,” Joyce was saying into the phone. “I don’t know. Xander? Xander, can you hear me?”
The boy blinked and looked up at them.
“Xander,” Joyce repeated. “Can you understand me?” A minute ticked by. “No, he’s not responsive.”
Xander ignored Joyce and focused instead on the green-eyed Slayer who was kneeling next to him. Buffy stared into Xander’s pain glazed eyes and swallowed past the thick lump in her throat. “Xander,” she breathed. “Oh, god. Oh god. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
“Is it always like this?” he whispered.
The young Slayer leaned close to her friend, tears stinging her eyes. “Like what?” she asked.
“Does it always hurt?” Xander moaned. “When you slay – “
Buffy cast a wary glance at her mother to make sure that Joyce couldn’t hear.
“ – does it hurt? Do you get hurt? Do you feel pain?”
She blinked in surprise and slowly lay down next to him so he could see her clearly. “What kind of a silly question is that?” she scolded him softly. “Of course I hurt. Of course I feel pain.”
“Superman doesn’t,” the boy murmured. “Super-heroes don’t feel pain.”
“I’m not a super-hero,” she whispered. “I’m just a girl. One girl in all the world.”
Tears began to fall from Xander’s dark eyes. “I’m sorry.”
She smiled slightly, surprised that he would be thinking of their fight and his cruel words right then.
“I’m sorry you’re out there bleeding while I sleep.”
Her smile slipped. He wasn’t apologizing for their fight. He was talking about something else.
“I’m sorry. Thank you.” His eyes fluttered and he didn’t respond when she softly called his name.
The paramedics arrived moments later and Buffy backed out of the way as they bustled around the beaten boy.
“I should have walked him home,” she whispered.
Joyce cuddled her daughter against her. “We should go with,” Buffy stated flatly. “Let me get dressed. I’ll call the others from the hospital.”
Without waiting for a response, she ran up the stairs to her bedroom and shut the door. She pulled the note from her pocket and stared at the bold, slashing script of her lover turned demon boyfriend.
Buffy sighed painfully. Well, it was settled: Angelus was officially stalking her.
>>>
Angelus stalked impatiently through the alleyways toward the lair.
The lair…he snorted in disgust. There wasn’t much left to the Factory that Spike and Drusilla had claimed as their home, not after the fire that had run rampant during his and Buffy’s altercation, but quite honestly, there wasn’t that much to the lair in the first place.
He and Darla would never have lived in such a hovel, both of them preferring quarters with views, vistas of their hunting grounds. Of course that description could no longer apply to the both of them, not just because Darla was dead and dust, but because since she’d returned to her bat-face Sire’s side she had returned to the sewer’s to dwell. Well, what could one expect from a prostitute? Blood would out.
Angelus growled softly at the thought of his deceased Sire. He truly wished that his resplendent bitch of a Sire hadn’t died the True Death the year before at his hand, because he wanted to kill her again. Imagine that bitch, abandoning him to imprisonment beneath that filthy soul for nearly a century and then just showing up again to seduce him back into the fold.
Her death had been far too quick.
Although it was amusing that she died at Angel’s hand while soul-boy defended Angelus’ future mate.
The universe did indeed have a sense of humor.
The master vampire softened his footsteps as he approached where his perimeter guards were supposed to be. After the previous shambles of security that had marked Spike’s reign, Angelus had no intention of sloppy security allowing an irate Slayer within their sactuary.
He found the two that he’d left to stand watch watching no more than a pocket Gameboy that one of them held.
Angelus flashed forward and slammed his fist into the miscreant’s chest.
The second guard cried out and sprang away as Angelus pulled the still heart from his disobedient minion. The cold, dark tissue remained cupped in his hand long enough for its owner and the second minion to see it before the heart and the Gameboy-playing guard both exploded in a rain of ash.
Angelus turned his dark gaze to the remaining minion. “Do you know what you did wrong?” the master vampire queried softly.
The goon, yet another mindless childer acquired from the local hunting ground of the Bronze nodded frantically.
Maintaining his pleasant human façade, Angelus brought his heel down upon the electronic game that had fallen into the ash of the dead vampire. The plastic crumbled beneath the force of his blow, nothing remaining of the hi-tech gadget but colored fragments.
“If you ever ignore the duties assigned you again, I’ll take my time cutting you to pieces. I’d like to see how long a vampire paraplegic could survive and whether you’d grow your limbs back.”
The underling swallowed and nodded again. “It won’t happen again, sir.”
Satisfied with the cowering submission of the underling, Angelus continued forward through the Factory and into the remnants of the lair.
Dru lay on the charred remains of a table, singing softly to herself as she stared at the ceiling. Spike in his wheelchair were parked close by, ever at the side of his princess.
Spike turned his wheelchair to watch as his grandsire entered the room. “Well,” the blond vampire drawled insolently. “What a lovely perfume you got there mate: fear, pain, blood and urine. Somebody’s been having fun.” Drusilla rolled from the table top and raced toward him eagerly, like a small child greeting a long absent parent.
“My Angel,” the dark-haired vampires crooned.
Angelus allowed his mad childe to embrace him, savoring the tightening of Spike’s jaw, the narrowing of his eyes and all the other tell-tale signs that showed that the younger vampire was jealous of his consort’s devotion to her sire.
“Oh, Daddy,” Drusilla purred, leaning forward to smell his clothes. “Why didn’t you take me to the party?”
Satisfied with Spike’s helpless fury, Angelus looked down into Dru’s crestfallen features.
“It was a private tete-a-tete, Dru.”
Not responding to his comment, the mad vampiress lifted his hands to her face. She inhaled deeply; scenting his fingers like a dog, then ran her cool pink tongue over the droplets of blood that had dried on his skin
“Did the naughty boy learn his lesson, Daddy?”
Angelus rumbled at the remembered pleasure of breaking Xander’s bones. He wasn’t surprised that Dru recognized what he had been about; the stink of Xander’s fear and blood clung to him like a cloying perfume. “Oh, he learned a lesson.”
Drusilla smiled slyly up at him. “Did he die screaming? Did you leave the Slayer a lovely present?”
He brushed her dark hair from her face, tucking it back. “Oh, yeah, I left her a present.”
Spike rolled his wheel chair closer to the two. “But did you kill ‘im?” the bleach-haired vampire questioned.
Angelus looked from Drusilla’s mad gaze to Spike’s challenging one. He turned toward his grandchilde and leaned menacingly into Spike’s face. “Tell you the truth roller-boy, I don’t know whether he’s dead or not.”
“You didn’t kill him?” Spike sneered incredulously.
“Daddy?” Drusilla whined in confusion.
“I did far worse than kill him. I broke bones, I shed blood and I opened his heart and sowed seeds of discord. If Harris lives, I don’t think he’s ever going to completely believe that the Chosen One is worthy of her calling or genuinely interested in stopping me.”
Spike blinked at this pronouncement, clearly unimpressed with the more subtle forms of destruction. “What do you mean if he lives?”
“Internal bleeding, exposure, the human body can be a tricky, delicate apparatus. In either case, live or dead, Buffy will get my message.”
Dru wrapped her arms around Angelus’ waist and leaned into him. “I’m so glad.”
“And just what message are you sending Angelus? Or do you even know? How much longer do we have to sit around listening to your grandiose plans before you kill the stupid bint? Just how long is it going to be until you ‘love her’ to death?”
Rage flared in Angelus’ dark gaze for a moment, stirred to life by Spike’s disrespect of his future mate. Spike grinned up at him waiting eagerly for the explosion but the tall vampire, but the tall vampire tamped it ruthlessly down . “What’s the matter Spikey? Feeling cranky? Did mummy forget to bring you something to snack on? I know how she is with her pets.”
Spike grit his teeth then ignore the comment, even as he tried to ignore the way Drusilla clung worshipfully to Angelus’ shoulder. “I must say, mate, blood and fear is a better scent than what you had on you the other night. Eau de Slayer wasn’t it?”
Drusilla whimpered as Angelus shrugged her off. The older vampire leaned down to Spike’s chair, bracing his palms on either side of his crippled grandchilde and smirked into Spike’s cool blue gaze. “What’s the matter Spike? Jealous? She’s a hot piece isn’t she? All golden and vital, delicate but deadly. You were inches from her throat when she was a sweet helpless lamb and you couldn’t even manage to sink a fang in. Did you know that the only thing better than spilling Slayer blood is spilling yourself inside her? But you’re never gonna know Spike, cause you don’t have what it takes to take this one.”
Spike ground his teeth together. “And you do?”
“Oh, yeah. I got what it takes and she’s gonna be mine, for a long, long time.”