Cometh the Hour

COMETH THE HOUR

Part 2/5

We’ve made love for hours. He calls it sex, or fucking, but the way he fucked me? It’s making love. I may not have much experience to go by, but it’s almost what Angel and I had. Would have had, if we’d had time for more than one night together. As morning broke, I fell asleep in the arms of a demon, feeling warm and safe and cherished. When I wake up early in the afternoon, though, I know I am in trouble. They say that prey animals can smell danger. As the Slayer, I may be a hunter, but my species is still a vampire’s prey, and I can smell danger. If I want to end up as more than a brief, damp squeak, I need to be very careful indeed. I can tell that he’s awake. His finger starts carefully tracing a pattern on my back, although I can’t tell what. I move to turn over, to face him, but he holds me steady. His arm is like the arm of a marble statue, hard and unyielding. I can’t see them, but I’d hazard a guess that his eyes, his face, have that same quality. Hard as stone.

He must be able to scent my fear – I can’t hope to fool him – so I try to distract him. I wriggle backwards. He’s hard there, too. Somehow, though, everything feels different. More threatening. Nevertheless, I reach around and start to stroke him, just as I know he likes it. And he does. But the hand that has been tracing patterns on my back reaches down and clasps my wrist, hard enough to grind the bones together painfully. I don’t struggle, though. Now is the time to submit. I wait for him, and try to calm my racing heart. A predator, wired for the hunt, might go into a killing frenzy out of sheer instinct if faced with a helpless prey oozing the pheromones of fear. How many cat owners have lost their beloved moggy to an equally beloved pet greyhound? It’s in the blood. When he speaks, his voice is light and teasing, and has that edge of madness that it had a year ago. Dear God. I think I’m in such trouble, and I have no idea why. Whatever made me think I could do this? Could tame this most vicious of all demons?

“It isn’t fading, Buff. Why not? The others are.”

“What?”

Not the best response I could have mustered, but my brain is still a bit sleep-fogged, and I have no idea what he’s talking about. He releases my wrist, which starts throbbing in agony, and goes back to tracing patterns on my back.

“Do you like it so much that you wanted to keep it?”

I have it now. The tattoo. My response is pure instinct, not thought out at all. A shriek of womanly indignation.

“Not fading? That shyster keeper said it would all fade. Everything, except what we wanted to keep…”

My voice trails off as I realise what I’ve said. The meaning of what he’s said. Not fading? Shit. I try not to remember how hard I’ve been praying for Angel’s return, how hard I’ve been husbanding every memory of him. Look where it’s got me. I try to concentrate solely on the world as it is.

“Well, I *do* like it. I just didn’t realise the magic would take that so literally.” I say that with some asperity. It’s the truth after all. He gives a low chuckle that sounds just a little more…normal. Please God. I wish the thing away, as if it might suddenly start fading under his nose. No such luck, of course.

“Do you like it for me, babe? Or for him?”

Ah. There we have it. What was I saying about the relationship between his fear and his brutality? I think we’re seeing an example in spades, here. And if I lie, he will know. Those damned vampire senses. He’ll literally sniff out a lie before I’ve finished it. Only the truth, then. Carefully selected.

“Both of you.”

I feel his body stiffen, and I think my life probably hangs by a thread, now. If I look round, I believe that I’ll see the vampire face. Certainly, his fingers feel…different.

I sigh, and press on. Dear God, let me be making the right decisions, here. For all our sakes. If he murders me, I suspect that the insanity will return and Sunnydale will see a bloodbath. Perhaps more than just Sunnydale. And he might not only kill me.

“You know I love him, and always will. I can’t stop that, just like you can’t stop drinking blood. It’s part of who we are.”

I feel him shift a little behind me, and I’m certain now that the vampire fangs are close to my neck, reaching for me. If he were warm and breathing, I would feel his hot, moist breath on my nape, smell the rankness of predator on his exhalations. I hurry on, without seeming to, I hope. Try not to show fear, little animal.

“I love you too, now. I told you that, on the battlefield, when I thought I was going to die. I needed you to know, but I think you didn’t hear me. I don’t know whether you want me to love you, or whether you’ll kill me because of it, but there’s no help for it. I do. I love you as I loved him. And I’m yours. You know I’m yours by blood. I’m yours by choice, as well, now. So I guess part of me wanted to keep the tattoo for both of you. But you’re the one I’m with, you’re the one I choose to be with. Anyway, I didn’t know it wasn’t fading. I can’t see that bit.” I allow myself to sound a bit querulous at the end. Well, how many times do you gaze at your shoulder blade, for goodness’ sake?

He says nothing for several very long minutes, and I remain silent, but then his fingers start to move over me again. This time, they feel less like claws. When his mouth touches the nape of my neck, it’s his human lips I feel, and I shudder with pleasure as well as relief. I think I might survive this day.

Then he’s turning me over, and kissing me as if he were starved for me. And I for him. He makes love to me then – and it *is* making love, there cannot be the least doubt of it – with fevered desperation. Something has changed, and I don’t know what. But I think it might be a good thing.

**********

I almost killed her. There is, of course, dead and dead where vampires are concerned. I’m not sure which it would have been, but it was almost one of them. I would have…regretted…that. The world would have felt the weight of my regret, believe me. But passion rules me as much as it rules you; more perhaps; passion is certainly ruling me now.

I have lain here all morning, anger roiling through me. I was sure that she had kept the tattoo because of her feelings for the hated soul, and for hours, I’ve wanted to tear her to shreds and feast on her remains; or fuck her to death, making her come again and again in her own blood, die screaming my name in ecstasy; or perhaps chain her to my wall and spend the rest of our eternal lives showing her every nuance of pain I’ve ever learned; or chain her to my bed and spend the rest of our eternal lives making her love me. I’ve visualised every one in exquisite detail. One of them and all of them. How I’ve kept control I don’t know.

I hear the change in her heartbeat as she starts to rouse from sleep. Still I can’t decide which of the variations to visit on her. I continue to hold her with my left arm. Her neck is lying in the crook of my elbow, my forearm across her breasts, my hand lying loosely over her right shoulder. She’s so tiny. It would be so easy to…No! That would be too quick. With my right hand, I start to trace the outlines of the tattoo. And now she’s awake, although still a little drowsy from sleep, drugged by satiation from our recent couplings. She tries to turn over, but I can’t and won’t look at her face. Not yet. Not until I’ve made my mind up what to do. I tighten the grip of my left arm, holding her firm against my chest. She feels her danger, somehow. Slayer senses, perhaps? Human instinct, maybe? More likely, I think, she feels me in her blood. She’s my mate, and it is this that tells her of her danger, although she might not yet understand the power of our bonding. Whatever, now I can smell the delicious aroma of her fear. My predator instincts kick into overdrive, and my control starts to slip.

Now she’s trying that oldest of feminine tricks. She presses backwards, her lush rear end enveloping and caressing the erection I’ve had through all my tortured musings, the erection that long since ceased to be pleasurable and has caused me exquisite pain for hours. My control slips a little more. Perhaps I’ll settle for fucking her to death, making her come in her own blood…No! No decisions, not yet. I keep up the soothing rhythm of tracing the tattoo, concentrating on that, trying to ignore, as I have for all these hours, the pain of my desire.

Her fear spikes upwards. It’s my blood in her, my enslavement of her, warning her of her danger. I remember that bead of blood on her lips, on that night in Hylek, my blood; the unexpected bead of blood that completed the circle of mated bonding, bringing about my enslavement to her. I remember how I thought of killing her then to end that enslavement, and now I’m hanging onto control by a thread. One more little push, and my passion will make playthings of us all.

And then she reaches backwards with her free right hand and starts to stroke me. For a moment, everything stops, times ceases for me, and I just AM. I’m nothing more than a hungry erection and I want to fuck NOW. If I do that, it will be in her blood, and I’ll drink her down, impaled on my cock and my fangs, and the world will burn.

I fight, as I have never fought before, to hang onto that thread of control. And time starts to run again. With the hand that has been tracing the tattoo, I reach down and grasp her wrist, pulling her away from me before it’s too late. I know that I’m hurting her, badly, grinding the bones of her wrist together. If she were truly human, her wrist would have been crushed beyond repair. I can’t help it though. I’m still fighting for control and I have no capacity for exercising restraint elsewhere. Long minutes pass before it’s safe for me to speak. She doesn’t try to move, and I feel her absolute submission. That helps.

I hardly recognise the voice, when I do speak, but I know where it comes from. The edge of madness. Does she understand the danger we are all in, I wonder?

“It isn’t fading, Buff. Why not? The others are.”

“What?”

Insolence! That’s no answer for me, her mate, her lord and master! I’m back to fighting for control, so I release her wrist and go back to tracing the pattern on her back until I can speak again.

“Do you like it so much that you wanted to keep it?”

Her reply surprises me and, strangely, ratchets down my struggle for self control by a notch.

“Not fading? That shyster keeper said it would all fade. Everything, except what we wanted to keep…”

She trails off there, realising what she’s said. The ratchet works the other way now and I try to think of some of the finer things this world has to offer, the reasons why I shouldn’t destroy it. They all taste like ashes.

“Well, I *do* like it. I just didn’t realise the magic would take that so literally.” Her tone is sharp and acerbic. Typical Slayer Buffy. And she doesn’t smell of a lie. I find that I can take a small step back from the edge, and, unbidden, a small laugh of relief rises to my lips. It’s only been a small step, but any amount of release from the grip of that madness has to be welcomed. I have just enough control now to press on. Only just, though.

“Do you like it for me, babe? Or for him?”

She fully realises her danger now. I can sense it in her blood. In my blood.

“Both of you.”

I stiffen, involuntarily, and take a large stride back into that grey cloud, back to the very brink. The smallest thing now, and we’ll be lost. I’ve fully morphed, and my claws are ready to rip at her heart, to tear that traitorous organ out of her body and eat it before her dying eyes.

“You know I love him, and always will. I can’t stop that, just like you can’t stop drinking blood. It’s part of who we are.”

That’s it. I shift behind her, bending my head to reach her, my fangs opening to embrace her neck, above the jewelled choker, those bloody drops of stone, to sink into her carotid and draw the life from her. I’ll turn her, and she will feel my anger for eternity. She will know pain that she has never dreamt of, even in her wildest nightmares. For this betrayal, she will know agony for every second of forever; she will never be free of it, never be free of me and my revenge. Fear has been pouring off her in waves, but now it’s replaced by acceptance. She knows what is coming to her, what she deserves. I close my golden eyes as the pain of her betrayal lances through me. In a second, it will be done.

“I love you too, now.”

What? I will myself to absolute stillness, my fangs still poised, not quite touching yet, but so close that I can taste the salt of her sweat on the air between us.

“I told you that, on the battlefield, when I thought I was going to die. I needed you to know, but I think you didn’t hear me. I don’t know whether you want me to love you, or whether you’ll kill me because of it, but there’s no help for it. I do. I love you as I loved him. And I’m yours. You know I’m yours by blood. I’m yours by choice, as well, now. So I guess part of me wanted to keep the tattoo for both of you. But you’re the one I’m with, you’re the one I choose to be with. Anyway, I didn’t know it wasn’t fading. I can’t see that bit.”

I am absolutely motionless, as only a predator can be. Only a predator that almost made the worst mistake of his life, for whom disaster has been averted by the merest sliver of a hair’s breadth. As the grey fog of madness recedes, I step away again from the precipice, moving back until it is a pencil line in the distance. Thoughts skitter around my mind like cockroaches. Thoughts of what I had planned to do to her, what I would have done to the world. What I would have done to me. Thoughts like a sea of corruption, a tide of foulness, washing up against the base of a lighthouse, a beacon of hope, a radiance in this hellish darkness. A beacon made up of three intertwined elements. I told you, beware the power of three.

She loves me. I can smell the truth of that on her. I can feel it, like a pounding in my blood. I’ve known it for a long time, without knowing it, if you take my meaning. I think I’ve known it since that first stay in Hylek, long before she saved my life that night in the park. But it was in the park that I should have recognised it. Foolishness. Shame on you, Angelus.

I love her. I’ve known it for a long time, and I haven’t had the wit to recognise it. I’ve felt it, like a fever in my blood, and it has driven so much of what I have done since I returned. It has been my lodestar, my guiding light. It will be my damnation. It is this love that forms the pillar of strength around which the other two elements entwine. No matter what else, I love her. Even though demons cannot love, I do. I’ll be damned for eternity, but I do. With every fibre of my being. I don’t know what this means, how it will manifest, whether it will temper my behaviour towards her, or whether loving the Slayer will end up killing her, or killing me, but I do know that just as she is enslaved by me, I truly am utterly enslaved by her. And I would have it no differently. Though it means that I will suffer the torments of hell forever, as a recusant and an outcast, whilst that slippery soul will spend eternity in the aether with her, yet I would have it no differently.

She loves Angel. I am surprised to find that I will let her. I just want her to love me more. I don’t want her to stop loving that spineless creature. She isn’t fickle; she is more steadfast than that. Once she loves, she loves for eternity. If she can love him for eternity, perhaps she can love me for eternity, too. If she ever stops loving him, perhaps she will stop loving me. Then the world will certainly burn.

I understand now how entwined the three of us are. I think.

Slowly, I close my jaws. It takes an enormous effort to change back. It’s never been as hard as this. I swallow back the taste of her and I allow myself to truly feel, to be, to just bask in her. And I have control again – except in one important area. Everything that has happened, every passion that I have felt, am feeling now, is concentrated in one exquisitely painful area. If I don’t do something about that, I’m going to come where I lie. I press my lips to her neck. I want to reach for her pulse point, to suckle it, to feel the life pounding through her, but I daren’t. That would put the seal on my lack of control.

I turn her over, and I kiss her as if I’m starving for her – which I am. She returns the kiss with the same fervour. I want to worship her body, offer her the adoration she so deserves, silently beg her forgiveness for the horrors I have almost perpetrated, but the worship must be fleeting or I shall disgrace myself.

I suckle at her nipples a little, and feel the jolt of desire that runs through her body. There is no time for more. I will make it up to her later, but now, I cannot. When I was first turned, Darla delighted in exerting the authority of a sire over me, in showing me how absolutely I was in her power. One of her favourite games was to suck me and fuck me with every ounce of her vampiric strength and endurance, and with one hundred and fifty years’ worth of experience, for entire nights at a time. And not permit me to come for entire nights at a time. Without even the aid of a cock ring. Young, inexperienced vampires have as little control as young, inexperienced human males. I learnt control at the hands of the harshest taskmistress – memories of her punishments whenever I failed make me shudder even now. It is only those lessons that have so far prevented me from spending myself all over my beloved. But Darla never had her hand around my heart, as Buffy does. And even Darla never had this grip on my balls.

Silently vowing to do whatever is necessary, to abase myself in whatever way will ensure her greatest pleasure for the rest of this weekend, to bring her to raptures she has never even dreamed about, for her own sake and as penance for the haste I am now in, I plunge into her in one long, smooth stroke. She opens for me, welcomes me, clenches down on me as if she will never release me. I bite through my lip in my efforts not to let go, to hold out just a few moments longer. I feel the blood leaking from the wound, and the smell almost finishes me. Then, she raises her head and kisses me. When she tastes the salt of the blood, she suckles on it, exactly as I would have done had it been hers. And I am gone. My orgasm explodes from me with a power I do not believe I have ever experienced in all my years. I am mindless and lost. I am caught in the darkness of la petite mort. It is many seconds before I realise that, far from being left unsatisfied, she, too, is in the throes of rapture. My blood has brought her to completion. She is truly my mate in every aspect. Everything between us has changed.

I don’t realise that I am in game face until she presses her finger against one of my fangs, drawing just a few drops of blood, which she allows me to suckle. And I am lost again, drowning in her velvet depths, our passion feeding off each other’s. We cleave to each other as we fall, together, down into a welcoming darkness.

When I recover myself, I am utterly and completely spent. You know that vampires need no recovery time. At least, I don’t. I am a demon, with complete control of this dead flesh that I inhabit. I just need to think that I want it, to allow my flesh to do it, and it is there for me, ready and willing. Not now. I am completely sated and drained, satisfied as I have never been before. I can sense that my beloved is the same.

I am sprawled over her, but there is something I must say, so I stay where I am, holding her fast. As I wait for her to come back to herself, I feel every inch of her skin cleaving to me and I think of my darkness pressing down on her light, trying to extinguish it; my cold, dead flesh draining her heat. Then I realise that I am wrong, that something different is happening. The chill of the tomb is being dispelled by her warmth, her living, loving warmth. She has already started to warm my still heart, and now her flesh is warming mine. It’s only temporary, of course, but I wonder what other effects she will have on me. I can feel the smile on my lips. I *know* I’ll enjoy finding out, even if she does have to drag those changes, kicking and screaming, from me.

And now she is rousing, and claims my full attention. She is flushed from our mating, and her full lips are smiling with that particular sweetness of the well satisfied. Her golden hair is fanned out across my pillow and she looks like a wanton, willing lover. I want to see her like that forever. But I will not, and a small icicle of fear lodges itself in my heart. I realise now that I want her always with this warmth, this spirit, this *life* that seeps into even my cold bones. I will keep her with me for the rest of her life, but I will never turn her. I refuse to even contemplate what will happen…after. Let the now be enough for now.

She raises her hand to my face with a look of love that any man of either of our species would impale himself to earn. It is only as she touches me that I realise I am still in game face. She does not care. I must be squeezing the breath from her, her tiny body engulfed by my larger one, but she seems not to care about that, either. She strokes my roughened brow, and I can feel the waves of love coming from her. I must say it now. I will leave my countenance as it is, so that she will truly know who speaks to her. I take her face between my hands, careful not to mar her with my claws. We stay that way for a moment, gazes locked, and the word is forced from me as a groan.

“Buffy…”

***********

The depth of his need was clear, even to me in my inexperience. What surprised me was the depth of my own. He plunges into me, and I want to take him further and further, until I no longer know which is his flesh and which is mine. I raise my head to kiss him, to have the unique taste of him, and I see that his bottom lip is bleeding, although I don’t remember it being cut. I suck his lip between my own, tonguing the blood off, savouring the richness of even those few drops. He doesn’t stop me, and I am too far gone myself to wonder whether it will…change…me. It tastes of cinnamon and power and Angel.

As I suck on the tiny wound, seeking more, he shudders, then howls his fulfilment. The feel of his seed within me triggers my own, and as I enter the first throes, the last thing I remember is that the face I have kissed is the face of the vampire. I need to acknowledge that I love the demon as well as the man. I raise my hand and press my finger to his sharpest fang. A little blood wells up and I smear it against his tongue, allowing him to suckle on my finger as I did on his lip. Then we are both lost, again, in bliss. I have no words to describe it.

When I come back to myself, his body is still resting on mine. I raise my hand to touch his face, the face of the demon, and love sings through me. He takes my face in his hands and speaks my name with a groan.

“Buffy…”

I want him to know how truly I am his. With vampires I am sure that actions speak louder than words. Instinctively, it seems, I know what to do. I lift my legs and lock them around his waist, not a request for him to enter me – I know that we are both too sated just now for that – but a gesture of submission, opening my body to him for his pleasure whenever he should choose. Without breaking gaze, I stretch my neck, baring my throat for him. He gives something between a sob and a groan, but he doesn’t move. I wait, for whatever it is I know he wants to say.

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

My Consort, my mate, my beloved. She lies beneath me, her body open to me in invitation, her neck offered to me in submission. It makes me want to roar in triumph. This woman, this Slayer, is displaying her acceptance of anything I might wish to do; has opened herself for me, and only for me. For the moment, I am overwhelmed. I am used only to the demonic emotions, which mainly spring from anger and from selfish desires. The demonic thrill of possession and of mastery over this wondrous creature is thrumming in my blood. Different emotions are also coursing through me. Human emotions, yet still ones that I am not very familiar with. The man I was, Liam, was not used to the finer feelings. I’m not sure how to handle all of this. A trip to Canada will be good, I think, despite the enforced separation from my beloved. It will give me a chance to get some…perspective.

But there are still things I need to say.

“When you told me you loved me, there on the battlefield, I heard you.” I stroke her throat with my thumbs as I speak, lightly, delicately, as if I were preparing to accept her offering. The choker glistens almost as temptingly as her skin.

“I thought at the time that you were hallucinating, that you believed me to be Angel. You were so close to death…” My throat closes and I cannot for the moment continue.

She remains still whilst I swallow past the lump in my throat at the memory of that terrible moment.

“It was you who didn’t hear what I said. You faded from consciousness too quickly. I asked you not to leave me. I said that I loved you, and that I neeyou.you.” I still the movement of my hands, and both she and the world seem to wait, breathless, for this unnatural declaration to be completed.

“And I swear to you, by all the powers of light and darkness, by every god in every dimension, that I love you now and forever. You are mine, for eternity. I will never be him, not ever again. I am only and always a demon. But I love you. You will stand by my side as my Consort, and I will cherish and protect you in every way known to human or demon kind. I will never leave you or abandon you, and we will face together everything the future brings to us.”

There. It is done.

There is a moment of stillness and the word ‘forever’ seems to echo mockingly around the room. The sliver of fear in my heart makes itself felt, and I know that, since I will never turn her, I will feel that shard in my heart every day for the rest of my life. I must learn to live with it.

She brings her hand back to my face, wraps it around the back of my neck and pulls me down for a kiss. She whispers only one word. “Beloved.” When the kiss breaks, I move aside, and we curl together, sated and at peace. There are many things that we will need to work through in this most extreme of pairings, but none of them are beyond us and they can all wait. We sleep until evening.

When we awake, it is because someone has knocked on the door. Spike enters the outer room and stops to look at us, a sardonic expression on his face. I know that we are curled together like kittens in a basket, but he’d just better damn well get used to it. He’s going to see this a lot. Buffy is awake now, as well, and a lot less comfortable about Spike than I am. Well, she’s going to have to get used to it, too.

He walks forward, into the bedroom, clearly trying out certain introductory phrases in his head. Spike is so transparent. Eventually he decides just to plunge in to what he has to say.

“You might want to get up now – there’s a delegation of Norag demons, come to pay tribute and make peace with you.”

Really? Who are the Norag, and what do they want with me? Why do they think I am at war with them? Still, homage and tribute make a good introduction. We’ll meet them, Buffy and I. I tell Spike to keep them occupied for half an hour, and we’ll be down. I can get ready more quickly, but Buffy might appreciate the time. I know how women are.

I feel different, somehow. Demons are driven, you know, creatures of appetite. Oh, we feel satisfaction, for a while, when we’ve had our fill of a particular appetite. But there are always other things to do. Everything in our existence is about meeting our own desires, always thirsting for something else. Now? I feel…contentment. Peace. Is this, I wonder, how Soul Boy felt when he handed our body over to me? If it is, then he felt…good. I’m waiting for Buffy to have her shower – she needs more time afterwards than I do. I think I’ll pop in there and torment her a little, put an edge on *her* appetite for later…

That was nice. I still feel…happy. That’s the only word I can find to describe it. It isn’t a demonic feeling, let me tell you. I’ve still got all of those but, now, there’s more. It won’t change any of my plans. I just feel more…amenable. How interesting the future is going to be!

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

On to chapter 3