Thralls

Title: Thralls, chapter 26

^^^^^^^^

Angel carried Xander up the stairs three floors and into the room, keeping a firm hold on him. The hyena was still, not fighting it, not objecting to being carried, letting Angel hold him close. The unnatural heat of his body was another temptation to the vampire. The heat sank into his cool skin through his clothes, whetting his appetite for more closeness, though he'd prefer it with more nakedness. It seemed a little too easy, and Angel was ready for the trouble when it came.

Xander was fine until he saw the bed, then he exploded into snapping fangs, raking claws and screaming howls. Angel immediately dropped him on the floor, avoiding the slashing swipes. Sat on him, holding the flashing, lethal claws away from his own body.

"Close the door." Angel said to Graham and Riley who were standing in the open doorway, Riley gaping, shocked by the abrupt change from the complacent, nuzzling were-Xander to a wild, powerfully built beast attacking the vampire holding him. They stepped inside, closed the door, stopped and stared for a while longer, not coming any closer to the heaving, snarling were-hyena and the vampire sitting on top of him, pinning him down.

Angel ignored his fully human thralls after shooting a look at the bed, making it clear he wanted them over there and out of the way. They made their way along the wall and to the bed, circling wide then climbing up, and sat down to observe the drama taking place on the carpet.

"Xander." Angel leaned down, Xander snapped his jaws, the teeth clicking shut so close to Angel's face he felt the breeze from it. He resisted the impulse to let go and pull away. Xander, he knew, if freed, would be out of the room like a streak.

"Xander!" The next was a shout. "Stop, and listen to me." He used the voice that the thrall had to listen to. And his thrall quieted, but shook like a leaf under him, tremoring. Xander let out a pitiful whine. Angel put his mouth next to Xander's ear, his lips brushed over the coarse black, yellow and brown fur. "I am not going to hurt you now. You must listen to me, Mine Own. Until I take you to the bed, we are going to talk, not fuck. I will not take you here on the floor."

Xander whined louder, more urgently, his back legs kicking out, not hitting anything, more squirming in distress than fighting. His furred face was desperate, his dark yellow eyes roaming, looking for a way to escape, any way out of his predicament, but he wasn't still trying to bite Angel. Angel spoke to him again.

"I need you to be human for this. I need you to understand me on levels your hyena spirit can not. Change for me." Angel said, forcing Xander to meet his eyes. Xander strained against the hold, then suddenly seemed to give up. He was, just as suddenly, Xander the man.

Xander let out a whimper, trembling. Angel took a chance and freed one hand to run it along the side of the young man's cheek, his thumb caressing the full lower lip. "I have lived a long time, Xander. I know there is something in your past that makes you fear me and what we will do together. We will do it, there is no way we can not. The will to resist is not enough to keep us apart. Your fear is not enough. We are master and thrall. We must meet on all fields." Xander made no reply, just stared up with fear filled brown eyes.

"So, I am going to take a guess here, that you were abused. That you were young and couldn't stop it. That you never told anyone, and never had any help for it. This situation, with me and you, is almost the same in many ways to what happened before, isn't it? It reminds you of then, and I remind you of him." Angel said softly. But, Xander started shaking his head. He turned his head so he wasn't looking at the vampire any more.

"No."Xander whispered, in a choked voice. "You aren't the same. You aren't the same." Like a mantra. "You aren't the same."

Angel took the unexpected opening, grabbing at it. "Then why are you afraid? If I don't remind you of him? You have seen how I am with Graham and Riley. They are mine as you are, and I have not harmed them."

"Them." Xander said. "There were three of them." His eyes filled with stinging tears.

Angel ground his teeth. Clamping his mouth shut to keep in the hot words that wanted to get out. He forced himself to stay calm. Forced himself not to go all gameface.

"Oh, God." Riley said from the bed, voice none too steady. Innocent, a boy scout, was Riley Finn, Angel thought, for all his weapons, guns and fighting skills. Stillpure Iowa when it came right down to things. Graham reached out and put a hand on his friend's arm,and the two of them fell silent.

"I am sorry, Xander. I can't take that from you, not the memory, but I can tell you, it will not be the same with me. Tell me how they hurt you, and I will make it as different as possible. But, Xan, it has to happen, and now. It is necessary. Do you understand?" Angel said.

"Yes." Xander's voice was tiny. Yet even as he answered in the affirmative, he was shaking his head, side to side as if saying no with his body while his mouth said yes.

"Did you know them? Or were they strangers?" Angel prompted the young man. He eased off of him, sitting next to him, keeping Xander close to him, wrapping an arm stronger than steel around the narrow waist. Xander's chest was heaving like a bellows.

"My father's friends, and his boss. He, he didn't believe me when I tried to tell him. He told me to stop lying, he let them come back, they did it again..." Xander wailed. Angel held him, stroked at his hair.

Well. That was all the information Angel needed for later. There were people who could find out their names and where the child rapists were now. And they could be quietly, as well as permanently taken care of. Men like that, with those kinds of tastes, they didn't change. They would still have their urges, and still be taking care of feeding them. Angel would see that it stopped. In fact he was rather looking forward to that.

"How old were you Xander?" He asked, gently, turning his hold on the young man into a cuddling, comforting embrace. Pulling Xander into his lap, stroking his fingers through the unruly, dark hair. They sat there, on the floor, while Xander tried to reply, swallowing the lump in his throat twice, before managing to croak out an answer.

"I was twelve." Angel closed his eyes against the surge of grief and undiluted rage filling him.

"Did you tell anyone besides your father?" Angel's tone was neutral, inviting more confidences. Not letting the fury he felt color his words, or stop Xander from talking.

"My mother, and Willow." The voice was not that of a young man, it was childlike, uncertain, meek. Angel dropped a chaste kiss on the bowed head.

"Thank you for telling me. What did they say?" He encouraged.

"Mom told me I had to stay quiet, not make up things like that for attention. That the neighbors would lose respect for my father, that he would lose his job if the word got out what I had done. And if Dad lost his job, we'd not have the money for a house. We'd have to leave, and live somewhere else. In the slums, where people without jobs lived. And I couldn't go to school with my friends any more." Xander was shaking.

"And Willow? What did she say?" Angel lifted a hand towards the bed, and Graham, somehow knowing, tossed him a coverlet. The vampire wrapped it snuggly around Xander. A further shield from the ice-cold memories.

"Willow wasn't even sure what I was talking about. She was always smart, but she was...very young. A lot younger like that than I was, and I was not precocious, myself. I had no idea men could...would want to do that to kids. She didn't know what sex was, not even between a man and a woman. She couldn't understand what I was trying to tell her. So, in the end I told her I got beat up. And we left it at that."

"And now you have told me. So, you want to know what I will do? Or do you want me to just do what I have to?" The vampire asked. Rocking the crying young man as no one had the long ago boy.

Xander seemed to know he was not talking about sex this time. He shook his head. "I don't want to know." He whispered, his eyes brimming with tears. Angel accepted that.

"You know, though, that I will take care of it, right Xander? Now. Tell me how they hurt you. tell me all about it."

Xander did, starting slowly. And letting all the bottled terror and horror of the experience come out in a rush of agony and words. Angel, and the two thralls on the bed listened to him, not interrupting as he spoke.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Nicholas groaned. Rolling with aching slowness onto his side. "I feel like shit!" He said. Even his hair hurt, if it came down to that. He rubbed cautiously at his face. His eyelids were stuck together, but otherwise everything seemed to be in place. He tried to sit up, sank back onto the mattress with a moan of pain.

"Shhhhh." Spike hissed at him, holding up a hand. His ear pressed against the wall. "I can't hear them if you talk."

Oz hurried over to the bed from the bathroom. The bath had been just what he needed to soak away the tenderness in his muscles from the scuffle. He couldn't call it a real fight, it had been too short, and very intense. He was happy that he was a werewolf and that he healed extraordinarily fast.

"Hey, Nicholas. I have just the thing for you. Come on." Oz heaved the young soldier up onto his feet, and led him towards the en-suite bathroom. Nicholas felt too poorly to protest, he used his free hand to hold his head on top of his shoulders. Oz told him, "You could use a bath."

"Shower," Nickolas said in return. "I don't like baths."

"Today, I think, you will have to make do with one. For therapeutic reasons." Oz insisted. "Much better for sore muscles." Spike hissed sharply at them both.

"Quiet." He said. Not moving away from the wall, entirely caught up in the tale of Xander's trauma. It was bloody awful. Spike let a smile, and not a pretty one spread over his face when he heard Angel assure Xander that appropriate action would be forthcoming. Good old Peaches, his Sire. He always got the job done, he did. Always on the side of Justice. Xander's assailants were living on borrowed time.

"You are listening to them." Oz said, stating the obvious, and adding more, his tone faintly scandalized. "Maybe you shouldn't." Then he disappeared into the bathroom with Nicholas in tow. Not waiting to hear his vampire's response. Just wanting to put the idea in Spike's mind that maybe the others should be granted some privacy. Spike smirked, knowing exactly what Oz was up to. But, he was new here, and he needed to know what was going on. He had been blindsided by the fact that Angel had thralls who he knew. The conspiracy was larger than he'd thought.

"Why do you think I chose this room?" He said to himself, ear pressed firmly to the wall between his suite and Angel's. He listened to it all.

ne'ichan