Angelus Unbound

Angelus Unbound: Chapter 3

Disclaimer: I don't own them. Mutant Enemy does. All hail Joss Whedon.

Spoilers/Ships: This is AU. Angelus/Buffy.

Distribution: Sure, just let me know.

Feedback: Is always nice. darkrhiannon@aol.com

Rating: R for violence and sex.

Author's Note: This one has been Jossed into kingdom come by Calvary. But you can still…enter my dream… -Rhi


“I don’t know how The First got in, Giles, but it was here!” Buffy said, her voice rising in concern as she paced the narrow confines of the kitchen. “And somehow, it’s corporeal now…or whatever it has working for it is. Maybe the Bringers got in, I don’t know. All I know is, it’s not safe for you here any longer.”

Giles gazed thoughtfully at his Slayer. She was taut, lean to the point of near emaciation, and bone tired, he could tell. Every year of Slaying showed on her face and he recognized, for not the first time, that she’d already outlived nearly every Slayer in the annals. And none of them had dwelt upon the hellmouth. “A dearth of safety is hardly a new occurrence in Sunnydale, Buffy,” he commented wryly.

“You know what I mean, Giles. At least the vampires couldn’t get into our homes. I don’t know what to do about The First. You saw what it did to Spike,” she shuddered at the image of her former lover pinned to the floor like some macabre and broken toy.

“While I don’t disagree about the danger, Buffy, I should like to observe that what happened to Spike is no less than he himself inflicted upon countless victims back when he, Angelus, Darla and and Drusilla were roaming about.”

“So you’re saying he deserved it then, Giles? What do I deserve, then? I slept with him…used him…rolled with him in the dirt. What if it comes for me next? Or for Willow? Or Anya? Or you? All of us have killed. All of us are guilty.”

“Buffy, that’s hardly the point,” Giles straightened up at the attack. Buffy always reacted to perceived criticism of any kind with a nearly instantaneous counter-strike. The instinct served her well on the slaying field, somewhat less well in inter-personal relationships. “You kill monsters, Buffy, not people.”

“But I get off on it, Giles!” She yelled, then stopped, aghast at what she’d just admitted. She turned from him to stare out the wi, as, ashamed to even meet his eyes.

“Buffy, dear girl, of course you do,” Giles said, crossing the room and turning her to face him with a gentle hand cupped under her chin. “You’re wired to enjoy it. What do you think being a Slayer means? It’s not an empty title made up by a group of stuffy old men. It’s not a job that you can leave at the office. It’s not even immersing yourself in lore and paper monsters as Watchers do. You were born to fight them, born with the ability, the power, the *need* to fight them. Of course you ‘get off on it.’ You would never have survived this long if you didn’t.”

Buffy turned tired, tear-filled eyes to the man who was more of a father to her than her own had ever shown interest in being. “But,” she sniffed, “doesn’t that make me a monster, too? Especially with first Angel and then…Spike…” her voice trailed off and the tears spilled down her face.

Giles pulled her into his arms and hugged her tightly to him. Whatever inward reservations he felt, still, about his Slayer’s penchant for snogging the very things she was supposed to kill, she needed him now, needed him to reassure her that she wasn’t evil, wasn’t a thing to be reviled for what she felt. “Buffy, all Slayers face this moral quandary…if they live so long. You are, fundamentally, a creature of the dark and the dark will draw you. It is only natural for you to be captivated by it. The key, my dear, is to use that natural affinity to your advantage rather than to allow it to subsume your character.”

Buffy looked up at him through tearful eyes. Sniff. “Use it?”

“Yes, dear Buffy, use it. You already know how…it’s what drew both Angel and Spike to you in the first place. They crave the very one who will destroy them. All vampires do. Your power, your poise, your light, your, well, charms. They attract the vampires and draw them into your power so you can dispose of them at your leisure. It is what you do best.”

“Oh.” She thought about it. It all made sense now to the exhausted Slayer. She wasn’t what Angel and Spike had loved, *thought they loved,* at all. It was The Slayer…capital S. That made a lot more sense. It completely explained how Angel could say he loved her, yet leave, why Spike could claim to love her yet attempt rape when she finally left him. And why Riley had always been dismayed by her. It all made perfect sense.

Giles felt her sobs still, felt her calm, and thought that he had solved the problem, had reconciled Buffy to her darker side, to the needs and impulses that she’d fought so long to deny, especially given their destructive aftermaths.

He had no idea.

*

Angelus paced the mansion impatiently in the afternoon gloom. The innumerable drapes and curtains kept him safe from the hateful rays of the sun. It hated him…that infernal hot and burning ball of destructive light…despised his kindred and he hated it in return. He remembered the soul’s baffling enjoyment of the sun during those two fateful days in which he’d walked in light…both linked inexorably to his, *their* lover.

Buffy had sent the ring of Amara to LA with Oz. *Coward,* Angelus thought scathingly. She’d not even been willing to face the soul in person with her so-called gift. Instead she’d sent a minion. Though Oz, honestly, was one of the Scoobies whom he admired. The laconic werewolf had actually backed the vampire away from a kill once, something he’d rarely ever been willing to do. He knew that Oz didn’t remember the event, but it had twinged upon his consciousness even after the soul had returned. The soul, sap that he was, enjoyed Oz’s company, but even the demon bore grudging respect for the spare musician.

Walking from under the pier into the sun, the demon had cringed deep into the psyche of his host, flinching from the light even though he’d known logically that it could not harm him. But even the power afforded by the ring was not worth the price the demon would have had to pay, walking in light. He craved the darkness, ruled it. He did not belong in the light.

The other memory was worse, given that he’d been banished from their body completely at the time and could only relive it through the soul’s memories. The Day That Wasn’t. The soul capitalized it in his thoughts, treasured it the way the demon treasured his memories of the taste of their Mate’s blood. Angel held that damned day to his battered soul as if it were the only thing that gave him strength to go on. The demon had thought, more than once, that if only he could have erased that memory that the soul would have given in by now…would have despaired and diminished. Kissing Buffy on the beach, with the sun shining down on them and the wind whispering promises of life…actual finite life instead of the infinite unlife that the soul had grown to hate…the memory made the demon cringe in disgust.

But now, that was all over. The demon ruled the body for good now, and tonight he would take the golden Slayer from the soul and remake her in his own infernal image. He hoped wherever the soul had been stolen to, that it could feel the change tonight, feel the Slayer’s life draining into the demon and feel the demon forcing himself into her very being as he fucked her. For that was precisely what he planned to do.

*
Connor broke through the door for them, finally, but it took him nearly a day due to the barricades Angelus had erected on the other side. Cordelia rushed to the phones immediately. This was so not going according to plan. Unfortunately, there didn’t seem to be anyone in Sunnydale, at least, not available by phone. Buffy’s regular number rang and rang without end and her cell just rang to voice mail. After leaving several minutes of increasingly hysterical message on that, Cordy hung up. Giving up on that for the time being, the group collected themselves and then the debate began.

“We must go to this hellmouth and destroy him before he kills anyone else,” Connor insisted.

“You forgettin’ about horny out there?” Gunn scoffed. “Somebody’s got to stick around and try to keep people safe.”

Fred chimed in, “Charles is right,” her eyes flickered to him then back to the group as she resolutely refused to meet Wesley’s thoughtful gaze. “What about all the vampires out there in the dark? We have to protect LA!”

Cordy seethed, unable to contain her anger at the entire situation. “We need to get Angelus back, Connor is right. We need him here with us.”

Connor looked less than enthusiastic about the absence of parental death involved in her comment. He didn’t want to bring Angelus back. He just wanted to kill him. Surely the g was wasn’t still confused about the necessity for that?

As they bickered on, fundamentally divided by their internal quarrels and Angelus’s pointed barbs, the blackened sun sank inexorably toward the horizon.

*

Buffy sat in the evening gloom of the basement next to the chugging washing machine and stroked Spike’s hair softly. His battered face screamed reproach at her…yet another ally she’d failed to protect. In her own house, even. At least she’d managed to get Giles and the others to relocate to Xander’s for the time being. They should be safer there…at least she hoped so. Unwilling to risk that Spike might either attack them or draw whatever minion had harmed him to them, Buffy had kept him in the basement and stayed to protect him. Her feelings for the blond vampire were complicated at best, she knew, downright Byzantine by any rational standards.

Every time she looked at Spike, Buffy saw layers. Where Angel had concealed the depth of over two centuries of experience beneath a veil of urbane calm, Spike affected the attitude of a perpetual teenager. Neither was the true face of the monster below. Buffy recognized that she used a similar mask, tthe the Slayer hovering deadly and ever-present under her shield of youthful girlishness was just as much of a monster as either of her erstwhile undead lovers.

Focusing the Slayer instinct onto vampires and demons alone was a formidable task at times. The urge to kill, to rule, to dominate all whom she encountered was inborn and extreme. She shared so many of the traits of the master vampires—great physical strength, unbelievable physical appetites, power on all levels. She remembered Xander telling her that it was good that she *thought* that she didn’t handle everything with violence…his implication being that the truth was somewhat different.

She knew that was what drew her to the monsters. She was one. So she sat by this broken monster and stroked his hair gently, saddened equally by her inability to truly love him and her very real care for him. His passion and joy at being a demon had awed Watchers over the century and a half that William the Bloody had existed. They drew Slayers, as well. Spike’s ability to kill Slayers was based in no small measure on their own fatal fascination with him. It was only Buffy’s good luck, *she grimaced to herself at that thought,* that Spike had ended up more interested in fucking her than in killing her.

It hadn’t been Spike’s good luck, however. And now she had a souled, unchipped vampire who was demonstrably still capable of killing. Evil was possible with a soul, she knew that. But Buffy couldn’t kill Spike. Not yet, anyway. Despite still loving Angel with all of her soul, Buffy cared for Spike. *He’s witty, interesting, and downright gorgeous to look at,* she thought. Plus, he connected her somehow to Angel. She could…feel…Angel in him somehow. She suspected that it was the blood bond forged between them, and in turn between Angel and her, but whatever it was, Spike felt like…home.

That familiar feeling had drawn her after her resurrection. The nightmares that plagued her nearly every single night…ghastly dreams of being trapped inside a coffin, no air, the weight of the ground pressing down upon her until she must scream and scream but receive no help. The pain…physical, mental, and soulful, of being ripped from heaven, the torment she’d felt as moldering flesh, sinew and bone had reshaped themselves into a living body…she revisited it every night when she slept. It was inescapable and soul-destroying, that pain.

With Spike, lying exhausted in Spike’s arms after sex so rough that she’d felt at times that *she* was raping *him,* she’d found some twisted kind of peace. It was only when their bodies were battered and bruised, when she bled from his passion, that she could sleep without dreaming.

So she’d sought out that peace, clung to it with both hands, knowing full well as she did so, that she was destroying them both with her need, but unable to turn away from her only salvation in the hard, cold light of renewed life.

She left him there, laying like one truly dead, and she tucked in the blanket around him, smoothing her hand across his hair and hoping that somehow small kindnesses now might make up for the pain they’d caused each other. Taking the clean laundry with her, Buffy climbed wearily upstairs.

Her plan for sleeping the day away had fallen by the wayside with the attack on Spike, and she was so tired that each step jarred her aching body. She would fold the clothes after she napped, she thought. Just a little sleep, enough to take the edge off the exhaustion that pulled at her limbs like quick-sand.

Buffy made up her own bed with fresh sheets, reveling in the crispness of their clean scent, then shucked her clothes by the foot of the bed and climbed in. She slept instantly, her tired body somehow aware that it must grasp rest wherever it might find it.

*

The sun was still hovering over the edge of the horizon when Angelus set out from the mansion, keeping to the long shadows like the dread predator that he was. He encountered few pedestrians in the gloom of early evening…even this early, most inhabitants of Sunnydale were too wary to venture out alone.

As he passed a playground, Angelus saw two little girls walking hand in hand to cross before him. They skipped light-heartedly ahead on the sidewalk and his fangs dropped at the delicious sight. He licked his lips in anticipation. Innocence was to be savored wherever one might find it. Children were Dru’s favorite, but Angelus was the one who had taught her that taste, among others too vile to mention.

Plucking flowers from a small curbside garden as he passed it, Angelus moved forward and called to the girls. “Hello, pretties. Have you seen my puppy? He broke his leash and now I can’t find him.” His mock concern smirked from his face with each word, but their innocent eyes were too young to recognize it. He knelt before them and gently held out a flower to each.

The girls looked at him curiously, then glanced around expectantly, as if the nonexistent puppy might appear from a hedge or bush. “I like puppies, mister,” the taller one offered, smiling at the handsome man who knelt before them. “Which way did he go?”

Angelus glanced ahead. Revello Drive, his destination, branched off to the left ahead. “I think he went that way,” he drawled silkily. This was just too easy…he almost felt guilty…nah.

“Why don’t you walk straight and she and I will take this shortcut through the…” he paused looking for a sign and finding one, “the Anderson’s yard. They’re neighbors of mine and I know that my puppy likes to dig in their garden,” he said.

The girls agreed and split up, the taller one hurrying onward as the smaller one darted through the Anderson’s yard. “What’s your puppy’s name, mister?” she asked innocently.

“His name is…Will. He’s a bloodhound. He’s been a very very bad puppy lately and I’ve had to punish him. He was sniffing around Bu…people in a very rude way,” Angelus replied.

“Oh,” she said. “Sometimes our dog, Max, likes to jump up on people. Daddy always has to yell at him. He says, ‘bad Max!’ and then Max stops doing that. Maybe you should try it with Will,” she remarked, young eyes scanning the back yard for any signs of the missing puppy.

Angelus scooped her up into his arms gently. “Yes,” he murmured. “I’ll have to try that.” Abruptly tired of the game, he turned her head to one side with a snap of his wrist and sank his teeth into her tender young neck. The flesh parted like butter under his razor sharp fangs, and he sucked lasciviously at the scrumptious morsel in his arms.

She didn’t even cry out, too startled to scream…and then…too drained. She was sweet, that innocent blood filling his mouth with light, frothy flavor. He savored every drop on his tongue, pressing the coppery taste against his palate and drawing out the tiny death in his mouth.

Finally she was drained and he dropped her spent corpse indifferently to his feet before calling to her friend. They were amusing…barely enough to tempt his appetite, but still, why waste one?

To be continued…