Lionesses

Lionesses

Part 3

When the judgement was pronounced, I almost ran. At least Aurelius has given me a way out. If the pain becomes too severe, beyond even my capacity, I have merely to scream, and he will kill me. Put me out of my misery. Mercy, of a sort, I suppose. Except that he will kill Spike and Dru first. If any one is to kill them, it will be me. No one else has that right.

When he showed me the whip, I almost sank to my knees and begged. Bones of the saints? They might as well have woven sharpened crucifixes into the braid and soaked it in Holy Water. And the whip is steeped in magic. I have no idea what extra dimension those spells will add to the pain. But this is all the fault of the Rom, the Soul, the Slayer… Even Darla, who abandoned me when I needed her most. As I will NOT abandon Will and Dru. Even if it kills me, as well it might.

They started by crucifying me. It was all I could do not to scream. How will I hold on? How will I hold out? I do not know. As the nails passed through my wrists, I knew that I could not obey his instructions. I WILL scream, before this is ended. The only question is when.

And now I wait for the flogging to start. My head is turned to the left, my right cheek pressed against the roughness of the wood. It smells like cedar. Cedar of Lebanon, I suppose. They say that Solomon’s palace was built with cedar of Lebanon. If I survive, perhaps I’ll ask Aurelius. He will remember. Perhaps this is a beam from that palace. It wouldn’t surprise me. I wonder how much blood has soaked into it? I see Sekhmet cross the floor and lap my own blood. There will be plenty more for her to eat before this night is over. I suppose she’ll keep the floor from staining. When she has cleaned it up she raises her head to look at me. Her eyes seem to speak.

“You will be strong,” she says.

As strong as I can be. It won’t be enough, though. I guess that it is a long time since the clan had entertainment like this. Aurelius speaks to me for what will be the last time until this punishment comes to its bitter end. Whatever that is.

“When this is finished, if you survive, you will have three days to free yourself from the beam. If you do not do so, that will be taken as defiance of my will. I forbid anyone here to feed you until you are freed.”

May the powers of darkness aid me now! Unless I am fed, even if I do survive the flogging, I will be so weak that I could be constrained by bonds of spider thread, let alone these iron nails. I’ll be lucky indeed if I retain the power of movement. I almost sob with despair. Only my pride stops me. I’ve got plenty of that. But will it be enough?

The first blow falls, a line of fire trailing from my right shoulder blade to my left hip. The one doing the flogging – I can’t see who it is, but he has a very strong right arm – waits, unhurried, for the pain to blossom and swell, and to start to die back. Then he lands the second.

I start to keep count. Anything to keep my thoughts from concentrating on the agony that my back will become. Counting will do for now. I’ll have to find greater distractions later.

When he stops after twenty-five, I don’t need to see what is happening to know that he has exchanged with a left-hander. The new line of pain tells me. This is only the beginning. It is bearable. It has to be.

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

I’m watching my Sire carefully, almost as if I could lend him strength. He’ll need it. Even excluding the element of magic, and the bones of saints, have you seen a back that has been flogged without mercy by just an ordinary whip? Of course you haven’t. Civilised humans don’t do things like that anymore, although they used to. Depending on the sort of whip used – and this one is as bad as I have seen – the back soon becomes a mass of long, thin cuts. After a while, the cuts are so numerous that there is little skin left in between them. After a little longer, there is no skin at all. Each cut lands a little deeper, without the resistance that the skin provides. Muscle and fat cut more easily.

The very construction of the human arm means that blows tend to land in certain alignments, although skilled wielders of the whip can maximise those alignments, particularly if two are doing the lashing, a left-hander and a right-hander. Nevertheless, certain placements of the lash are favoured, and these wear more deeply into the flesh, cutting deeper, spraying strands of body tissues and body fluids over the one doing the lashing. And over the surrounding area. Eventually, in those places, the flesh is worn away, and the white bone glimmers through the deep, bruised red that is the rest of the back. The longer it goes on, the more bone is exposed, the more flesh is dissipated round the room. I learned this from Angelus.

You think that vampires feel less pain than humans? That the fact that our bodies are dead means that our sensations are numbed, our nerves not up to the job? Yet you accept that we have a better sense of smell than you do, that our hearing is sharper and our sight more acute. All of these senses depend upon the functioning of nerves. In all of them our senses are many times more acute than yours. Why do you think touch should be different? Oh, what about taste, you ask? You think our taste buds are dead, so the nerves of touch are, too? Nonsense. Our sensation of taste is no less acute than our sensation of sight or hearing or smell. It is simply that foods other than blood have a different taste than they used to. The taste buds are hankering for blood, and everything else is second rate. We are more focussed on the blood. Oh, there are other things that we enjoy the taste of. I like beer, for example. Angelus prefers fine wines. But we all much prefer fresh, human blood.

That leaves touch. As with all our other senses, the nerves in our bodies are substantially more sensitive than yours. We feel pleasure more. We feel pain more. It’s just that the two are not so separable for us as they are for most of you. Pleasure and pain, sensations that are simply ends of the same continuum. However you look at it, wherever we are on that continuum, the feelings are more intense, make no mistake. I learned this from experience, delivered by Angelus, often with a whip. But never like this. Never with a whip as damaging as this. We’ve passed three hundred and his body has, for the moment, stopped trying to heal itself, is conserving its energy until the punishment stops. And there is the gleam of bone from one of his ribs. We’ve still got a long way to go.

I wonder if anyone is actually keeping count, other than me. When I can tear my eyes away from my Sire to check, I see that a minion is standing by Aurelius, marking each set of twenty-five lashes off on a slate.

I go back to Sire-watching.

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

I lost count a long time ago, at five hundred and twenty three, I think. I don’t really know, it could have been anything. I have reviewed my entire life, including those dreadful years in bondage to the Soul. Anything, to take my mind away from reality. And it isn’t enough anymore. I have had an iron grip on my will, but it has been slipping for a while now. A few more blows, or a few after that, and I will scream and end this. That isn’t the only thing that is slipping, either. I feel as if I have to leave this flesh, abandon it to its pain, and become incorporeal once more. I think it’s the magic of the whip, trying to drag spirit and flesh apart. The more I weaken, the less I can resist it, that pull of final death.

On top of that, I think I am starting to have hallucinations. It feels as though someone is here, with me, holding my hand. How can that be? I can see both my hands – or at least I could, if I had the strength to turn my head. I know that there is no one here to give me comfort.

Somewhere through the mists of pain I hear Aurelius.

“One thousand. That expunges the offence against Nest.”

Oh, good. Only two thousand to go.

***********

We don’t know why he left Sunnydale. They’ve all gone, all the Aurelian vamps. There are just minor characters left from other clans, or from no particular clan at all. They are easy to kill. I don’t know how much longer that will last – surely someone will come to take Angelus’ place? This is the Hellmouth, after all. Has he left for good? I don’t know. Why are their clothes gone, but everything else stored neatly in the basement? I don’t know. Is he dust? Has there been some incredible battle, and is his dust there, mixed with the others? I. Don’t. Know.

Do I care?

Of course I do. So long as he lives, and my heart tells me that he still does, I have hope that my love, my soul mate, can be restored to me. If he is dust, that can never, ever happen. I may have to kill him, I accept that. But I can’t do it yet. Not so long as Willow is trying to find a cure, another curse.

I dream about him a lot. Most nights, in fact. Sometimes it’s Angelus in the dream. Those are true nightmares. Sometimes it’s Angel, restored to me. I think those may be worse. As happy as I am in the dream, my loss is renewed when I wake up. I lose him all over again. It’s tearing me up.

I wonder if I’ll dream about him again tonight?

***********

I’m losing all connection with reality. That may be a good thing, if I lose connection with this agony that is my flayed back. That hasn’t happened yet, though, and if I lose my grip, I will surely make a noise. I wish I could lose consciousness, for in unconsciousness is silence, but vampires don’t lose consciousness merely from pain. Not like humans. Not even this level of pain. And if I do, will my spirit be prised from my body, leaving only ashes behind? I’m not quite ready for that yet. Yet. I might lose consciousness from blood loss, although I doubt it, since there’s already quite a lot on the floor. Every so often, Sekhmet comes to lick it up. Whenever she does, she looks me in the eye, and her eyes speak.

“Be strong.”

I’m hallucinating. Cats can’t speak.

And then I know I’m hallucinating. All I can see now is the red mist of pain – it’s been like that for a few hundred lashes – but there’s a figure coming towards me, through the mist. The light is bright behind her and I can’t see her features, but I can see her blonde hair and her diminutive stature. Darla? Can it be Darla? My Sire, who abandoned me when I needed her most? My mate, whom the Soul killed to protect his beloved, his own intended mate? Has she come back to me from death? Or has she come to take me back with her to the abyss? She comes closer and I still can’t see her face, but she touches my lips with her finger, the international, interspecies sign for silence, and she feels warm. Has she been reborn?

Suddenly the agony intensifies – another change of ends, then – and I want to sob. She seems to know, and she stops the sob with her mouth. Her warm, living mouth, kissing the sound away. When I once more have a little control, she pulls away. I miss her, I want her back, but she puts that finger to my lips again, quieting me.

She runs her hands over my face, my hair, my neck, gently, delicately, as if renewing acquaintance with the feel of my flesh. As if her fingertips had forgotten, and needed to be reminded. She takes her time, relearning every inch of me. While she does so, whatever is happening behind me becomes disconnected, seems to lose importance, seems not to involve me at all. Only she matters, only she can make my body *feel*, can hold body and spirit together. She, and the hand that still seems to be holding mine. That hasn’t gone away. Nor has the pain, but it doesn’t seem to matter so much.

Darla and I were a force to be reckoned with, a fundamental force of nature, and she took me places I had never dreamt of. She wanted to be my eternal mate, to have the ritual and the ceremony, but I kept telling her to wait. ‘Wait until we’ve been together for five hundred years, Darla. Perhaps then. But now? Let the now be enough for now.’ Has she forgiven me for that? Is that why she’s here? She was my mate, but she never had her hand on my heart, warming my cold, dead centre. Not until now. And now it’s different, in this dream. In this here and now. Eternity suddenly doesn’t seem long enough with this one.

But something is wrong, and my pain-fuddled mind cannot grasp it. My senses are screaming, and it isn’t only from the agony. She is warm, and Darla should be cool. Her smell is different. Is she here? Is she human? Darla, who left me to the Soul, Darla who has come to…? To do what? Then her hands move over my hips and I no longer care why she is here.

Carefully, she avoids touching those areas that are open to the lash. But blood is sliding down my ribcage from my ruined flesh, and it now coats her fingertips. She lifts one hand and inspects it. Then, one by one, she sucks her fingers, cleansing them, drinking my blood. I want to moan, I don’t know whether it is in need or renewed anguish, but she understands and puts one pink fingertip to my lips again.

“Shh, my love, my heart, you must stay silent.”

Her voice is an echo of a whisper of a sigh. But there is stsomesomething about it. Darla? As I try to concentrate on what my mind is trying to understand, what my senses are trying to tell me, the agony flares again, and I feel the scream rising in my throat.

Once again, she understands, and seals her lips to mine, drinking down the scream. I taste myself on her mouth, my blood on her tongue. When she breaks the kiss, she goes back to exploring my body. Her hand caresses my chest, running over the nipple, sending a shudder through me. Her lips suckle at the other nipple, as I press my cheek into her hair. It is soft and heavy, like silk, and the fragrance of her overwhelms me. Her tongue traces a path towards my navel and plays there for a moment, as I suck in a deep, unnecessary breath. Then she stands up and kisses me again, both her hands on the back of my neck, holding me to her with all her strength.

When she finishes, her hands are covered in my blood, and once more she licks it away, her little tongue darting in and out, just like a cat. A tiny lioness. Strange, because I always thought of Darla as a fox, a sly and cunning fox. Her right hand traces a path down my abdomen. When she finds what she is looking for, it comes up to greet her. Even in the midst of all this pain, I cannot resist her. Not this time, although I have often resisted Darla before. As she caresses me with her right hand, her left comes up to my face. She strokes my cheek, my eyes, my temple, making a soft, sighing sound that has words hidden in it, if only I could make my wits work. If only I could understand. I want to hold her, to return the caresses with which she is favouring me, but I cannot seem to move my arms. There is a reason for that, I know, but I cannot seem to remember what it is. Throughout it all the pangs of Hell seem to intrude on our tryst, but she will not allow me to acknowledge the pain, and each time I succumb, she seals her lips over mine to stop the scream.

A voice says something behind me, but the sounds are deep and distorted, as if I am in a different time frame. In any case, they cannot have anything to do with me. I am here with…yes, with Darla, who once abandoned me but who has come to me now.

As she works, my senses eventually make my mind understand one thing. Her movements are untutored, naïve, but all the more wonderful for that. If Darla remembers me, why does she not remember all the skills she had? And then I cease to care, as I respond to her as I never have before in two hundred and fifty years; as I know I always will, now, for all the years left to me, and I feel the climax crashing through my pain-wracked flesh. I rear back my head to roar and, quick as thought and strong as a lion, she pulls my head to her neck so that I can drink. And I do. In silence. Her blood is different. It tastes of sunlight and life. Before, Darla always tasted of lilies and death. And it explodes into me with a power that it never had before. As I pull it from her, careless of how much I take – she is a hallucination after all – she, too climaxes, even though I have been unable to do anything to bring her to it. She is mine – my eternal mate – my spirit and my flesh cleaving to her in a way that I never have before. She recognises that, and I know that she is bonded to me just as surely. I can bring her to completion just from my bite. That has never happened before. Still, who knows what rules apply in a hallucination?

Then as I come back to myself from the power of her blood and her fingers, I pull away from the wound in her neck, which seals over instantly, and I am back in that sea of pain. It is too much. It overwhelms me, a crashing tide of red agony. Once again, she presses her mouth to mine, silencing me, and her little hands continue their journey of rediscovery.

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

Daddy dreams. Daddy dreams of *her* but Miss Edith told me that he would. That he had to, to be able to live. So that’s all right.

And Spike? My Spike? He’s found his Daddy again. But he’s sad because Daddy hurts, so my Spike is crying for him. But that’s all right, too. We’ll be a family again. Miss Edith told me.

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

How can he bear it? I know I can’t. How has he managed not to cry out, not even so much as a whimper? This is happening because of us. Because I couldn’t, or wouldn’t, do as he said, and because I was stupid.

And he has come here, to this, only because of us. He could have left us here, abandoned us, made new childer, but he did none of those things. Look what has become of him now. My Sire. I’m not ashamed to say that. I don’t resent him, or hate him. Oh, I’m still not going to let him destroy the world, but I’ll find another way to stop him. I loved Angelus once. I worshipped the bloody ground he walked on. And I do again. I probably always did, which is why I hated him so much until now.

The sights and scents of his pain surround me, and I’m crying for him. I’m not ashamed to say that, either.

His back lies in ruins, and there is blood everywhere. Almost all of his ribs are showing a glimmer of white. His tattoo is reduced to some dark fragments of skin amongst the bloody mess. The taint of magic, whatever it is doing to him, is greasy in the air. The lioness is sitting by his side, her head against the front of his hip, out of the way of the lash. Occasionally she raises that head to look him in the eye, and I could swear she tries to speak to him. And occasionally she laps up the blood from the floor. Aurelius has done nothing to stop her, but since she does nothing to diminish his pain, I suppose she is not going against his judgement.

“Two thousand. That expunges the offence against Darla.”

Only another thousand to go, then.

What now? For a moment his head goes back, and he looks as if he will cry out. But it snaps forward again, and he is silent. He is in game face. His back is to me, but the scent is unmistakeable. Musk. He’s bloody well climaxed. In the middle of *this*? I look at Dru, and I can see from her secret smile that she has scented it, too. What the hell is going on here? I hope the clan are impressed, because they damn well should be.

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

I thought she would leave me, but she hasn’t. I haven’t drunk from her again, but she has stayed, overlaying my pain with her pleasure. Her blood still powers through my veins, giving me strength. And she will not let me cry out.

Still I cannot move my arms to hold her, to return her favours, and when I try, she soothes me and whispers in my ear wordless sighs of comfort. When I try to speak, she stops me, and I remember that, fome rme reason, I must not make a sound.

There is a fire in my back that I do not believe can ever be extinguished, a fire that contains knives, slicing and paring my flesh away. My spirit is continually being wrenched from this shell of flesh. It is all I can do to stay together. To stay me. Am I in Hell? Is this Acathla’s domain? If so, why am I one of the damned? I have given him this. I must have. That was why I found him. And why is Darla here with me, when she had already met her final death? Do all the Hells meet? Are they all the same? My mind cannot compass the thoughts, so I let them slip away.

This has gone on for hours, I’m sure. Or perhaps it has gone on for eternity. I no longer seem to know the difference.

Still her little hands exact their price in pleasure. She seems more confident now, as if she has learned things about me. Surely she already knew them? After one hundred and fifty years together, she knows my body as well as I do. Better, perhaps. I don’t know how many more times she brings me to completion, but I do know that she has cocooned me, spirit and flesh together, and kept me whole.

And then it stops. Whatever is trying to drag my spirit away from my body has stopped. The scourging of my back has stopped. The fire and knives are there yet, but they are quiescent. Perhaps I can bear it. If I could have more of her blood…

But she does not offer again. She continues to cling to me, though, as if she knows this is just a temporary respite in my ordeal. Once again, she presses her mouth to mine. I hear a voice behind me, as she kisses me until I am breathless, until I remember that I do not need to breathe.

“Three thousand. That expunges all offence.”

Then I feel the owner of the voice move behind me, and whisper in my ear.

“Remember, Angelus. Three days. You must free yourself within three days.”

His fingers run through the furrowed flesh, caressing my naked bones, kneading the exposed muscle, scraping across each raw and shuddering nerve. I cannot keep back the scream, but she deepens the kiss and drinks my howling down into herself. Nothing emerges from me but a soft sigh of breath.

As she holds the kiss, I feel his fangs sink into my neck, pulling all my remaining strength from me. Another pair of larger fangs, much larger, sinks into the other side. Darkness bleeds in to my vision, an encircling darkness that sweeps forward to claim me. My legs will no longer hold me, but still I cannot move my arms, and as my knees give way, my whole weight is thrown on to my wrists and I remember. They are nailed to a beam, and agony breaks over me again. As the agony and the darkness meet, and I no longer have the strength to scream, she pulls back from me. There is no light behind her this time, and I see her face.

It is not Darla, my Sire, my mate, who cast me off and abandoned me to torment when I needed her most. It is the Slayer, my mortal enemy, who has come into Hell for me, come to comfort me, save me, nourish me, come into this eternity of torment to fetch me back out.

Then everything is darkness.

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

I wake suddenly, and sit up in bed, my body covered in sweat. The dream starts to fade, but I want to hold on to it as long as I can, to try to understand. I was with Angel, and he was in pain. In agony. And he was not permitted to make a sound. I don’t know how I knew that, but I did.

I think he was in Hell. Why would his soul be in Hell, when all the evil was committed by Angelus? When his soul wasn’t even present? Is there no justice in the world? No mercy?

I knew why I was there. It was to ease his pain with pleasure. I could not free him, but I could do this for him. Even now, the palms of my hands can feel the touch of his skin, the soothing coolness of his flesh. I can taste him in my mouth, cinnamon and sandalwood and Angel.

The morning is warm, but even so, chilled air brushes over my sweaty skin, and I shiver, wrapping my duvet a little more closely around me. The dream seemed so *real*. Slayers can have prophetic dreams. Is that what happened? Was it a vision from a future in which Angel is somehow returned to me? Or is he truly in Hell, and needs to be rescued? Or was it just the product of my fevered imagination, my desperate longing for Angel and fear of Angelus?

I don’t know. I must talk to Giles. I haven’t told him about my dreams of Angel, although he surely wouldn’t be surprised, but this one was different. This needs to be understood. That much I know.

And there is something I need to know. To a vampire what, exactly, is a mate?

The chilled air whispers over me again, and I go to pull the duvet tighter. It is then that I see my hands. There is blood under the fingernails.

I remember something else, and reach for the hand mirror. On my neck are two small red marks. Not scars or wounds, just marks, and they are fading as I watch. Nevertheless, I know that his fangs would fit neatly onto them.

Oh God. Angel…

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

I cannot bear it. These iron chains hold me fast, and I cannot bear it. I have fought and raged, and torn my wrists open on the unforgiving metal, but I cannot get free, and I cannot bear it. I’m sure that, if he knew, Angelus would think that I have shamed him, but I don’t care. Dru looks at me with pity, as if I’m a child who does not understand, but I still don’t care. The other vamps here look at s ifs if I were an insect, or something else beneath their notice, *and I don’t bloody well care*.

Have you *seen* what they have done to him? They are determined that he should die, I can tell. He has no chance of meeting their stupid requirements. I don’t how how he is still alive.

After the flogging, when they had stripped his back to the bone in places, and spread Sire flesh and Sire blood all over this damned hall, Aurelius walked over to him to inspect their handiwork. I hope he was pleased, because if ever I get a chance, I’ll do the same to him. I promise.

He ran his fingers over the damage, tracing the curves of the bones, opening up the pathways where the whip had dug deepest, causing pain with every touch. And still my Sire refused to cry out.

Aurelius licked his fingers clean, whispered something in Angelus’ ear and then *drank him*! And the hell-born cat joined in, Aurelius on one side of his neck and the cat on the other, those huge f sun sunk deep in the flesh. Damndest thing I ever saw. I don’t know how much they’ve taken, between them, but Angelus might as well be done for now.

Then the clan got their twopenn’orth in. One by one, they’ve taken blood from him. Blood he doesn’t have to give. And one by one, they’ve scraped their lilywhite hands, with their delicate, knowing fingers, over his back, scratching bits of him away, and then licked their fingers clean. I couldn’t watch it, I just started tearing at these manacles, trying to break free, trying to go to him, to stop them, anything except just sitting and watching. But I couldn’t. I simply couldn’t get free, and now I’m curled here in my own pain. Pain in the heart, pain in the spirit. Angelus is slumped, his legs unable to carry him now. I think he’s been unconscious for a while, but he seems to be coming round. He’s hanging from those nails, struggling a little, but he has no strength. On top of everything else, he’s in danger of dislocating both shoulders. Without fresh blood, he cannot heal, and he certainly can never find the strength to break free. And I cannot help him. My Sire, the one who entered this hell house to fetch us out.

I cannot bear it.

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

Buffy has told me about her dreams, and I don’t know what to think. Oh, I’m fairly sure what to think about this last dream – it’s a special Slayer dream, if ever I heard one, although I’ve not before come across one that left quite such physical signs afterwards. The marks on her neck might be psychosomatic, but the blood under her fingernails? That is different.

No, when I say I don’t know what to think, that is on a more personal level. Angel contained Angelus within himself, and through his weakness he let the demon loose. That monster has terrorised my Slayer and her friends. And he has murdered my lover, leaving her in my bed for me to find, in a demonic travesty of love. I can never forgive that murder. If I can’t forgive it, if I continue to hate him with the same white-hot loathing that I still feel, if I cannot differentiate between Angel and Angelus, as I cannot, how can I help her? How can I bring myself to help this murdering fiend, whichever spirit currently occupies his body? Whichever guise he presented to her in that dream?

Still, she is my Slayer, my responsibility, and Slayer dreams are not given for nothing. This is important, so I must try. That means that I will have to contact the Council, much as I despise them. And if they cannot help, I must find other sources, because even if I have no wish to save him, not doing so might mean killing her. Slayer dreams are usually about life and death, at the very least.

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

I don’t know where I am, but I seem to have been here forever, and the face I wear is that of the demon. I cannot find my human face.

I cannot see. Everything is just a haze of white. I cannot hear. Sound is just a buzz in the background. But I can feel too much. My body is a miasma of pain, its infernal touch settling in every crevice and curve, in every plane of muscle and joining of bone. I can feel, then, but I cannot see or hear. Except for her. She has come to me again. I know that it is a dream, that it is a product of my mind. I know who she is and I know who I am. So why should the Slayer come here, for me, unless to kill me? She would not, of course.

But I know who I used to be, and that is why I can see her. It must be because the Soul loved her so much that she is imprinted on this mind that we shared. She would have been his refuge, so she has become mine. Will I ever be free of her memory?

She has not come close enough to touch me after that first time, but she hovers, just out of reach, urging me to break free from whatever it is that holds me here. I cannot. I am powerless. My body cannot answer my demands. She has just appeared now, having left me alone for a very long time. No, not quite alone. A hand still seems to hold mine. I can’t remember when I first felt it, but I know that it has been here as long as I have been captive.

She comes forward, from that nimbus of light, and this time, she touches me again.“You“You must free yourself and come to me, my love,” she whispers, almost too softly to hear, as if she were speaking from a great distance.

Her hands cradle my face, her fingers stroking my cheeks and my roughened brow. She presses herself to me, and her clothes, which I know she wore, but which I cannot now recall, are gone. She is warm and soft and fragrant. She rubs herself against me and I respond. How can I not, when my mind and my body seem programmed, seem to be slaved to her, by the love the Soul had for her? I have no blood in me to heal me, no blood to strengthen me, no blood to enable me to free myself from this torment, yet I have blood enough for this, it seems.

But I am in her hands, literally, because I have no strength to move. But she is cruel. She strokes and teases me until pleasure threatens to turn to more pain, but she stops and moves away a little. I yearn towards her, wanting and needing her touch, even as te ate and despise it. I am Angelus. I am not Angel. Yet I still yearn towards her, as she whispers again.

“Free yourself, Angel. Come to me.”

Angel. Even so, I cannot stop myself. She urges me on, like a falconer tempting a captive bird to the lure. And like the hungry bird, I respond. But I cannot free myself.

She comerwarrward again, her eyes sparkling with promises that would be the downfall of saints. This time she offers me her wrist. I bite.

I know that she is an hallucination. I know that I can get no strength from her, and yet something seems to pass between us. If it is not blood, the effect is the same, and I swallow down her power. But her strength remains elusive, like her, toying with me, allowing me to touch it, then slipping out of my grasp. I could weep with frustration. She moves closer still, her breasts feathering across my skin and it is then that I feel cold metal at my lips, and real blood, hot and fresh, slidinwn mwn my parched throat.

The metal is replaced by cool flesh, as another wrist is offered to me. Again, I drink. But this is no hallucination. I think that I should recognise this blood, but my mind cannot focus, except on the sheer energy of it, even more potent than Slayer’s blood, full of heat and light and *power*. I drink it down greedily, and the wrist does not flinch.

Memory returns first. I know what has been done to me. Awareness of my surroundings is next. I am still nailed to the beam. Strength suffuses me, and I am able to stand. I feel my wounds start to heal, although they will take some days to close over.

Still I drink. And she is still here, pressed to me, whispering to me of freedom.

Then the wrist is gone. I look around, but there is no one behind me, although I feel Sekhmet at her accustomed place, her head pressed against my hip. She sits next to the Slayer, but neither seems to be aware of the other.

“Try again. Try harder.”

Her hand slips down to caress me, as if promising rewards if I will but obey. Sekhmet nudges against my thigh, as if she were encouraging me. The Slayer seems to see her for the first time. The hand that has been caressing me moves to caress the cat. I cannot help it. I have wanted this woman for too long, now, and I roar in rage. My hands press against the beam, and with one sinew-bursting effort, I tear the nails from the wood, and fall to the floor. She leans down to kiss me, an all-too-brief meeting of our lips, and then she sighs softly.

“Come to me, Angel. You can come to me now.”

Angel. She touches my wrists, still pierced by the nails, my blood staining her skin. Then she is gone, and I roar again in rage, and loss, and pain. Vampires come rushing in from all directions. But she is still gone, has never indeed been here, and I know that I must exorcise this haunt, this madness, from my mind. When I return to Sunnydale, I must put the Slayer in her place, or I shall never be free of her.

I am surrounded by the clan. Aurelius strides through them and stands, silent, in front of me. I know what he expects, what they want to see. First one, then the other, I grasp the nails and pull them from my shrinking flesh.

As I crouch there, waiting to see what will happen next, I look down at my gore-streaked belly. Caught in the dried blood is one long, golden hair.

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

I have dreamed of Angel for three nights now, even though Giles has given me a potion to help me sleep, to try to prevent these dreams until he has been able to research them better. This morning, when I wake up, I have blood on my hands. Blood and cat hair. Large cat hair. I remember. I don’t understand, but I do remember. He is free now, I know that. Perhaps it means that he can come back to me, and somehow, together, we can deal with the monster that has taken his place. I pray for that.

Or perhaps he will simply be able to rest in the er ier in peace. I pray for that, too. If he’s there, perhaps I will be allowed to join him, when my time comes. If there is any mercy in the world.

Giles can find no explanation for these physical signs that I have been with Angel. He is afraid. He is also angry, although he tries to hide that. He cannot forgive Jenny’s death, and I dread to think how he would handle Angel’s return. Powers that be – if ever you helped one of your slayers, help me now.

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

Continued in Chapter 4