Thralls

Title: Thralls, chapter 4
Disclaimer: I do not own ATS or BTVS.


Angel retreated into his suite, barricading the door to protect his thralls. His blood was rushing through his veins, he knew, distantly, that he had almost attacked his friends, but it did not bother him. Adrenaline still coursed through him, brought to the fore by the automatic need to protect what was his. His on the most fundamental, cellular level. His thralls. Beings who shared his blood, who were his, and only his, even more so than his Childer were.

The room was filled with pale candlelight, glowing golden, the air full of the scent he had not been able to ignore when he had smelled the first tendrils drifting into the Hyperion on the breeze. Now the scent filled this closed and locked room to overflowing, full, rich, singing to him, reminding him he was not always civilized, not always in control, reminding him that sometimes his demon ran free. He was a predator, an alpha male animal, a creature with ancient roots, with millenia old instincts thrumming through his body, his brain.

His ears were filled with the pounding, singing pulses of the three men, all of whom were on top of his large bed. He had stripped them, unprotesting, of their hindering clothes, impediments that kept him from their flesh and skin. And laid them on the velvet spread, enticingly, appetizingly bare.

The palest skinned one, blond haired, tall, strong; the darkest toned, was the shortest of the three, also blond, but a browner blond, and very muscular, chiseled as if from a tinted marble. The striations of his muscles, gloriously perfect, begging for his master's tongue to explore. Then there was the one who was not a stranger.

Xander's skin tone was intermediate, his hair dark, the scent rising from him, maddening. Angel resisted no longer, crawling up onto the bed, and into the center of the three restless men who reached out for him, his tongue flicking, tasting their sweating skins as he moved over them. Luscious, wonderful, blood and sweat, and his own scent mixed in. A sensual heaven/hell, a banquet filled with the torment of not being able to taste all of it, drink it all down, embrace the three at once, writhe in release with all of them.

He had to choose, everything cried out for him to select the One, and to dispose of the other two. He let out a nasty snarl, refusing the temptation to slash and feed, to drain one or two dry, so that there would only be one left. Only one to call to him, to feed his appetite, to demand his attention, his fangs, to feed his lust upon. To own. Just One. He growled, and the three pulled him down with them, closer to them to their throats, arched and offering.

Tear and feed, feed and tear. His internal, primordial vampire chanted. Eat, gorge, there is plenty, there is enough to glut yourself on, to fill your hungering belly full of hot, searing human blood. Drink, drink, until you are drunk with it, the perfect elixir of thrall blood, your bloodmark spicing the rich redness. It is yours, take it, eat it, devour it, devour them. Savor this rich feast. Bathe in the blood that is yours by right. The mad whispers filled his ears and he groaned with the need.

The depth of Angel's hunger, and need, was telegraphed to the thralls, and they reached out, hands running over him, just as needy, just as hungry for him as he was for them. They were three men, raised in the modern times, in a country that had made them independent, free, but now, they were only his, bound as any slave in the past to this one male, this vampire. They could not fight him and win.

Xander shivered. He felt Angel's cool skin brush against him. It was what he wanted, but also what he didn't want, what he wished he could run from. A man in bed with him, naked, aroused, and he, aroused to the same degree, he who had never looked at another man and wanted to fuck, or touch or explore. God, but if right now he had a choice, he would lay on his back, wrap his legs around those slim, powerful hips and beg to feel them driving into him, filling him, and slaking their lust. Because Xander, unbelievably, burned. For what he had never before today wanted.

Graham was fighting to be still, and losing. He felt the vampire slide over him, reaching for Riley, and he saw his own hands reach out, circle the vampire's waist and pull him in near, so they touched all along their lengths. The vampire's body was larger, taller than he was, less defined and cut, but he felt the strength in it, the preternatural power, that exceeded by far his own. It excited him. He had fought and sweated to put himself in this shape. So that he would have the advantage in every unarmed confrontation with another soldier, another man. But, this was no man, this was a vampire. Hand to hand, he stood no chance. The Vampire was his Master in every way, if he had a gun...even then, he would not be able to kill, not this man. And the thought, that he was helpless, that he was this man's, this vamp's meat, was thrilling. He wanted it. He craved it, to feel the fangs pierce his flesh and drink his life's blood. It was his reason for living. He shook his head, recognizing the thoughts, the images as being far different from what he'd always known, always felt. But he could not shake the desires free, he could not change them, or the rapid patter of his heart as the vampire's head lowered, he tilted back his head and waited for the teeth to break his fragile skin.

Angel stopped fighting the need, let it wash over him in an undeniable wave of ravenous hunger, desire and ownership. It was the tanned one, the shortest, and the one with a form like a Greek god, that he attacked and fed from. It was exquisite, the slow penetration of his fangs, for the first time in his life, the double fangs lowered, not just the one, common, feeding set. All four fangs entered the flesh stretched welcomingly under his mouth and blood rushed into his mouth to fill it with salty sweetness. Wonderful, sweet, rich, filling. Intoxicating. He hungered, he drank, the man under him moaned, clutched at him starting up the precursors to bruises on his waist. But Angel did not mind. The pain lanced through him in the back ground, adding excitement and spice.

More hands pulled at him, before he could drain the willing sacrifice dry. Angel felt himself lifted away, dragged to another long, succulent throat to feed at. He again struck deep and hard, giving out his own bruises, again all four fangs, again blood rushed into his mouth and again he drank, mouthful after mouthful, so wonderfully exquisite, so right, to drink, and drink and drink until he felt full....

But before his appetite was slaked, there was third throat, a third voice, previously unknown, but now his possession, his own, as the other two had been. Claimed. Tasted. His. Tall as he was, about his own build, only a fraction smaller, blond, blue eyed. So good, tasty, willing. His. He drank, until he was full.

Riley's eyes closed in submission, puzzled at the sensation of being taken, of offering no resistance to this, he wanted this, had to have it. Had fought all his life against seeking it. The ache of the days since he had been injected with Angel's serum, unwillingly bound to the vampire, faded and turned to satisfaction, to peace and to belonging. It was what he wanted. What he had to have if he wanted to exist. His hands fisted in the vampire's hair pressing the face to his throat, the feeding mouth, his heart beating frantically in the dark chant, drink, drink, drink.

Then Angel sagged back, full so full. Amongst the sweating, sated bodies of the men. All three hearts filling his senses with the steady, strong beating of their pulses. All three warm with living blood. All three Claimed and chosen. His. His thralls. He smiled. Showing them his doubled fangs, this most intimate thing that none but a thrall might witness and live. There would be more to share with his thralls, but not now, now he would sleep, surrounded by them, by the rightness of their presence. The rightness of his choice.

All three were his.

Together, they slept, he rested, watching over his own.

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