Odalisque

By Elen

Prologue

Prague Spring, 1898

Her German was more than credible, the estate agent concluded, his eyes lingering on the woman seated before him in the handsome study of a seventeenth century town home. Her accent had improved and she rarely stumbled over words anymore. From a great distance, she had supervised the restoration of the house. Her letters had come from London, Paris, and Madrid, spanning nine months. She was much, much younger than the letters might have suggested. She spoke, wrote, thought, like an older woman, and he found that a little disturbing, but also oddly attractive.

When he met her train he had been looking for a matronly grand dame, not this little slip of a girl dressed rather austerely. Even now, she was wearing a starchy white blouse with a high neck, and a bottle green wool skirt without adornment. Her auburn hair was drawn up in a chignon at the back of her head. No jewelry, nothing pretty or soft, or decorative about her.

He had tried to change the terms of the relationship. Once he realized that she was so young, he had become more assertive. He was curious about her. She seemed so alone in the world, controlling what appeared to be a small fortune. Where was her father or husband, or some other concerned male relative to guide her? To represent her in dealings with people like him? And if there was no male relative, or husband to guide her . . . well, she was rich, and foreign, and perhaps she needed a man.

His overtures had been analyzed and dismissed. She had been surprisingly blunt. They had been in this very room and he had been explaining why he disagreed with her plans to divest holdings in a railroad scheme in favor of investing more heavily in a tea plantation in Ceylon. Before he had become her estate agent such conversations had been purely theoretical. He had never had a client with financial interests as diverse as hers. She had delicately suggested that that could change if he was not able to follow her instructions.

He was a little disappointed when she explained that her family was joining her in Prague within the week, requiring a shift in the disposition of some of her assets to cover the increase in the expenses of her rather modest household. He had a feeling that what opportunity he had to influence her had disappeared. There was a man, a brother, an uncle, a cousin, who was probably waiting in the wings to take charge.

“If I may be permitted to inquire, will I be receiving instructions from your . . .” he paused, hoping that she would clarify the precise nature of the relationship with her family.

Her eyebrows lifted at this, and she let the pause develop into a silence that was almost uncomfortable. “Only in the event of my death,” she said, speaking of it so casually that he thought she was, perhaps, making an odd joke.


Chapter One

Steam curled from the engine that was luffing, at rest, covering the platform with a misty white vapor that glowed in the darkness, alleviated only by the greasy glow of gaslight from the lamps stationed at regular intervals along the railway platform. She was not alone. Two uniformed porters stood by with carts to collect baggage. Two carriages waited outside to carry baggage and the occupants of the train back to the townhouse.

Outwardly, she appeared composed. She was dressed for the cool night in a heavy wool gown and a fur lined cloak. Her hands were gloved. There was a hint of color in her cheeks that might have easily been mistaken for a reaction to the wintry chill that lingered in the air. It had more to do with the increased rate of her heart beat, and the instincts that screamed at her to flee as this time that she had fought to enjoy in solitude was about to come to an abrupt end.

It had been two months. At first, she had been afraid, though she hated to admit it. She had been afraid, especially at night, alone in the townhouse, lying awake, listening to the sounds of the house around her. She slept poorly. The irony of it tormented her. Alone and safe, and it frightened her more than anything now. In those sleepless hours her thoughts had turned, inevitably to ways to escape. She had access to money, and God knew she had fled enough places in the dark of the night to know how to get away, to become traceless and invisible.

But she knew that she would spend the rest of her life, looking over her shoulder, waiting. Wondering. There was also the notion that she clung to that she was there for some reason that would eventually reveal itself.

She considered taking the laudanum that she kept in store with her herbs and potions. When she was exhausted and unable to sleep the prospect of falling forever into a deep and dreamless sleep beckoned. In the early years she had tried to kill herself twice. Those failures, desperate gestures, incomplete and futile, mocked her now.

They were coming.

She saw them, through the clouds of steam. A sleek, beautifully dressed blond woman with her hand resting decorously in the crook of a tall, dark haired man’s arm. A fur-trimmed hood that rested lightly on the dull gold of her elaborately dressed hair framed her face. The man was considerably taller, broad shoulder emphasized by the cut of his greatcoat. Despite the long train journey, they were immaculate, and they moved in the deliberate, unhurried way of experienced travelers, neither distracted nor alarmed by the adjustment to walking on the unmoving surface of the platform or the sights and sounds of a train station that had stirred to life as passengers debarked and met their waiting parties. They made a handsome couple.

A few steps behind them trailed a dark haired girl with a beatific smile on her face and a distant look in her dark eyes, seeking the night sky, incongruously carrying a doll. The doll bore a passing resemblance to the blond woman. She had been carefully dressed for the cool evening in a small pale blue coat with tiny pearl buttons, trimmed in white fur with a tiny matching muff hanging on a silk cord around her neck.

Last of all, a smaller man than the first, his ashy brown hair falling over his brow, his cravat a careless mess, loosely knotted around the equally loose neck of his blouse. His greatcoat was left unbuttoned despite the chill in the air and it billowed around him as he quickened his step, moving beyond the dark haired girl, whose dreamy gaze lingered on him with creamy satisfaction. He swept past the more sedate looking couple, earning an annoyed look from the man. The blond woman smiled indulgently, but the smile never reached her calculating gray eyes.

“Pet,” he greeted her, blue eyes dancing with humor and satisfaction, his hands, always cold, and colder now with the chill in the air, cupped her face, his thumb moving boldly over her lips.

His forehead touched hers under the brim of the hat she wore. The hatpin securing the hat stabbed her scalp, scratching it as the top of his head pushed the brim of the hat back. The unexpected pain brought tears to her eyes. The tightness in her chest had nothing to do with the pain. She knew better than to close her eyes. He smiled and tilted his head to one side, taking her upper lip between his, sucking on it delicately.

“How sweet,” Darla said in a tone that suggested otherwise.

William refused to allow Darla’s disapproval to dictate to him. He let the kiss go on a moment longer, and reveled in the bright, wet green eyes that stayed open throughout, full of pain and a flicker of defiance that had never been entirely stamped out to his delight. His arm curled possessively around her waist, exerting just enough pressure to bring her into full contact with his body. Layers of clothing separated them, but she knew that he was there. He saw it in her eyes before they closed, briefly, and then opened.

He held her lightly, against his side. Drusilla glided forward, her thin, long fingered hand lightly patting the girl’s cheek. “My William’s poppet,” she cooed. “Come home to us, dearie? Such fun we will have, with moonlight and dark wine and pretty sounds in the dark.”

She found her voice. “Hello, Dru,” she said, steadily.

Dru pinched her cheek. “Hello, Miss Willow,” she breathed, and then she giggled. “Such lovely games we shall play.”

Willow swallowed hard. In Drusilla’s not so sane mind she was merely one in her beloved collection of dolls. Not quite as beloved as Miss Edith, but up there. Dru’s cool lips brushed hers and then she was gone, dancing over to Darla. “Say hello to Daddy and Grandmum,” she ordered.

Annoyance flickered again in Darla’s eyes. She disliked being called grandmum, and it wasn’t an ageist vanity. Her connection to Dru was something she did not like being reminded of. She was damaged; an embarrassment to Darla, tolerated because she was Angelus’ childe, and her second sight was moderately useful. Her appraising gaze lingered on William and his pet. He had kept the girl, nearly eight years now. It was little more than a game to him, but it had produced interesting results.

Willow had been barely sixteen years old when he stumbled upon her, dragging her home like a stray cat, keeping her locked up in his room to fuck and feed on. When that didn’t kill her, and Dru took to her, he started taking better care of her. Eventually Angelus was stirred to take a mild interest in the girl, and she had proven useful. She had a quick mind, and in her late teens, she had developed some magical abilities that had probably always been there, dormant. Angelus had insisted on getting her a first rate education, hiring tutors for her. Nearly eight years later she had a place in their little family as a human servant, soothing Dru, fucking William, managing their finances, and providing them with a human to secure their dwellings.

The great fuss of keeping her alive and moderately healthy had paid off, and Darla sometimes forgot that she had not been best pleased with the project. It was nearly time to bring it to its natural conclusion, and she was eager for that. In fact, she almost regretted siding with William. Angelus was itching to sire the girl, and William had appealed to her to support his claim to her. In most things she allowed Angelus to pretend that he was in charge of their little family, but she was not above using her hold on him as his sire to snap him back into place.

“You’re looking well, Willow,” Darla said. “Prague agrees with you?”

The girl’s eyes lowered. “Yes . . . m’am,” she said.

Darla smiled at Angelus. “Doesn’t she look well, darling?”

Angelus reached for her hand, and brought it to his lips, his fingers stroking her gloved palm. “Exquisite,” he drawled in a bored tone, his eyes contemptuously raking her form.

Darla’s laugh tickled like crystal in the cold air around them. Left to her own devises, Willow was dressed like a dowd. All in black, buttoned from wrist to throat.

The porters had gathered the luggage and trundled it out to the waiting carriages. Drusilla linked arms with Willow. William kept his hand centered on her back as they moved through the rail station to the waiting carriages. He handed Drusilla up, his hands framing her narrow waist, and then turned to Willow. Angelus and Darla were taking the other carriage. He pinched her chin, turning her face up to him.

“Miss me, pet?” he asked.

“Like a bad cold,” she retorted, making him laugh at her resentful tone.

“Up you go,” he said, easily lifting her and tossing her into the carriage.

She should have been more prepared for that. Her skirt caught under her and she landed awkwardly on her knees. Before she could get up and take a seat, William had joined them in the close confines of the carriage, his hand on her shoulder warning her against any attempt to leave the floor. He took his seat beside Dru, who rubbed his thigh and rested her head on his shoulder.

“Don’t be mean,” she pouted prettily, shaking her finger at Willow. “William has missed his pretty poppet ever so much,” she told her with a knowing smile.

His booted foot probed her skirt, and Willow clenched her jaw.

He smiled at that. “Growl at me, little bitch, and we’ll play games that you’ll regret,” he warned her.

A shudder ran through her frame as she struggled to find the right frame of mind to relax and accept her subservient position. He rapped on the roof of the carriage to get the driver’s attention, and the carriage lurched into motion. Even knowing this was coming, Willow felt herself almost fall forward. The carriage was well sprung, but on the unprotected floor, she felt every jolt against the cobblestones. She felt an irrational desire to press herself against his leg and apologize–not simply as a matter of self-preservation.

“Poor, Miss Willow, all alone, for days and days,” Dru murmured. “No one to pet her, or brush her hair, or play naughty games with her soft, wet parts.”

That wholly inappropriate observation wrung a wry laugh out of William, and he relented, removing his booted foot. “Get off the floor, pet,” he ordered.

Awkwardly searching for the seat behind her, Willow scrambled into the opposite corner of the coach, smoothing her skirt down.

He toyed with Dru’s hands. “Darling? Does Miss Willow need her soft wet parts played with?” he asked with a smirk.

Rubbing her cheek against his shoulder, she made a purring sound. “Lovely, naughty games to be played, my William. My Spike, My wicked, beautiful boy,” she crooned to him. “Daddy and Grandmummy and I will play other games.”

Willow stared out the window, watching the town pass, her stomach roiling. Oh, God. The games that would be played tonight . . . there were seven servants in the house, per Angelus’ instructions, two women, and five men, not counting the coachmen.

They had been rather carefully selected. The estate agent had thought her instructions bizarre. She had not demanded the well-referenced servants that were typically sought in a household with means. She sent him into the workhouses to recruit for her. She wanted servants without families, without prospects. She told him that it was because she wanted people who could be trained to her specifications, people who would owe her their loyalty. He bluntly told her she was likely to be rewarded by theft or worse by picking from the dregs, but he had done as he was told, and she had cast her protection charms, knowing full well that no one would harm her, and if they did, it hardly mattered anymore.

Of course, they had followed their instincts, robbing the house blind, smirking behind her back at her obliviousness. There was one footman who had seemed to decide that despite the fact that she was foreign and stupidly naïve, she was also well meaning and kind, and he had knocked a few heads together and brought a semblance of order to the household. He made sure that he was always within the sound of her voice, at all times, and she had rewarded his loyalty by making him the majordomo.

The increase in pay and status had a ripple effect, changing the atmosphere of the house overnight, and all the while she pretended. Kindness and generosity, and quiet authority could overcome the dreadful obstacles placed in the path of these people. It was a social experiment, a success that amazed the nosy, disapproving estate agent.

Tonight, it ended. Tonight they would all die. Tomorrow they would rise again, undead, and she would remain. Coldness crept into her. Her face was numb with it as she stared blindly into the night. She would not be alone, nor be required to bear witness to what happened, and she quietly despised herself for feeling grateful.


Chapter Two

Despite the late hour, the house was ablaze with light. Expensive gaslight. The fires in the main salon, the dining room, and the bedrooms prepared above had been kindled to the mistress of the house’s specifications.

She was a strange one, foreign, with odd habits that were exotic and exciting. She had very specific instructions about most things. One didn’t simply throw a few logs into a fireplace and light some kindling stripped from the dry wood. She ordered cedar and ash for the fireplaces. The kindling was a special mix of cedar shavings, pinecones dipped in scented wax, and dried herbs and flowers that filled the house with a scent that you wanted to fill your lungs with.

It was a scent, for Lucius, intimately associated with every good thing that had come to him in the house. Clean clothes, for instance. He had four sets of them, an absurd number. Most of the footman had sold three sets of the clothing they had been provided with. It was expensive stuff. The cloth and trimmings worth a pretty penny, and even more so because they did not so much resemble a livery. The trousers were black, the blouse white. There was a waistcoat, in different shades from bottle green to brown to gray to black. The coats were black, and well made, with a lining sewn in. And then there were the boots, two pairs, fitted by a shoemaker, in expensive leather that smelled delicious. The outerwear included a hat, greatcoat, gloves, and scarf.

These treasures made them the envy of the servants in the neighboring house, who sniffed disdainfully as their foolish mistress for hiring street scum and treating them like house pets. But Lucius had come to the conclusion that she was no fool. He had seen the awareness in her great, dark eyes in those first few weeks. She understood what was going on around her better than anyone gave her credit for, and she was patient, a sad empathy glowing in her eyes.

So green, he thought dreamily. Green like glass, with the light shining through it. Lush against her pale skin. She was a little beauty, that one, seemingly unaware of it.

She was no aristocrat. There was intense speculation about her origins below stairs, and only he knew the truth. She was an American. It had slipped out one night when she was up late, in the library, reading a book. It was the same night that she had offered him the position as her majordomo. She had looked up from her book and asked him if he could read. For a moment he thought she was mocking him.

She seemed to realize it, and sorrow flashed in her eyes as color crept into her cheeks. “That was a stupid question, wasn’t it?” she asked. “In America, almost everyone can read, at least enough to get by. What I meant to say is if you would like to learn, it can be arranged. I need a majordomo who can read, and since I plan to offer you the position, I need to know what needs to be done.”

She hired a seminary student to teach him to read, and her origin, one of the little mysteries of her otherness, remained his secret. Well, his tutor probably had guessed at it from his questions about America and about learning to speak English. The mistress’ German was very good, but occasionally she slipped without thinking into her native tongue and all the books she read were in English, so he thought she must miss speaking her native language.

He knew the others had their own little secrets about her. The cook knew her favorite foods and spices, and hoarded this knowledge smugly. The maid who had been elevated to see to her personal needs, slight as they were, knew the secrets of her wardrobe and bedchamber, and was in her own way, equally close-mouthed.

They were participating in a conspiracy, which made the small secrets they kept to themselves less annoying to each other. They knew, for instance, that she paid them too much. Gave them too many privileges in their days off and their informality, which the neighboring servants disapproved of, making them close ranks around her. There had been one stable boy and a laundress that refused to observe this unwritten code, and they both had been run off quick enough.

The house was immaculate. She hadn’t demanded it of them when she explained that her family was, at last, joining her, but her anxiety was transparent. She had a hard time falling asleep and would wander the house at increasingly late hours. Lucius discovered her up one night, near dawn, in the butler’s pantry, polishing silver. When he mentioned this to the cook and her maid, they admitted that they had noticed her taking on other household chores. Overnight, they had become oddly house-proud. She reflected on them, as they reflected on her, so the floors had been polished, and the rugs beaten clean, and even the windows, hung behind the heaviest, and darkest of drapes, had been cleaned to sparkling.

The dining room was laid with a late night buffet. The cook had made trays of tiny canapés, chilled a bowl mounded with caviar. Toiled over wafer thin latkes, and lighter than air pastry puffs filled with chilled cream and garnished with fruit dipped in honey.

Fresh cut flowers filled vases in the bedrooms. Scented candles had been set in their holders. Lucius replayed the foreign sounding names of the mistress’ family. Angelus, Darla, Drusilla, and William. He smoothed his gloves over his hands again, hearing the sounds of carriage wheels on the cobblestones, and the creak and jangle of sound that signaled a coach stopping outside.

He opened the doors himself, letting the two footman set the outer door stops as he strolled ahead of them to the coach, nodding to the coachman above as he reached for the door.

It was flung open before he could close his hand on the brass door handle, and a man emerged, shoulders first, hatless, his brown hair loose and disordered. He jumped down lightly, paying very little heed to Lucius, turning back to assist a one of the most beautiful women Lucius had ever seen. The spare light flooding from the open doors hit her face. She was pale and slender, with raven dark hair and cherry colored lips and eyes as black as sin. She gave a girlish squeal when the brown haired man lifted her by the waist, her hands falling on his shoulders as she tilted her face to the night sky.

Laughing, he twirled her about, making her cry out something in a language Lucius did not immediately recognize.

His attention returned to the coach as his mistress appeared; hesitating above the step he had neglected to put down. Inwardly cursing at his lapse, he hurried to put the step down and offer his hand to steady her as she cautiously extended her foot beyond the hem of her skirts.

“Thank you,” she said, and then automatically corrected herself, repeating her thanks in German.

It was one of those little slips that he enjoyed.

William set Dru down on the stairs, looking back to see Willow alight from the coach with the assistance of a male servant who was looking at her like she was the Virgin Mary and Fairy Godmother all rolled into one tasty little package.

He gestured to her. “Come along, pet,” he said. “I want to see this house you’ve arranged for us.”

Lucius had no idea what the brown haired man was saying, but the gesture was easily interpreted. The footmen were set to unpacking the luggage, and his mistress joined her family on the stairs as he urged the footman to hurry. The second coach was clearing the intersection to the square, and he wanted to get the first coach away.

Satisfied that Lucius had this in hand, she joined them on the stairs.

“English,” one of the footmen concluded.

Lucius frowned at him, and told him to quit gossiping and move it along. English? Their voices sounded so unlike the mistress that it seemed hard to believe. He made a mental note to ask his tutor about this at their next meeting.

With a woman in each arm, William entered the house, looking around. Darla and Angelus craved their little luxuries, and he knew instantly that they would be pleased with Willow as his gaze took in the well appointed foyer and the servants that waited to take their outerwear. Dru patted a startled footman on the cheek and pursed her lips at him in a pretty little pout, and William laughed, amused by her antics.

Willow tried to evade the arm he had around her waist after she removed her cloak, speaking in rapid German to the servants. She looked nervous. He yanked her to him, bending his head to nuzzle her covered neck, feeling her stiffen in his arms.

He smiled. She had grown a bit independent on her own, and he was going to enjoy reminding her of how short her leash really was. Dru wrapped her arms around both of them, kissing the corner of Willow’s mouth. “Pretty, pretty, sweet and sour,” she sang.

“You’ll feed my William soon, all spicy and hot, blood and honey between your pretty legs.”

Willow thanked a God she no longer believed in that the servants' grasp of English was virtually non-existent and that Dru had not followed up with some energetic touching. The puzzled looks on their faces were unnerving enough.

“That she will, Princess,” William agreed, relenting enough to loosen his hold on her so they could leave the foyer for the salon.

“Fix me a drink,” he ordered, giving Willow a little push.

She fled to the sideboard to reach for a crystal decanter, giving a spare shake of her head to a footman who moved to take her place.

“I know what I want to drink,” Dru said slyly, curling around William. “Something lovely and warm and red, pulsing with life.”

William settled on a settee with Dru nestled against his side. “Soon, my love, soon,” he promised. “What do you think of our new home?”

“Happy, it shall be,” Dru pronounced.

Willow brought him whiskey, neat, poured into a crystal tumbler, and took a step back away from them, standing close enough to the fire to feel its heat at her back.

He held the tumbler up, admiring the play of firelight against the amber brown color. His gaze switched to her. His girl. Cased in black wool, her vivid hair drawn up tight behind her head. “I’m going to have to burn your wardrobe, aren’t I, pet?”

“You’ll do as you please,” she said neutrally.

He rubbed his cheek against the top of Dru’s head, smiling at her. “Don’t I always?”

Angelus and Darla came in and Willow moved to the sideboard to pour brandy for Angelus and sherry for Darla. She served Darla first. In some ways she almost liked Darla. She largely ignored Willow, and there was something comforting in the feeling that she was invisible to her.

Angelus took her chin between his fingers, stroking her skin. “You’ve done very well, little one,” he said, the lilt of his brogue softening his voice. “I’m pleased with you.”

Darla rolled her eyes at this pronouncement. He did things like that to annoy and undermine William.

The girl had the good sense to simply tolerate his touching, remaining as still as a statue while William’s eyes narrowed to signal his growing annoyance.

“I’ll have to think of some suitable way to reward you, now won’t I?” he teased, giving her chin an affectionate pinch before he took the glass she held for him.

William cleared his throat. “You're welcome, Angelus,” he said. Time to snap the leash. “Pet?”

He gestured to the floor beside his knee. Darla smiled to see the girl’s back stiffen ever so slightly before she sank, unsteadily to the ground beside William’s knee.

With the luggage inside and the coaches sent to the stable, Lucius gave a single knock on the salon door and entered. The two late arrivals were already seated with drinks. The couple that had arrived with his mistress was sitting closer than was proper and his mistress was sitting on the floor near the man on the settee.

“There is a light supper laid in the dining room,” he announced in German. His gaze flicked to a chair against the wall.

His mistress gave a spare shake of her head, reading the look. “Thank you, Lucius,” she said. “We will ring if we require anything,” she said, dismissing him.

William stroked her cheek with the back of his hand. “Have him eating out of the palm of your hands, don’t you, pet?” he drawled.

Lucius was frustrated by his inability to understand what was being said, but he knew when he was dismissed. He gave his mistress a grave bow, and stepped backwards out of the room, shutting the double doors behind him.

“Think he’d be so devoted to you if I called him back here to watch while I tumble you here on the floor?” he asked watching the color climb into her cheeks.

“My, my,” Darla drawled. “Someone’s awfully anxious,” she said. “As entertaining as it is to watch you rut,” she made it sound like it was anything but, “I’m hungry.”

Dru patted her stomach. “My tummy is all rumbly,” she agreed, brightening.

“William?” Angelus prompted. “Need a midnight snack to tide you over, boy?”

He loosened a strand of Willow’s hair, winding it around his fingers. “Maybe later,” he said. “Save something for me?”

“I’ll save you a nummy treat, my wicked boy,” Dru promised, running her fingers over his lips.

He kissed them, lightly tugging on Willow’s hair as he rose. “Come along, precious. Daddy wants to play.”


Chapter Three

He wished to be denied clarity. On the bloodstained chaise, the maid, Sophie, stared at him blankly. She was dead. He wasn’t sure if the blood on the chaise was hers or another’s. They were all dead. They had been dying for hours. He had seen it, when it began, with the beautiful dark haired girl, twirling in the dinning room, then lunging, her face a monstrously distorted mask as she ripped the throat out of Wilhem, the oldest of the footman. Wilhem, who might have expected to be made the majordomo, but cheerfully accepted it when he was not.

He’d heard it. For hours he had been hanging from a hook buried in the ceiling where a chandelier once hung. His head hung tiredly, his field of vision filled with the mess beneath him on the floor. Blood, waste, and the filmy white secretions, both his and the dark haired man who had raped him, soiled a hand cut rug.

It was an indignity he had been spared most of his life. He was too big and strong to be easily overcome, but even the women, those two seemingly frail, beautiful women, had overpowered him effortlessly, and they had done things to him, that even now made him glance down at his flaccid organ as it twitched weakly. He had, when he had the coin for it, filled a common prostitute’s painted lips with his semen, but these women, in their silks and velvet, with their soft, pampered skin, had sucked him off with an expertise that would have made the fortune of any whore.

Bite marks littered his body, and he felt every one of them. In a strange sort of way, they were the least of the pains that clamored for his attention. His wrists were still bleeding. Above them, his hands were so numb that they ached, and this was nothing to the pain in his shoulders from being stretched until he was on his toes, desperate to keep from falling and dislocating his shoulders. The muscles in his calves burned with cramps and his torn rectum, tormented by the sweat that rolled down his back from the over hot fire still burning in the hearth, itched and burned. The bites were the least of it. Some bruised and aching, others simply stinging him into awareness.

The door to the hallway had been left open. The darkened corridor was empty. He wasn’t sure where his tormentors had gone, or if they had gone. Across the hall the door was shut. It was the door to his mistress’ room. The door behind which muffled sounds had been heard, unmistakable in their meaning at regular intervals through the long hours of the night. The sounds of a cat caught in a briar, mewling, keening. Words in an unknown language. At some point he had made up words of his own. Unbelievably course words. The language of the streets and the dockside, of whores and their transactions in the filthy alleys in the worst parts of town was his refuge.

He thought coming to this house had been the beginning of a new and wonderful life. He thought the mistress, foolish and naïve, had seen something in him, in all of them, that could be made . . . better. Who was the fool? She had lured them here to this, to her monstrous family and while they died around her, she was fucking one of the beasts in the bed he had imagined her sleeping in so decorously, so innocently, immune from the ugly things in the world she had rescued them from.

When they left the salon, Lucius, standing at his post in the hall, had turned to her, a question in his eyes.

William ran his finger up the back of her neck, probing at the bundle of hair carefully arranged by Matilde. “Have him send up a bottle of wine and a tray for you,” he said, plucking a hairpin loose.

There was only the slightest tremor in her voice as she carried out this instruction. William spoke German. He’d know if she was lying or adding a word of warning.

Lucius inclined his head, taking it upon himself to prepare her tray himself. She kept odd hours, and he was accustomed to foraging for her, as she called it with a rueful smile. He chose from the fruit and bread, ignoring the canapés, and adding latkes smeared with sour cream and a liberal portion of caviar. The wine was a local vintage, kept ice cold. It tasted of apples, and he knew that she preferred it to the expensive vintages laid in the wine cellar. He kept his mind on the task at hand, preferring not to think of the rather disturbing way the brown haired man had been playing with her hair.

He had them sorted, the new comers, into couples. The brown haired man and the dark girl. The blond woman, and the dark man. Their mistress was . . . what? Sister, cousin? It made him uneasy. She had never really defined the relationships. He had not asked. It was not his place to ask.

Having clothes ripped off her body was nothing new, Willow reminded herself. He was almost being considerate about it. Wool didn’t give easily, and he had left her bruised before by the pressure of cloth digging into her skin before it gave. He was using his fingers to break off the buttons that held her bodice together from throat to waist. She could hear them hit the ground, one by one, the dress slowly loosing its mooring as the heavy fabric was released.

“We are definitely burning this,” he said distastefully. “Looks like widow’s weeds. What were you thinking?”

“That I was a woman, alone, in a foreign country, not particularly wishing to become someone’s idea of–“

He cocked his head to one side, his eyebrow lifting. “A whore?” he taunted.

Color washed out of her face, leaving her looking oddly stricken. He could have mocked her expression, or reminded her of how he had found her so many years ago in Bristol. Instead, it stirred something like remorse; it made him cup her face in his hands, his thumbs stroking her pale cheeks. “No one could ever mistake you for anything so common,” he said softly, and he meant it. Even when she had approached him, looking like she had been driven to having sex for money like any other common whore, desperation dulled by expediency, there had been something just the tiniest bit different about her that had claimed his attention.

He kissed the tiny frown forming between her eyes. “Need help with your laces?” he asked.

She bit her lower lip and nodded slowly. There was no point in fighting. After eight years she knew that William wouldn’t hurt her, wouldn’t deliberately hurt her, so long as she was cooperative. He wouldn’t tolerate open defiance, and she had learned the hard way that his toleration was higher than Angelus’. If William couldn’t keep her in line, it was an engraved invitation for Angelus to do so, and the things he had done to her were the subtext of her worst nightmares.

He unlaced her stays, dropping a kiss on the nape of her neck before stepping back to allow her to undress. He removed his frock coat and tossed it carelessly over the back of a chair before sitting down to remove his boots. They looked a bit worse for wear.

She undressed down to her chemise and stockings and he shot her an amused look, as she sat down at her dressing table to pull the pins out of her hair. At the discreet scratch at the bedroom door, he crossed the room and picked up her dressing gown, tossing it to her and waiting for her to secure it before he bade the servant to enter.

Holding the dressing gown closed at the throat, and nervously pushing her hair behind her shoulder, she watched Lucius enter with the dinner tray and wine that William had told her to order brought up to her room.

He set these items down on the small table near the window before asking her if there was anything more she required for the evening.

She gripped the dressing gown harder, painfully aware that this was probably the last time she would see him alive. “No,” she said softly. “Please let the staff know that I appreciate their efforts to make my family comfortable,” she said.

He inclined his head. Trying very hard to maintain a neutral expression. No matter what he might have tried not to wonder about, he was reeling from seeing his mistress in so intimate a setting with a man who appeared all too likely to be spending the evening in her room.

Four new suits of clothes, a salary half again as much as the servants who toiled nearby. A Mistress with a pleasant voice, an easy manner. He counted the blessings that he had been given and refused to be the cause of her embarrassment or discomfort.

“Shall I tell Matilde that you require her?”

She had forgotten about the maid. “No,” she said hurriedly. “Not tonight.”

The brown haired Englishman lounged, his stocking clad feet stretched before him. “That will be all . . . Lucius,” he said with an amused twist of his lips.

She nodded when he appeared to hesitate. “Thank you,” she said again.

He stepped back, something hard crunching under the heal of his foot. He stooped quickly to pick up the object, and left the room.

When he shut the door behind him her hand went to her mouth as the bile rose in her throat. William watched her for a moment, waiting for her to get control of herself, mentally warning her not to take too bloody long about it. He had spent three days on a train in an admittedly comfortable private car, but he was in no mood for the weeping and gnashing of teeth that she looked inclined to indulge in.

He rose, and saw her taking deep breaths as she fought to calm herself. The fact that she was putting some effort into it mollified him enough to go to the table to pour a glass of wine for her. He brought it to his lips to taste. The bouquet reached him before the taste on his tongue. Crisp, with an undertone of apple, probably a local vintage, and nothing Darla or Angelus would deign to pass over their educated palates, but he liked it, and he liked that she apparently preferred it.

No airs and graces for his girl.

He brought the glass of wine to her, setting it on her dressing table, guiding her back to the seat that she had left. He’d have time to poke around tomorrow, ferret out all of her little secrets. The dressing table was a predictable, neat arrangement of her brush and comb, a tortoise shell box that held her hairpins, and a rosewood box that probably held her jewelry, or at least the pieces he permitted her to keep. Nothing too valuable was kept in there, just a few baubles that she largely ignored. He picked up her brush at the same time that she reached for it.

“Drink your wine,” he said, running his free hand over the soft coils of her hair.

There was no mirror on the dressing table. He imagined that her maid thought that an odd omission as he started from the ends of her hair, drawing the brush through the burnished auburn, smiling to himself as he watched the light bring out the coppery tones.

Her hand shook only slightly as she picked up the wine glass, holding it with both hands. He could smell the salt of her silent tears, mingling with the bouquet of the wine, the scent of the fire, and the lingering scent of her soap, warmed from her skin.

He’d let it go, for now. She knew very well what was to happen, and if she let herself get attached to the people she had selected for this, it was her own damn fault. From what he had seen so far, she had followed his instructions and Angelus’ perfectly. She deserved to be praised and petted, and he wasn’t going to let her tears interfere with her reward for being so very good.

When Angelus had suggested sending her ahead of them to Prague, he hadn’t been terribly keen on the idea. It had been years since she had tried to escape him, but that didn’t fool him. Behind her compliance was the same sharp, willful mind that had made taming her entertainment enough for nearly a decade. Two months on her own could undo years of work, and he was so bloody close to getting exactly what he wanted. He had waited to turn her, wanting to put a few more years on her. His one experience visiting the Master’s lair in London had been more than a little humiliating. It was clear that the Master didn’t think Darla’s little family was up to snuff, and that he and Dru were particularly lacking, she because of her madness, and he because he was sired by her.

Willow was in aid of an answer to that. Angelus had actually unwittingly underwritten the process. On his own it might not have occurred to him to see that the girl got any kind of education. He had never met a true bluestocking in his mortal days, but he’d absorbed the impression that went with the sneering about educated women. He had to admit to a certain degree of pride in her accomplishments. She was well read. She spoke English, German, French, and Italian fluently. She had been given lessons in music, drawing, and deportment that had taken, but not spoiled her natural temperament. She was going to be a credit to him.

He knew the time for it was ripening. He had even considered making it tonight, completing their reunion in her death, but as appealing as the idea was, he’d rather not make her turning a footnote to their arrival in Prague. By tomorrow night the house would be full of the newly risen, and the long effort that they had put into her merited something more than divided attention.

Aside from that, Dru would have a bloody fit if they didn’t make a production out of it, and he didn’t fancy her screaming and railing at him, or the idea that if it wasn’t just right, she’d turn on his newly made childe in a fit of rage.

He finished brushing her hair, and set the brush aside, drawing her head back against his chest, his fingers rubbing her temples in soothing circles. She’d stopped crying at some point and was just staring off at nothing, her chest rising and falling, tension in her expression. She was listening. Listening for the sound of carnage below.

“I’ve missed you,” he said, taking the empty wineglass from her, pulling her to her feet by her hands.

Her eyes flew to his, remembering her response when he asked her if she missed him, but he didn’t seem angry, and he didn’t seem to expect her to say that she missed him either. She didn’t think she could say it.

He lifted their joined hands, touching them to her lips. “Undress me?” he said it like it was an invitation that she could refuse, while his eyes told her that not to test his patience.

In the old days, he wasn’t William. He was Master. It was her only word for him, and it had been beaten into her. His unadorned first name was a relatively new privilege that she had been introduced to by Angelus. It had taken another beating to convince her that she would forget it at her peril. They could not take her out in the polite, human world calling them by anything but their given names.

Automatically, her hands went to his cravat, unwinding the soft linen. She started to fold it, but his hands brushed hers, and she understood that he wanted her to let it fall to the floor. She unbuttoned his shirt, revealing his pale, smooth, muscular chest. Her eyes fell on his nipples, dark, flat, male nipples. His hands stroked her arms through the robe she was wearing. His abdomen contracted, and she read the silent invitation to tug his shirt out of his breeches. His arms circled her loosely as he undid the cuffs and she licked her lips feeling the wetness pooling between her thighs.

She kissed his chest then, and he made an approving sound, his hands resting lightly on her hips for a moment. When he released her, she lifted her hands to push the shirt over his shoulders.

“Let it fall,” he murmured, his lips brushing her temple. The shirt fluttered to the ground. He caught her hands by the wrists, bringing them around to the belt of her dressing gown until she loosened the tie of her own volition and shrugged out of the garment.

The firelight behind her turned her thin chemise nearly transparent. The hard points of her nipples were visible against the cloth, edged in lace. Her gaze was fixed over his shoulder.

“Look at me,” he commanded.

Her eyelashes fluttered like moth’s wings against her skin before she redirected her gaze to meet his. He took her hands in his, one hand bringing hers to press against his erect member. His other hand directed her hand to the hem of her chemise were it lay against her upper thighs. The fabric pressed against her, between her thighs, and a tremor shook her as she felt her own wetness soak the thin cloth.

He pressed himself into her hand. “Finish,” he ordered, freeing her hands.

She unbuttoned his breeches, sliding them over his hips, her knees unlocking to allow her to kneel in front of him to unfasten the small gold buttons at the bottom of the breeches, just below the knee. He lifted his foot to allow her to free each of his legs, removing both the breeches and the stocking beneath. Before she finished with his right leg, he grasped his cock in one hand, stroking himself, his thumb moving over the foreskin to spread the pre-cum oozing from the head over the organ.

He offered her his thumb, and she took it between her lips, tasting him on his hand until he withdrew his thumb, rubbing her lower lip.

She freed his other leg as he continued to stroke his cock. His hand lifted her chin, and he smiled down at her.

Sometimes she liked to pretend that she didn’t understand him at all. Didn’t know what he wanted. It was a game she played in her head, and to some extent, with him, waiting until he told her what to do. Trembling, she laid her hands on his narrow hips, her thumbs riding his sharp hipbones, absorbing the coolness of his skin.

Sometimes she wondered what it would be like to feel warm, heated, human, living flesh, other than her own under her hands. Sometimes she wondered what it would be like to be with someone who looked less like an ideal of perfection. He was all sculpted muscle layered over bone. His hand was still moving over his cock, but her gaze rested on his abdomen, on the downy feathering of brown hair that arrowed down to his groin.

“That’s a very pretty picture you make,” a trace of affection warming his tone.

His stroking hand guided his cock to her lips, and they parted. Her tongue swirled around the head of his cock, and his hips flexed under her hands. She took him into her mouth, using her teeth to scrape the underside of his cock.

His hand fisted in her hair. “That’s it, love,” he hissed. Christ, the heat of her mouth on him! It felt so good. His hand was wrapped around the base of his cock, pumping it into her mouth. He timed his thrusts, careful not to come while he was too deep in her mouth. She’d be coughing his semen out of her lungs half the night, which didn’t suit him. He spilled himself inside her mouth with a grunt, and she swallowed it down, careful not to let any of his come spill from her lips.

Silly bint, he combed his fingers through her hair as she swallowed convulsively, her clever little tongue swirling around the head of his cock to clean him off. As if he minded seeing his seed on her lips and chin, or splashing over her pretty tits. There was no one like Angelus for seeking some stupid sodding ideal of perfection to spoil a cock sucking. He let her rest her head against his stomach while she got her breath back, his hands stroking her beautiful hair.

“Come up, now, on your feet, pet,” he coaxed, using her hair to make his wishes clear without pulling on it too hard. His arm curled around her and he cupped her ass, pinching it lightly before he caught the back of her chemise and pulled it over her head. He smacked her bare ass. “Get in bed,” he said gruffly. “Bleeding gaslights are giving me a headache.”

He went around the room to turn the jets down. Willow sat on the edge of the bed, rolling her stockings down. William tended to fling his clothes around. His rooms always looked messy. She preferred to put things away, and sat on the edge of the bed debating the wisdom of getting up and picking up the clothing strewn over the floor. She felt the bed give from the other side, and his arm went around her waist, hauling her to the center of the bed.

“Did I tell you to take off your stockings?” he purred in her ear, his thumb making circles on her abdomen.

“N-no,” she stammered. He didn’t sound angry. In fact, he sounded amused, but that wasn’t always the best gauge of his mood.

He plucked the stockings from her hands. “Jesus, Willow!” he muttered. “Worsted wool? We can keep you better than this.” He chucked one and then the other stocking across the room, narrowly missing the fire, for which she was deeply grateful. She didn’t relish the idea of her room smelling of burning wool and sweaty feet.

“They’re warm,” she protested.

“So is silk,” he said, his hand sliding down between her legs, his fingers stroking her apart. “Ah, warm, wet, silk,” he nuzzled her throat. She let her head fall back against his shoulder as his lips opened over her throat, her hips lifting.

“Mmmm. I think someone did miss me,” he chuckled.

His thumb rotated over her clitoris. His hand cupped the back of her head, supporting her as he took away the support of his shoulder to lay her back on the bed, his mouth seeking hers greedily.

“Spread your legs, and I’ll make you feel so good, pet,” he said between kisses.

She opened her legs wider, and his finger slid inside of her, making her gasp.

He raised his head, a slight frown appearing. The hand beneath her head shifted and his fingers traced the outline of her ear. “Hmmm. That’s interesting,” he said, his eyes narrowing. “Nobody fucking you for two months? It’s made you . . . tight,” he grinned. “I think I like it.”

She squirmed under his thumb and finger. “Tight, wet, and aching for a good, hard fuck aren’t you? “He smirked.

His task completed, Lucius lingered in the hall way outside his mistress’ rooms, half listening to the murmur of voices, rolling the small object he had picked up off the floor between his fingers. He checked on the rooms that had been prepared. The luggage in the foyer had been moved to the bedrooms. The two maids were still working on unpacking the women’s clothing. He took the opportunity to tell Matilde that the mistress had retired for the evening and did not wish to be disturbed.

The maid simply looked relieved, and continued working to hang garments. Sophia was across the hall in the master suite, similarly occupied. The two maids would remain available in case the mistress’ family required any assistance before retiring. On the other side of the master suite, Frederick was nearly finished unpacking for one of the men. Lucius assumed it was the dark haired man. There was a subtle air of command about him, and it seemed logical to assume that the mistress had reserved these rooms for his use.

Which meant that the brown haired Englishman was assigned to the room across the hall from his mistress. Paulus was already done unpacking him and had an armload of soiled clothing to take to the laundress. Filthy English swine, Lucius found himself thinking as Paulus took the hallway to the back stairs. Left alone in the room, he found himself clenching his fists.

He opened his hand to look at the object he had retrieved from the floor of her bedroom. It was, he found, a small, black, velvet covered button. It must have come off one of her dresses. She wore so much black that the neighbors were convinced that she was in mourning. He knew he should return it to Matilde so she could find the dress missing a button and repair it. He promised himself that he would do just that, later, as he tucked the button in the pocket of his waistcoat.

There was something very odd, very wrong, going on here, though he wasn’t sure exactly what it was other than the vague sense of . . . disappointment that the mistress was entertaining a man in her room.

A brother, a cousin–he didn’t believe it for a moment.

Not that it was any of his business. In fact, he would have to pay careful attention to the other servants to ensure that no tongues wagged. Later, he would speak to Matilde, he decided. Between the two of them they would be able to ensure that no whispering and tittle tale went on below stairs.

He made himself take a few deep, calming breaths before leaving the unoccupied room. The temptation to linger in the hall was immense. He made himself walk down the hall to the back stairs.


Chapter Four

The coolness of his body, his hands, his cock, especially inside her, aside from being unnatural, was different enough to made her register his touch in a profound way. He picked up her body heat given enough time, but never quite warmed to the same temperature. His thumb kept moving back and forth over her clitoris in the same hypnotic rhythm, never varying in the depth of pressure or speed, sending jolts of sensation through her that made her splayed legs bend at the knee, her feet pressed against the velvet counterpane. His finger stroked her, penetrating to its fullest length, retreating to join the fingers that were holding her spread apart, then sliding back into her, sometimes hard, sometimes slow. He had kissed his way down to her breasts and took one nipple into his cool mouth, sucking on the hard point, tugging on it with his lips, sending little jolts of pleasure through her.

She had one hand over her mouth to stifle the sounds that she was making, and the other touching his hair, winding her fingers in it the way he did with hers, wandering down the back of his neck to clutch at his shoulders.

He kissed and nibbled and licked his way down to her navel, kneeling between her widespread legs, pausing to look up her body, his blue eyes sharp with amusement at her attempt to keep her sounds behind her hand. His tongue dipped into her navel, making her twist under him.

“Stop that,” he scolded. “If I wanted you quiet, I would have gagged you.”

She shuddered at the idea and he laughed softly. “I’m in a mood for compromise,” he told her, moving his hand from between her legs with a lingering caress and pulling her hand away from her mouth. He moved her hand down between her legs. “Now, be a good girl and slide your fingers in your hot little quim for me, pet,” he said silkily. Moving his free hand to cup her breast, rolling her nipple between his thumb and forefinger.

She slid one finger inside herself, moaning at the sensation.

“Fingers, love,” he reminded her. “Give yourself a good fingering for me. I love watching you fuck yourself,” he said, sitting up, his fingers twisting and tugging on her nipples.

She added a second finger, rubbing the heal of her hand against her tingling clitoris.

“You’re so wet,” he mused. “But, not to worry, your merry little bands of humans, they might hear you moan, but only a vampire could hear the sounds of your fingers working your wet cunt.”

The muscles in her legs and lower back tightened, and she threw her head back, her hips instinctively lifting off the bed as she reached for the sensation that was peaking.

She came with a soft, keening cry.

Darla sighed. “Well, that took a ridiculously long time,” she observed. “Your boy must be loosing his touch, Dru.”

“He makes bright colors, like silvered fishes, swimming in bloodied water,” Dru said placidly as she stabbed her needle through the cloth she was working on.

At moments like this, Darla’s palm itched to slap Angelus. He was working on his second brandy, watching Drusilla work her needlepoint with an air of contentment. The girl was a complete loon, but one thing she took away from her convent experience was skill with a needle. She held up her flame stitch for them to admire.

“Very nice,” Darla said grudgingly while Angelus beamed at his insane childe. Needlepoint. Useless, absurd, pointless exercise, though it did tend to keep Drusilla relatively centered. Angelus’ weird admiration for the so-called gentle arts was lost on Dru, who could barely be taught to do anything but hunt after she was turned. Darla suspected that was why Angelus was so intent on stuffing William’s little pet with music and drawing lessons and other inane skills while she was still living.

Dru stabbed the needle into the stretched fabric to secure it. “Is it time for supper?” she asked, cocking her head to one side in a manner that was rather charming in a child-like way. “I’m ever so hungry,” she confessed.

Angelus rose, and offered her his arm. “Then, let’s see what’s laid on in the dining room,” he suggested. “Now, Dru?” he squeezed her hand. “Remember, no catch and release, eh? We don’t want anyone wandering out into the night.”

She gave him a sly, conspiratorial smile. “Just snapping turtles and sugar plums, dearest Daddy.”

Darla heaved another long-suffering sigh.

Dru held up one finger, and the three vampires listened to another keening cry, possibly loud enough for even the oblivious humans to hear.

“My William does such delicious, sinful things,” Dru observed as they left the salon.

“So loud, pet,” he teased as she panted for breath. “And we’ve barely begun. You’ll be hoarse by the time the night is out,” he predicted. She moved her hand, with a vague idea of wiping the stickiness of her own secretions off on the counterpane, but he caught her wrist before she could complete the motion.

“Compromise, if I recall,” he moved her hand to her mouth. “Now, you can suck on your fingers. I’m going to be tasting the same sweetness.”

Her eyes opened and she stared at him with a fathomless expression. Her index finger slowly traced the outline of her lips. The tip of her tongue stole out to touch her finger. Lust brightened his eyes as he watched her finger disappear into her mouth.

His hands stroked the insides of her thighs. He was in no particular hurry, he decided, starting at the bend of her knee, planting a soft kiss there, and rubbing his lips against the warmth and smoothness of her skin.

Matilde turned away from the wardrobe, wondering if she heard what she thought she heard. Sofia appeared in the doorway, her eyes round with wicked glee.

“Who?” Matilde asked.

“No one is up here but the mistress. Retired early?” Sofia leered. “No wonder Lucius has a stick up his ass tonight. Our right, good, and noble lady is getting laid.”

“Sofia,” Matilde glared at the other maid. “Get your mind out of the gutter,” she snapped.

A soft, intense cry of unmistakable sexual completion echoed down the hall, and Sofia chuckled. “For pity’s sake! So, the mistress is getting a,” she made a crude hand gesture. “She’s not a plaster saint, and did you see either of those men? They could get me to make some pretty sounds.”

“Are you done?” Matilde asked, going back to folding. “Get it all out, because I’d better not catch you giggling with the kitchen staff, or the stable boys about such things.”

Sofia rolled her eyes. “I’m not stupid, ‘Tilde. She could turn this place into a brothel, and I’d still be glad to be here,” she grinned. “Maybe more glad,” she said slyly.

“If you are done, you can help me in here,” Matilde told her, intent on her task.

A burst of words in English issued from the room down the hall, and even Matilde had to pause, wide-eyed. She met Sofia’s eyes and had to cover her mouth to stem the tide of her laughter.

“Will, Will, Will, Will,” she chanted.

“I know my bloody name, woman,” William muttered blowing against the engorged knot of silky smooth skin, blood, and nerve endings his tongue had been lashing. His tongue gathered the heated essence of her, and he pushed two of his fingers in her hot, tight hole and growled softly when her hands pushed his head down between her legs.

“That’s it, kitten. Fuck my fingers and my mouth,” he exhorted. In the firelight, she was breathtaking. Her skin was damp with sweat, her hair was spread out around her head, and her lissome body was straining towards his mouth and fingers.

“Mmmm. Pretty, kitty, with her pretty pussy,” he cooed, rubbing his fingers against the slight bulge in her vaginal wall. “Spill your honey for me, pet, come for me, Willow. I want to taste you. I want to fuck you. I want to make you scream, love.”

His lips fastened on her clit, his tongue lashing it as his fingers worked inside her. He could feel her trying to pull him closer as her back arched, and then the frantic, confused way she tried to push him away as her senses overloaded and the pleasure became overwhelming.

She tried to cover her mouth, but nothing would have completely stifled the scream that tore through her throat as she came in long, hard spasms that wracked her small body, and made her head fall back until he wondered if it was possible for someone to break their own neck when she shuddered violently and went limp.

He froze for a second, and then heard the reassuring sound of her heartbeat, hammering in her chest. Passed out, poor thing, he guessed, laughing softly as he eased her down on the mattress. He looked down at his now painful erection, and briefly considered sliding inside her.

He generally preferred to have his lover conscious, but right now, easing himself into her wet heat sounded like heaven.

With an annoyed sound, he moved from between her legs, and adjusted the awkward and uncomfortable looking angle of her head, running fingers wet from her lovely cunt over her soft lips. Her eyelashes fluttered and he leered at her. “Hmm. Just the scent of your cunt does that to me, too,” he told her.

Her eyes opened. She still looked dazed. Her hand lifted to touch his hip. “Will?” she sounded uncertain.

“Expecting someone else, where you?” he asked tartly. In eight years, the only sexual partners she had had were his sire, Angelus, and Darla, and never out of his presence. Angelus could be a right prick, but he held like iron to the rules that he laid down, and Willow was William’s.

“Huh?” she sounded bewildered.

He gave himself a mental smack. You made the girl loose consciousness, you pillock. Quit needling her.

“Nothing, sweet,” he relented. “I’m being an ass.”

“As usual,” she murmured, her eyelids sweeping down, and the sweetest smile gracing her face.

It did something to him. He ought to roll her over and spank her ass for mouthing off like that, for the second time tonight, but the smile that came with it made him feel like he couldn’t breath–when in point of fact, he didn’t need to.

“You’re getting a fresh mouth on you, Red,” his tone was mild, but it made her brow wrinkle, and her heart rate, which had just started to approach something normal, accelerated as she started to become more aware of just exactly what she had said.

“I didn’t mean–“

He cut off her frightened protest with a soft kiss, moaning at the sweet taste of her mouth and cunt. “Sssh,” he soothed. “Just lay there. Catch your breath,” he said, somewhat contrary to what his rampant cock was urging. He pushed her hair away from her face where it was sticking, laying the back of his fingers against her skin. She felt a little off to him, like she was cooling down too fast. He really wasn’t surprised when she made an almost imperceptible sound of discomfort. He yanked the counterpane loose and covered her up with it.

He left the bed, walking over to the small table before he remembered that the wine glass had been left at her dressing table. Her presumptuous majordomo had only brought the one glass.

“Will?” she started to get up.

“Stay there,” he said, glancing over at her. She was pushed up on her elbow. “Lay down,” he corrected. “When was the last time you ate something?”

She had a tendency to forget to eat, as unbelievable as it seemed to him. He got to feeling a bit peckish, and he drained someone. Simple as that. Refusing food had been one of her little games when she had given up on escaping alive and was willing to escape in other ways whenever she got in a snit about something. She went on her little hunger strikes, rattling on about some bloke named Mahatma Ghandi. She took a knife to her wrists in Ghent, tried to take a dive off an eighth story balcony in Rome, screaming like a bloody banshee when he caught part of his arm on fire yanking her off the damned railing.

She had stepped in front of a carriage in London, though he was never really clear on whether that classified as a deliberate attempt to do herself in or was just a case of being a bit lost in thought. She could do that. It had taken him a while to understand it, but basically, the way he figured it, she did everything hard. She could drift off on a thought and be a million miles away, sort of like Dru, without the charms of lunacy. She didn’t just read or study, but she sponged up knowledge and experience. A story told reasonably well could put her right on the edge of her seat. She slept hard, never quiet or still, but restless, fighting for space, the blankets, or just a good cuddle.

The sense memory of waking with her small body warming his made his skin prickle. His cock jerked, demanding his attention. He glanced down at it, and shrugged. The night was young.

He picked through the fruit, examined the latkes with a frown before deciding to give that a pass, and added some of the bread to the plate. Silly sod didn’t know her as well as he liked to think, or there would have been some chocolate. He had put an end to her last hunger strike by painting her lips with warm chocolate sauce, watching her nostrils quiver as the scent reached her, and eventually broke her.

Chocolate. He smiled to himself, and glanced over his shoulder, wondering why she hadn’t answered him. “Willow?”

“Breakfast,” she sounded less than certain of that, which meant that she was probably lying to him. “I’m not hungry.”

Definitely lying, he decided. She had known that they were arriving today, so she had probably not eaten, letting all her anxieties about this evening work on her. He cocked his head, listening actively for a moment.

Vampiric hearing was something you learned to control over time. When he was newly made, it drove him nuts. All the things he could hear, the loudness of everything, and especially the loudness in any kind of quiet, because that was the most unnatural thing of all. Made you feel like you could hear the earth turning. At a few yards, in a closed room, he could hear Willow’s heart, and the soft sound of her breathing. He let his true face show, and the whole bloody house lay open to him.

Down the hall, two humans, female from the sound of hushed voices and muffed laughter. One scolding the other. His eyes narrowed as he concentrated on what was being said. Nothing that interesting. A little gossip about his girl. He honed in on a mocking ‘looks so innocent, like butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth’, an observation that lacked for originality if not veracity. His eyes drifted downward as he sought to hear beyond the immediate area.

House sounds, people moving, someone moaning . . . he let his features resume their human mask. “Dinner time, pet,” he said, picking up the plate and the wine glass.

She reached behind her, fluffing a pillow to lean against, quietly muttering, “What part of not hungry eludes him?”

Third mouthy remark of the evening. Oh, someone was practically begging for a spanking, he thought, setting the plate on the table beside the bed and handing her the glass.

He caught her chin between his fingers, forcing her to look at him. It had been years since he had struck her with anything other than his own hand. He lost some of his enthusiasm for marking her up, especially since it took her so long to heal. “Are you trying to provoke me, Willow?”

Her eyes widened at the question.

“Angelus is pleased with what you accomplished on your own, as am I. You do deserve a reward, but, my love, don’t mistake me. I’m more than willing to oblige you if you need a reminder about the nature of our relationship.”

The silky menace in his voice was in no way lessened by his fingers, feathering over the pulse point in her throat, brushing over the faded mark of his fangs.

“Do you understand me?” he rapped out.

“Yes, Mas–“she sucked in a hard, trembling breath. “Yes, William,” she whispered.

He sat on the edge of the bed beside her, giving her cheek an affectionate caress, tilting his head to one side. “I like it when you call me Will,” he admitted, smiling at her, “Makes me feel like a lad.”

He plucked a small, dark red strawberry from the plate and fed it to her, seeing the distress in her eyes. She chewed mechanically, and he nudged the hand holding the wine glass, guessing that she was having trouble making herself swallow.

“You’ll make yourself sick, missing meals,” he scolded. “Can’t have that, pet.” He brought a grape to her lips, and then smiled, holding his hand out for her to spit the seed into.

Lifting his eyebrow, he selected another piece of fruit for her. “Did you miss me while you were away?”

Tears filled her eyes and her eyelids closed. He brought a strawberry to her trembling lips. She took it delicately between her lips, and chewed, swallowing hard. Breathing hard.

Even with his highly developed sense of hearing he almost missed it.

“Every minute of every day,” she whispered.


Chapter Five

The servants in the dining room all straightened a bit when their mistress’ guests wandered in. The dark haired girl was almost dragging the tall, dark, distinguished looking man, energetically swinging his hand, humming a little snatch of a song, her dark eyes sparkling. There wasn’t a person in the room that didn’t immediately hew to the fact that there was just a little something off about her, but at the same time feel a little charmed by her. The blond woman made them feel more at ease. She seemed to look everywhere and nowhere at once, reducing the servants in the room to the status of the furniture, which was actually a relief.

The dark haired man looked like he might actually talk to them, and Lucius was nowhere in sight. While the opinion below stairs was that Lucius had become a bit puffed up with his importance, he had more depth of experience dealing with the mistress, and was the most logical choice to interact with these people.

He glided into the room at last. “May I freshen your drinks?” he asked.

Dru took that moment to strike, and no one, Darla was forced to acknowledge, could match the speed of Drusilla’s strike. She was like a cobra in doll clothes, lunging, game face in place, snapping the neck of a strapping man with thinning red hair, her fangs ripping through his throat as second later, her hand punching into the cavity of his chest to massage his shuddering heart as she drank deeply.

For a moment everyone froze.

The cook, standing in the service entrance thought that the clumsy clod Wilhem had startled the pretty girl and compounded his error by stumbling on her. He shot forward to drag the oaf off of her before he crushed her, horrified at this nearly unbelievable lapse. He had spent hours refreshing the shaved ice chilling the caviar and the latkes. He’d been up since four o’clock the previous morning nursing the pastry dough to its thin, flaky tenderness. The mistress had wandered into the kitchen to seat herself at his worktable and watch him work, asking questions about where he had learned to cook.

A footman standing approximately vertical to his counterpart simply could not reconcile what he was seeing–the girl’s hand was wrist deep in Carl’s chest and great gouts of blood were spilling down her velvet skirt, glistening wetly in the heavy nap of the fabric. His eyes rolled back in his head and he fainted.

The blond woman, a cool, social smile on her lips, turned to Lucius, her face changing into something monstrous. He spun away from her, with one thought. One purpose. He’d left her alone, upstairs, despite his uneasiness about her ‘family’.

She jerked him back, one improbably strong arm cinched around his neck. He tore at her arm, no longer caring that she resembled something female, kicking backward and smashing his elbow into her ribs. He broke free and raced for the stairs.

Darla laughed breathlessly. “Oooh. I like him,” she crooned.

Angelus was draining the cook. He raised his head.

Darla fluttered her hand at him. “He’s mine, darling. Enjoy,” she said, taking off after the majordomo. Her skirts hampered her on the stairs, and she cursed them, knowing full well that if that fool burst in on William, Dru’s hot-tempered boy would eviscerate him. She snarled, baring her fangs. The most promising one of the lot Willow had found, and he had to be a noble fool.

She caught him eight feet from the door and flung him into the opposite room, slamming the door shut behind her, leaning back against it, she let her mortal face return. The man was panting with exertion and fear. Such a lovely smell, she reflected. It went nicely with the cedar chips in the fireplace.

She raised her finger to her lips. “Sssh” she gave him her most charming smile, the one that had lured countless people to their deaths. “Our William doesn’t want to kill her,” she confided, revealing her understanding of what was running through his mind, running her fingers lightly over the tops of her breasts. “He’s just fucking her,” she shrugged. “It’s always the same with them. You’ll see.”

“What are you?” he demanded, his voice shaking.

“Anything I want to be. As is Angelus, and William. Dru? She’s a whirlwind of everything and nothing, but she amuses Angelus,” Darla’s voice was soft, lilting, teasing. “You can be anything you want to be. You can be like us. Like William? Rutting between the soft thighs of a soft, rich, pampered woman. Filling her with his cock. She makes the prettiest sounds when she’s riding his cock, our William’s girl does,” Darla laughed softly, cruelly, enjoying the stunned look on his face.

He was handsome. At least six feet tall, and well made. She wondered what his hair looked like when it was freshly washed and loose around his shoulders. In the careful, neat queue he wore, it looked like antique gold. His eyes were cornflower blue around the enlarged pupil.

“Close your eyes, and you can hear them. You can imagine that it's you making her cry out as you fuck her like an animal.”

He couldn’t believe this elegant woman was saying these things to him, speaking to parts of his mind that recoiled from her words even as his body reacted in ways that filled him with horror.

“You are a monster,” he spat at her.

Darla laughed. “Of coarse,” she agreed, the bell of her skirt swaying as she approached him with a roll of her hips that would do the coarsest of streetwalkers proud. He opened his mouth to shout for his mistress, to give her this one warning, and before the sound left his mouth, she backhanded him with a force that sent him crashing to the ground, blood filling his mouth, and then she was on him, shoving his head to one side and biting into his throat, he gasped, and choked on the blood in his mouth as the world faded to black.

Darla raised her head, licking the deep bite mark in her victim’s neck almost as an afterthought as she listened with the intensity of a hunter.

She could hear William and the girl in the bedroom across the hall. The sound of a glass breaking and a brief struggle. Her lips curled. If that little bitch reached the hall, she was fair game in the hunt, and William knew it. He had better shove his cock in her and fuck her unconscious. Stupid boy. She licked her lips.

Her head swiveled, two more heartbeats, nearer. Prey. She rose, automatically straightening her skirt, smearing the blood from her unconscious, but still living victim on her bodice and strolling boldly into the hall.

Two women, maids by the look of them were in the hall, looking more puzzled than alarmed. “You there,” Darla called out. “Which one of you is my maid?” she demanded.

The two women exchanged baffled glances. “Are English speaking servants too much to ask for?” she complained, reverting to the German patois she had learned in Pennsylvania two hundred years ago to repeat her question. The handsome boy awaiting her seemed to understand her well enough a few minutes ago.

The plumper brown haired girl bobbed a curtsey. “That would be me, Mistress,” she said. “How may I serve you?”

“I’ve spilled wine on my dress,” Darla told her as she approached. “I want you to take care of it before the stain sets.”

“Yes, m’am,” the girl bobbed again.

There was an annoying habit, and Darla didn’t care too much for female minions anyway. Angelus was the one who specified two women. Left to his own devises, he’d turn a harem.

“We heard a sound, m’am, like someone falling,” the other girl said. She had a bit of a bold look about her. Dark hair and eyes, and a full lower lip that looked promising.

“As did I,” she said haughtily. “Why would your majordomo be fumbling around in Master William’s room, I wonder?”

Matilde and Sofia exchanged looks. “Sofia will check, m’am. If you will follow me, we’ll put you to rights so you can rejoin your family.”

Darla tilted her head. “Hmm. You would be Willow’s personal maid, wouldn’t you?” she guessed. Plump, practical farm girls had no appeal for Angelus, and this one appeared to have her wits about her.

“I have that honor,” the girl admitted.

Darla could almost hear William in her head, in one of his ridiculous accents, saying something like, ‘makes me want to heave’. “Now, you are my maid,” she said sweetly, following the girl.

He kissed the corner of her eye, catching one of her tears on the tip of his tongue, savoring it. Her tears, her sweat, the sweet, hot juices that flowed between her legs, each had a different flavor, but there was a quality that each shared with her blood, some underlying, essential element that his body recognized and craved. He felt her warm breath against his chin, and lightly kissed her mouth as well, tasting the apple-y wine and the fruit he had fed her.

“Have a bit more,” he encouraged. “The bread, maybe?” he suggested.

She licked her lower lip, tasting him on her lips, and nodded.

“I missed you desperately,” he said, shooting her a sideways look full of mock despair. “Spent my nights getting pissed and my days hugging my pillow to my chest, no one to fight for the blankets, or too drool on my shoulder in that charming way only you possess.”

His playfulness made her ache. Sometimes, when he was in a good mood, he was so . . . tender with her, and sweet.

He insisted on feeding her.

“You manage the glass, darling,” he said when she sat up a bit more and reached for the plate. “Fainting like that does wonders for a bloke’s ego, but . . .” he glanced down at his semi-erect cock. “Don’t fancy you making a habit of it, least of all tonight. It’s been too bloody long since I’ve . . .” he pinched her cheek. “Hmmm? Seen that pretty blush? Caused it?” he teased, feeding her another bit of bread.

“More wine?” he asked, seeing that she was near the bottom of the glass.

“Are you trying to make me drunk?” she tried to match his mood.

She had no head for liquor, and no stomach for it either which was why he passed on the rich looking latkes. All that sour cream and wine wouldn’t sit well on her stomach, another black mark on the majordomo’s book. Drunk, no. Relax her a bit? Definitely. She was strung as tight as Angelus’ ass.

He took the glass from her and handed her another bit of the bread. “Finish your dinner, love,” he ordered, going back to the table to refill her glass. There wasn’t much more than a half a glass left in the bottle, so he ran his finger through the sour cream and caviar, licking it off and washing it down with the wine in the bottle.

“Drinking from the bottle,” she tsked. “What would Angelus say?”

“Sod him,” he said rudely. “I’m continually amazed at this obsession with a lot of silly rules that have sod all to do with being basically outside of any rule save–“

“I do as I please,” Willow interrupted, doing a horrible imitation of his accent.

He laughed. The accent was crap, but it was funny. He picked up her replenished wine glass. “It’s a fine line you tread. That was definitely a bit of cheek, but amusing, so, when I turn you over my knee, I promise, it will be one of those nice spankings that turn your ass pink and get you all hot to fuck me.”

She heard him, and opened her mouth to say something, and then shut it, sitting bolt upright in the bed. William heard it too, footsteps, pounding up the stairs, followed by the sound of someone falling, hard, across the hall, and a door slamming shut.

She froze, one hand clutching the counterpane to her bare breasts, her shoulders hunching in as she squeezed her eyes shut, visibly cringing. She drew her knees up to her chest.

It had started. The scent of blood reached him and he had to exercise some control to keep his game face from coming on. For a moment he stared at the door. It was Darla up here, hunting. His gaze flicked to Willow, but he realized that her voice was too muffled through two doors for his lover to hear. The cringing was . . . annoying.

“Stop that,” he snapped at her.

She ignored him, rocking, making some God awful mewling sound, like someone was hurting her, which, he felt like telling her, could be arranged if she didn’t get a grip on herself.

“Willow! Stop it, this instant,” he ordered, not bothering with a threat that he would be stuck with following through on. The last time he had done that she had been unable to walk for a month, a month in which he had wondered if he had crippled her.

She lifted her head, staring at him, looking very much like something he’d like to hunt, and then she was hurtling out of the bed for the door.

Without even thinking about it, he got rid of the wine glass to free his hands, diving after her, his hand hitting the door before she could reach the doorknob. Stupid little bitch! What did she think she was doing? There were three vampires in the house on a hunt, and one bloody step out that door would make her fair game. Angelus, Darla, and Dru were fully capable of killing her in a fit of blood lust. Angelus’ stone cold bitch queen would cut her heart out in front of him just because she could. At least Dru would feel kind of bad about it, if she remembered killing Willow. And Angelus? William’s blood ran cold at the things he might take it in his head to do while he was killing her.

“I can’t let it happen, I can’t let it happen,” she moaned, pulling futilely on the doorknob. It was almost funny. He was holding the bloody door shut, and she hadn’t a chance in hell of matching him in a contest of strength.

“Please, please,” she begged. “I’ll do anything you want. Just let me make it stop. I have to make it stop,” she wept, demonstrating a complete lack of any semblance of rational thought, William decided.

She was right over the bleeding bend if she thought that running naked through the house during a hunt was going to do anything but introduce her to a whole new definition of rape and a nasty death. He hadn’t been particularly gentle with her over the years, and she had been the entertainment in more than his bed, but he lacked Angelus and Darla’s twisted genius for sadism, and he knew it. Didn’t bother him a bit. Their little joint project was his lovely Dark Goddess, and while he worshiped the ground Dru trod, he wasn’t completely stupid about her. He’d kill Willow himself, and stake her if she was undead, if she ever went the way of Dru.

Using his shoulder to keep her from opening the door, he wrapped his arm around he waist to drag her away, but she hung onto the doorknob with the tenacity of a terrier. He squeezed her wrist. “Let go,” he hissed at her. He was not relishing the prospect of her causing a scene that Darla would no doubt overhear. Smug, cold bitch that she was, he thought, he would never hear the end of it.

Willow’s hair whipped around her shoulders as she shook her head.

He applied more pressure to her wrist, gradually increasing the pressure while he spoke to her as calmly and rationally as he could manage. Decades of practice with his sire paid off. “Let go, love. Let me take you back to bed. I’ll make it all go away, sweetheart.”

“Liar,” she spat.

Bloody hell. Of course he was lying. “Sweetness, I don’t want to hurt you. Let me take care of you, baby.”

She should have been screaming. Christ, he was hurting her. Changing tactics, he relaxed his grip on her arm and then bore down again, brutally.

A ragged sob was her only concession to the pain.

“Ssshh. Don’t weep so, love. You’ll make yourself sick,” he crooned to her, his lips inches from her ear.

“Please,” she tried again.

Any second now he was going to break her fucking wrist, and even if he had the first clue about where to find a competent doctor to reset it–another lesson learnt evidenced by the crooked index finger on her left hand, and her tendency to limp a bit when she was very tired, the lingering products of two poorly set breaks–there was no question of bringing a doctor here tonight.

“Baby?” he put some steel in to his tone. “I don’t want to hurt you, but I’ll break your arm and call it a good day before you get out of this room. Now,” he spaced each word out, cold and precise, “let go of the God damned door!”

Her hand relaxed just enough for him to yank it off the door, and he scooped her up, carrying her back to bed while she wept uncontrollably, her badly bruised arm lying between them.

“Sshhh,” he rocked her, smoothing her hair with his hands. “Why do you do these crazy things?” he asked, furious with her for the scare she had given him. “Maybe next time, I’ll hunt, and you’ll bloody well watch. You think then you’ll understand when I tell you–“ he heard his voice rising, which meant that he was the only person in the room listening to anything he had to say.

She was making that sound again, that made him want to make her stop. He covered her mouth, pinching her nose shut. If she couldn’t breath, she couldn’t make a sound. “No more,” he told her, his voice clipped. “I’ve had enough, Willow. No more.”

She stared at him, her head jerking back, once, twice. He figured once more, and then he’d let her breath again, but she went still, and then she stopped resisting, her great, tear drenched green eyes, so bright that he almost didn’t mind when she cried, and he hated weeping women, fixed on his. And the brightness started to waver.

Matilde went to the closet to find a gown of a similar cut for the lady to change into. That would be quickest, and would avoid the necessity of changing undergarments and petticoats. “There’s a sapphire blue in cut velvet,” she began.

“My favorite,” Darla purred.

Matilde jumped. She was right behind her, so close that the maid froze, uncertain what to do. The mistress was very particular about what she wryly described as her personal space, and she and Matilde had worked out little signals for such things, like a soft clearing of the throat. She had found it touchingly amusing that the courtesy that the mistress demanded of her maid was one she was careful to return, and once or twice, they had shared a quiet laugh at their odd habits.

Other than falling into the wardrobe, Matilde had nowhere to go, and whatever she might have thought or said about this state of affairs, would never be known. With a sense of uneasy astonishment, she felt herself drawn back against a soft body. A cold, wet, surprisingly rough tongue, not unlike a cat’s, licked her neck, and then the white hot agony of a crushing bite made her arch away. The involuntary movement of her body drawing a low growl, a tightening of the arm around her waist, and a deeper bite.

She had the oddest sensation. It was like someone was pulling the blood out of her veins, and she frowned at the absurdity of it as her life ebbed away.

The first real, full-throated scream of the night came from William’s room when Sofia found Lucius lying on the floor. That wasn’t when she screamed. It was when she shook him and his head lolled back, unsealing the coagulating wound and a spray of blood hit her face. That was when she screamed, a full-throated, desperate scream of abject terror–something Angelus liked to call dessert.

He and Dru had hunted the first floor with ruthless efficiency. Angelus never had any intention of turning so very many humans at once, so it was given that there would be some that would not survive the attack in any condition to be turned, but he thought, as he stalked through the library, pausing to scan the titles on the shelves, was it too much to ask for a bit of entertainment to liven up the proceedings?

At the bone-chilling scream, he abandoned his perusal of the titles with a happy smile. “Dessert!” he caroled cheerfully.

Drusilla had already beaten him to the stairs and was racing up them, her skirts rucked up to her knees as she took the steps two at a time. When he reached the room, the boy on the floor was starting to come around. Angelus figured that Darla had left him there to enjoy later. The girl was on her knees, her arms around Drusilla’s waist as she sobbed into her blood soaked skirt.

For once, Dru looked nonplussed. She cast a baffled look at her sire, and then, like a bird, lifted her head, cocking her head to one side, a sweet smile turning up the corner’s of her lips. “There, there,” she patted the girl on the top of her head. “Ssssh. Don’t weep so,” she said. “You’ll give yourself a tummy ache.”

Angelus frowned at her, and then he caught it too, what was the inspiration for Drusilla’s grossly inappropriate and unwittingly hilarious attempt to comfort the girl they were going to kill one little tasty bit at a time. It was that idiot childe of hers and his softhearted human consort.

For every time that the girl did something that impressed or pleased him and made him feel the tiniest bit envious of William for having the wit to coddle her along, she went and did something so stupid or pointless, that he was moved to incredulity at the boy’s patience.

Not that it actually lasted that long. He went from billing and cooing soothing nonsense in her ears to telling her he’d break her arm in something under a minute.

Since this seemed to work, Drusilla reached down to one of the arms wrapped around her, looked at Angelus, and snapped the girl’s arm.

He felt her heart slowing. Oh, no you don’t, the thought ran through his head. She’d loose her nerve. Her body’s insatiable demand for air wouldn’t let her beat him on this particular playing field. He could feel the muscles in her chest fighting to expand, and he could feel Willow, her lips under his hand, gritting her teeth to resist the pull to try to breath.

“Oh, fuck,” he muttered, relaxing his hold on her face, watching her stare turn into a desperate, outraged, protest. The stupid, pig stubborn, bitch was now holding her breath. He dumped her on the mattress and the second she hit it her mouth opened and she was sucking in air. To cap the evening’s entertainment, one of the maids started screaming her head off, and Willow was covering her ears, trying to block it out.

“Well, this is a lovely evening we’re having,” he said, more to himself than her. He got up, flung open the door and glared across the hall at his sire and Angelus.

“Do you bloody mind? Trying to get a leg over here, and that bitch’s caterwauling isn’t doing anything for me. Stuff a sock in her mouth.”

Angelus leaned against the frame of the bedroom door, his dark eyes traveling over the enraged, naked vampire, looking amused at the display of temper. “Problems, boy?” he drawled. “Need suggestions?”

William turned his head to look back into the bedroom. “Pet? You move an inch from that bed, and I swear I will chain you to the foot of my bed and keep you alive until you’re toothless old hag.”

“I want to die,” she whimpered.

“Now, William,” Angelus mocked. “She wants to die. That’s so sweet. Isn’t it Dru? Miss Willow wants to die,” he waggled his eyebrows at her. “Tell your boy to finish the job and make us a new addition to the family.”

The sobbing chorus of ‘I want to die’ got cut off in mid whimper.

“Oh, so now you change your tune?” William muttered. “It’s all ‘I want to die’ until it sinks into your thick skull that I haven’t wasted eight years of my unlife only to forget to bring you back,” he shouted at her naked back.

“William,” Dru pouted at him reprovingly.

The sniveling maid started winding up again, and Dru slapped her face. “Hush now. We’re talking,” she said as if the maid was the one with the inability to grasp what was going on.

William grinned at her. “Thanks, Princess,” he said.

She graciously inclined her head. “You’re very welcome my darling, delicious, depraved boy,” she returned.

William looked her up and down. She looked glorious, her long hair falling free, a bit of blood forgotten in the corner of her lip, and her dress smeared with blood. She was breathtaking. “Dru, you’re so bleeding gorgeous, you make my eyes hurt to look at you.”

Willow hugged her knees to her chest and wondered if shouting, ‘then go fuck her,’ might push him just hard enough to . . . what? Beat her? She squeezed her eyes shut.

“Well, that’s an attractive look,” Darla drawled as she came down the hall. “I thought you’d be enjoying your reunion with your . . . with the girl,” she waved in the direction of the room. “No? Lover’s quarrel? Little spat over the inevitable, and yet somehow–“

“I get it, Darla,” William said, refraining from telling her to piss off.

“You do well to keep a civil tongue in your head with me, William,” she warned.

“Unless you beg for an uncivil tongue,” he shot back.

“How . . . vulgar,” she sniffed, as if he was beneath her, and technically speaking, he was, by two generations.

“Joining us?” Darla asked.

William looked into the room at the two victims on the floor. The majordomo he had been looking forward to killing slowly was in there, and the bird wasn’t bad looking. Everyone looked fat and happy and well fed. He frowned at Dru. “What happened to saving something for me?” he asked.

She looked guilty. “Oops?” she offered.

He glared at his lover’s huddled figure on the bed. “Given her track record, if I chain her to the bed, she’ll bleed to death chewing through a limb,” he said.

Angelus’ shoulders shook with a silent laugh at this observation. Half the time he wanted to beat William senseless, but the rest of the time he was fairly amusing. Their eyes met, and William gave him a small nod that suggested that he was past the worst of his temper tantrum.

“Well, then,” Darla gave him a little wave. “Ta. Give Willow a kiss goodnight for us,” she said.

Dru blew a kiss at him and he mimed catching it and clutching it to his heart. She paused before blowing another kiss. “Now, this one is for Willow, you insatiable thing,” she cautioned.

“From your lips to–“

“Her luscious pink parts,” Dru inserted.

He winked at her. “Every precious inch, sweetness.”


Chapter Six

“I hate you,” she said, her voice flat, emotionless.

“I’m not overly fond of you at the moment, ducks, so right back at you,” William retorted, his hand on her shoulder forcing her to her back.

He had lit the branch of candles near the bed before he had returned to it. She wiped her snotty nose on the back of her hand, scrubbing at her face like an over-tired child. A man’s voice erupted across the hall. “No, God no,” he yelled hoarsely.

He watched her lips move, soundlessly, his own thinning. He had lit the candles for more light to get a closer look at her wrist, not entirely sure he hadn’t broken it. He gave it his attention, moving her hand this way and that.

“Are they all dead?” she asked in the same toneless voice.

“Does it sound like it?’ he shot back, before relenting. “Your majordomo is wriggling on Darla’s hook, and the little sloe eyed maid? Heard her giggling down the hall. Seemed to find it pretty bloody amusing that you were getting shagged,” he said, knowing that she hated being made fun of just about worse than anything.

Something flickered in her expression, gone too quickly for him to identify. “I don’t think its broken,” he said, “but I don’t think you’re going to be up to scribbling in one of your journals for a few days either.”

Their eyes met and something spiteful flamed to life in hers. “Too bad for you. You always like it better when I use that hand.”

His lip curled. Well, fine, he snarled inwardly. Just fucking fine. We can play that game too. His hand fisted in her hair, dragging her up by it, flinging her face down, her hips across his thighs. The firm white globes of her ass were pushed up higher as he got his legs under him, resting his ass on the backs of his legs. He shoved her hair away from her face, clamping his hand down on the back of her neck when she would have turned her face to the mattress.

He ran his hand over her ass, his fingers rubbing in slow circles, testing the pliancy of her skin. She had the most beautiful skin. Ivory toned, and other than the random bite mark and freckles, unblemished. He pushed her thighs apart. “Keep your legs spread, or by God, I’ll fuck you with every remotely phallic object in this room and keep you from coming until dawn.”

To add emphasis to his threat he roughly thrust three fingers in her cunt, feeling her body stiffen as her vaginal walls resisted the bulk of his fingers stretching her.

He pulled his fingers out of her and started slapping her, working on the tender backs of her thighs, feeling her fighting her own instinct to evade his hand. She bit down on her lower lip to keep from crying out, and he figured that she wasn’t quite done with her rebellion for the evening. Coldly angry with her, he refused to be goaded into hitting her hard. The smacks stung, her thighs were turning an angry red, and each one had to hurt like hell, but he wasn’t going to be goaded into laying into her.

When his hand came down abruptly on her untouched ass, a yelp escaped her.

He smiled at the sound and ran a soothing hand over the backs of her thighs, using his fingertips only, knowing that she would feel the light, teasing touch more powerfully.

He gave her other ass cheek a stinging slap, his fingers stroking her neck, smoothing her hair. Her breast was peeping out between his thigh and her outstretched arm, he moved his hand down to run his fingers over it using the same light, teasing touch, slapping her ass again.

“Gets you all hot when I spank you,” he reminded her, feeling her cunt, warm and damp against his leg.

“I hate you,” she whispered again.

His fingers followed the curve of her ass, dipping into the wetness of her cunt, spreading the outer lips apart. Watching the awareness work on her in her eyes. He chuckled. “Mmmm. I’m feeling you hate me,” he mocked. “I’m feeling your hot pussy, dripping on my leg. You want to rub your cunt against me, don’t you?”

His thumb thrust into her, swirling around, sliding up between the pink cheeks of her ass to press against her tightly puckered anus. Her legs started to clench together, and then she realized what she was doing and moved to separate them.

His thumb pushed into her. She panted, her eyes wild. “Will . . .”

“I love fucking you,” he said as his thumb sank into her.

She rolled her hips against his leg, trying to get some friction on her clitoris, and wailed softly as he fucked her ass, hard, with his thumb, knowing she was getting off on the pain as well as the pleasure his fingers were affording her as they slid between the wet folds of her sex.

Her hands were fisting in the disordered mess they had made of the linens, her face contorted, as she gasped and mewled, and shook under his hands.

“Tell me what you want,” he demanded. “Tell me, and I might just let you have it, pet.”

“Fuck me,” she moaned.

His hand left her neck to slap her ass. “Pay attention! I am fucking you,” he snarled. “Tell me what you want!”

“Aaaaaah,” she wailed as his fingers rubbed her clit.

He slapped her ass again. “Stop that,” she was frantically rubbing herself against his leg. “I’m not going to let you come until you tell me what you want.”

Gritting her teeth as much from the weird mix of pain and pleasure as frustration, she gritted out, “Fuck me, with your cock, in my cunt.”

He pulled his thumb out of her and moved around between her legs, spreading them further apart while she pushed up on her elbows, her legs trembling as she eagerly pushed her hips back.

“Now, that’s what I like,” he said, holding her hips, and kissing her reddened ass, his cock rubbing against her slit. He lined the head of his cock up with her weeping hole, his hands sliding up her hips to cup her small, firm breasts. “Push back on to it, love,” he encouraged.

She pushed back, feeling the head of his cock breach the opening, “Goddess! Will!” she cried out as she felt the walls of her cunt stretch around the cool hardness of his cock, inch by inch as she pushed back.

“Take it all up in you, love,” he grunted, throwing his head back as the added tightness coupled with the heat of her made him gasp for unneeded breath.

She shuddered, twisting her hips as she drove herself back on him, her ass snuggled up against his abdomen. His hands moved back down to her hips, holding her there. “Mmmm. I can feel your cunt quivering around me,” he said, slipping one hand around to find her clit. “I’m going to make you beg. I’m going to make you scream.”

Sofia’s broken arm lay at an unnatural angle. Her shoulders were on the bed, just barely, leaving her head to hang over the side. One of her eyes bulged as the dark haired man thrust his cock deeper into her mouth. Lucius could see just that much of her face between his hairy legs.

His pants were down around his ankles, and he hadn’t bothered to take off anything other than his frock coat, which he had carefully hung up on a padded hanger before handing another padded hanger to the blond woman. He undressed the dark haired girl first, in no hurry about what he was doing. Her blood stained clothes were carefully removed and hung or folded neatly. Together they undressed the woman, caressing her painted body. Her nipples were dark with rouge.

He tried to crawl away and got as far as the door, no longer caring that he was taking the coward’s way out, but they hauled him back and striped the heavy drapes of their corded tie backs, tying his wrists tightly and looping the excess around an unused chandelier hook in the ceiling. Pulling and pulling, until he made himself use his legs to keep from having his arms pulled out of the sockets, and still they pulled, hoisting him higher, until he was on his toes.

The dark haired girl tossed Sofia on the bed like she was a rag doll, making her scream as her broken arm was violently jarred, the displaced bone bulging against her skin.

She tore at the maid’s simple clothing. The light but sturdy dark blue wool that Sofia had been so proud of, shredded like tissue silk, leaving wicked wheals of blood on her skin that the dark haired girl, the mad girl they called Dru, licked away with inhuman growls and purrs. She buried her dark head between Sofia’s thighs, Angelus moving behind her to hold the maid’s ankles apart.

Under other circumstances she might have even enjoyed it, Lucius thought. Bold, sloe eyed Sofia had rubbed herself up against him more than once as he recalled, with an unmistakable invitation in her eyes.

She stared blankly at the ceiling her eyes glazed with shock and pain, whispering the words of a prayer she probably learned in the workhouse.

The blonde woman cut his clothes off with a knife that never touched his skin. “I have some skill with a blade,” she commented, seeming to take pride in her neatness at splitting seems and leaving him unmarked.

Sofia grunted and jerked. Angelus rested one of her bare feet on his shoulder, unfastening her breeches, he took out his cock, stroking it in one hand, guiding it between the legs of the girl sucking the maid’s cunny.

Her name is Dru, he reminded himself. He had them straight in his head now. Dru. Darla. Angelus, and William.

The sound of flesh slapping flesh sounded like a gun crack from across the hall. Dru lifted her head, pink juices staining her face and smirked. “Someone’s been naughty,” she said in a singsong voice. Her fingers rooted in the maid. “Not to worry,” she told her. “William is making it a nice spanking,” Angelus slapped her firm ass and she squealed, pushing back against his invading cock. “Slapping, tickling,” her tongue danced over Sofia’s sex. “So very nice,” her eyes rolled back in her head and she turned her head, biting into Sofia’s soft white thigh.

“Blood and honey,” she pronounced when she lifted her head and watched rivets of blood trickle down the girl’s thigh. She pouted. “Hard, Daddy,” she said in a complaining tone.

Darla grabbed his chin, brushing her naked body against his; the tips of her breasts were startlingly cold against his chest. Her hand rested against his thigh, squeezing. “Just when I start wondering why everyone thinks that girl is so smart, she surprises me,” Darla said.

He wasn’t sure who she was referring to so he kept his mouth shut while she prodded and squeezed and explored his body like he was a horse at an auction, all the while, her body brushed against his, the coldness of her skin confusing him. She was freezing.

She stood behind him, her hand stroking his cock to hardness. “You’re an impressive specimen,” she breathed in his ear.

“Would madam care to see my teeth?” he said coldly.

She kicked his feet apart sending a jolt of tearing pain through his shoulders even as she cupped his sack, working his cock in a relentless way. I won’t, I won’t I won’t, he chanted in his head. “What’s your name again?” she demanded.

He refused to answer.

She squeezed his balls hard, making him scream. “Your name!”

He shuddered as she cupped him gently, her cold touch almost soothing to his abused flesh. “Lucius,” he groaned.

“Lucius,” his name rolled off her tongue sensuously. She kissed his back, his ribs, one of his nipples, sucking on it lightly while her hands continued to work his rod and sack, her thumb swirling around the head, making his cock jerk in her hands.

“Lucius,” she murmured. “Are you listening?” she asked, cocking her head to one side, cutting her amused gray eyes to the closed bedroom door across the hall.

He glared at her. He was listening now. Flinching at the sound that came at regular intervals. Slap, slap, slap.

He found himself listening for something else, and not hearing it. She wasn’t crying or screaming. It amazed him. For a moment it occurred to him that there was some small victory to wring out of this.

Darla smiled as she saw his expression change. Oh, he was going to be fun to break, she gloated to herself, meeting his eyes. He relaxed into her hands, no longer fighting her.

His lip curled. “I usually pay for this,” he said. “What’s the going rate?”

She jerked back, eyes narrowing. “Angelus? Dru’s not paying any attention to you,” she pointed out. The girl was far to busy finger painting bloody patterns on the maid’s stomach. “I think it’s time for Lucius to find out what the going rate is,” she sneered.

Angelus looked over at her, and gave Dru another smack on the ass, pulling out of her with a sickening plop, his breeches barely riding his hips as he strolled over, probably intent on beating him to death for the insult to the ‘lady’.

He circled around him, pausing behind him while Lucius’ back tensed for the blow that was sure to fall. He was startled to feel the man’s hands on his buttocks, roughly pushing them apart. “Oh, no,” he moaned, panicked by the idea of what he might do to him. “God, no!” he yelled frantically.

Darla smiled coldly at him. Lucius felt the broad head of Angelus’ cock press against him, his hands on his spread open ass keeping him from moving more than a few inches while the strain on his shoulders became nearly unbearable.

“Try to relax, dear. It always hurts the first time,” she mocked, picking the scraps of his clothes up off the floor. The mistress’ black velvet button fell unheeded by her from the pocket of his ruined waistcoat. Lucius watched it roll across the floor until it was almost hidden from view by the bed hangings, and then all thought, all breath was driven out of his body as the man rammed his cock into his ass. His head fell back, his face forming a mask of agony as Angelus grappled and grunted, hips bucking fiercely as he fought to bury his cock in him.

“Almost,” Angelus grunted, “makes me,” he started thrusting harder now that Lucius torn passage began to ease becoming less hard to penetrate, but deliciously vise-like, “believe,” his large hand grasped Lucius’ cock, “in God,” he said as he raped him

A wild, hopeless, animalistic sound reached the servant. Tears spilled down his face as he realized that it came from his throat.

“Relax, boy,” Angelus said.

From across the hall, there was a new sound, no more sounds of a beating, but a woman’s voice, moaning, with words he was grateful not to understand in between. But he wasn’t to be spared that for very long.

Darla rooted around in a drawer and produced what appeared to be a riding crop that she slapped against her hand. “Not being able to speak English is a draw back,” she commented, strolling back over. The tip of the riding crop lashed the head of his cock. Compared to the thick cock in his ass, it didn’t register, and she brought the crop down on his chest, making him cry out again.

“Don’t ignore me when I’m talking,” she said with real menace. “We are going to have lessons in English, my boy,” she said.

“Tell him about buggering, Darla,” Angelus chortled. He kissed Lucius’ sweaty throat. “Tell him that I’m not going to stop fucking him until he comes, and I’m not going to come first,” he said.

Darla cocked her head to one side. “You do realize that you are speaking in German?”

“That’s right,” he said. “So, you better start thinking of something that’s going to make you spill,” he counseled Lucius, “I can fuck something this tight for hours,” he slammed into Lucius again.

Dru’s victim had passed out, and she prodded her a couple of times and sat up, pouting. “No toys for Dru,” she whined, casting a longing look across the hall.

“Daddy will share, my darling,” Angelus said to distract her. Contrary to William’s thinking on the subject, Angelus had no real desire to see Willow turned yet, and Dru was a little dangerous after so much anticipation.

She clapped her hands delightedly, gracefully gliding off the bed. “May I Grandmummy?” she politely asked for Darla’s permission

“Go ahead, Dru,” Darla agreed.

To Lucius’ amazement, this graceful, delicate, swanlike girl hooked her arms under his knees and pulled him off his feet. For the first time since he had been tied up the ache in his shoulders disappeared as the tension was relieved, and it looked completely effortless on her part.

“Mmmm, nice, Dru,” Angelus purred, appreciating the change in the angle of penetration.

She stared into his eyes. “Be with me,” she murmured softly, her head moving sinuously. “Be in my eyes,” she invited. “Be in me,” she breathed.

“What do you see, Princess?” Angelus asked.

Dru gave him a conspiratorial smile. “Grandmummy knows. She’s ever so clever,” she said. “No, cream for my tea,” she said, part of some dialog only she was party to. She leaned forward and swirled her tongue around the head of Lucius’ cock. He bucked and writhed in her grasp.

Across the hall, Willow was hoarsely begging William to fuck her. Darla smacked the riding crop over the boy’s ribs, providing a mocking translation, while he babbled a litany of pleas for release, bucking up into Dru’s mouth until he came with a violent shudder.

Angelus pumped himself into him once, twice, and came with a heartfelt groan on the third stroke. Dru dropped him with an air of ‘my work is done’ and licked her lips while Angelus steadied the boy until he was sort of on his feet, trails of blood and seminal fluids running down his legs.

Angelus slapped his ass. “You’re a good fuck,” he told him, biting into his shoulder.

Dru let her face change. “Treats for everyone, Grandmum,” she declared, biting into his hip. Darla caressed his lax face, turning his head to the unmarked side and biting in.

Lucius had no idea, no real understanding, of the passing of time as he watched the dark haired man–Angelus–fuck Sofia’s mouth. She had a look in that one eye, almost like she was startled, or that, perhaps there was something she wanted to say.

The two women and been rummaging through William’s things, talking and laughing at him in the way woman laugh about their men. Age was relative. Drusilla looked and acted the youngest of them, a girl barely out of the schoolroom by the look of her, but from the way they spoke, it was clear that William was the youngest. The conversation drifted in and out of German. Angelus wanted them to speak in German.

He argued with Darla about that. “Don’t teach them English,” he said, again in German. “We speak German with the minions, and keep English for family business.”

Admiration for this way of thinking flashed briefly in Lucius’ mind.

“Can you believe all the things that boy has brought for her?” Darla asked. “He can’t remember to have his stupid boots polished, but he buys sheet music for her? And–“ she started laughing as she held up a seed pearl choker. “Anniversary present? Nothing but jewelry says thank you for being my whore for, what is it, nine years?”

“Eight,” Angelus corrected. “Breath through your nose,” he instructed Sofia.

Her stare remained unblinking, and desperate, pleading with Lucius, who was having a hard time thinking anything other than better you than me.

It had been quiet across the hall for some time now. The memory of those ardent, anguished, wanton moans and screams made Lucius squeeze his eyes closed as if he could crush his unwanted knowledge. But, when he closed his eyes, he got a mental picture of his mistress, sitting in the red leather chair near the fire in the library, her head thrown back in ecstasy her skirts pushed up past her knees, her legs over the arms of the chair while William fucked her. And she turned her head to see him watching her, smiling in her gentle way, unperturbed by her dishabille, saying “No cream for my tea.”

That evil black haired bitch had done something to him to put such a picture in his head.

“Grandmummy,” Dru wagged her finger at her. “Mustn’t call my William’s poppet bad names. She spins and dances in my head, singing lovely songs, all dressed in white like a sweet, darling dolly, with lace, and ruffles, and pink ribbons in her hair.” She smacked her forehead repeatedly with the heel of her hand as Angelus grunted his way to a climax. His semen spilled from Sophia’s gaping mouth.

“Take a break, slut,” Angelus sneered at her. “You’ll be on your knees sucking cock for a week the next time you fail to swallow every drop.”

She gulped, rolled her head to one side, and vomited weakly on the carpet, making Angelus jump back in disgust. That was almost funny, and Lucius found himself wanting to laugh.

The bedroom door across the hall opened and William emerged. He had pulled his breaches on and a linen shirt that he hadn’t bothered to button. He strolled in, looking around, his thumbs hooked in the waist of his pants. “All I have to say is, I’m not picking up after you,” he warned them.

Angelus smirked, his mood restored. “It’s your room,” he pointed out.

“So? I don’t have to stay in it,” he reasoned, stepping around the slimy mess on the floor under Lucius to go to the dresser. He flipped open a silver box, removed a cheroot and flicked his fingernail over a match to light it, taking a deep drag. He turned around to lean against the dresser, running his hand over his bare chest, the picture of post-coital satisfaction.

“You know what you are?” Darla asked him.

“A good looking bloke?” he guessed.

“A walking cliché,” she said, nastily. “What? No chocolate,” she dangled the choker. “No armful of roses?”

He snapped his fingers. “Chocolate!” He frowned, looking around the unfamiliar room. “The thing about killing everyone after they have unpacked your luggage is that no one is alive to tell you where they stowed your stuff. Where the hell would someone put a box of chocolates?”

He raised an eyebrow at Darla. “You nosey bints have been pawing through my things, haven’t you? Seen a box of chocolates? Its in a tin, about,” he spread his hands apart, “this big. Cadbury,” he specified.

“We were in Vienna and you bought nasty mass produced chocolate?” Darla looked at him like he had grown a second head.

“She likes the Cadbury, and it’s the thought that counts,” he retorted.

“No, its not,” Darla assured him. “And, pearls? I thought pearls were for debutantes and matrons?”

“Where do you think I got it?” he asked, rolling his eyes. “Got to start killing women with better jewelry. Emeralds?” his eyes narrowed on Darla.

She sniffed, but gave him a grudging nod. “Better,” she conceded.

Dru drifted towards the door, but William intercepted her, slinging his arm around her waist and burying his face in her hair. She stroked his hair and face. “Kitten’s in a briar, gnawing and biting. Ribbons don’t break,” she said sagely.

William’s facility for deciphering Dru’s more obscure rambles was unmatched. “Kitten’s sleeping, warm and cozy,” he assured her.

“And safe?”

He kissed the palm of her hand tenderly, grateful again to her for even caring. Angelus and Darla never cared beyond how useful his lover was. “Safe as houses, my black beauty.”

Her forehead came to rest against his. She seemed utterly unselfconscious about her nudity. “And we must always keep her safe. Miss Edith, and Miss Willow, for they are the most favorite to come and have tea and cakes with Princess.”

William made as if he was going to bite her nose, and Dru giggled and swirled around him. “I feel alive,” she declared, spinning until Angelus caught her to him and she cuddled against his chest.

Darla found the box of chocolates on the upper shelf of the wardrobe. “Cadbury,” she called out her find.

“Oooh, you’re a peach,” William declared. She tossed the box to him. “Got a bit more smoothing over to do,” he admitted.

“Go with the pearls,” Angelus suggested, refraining from mocking the notion of making up with a mortal girl. Willow had passed the bounds of ordinary mortals a long time ago, and she was going to be one of them.

William’s comment was calculated. It was a toe dipped into the bloodied waters to determine if blood lust had been sufficiently slaked to consider Willow off the menu, if she did leave her room. Not that he was planning to wake her up for a tour of a house full of dead bodies, but just in case she took a flier for the door. She kept him on his toes.

“The pearls?” William frowned. “Chocolate’s the thing. She’ll eat it. The pearls? She’s just as likely to tell me to do something that is, physically impossible, or just damned uncomfortable, to myself, with them,” he predicted. “She’s gotten a bit a cheek on her over the last two months. I blame you,” he told Angelus.

“You haven’t rubbed off on her in the slightest,” Darla offered slyly.

He shrugged. “Got the fists and fangs to back it up, which my lovely, sadly, lacks at the moment.”

Dru’s fingers circled one of Angelus’ nipples as he played with her hair. She smiled. “I have such a lovely idea,” she said with a pretty pout.

“What’s that, Dru?” Angelus asked.

“Christmas Eve,” she said. “We can have cakes and presents and pretty sparkles, and my William can make Miss Willow no more,” she said, clapping her hands together, “and then” she said breathlessly, “on Christmas Day, she will be with us . . . like the Christ child. Our own sweet, Christmas-born childe.”

The three other vampires stared at her, bemused at the imagery from the former novice.

“Sometimes I think that the church put as much of the bizarre in her head as either of you,” William broke the silence.

“Hmmm. Without the disturbing religious imagery, it isn’t a bad idea,” Darla conceded.

Angelus grinned. “You just want to avoid a repeat of the Christmas Eve caroler massacre,” he accused. It was one of William’s more spectacular bloodlettings, and Angelus had let himself be talked into joining in.

“Should have gotten a bloody medal for that. Public service, we were performing. They were butchering the Carol of the Bells, and I rather fancy that one.”

Dru started humming it.

“Oh, hell,” Angelus glared at him. “Now look what you’ve started. You can just take yourself off and cuddle up with your bed warmer, but we’ll be listening to this for hours.”

William just laughed and looked around. “So? What’s good to eat? I’m feeling a bit peckish.” he eyed the boy, who was sporting several different sets of bite marks. “I think I’ll pass on the mobile, if no one objects, and have a spot of . . . this sorry leftover,” he gestured to the girl.

Being William, he didn’t bother to wait for anyone to object.


Chapter Seven

Willow wasn’t asleep. As soon as he left the bed, she woke up, but she lay without moving, hearing the muffled sound of voices. The candles had been extinguished, probably after she fell asleep, held against William’s chest, his hand gently stroking her back.

She wanted to get out of the bed, and she desperately wanted a bath. The house had hot and cold running water, water closets, and two baths on the second floor. One was a part of the master bedroom suite that Darla and Angelus would share. The other bathroom was between her room and Drusilla’s, with access from either bedroom.

William had warned her against leaving the bed earlier, and she wasn’t sure if that injunction still held. He could be forgetful about things like that. When he said she walked a fine line, the sarcastic voice in her head responded with an unladylike snort. She was sore and sticky and the room reeked of sex, and sweat, making her nose wrinkle. She was also hungry and thirsty. Painfully so. The ache in the pit of her stomach was competing with the ache between her legs.

She hoped her stomach would win. The ache between her legs reminded her of what they had done. Not that it was anything new, or different, or worse than anything else, it was just . . . she’d been alone for a while. Scared alone, and lonely alone, and no sex alone. Not even masturbation, though she had been tempted more than once to give herself an orgasm, especially on those nights that she couldn’t sleep and she knew that an orgasm would allow her to relax enough to sleep.

There was a little game William used to play with her. It had been a while since they had done it. Basically, he would talk her through an orgasm. It always started the same way. He’d say in a teasing, tempting tone of voice, ‘touch your lips’ and after the first few times, it always made her wet. She frowned in the dark, bringing her fingers to her dry lips, trying to remember it.

There are always happier things to remember . . .

Touch your lips, her lips formed the words silently.

‘Lick your fingertips,’ her tongue was like cotton wool.

She smoothed her fingers over the pillowcase, playing with the starchy Battenburg lace. She thought if she pulled her knees up the ache in her stomach might subside a little. She tried it, and gasped.

The muscles in her thighs were still mushy. The weakness was connected to the way they had fucked . . .

She had been on her knees, trying to keep her shoulders off the bed because she had no leverage without them, and he was barely moving at all, except to run his hands over her skin and play with her clit until she was on the verge of an orgasm, and then he’d stop, which had only made her try harder, to make herself come, or to make him let her come, or to make him stop fucking her like it was a contest.

She’d used her body. Fucking him as hard as she could, tightening her abdominal muscles to squeeze his cock. She had begged. She had vocalized every sensation until she was hoarse and lightheaded from lack of breath. She had even cried towards the end when she felt herself tiring on that precipice of arousal and need that he kept pushing her towards and then backing off from. She was starting to wonder if she could have an orgasm at that point. She was just so tired.

Then, finally, he had pushed her head down into the mattress, holding her there with his hand on the back of her neck, fucking her hard, his finger’s pinching and twisting her clit until she came, soundlessly, tears rolling down her face.

Then he had been tender and gentle, kissing her tears away, whispering in her ear how he had missed her and how well she had done, and how proud he was of her and how beautiful she was, until she fell asleep.

The bedroom door opened and stayed that way for a moment before he closed it. She heard him moving around in the room, but she kept her eyes closed. Something landed on the bed with a thump near her back, followed by his voice.

“I know that you are awake. Don’t pretend.”

He sounded edgy, he was pacing. She could hear him. “How long have you been awake?” he asked.

She didn’t dare lie. She opened her eyes. “Since you got up.”

He sat on the bed beside her, his fingers drumming on something metal, and hollow, near her back. She gingerly rolled over, rubbing her stomach.

“Were you listening to us?” he asked. “You don’t lie very well, so don’t even think about it, just answer me.”

She was confused and more than a little frightened. “No,” she said. “Is anyone still–“ her throat refused to cooperate, clamping shut.

He grabbed her shoulders, yanking her upright, shaking her. “Tell me the truth Willow before I get angry and I do something that I’ll regret later.”

“I was just lying here, thinking, and I wasn’t eavesdropping on you,” she got out.

“Thinking about what?”

“Lots of things, like . . . being alone, and then not, and us, and,” she knew wasn’t making sense. “And, when you’d say, ‘touch your lips’ and–“

“What?” she was babbling, and strangely, since he could usually make out most of Dru’s rambles, Willow’s were harder to unravel.

She felt the color creeping up in her cheeks, and damned herself for being so easily flustered by him. “You used to do this thing,” she mumbled, “talking to me, telling me how to touch myself.”

He stared at her for a moment, trying to figure out what she was talking about, replaying her words in his head. A slow grin appeared. “Ohhhh. Touch your lips,” his hands relaxed on her shoulders. “That was a fun game.”

When he realized that she was awake, he had wondered how much she might have overheard. There was no telling how she would react to a family conference about turning her. She might expect it, but she sometimes had a hard time coming to terms with the harsher aspects of the reality of her existence, so he rather doubted it. He was afraid that it would set her back on the road of finding some way to kill herself, armed with a hell of a lot more useful knowledge about how to kill herself in ways that would make it impossible for her to be brought back.

He had kind of made a joke of it earlier, but the truth was that he had missed her desperately and spent most of his evenings getting pissed, and his long, dull days all too mindful of the huge space she occupied in his un-life. Without Willow to talk to and play with, he was stuck with Darla, Angelus and Dru. He had a childe-sire bond with Dru, but with Dru, Angelus came first and last, and he was wedged in on the margins.

He didn’t resent her for it. She could barely cope, and coddling him was never in the cards. Angelus was another story. He had resentments that had mated and spawned antipathy, bitterness, and bile where Angelus was concerned. Which had sod all to do with the fact that he’d follow him to hell and back. Angelus and Darla weren’t half bad, about half the time, but their spats tended to have a lot of spill over, and he had always been able to take himself off to shag his girl, or take her out for a few hours, just the two of them, to get away from it.

He missed her voice, and her warm, tight little body curled up next to him, and little things, like brushing her hair, or watching her take a bath. He had missed eavesdropping on her tea parties with Dru. He even missed Angelus doing his Pygmalion thing with her, talking about books–which was mostly Angelus telling her what she was supposed to think.

She just satisfied some unnamed craving in him, like nothing and no one else.

And he could have un-lived just fine without knowing that, thank you very much, Angelus. If it hadn’t been for that prick’s interference, he might not be sitting here right now worrying about the stupid things she could do to herself if he didn’t turn her before she realized that was on the schedule for Christmas, after the opening of presents and the wassail. Dru would, he knew, insist on the wassail. Maybe a plum pudding, too.

Christmas? It was nine months away. He couldn’t wait that long.

“Will?” her voice was so small and soft. “Are you still mad at me?”

There was a tremor in her voice that made him feel sad. “No, baby,” he sighed. “I hate sodding trains. All that noise, and then the quiet. Puts me on edge is all,” he scooted her closer, so he could hold her and kiss her.

Her lips were puffy and dry. He lifted his head. “You must be thirsty,” he said.

“And hungry,” she nodded, her cheek rubbing his chest. “And,” her nose wrinkled, “stinky.”

He laughed at that. “Want I should draw a bath for you? Find you some decent food and something to drink?”

“I can manage the bath part,” she said. “You don’t have to do things for me,” she said awkwardly. She knew he took a lot of crap from Angelus about spoiling her.

“I like doing things for you, Willow, my Willow,” he said, kissing her forehead. “Go on, make yourself smell like a bower for me, and I’ll find some food for you,” he picked up the box of chocolates. “Got some chocolate for you. Cadbury? You like those, right? Darla said--”

She turned in his arms, flinging hers around his neck and hugging him, hard. “My favorite,” she said tightly, passionately, sounding like she was going to start crying again.

“All right, then,” he was more moved than he’d admit under torture. “Anything for my girl,” he said, rubbing her back when she didn’t let go of him. “Sweetheart?” he could feel her trembling.

She pressed her lips against his throat, which given that her lips were kind of dry, actually felt kind of unpleasant, but he kept that to himself and hugged her back. She practically crawled up his body to get closer.

“I didn’t mean it when I said that I hated you,” she whispered.

He slid his arms up between their bodies, forcing her to relax her death grip on him so he could meet her eyes. “You meant it when you said. You always do, and,” he shrugged. “That’s all it is. No more tears and sadness tonight?” his eyebrows lifted questioningly. “Rather have you knee me in the balls than start with the crying again.”

She went from puzzled, to curious, to amused in a matter of seconds. “I’ll keep that in mind,” she told him.

He gave her neck a light squeeze. “You don’t leave this room without me. I’ll tell you when that changes.”

Her gaze drifted downward. “You’ll forget,” she predicted with a small smile.

She was probably right about that. “Go,” he shoo’d her, making her shriek when he thoughtlessly slapped her sore ass.

He winced inwardly. Oops. She scampered into what he assumed was a bathroom and he got to up again to go look for food.

The unholy trinity were back at it with the boy who was getting what was, given the mess on the floor, a second or third buggering from Angelus. Poor Darla. Her boy would fuck anything moving, and sometimes not moving. He wouldn’t be surprised if the maid he left dead wasn’t violated some more before she woke. Angelus had some kink about wanting to fuck ‘em as they were awakening. Sick bastard.

He quietly slipped past the door and down the stairs, getting a look at the carnage. Someone had been a messy eater. The dining room looked like an abattoir. William mentally put a quid on Dru and started looking for a kitchen, getting the lay of the ground floor in the process. There was a nice, cozy library across the hall from the living room. He sniffed, processing the odors in the room. It was a given that Willow spent a good bit of time in here, but her scent was strongest around a red leather chair that looked very much like something Angelus would consider his throne and at the far end of the room where there was nothing but shelves of books.

He sniffed again. Her scent was stronger . . . on the other side of the bookcase? How did that work? He walked out to the hall and tried the next door. Smallish room with a curving wall on the library side. Behind the curving wall, which didn’t quite meet the outer wall, there was a nice little bar and a humidor. His thoughtful darling had made sure he had a room to smoke in, maybe lounge in one of the comfortable looking armchairs, and . . .

He reentered the alcove and reconsidered its dimensions before tapping on the wainscoted wall to his left. Hollow as a drum. Interesting. He’d have to do some more exploring, he decided. Tomorrow. For the time being Willow was stuck in her room. It wouldn’t do to have her wandering around with a lot of hungry fledges around until they got the pecking order drilled into them.

He found the kitchen and started rummaging around for food, of which there was plenty. He loaded a plate with an apple, cheese, bread, and what looked like a custard tart with blackberries. He found two more bottles of the wine she had been drinking earlier in the icebox and took one. With these provisions, he headed up the back stairs where the buggering was still in progress judging from the pained grunts and groans he was hearing.

And, oh, my, it wasn’t just the footman getting buggered. Darla’s snooping had uncovered a marble dildo he had picked up in Vienna. It wasn’t particularly large or long. He’d gotten to use in Willow’s ass since she got so hot when he fingered her ass, but she’d never really adjusted to him fucking her there. It was just too painful for her. A little pain and domination got her hot, too much and the discomfort distracted her. Now it was getting christened in Mr. High and Mighty. William smirked to himself, in complete charity with Darla at the moment, despite her appropriation of his toys. Tucking the wine bottle under his arm, he quietly let himself in, making sure to lock the door before he took his finds into the bathroom.

He was a little disappointed to find that she had already washed her hair. Probably over the side of the tub before she let it fill. She had a white towel wrapped around her wet hair and was soaking, one arm on the lip of the tub, the other, the one he had nearly broken, soaking in the water. The glass was all smashed to hell from when he had dropped it and he had forgotten to uncork the wine. He swore softly under his breath, not wanting to disturb her.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“No cork screw and I broke the wine glass,” he told her. “S’not a problem. Just relax,” he said.

“Lucius–“ she stopped. “There is one on the mantel, I think,” she said, “And I can drink from a bottle.”

‘Lucius’ William mimicked in his head, going back to the bedroom and finding a piece of the broken wineglass when he stepped on it. He ignored the minor injury and located the corkscrew in a little metal frame on the mantel. He went back to the bathroom and uncorked the bottle.

“Room enough for me, in there?” he asked.

“I guess so,” she moved around until she was in the middle of the tub and he got in, sitting against the higher end of the tub. “Running hot and cold water?” he guessed. “Darla will be pleased. She carried on something fierce about Prague. The back of beyond, and so forth,” he elaborated as she sorted through a basket of soaps that had a home on a small ledge in the wall.

“This one is nice,” she said. “Sandalwood,” She held it out for him to smell.

His hand closed on her wrist to tug her back against his chest, and her lips clamped shut in a grimace before he realized the he was pulling on her sore wrist. He immediately dropped it.

She blinked a couple of times, taking a few quick breaths as she soaped a washcloth.

“Stop that,” he jerked his chin back in a ‘come here’ gesture. He opened his legs to make room for her, “lay back against me,” he said when she moved in a confused way trying to wash him. “I just want a nice coze, hmm? Got your wine, and there’s food, behind me on the sink. Though, I don’t suppose I can reach it, can I? Well, bloody hell,” he cursed.

“I’m thirsty,” she reminded him, settling against him.

He wrapped one arm around her, and settled one of his legs so it was over her thigh, his foot braced on the bottom of the tub near hers to keep from putting his weight on her leg. He tilted the bottle for her, mindful of her sore wrist, and his arm slipped on the wet porcelain, making the bottle hit her front teeth, sloshing wine down her chin.

She started giggling, and then moaned. “Oooh, don’t make me laugh. It makes my tummy hurt,” she said, moving his arm and pressing his hand into her tender abdomen.

He massaged her sore abdomen, glad that she was amused. “That isn’t hunger,” he told her dryly. “That’s from you trying to squeeze my cock right off.”

“I think I can manage the bottle,” she said diplomatically, trying not to feel embarrassed, which was sort of like trying to ignore the elephant in the room. She drank from the bottle greedily, her parched mouth and throat soothed by the coolness of the wine.

“Gently. Slow down, love,” he counseled. It was never the same, the way she took things. Right now she was like a child, refusing to look or listen at something bad. Her voice was still a little high, a little edgy.

“Thirsty,” she paused to say, casting him a sideways look. “Did you like it?”

He smirked. “You have to ask? You’re a marvel. You blush like a virgin, and shag like a Goddess. I loved it.”

“But . . . not so much,” she said quietly. “Not enough to . . .”

“Come?” he prompted. “Is that what you are saying? I told you, love, I’ve been in a bit of a mood. Settle down, and drink your wine, and let me hold you,” he kissed the side of her head.

Lucius was still alive when William got up near noon the next day. Barely alive. The brown haired Englishman hardly spared him a glance as he strolled into his room, muttering to himself in English.

He stripped off the half buttoned breeches and unbuttoned shirt, unconcerned with his nakedness. Lucius couldn’t stir himself to protest. In a bizarre way, it made sense to him that there would be this one thing that he would share with his mistress. Her lover, and this man, this monster, was unmistakably, her lover, would rape him with the same organ that had made her cry out in supplication and pleasure.

He understood it.

But the Englishman was intent on nothing more than changing his clothes. The soiled clothing from the finished day was casually heaped on the ground. He donned a fresh blouse, stepped into a pair of long trousers, pulled on a pair of dark socks. He brushed his hair hastily, pulling on it without regard for anything but getting the worst of the disorder under control. When he was satisfied with this he turned away from the wardrobe, pausing when something caught his eye.

It was the pearl choker. He picked it up where it lay, forgotten on the floor, and he walked over to a chair, pulling it away from the wall, turning the back of the chair to Lucius and straddling it like a common day laborer at a pub. He let the choker slip through his fingers, rubbing the small, perfectly matched pearls bracketed at intervals by thin white gold bars that caught what little bit of light had filtered in to let Lucius know that it was now day.

For hours now, he had waited for that door to open. He wanted to see her face. He wanted to know what all of this meant to her. He was past wanting to hurt her, or wanting to ask her. He just wanted to see her face, see the meaning of it in her sad and lovely eyes.

The Englishman cocked his head to one side. He couldn’t read minds, but he could read faces and the direction eyes drifted in. “It will never happen,” he told him, speaking German now. “She thinks that what she imagines is so much worse than what it actually is, but . . . that isn’t true. So, she’ll stay behind that door until I say otherwise. And all of this,” he gestured around him, “Will be put to rights. It’s easier for her,” his gaze drifted down to the soiled carpet. “And, that’s one thing I can give her.”

He held up the pearl chocker, admiring the way the light played on this. “I killed an eighteen year old girl for this because I thought it might suit her. The things that I would do to you, if you ever fail me or mine, will pale in comparison to what you understand about suffering. That includes her. Especially her. If you remember nothing else, remember that,” he said.

Lucius wasn’t sure why he was telling him these things unless he meant him to live. There was one thing he had to know, because it might explain everything.

“Is she,” his voice was thin, raspy, and speaking hurt. His throat was raw. He tried again, “Is she what you are?”

His smile was almost indulgent. “Vampire, is what I am, and no, she’s as mortal as you are.”

Knowing it hurt more than he could ever have imagined. For him, this was one night, for her, nights beyond counting.

William watched the tears form and fall. More weeping. What? Did he have some kind of sign hanging around his neck inviting people to weep down his shirtfront? At least Lucius was neat about it. They were neat, manly tears. No sobbing. William decided to let it go for now, and leaned back, turning his head until he heard the satisfying crack of vertebrae realigning.

“Well, now, we do have a spot of business,” he told him. “You’d be the man in charge of seeing to things around here, right? What’s she been taking for breakfast?” he asked.

Lucius frowned at him, watching him play with the choker and wait with what appeared to be growing impatience.

“Were you following along? Because I won’t stand for her being neglected because you can’t get her breakfast tray. What do I bring her?”

Lucius gave himself a mental shake. “Dry toast, fruit, and tea,” he said hoarsely.

He gestured for Lucius to continue. “Luncheon, supper, go on, man. She’s going to go on eating after breakfast.”

He found himself reciting her routine after a few more sharp questions, providing details about her preferences and needs. It wasn’t an exhaustive recitation. She was fairly undemanding, but he found that he wanted her to have this. To have someone who at least knew that a sprig of fresh basil with her supper chased away her headaches from reading, and that she loved cut flowers, but wasn’t picky about the kind of flowers. Violets and forget-me-nots, and heather pleased her as much as roses and orchids, that she liked her tea, very sweet, lukewarm, and to steep a clove with the tealeaves, because she liked the scent.

“I’m impressed,” William told him when he was finished. “You noticed all these things. I’ve had her for eight years, and . . .” he sighed. “I suppose it’s a matter of paying attention. She likes chocolate,” he told him. “You missed that. It’s probably her favorite thing after a good book, and–“ he grinned boyishly, “other things,” he said with unmistakable meaning.

He rose, holding up the pearls. “What do you think? I know they’d look lovely on her. She has such a pretty throat. Do you think they suit? Do you think she’ll like them?”

“Y-yes, Both,” he managed to say.

William pocketed the pearls, walking over to where the strong cord securing Lucius’ wrists was tied. He unknotted it and let the line play out slowly. He had been standing on his toes so long that Lucius didn’t realize how much the ropes had been supporting him and he collapsed in the floor, too exhausted to care what he was lying in.

William did care, and gave him a hard kick to get him to crawl a few feet away. “Just changed clothes, so, I’ll be neat about it,” he said, shoving Lucius head to one side. His fangs bit deep and hard and he drew the last of this life out of him in hungry draughts. Dying, his heart shuddering, Lucius watched as William tore open his wrist.

“This makes you mine,” he said. “Like her, only considerably less important to me,” he said as his blood dribbled over Lucius’s lips.

The taste in his dry mouth was indescribable. His tongue weakly lapped at his bloodied mouth. It was the last thing he remembered.


Chapter Eight

It was dusk when Dru joined them in bed, sliding between the sheets, facing Willow who was sleeping on her side, William’s arm holding her against his side.

He had brought Willow breakfast and a few books to read before going off on his own to explore the house. It took him three hours and he had been about to resort to brute force, but he figured out the little trick with library wall. The end section of shelves was on a pivot and all it took was to disengage the catch to swing it open to reveal a curving stair down.

The chamber below was probably the original wine cellar. It wasn’t a cozy setting, but it was cool and dry. He found several lanterns, candles, and few packing crates stacked on their sides to serve as shelves for books, or storage for the expected assortment of stinky herbs.

It was a private study. He wasn’t sure what he expected. Maybe an exit strategy. A store laid in for when she bolted for good, because the next time Willow ran, he was certain that she would have learned from her mistakes in the past and be ready, with money that wouldn’t be missed until far too late, documents, and plans.

She’d gotten away from him once for six weeks in London only to be found in a lunatic ward, ironic given that he and Dru had sprung her, with Dru claiming to be her sister while William claimed to be Dru’s husband. Very put upon, what with the insanity clearly running in the family. The daft bint unwittingly lent veracity to their story by blurting Dru’s name out.

In Berlin, she had coolly walked through the gates of the American Embassy before he even realized that she was no longer a step behind him. The whole step behind him business being another one of Angelus’ daft injunctions after Willow joined their happy home. If Angelus had his way, she would have been crawling around on all fours with a collar around her neck so the other vampires would get the hint. William was convinced that the older vampire made half his precious vampire etiquette up. If he wanted to have someone crawling after him, he’d get a damned dog.

Not all of the undead were terribly brilliant. Intellect seemed to play a virtually non-existent role when it came to selecting minions or true childer. Nonetheless, only the newest of the newborns wouldn’t recognize a claim, and his scent was all over Willow. A fresh bite mark on her pretty throat and the fact that she was breathing pretty much said back the fuck off to the undead that valued their unlives, without a lot of ridiculous twaddle about her having to walk behind him in public and keep her eyes to the floor, and address everyone as Master or Mistress, and generally be treated like nothing but a convenience to fuck and feed on.

Because, he could get either commodity without keeping it alive, thank you.

He paced the small room, chewing on the inside of his cheek as he tried to decide if he should confront her about this, or let her think she had preserved her little secret. If he should tell Angelus or Darla, or both–no point bringing Dru in on it. He needed to get to the bottom of what she was up to. It could be something fairly innocent, but when Willow was her most innocuous, she was usually up to something. Still, it wouldn’t do to discount the possibility that she was hiding her witchy activities from the humans, who might go tattling to the church or the civil authorities.

His eyes scanned the room again. If she showed him the room, it was most likely that she was hiding this from the servants. If she didn’t show him the room, the most innocent explanation was that she wanted a truly private space to herself. The alternative was that she was exploring the dark arts for a means of escape, defense, or attack. He was putting his money on the former. Her instincts had always run to flight.

After he left the secret room, he did some more poking around the house. Angelus had joined him, looking for the wine cellar, checking out the dungeon prospects in the adjoining cellars like the big freak he was. They wound up in the kitchen where Angelus lounged around, sipping burgundy and pontificating on his softness while William made soup and cut a quarter of a loaf of bread into neat slices that were piled with wafer thin roast beef. There was also ham.

“She’s Jewish,” William said when he found the ham.

“Huh?” Angelus responded as if this were a non sequitur.

“Wil-low,” William pronounced her name slowly. Ponce. Angelus had been rattling on about her for a painful half an hour. Who the bloody fuck did he think they were talking about?

“She’s Jewish,” he repeated. “Jews don’t eat the flesh of . . . pigs,” he said, thinking that it was something more elaborate than just pig, but the ham came from pig, so close enough. “The majordomo character waxed on a good bit about what m’lady fancies. ‘Warm foods at luncheon, such as a soup with a cream base, and a few slices of bread with meat. Cook keeps it in the icebox, very thinly sliced’” William mimicked. “Jesus bleeding Christ! And he doesn’t know that she loves chocolate and she won’t eat ham.”

“Should have left the bastard dead,” he grumbled.

“Willow is Jewish?” Angelus was having a hard time absorbing that. “How is it that I didn’t know that? Oh, and Lucius? Stay out of Darla’s way for a few days. She was very put out about that.”

“Who is spoilt?” William asked pointedly.

“She’s my sire, and she’s old,” Angelus pointed out. “Willow is human. Do I really have to explain the difference to you?”

“My sire is a woman, too, and by virtue of siring, automatically older,” William laid a slice of bread on top of the meat the way he had seen Willow do more times than he could count. “I figure it works better that way. If you have to suck up to someone, might as well be someone with nicer parts to suck on.”

“Willow’s still human,” Angelus drawled.

“Still has my favorite set of parts,” William countered. “I’m a simple bloke. I make no bones about it. Out there,” he gestured to the wider world. “It’s see, want, take, and if someone beats me to it or beats me to get it . . . so be it. There’s always another day. But, here? I can put a bit of effort into keeping my girls happy.”

Angelus stared at him for a moment. “You really did miss her, didn’t you? I thought you were just sulking because it was my idea.”

William returned his stare. “What of it?”

Angelus gave a lazy shrug. “Has it ever occurred to you that you’ve never killed her, turned her,” he made a circular motion with the glass, acknowledging that there was never any real question of it being otherwise, “because you don’t want to.”

“Uh . . . no. If I wanted her dead, she’d be in the ground. If I wanted her turned, she’d be sleeping off a heavy meal. I’ll do it. I just don’t want to do it now.”

“Why?”

He stirred the soup. Like the thinly sliced roast beef, it had been in the icebox in a ceramic bowl covered with a lid. He tasted it to make sure it was soup and not some sauce masquerading as soup. Tasted like soup. He tasted it again. “What the fuck is this? It tastes like a fat lot of nothing in particular.”

Angelus sniffed, sampling the cooking smells. “Leek,” he said firmly.

“And a leek is?”

“Vegetable. Similar to onion.” Angelus refilled his glass. “Going to answer my question?”

“Nope. I said I do it for Christmas, so–“ William chuckled, struck by a new thought. “Now, this is oddly appropriate. I’m going to turn a Jew on Christmas Eve to be raised on Christmas Day. I like that. It has a blasphemous kind of charm.”

“When are you going to tell her?”

“She’ll get the message when I’m draining her.”

Angelus nodded. “I think that is wise,” he approved. “It will only frighten her. Might make her do something to try to avoid it.”

William looked for a bowl for the soup. “Speaking of which,” he decided that it was now or never. “There’s a small cellar under the library you should look at. Looks like my girl’s been doing some of her witchy stuff down there. There are books and the usual magical folderol, all very neat and tidy.”

“Have you asked her about it?” Angelus asked.

“Going to see if she spills.”

He poured the soup into the bowl as Angelus hopped down from the counter he was perched on and picked up a pot of herbs. “Fresh chives,” he explained, sprinkling some on the soup.

“Which tells you, what?” Angelus returned to the topic of Willow.

“If she’s hiding from humans or if she’s hiding something from us.”

Proving once again that there was a devious mind behind the ‘I’m a simple bloke’ façade William liked to play at.

William opened his eyes, resting his chin on top of his lover’s head. Her heart was beating slow and steady, which meant she was sleeping deeply. He offered Dru a slow smile.

“Hello, beautiful,” he whispered, his eyes shining with love and admiration.

Dru returned his smile, gently lifting a long, curling lock of Willow’s hair to rub between her fingers. “Dolly is sleeping?”

He moved the arm around Willow’s waist to catch Dru’s hand and bring it to rest lightly over his sleeping lover’s heart, wondering if she would understand. There was a moment of clarity in her eyes, and then it was gone before she could process it. “Miss Edith is not noisy, and she is awake,” she pouted.

“Miss Edith spent her evening quietly, I suspect,” William kept his voice low. Willow shifted a bit next to him, her hand moving restlessly until she found his arm and then she made a soft, disgruntled sound. He resettled his arm around her waist, rubbing slow circles against her stomach.

Dru wasn’t above pinching or screaming to wake Willow up when she wanted her company, and normally he wouldn’t try to dissuade his sire. “Dru? You know when you are having one of your days when the stars are spinning and you can’t hear for everything they are whispering all at once, and your head–“

“Hurts,” she frowned at him for making her think of such things. “Bad William.”

Bad William could precede a pout, a sulk, or a fight. He gathered himself, ready to get Willow out of the combat zone if Dru showed some claw.

“Sometimes it is like that for her, too, my darling,” he whispered. “Not the same, but as terrible and she’s not as strong as we are.”

Dru considered this for a moment, her fingers gently stroking the skin over Willow’s heart. “Poor, poppet,” she breathed. “I can smash and bash and fill my head with lovely screams and make it all better.”

William kissed the top of Willow’s head. “She can’t. It makes her head hurt and her chest ache, and she needs sleep and soft words. Soft hands.”

Dru kissed Willow’s forehead. “There, there,” she offered, looking at William to see if she was doing this right.

“I love you,” he breathed, looking at her like she was something wonderful.

“Do you love Miss Willow, my William?,” she touched her lips to Willow’s forehead. “No. That’s silly,” she realized. “Sometimes I like to pretend that she will be ours, forever and always,” she said, careful to add. “I know that she is yours my darling boy, but . . . you will always be mine, and you’ll share her with me? Always? Dru, William, and sometimes-our Willow?”

“Not Miss Willow?” Dru rarely spoke of Willow as if she were a person rather than a doll.

“Miss Willow, for now,” she acknowledged.

The little twists and turns in her mind were fascinating. The mortal creature in his arms was Miss Willow, and Willow was the creature she would become after he sired her. It reminded him of his aborted experiment with creating another identity for himself in a nom de guerre. Darla and Angelus had refused to indulge his insistence on being called Spike and for a couple of months they had fought over it, and then Willow came along, and he sort of forgot about it.

She cuddled closer to them and Willow roused enough to slip her arm around Dru’s waist, her cheek coming to rest on the upper swell of her breast. Dru accepted the change in position with a smile, her graceful hands stroking Willow’s hair and skin as she cooed to her.

Oh, no. That won’t wake her up, William thought, twisting at the waist to pick up one of the two cheroots that he had carried over from his room. There were times when Willow slept like a rock, through the worst weather, and the noisiest forms of transportation. Dru had taken the initiative to gather more of Willow against her and was busy dropping soft, closed mouth kisses in her hair, and against her temple. He watched Dru’s hand moving beneath the sheet, over Willow’s waist, her hip, her leg, nearly down to her knee. Dru’s arms were unusually long. Not freakishly so, she was nearly his height and long limbed and she moved like one of the ballet dancers they saw in Paris might if it were natural and not some studied idea of grace.

He smiled as he watched them. Dru had slipped one of her legs between Willow’s before her hand moved back up. Her hand cupped Willow’s breast. William noticed the barely perceptible change in her heart rate. She gave a spare shake of her head, pressing her cheek against Dru’s chest, making a dry, kissing sound as she fought to stay asleep.

William and Dru’s eyes met. Dru’s eyes had a wicked, conspiratorial gleam to them. With both hands, she lifted Willow’s head, careful not to pull on it or jar her awake and he uncoiled the arm he had been pillowing his head on. Dru re-arranged Willow’s head to rest on his upper arm and he curled it around her, laying his hand possessively on her neck. The change in position gave Dru unimpeded access to her breasts. Her cool tongue traced a red mark in Willow’s skin from a wrinkle in the sheets that went all the way down to the nipple of the breast that had been slightly under her as she slept.

Dru took her nipple into her mouth, sucking, her tongue moving in circles around the hardening nipple. Not even Willow at her sleepiest could stay asleep, and William felt her heart pick up speed as she woke, abruptly, her body tensing with a little more than wakefulness. His thumb, nestled under her ear, moved against her skin to let her know that she was still with him. Dru’s mouth opened wider, taking more of her breast into her mouth. She stayed still. It wasn’t that unusual for Dru to join them in bed and she preferred Willow to be the passive participant in their bed play.

As unfixed as Dru was she was rigid in her relationships. With her precious Daddy and Darla, she was the passive one, her eyes reflecting her need for them to notice her, pay attention to her. Hurt her. Between him and Dru things were more on an even keel. He had been a virgin when she turned him. For months after she had been like a woman he was courting, with the surety of sex. They had been as close, in his mind as any married couple. She had done things, shown him things, that had shocked and delighted him, but she hadn’t made him feel like he was anything but her equal.

Then Darla had gone off on one of her mysterious trips, and he had discovered that Dru wasn’t his, by her own choice. He’d taken one of the worst beatings of his life from Angelus and lay on the ground unable to move for hours as Angelus put on a demonstration not a dozen feet away.

She became slightly, but decidedly dominant when Willow was in bed with them. Her free hand moved up to cup the other breast, her fingers finding the nipple and pinching it playfully while William kept gently stroking her throat with his thumb, reminding her to be still.

For Willow’s part she wasn’t precisely confused about what was happening, or even surprised, and a very long time ago she stopped trying to determine what she felt about it since her feelings were of no concern to anyone but William, and even that wasn’t a certainty. He had been very solicitous today, but she recognized it as a mood, and William’s moods never lasted very long–at least the ones she processed as pleasant did not. She had never been slow to wake. William was, and he tended to be grouchy when woken abruptly–the only caveat to that was when he woke up and had something to vent his temper on.

During one of their sojourns in Spain, questions had arisen about the odd family that occupied the second floor of the inn. Strange, unexplained deaths and disappearances had mounted up. Whispers of strange sounds in the night. Darla had done her usual thing when they reached that town in Catalonia. She made a point of going to mass, heavily veiled, with Willow as her companion, in the evenings. She and Angelus dined with the mayor, the few prominent merchants, and the backcountry hidalgos. It tended to ensure that they had more time and even some warning before it became necessary to move off.

This was one of the public faces of the family. Angelus was the patriarch, and Darla was his wife. Drusilla was usually passed off as Angelus’ sister, her apparent madness a topic that was made off limits by a subtle show of offence or a freezing look. William was more often than not passed off as Darla’s brother, and Willow, depending on the mood or necessity of anyone even knowing she existed, was shuffled into whatever role appealed at the moment.

The attack had come at dusk, which was the first mistake that the towns people made. They were keeping vampire hours, the second floor of the inn tightly shuttered through the heat of the day, which actually was not so remarkable. They were looking for a girl and a boy who had disappeared the previous night, and it was almost funny, but it was not a disappearance that Darla, Angelus, Dru, or William were remotely connected to, they later determined. Darla and Angelus thought it was something William had done, since he had a talent for killing the wrong people.

When their bedroom door was kicked in he was instantly awake, dragging her out of the bed and pushing her into a corner behind him. The odd thing was that he didn’t seem angry. When you kill people with your bare hands, there’s a presumption of anger, but he seemed exhilarated, and happy, like someone had thrown a surprise party for him. Angelus had been coldly furious. After the first wave had been cut through with deadly efficiency, he had been in the hallway, dressing, and shouting orders to get the minions hunting the town.

“When you run out of bodies on the streets, start burning them out,” he ordered, effectively neutralizing the lack of invitation.

William felt her shudder, and wondered what that was about. She wasn’t keen on crawling into bed with Darla or Angelus, a fact that they were aware of and took a certain amount of enjoyment in, so she was careful not to let anything show in her face, completely unaware that her wary detachment gave her away. She wasn’t standoffish with Dru, though. The fact that Dru took to her, and that she had a calming influence on his sire was the first thing that he noticed about her beyond the obvious lure of her body. He kissed the top of her head, and went back to his cheroot while Dru fondled her.

Maybe it was the two months on her own, putting ideas into the too fertile soil of her busy little brain. If Dru wanted to dress her up in doll clothes, have her little tea parties, fuck her silly, or just about anything short of killing her, he’d not only allow it, he would actively participate, and if she needed a reminder of that, she was on the verge of getting one.

“I thought you wanted Miss Willow for a tea party, my love,” he drawled.

Dru’s mouth clamped around the breast she was suckling as she drew back, tugging on the nipple that left her lips with a wet sound. She snapped her teeth in a playful bite that made Willow flinch. He crushed out the cheroot in a saucer on the bedside table.

Smelling the fear that had sharpened her scent, Dru’s hand drew back from the other breast, hovering like a cobra about to strike. She flicked her long fingers at Willows face with a growl that he interpreted as playful, and then giggled delightedly at her flinch, before gently patting Willow’s cheek.

“I’ve thought of other games to play,” she told William, her fingers exploring Willow’s face. She cocked her head to one side. “Miss Edith’s eyes are ever so much prettier than hers, but not so naughty.” She tapped on the end of Willow’s nose. “You were naughty. Spoiling William’s fun,” her smiling became knowing, “Sometimes I’m naughty, and Daddy makes me scream.”

She ground her leg between Willow’s thighs and pinched one of her nipples hard enough to make the girl’s lips part in a soundless gasp of pain.

Dru attacked her lips, sucking, biting, her tongue pushing into her mouth forcefully, her hand molding the breast she was fondling, her thumb teasing the hard nipple, pinching, tugging lightly as she kissed her voraciously, driving the back of her head into William’s shoulder. His semi erect cock hardened as Dru’s leg rocked against her rhythmically, driving Willow’s hips back against his body. His free hand moved over Dru’s side, reveling in the coldness of her skin in contrast to Willow’s warmth. He gave her ass a hard smack to get her attention when he felt Willow struggling to breath.

“Dru?” he said dryly.

She abruptly stopped kissing Willow, who sucked in a couple of hard breaths.

“She has to breathe, darling,” he reminded her, rubbing his cheek against his lover’s hair. It was soft from being so recently washed and smelled of vanilla.

Dru smiled impishly. “Oops,” she said. “I got carried away.”

He eyed her damp, red lips. God, she was gorgeous. “You carry me away, my love.”

She levered herself up to reach his lips. The changing angle of Dru’s leg between Willow’s thighs made her close her eyes at the unexpected stab of arousal. Dru’s long hair fell across her face as she and William kissed. The inside of his arm moved over her as his hand moved over the side of Dru’s body, making her a part of the caress whether he intended it or not. Sometimes they got so lost in each other that Willow wondered if they even knew that she was there. She didn’t resent it. She knew it had nothing to do with her and everything to do with their peculiar, and unwittingly tragic relationship.

It was the hardest thing she knew about William. He loved Dru with a purity and clarity that was absolute. She was his sun and stars, and he was the firmament that Dru revolved around in her unhinged state. Their dedication to each other was so ingrained that it could almost be forgotten, until they looked at each other a certain way, or kissed, like this. Witnessing such an intimate moment should have made her feel uncomfortable, but in a peculiar way it charmed and calmed the places in her mind and heart that she was most frightened of visiting.

And she wasn’t forgotten, not really. Dru was still stroking her breast, her hand gentling even as the kiss she was sharing with William became violent, and his thumb was still moving in a ceaseless sweep under her ear in a rhythm that, she realized, mimicked her pulse.

When Dru sucked away the last drop of the blood she had drawn from his lip, their eyes met and clung. He finger combed her hair over her shoulder, drawing the length away from Willow’s face. “Sweet kisses for everyone,” Dru murmured, bending her head to delicately lick Willow’s kiss swollen lips.

It was like a minuet. She was shifted ever so slightly in William’s arm so he could reach her mouth and kiss her while Dru pressed kisses along her neck, shifting downward in the bed to tenderly kiss and lick the reddened nipple she had been fingering. William’s hand left the vale of Dru’s waist to slide under Willow’s knee, lifting her leg over his as he kissed the corner of her mouth. The change in position left her exposed, her legs tangled between his and Dru’s, the same coolness, but different textures. The roughness of the hair on his legs contrasted with the smoothness of Dru’s thigh.

His hand moved to Dru’s much fuller breast and she made a sound in her throat as he crushed it in his hand, roughly abrading her nipple as Dru kissed the underside of Willow’s breast.

His hand moved from Willow’s throat to the breast that Dru had abandoned as her head moved lower. His hand left Dru’s breast and moved down her abdomen, his index finger circling her navel as if to invite Dru’s attention to this feature of her body, and then his hand moved lower, his fingers tugging lightly on the curls between her legs. It made the lips of her cunt move just enough for her to moan softly at the sensation he was creating.

One of his long cool fingers slid along the lips of her cunt, tracing an erotic outline while Dru’s tongue dipped into her navel. Willow registered the sting of Dru’s fang after it left her skin, opening a small cut that welled blood. William’s head came up, sharply, his face changing at the scent of blood, the beginnings of a feral growl vibrating in his throat. He watched Dru as she let the slight flow of blood drip into Willow’s navel, her tongue delicately scooping the blood up. She sucked on the tip of her blood-coated tongue and bent her head to lap up the blood that had pooled. He was breathing heavily, his face shifting back, his cock rubbing against her back.

His fingers cupped her, pressing into her heated flesh, wringing a moan that was in part relieved, from her as he stared intently at Dru. His fingers rubbed against her, his middle finger penetrating her, making her push herself on his hand as her head fell back into his shoulder and her lips sought his skin, only to be lightly abraded by beard stubble on his jaw.

Dru barely paused, laying a firm hand on Willow’s hip to keep her still. A second finger joined the first, twisting, plunging in and out of her while his hips rocked against her and the cool wetness seeping from his cock made a slippery spot on her lower back.

Willow felt her inner walls clenching, prefacing an orgasm that she knew without being told that she would be denied. She licked her lips and kissed his throat. It was too early for that. Between the two of them they could keep her on edge for hours, finding their own release as it pleased them.

She wasn’t surprised or disappointed when he withdrew his fingers, leaving her trembling. The sheets had slipped down to pool around their legs. Dru’s head blocked her view of her lower body, but not her awareness of herself, spread open, the lips of her sex, wet. William offered his fingers to Dru and she alternated between them, a purr of contentment rumbling in her throat as she lapped at his wet fingers, her tongue milking the small tear in Willow’s skin for more blood.

“More?” she requested, and Willow shuddered, eagerly pushing her cunt into his hand when his attention returned to her.

His gaze moved to her face, shifting to reach her mouth, he kissed her lower lip, pulling it into his mouth. His gaze was warmly affectionate. His thumb rotated slowly over her clit while his fingers fucked her.

Using a nail, Dru opened another small cut. She had to draw back and flex her fingers into a fist to shake off the impulse to force her fingernail deeper under the skin. William would not be pleased if she poked holes in his girl before he had an opportunity to do his own kind of poking. She kissed and licked an irregular, round scar in the fleshy part of Willow’s side, not remembering so much how it got there, but that it had enraged her childe.

She lifted her head, watching the blood trickle in a bright red ribbon over pale skin. Her eyes flitted to William’s hand, and back to the blood, and then to watch them kiss. He was worrying at her lower lip, his head moving as he changed the depth and texture of the kiss.

She gave his hip a hard pinch to get his attention and he chuckled, casting her a look of mock contrition as he offered her his hand again. “Sorry, Princess,” he said. Her tongue swept up the rivulets of blood and she took his fingers in her mouth, mixing the tastes together on her tongue. She reached between Willow’s legs, retreating to give her wet cunt a caress, her goal, the root of her William’s cock. Reading her intent, he made a space for her hand, and groaned as her hand closed around him. When his fingers were clean and the fresh wound was sealed, she signaled her desire to roll the girl between them over on her stomach, resting her cheek on her warm, soft skin as she eagerly took William’s cock in her mouth.

He brushed Willow’s hair away from her neck and shoulders, wrapping the length of it around one wrist, kissing her shoulders and spine up to the downy hairs at the nape of her neck, blunt teeth nipping her skin in an unmistakable prelude. He could feel her tensing under him as the bites became harder, interspersed with kisses meant to sooth. His other hand played in Dru’s silky black hair as she held his hip and took him into her throat. When he felt his balls tighten with his impending climax he let himself change, his tongue roughly stimulating the blood vessels under her skin before his fangs sunk in, deep.

Dru, God bless her, took her hand off his hip to throw her weight more firmly over his lover, whose body had jackknifed with the pain of his deep bite. He drew on her hard, once, before unclenching his jaw and retracting his fangs. Dru hadn’t swallowed all of his release, and was milking the last of it with her hand in pearly drops over Willow’s lower back while he pressed his tongue against the bite, savoring the spicy tang of her blood.

And Angelus asked why he hadn’t killed her by now? How he hadn’t greedily drained her dry the first time he had tasted her amazed him. She had been a sixteen-year-old prostitute, new to the trade according to the poxy blond girl who had been pimping her in an alley. It was a specious claim, but the fear and embarrassment in her eyes seemed to lend credence to it while he haggled with her friend, who had been holding out for a simple hand job at a tuppence, because the girl had to learn something that required skills.

Which, as he had pointed out, was hardly any concern of his.

He’d tossed her a half crown and taken her up against a brick wall in a filthy alley while she shook and wept soundlessly as he ruthlessly fucked her dry, tight cunt with every intention of killing her, her friend, and taking back his half crown. Fucking frightened little girls didn’t do anything for him, but when he had bit into her, expecting something reasonably young and tasty, he had come from the unbelievable taste of her in his mouth.

She had tasted so good. So right somehow. It was like she was some special flavor he had been seeking without even knowing it. Still, it was odd, that he had made himself stop. Her friend had stopped counting her coins, the vulgar little ditty she had been singing under her breath stopping. With the instincts of a predator recognizing something with bigger, nastier teeth, she had taken off, and he had damn near taken her head off her shoulders when he snapped her neck. The taste of her blood after the ambrosia he had been sampling made him spit out the mouthful he had taken.

And maybe, it had made him think. Not Angelus style deep thoughts. He hadn’t had anything in particular in mind when he scooped up the girl he had dropped and carried her home. Angelus, Darla and Dru were busy with one of their torture marathons with a couple they had spent weeks reeling in between fancy parties and the theatre, so he’d kept her, to amuse him, and somehow he managed not to kill her.

Poor baby. She was trying to muffle her sobs in the mattress, as if he couldn’t tell from the catch in her throat, or the way her shoulders were heaving that she was crying. She was so serious. She took everything so seriously. His injunction against tears and sadness last night, for instance. No one took him that seriously, and you would think she’d learn by now. He knew damn well that he had hurt her. He wasn’t stupid, or entirely lacking in sensitivity. Even Dru had cottoned the fact that she was hurting and she was petting her lower back and ass as she cleaned the mess they had made off of her skin. She was eight years older, maturing into a stunning woman, and there was still a bit of little girl in her.

She had to have known it was coming with a houseful of vamps in new territory, he wouldn’t leave her without the protection of an unmistakable claim, and that took more than a bit of blood play to leave.

Dru gathered her in her arms, guiding her head into the crook of her neck, one arm loosely holding her head to her as she made soft, soothing sounds, her fingers brushing away some of the tears. Her longer, stronger legs, sorted them out, pushing Willow’s to the outside as she drew her more fully on her body. With some idea of what she had in mind, he moved between the tangle of legs, lifting Willow’s hips, his hands stroking her back, moving under her to stoke her breasts.

Dru gave him a dreamy, peaceful smile, and he held her gaze as he kissed Willow’s back. Dru’s hand moved between her legs, gently petting her, her fingers finding her clitoris and stroking it. One of her fingers found his cock, her fingernail scraping him lightly in invitation.

Willow wasn’t oblivious to what was going on around her. It just wasn’t as overwhelming as the pain she was in that seemed to wake her pain receptors to her throbbing wrist, the slight burn in the too tight, bruised skin on the backs of her thighs, and the sting of the small cuts on her abdomen. She was also disturbed by her reaction to the bite. Her heart still felt bruised from that hard, brutal pull on it through her veins, and she had nearly bitten through her lip to keep from screaming, which was probably less offensive to William than her crying.

It seemed like he was always telling her to stop crying.

It flooded her with shame as the uncontrollable tears slipped, hot and oily over her cheeks. She was afraid that her nose was running. It was only one more humiliation amongst many. Snot, tears, flatulence, sweat, all the unpleasant reminders of humanness that vampires didn’t suffer that sometimes made her feel painfully conscious of her otherness. For two months, she had been amongst humans, and she was even more aware of these traits. It had actually bothered her. The reek of sweat when Matilde lifted her arms to reach for something on an upper shelf had her nearly shaking with revulsion.

And if Matilde was repulsive to her, what then was she?

Dru’s hand cupped her chin, lifting her face to her dark, fathomless eyes. Eyes that reached right into her, into the places she wished to forget existed, but were too close to the surface. “Cry, bitter and salty tears,” she whispered to her. “They fall like warm raindrops on my skin, to burn and tingle.” She tilted her head, as if she were listening to Willow’s disordered thoughts, her fingers tenderly brushing over her lips, making her sniff, and then cough to clear her flooded nose. “No, no. You are nothing if not sweetness and pretty colors,” she crooned. “Feel my William, my brightest star, my gentle and vicious boy.”

He was there, behind her, the head of his cock breaching her while Dru kissed her, her tongue drawing Willow’s out to tangle. Lust flared in Dru’s eyes. “You feel him. So . . . so good,” Dru’s fingers shifted to spread around William’s cock as he slowly thrust deep.

Her smile turned sly. “My William will make such pretty colors dancing behind your eyes, like sunlight on water, like firelight, burning you. Burning your cunt, spreading all around until you are burning, burning, hot and cold.”

Dru sucked on her bloodied lip and Willow gasped as William moved, thrusting slowly, torturously, around Dru’s fingers, into her. Every nerve ending in her slick, wet channel was alive to the sensation of his cock stretching her, sliding deeper inside of her, slowly withdrawing, moving back over the same sensitized flesh.

She knew that she was shaking. She could feel it as his hands moved over her languidly, from her hips and her ass, over the backs of her legs, across her back to the sides of her breasts, leaving gooseflesh to prickle her skin in his wake.

“Please,” she whimpered, wanting it. Her hands tangled in Dru’s hair, marveling at the softness, like mink.

Dru rolled her shoulders, directing her mouth to her breasts, her long finger hand cupping a creamy breast tipped with a luscious pink nipple. Her eyes twinkled. “Grandmummy rouges her nipples,” she confided as if this was the most shocking thing she had ever heard.

Their eyes met again as William hit bottom in her, and Willow found herself giggling at the wonderful absurdity of Dru.

She pinched Willow’s clit. “I made her laugh,” she said, sounding terribly smug about it, stretching like a cat as Willow’s wonderfully warm tongue flicked over her nipple. “More,” she demanded. “Harder, lovey.” She waggled her finger against Willow’s clit and clamped her fingers against William’s cock. “Not you, my William,” she smiled. “So hard,” she breathed as his cock moved through her fingers, wet and warm from Willow.

Willow applied more suction to the nipple between her lips and Dru sighed her approval. “So warm, so wet,” she purred, her fingernail lightly scraping Willow’s clit, making her moan.

He loved watching them together like this, and fucking Willow slow, feeling her tensing and quivering around his cock as he filled her, feeling the way her hips twitched when he was pushing into her, and the way her breath left her in a rush as he eased out of her. She was soaking wet. His hands spread her thighs a bit more, hearing the strangled sound of her anticipatory moan, knowing the next thrust would send him that little bit deeper inside her.

The insides of her thighs were wet. He ran one of his dampened fingers down the cleft of her ass, painting her tightly puckered anus with her secretions. He smiled as she pushed back against his finger, feeling her legs tremble. He tapped on the opening, patting it teasingly, relatively sure that if he eased his finger into her, she’d go off like a rocket, and he just loved keeping her where she was now, on the edge of a climax.

Perfectly aware of how he was teasing Willow, Dru pursed her lips at him, directing Willow to her other breast.

Not wanting his sire to feel neglected he pulled Willow’s hips back enough for Dru to slide out from under her. His arm snaked around Willow, pulling her up against his chest. The change in the angle of his penetration made her cry out his name. He nuzzled the fresh bite mark on her throat as Dru’s hands painted erotic patterns on Willow’s sweat dampened skin.

“This is just a taste of things to come,” he told her as Dru licked her Willow flavored fingers and delved between her thighs again to stimulate her clit while she remained impaled on his cock. She keened, grappling for a hold on him so she could move on his cock. Her blunt fingernails scraped his skin, scoring it and he ground himself into her while she pleaded for him to fuck her hard.

“Are you trying to make me come?” he growled.

“Mmmm. Yes!”

He wrapped his other arm around her, lifting her hips and driving her down on him hard once, twice, and then with a heartfelt groan the third time as he came. Drusilla had taken her hand away, denying her the clitoral stimulation she needed to come and she responded with a frustrated wail that made him laugh softly as he kissed her throat.

“Baby, you wanted me to come,” he teased her.

Drusilla chuckled appreciatively, eyeing them hungrily as she arranged herself against the pillows, spreading her legs.

There was something almost obscene about her completely denuded pudenda that Willow always found as disturbing as it was erotic. She had the unpleasant experience of being subjected to Dru’s extreme form of grooming on several memorably unpleasant occasions. She used a pair of tweezers to depilate legs, underarms, and pubic hairs. It took hours. The first time Dru had done it was during one of her tea parties, at Miss Edith’s suggestion. William had wandered off after an hour, with a stern glare at her that told her she’d experience something more unpleasant if she put up any show of defiance.

After it was over he had suggested a cold bath and ice to reduce the worst of the swelling, leaving her to hunt. When he came home, he had gone down on her and fucked her for hours and she had been afraid that he was going to demand that she maintain herself that way.

He hadn’t to her relief. Usually Dru’s grooming instincts confined themselves to picking out her clothes or playing with her hair, or using Willow as a mannequin to look at her jewelry, which could kill an entire day easily. Then there were those other occasions when nothing would satisfy her but tweezing every hair off her body. The only line William ever drew was at her hair. It precipitated a fight that featured a lot of foot stomping and yelling, before Angelus of all people took pity on her and removed her from the line of fire to sit at his feet and read to him.

By the time William and Dru stopped screaming at each other to go look for the escaped grooming object, they found her sitting sedately at Angelus’ knee, reading from the selected works of Lord Byron while he stroked her hair. It was, what she learned to recognize as one of Angelus’ set pieces. A tearful, nearly incoherent Dru standing with her mouth at half mast as she processed the scene, and William looking like he was going to explode, while Angelus calmly stroked her hair, waiting until she finished the long passage that she was reading in a voice that shook to say with absolute finality. “Her hair is very pretty. Exactly where it is. On her head, Drusilla.”

Which took the wind out of Dru’s sails. Willow had expected retaliation of some kind. Dru could hold a grudge like a terrier and she had the hardest, sharpest fingernails Willow had ever felt. But, the matter was dropped, and her hair stayed on her head.

She felt William pull out of her, still semi-erect. He slapped her ass and pushed her into Dru’s arms, springing up from the bed to go light another cheroot. “Give her a moment to catch her breath, Princess,” he suggested to Dru before strolling into the bathroom that connected her room to Dru’s.

Dru pushed her hair away from her face, drawing Willow down to rest her head against her cool abdomen for a moment. Dru nudged her and Willow obligingly moved until she was lying mostly against her hip and thigh. She smiled wryly to herself when Dru tapped one finger on her cunt, her other hand giving Willow’s head a push in that direction.

Dru wanted what Dru wanted when she wanted it and she could be remarkably direct about expressing her needs. When she wasn’t, William was the only one who could deal with her. That made being alone with Dru an adventure, but today, she was remarkably coherent and mellow, like a snake sunning herself on the rocks.

Or as William once cheerfully observed, if Dru ever went for her throat, she’d be dead with Dru’s hand yanking out her heart before anyone could help her, so it was best to go along and get along.

She folded her legs under her, kneeling between Dru’s splayed thighs. Willow used her thumbs on the margins of her cunt to spread the lips open. Dru made an approving sound and Willow slid the pads of her thumbs over the inner lips, finding her wet. Dru tilted her hips up and she dipped her head down to run the tip of her tongue over the edges of her cunt, not unlike the way that William had teased her with his fingers.

Avoiding her clitoris for the moment, confident that Dru would let her know when she was no longer satisfied, Willow took little bites of the spread lips of her cunt, swirling the tip of her tongue over the cool smooth flesh.

She had a funny scent, like something old and dry and vaguely floral. Angelus had a theory about the scent and flavor of a woman’s secretions that had become a topic of dinner table conversation. He thought it was a product of diet, and he and William had chatted casually about this while she had an odd moment in that she was fully able to follow the arguments, having, by that time, been between enough women’s thighs, vampire and human.

She curled her arm under one of Dru’s bent legs to rest her hand on her lower abdomen as she nudged Willow with an impatient push of her hips that was a definite, ‘get on with it’. She worked her tongue over her slit, letting it flutter against the opening of her vagina before working up to the engorged knot of her clitoris, plucking at it with her lips.

A pleased moan erupted from Dru. Willow brushed her fingers against her while she flicked her tongue over Dru’s clit, and she gave a little grunt, tangling her fingers in Willow’s hair. She slid two fingers into her, sucking hard on her clit for a moment before relaxing her mouth and using her tongue.

“Hard,” Drusilla mewled. “Hard.”

She always had to remind herself that she couldn’t possibly hurt her, and it wasn’t just the vampire thing. Dru’s tolerance and craving for pain was beyond Willow’s scope. She still had to steel herself to add a third finger, ramming them into Dru as hard as she could.

Her back arched off the bed and Willow pumped her fingers in her, using lips and teeth to alternate between sucking and biting on Dru’s clit while her own twitched with what she could only describe as sympathy pains.

William wet a hand towel to clean himself off and rinsed it, squeezing out the excess moisture to carry it back into the bedroom for Willow. She’d been a nice bit of a mess when he’d pulled out of her. He smoked his cheroot, looking at the mess that the bathroom had become. Dru had been in here, leaving her wet towels on the floor and a melting bit of soap in the tub. Willow was used to picking up after her.

He opened the mirrored cabinet to see what she had stowed there. She had her little case of teeth cleaning stuff, and a row of little glass pots with different colored contents. He picked up one with something pink inside. He unscrewed the lid and sniffed at it, smelling peppermint. He shrugged, unable to imagine what that was for. The next one her recognized. It was an ointment–nasty odor to it, best left tightly sealed. The pinkish brown pot contained the stuff she used to cover bruises. He picked up a brown apothecary bottle, reading the label.

Laudanum.

Trouble sleeping or something else? He jiggled the bottle. It was more than half full. There were a couple of small brown envelopes of what he knew to be a headache powder without picking them up. The rest of it was sticking plasters and a tin of alum and another of talc.

He shut the cabinet and flicked ash into the sink. Willow hated him smoking in the bathroom, an opinion she wisely kept unvoiced, but you didn’t live with someone for eight years without being able to read thinned lips and flashing eyes. Even when she was trying not to let what she was thinking show she was pretty transparent.

He could hear Dru winding up and went back into the bedroom to join them. A fair bit of rolling around on the bed was in progress. They had moved down to the center of the bed in a tangle of limbs. Dru was still on the bottom, but she had her head between Willow’s legs and was gripping her ass hard enough that she was sure to leave bruises. When her tongue wasn’t shoved up Willow’s cunt she was screaming, “Harder, harder, harder,” in a frustrated wail.

He tossed the cheroot into the cold grate, as he crossed the room in a few swift strides, knowing full well Willow couldn’t give Dru what she wanted.

He grabbed a fistful of Willow’s head, pulling her head up from between Dru’s thighs, startlingly an, “Ow, ow, OW!” out of her.

“Tagging in,” he explained, ramming his cock into Dru with enough force to send her six inches across the bed and turn her frustrated hisses into a happy purr. He reached down and pinched her clit hard. “Is that what you want, love?” he asked her.

Feeling like a mouse caught between two snarling cats, Willow’s hips twisted and Dru only relaxed her grasp enough to slap her overly abused ass while William pulled her into an animalistic kiss that mashed her sore lips against her teeth.

He was pounding into Dru, and she was meeting him, thrust for thrust, his hand tangled in Willow’s hair, holding her up until she managed to get one arm up to sort of brace herself on his shoulder. “Good girl,” he grunted, turning his attention to Dru. Willow didn’t want to know what he was doing to her clitoris. She was scared to death that Dru was going to bite her.

“Like that?” he grunted, giving Dru’s clit a hard twist that had her coming, hard. He pulled out of her, still hard himself. “Dru? Let’s make my kitten purr.”

Darla found Angelus in the cellar below the library. There were hours to go before their minions rose. The next few days would be work. Teaching them to hunt, culling out the ones that were too weak, or wouldn’t accept discipline, establishing order. It was something the boys particularly excelled at. It was one of the four reasons why she put up with William. He fought like he was born to it, he kept Drusilla out of her hair, and he gave Angelus someone to argue with other than herself.

If she accidentally drove a stake in his chest next week, well, that was next week when the household was in order. Even as she thought it, she knew it would never happen. Drusilla. Angelus was sitting on a crate thumbing through a book. “This lacks nothing for atmosphere,” Darla observed as her calculating gray eyes took in the room. “What is this in aid of?” she asked.

Angelus looked up, reaching automatically for her hand. He pressed her fingers to his lips. “I’m not sure, yet. Will found it.”

Will? Apparently, today, Angelus was in charity with the brat. He smiled at her, reading her sharp glance. “Told him to mind his manners with you if he knows what’s good for him,” he told her, well aware that she was angry at his grandchilde.

“Sage advice spread on fallow ground,” she retorted icily. William was not as stupid as he sometimes liked to pretend, which made his little misadventures and the liberties he took all the more irritating.

“What are the children up to?” he asked.

Darla rolled her eyes. “What else? I’m surprised you haven’t heard them. It’s a wonder that Dru hasn’t accidentally killed William’s little pet.”

“Hmm,” he agreed. “More lives than a cat, she has. Makes you wonder if at the end of the world the only survivors will be a rat, a cockroach, and Willow,” he smiled at the thought.

That was one way to look at it. She had so far shown herself to be a spectacular failure at killing herself, or simply dying of one of the many hazards that lay before any mortal life. Aside from her pathetic attempts to end her own life, the girl had been shot, stabbed, and drowned, she had contracted influenza, pneumonia, and dysentery. She had damn near starved to death before the genius upstairs had the wit to figure out that she wasn’t being fed often enough. Her whole life was a comedy of errors, and Darla had no doubt whatsoever that the girl genuinely yearned for an end to it.

And they thought she was cruel. It boggled the mind.

“What is all of this?” she asked again.

“Will’s thinking that we take a wait and see approach. She may just have wanted to keep her studies away from the servants to prevent gossip about witchcraft.”

“The servants can’t read,” Darla retorted in a bored tone of voice.

He held up a book with a Pentacle embossed on the cover. “That’s plain enough, even for the illiterate, you’d have to agree. There are still places in the world where witches are killed, without a lot of questions asked.”

“So?” Darla prompted. “What are we waiting for?”

“She tells us about the room? No secrets, just discretion in front of her kind. She fails to tell us about the room? Well, that’s something to be a wee bit concerned about,” he tried his charming little grin and realized that she was having none of it.

Darla glared at him. “A witch. A natural born witch? And you encouraged this, Angelus! I told you it was dangerous.”

He had encouraged her study like it was an intellectual pursuit, not a potential weapon that could be pointed at them. “William has better sense. He doesn’t trust her an inch.”

“My love,” he wheedled, “she doesn’t know that we know,” he gave it his most reasonable tone. “And, did you notice? No invite into the house when we arrived,” he flipped to a page that she had left marked. A sheet of paper with her handwriting was tucked between the pages. “She took this spell and modified it to create a protection ward that includes us, almost as if we were human.”

“So?” Darla looked at him like he was speaking a foreign language.

“So, my darling, she arranged it so that the invite extends to us, not just her.”

Darla’s lips quirked. “You mean that if a vampire wanted to enter the house, any of us could extend that invitation?”

He nodded. “Very clever of her, and useful,” he pointed out.

Moderately appeased, Darla looked thoughtful. “She didn’t have to do that,” she conceded.

“And, she didn’t tell us she did that,” she pointed out.

“True,” he agreed, “so, we wait and see, but not long. Before she has the run of the house, I want to hear something about this from her lips, even if I have to beat it out of her.”


Chapter Nine

The dead that had been fed to rise had been moved to the servants’ quarters at the rear of the house, behind the kitchens. They included three of the four stable hands, the Cook, one footmen, one maid, and the major domo. It was a larger number than Angelus liked. The dead had been dumped in the cellar below the kitchen for disposal later.

Cleaning up the house was not a high priority. They’d have minions for that soon enough. The dinning room doors had been drawn shut on the spoiling food and blood spattered walls and floor. William’s door had also been shut.

These little niceties were for the girl’s benefit and Darla found them ridiculous, but Angelus had been the one to take those small precautions. It was a little after nine in the evening before William appeared in the salon with a girl on each arm. Dru was dressed in a blood red velvet gown overlaid with black lace. She had her hair dressed in an elaborate coiffure around an onyx comb and a pair of jet earrings dangled from her ears. She always dressed up for the awakening, swaning around like she was the gift of unlife.

William was in his usual state of dishevelment. He’d tied back his hair, and put on his disgusting boots and a waistcoat that was half unbuttoned under an open frock coat. His cravat was just . . . there.

Willow looked . . . stunning, actually, Darla decided. She was wearing a beautifully cut blue velvet gown that gently draped her shoulders, falling to a natural waist into a deep skirt with contrasting ivory silk panels. Her hair was also up, less elaborately styled, it had been pulled up loosely and a braid of her own hair wrapped around it with the length allowed to fall in natural curls.

There was a deep bite mark on her throat, not yet scabbed over, but not bleeding either. The skin around it looked bruised. It was not necessarily unattractive. Her right wrist, almost hidden in the bell of her skirt was black and blue with bruises. Not a mark on her face, though. Darla made a mental note of that. William had become reluctant to mark up her face over the years. He might not even be aware of it, but it would make the girl more vulnerable to the shock of being hit in the face.

“Are your fingers broken that you can’t fasten a button?” Darla sniped at William.

He grinned at her. “Good evening to you, too, Darla,” he said, capping it with a mocking bow, catching Willow’s hand in his when her hand automatically went to his waistcoat to button it. He brought her hand to his lips, kissing it lightly.

“Are you hungry, Willow?” Angelus asked, he nodded to the sideboard. “There’s something for you, if you are.”

“Thank you. I might take it up with me when I go upstairs?” she said, the slight rise at the end of the sentence a lingering request for permission.

“Whatever suits you,” he agreed. “I can’t say when I’ve ever seen you looking lovelier,” he said, looking to Darla. “My Dru’s always in looks,” he added before a pout could fully form on Dru’s face.

“It was my dress for Miss Willow,” Dru informed him. “Her wardrobe is full of bad clothes that must be punished severely.”

The other four occupants of the room greeted this observation with varying degrees of amusement.

William walked over to the sideboard, still holding Willow’s hand as Dru sank to her knees beside Angelus, carefully arranging her skirts around her. Dissatisfied with how they lay, she stood up again and started over.

The food laid out was mostly cheese and fruit. William picked up a ripe red berry and ran it over Willow’s lips before he let her take it from his fingers. His hand stroked her back and he kissed her mouth, sucking on her lower lip while she turned pink at the attention. “Sherry, sweetheart? Or wine?”

“I’ll get it,” she said, giving him a small push. “Sit. I’ll bring you a drink.”

“I don’t think I can bear to be away from you that long,” he teased, kissing her blushing cheek. “Now, that’s a pretty bit of warmth.”

“Wine,” she blurted out.

He grinned, knowing that he was making her uncomfortable, but unable to resist. He looked over the selection of wines, chosen by the pretentious one, and settled on a dry Riesling for her, and poured that before going with his usual whisky, neat. She picked up her glass with her left hand and he steered her around him, dropping a kiss on her shoulder. There was a green leather armchair that had him written all over it, but he was pretty sure Darla was going to ring a peel over him if he pulled Willow down into his lap, so he steered her towards the settee and when she would have put a correct hands width between them, applied just enough pressure to keep her next to him.

He rested his arm on the back of the settee, giving one of her long ringlets a tug before winding it around his fingers.

Dru was finally satisfied with the arrangement of her skirt. Her gaze was intensely appreciative, and she might stay that way for hours, admiring herself, if they were lucky, Darla thought.

She was sitting opposite Willow and William. “The house really is lovely, Willow. You’ve done very well. I haven’t seen all of it, yet, but what I have seen is beautiful.”

William touched his tumbler to her wineglass. “It’s better than a hole,” he put in.

Willow’s eyebrows pulled together the slightest bit and she gave him a sideways look of exasperation. She wasn’t sure, but she suspected that he and Darla were on the outs and he was being annoying for her benefit. “I’m glad that you are pleased,” she said.

Angelus’ lips quirked with mirth. There was no one like Willow for rendering a polite social phrase. He knew she didn’t mean it to sound like she was mouthing rote platitudes, but that was exactly what it sounded like. Darla made her nervous, and William baiting Darla was making it worse.

“I had a bit of a look around,” he said. “Tomorrow? We’ll go over the house top to bottom, and I’d like a look at the accounts,” he told her.

“The account books and petty cash are in the safe in the library,” she said. “There is an extra set of passports, travel documents, maps, gold coin, and bearer bonds in the floor safe located in the master bedroom. It opens by key lock. I have all the keys, but I forgot to bring them down.”

“Give them to William when you retire,” Angelus suggested. “I don’t recall suggesting anything about passports and travel documents,” his tone was deceptively mild. “Are we going somewhere?”

William felt her tense. “When aren’t we?” she asked.

Angelus and Darla exchanged glances. “An excellent point,” Darla allowed. “Where are we going?”

William watched the surface of the wine in her glass ripple. She was starting to tremble. He set aside his glass and took her wine glass from her. “Sweet? Just answer their questions. No one is mad at you.”

Darla raised an eyebrow as if she might dispute that.

“Antwerp, or Budapest,” she said.

Angelus’ curiosity was piqued. “Why those places?” he asked.

“Last summer we invested in several dye works in Bruges and Brussels, and a lace factory in Antwerp, so in addition to hard assets, we have contacts in Belgium. Antwerp is centrally located and within a day’s ride of three major ports. The dye industry in Europe is in a freefall. Mass produced dyes from England, India, and the United States are too cheap to compete with. The textile industry in Europe still hews to the older more reliable dye works for the production of luxury goods, but the money is in mass produced textiles, so the industry is very sluggishly adapting–“

“What does that have to do with going to Antwerp?” Angelus interrupted.

“Uh . . . to un-slug it,” Willow’s brow wrinkled at her attack of verbal spasticity. She made a hand rolling gesture. “We have to go to Antwerp at once, those fools are loosing money by the fistful . . .” she declaimed in an unnaturally deep voice that had William laughing heartily.

“Do it again, with a bit of the brogue, pet,” he invited.

Her nose wrinkled. “I thought I was,” she ducked her head to say.

Even Darla smiled. “Avoid the stage, my dear,” she suggested.

Angelus leaned back in his chair. “And Budapest?”

She looked the tiniest bit guilty or embarrassed. “Well, we’ve never been there, and it looked interesting in the atlas–and did I mention that my Grandfather was born in Hungary? He’s dead now, but . . . Magyars! Goulash, Paprikash–“ she shook her head, “You don’t care about food,” she snapped her fingers. “Oh! Alum! Center of alum trade in Eastern Europe, which makes Antwerp still good for–“

“Those fools!” William recapped, still chuckling. “So, you thought Budapest, and had to figure out a way to make it work?”

“More or less,” she said under her breath. She looked up at Angelus. “It’s not so much your, er, track record with an angry mob,” she began.

“Oh, I’m hurt,” William clutched her to his chest. “You wound me, sweet. Kiss it better,” he chased her lips.

Darla cast a long-suffering look at Angelus. “We could have gotten a puppy,” she said. “They are as cute, and they make nice snacks.”

Dru looked up at Angelus. “I should very much like to have a puppy,” she announced.

“Dru, dear, you already have William,” Darla said in an acid edged tone.

“Hey, now,” he left off kissing Willow. “I’m in the room! And, about that thing that you are upset with me about, uh . . . sorry. Didn’t realize.”

She debated about accepting the apology while she responded with a wintry smile. “It was already forgotten.”

And if you believed that, Willow thought, there was a nice bog in a stinky corner of hell that you might be interested in for a summer home. She covered the desire to smile at her own wit by touching William’s knee lightly. “May I have my wine glass?” she asked softly.

He reached over to the table on his right to get it for her.

“Any other interesting things you want to tell us about?” Angelus asked.

‘Subtle’ William mouthed over Willow’s head, rolling his eyes.

She sipped her wine, thinking. “Mmmm. The house has some interesting features,” she said. "It’s roughly one hundred and twenty years old and built on the foundations of an older structure destroyed in a fire. The water is spring fed, so it’s drinkable---not that you drink water,” she allowed. “And, there are three old cellar’s beneath the foundation. Two that I’ve found. The third one maybe under the main staircase, but ripping out the wainscoting seemed . . . unnecessary,” she said, taking another sip.

William let his hand drift to her shoulder. “Under the library there’s a cellar that is accessed through a section of the shelving that is on a pivot,” she smiled suddenly, brightly. “Secret rooms,” she bubbled over, infectiously.

He kissed her shoulder, relieved that she was telling them. He didn’t want to think what Angelus and Darla might have done to her.

“Daddy!” Dru interrupted. “I want a puppy!”

“Not, now, Dru. Daddy’s busy,” he said, quelling. “Willow?”

She shot him an apologetic look. “Sorry,” she offered meekly. “It’s not a very useful space. Small. Can’t be secured. I’ve been using it to store my books and magic supplies.”

There we go! That’s my girl. Not keeping any secrets. William twisted his head, to realign a couple of vertebrae.

Darla glared at him. “Must you? It’s disgusting, that sound!”

“We’re vampires. We snap necks all the time. Right and left,” he barked back. "Makes me feel right at home when I do mine.”

Uh oh. Darla looked like she had decided not to accept his apology and Dru was too busy pouting about Angelus not finding her a puppy to deflect attention to him. Willow made herself turn to him. “Will?”

His fingers brushed her cheek. He was in a staring contest with Darla. “Pet?”

“Well . . . I mean, it is kind of . . . ooky,” she softly.

Jaws dropped. That was an unmistakable siding with the enemy, soft-spoken rebuke.

It also lost him the staring contest as he looked at her like she had lost her mind. “Ooky? That isn’t even a word.”

She made a face and shuddered. “Ooky. It’s like,” she put her hands up into claws and bared her teeth, “Grrrr. Also not a word, I’ll admit, but it’s . . .” she frowned. “You do know what ‘Grrr’ means, don’t you?”

He had two choices. Backhand her to the floor, or laugh. He chose the later, pinching her chin. “I can guess,” he told her with a small frown.

Angelus had that look he sometimes got on his face when he was watching Willow. It was contemplative, and curious, and amused, and just a tiny bit covetous.

William’s lips moved silently, ‘Mine.’ And then he smirked.

“Tell me about the other room, Willow,” Angelus prompted.

“That’s the grand prize, so to speak,” she turned back to him. “It’s secure behind a two inch thick reinforced door, and it has . . . sewer access.”

For a moment he just stared at her, and then he smiled broadly. “Now does it, lass? That’s a bit of good luck.”

“Right now, it’s a weapons locker, because it’s pretty much the most secure room in the house. Access is through the butler’s pantry. The stairs are a little creaky, but I didn’t think you’d want just anyone knowing it was there, so I didn’t call a carpenter in to look at them.”

“You’ve done very well,” Angelus pronounced. “I think some reward is in order, don’t you Darla?”

Darla gave her one of her brittle smiles. “What would you like, dear?” she asked.

A one way ticket to London? That would not go over, she thought, looking down at her lap. She hated these kinds of moments. They’d expect her to think of something that she wanted, and the reality was that they would never give her what she wanted. The hell with it. She was going to say something that was at least what she actually wanted.

She looked up at them. “I’d like to go to London,” she said.

“To London,” William repeated.

“England. London, England. There are other Londons. It’s in the Atlas,” she insisted when he frowned at her. “Like, there’s a London, Kentucky. Also a Paris, Berlin, Lebanon, and Frankfort, just in Kentucky. In the United States. East of the Mississippi, which is the longest river in North America, and there’s a London in–“

He laughed. “I get the idea, pet,” he said dryly, looking at Angelus briefly, thinking that it was none of his business where he took Willow, but if it was on Angelus wallet, then he wasn’t going to object.

“We could do that,” he said agreed. “Go to London. Take a train to Calais and a night ferry across the Channel. I haven’t pissed off anyone that counts in London in at least a decade,” he kissed her bare shoulder again. “We’ll make a holiday of it,” he watched her face. She might have actually meant go to London alone, but he was sure she would accept going to London with him as a reasonably pleasant compromise.

A tiny frown knit her brow. “What’s in London?” Angelus wanted to know, wondering why London, and not, Paris or Berlin, or the oh-so fascinating Budapest?

Because the Watcher’s Council is there? “Where to start? Well, the last time I was there hardly counts. I’ve read so much about London since then. Its like there is a London I’ve been to, and a London I’ve . . . been to, in books and plays. And, there are the plays, and museums, the Tower of London, and Buckingham Palace, and I want to see if there really is a 221B Baker’s Street–“

Angelus laughed. “That’s an interesting question,” he agreed, though the significance of the address was not shared by anyone else in the room.

“And there are magic shops in London. That fortune teller in Lisbon told me that the best magic shops in the world are in London and Edinburgh.”

Darla watched as she got swept up in all the things that she wanted to do, that William had no interest in and would probably spare very little time for. The animation, the glow in her eyes, the rush of color in her face, the enthusiasm in her voice, it was all very appealing. If she met her at a party, she would probably find her interesting and entertaining. But it was, in a way, new. She had probably been moving toward this very interesting place in her life for years, unnoticed, tending to slip into the background. Her two months on her own, with no way to hide herself, had been like forcing a tulip bulb to burst out of dormancy.

For the first time it actually occurred to Darla that Willow might eventually become someone she might actually like. Her interest in Angelus was purely confined to getting what she wanted, which wasn’t Angelus himself but things he could make available to her. Her attachment to William was no more than what it appeared to be. She fucked him, he kept her alive and reasonable well cared for. There was a gritty, hardheaded pragmatism to the girl that she liked.

William sat back mentally reviewing her list of the attractions London offered. Hmm. There were plays. He could take her to a play–no bloody opera. One play. Check.

The tourist-y sites were all daytime only venues, which counted him out, though he supposed that maybe she could go by herself. She’d spent two months in Prague and behaved herself. A day trip around London wasn’t a stretch.

The mysterious address that made Angelus smile? Ask a cabbie and be done. As for magic shops . . . aside from the fact that they smelled foul and attracted a strange crowd, he had never been keen on magic. He had met a witch or two in his time, and they were generally not to be messed about with, and the serious practitioners of the dark arts gave him the willies.

Not that she had ever done anything really alarming. Floating a feather or a flower was the most witchy thing he’d ever seen her do. Most of her books read like an apothecary manual with instructions to make ointments and pleasant things like the pillow she had made for Dru to help with her headaches that always worked like a charm. For a few months she made bath oils and soaps and cosmetics by the gross as she worked her way through another book. Angelus joked that they were the cleanest and best smelling vamps in Western Europe. It all appeared to be harmless crap that kept her busy, but there was a part of him that was skeptical. They weren’t burning witches for centuries, and there weren’t biblical injunctions against witchcraft over trading recipes for the home remedies.

“That reminds me,” Angelus said. “How did you manage the non-invite. You didn’t invite Darla and I in, but there was no barrier.”

It was so obvious that he didn’t know how he missed it. In fact, he couldn’t recall that she invited him in, and he and Dru had walked in beside her. He looked at her.

“I did research on three types of spells,” she said. “Protection wards, household blessings, and spells to cast out, which are similar too, but not quite the same as a protection ward. I did some experimenting–“ she winced. “In fact, there is one room in the attic that I’m pretty sure I’m never going to be able to get into, but I sent Matilde in and she didn’t have a problem. I wasn’t sure if it was going to work because I didn’t have a vampire to . . . test it on.”

“The long and short of it is that I did a modified protection ward and a blessing on the grounds, and nothing can get in without an invite. Not a mouse, not a stray cat, not a demon or vampire, not even humans. Invitation required to all beings not specifically included in the blessing. The ward is just a extension of that, but” she frowned “I’m not sure if it worked. It’s kind of a stay away ward, and if anyone clears it, I get a little pins and needles sensation, which is kind of unpleasant, so if it doesn’t work, I’d like to dispel it and recast it without the barrier whammy.”

“Why don’t you make it so someone breeching the barrier would feel it?” Darla wondered.

“And every time someone casually approaches the place, or even walks by, they get a prickly feeling? It’s easier for me to just look out a window if it persists more than a few seconds.”

“Right, then,” William said. “Or we just hang a big fucking sign that says, ‘Keep Out, Evil Vampire Lair, PS We Have A Witch. PSS: She’ll Turn You Into A Rat.””

Willow bit her lower lip to keep from laughing. She looked down and caught Dru staring at her with a pout. She nodded to her and looked up. “Oh, and I would very much like for Dru to have a puppy,” she added.


Chapter Ten

None of this is real.

Five words. They appeared on the first page of every journal that she kept. Sometimes they repeated, over and over, in her neat handwriting. He remembered her saying it under her breath in a litany, a long time ago. He had found her smacking her forehead against a wall once, and it had become a blurred together sound, “Notrealnotrealnotrealnotreal.”

It was something you might say when everything became too much. When you were at the end of your rope. He had come to think of it as a kind of alarm bell. When she started with the chanting, she was losing it, and it was time to back off. And then every once in a while she would do something, like walking out in front of a carriage, and he’d wonder if she was testing the idea. It was like her. She’d think of something, or read something, and then she would want to test it.

Her journals weren’t what you’d expect. There was a bit of ‘this is what I did today’ to them, and then they would go off the rails in odd directions. She wrote summaries of books she read. Sometimes she would go off on a tear about a novel, and practically re-write the entire thing from start to finish, filling journal after journal with it until she was onto some new thing. She wrote about her magic studies. She made lists. She wrote about him, and it wasn’t all hearts and flowers either, not that he expected it to be.

She knew he read her journals. She hid them, he found them. It was a game, or she didn’t care, he was never quite sure of which was the case. The first few volumes had been largely dedicated to Jane, her ‘friend’ from the alley where he had found her. That she ever considered that pox-ridden bitch her friend was beyond pathetic. Meal ticket, more like. Jane, if that’s what her name really was, was a whore beyond her prime earning years, pimping a younger and more attractive girl, that, from what he had gleaned from Willow, she had latched onto in the workhouse.

She wrote little stories to herself about Jane. They were what you would expect of a girl in her teens, variations on a theme of redemption. Jane always ended up doing something virtuous or respectable, and some of it was fairly imaginative, too. Far fetched, but entertaining.

He had gotten angry at her about something, and had told her exactly what her precious Jane had been about, and that, since she was confused on this point, Jane was dead. He had killed her.

She’d pushed herself up on her elbows, looking him right in the eye–and this was long before Angelus had given up on the downcast gaze bit–green eyes wet with tears, glittering like gems, full of contempt, and she spat out, “Duh!”

It wasn’t a word, just a sound, pregnant with meaning, and he had broken three of her ribs without thinking much about it, though he really wasn’t as mad as he knew he ought to be. That stare had been not unlike the experience of drinking her, a moment of recognition. A moment when he saw something in her that he . . . wanted.

William found the journal he was paging through now by the light of a lantern under a pillow cushion in the small room behind the library. It was full of observations about Prague, as if she were writing a guide book, and considering that she knew he’d find her journal, he decided that it was possible that she was. There were street maps sketched out, and odd little notes, like reminders that she had hastily scribbled, prefaced by the initials NTS.

Note To Self. She sometimes muttered the phrase under her breath.

Her syntax in writing was different. She wrote in great torrents, the lines becoming fat when she was in too great a hurry to be bothered with sharpening her pencil. Peculiar sounds expressed as words littered her writing. Oooky, grrrr, eeeew, ick, and so on. There was a rhythm to it, too, a verbal integrity that was peculiar, but unforced. This was the way her mind spoke to her. This is what she sounded like in her own head, he concluded.

They had gotten a taste of it tonight. She had been unusually animated, even bold, and he had never seen her speak so long and with so little discipline in front of Darla or Angelus. With Dru, she could rattle on for hours. They had tea party conversations that were hilarious because Dru couldn’t stay on topic and Willow didn’t need to in order to entertain her. Usually with Angelus and Darla she was on her very best behavior, alert, speaking when spoken to, providing answers that were direct.

His gaze wandered up the wall blankly, wondering if having no one but her journal to talk to for two months had played a part in the small changes he had noticed in her.

He took a deep breath, through his nose. The book, leather bound, was saturated with her scent from frequent handling. He could smell her on his skin as well. He sucked on his lower lip, eyes narrowing as he sought the taste of her there, under the whiskey and tobacco. They’d spent nearly the entire day shagging, eating, and sleeping. Dressing for the impromptu family gathering–Angelus couldn’t wait a single fucking day to grill her–had turned into a tender coupling in Dru’s room.

Dru had been dressed for the evening’s program, and she hated musing her clothes or her hair after she was all dressed up, but she had gotten that frenzied look in her eyes after she had done Willow’s hair and Miss Edith didn’t like it. For a stupid doll, Miss Edith had a good eye, William thought with a grin. He didn’t like Willow’s hair arranged in tight curls, like she was some kind of garden-variety debutante.

Dru needed a distraction, and Willow was there, so he whispered in her ear that what would really give her a nice glow was a good shag, and Dru had blown him a kiss and helped him undress her–though he would have been just as happy to have her with all that blue velvet spread out around her. Dru didn’t want her dress spoiled.

He could tell that she really, really did not want to do this. She had bathed, and she was already getting nervous about the command performance in the salon, and she was sore. He had seen the indignation flash in her eyes when Dru announced that Miss Edith didn’t like her hair. Her eyes had flown to the mirror, puzzled and a little hurt, because she did like it. She thought it looked swell.

It came down slowly, a little bit at a time, hairpins sliding out while he was sliding in. At some point in the middle of it, Dru consulted with Miss Edith, and the proper hair style was agreed upon, and Dru picked up her brush, starting at the ends of Willow’s hair, gently removing the pins, brushing her hair to shining while he slowly fucked her over the arm of a chair, her head in Dru’s lap. The scent of her cunt and her tears burrowed into the back of his brain.

Some day she would understand. Sometimes he made her cry just for the pleasure of licking the tears off her face.

The fledge on the floor started to stir, so he tucked the book inside his coat pocket and sat with his arms across the back of the chair he was straddling, waiting. This was the last of the lot to wake, and it was near dawn. There would be no time to hunt before he was awake, which meant a long, sorry day of misery for him. William’s philosophy to managing minions was predicated on one point. Can’t hunt, can’t feed. He wasn’t in the game to take care of minions. If they didn’t have the wit to feed themselves, then they weren’t worth keeping.

He laced his fingers together and cracked his knuckles one by one as the fledge turned to him at the first sound and then stared at him, unblinking as he worked his way through the remaining nine fingers.

“I’m hungry,” he said.

Of coarse you are, mate, William thought. He had never really forgotten the terrible hunger that had been the all-consuming awareness of his own awakening. A hunger so terrible that you’d claw yourself out of a coffin. Out of the ground.

“That’s too bad,” he said in a tone that suggested a distinct lack of sympathy. “It’s nearly dawn, and too late in the day for us to hunt, so you’ll go hungry. House rules. You feed yourself. I don’t feed you.”

He looked puzzled, and frustrated, and the panic was starting to seep in. They always panicked when they started to realize that there was something wrong.

He threw his head back, listening. Sniffing. Sampling the air, and then realizing that he didn’t need it to breath. Eventually he would try to get out of the room. The need to feed was too strong, and that’s when he would get to work, to plant another idea. The need to please him, as primal as the need to feed.

None of this is real.

She let her fingertips rest on a pane of glass, looking out onto the shadowy tangle that was the unkempt garden. Angelus had given her no instructions about a garden, and she had taken no action to have the garden below tended. It was dead and overgrown except for a small spot around by the kitchen where the Cook had potted herbs and she had started growing common spell ingredients.

In a day or two she would start seeing vampires who wore the faces of people she had hired to work in this house. They would remember her. They would be told who she was. They wouldn’t be offended or angry, and if they wanted to survive another day, they wouldn’t be covetous either, because that would end badly for them.

They had no hope. They had no real chance at life before they came here, she reminded herself. They were like Jane, who thought she was a shark, but really was a guppy in the shark pool.

The desolation of the garden below was soothing. All dead, and it would stay that way, falling into rot, and then, perhaps, reseeded to create new life. And it would be new life, fed from death, with its own uniqueness and integrity.

“I could smash my head right though the glass. I could use the shards to cut my wrists. I could throw myself from the windowsill. A two and half story fall might do it,” she whispered to the glass, trying to find her eyes in her reflection to gauge her own resolve. “I can do these things,” she whispered.

“But you won’t.”

She spun around, tripping clumsily on her skirt and almost making good on it, but when her back hit the glass it only rattled, but did not break. Darla was standing in the open doorway of her bedroom, and Willow’s heart started beating faster as she wondered how long she had been there.

“At least, not tonight,” Darla said with a small smile. She gestured to one of the two chairs in front of the fireplace. “Sit,” she said.

It was not an invitation. Willow went to the appointed chair and she sat. When Darla did not join her in the opposite chair, and instead wandered around the room, she wished that she could find a space in her head that would allow her to list prime numbers, or the periodic table of elements, or conjugate verbs in French. She wished that she could find a charm that would give her that distance and objectivity.

“You must have changed the sheets,” Darla said, running her hand over the neatly arranged counterpane.

She had changed the entire bed and cleaned the bathroom and taken an extremely hot bath, attacking each item as it became available. Dru and William bathed. They retired from the bathroom to Dru’s room where Dru had tried on dress after dress before she sent William to get her, to dress her.

She had created an elaborate hair style for her on the first attempt, using rolls of cotton to form the shapes, holding it all together with hairpins, but Miss Edith disapproved and it had to be taken down, and Dru got frustrated. Never a good thing when she was armed with a brush or sharp objects, so the dress was removed and hung up and Miss Edith was placed on the bed, decorously arranged with her back to the room, and William and Dru indulged in a tried and true method to deal with Dru’s frustrations.

Her fingernails cut into her palms.

“There are things that you should know that the boys think that they should not tell you,” Darla said. “I disagree.”

No matter what Angelus liked to pretend, Darla was the real seat of power in the household.

“I think its time that we talk about your future,” she said.

It was an alien concept. The only future she wished to have was in her present past, or not present future. The fact that Darla was suggesting that she had a future had implications that made her feel lightheaded.

“My future?” she repeated, because it was becoming painfully obvious that she was expected to participate in this conversation.

Fear flooded her scent. That was to be expected. Darla knew she was frightening. She worked at it, and the girl wasn’t stupid. She walked over to her, her hard, cold fingernail lifting Willow’s chin until her head was tilted back at an uncomfortable angle.

“It is inevitable, you know,” her tone was conversational. “Vampires don’t keep humans for eight years to watch them grow old and die.”

The reek of fear gradually subsided, leaving only discomfort in its wake. Darla was impressed in spite of herself. Willow understood. She understood completely.

“Don’t think about it,” she advised. “When my time came, I was already dying. It was a choice between dying faster, with less pain and humiliation, or living. I chose living. Dying a little bit at a time, seeing everything stripped from you . . . it makes you appreciate the prospect of having power over life and death. Most of us don’t have that luxury. It wasn’t offered to Angelus, or Dru, or William, but I give it to you. There is still time. If your answer would be to die faster, with less pain and humiliation, there is time for you to make that choice.”

None of this is real.

It was the only explanation that made Willow had been able to accept. None of this is real.

She said it out loud, chanted it under her breath as a mantra after she tried every spell she half knew to reverse a spell while two men held her down and another raped her. She was saying it the next morning when the watch was called by a passerby who found the spectacle of a filthy, half-naked woman huddled against a wall sufficiently annoying or alarming to call in the civil authorities.

Television informed her perspective on what would happen next as she was roughly bundled into a dark, swaying vehicle. She would be seen by a doctor, and she knew, dimly that she needed to be seen by a doctor, and maybe a counselor, and then her parents, and then she would have to see her friends, who might know or guess what had been done to her. She hoped that someone would know or guess because she didn’t think she could ever talk about it.

But that wasn’t what happened. No one talked to her. She was taken from one workhouse to another while the constable grew impatient, unnerved by her mutterings, which were putting off the supervisors of Bristol’s workhouses. So, he shook her and slapped her until she stopped with her mad little chant, which worked like a charm. She was quiet when they got to the Poor Clare's workhouse, and the sisters took her without a demur.

Days passed. There was a routine to it that was almost comforting and the nuns weren’t unkind. They bathed her, a process in which she stood in a cold room, naked while one woman armed with a brush and an expression of piously grim determination scrubbed while the other two, armed with buckets of cold water, rinsed, until they were satisfied that she was clean and lice free. Then they cut off her hair.

She had a narrow cot to sleep on in a dormitory filled with women. When she woke up screaming the first night, the girl beside her wasn’t unsympathetic, but she was tired and she told her that if she carried on like that every night someone would put a pillow over her head. She had seen it before.

Her name was Jane. That was what the nuns called her. The next morning when they were set to picking oakum and Willow muttered, “This isn’t real” under her breath, Jane gave an appreciative chuckle, showing teeth that were chipped and blackened.

Jane was her friend. Sort of. When the weather warmed up and Willow started showing, the nuns told her that she would have to leave, which confused her. She didn’t have anywhere to go, but Jane was leaving too, explaining that she only stayed in the workhouse through the worst of the winter months. It was maybe another day later when three things were born in on her. In the unreal world she was a prostitute–it explained the hours spent picking oakum while one of the sisters read from the bible and from tracts about the sins of the flesh. It was just another example of the unrealness of where she was. She wasn’t even who she was in the where of wherever she was. She was pregnant. This was a finding that should have occurred to her before, but hadn’t. A fact that she should have been aware of, but wasn’t until Jane explained it to her. She didn’t feel pregnant. Lastly, she could not remain pregnant, which actually didn’t bother her so much when Jane explained it to her, because she didn’t feel pregnant, and she certainly didn’t want to be pregnant.

She couldn’t be pregnant. She was a college bound honor roll student and a member of the Computer Club, and she had read Changing Bodies, Changing Lives before she even got her period because her parents considered her a smart and sensible girl who would make good decisions about boys and sex. Not that it really mattered because she didn’t know any boys who were interested her, even remotely, in that way. Except, maybe, for Oz.

They had no money. This didn’t bother Jane in the least. She set off at a brisk walk for a neighborhood that Willow didn’t need to be told was bad. She had nowhere else to go, so she followed her, a little glassy eyed at all of the things inflicted on her senses. She told herself to pay more attention, because at some point she wanted to remember this, the walking through an unreality so complex.

She witnessed her first act of prostitution while standing awkwardly behind a wagon on the quayside clutching her small bundle of belongings that included a bible, what was described as small clothes, and a wooded cross strung on a piece of yarn. The cross was comfortingly familiar. She had the same feeling that she had when Marcy Walker had lit a cigarette behind the gym at school, defying the smoking ban on campus, and well, just, smoking, which in and of itself was something Willow couldn’t understand wanting to do.

She kept her gaze carefully averted, shifting from one foot to the other while she watched the man Jane had approached with a phrase that sounded like a song. A vulgar song that made her want to laugh in a shocked kind of way.

This performance was repeated three times, while Jane’s mood improved with the completion of each transaction. It wasn’t the sex that pleased her. That had been performed with mechanical efficiency, though the men she serviced seemed pleased enough and utterly unperturbed by Willow’s presence, which made Willow wonder if she was just seeing this and was herself unseen. It was the money. She had money, and she was proud of the fact that she had earned it so quickly.

Willow found herself standing in the filthy hallway of what appeared to be a tenement while Jane haggled with a woman who had a small child on her hip who eventually gave in to Jane’s argument and produced a key and a very large sack that the two of them hauled up three flights of stairs.

“You are new at this, aren’t you, ducks?” Jane said with a rough kind of pity as Willow stood in the middle of a very small room that seemed to be filled with discarded bottles, refuse, and a sour smell that made her stomach turn.

The pity began and ended there. Jane explained what she needed to do to survive, while Willow stared at her in stunned disbelief. “Look, forget all that twaddle the nuns stuffed you with. You’ve got no references. Hiring out as a maid is a dream. It won’t happen. No one with sense would hire out of the workhouse, and if they do, like as not you’ll find yourself in a box, hired out at all hours at a penny a poke, and you won’t see tuppence for it,” she said.

It was better to work the streets, preferably in pairs because it discouraged most of the worst of the lot, as Jane put it.

The sack was full of clothing and wigs and cosmetics, and Jane inventoried it carefully to make sure that it was all there exactly as she left it, then she got dressed. When she was done with that she turned her attention to Willow, who also got dressed. It reminded her of the last Halloween, when they had turned into her costumes and she thought at one point that night that it had been a lucky thing that Buffy’s costume hadn’t belonged to Jane at one point.

It was the thought that made her cry, not the thing that she was doing with Jane muttering instructions at her.

Before she made enough money for the business of making herself no longer pregnant, an event that she had decided she simply couldn’t think about, she was climbing the stairs to the room when a fierce cramp shot through her and she collapsed on the stairs.

The landlady’s husband found her there, a weird mix of pity and disgust written on his pleasant face. He had red hair, like her. She still remembered that. Looking up at him and saying, “I have red hair, too.”

He helped her the rest of the way up the stairs and she curled up on the pallet on the floor that was now her bed. That night, Jane helped her clean herself up and brought her into her narrow bed, curling around her. The added warmth was nice. She felt so cold.

That night she told Jane why it wasn’t real. It was a spell, and the real her, the real Willow was in Sunnydale with Xander, and Oz, and Buffy, and Mr. Giles and her parents were at a conference in Buffalo. They were staying in New York with some cousins and coming home in time for her birthday.

It became a ritual after that night. She knew that Jane thought she was crazy. Jane had told her as much on several occasions, warning her against crazy talk, but when they were alone, she would rest her chin on Willow’s shoulder, spooned up against her back, and ask for another story. And she would kiss her and pet her, like she was a child, or at least that’s what it seemed to Willow until the petting became something else, and in a way she didn’t mind. It didn’t hurt, and it seemed to make Jane happy.

And, above all, it wasn’t real. None of it was.

She stopped wearing her cross. She kept it in the pocket in the dress she wore when they were working. It wasn’t Jane’s favorite, but she said it suited Willow. It was pink, and the top of it looked like it was just slung over the tops of her arms to leave her shoulders bare. She wore it with a blond wig that made her head itch, which was a bonus really. The itchy wig demanded her attention when she most needed it to wander, reserving the internal litany of ‘it isn’t real’ to those moments when she most needed to believe that none of it was real. There was an end to the unreality.

She did not expect it to come at the hands of a vampire. There was a certain irony to that. Well, there was that, and the fact that she didn’t recognize him.

Jane did the talking. Jane always did the talking. It was their con. Willow would stand back, removed from the whole business while Jane would explain as how she was new at the trade and barely more than a child, and so on. Claims that were usually met with skepticism or outright scorn, or a laugh, before the real haggling began.

Willow had stopped looking at the men. She hardly registered this one as he pushed her skirts up and slammed into her. For a moment she cursed Jane with the most vulgar language she had picked up. He was huge and hard, and strong enough to make her feel like she was suffocating as the pain of his intrusion made her stomach clench. Jane was busy counting her coin, and watching the alley. She had a knife and swore that she knew how to use it. Occasionally she glanced over at Willow to give her a wink or a reassuring grin.

She was looking at Jane when he bit her. That felt real enough. She had been curious about what it was like to be bitten and drained. When your best friend is a Slayer, and your dead friend from childhood is made into a vampire, and you’ve met yourself from another dimension as a vampire, you think about things like that. And the answer was, not surprisingly, that it hurt. A lot. But it also seemed an oddly appropriate conclusion as she felt herself slipping away, her heart skipping as it occurred to her that maybe this was what was supposed to happen and she would wake up in her bed, or maybe in her U.S. History class, with Xander sitting two rows over, covertly watching Cordelia.

But that wasn’t what happened at all.

There is a phenomena, about seeing people in unexpected places, where they become unrecognizable due to lack of context, Willow concluded after thinking about it later. She couldn’t understand how so much time could have passed before she realized who he was, and in a way that was a part of the unrealness of it because in any real life or death moment she was positive that she would have recognized the vampire known as Spike, formerly known as William the Bloody.

It wasn’t like they had chatted or they actually knew each other. The sidekick and archvillian didn’t know each other socially, but she knew who he was, what he was, and she had been more afraid of him than anyone until Angelus showed up.

In the real world? Spike was in Sunnydale. In the unreal world, there was William, and she was so long in the habit of thinking of them as different people that she really no longer knew what to think.

Long after Darla had left her alone, Willow stared in the middle distance. If none of this was real, she had no choice.

And if it was real . . . no choice was a choice.

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