The men had just departed, taking Darla's four girls with them to an izakaya nearby. They would return at dawn, having spent the night drinking beer and mingling with rich men and a few prominent performers from Kabukicho. Until then, the teahouse would be left to Darla and her servants. And Yoshida sleeping in the house behind.

Darla led Angelus to a small room. Through the paper screens he heard the clinking of delicate bowls as servants cleaned up after the party. He could hear their heartbeats and smell faint perspiration on their clean skin. It was nothing compared to the maddening smell of that boy.

And there was Darla. Her face was a blank because of the white paint. But her eyes. Her eyes hadn't changed. Angelus knew them of old. Still everything, still gentle, vicious, beautiful, deadly. Everything she was, her eyes told. If you knew how to read them.

He fell at her feet, face raised to her. Her rosebud lips arched into a sneer. He looked away.

"Darla, I need –" She waited. She wanted to hear it. "I need blood."

"Still tortured by that filthy soul, my boy?" She stood away from him, as if it might be contagious.

He pushed himself to his knees. She could see the soul there, like a black weight on his shoulders, bowing his head and aching his back. She might have felt pity, were it not for the contempt.

"Look at you," she continued. "Your clothes! You've been wearing them for how long? I swear that's what you were wearing when you left my rooms in Shanghai!"

Angelus looked down at his clothes, suddenly ashamed. They were rags. They once had style, but it was a long time ago.

"And your hair." Suddenly she was face to face with him, grabbing the grimy locks at the back of his head. "You come here, to my home, looking like this? No man has worn hair like this in decades!" She spat out the words. "You look wretched. I won't have you polluting this place. Leave."

She tore her hand from his matted hair and held it away from her, afraid it would sully her kimono.

He managed to raise his head, but he could not look at her.

"I can – I can change," he stammered.

"I've heard it all before, Angelus. It ended when you jumped out a window to save a baby from me." She could sound imperious and wounded at the same time. He sagged again.

"At least let me stay, for a while. Please." His voice had faded to a ragged whisper.

Darla regarded her childe bowed before her. She had never seen him like this before, not in China, not in Romania. Never so desperate. At her silence, she saw the slightest of changes; something in the set of his shoulders suggested hope.

"Angelus," she said, her voice now singsong whisper.

She knelt on the tatami, still keeping her distance.

"Did I tell you that? Did I tell you in China? I killed them all."

"Who?"

"The gypsies who did this to you." Her eyes were wide, but her face was still an eerie blank.

"Oh. You didn't tell me." His face looked strained.

"Not that I'd expect you to appreciate it." She looked at him, laughing a little. "Not my boy, cursed with a soul. My boy doesn't want blood spilled for him. And yet, here he is, looking for me because he's hungry."

Angelus crumpled. It was too much.

Her voice had become deadpan. "Children always come back."

She paused. She watched as he held himself up from the floor, his weak limbs barely managing even that.

"You are nothing. Angelus."

He looked at her, for the first time, straight in the eye.

"But you're not nothing to me." With these words she rushed to him, enclosing him in her arms. He collapsed against her. He buried his head in her neck, sobbing, holding her as if he could never let her go. She stroked his back, soothing him, purring to him. Soon she felt it, as she knew she would. Two points against her neck, a low growl. She pushed against him, giving permission.

He sank his fangs into her neck, the fresh blood in her veins an elixir. He pulled slowly, drawing it out of her body without the strength of a heartbeat to help him. He relished every pull. Sire's blood. Every time, it made him feel both immensely powerful and immensely vulnerable. It brought him back to his fledge days in Galway, brought him forward to an eternity with her. His everything. He could feel her nuzzle his neck as she refrained from biting him. He needed all the blood he could get. He moaned in response, holding her closer to him as he drank her in. He just tried to forget the body outside.

All too soon she pushed him away. She looked at his face, and laughed. Angelus bridled, wondering what trick she had dragged him into. Then he realized. He saw the side of her face, the paint all smeared. It must be on his face, too. He laughed with her, his eyes lighting for the first time in two decades. Darla saw that newness.

She ran her hand over his cheek.

"Come on," she said, as she stood.

"Where are we going?"

"You'll see." She smiled as she took him by the hand.

She led him to the bathhouse. The bath had been refilled, and paper lanterns hung around the walls, filling the room with a soft glow.

She began to undress him. She pushed his grimy frock coat over his shoulders, exposing a waistcoat and a white shirt at least twenty years out of date. She shook her head and laughed as she ripped off the waistcoat and began to unbutton his shirt. The collars had lost their starch a long time ago. She walked around him, slipping the shirt off, running her fingers over his tattoo. She paused as she looked at it.

"Oh, Angelus," she sighed. "I chose well when I chose you." She smiled, running a delicate hand down his bare chest. He growled in pleasure.

"Take that paint off," he said.

"You take it off," she replied, playfully.

He ripped her obi from her waist. Her kimono followed, the beautiful garment flung unceremoniously on the stone floor of the bathhouse. He pulled at the layers still wrapping her, frustrated by their complexity. Laughing, she tugged open a knot, and they fell away. He ripped off her wig and brought her blonde hair round her face. He roughly pulled her against him and kissed her, raiding her mouth with his tongue, devouring her taste, and shivering when he felt her respond in kind. He felt her skin against his, her familiar curves against his body. She deftly opened his trousers and pushed them down. He kicked them away. He knelt, and brought her down till she straddled him, then he pulled his mouth away from hers. He saw her eyes bright and thrilled at the thought that he had made them so.

He found a basin by the bath, an old bamboo thing, and filled it with water.

"Close your eyes," he whispered gently, as he began to pour the water over her face, rubbing away the paint with his fingertips. He cleaned it from her face, her neck and her back, white streams of water, tinged with red, running down her body as the paint came away. She put her hands under the flow, first washing the white off her fingers, then cleaning the smeared paint from his face. He filled the basin again, and rinsed the last of the whitened water away.

She could feel him between her legs, becoming aroused. She put a finger to his lips.

"Not yet, Angelus," she said. He moaned and pulled her against him, but she stood up, breaking his grasp, and pulled him up too.

"Not until you're clean again. Into the bath."

He gazed at her, smiling, intoxicated, then stepped into the bath. The stone base of the bath was hot against his feet, a low fire under the floor keeping the water warm. He sat in the water, leaning his head back, feeling warmth creep into his cold body. He could hear her as she fetched something from the shelves. She came back and sat on a low bamboo stool behind him. His eyes found hers as he looked up at her from the bath. Then she grinned and held up a scissors.

"Angelus," she said, "it's time to bring you into the twentieth century."

He laughed, and wet his hair.

Darla took a comb from the box by her side and began to straighten out his mess of tangles. He yelped now and then as she hit a particularly bad patch. She giggled.

"I give up," she said, a mock-weary tone I her voice. She took out the scissors and started snipping. Angelus could feel a weight lift from his head as she cut away the tangles. He tried to think of the last time he had even thought of his hair, but he couldn't remember. Now it was all he could think of, because that was where her hands were.

He gazed at her as she concentrated.

"You've been here a while."

She glanced at him. "We left Shanghai soon after you did. I couldn't stay there."

"Spike and Dru?"

"They're somewhere. Spike wanted to see Tokyo, said it was more his style."

Angelus smiled gently. "But Kyoto is yours."

"It's quiet. After a hundred and fifty years of… well. I thought I'd like a break." She stared intently at his hair. It was so quiet he could hear it falling to the ground.

"And you? Where have you been?" she asked.

"Around."

"Around?"

"I went to Hong Kong for a while."

"Oh. Docks."

"Yeah."

"I hope the vermin are better there." She didn't say it bitterly. She just said it.

"Not really."

They fell silent again, as Darla continued to snip his hair.

"How did you find me?"

"Came here months ago. I heard rumours of a beautiful foreign geisha in Kyoto. It could only have been you, Darla."

"You couldn't have known that."

"I heard a rumour about the payments, too."

"Oh."

She combed his hair again. This time he felt the comb glide through, no tangles to stop it.

"There, now. Don't you look better?" She smiled.

"Do I?" He smiled back.

"You will. But it's sticking straight up." She laughed, trying to comb down his hair. "It will go down when it's dry."

Angelus sat up and looked over the side of the bath at his hair on the ground. He ran a hand over his head.

"Feels better," he said.

Then, with preternatural speed, he grabbed her and pulled her into the bath with him.

"Angelus!" she screamed, laughing.

He began to kiss her, letting his hands wander all over her skin.

"Feels even better still," he murmured.

Again he invaded her mouth with his tongue, as she invaded his with hers. He could feel her purr into his mouth as she ran her hands over his chest. He gently kneaded her breast with his hand, while he held her close to him with the other. Then he let his hand run down, over her soft belly, and between her legs, where he found her centre.

"Angelus," she whispered.

He merely groaned in reply as his fingers began to stroke her clitoris.

"Angelus, I haven't fed."

He pulled back and looked at her.

"You did. Earlier. Outside."

"I gave you that. I gave you all of it."

He stared at her.

"Oh."

"I need blood. You know that."

"You gave me all of it?"

"Yes, my boy. It's alright, I can feed, and then we can get back to this, lover." She smiled, moving her body against his.

He leant his head back, closing his eyes, feeling her nearness. He could not resist.

"Feed," he said.

"Yoshida!" she called, as she rose from the bath. She stepped towards the door of the bathhouse and called again.

Soon the boy appeared, rubbing sleep from his eyes and attempting to smooth his tousled hair. He saw her standing in the glow of the paper lanterns, wet and naked. He stopped, staring. She could almost hear his thoughts. She moved to one side, as if by accident, allowing him to see Angelus in the bath. His face fell.

"Seiji," she said in her most sensuous voice.

He pulled his yukata tighter around him as he answered.

"Yes, Darla," he said, his voice dead with sleep and disappointment.

"Bring me someone. Anyone. You choose."

He regarded her for a moment.

"Right away, Mistress." He turned and walked away.

Angelus remained still, eyes closed, as Darla waited to hear footsteps. She heard Yoshida go to the servants quarters and knock on a door there. When she heard the voice that replied, she smiled. He could pick the good ones. She was so pretty, and she persisted in breaking the china.

The girl came to the bathhouse, sleepy and confused. Seeing no one at the door, she walked inside and looked around. She saw a strange man in the bath, his eyes closed, lying as if he were dead. Her shock had not time to wear off before Darla had her by the throat. She did not have time to scream.

When he opened his eyes the body was gone. Darla smiled at him, knowing, luscious. He took her hand as she stepped into the water once more, feeling her new warmth. When he kissed her he could taste the blood. The coppery tang filled his mouth and he crushed her against him, needing that taste. She straddled him in the water, feeling his cock against her belly, straining for her. He ran his hand again between her legs and found her slick and ready for him. She positioned herself over him, and took him in to the hilt. She gasped as he filled her, their bodies fitting together again as they had always done. He began to move inside her and moaned as her inner muscles tightened around him. He turned, so her back was against the side of the bath, and began to thrust as violently as he could in the water. Darla screamed in delight as she wrapped her legs around his hips. He cradled her head and brought his mouth to hers, doubly penetrating her with the voracity of his kisses. She moaned into his mouth as he brought her towards her climax.

Her orgasm carried him over the edge, and he felt the intense waves of pleasure as he spurted his dead seed into her womb.

"Angelus," she said, taking his face in her hands. "Angelus, you've come back!"

"Darla," he gasped, withdrawing from her. "Darla." He leant in to her as she put her arms around him, soothing him. He lay between her legs, his head on her breasts, as she stroked his hair.

"Come, Angelus. Let's go to bed."

He nodded, and looked into her eyes. He'd do anything for her, with her, to her.

Anything to get that heartbeat out of his head.