"I am glad to see them go. She was never worthy of our Master's attention,"
Darla said, striding over to the Master's side, where Drusilla had
previously stood.
Both Angelus and Spike gazed after the crazed vampire, and the former slayer. Angelus, with narrowed eyes of residual rage; Spike, with longing and wonder. Breaking the stillness that had settled around them, Angelus scoffed and turned away from the rest, pacing in another narrow corridor, still in near sight of the others.
"Let him go," the Master said, staying Darla with a long clawed hand around her slender wrist. Her big eyes glancing down at him, the Master continued, "He was always too impetuous. I did try to warn you of it over one hundred years ago."
"I still stand in my position with him," Darla said murmured.
"Even when he would speak to you that way?" the Master questioned.
"It was I who brought him up to speak that way," Darla answered, still gazing after him, planning the hurt that she would inflict on him later when they were alone. "And even when he would stray, faced with that damned gypsy curse, it was none but I who brought him back. We belong together."
And what a glorious night that had been, Darla mused, allowing her mind to go back to that splendid night between them. What a row they had had before that. And after, who would have thought that her stepping back would have him coming back to her. When she had allowed that he would stay with her, without giving in any of his 'presents' that she had come to expect of him over years. When he had come to her one night, come to her in the raw need that they had always shared between them. When he had seen that his endeavors for 'good' and 'just' were a hoax, set up only by a God who would not want him.
And she at first had pushed him away, for how could she give herself so completely to such a shadow of the man whom she'd once loved? It had been he who had put on the force that night, for the first time since those cursed gypsy's had reinstated his sorry soul, he had once again been the aggressor. For her. For the memory of what they could be together. Because suddenly, that memory alone had no longer been enough for him. For either of them. And they had joined, in possibly the most fulfilling joining between them since her siring of him a century before.
Perhaps it had been the anticipation, perhaps not, but that night had been so different to any other. And then, once they had woken up disheveled, and with the mattress on the floor after the creaking bed's legs had simply given out beneath them, Angel had been her Angelus once more. They never did speak of those times in between, but in those times after, he had been vicious. Sometimes, more vicious than even she could believe. Oh, but they had been the most glorious times together.
"Yes, so you keep saying," the Master murmured. He then turned his attention to Spike. "And what of you, young one? Do you not go after your beloved one?"
"We always find each other, me and Dru," Spike answered glibly. "You gotta give a girl like Dru her space. She'll love you more for it."
It was the way that the youngest vampire of the group had been ever since the Master had allowed them to come back with him after they had been forced into hiding due to one of this young one's antics. Had he not managed to bag a slayer of his own before that time, the Master oftentimes believed that they would have left him alone out there to burn. As it had been, his men had found them and brought them in. Even Angelus had been vaguely apologetic for their past meeting, and the Master could even find it in himself to respect the younger vampire's lust for life and the snuffing out of it by his hands and teeth.
Now together, they bided their time for the prophesised times to come, and the Master could not help but think over what his young princess had spoken of. If indeed she spoke true, there were some very interesting times to be had ahead. Mayhaps they might even think towards acting in that direction after all.
*
~1906 - London~
A firebomb erupted through the sewers, giving the vampires who lingered there barely enough time to become aware of the situation, let alone react to it.
"Bloody hell!" was screamed out, almost drowned out entirely by the explosion surrounding them.
"We have to get out of here," Darla cried. Her eyes were wide as they searched hard for a way out of this. "It's a death trap for us all."
"Like we all can't see that!" Angelus growled. "When I get my hands on the one who's responsible for this. . ."
"Well, I can hardly pass up an offer like that now, can I?" a feminine voice said from behind the fire force. "Bring it on."
"A slayer," the Master muttered. "Kill her. She will not get out of these sewers alive!"
"I hate to prove wrong someone as old and, well, I would say wise but in this situation, I don't think that quite fits." The girl found herself face to face with Spike suddenly and grinned up at him before head butting him squarely. "Do you?"
"Angelus, here's a piece for you!" Spike called out over the fire. "Remember, I did promise you the next slayer we came up across."
"Aye," Angelus replied, grasping the slayer by her upper arms forcefully, and hurling both of them up through the manhole and above ground to better fighting surroundings for him. "That he did, slayer. This will be a mighty fine pleasure. I have heard say that the blood of the slayer is a most powerful aphrodisiac."
"Don't talk to her," Darla told him, glaring at the slayer viciously. "Get rid of her quickly. She has already cost us too much!"
Indeed, that was true. The only ones to have made it out of the fire trap had been Spike as well as Darla aiding the Master. Now they stood about in the nighttime London rain as passersby screamed and ran all about them.
Spike, at first having been content to merely watch his sire's maker play with his newest toy, suddenly lifted his head as though sensing something nearby, before turning off to seek it out. Darla noticed absently, before dismissing him as unimportant at this point. The Master drifted towards the fight between vampire and slayer in something akin to a daze.
"Yes," he hissed low in his throat. "The slayer will come down to me, and she will die, giving her life so that I may bring about hell on earth!"
His tone was triumphant when he reached close enough to be heard by Angelus and the slayer, even through the din that was being made all around them.
"What are you talking about?" Angelus asked, taking his attention away for a second from the slayer in front of him, after buying himself a second as she fell to the ground.
"It shall not happen like that," the slayer snarled, glaring up at the Master, before she quickly regained her footing once again.
She glanced for a second towards Angelus before deciding obviously that this was one fight she was not about to win. Darla came to stand closer by her childe's side, and together, the two of them looked quite intimidating, even without the Master vampire's clawed hands reaching out towards her.
"Not tonight, but soon!" the slayer promised, before turning swiftly to retreat back to wherever it was that she had come from.
Not swift enough, Angelus' hands reached out from behind her and near yanked her head from her shoulders as he violently severed the bone between her head and her spine, with a definite sense of satisfaction.
"Damn it, and I was getting such a taste in my mouth for a long, healthy draft of slayer blood this night," Angelus growled down to Darla, as the slayer's dead body was dropped careless down onto the cobblestones, for whoever cleaned the streets in the morning to find.
"No mind," she murmured into his mouth. She was draping herself up against his much larger body "You heard the girl. Not tonight, but soon. It was a promise, Angelus."
"Aye, a promise I intend collecting on, even if it's from every other one of them down the line," Angelus muttered darkly, before taking his sire's mouth in a savage kiss.
They pulled apart, becoming aware once more of the Master's presence with them. That, and Spike's continued absence.
"Now, where do you suppose he got to?" Darla asked, though without any real care in her tone. Angelus' next words followed that up neatly.
"Who really cares? Let us leave this place. I grow tired of it, and we can hardly stay here now. We must find another place to rest before sunlight."
*
"I can sense you, my puddle full of devilish delights," Spike murmured into the darkness. "I can feel you in my bones, stuck in my marrow. The air reeks of you, luv. There's no need to stay in hiding. You know I'll find you eventually."
"My William. How true you are to me. I knew you'd not forget me," an answering murmur from nearby trees replied.
Stepping out, Spike saw indeed that it was his sweetly, dark princess come to greet him, and swept her into a fast embrace that was violent in the taking.
"Ah luv, you were gone for so long. I had begun to doubt that you would come back to us," Spike muttered against her soft, pale neck. The ridges of his true face tickled her fair skin, and she shuddered slightly.
"Silly boy, you knew I'd come back for you," Drusilla told him, lifting up her gloved hand to stroke his face. Unlike him, she still appeared human, even if such an appearance was quite deceiving. "We'll always come back for you. You just had to learn your lesson first."
Drusilla nodded as though that was that, and it was all very simple. Spike only found himself very confused.
"Dru? What lesson was there to learn?" he asked, stepping closer to her as she wandered away.
"Why, the slayer, of course," Drusilla replied, shaking her head at him. "Why Spike, sometimes you are really very slow."
"You mean, you were the one who set the slayer upon us tonight?" Spike asked, beginning to get very riled up at the thought.
"Leah Bradley," Drusilla said, going off into her own world with her usual ease. "She was very giving, she was. Quite happy to do everything I asked of her. She's a real slayer, you see. Not like the one that I brought you back then. You all had to see the difference."
Spike was beginning to see the warped sense in his beloved's line of logic, though the line was not necessarily a happy one to him.
"Let me see if I'm getting this right, luv," he began slowly. "You set the slayer on us to teach us all a lesson. You could have had us all killed!"
"Nonsense!" Drusilla admonished. "I would never have let that happen."
"And you were there, were you?" Only narrowly did he manage to refrain from grabbing her roughly and shaking her. Not that she wouldn't have enjoyed it. He just didn't believe that it would be overly productive in this situation. "Geez, Dru! So where is your little pet slayer then? I suppose she's lingering about here somewhere?"
Drusilla appeared surprised for a moment, as though Spike had just mentioned something that she had misplaced and forgotten about. Fortunately, Buffy was able to move on her own, whether she had been misplaced or not, and chose that minute to come out of the thicket.
"Ah, there she is. My pet slayer. But no!" Drusilla paused, her eyes widening and her lips creating an 'O' of shock and revelation. "She is your pet, my love. You were the one who brought her here like this."
"Bloody hell Dru, what are you going on about now?" Spike asked, getting more than a little annoyed. "If I'd done something like that, don't you think I would have remembered it? It's not as if I easily forgot that Chinese brat from the Rebellion, is it?"
"No," Dru whispered, holding a forefinger to her darkened lips. "You haven't done it yet, for of course you'd remember that! It's about what you did do, or what you will do, or what you won't need to do now, because it's already done. Isn't that wonderful?"
Spike shook his head and closed his eyes. Sometimes, it was just better to give up on her when she was in one of these moods. 20 odd years with her like this had taught him at least that much.
"Alright then Dru. Whatever you say. We'd better be getting back to the rest of them right soon too. Otherwise, well, you know how eager they can be to wander off without us!" Spike glanced down at Buffy, almost as though he would have rathered not to, with all that she represented. "And I suppose that you'll be wanting to come along too? Very well, but watch yourself. You're no better to me just because you were once a slayer. In case your new 'watcher'," he glanced scathingly at Drusilla, "Didn't tell you yet, there's a new slayer in town."
"I expected nothing less," Buffy replied, just as scathing. "One dies and another one is called. Don't think that just because I became a vampire I lost what wits I had. Obviously that's something that some of us seem to suffer of!"
That last comment was made pointedly at Spike, who growled in abject annoyance, before grasping Drusilla's arm and dragging her along with him.
"You are going to have some explaining to do for this one, luv," he told her harshly, before they came again into more heavily populated areas.
*
They had separated not long after this time. Through the years, the had come across each other in mass destructions and massacres, though never after that time had they made nest all together. In fact, the Master, so intrigued by Drusilla's ramblings, had traveled his way to Southern California, along with Drusilla' pet slayer Buffy, once the other vampire had tired of her fun. Spike and Drusilla had traveled the world widely, coming across demons and wars, finding that the key to the slayer line was held in the potentials that were chosen before. Angelus and Darla had fought and loved as they had come to discover the new world, and where they fit in to it.
Years past. Decades. And yet the longer this group remained apart, the more concreted it became that this group would once again come together on a place that reeked evil and what evil could do. A place called Sunnydale, the name that the very mouth of hell used to hide itself from the humans it lingered beneath.
*
Both Angelus and Spike gazed after the crazed vampire, and the former slayer. Angelus, with narrowed eyes of residual rage; Spike, with longing and wonder. Breaking the stillness that had settled around them, Angelus scoffed and turned away from the rest, pacing in another narrow corridor, still in near sight of the others.
"Let him go," the Master said, staying Darla with a long clawed hand around her slender wrist. Her big eyes glancing down at him, the Master continued, "He was always too impetuous. I did try to warn you of it over one hundred years ago."
"I still stand in my position with him," Darla said murmured.
"Even when he would speak to you that way?" the Master questioned.
"It was I who brought him up to speak that way," Darla answered, still gazing after him, planning the hurt that she would inflict on him later when they were alone. "And even when he would stray, faced with that damned gypsy curse, it was none but I who brought him back. We belong together."
And what a glorious night that had been, Darla mused, allowing her mind to go back to that splendid night between them. What a row they had had before that. And after, who would have thought that her stepping back would have him coming back to her. When she had allowed that he would stay with her, without giving in any of his 'presents' that she had come to expect of him over years. When he had come to her one night, come to her in the raw need that they had always shared between them. When he had seen that his endeavors for 'good' and 'just' were a hoax, set up only by a God who would not want him.
And she at first had pushed him away, for how could she give herself so completely to such a shadow of the man whom she'd once loved? It had been he who had put on the force that night, for the first time since those cursed gypsy's had reinstated his sorry soul, he had once again been the aggressor. For her. For the memory of what they could be together. Because suddenly, that memory alone had no longer been enough for him. For either of them. And they had joined, in possibly the most fulfilling joining between them since her siring of him a century before.
Perhaps it had been the anticipation, perhaps not, but that night had been so different to any other. And then, once they had woken up disheveled, and with the mattress on the floor after the creaking bed's legs had simply given out beneath them, Angel had been her Angelus once more. They never did speak of those times in between, but in those times after, he had been vicious. Sometimes, more vicious than even she could believe. Oh, but they had been the most glorious times together.
"Yes, so you keep saying," the Master murmured. He then turned his attention to Spike. "And what of you, young one? Do you not go after your beloved one?"
"We always find each other, me and Dru," Spike answered glibly. "You gotta give a girl like Dru her space. She'll love you more for it."
It was the way that the youngest vampire of the group had been ever since the Master had allowed them to come back with him after they had been forced into hiding due to one of this young one's antics. Had he not managed to bag a slayer of his own before that time, the Master oftentimes believed that they would have left him alone out there to burn. As it had been, his men had found them and brought them in. Even Angelus had been vaguely apologetic for their past meeting, and the Master could even find it in himself to respect the younger vampire's lust for life and the snuffing out of it by his hands and teeth.
Now together, they bided their time for the prophesised times to come, and the Master could not help but think over what his young princess had spoken of. If indeed she spoke true, there were some very interesting times to be had ahead. Mayhaps they might even think towards acting in that direction after all.
*
~1906 - London~
A firebomb erupted through the sewers, giving the vampires who lingered there barely enough time to become aware of the situation, let alone react to it.
"Bloody hell!" was screamed out, almost drowned out entirely by the explosion surrounding them.
"We have to get out of here," Darla cried. Her eyes were wide as they searched hard for a way out of this. "It's a death trap for us all."
"Like we all can't see that!" Angelus growled. "When I get my hands on the one who's responsible for this. . ."
"Well, I can hardly pass up an offer like that now, can I?" a feminine voice said from behind the fire force. "Bring it on."
"A slayer," the Master muttered. "Kill her. She will not get out of these sewers alive!"
"I hate to prove wrong someone as old and, well, I would say wise but in this situation, I don't think that quite fits." The girl found herself face to face with Spike suddenly and grinned up at him before head butting him squarely. "Do you?"
"Angelus, here's a piece for you!" Spike called out over the fire. "Remember, I did promise you the next slayer we came up across."
"Aye," Angelus replied, grasping the slayer by her upper arms forcefully, and hurling both of them up through the manhole and above ground to better fighting surroundings for him. "That he did, slayer. This will be a mighty fine pleasure. I have heard say that the blood of the slayer is a most powerful aphrodisiac."
"Don't talk to her," Darla told him, glaring at the slayer viciously. "Get rid of her quickly. She has already cost us too much!"
Indeed, that was true. The only ones to have made it out of the fire trap had been Spike as well as Darla aiding the Master. Now they stood about in the nighttime London rain as passersby screamed and ran all about them.
Spike, at first having been content to merely watch his sire's maker play with his newest toy, suddenly lifted his head as though sensing something nearby, before turning off to seek it out. Darla noticed absently, before dismissing him as unimportant at this point. The Master drifted towards the fight between vampire and slayer in something akin to a daze.
"Yes," he hissed low in his throat. "The slayer will come down to me, and she will die, giving her life so that I may bring about hell on earth!"
His tone was triumphant when he reached close enough to be heard by Angelus and the slayer, even through the din that was being made all around them.
"What are you talking about?" Angelus asked, taking his attention away for a second from the slayer in front of him, after buying himself a second as she fell to the ground.
"It shall not happen like that," the slayer snarled, glaring up at the Master, before she quickly regained her footing once again.
She glanced for a second towards Angelus before deciding obviously that this was one fight she was not about to win. Darla came to stand closer by her childe's side, and together, the two of them looked quite intimidating, even without the Master vampire's clawed hands reaching out towards her.
"Not tonight, but soon!" the slayer promised, before turning swiftly to retreat back to wherever it was that she had come from.
Not swift enough, Angelus' hands reached out from behind her and near yanked her head from her shoulders as he violently severed the bone between her head and her spine, with a definite sense of satisfaction.
"Damn it, and I was getting such a taste in my mouth for a long, healthy draft of slayer blood this night," Angelus growled down to Darla, as the slayer's dead body was dropped careless down onto the cobblestones, for whoever cleaned the streets in the morning to find.
"No mind," she murmured into his mouth. She was draping herself up against his much larger body "You heard the girl. Not tonight, but soon. It was a promise, Angelus."
"Aye, a promise I intend collecting on, even if it's from every other one of them down the line," Angelus muttered darkly, before taking his sire's mouth in a savage kiss.
They pulled apart, becoming aware once more of the Master's presence with them. That, and Spike's continued absence.
"Now, where do you suppose he got to?" Darla asked, though without any real care in her tone. Angelus' next words followed that up neatly.
"Who really cares? Let us leave this place. I grow tired of it, and we can hardly stay here now. We must find another place to rest before sunlight."
*
"I can sense you, my puddle full of devilish delights," Spike murmured into the darkness. "I can feel you in my bones, stuck in my marrow. The air reeks of you, luv. There's no need to stay in hiding. You know I'll find you eventually."
"My William. How true you are to me. I knew you'd not forget me," an answering murmur from nearby trees replied.
Stepping out, Spike saw indeed that it was his sweetly, dark princess come to greet him, and swept her into a fast embrace that was violent in the taking.
"Ah luv, you were gone for so long. I had begun to doubt that you would come back to us," Spike muttered against her soft, pale neck. The ridges of his true face tickled her fair skin, and she shuddered slightly.
"Silly boy, you knew I'd come back for you," Drusilla told him, lifting up her gloved hand to stroke his face. Unlike him, she still appeared human, even if such an appearance was quite deceiving. "We'll always come back for you. You just had to learn your lesson first."
Drusilla nodded as though that was that, and it was all very simple. Spike only found himself very confused.
"Dru? What lesson was there to learn?" he asked, stepping closer to her as she wandered away.
"Why, the slayer, of course," Drusilla replied, shaking her head at him. "Why Spike, sometimes you are really very slow."
"You mean, you were the one who set the slayer upon us tonight?" Spike asked, beginning to get very riled up at the thought.
"Leah Bradley," Drusilla said, going off into her own world with her usual ease. "She was very giving, she was. Quite happy to do everything I asked of her. She's a real slayer, you see. Not like the one that I brought you back then. You all had to see the difference."
Spike was beginning to see the warped sense in his beloved's line of logic, though the line was not necessarily a happy one to him.
"Let me see if I'm getting this right, luv," he began slowly. "You set the slayer on us to teach us all a lesson. You could have had us all killed!"
"Nonsense!" Drusilla admonished. "I would never have let that happen."
"And you were there, were you?" Only narrowly did he manage to refrain from grabbing her roughly and shaking her. Not that she wouldn't have enjoyed it. He just didn't believe that it would be overly productive in this situation. "Geez, Dru! So where is your little pet slayer then? I suppose she's lingering about here somewhere?"
Drusilla appeared surprised for a moment, as though Spike had just mentioned something that she had misplaced and forgotten about. Fortunately, Buffy was able to move on her own, whether she had been misplaced or not, and chose that minute to come out of the thicket.
"Ah, there she is. My pet slayer. But no!" Drusilla paused, her eyes widening and her lips creating an 'O' of shock and revelation. "She is your pet, my love. You were the one who brought her here like this."
"Bloody hell Dru, what are you going on about now?" Spike asked, getting more than a little annoyed. "If I'd done something like that, don't you think I would have remembered it? It's not as if I easily forgot that Chinese brat from the Rebellion, is it?"
"No," Dru whispered, holding a forefinger to her darkened lips. "You haven't done it yet, for of course you'd remember that! It's about what you did do, or what you will do, or what you won't need to do now, because it's already done. Isn't that wonderful?"
Spike shook his head and closed his eyes. Sometimes, it was just better to give up on her when she was in one of these moods. 20 odd years with her like this had taught him at least that much.
"Alright then Dru. Whatever you say. We'd better be getting back to the rest of them right soon too. Otherwise, well, you know how eager they can be to wander off without us!" Spike glanced down at Buffy, almost as though he would have rathered not to, with all that she represented. "And I suppose that you'll be wanting to come along too? Very well, but watch yourself. You're no better to me just because you were once a slayer. In case your new 'watcher'," he glanced scathingly at Drusilla, "Didn't tell you yet, there's a new slayer in town."
"I expected nothing less," Buffy replied, just as scathing. "One dies and another one is called. Don't think that just because I became a vampire I lost what wits I had. Obviously that's something that some of us seem to suffer of!"
That last comment was made pointedly at Spike, who growled in abject annoyance, before grasping Drusilla's arm and dragging her along with him.
"You are going to have some explaining to do for this one, luv," he told her harshly, before they came again into more heavily populated areas.
*
They had separated not long after this time. Through the years, the had come across each other in mass destructions and massacres, though never after that time had they made nest all together. In fact, the Master, so intrigued by Drusilla's ramblings, had traveled his way to Southern California, along with Drusilla' pet slayer Buffy, once the other vampire had tired of her fun. Spike and Drusilla had traveled the world widely, coming across demons and wars, finding that the key to the slayer line was held in the potentials that were chosen before. Angelus and Darla had fought and loved as they had come to discover the new world, and where they fit in to it.
Years past. Decades. And yet the longer this group remained apart, the more concreted it became that this group would once again come together on a place that reeked evil and what evil could do. A place called Sunnydale, the name that the very mouth of hell used to hide itself from the humans it lingered beneath.
*
