Hey, sorry it's been a while but I just haven't had a chance. Again, unfortunately I only own Carma. I've really messed around with characters in this but I hope you like it
"I'm going to go out on a limb and assume that he isn't a friend of yours."
All Carma got in return for her politeness, sarcastic though it may have been, was a glare from Buffy that was probably meant to be frightening, but Carma had lived with Angelus and William the Bloody for decades, that was nothing.
"No he isn't."
The Bringer had been tied down onto the chair, after Buffy and the others had recovered from the abrupt entrance. Apparently he had been lurking outside the house, the only one though, the three of them had checked, and Angel had insisted that she believe them, although the idea of trusting vampires apart from Angel or Spike was just wrong. Intellectually Buffy knew that two of this 'Triumvirate' as they called themselves were Angel and Spike, and she promised herself that she was going to treat them like that, but it was still quite scary. As for Carma, Buffy had absolutely no intention of being nice to her; the way she was draping herself over Spike, William, was absolutely ridiculous, as though he would ever be interested in something like that.
"He's a Bringer, one of the First's agents. He must have been trying to find out how many potentials we've got."
After a few seconds silence Willow finished the explanation as it became obvious that Buffy wasn't going to respond anymore to Carma. She had to raise her voice as she spoke, to make herself over the low growls emerging from Angelus's throat at the insult to his childe. But before he could do anything about it William entered the conversation.
"Why are you guessing what he wants, why don't you just ask him?"
"We've trapped one and asked them that before. They don't give anything away."
This time it was Buffy that replied, in a girly, flirty voice, causing Carma to growl under her breath.
"Asked, asked! These bringers must have been killing potentials. And you just asked what their plans were. Spike I'm ashamed of you."
Pathetic though it was for a Master Vampire, Angelus almost seemed to be having a heart attack. The idea of just 'asking' for information was totally foreign to him. Why did no one here seem to know what torture was, slayers and watchers were one thing, but there were two vampires who he knew knew how to wring information out of an unwilling donor, and they just ASKED!
"Well what would you suggest?"
"Give him to us for a few hours, we'll sort it."
Despite Angel and Spike's objections, and Giles's rather obvious misgivings, the Triumvirate hauled the unconscious Bringer down to the basement. But the door slammed in Buffy's face before she could follow them down.
In the basement
"It's a shame he's blind. It's always more fun when they can see the blood."
"Wow, would you look at some of the thing's they've got here!"
Angelus and William looked away from the gibbering, bleeding Bringer to see Carma leaning over a chest pulling out various weapons and haying them almost reverently on the floor. There was a gleaming silver sword with an ornately decorated hilt, a mace, a gorgeous knife with a jewelled hilt that Carma slid into the waist band of her jeans, and among others, a glowing purple whip that Angelus swore he had seen a friend of his use once.
"How's it going?"
"He seems to be refusing to talk."
Angelus stepped back to allow his childer play their game.
"Ahh, why don't you want to talk to us?"
Her voice had a saccharine sweetness that was both seductive and deadly, her hips were swaying as she walked towards the Bringer and circled him predatorily, her hand trailing across his chest as she drew up behind William and rested her head on his shoulder. Without any sign of mercy in their eyes they just stared at the Bringer in front of them, the normally stoic harbinger was slumped against one of the supports. A series of cuts, almost like a pattern of cross-stitch, all neat and perfectly straight, they ran down his arms and his back was decorated with large bruises. He was whimpering, pathetic little noises erupting from his mouth, although he still wasn't talking, he was close to cracking.
"Carma, William, the two of you must be hungry. And I'm sure our friend here would be more than happy to oblige."
The Bringer didn't need to see to know that he wasn't just going to be fed on, vampires didn't like Bringer blood anyway, it usually made them ill. Something in Angelus's voice spoke of something far worse. With matching malicious smirks Carma and Spike moved so that Carma was on his right, and William on the left. Nodding to their sire they both morphed and viciously sank their fangs into the Bringer's neck.
It burned! The Bringer had never really considered being bitten by a vampire, but nothing said it felt like this. Liquid fire was racing through veins, and it fried and froze his insides at the same time, metal spikes were ripping through his organs and it felt as though they were puncturing his skin, from his scalp to the soles of his feet. Some part of him could feel their fangs depart from his neck, and the pain should have stopped, or at least decreased, but it strengthened.
If the Bringer could have seen he would have seen Carma slammed into the post he wasted onto, instead he felt it. Carma's hands were held above her head as William pressed against her and kissed her ferociously, fangs clashing and tongues fighting their own private dance. It was always like this when they shared blood. Blood was a physical part of a person, and when they added the right amount of their power to their feeding, when the blood passed from one mouth to another it intensified their power, caused the victim excruciating pain that lasted as long as they wanted it to. And this was always enough to make them break, it wasn't just the pain, it was the psychological horrors this form of torture inflicted upon the victim, all their nightmares paraded in front of their eyes.
Blood running in rivers down the walls of his mindscape, blurry shapes ran across his vision and they screamed, long and loud, filled with pain. Faces floated towards him, large eyes, rimed with bruises of blood were the frames for the perfectly formed tears that fell, and ran into the corner of the mouth opened in a silent scream. His family. He had once been normal, human, slightly more pessimistic than most, but human, but then his family were murdered in a robbery, his father and brother beheaded, his mother and sisters raped then murdered. Left for him to find when he arrived home from visiting a friend, three weeks later when the bodies were rotting and all the blood was dried in pools around the wounds, and his fathers head had rolled into the hall, so it was the first thing he saw when he entered the house. He'd gone mad then, the police hadn't been doing anything fast enough, and so he'd taken matters into his on hands, he'd gone to every bar in London for three days straight, never stopping, and then picked up a trail to Brighton, he'd followed them and delivered vengeance. Heads rolled and blood was spilled in copious amounts as he paid the bastards back for what they did to his family. That was when the First came to him, he offered the blood crazed young man a place in his ranks, to live forever and assist in the dawning of a new age. Colin didn't make a sound when he died at the same time they took his eyes, instead he welcomed in the Bringer he became, the emptiness and the reassurance that he would never be hurt in that way again. And as the years passed he forgot, evil suppressed the memories of the young man, leaving only the Harbinger of the First in his place. But now Colin was resurfacing, and it hurt so much! With a final anguished scream as he saw they eyes of his mother crying he broke down.
"AAAAHHH! What do you want?!"
Withy a flick of his wrist Angelus told William and Carma to stop, and observed the quivering wreck in front of him. It may have been his imagination, but a quick glance at his childer told him that they had noticed the same thing, his skin had darkened to an almost human colour, and there seemed to be a very short layer of hair covering his scalp.
"I want to know why you ere crawling around outside this house. And I want to know what the First's plans are."
It was a low growl that spoke to the Bringer/man, one that had frightened minions almost into staking themselves.
"He…he…wanted to know if the three of you were actually working with the slayer, and if you were what you were planning to do. And he wanted reconnaissance about the potentials, there's always one of us here to see if any new girls arrive."
Carma interrupted with a disgusted noise, honestly, if he was telling the truth, and he was, there had been at least one Bringer around the house at all times, and they never bloody noticed! Pathetic! But she was silenced by a glare from the two other vampires.
"He has an army of Turak-Han waiting for his command to rise, he knows it's only a matter of time before they all fly apart, and that is the night he intends to flood the town with Turak-Han, no matter were the slayers have stormed off to, they will be found and taken down, one by one."
He voice caught in a sob as he finished, but the vampires were only half listening, while the Bringer had been speaking he had seemed to become less like a Bringer and more like a man. His hair had grown longer, and his skin darkened to a late summer tan, the scars covering his eyes had lightened and nearly disappeared, although the skin still covered his eyes, his brown robes had transfigured into a lose white shirt and black breeches. It was at that point that Angelus and the other two remembered the stories they had unearthed about the Bringers when the First originally approached them.
Although some were demons originally, others were humans who had been taken over by evil; the First took those humans and stripped away their humanity with their eyes. There had been one case where one of those Bringers had been reverted to their humanity, a spell cast by an immensely powerful witch, but it went wring and he killed himself within a week.
"Oh shit!"
"It's not possible."
"I think we've got proof to the contrary love.
"I think you must have put too much power in when you were sharing the blood."
"What…what's going on?"
There was silence while they tried to figure out ho to answer the Bri…mans question. They knew how to torture, but this was a bit out of their league. After a long moment Carma stepped forwards and let him down from the ropes, and travelled with him as he slumped down to the ground. And she stroked his newly grown hair as she answered, watching him feeling his new clothes in astonishment.
"You're human again luv."
Simple but damaging, he started panicking, whimpering and calling out gibberish, the two younger vampires had to hold onto him to stop him from hurting himself as Angelus knelt down before him.
"You're human. At the risk of sounding kind, you don't need to panic, this was our fault, and we're not going to just let you go wandering off. We'll look after you."
The distraught B…man just burst into tears and leaned into the bodies surrounding him.
Thanks to everyone who's reviewed so far, I love you all. Please review this chapter as well:)
Scary Vampiress: glad you like it so far and I hope you like this chapter too
Whisper: here's the net posting
SpikedAngel22: I hope you like this chapter as well
an: here's more for you
