A/N: You know what was a good show that didn't nearly get its due? Tru Calling. Fantastic show, and then it got cancelled for Point Pleasant. FOX bugs me. A lot. But oh well! Because I'm starting to write out Xander's chapter with Lucian…aren't we thrilled? Really? Applause?

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Well, that sucked. Thanks, guys. You make me feel all warm and tingly inside. Really, though, 70 reviews – so cool! I'm gonna have over 100 reviews before this story is over – can we all pause for a geek moment?

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Jeez, you guys are a dead audience. Or undead, hah! ON WITH THE SHOW!

the Passion of Angels And Demons

Chapter XII

Freak on a Leash

Oh…dear…God… Xander thought to himself, still shaking. It had been at least five minutes since Angelus had left the room, and still, all he could do was lay there and shake. Well, there was some trembling, too. And probably some fearful quivers. There were a lot of words in the language that could define this right now. Xander was running through all of them right now. It was something that normally calmed him down; to focus on something and count through it until he could see how it was made. It wasn't working now, though; it was just riling him up even more.

And why the hell not? He was wearing a freaking collar, man! What the fuck?! He giggled a little madly as he shook. It was the least that he could think to do, and at the moment he had the luxury of giving in to some personal hysteria. At the moment, Angelus was…where? Did he care – should he care? Of course he shouldn't. But he did. He really did. He just wasn't sure how he cared. Did he want Angelus to come back into the room? Well, he really could say that he did…but did he want him back to see him, speak to him, or to yell and scream and beat at him?

He took a deep breath, a slow, calming breath. In…out…in…out… it was a trick that Willow had taught him – meditation, she called it. It was one of the most basic things that Wiccans are taught, and ever since she'd started taking lessons with Miss Calendar, she had been spending a couple of minutes at the end of the school day meditating in the library. She had told him and Buffy that it worked wonders on her stress levels. As he sat there, breathing, not thinking, he had to acknowledge that she was right.

He'd finally stopped shaking, and he reached calm, steady fingers up to his neck. The collar was thick, black leather, and obviously new. There were no bends or weaknesses in it. It was a plain thing with a large buckle at the back, to which Angelus had attached a small lock that was just as obviously new and just as obviously impenetrable. There was no way that he was getting this thing off of his neck without a key. He sighed, struggling to remain calm.

Next order of business: clothing. He stood up and surveyed his surroundings. Like there had been before, there was a small table with two chairs up against one wall. There was a stone fireplace, and the mortar from the bricks still smelled pretty fresh. There was a fire burning rather inappropriately cheerily in the fireplace. A big wooden armoire was up against the wall. The huge four poster bed dominated the room, but there was still enough basic room to walk around comfortably. The door was large and metal, and fairly thick, and it was quite clear that it was locked from the outside as well as the inside, in a door that only Angelus could open.

He crossed to the armoire quickly, and thanked Willow's goddess (the only deity he'd seen any real proof of existence) that it wasn't locked. Inside, his jaw dropped. There were two closets – one to the left and one to the right. In the left was obviously Angelus' closet – leather pants, large black dusters. But to the right, in the corner, was Xander's clothes. Taken from his closet! Angelus had been in his house and taking his things! He'd known all along that Xander was going to become his prisoner, willingly or not! And the only possible way that he could have gotten an invitation to Xander's house was…my parents.

Oh, shit.

He snatched the first pair of pants he saw and threw them on, and then he threw on a plain white tee that he saw tossed on the floor of Angelus' side. He practically sprinted to the door, go there in three strides, and slammed on the metal door with his hand as hard as he could.

"OW! SUMUVABITCH!"

Not a good idea, he thought to himself as he shook out his red hand. Solid metal doors, as it transpired, hurt a lot more to hit than it usually does to bang on a wooden door. Still, he was too mad and frightened and just all in all too emotionally overwhelmed to let it stop him for long. He started hammering on the door as hard as he dared with his good hand, screaming as loud as he could, "ANGELUS! LET ME OUT, YOU GOD DAMNED BASTARD! OPEN THE FUCKING DOOR!"

What he hadn't been expecting was to get an answer.

The door abruptly clicked around the lock area and swung open sharply. Xander had to leap back in order to not get creamed in the face with the solid steel torture device. He opened his mouth to let Angelus have it, and then shut it again abruptly. It wasn't Angelus standing there. It was a completely different vampire. And it was an old vampire. How Xander knew this, he wasn't sure, as the vamp was wearing his human façade and there was no way to ascertain his age, but he could just…feel it. Here was an immortal that had seen a century or two. It was the same feeling that he got around Angelus or Spike, or even Drusilla.

The new guy was tall, built along the lines of a bulky basketball star – not freakishly tall, but a little more than six feet. He could probably comfortably stare Angelus in the eye. In life, he'd had green eyes. Now, he looked like a barn owl. It was pretty creepy, really. Danger was exuded in his smooth, liquid-y movements as he smartly shut the door behind him. Xander wasn't nearly in the mood for this silent creature of the night bullshit, as it tended to remind him of Angelus a little too much, and he was in major rant mode right now.

"Who the hell are you?" Xander demanded bluntly. Well, he wasn't dancing around tact. Maybe he had been hanging around Cordelia a little too much lately. Jeez. It was Xander-babble even in his own head when he was upset! Or maybe he was just thinking all of these random thoughts to himself to keep away from the irritated growl that was issuing from the Hulk poster child in front of him.

"It's not your place to question me, human," the vampire spat.

"I'll question whoever the hell I want," Xander shot back. "Now tell me where the fuck is Angelus!"

Whoever the nameless vampire was, he appeared completely flummoxed by Xander's obvious lack of fear and complete disrespect. Xander could understand the attitude; to a vampire as old as this one, he obviously considered himself at the top of the food chain. He had the arrogance that told Xander that he thought himself truly immortal, and Xander could work with this. But on the downside, such unquestioning arrogance would make the vampire pretty much immune to threats of bringing the Wrath of Buffy down on his head. Xander watched as the vampire quickly regrouped. He drew himself up as tall as he could (which was actually fairly intimidating, Xander had to admit) and said:

"It's not the pet's place to demand things of his master."

"Okay. Now let's take a step back and think about this. What did you just call me?" Xander inquired in a deadly polite whisper.

The vampire, clearly enjoying himself now, said in the same pompous voice (and entirely underestimating the things that Xander could do if pissed off and left to his own devices), "I called you the master's pet. You are his human toy and nothing else, and he has charged me with keeping you untouched from the rest of the court." He grinned maliciously. "It's not uncommon for masters to reward their trusted servants with pet's favors…" he continued, raking Xander with a stare that made him sway on the spot with disgust. "I would find it difficult to say 'no' to this offer," he admitted with that same disgusting lecherousness in his tone.

"Oh," Xander said quietly. The vampire smirked and took a step closer to him. Xander hauled off and kicked him in the crotch as hard as he possibly could. For just one second, the vampire made no move. Then, a soft, high-pitched animal keen escaped his lungs as he went paler than a ghost and dropped in his tracks, moaning piteously and curling in on himself as he clutched at his balls desperately. Xander watched this without a change of expression on his face.

He turned and quickly scanned the room, smirking at the stupidity of Angelus when he saw his target. Really, with all the crazed bondage bitch shit that Angelus was suddenly hurling at him, he should have considered how pissed off Xander might have gotten about it all. Wooden chairs? Tsk, tsk. Xander, not a Slayerette for nothing, scurried over to the chairs while his lovely new 'guard' was otherwise incapacitated on the floor, and grabbed one of the wooden chairs up to the table. He picked it up and hurled it at the wall as hard as he could, trusting to the thickness of the door to not bring the rest of the…what had he called it? Court? to come running to see what the hubbub was about. The chair gave a half-hearted shattering, scattering huge chunks everywhere. Xander grabbed the sharpest portion of leg that he could find and, makeshift stake in had, straddled his new 'friend,' the sharp wooden weapon poised over his heart.

The vampire froze in place. Xander's knees were on his arms, so any move that the vamp made to dislodge him could be instantaneously countered with a swift dusting. Any illusions that the vampire had had about his supposed immortality were being dropped, and that was good. Cause Xander was mighty pissed off at the moment, and he probably would have staked the motherfucker for speaking at this point.

"Now, I think that we need to have a little…chat," Xander said conversationally, with his usual cheerful voice. The vampire stopped his little attempts to struggle to nod quickly. "What's your name, anyway?"

"Lucien," the vampire said after a moment, after an apparently internal struggle with himself. Xander had a second to be impressed at the vampire's control, that he still hadn't shifted out of his human countenance, despite the threat being presented to him, before he snapped himself back to business.

"So, Lucien," Xander said. "I think that we've had some misconceptions. Now, I'm willing to move off of you and not stake your ass to dust right now, if you agree to lay off of the 'pet' stuff," Xander continued. It was a gamble, really, but he was banking on that telling statement the big vampire had unwittingly let out about protecting him for Angelus. He'd bet that Angelus wouldn't be happy with his guard if said guard attempted to take a chomp out of Xander's apparently biteable neck.

The vampire seemed to be thinking along the same lines, as he nodded after a moment. Xander moved off of him, moving away from him, but still keeping the stake at the ready. It never hurt to be prepared when facing off with a bloodsucking fiend from beyond the grave. Buffy had taught him that one early. The vampire eyed the stake somewhat nervously. It was obvious that he'd thought he'd underestimated Xander, and Xander didn't really need him to know that his fighting prowess didn't really extend that far from what he'd already pulled. Working with Buffy over the last year and a half had given him some basic survival skills, and that was about all that he had.

"Where is Angelus?" Xander demanded, trying to bring some order back into the swirling chaos of his brain. He needed Angelus here, to talk to him, to touch him—

Where the hell did that come from? He needed Angelus there to talk, and that was it. That was all that Xander had signed up for before he entered this weird world where he had bodyguards and Angelus was all mastery and freakishness. All Xander wanted was answers. That's all he savagely told his body. He refused the little slutty bastard part of his subconscious that was laughing its ass off at the rest of his brain (I should never have let Willow take that damned Psychology class, he thought at random).

"The master is meeting his court," Lucien said unhelpfully. Xander gave him an irritated glare.

"Thanks for clearing that up, Captain Obvious," Xander snapped sarcastically. "What the hell is a court? Where the hell am I?"

Lucien sighed a rather put-upon sigh, and Xander was momentarily taken aback. It was a very Giles-ish sigh, one that he had often in Xander's presence. Xander didn't need to think of Giles and his friends right now, didn't need to think of how he'd turned his back on Buffy's heartache to come with Angelus for the answers that the demon could provide. He didn't want to think about the consequences of his actions.

"The court is the master's followers, his minions and his Childers," Lucien explained waspishly, clearly calling Xander an idiot for not knowing this basic piece of information. Xander, annoyed, lashed out:

"Don't give me that look – I didn't have to know anything about vampire courts out there, I just helped Buffy kill them."

Clearly, he'd been mistaking his first assumption that this vamp wouldn't be scared of the Slayer, because he flinched slightly at the mention of her name. Interesting.

"Master Angelus will be back soon," Lucien said stiffly. Xander had clearly crossed a line by mentioning Buffy's name to him. He turned and stalked out of the room, slamming and locking the door behind him. Xander stared after him, slowly putting the stake down on the floor. What the hell had he gotten himself into?

A/N: Kind of short, I know, but the interesting bits are, of course, the parts where Xander and Angelus are in the same room as each other. As for the title, it has nothing to do with the song – it's just how I felt when I thought of freaked out Xander in a collar (now picture Nicholas Brendan doing a scene in a collar…sigh…:)

So, until next time, I bid you adieu…and I beg for more reviews. Really. The last update, I got two reviews and about three new people signaling that they'd added it to their favorites and moved on. I don't have that stupid block thing where non-signed-in users can't review, so, seriously, review me, or I shall cry. :(

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