Echoes True and False

by Lesera128

D.C. Halloween 2007. In a moment of weakness, Brennan makes a mistake and finally contravenes Booth's free will, breaking the spell that has kept him from remembering his life as Angel. He regains his memories and confronts Brennan, forcing them to deal with the fallout of her actions. Bones/Angel crossover. AU. Sequel to stories like "Toe to Toe"-"The Price to Be Paid." Complete.

3. Part IIIA: Echoes of the Past, Part 1

Echoes True and False

By: Lesera128 & dharmamonkey

Rated: M

Disclaimer: Here we posit our normal rigmarole. No, we don't own anything from Bones or Angel... or anything else. Yes, we're wreaking what havoc we can with these characters that we don't own to create an awesome story. But, since it's only for the purposes of creative enjoyment and amusing distraction, we think we're okay. Are there any other questions? No? ::blinks:: Good. Then moving on―

Logistical Notes: For those who are curious, the infamous character of Helen (or at least the template for her) was borrowed from the non-canon Buffy the Vampire Slayer novel by Nancy Holder called The Evil that Men Do. Just an FYI.

Author's Note: This chapter is long overdue. However, in our defense, at approximately 25,000 words (which is half what the length of the original chapter was since we cut it in half) it's not like it wasn't without good cause. That said, we hope the chapter lives up to expectations and that you enjoy. So, without (much) further adieu, one more minor note and then onto the good stuff.

UNF Alert: This part of the story contains a scene with Angelus. In case you've forgotten, since it's been awhile since Angelus has been around for any substantial period of time in recent chapters, Angelus can be quite lewd and inappropriate, and such inappropriately lewd talk frequently degrades into extremely lewd conduct. Where Angelus goes, UNF usually follows. It's his nature. If you don't care to read about that, or shouldn't be, save yourself. For the rest of you, you've waited long enough. Read on.

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Part IIIA: Echoes of the Past, Part 1

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The memories assaulted him, pummeling him like the incessant fall of a hard, cold rain, soaking him to the core until all Booth could do was just try to endure it. He stumbled a bit, struggling to see clearly as his mind was flooded with visions of other times and places he'd never seen or heard or thought of before. As each memory faded and a new one appeared to swallow him up, he felt his heart pounding in his chest, and his breaths came in desperate pants as he swore he was being choked and devoured by the kudzu that was rapidly blanketing his mind with its dense, invasive tendrils.

Booth felt something howl deep inside of his chest, a flash of feral enthusiasm that rippled through his limbs and made his shoulders twitch. It was the same tightly-wound aggression that he'd felt a thousand times while crouched at the faceoff circle, hunched over his skates with his stick held firmly in his hands as his eyes watched the ice below for the moment the hard black puck would come into his field of vision and he'd explode in a blur of movement and speed. He felt a rush, the same soaring wildness that sent his simmering blood to the verge of boiling in the fraction of a second between when he reared his arm back and his his fist landed hard against another man's jaw. But the rush left him breathless in its wake, as something deep within recoiled a little at the darkness inside of him and how delicate the fetters were that seemed to hold it at bay.

Brennan felt dizzy just watching him as all the color drained from her face at the realization of what she'd done, especially what she'd done to him. She could see his skin glistening with a fine sheen of perspiration that reflected under the halogen track lighting that illuminated the lab's main atrium. Even from a distance, she could see his pupils had dilated significantly, and the muscles of his jaw and hands had tensed greatly, and the normally warm tone of his olive skin had blanched to a pallor that made Brennan's heart race with concern.

Ohh, Booth, she thought as she began to walk towards him slowly, careful not to send him into a deeper spiral of panic than already seemed to be swallowing him up with each passing second. God, what have I done?

His mouth opened and closed, his jaw shifting from side-to-side and back and forth as small murmurs, whimpers and growls sounded from the back of his throat, and his eyebrows knit in a troubled way, low over his deep-set brown eyes, wavering every few seconds as his eyes blinked, narrowed, widened and blinked again as he struggled with the images that flooded through his mind and blinded his sight with visions of a past he never knew he had.

Brennan glanced at the clock with a roll of her eyes as she opened the door to her terraced house and beheld the source of the pounding that had drawn her from the depths of her bedroom. As she took in the sight before her, she watched with no unexpected amusement as she saw the bloodied, battered figure that stood impatiently, hunched over with his hands on his hips, on her doorstep.

Angelus raised his head and looked at her, an inch-long gash bisecting his left eyebrow, another laceration on the right side of his forehead, near his hairline, and a couple of small cuts on the edge of his slightly-swollen lips. A trail of dried blood ran from his nostrils down to his upper lip. His face was covered with two days' worth of stubble and his hands were darkened with dirt.

"Well, I would say something trite like 'look what the vampire cat dragged in,' but seeing as how it's four o'clock in the morning, Angelus," she said to him with a pointedly arched brow. "I hope you'll forgive me for skipping the pleasantries and I'll simply ask you...why are you here?"

Angelus straightened his back with a grunt and stumbled through her doorway into her apartment. "You know," he huffed in mild annoyance at her, "a normal person would have said, 'Oh my, Angelus, what's wrong? What happened to you, sweetness? How can I help? Tell me what to do.'"

Laughing cynically at him, Brennan shook her head as she said, "Ha. As if I'd ever let you tell me what to do."

Angelus rolled his eyes at her before he said, "Aye, and like I'm daft enough to think you'd listen if I did." He snorted dismissively and shook his head. "I mean, for fuck's sake. I suppose you expect me to be grateful for your dispensin' with the formalities, then, aye?"

Staring at him with a beady glance, she asked, "I suppose you want to come in then?"

"No," he said. "I was just thinkin' I'd stand here on your wee doorstep for the next fortnight or two, baying like an ol' tomcat." Angelus stared at her blankly for a moment as he saw her open her mouth as she appeared to be about to say something, thought better of it when he shot her a look of annoyance, and then was pleased when her mouth snapped shut. When another few seconds passed, and still an awkward silence hung between them, nodding at her with a bit of impatience, Angelus grunted, "Come on, Brennan. You know I wanna come in. For fuck's sake, lass, are you really gonna make me ask?"

Opening her front door wide, she gave an exasperated gesture as she said, "Fine." Shaking her head, she added, "If you've come all this way, you might as well come in and tell me what you want."

"You know, you're a fine fuckin' piece o' work, lass," he grumbled as he walked in. "Since when did you ever do me any favors, huh? An' I donna mean the kind that involve me bangin' me hard cock in your hot snatch, by the by."

He turned around as he watched her close her front door with a loud thunk and looked her up and down. Her cheeks had a rosy glow to them, and even if he hadn't noticed the way the light of the room caught the light sheen of perspiration along her collarbone, he could smell the sweet scent of her sweat. Her normally pale blue eyes flashed bright in a way that he recognized as one that usually he saw in her eyes only when he was about to fuck her, and with the way her pupils were dilated, she had a predatory look about her that made his balls tighten in his trousers.

The wild, dark look that glittered in her eyes reminded him of the look she flashed him when he'd roused from his unconsciousness the first night they came together, as he opened his eyes and saw her wiping the blood of two slain men off her mother's dagger. That look made him think of the way she'd brutally demanded that he take her that night after ordering him to cut her out of her dress and corset so that he could fuck her in nothing but the pair of black Spanish leather heeled boots she'd worn, right there on the Azerbaijani carpet in front of her fireplace, just a few feet away from where he now stood. Since that night, he'd hungered for her, and while he'd wandered his way into other women's beds, he'd never lost that feeling that no other woman would satisfy him that way she did.

Angelus smirked, noting how she seemed to have thrown on her robe quickly and knotted it loosely, and his glance fell to her hands as he wondered what she'd been doing just moments earlier when he'd banged at her door given all the evidence combined. Brennan's eyes quickly met his when she realized where he was looking, and she quickly reknotted the robe's belt more tightly around her frame.

"Why bother?" Angelus snickered. "It's not like I haven't seen it all before, lass...many, many times, mmm." He licked his lips at the statement, then tilted his head as he added, "And will again soon, I think, hmmm?"

Rolling her eyes at him, Brennan said, "You'd think after all these years I'd be used to that presumptuous ego, hmmm, Angelus?"

Shaking his head, Angelus said, "You've always been too stubborn, lass. Twice as stubborn as a two-headed mule, ya are. When you get that wicked mind o' yours set on somethin', there's no force in this world or any other that can keep you away from it." He hesitated for a moment, then said, "I like it best when that mind o' yours is thinkin' about me, 'cause that means there's no resistin' your willful, wicked seductions, aye? But if that's the price I have to pay for your wicked fuckin', well, alas, I suppose I'll just have to grin and bear it while I suffer your stubbornness."

Pursing her pink lips, Brennan retorted, "You know, not everyone thinks that about me, Angelus. As a matter of fact, I think you're the only one who's ever said that about me."

"Oh?" he asked her. "So you've been takin' up with blitherin' idiots again while I been gone, hmmm? Is that what you're tryin' to tell me, lass?" He stared at her for a moment, almost as if he was sizing her up, and then continued, "I mean, a man's gotta be dumb, deaf, blind or all three not to see what a wonderfully fuckin' wicked, willful woman you are. And if he wasn't, and hung around you for more than a moment, he'd have to be a fuckin' mental defective or daft as all hell not to wanna do whatever he could to get between those lovely legs o' yours as quick as he could and do whatever he could to stay there as long as fuckin' possible. So, if that's the type of men you've been keepin' company with, then you've been hangin' out with the wrong kind o' men entirely all over again."

Narrowing her eyes, Brennan said, "What's it matter to you who I've been doing what and with whom, Angelus?"

Something in her tone caused him to frown, as he looked from her slightly disheveled appearance, to the direction of her bedroom, and back to Brennan again. "Seein' as how I'm all about the niceties, lass, I'm just sayin' I hope I didn't interrupt anythin' comin' at this late hour," he said with a smirk. "What's wrong, lass?" he chuckled. He then tilted his head as he said, "If I didn't know any better, I'd say itlooks like maybe I called ya away from some important business. Maybe you were back in that lovely bed o' yours, takin' the wee edge off?" Angelus gave her a crooked, lascivious grin. "An' if so, then it's a damn good thing I showed up when I did—aye, with my impeccable sense o' timin' and all—an' it'd be the only decent thing t'do for me to lend ya a hand finishin' ya off, mmm?"

"I'm not sure what you mean, Angelus," she said with an arched eyebrow. Brennan let her eyes skim Angelus' rather ragged form, admiring the way his sweat-soaked shirt clung to his muscular chest and shoulders. After a moment of silence, she shrugged and said with a faint smile, "Though I suppose you'll be pleased to know that there aren't any men waiting for me in my bed at the present time."

"Aye," he said. "O' course, 'cause I haven't made my way back there yet. All in due time, though, lass. But never fear, 'cause we both know I won't leave ya waitin' too long in that respect..."

Brennan shot him an irritated look before she sighed, "Enough."

"What?" he asked with a jerk of his chin.

Shaking her head, Brennan replied, "After twenty years, Angelus—almost to the day, actually—I would've thought we were far past all of that tripe. So spare me the cocky Irish bullshit and just tell me what you want."She paused for a moment and the corners of her mouth curved up ever so slightly as she studied him that quickly disappeared. "What are doing you here?" she asked him with her face once more so devoid of emotion that Angelus would've sworn he'd imagined her showing anything but serious annoyance on her lovely face.

Angelus scowled. "Come on, lass," he said with a petulant knitting of his eyebrows. "I've had me a shite day—aye, or two or three, ya know—and I was jus' hopin' ya'd be willin' to give me a wee hand and...maybe fix me up a bit, ya know." He pursed his lips and, after a moment could no longer suppress his lusty snicker. "I've always been able to count on ya to fix me up the way only you can, lass." He nodded at her in a complementary way before he smiled again and prodded her when she remained silent, "Ya know what I mean there, aye?"

She looked him up and down again, noting how soiled his light gray wool trousers and white shirt were, and how the pressed wings of his shirt collar had long since flattened out and pulled away from the body of the collar. His shirt cuffs hung open, having presumably lost his cuff links along the way; his braces hung limply from his waist, having been some time ago peeled off his shoulders based on the pattern of dirt smeared on his shirt; and his narrow-toed, heeled black leather shoes were gouged and scuffed.

Brennan glanced back towards the heavy oaken door to her bedroom, which was cracked slightly, with a soft, warm flicker of lamplight peeking through along the edge of the doorframe. Angelus followed her gaze once again, and his dark eyes brightened as a crooked smirk flashed across his lips.

"I'm feelin' a bit worn down by this rough time I've had," he said with a snicker. "I could do with havin' me wounds tended to by a talented nurse such as yourself. And, since I know how hard I'll be...or, pardon, ya know, how hard it'll will be for one such as yourself to minister to one such as myself in my hour of need..." He laughed out loud at his own cleverness. "Well, I'll gladly see to it that you're properly rewarded for all your efforts, though to be perfectly honest, lass, bein' nursemaid to a man such as meself is a privilege of its own." He paused, gave her a bigger, lewd grin, and then added cheekily, "And I won't even ask ya to dress up like a nurse, lass. White was never your color, anyhow."

Brennan narrowed her eyes slightly, then turned back to face him.

"Why do you need to be nursed, Angelus?" she asked, giving him a questioning look. "Surely it's not because you've missed my...delicate touch. Surely you know that such façades aren't necessary if you want to get laid."

"No," he said, hesitating slightly as his eyes scanned her robed form. "I donna like delicate touches. Touchin' delicate things? Aye. But when the shoe's on the other foot, I donna care for dainty pussyfootin' around." He licked his lips and shrugged. "Neither do you. I know you like it rough, too, aye? You like a good, rough givin' ta, don't ya?"

He took a step towards her and tilted his head to one side, licking his lips as he found his gaze again drawn to the open neck of her silk robe and to the glistening space between her breasts, which swayed gently as she moved, then brought his eyes back up to meet hers.

"Aye, lass, I know how much ya like it when I take ya, standin' up, pressed up against that nice wee wall over there. Ya like it when ya can feel me, poundin' into that tight snatch o' yours as if I was tryin' to hammer ya to that there wall with me cock like you were a pretty lil' picture. Takin' ya from behind like that, all ya see are my hands on the wall on each side o' your face and the wall in front o' ya. Or would ya rather me drill ya over there..." He gestured towards the hearth with a jerk of his chin. "On your back, right up that hot, tight little ass of yours...because holy hell, lass, I've never fucked an ass as good as yours, or heard anyone scream my name the way you do when I come in that hot ass of yours..." He grunted and rolled his shoulder to suppress a tingle that surged up his spine at the thought of it. "Aye, we should do that more often, really. I'm glad I had the honor of showin' ya how great ass-fuckin' could be, ya know, 'cause—"

"Angelus," she sighed, cutting off his lewd ramble. "One thing I've always valued in our interactions over the years is the fact that we've always been able to speak frankly to one another," she said tersely. "So quit dallying around. Are you going to just stand there like a fool blathering on, or are you going to tell me what really happened to you?"

His upper lip curled and his nose scrunched up in frustrated disdain. "You're a fuckin' piece of work, lass," he snorted as he walked across her sitting room towards the fireplace, jerking his soiled, sweat-soaked shirt out of the waistband of his trousers. He reached up and began to unbutton his shirt, wincing as he tried to pluck the buttons apart with his fingers.

"What's wrong with your hand?" she asked him, seeing him struggle, but making no move to assist him. "I assume it has something to do with the rest of the reason as to why you're not your normally well-coiffed and carefully-manicured self?"

"They broke it," he said, looking down at his bruised, swollen hand, wincing as he tried to bring his thumb and forefinger together around a button. "Fuck," he hissed in frustration. He looked up at her and said petulantly, "We both know that you've always liked that I take care o' myself and dress a bit dandy for ya. You like that I have class. Come on, lass—admit it."

Brennan closed her eyes and shook her head. "I'll admit no such thing. Instead, quit trying to change the subject. Why don't you tell me who 'they' is, Angelus?" she sighed in a very condescending way. "Remember, specificity is a good thing."

"Specificity?" he snorted. "As in ya like it when I tell ya specifically what I'm gonna do to that sweet body o' yours?"

"Angelus," Brennan prompted him, her tone peaking in frustration. "Tell me. Who?"

He blinked, his jaw hardening as he stared at her, then said, "The fuckin' cunts in the fuckin' Tower, that's who." He fussed with his buttons once more, but growled as he couldn't form a grip with his broken hand. Angelus looked up at her, gritting his teeth and furrowing his brows, hesitating for a moment as he realized that she wouldn't give him the satisfaction of offering to help him unless he swallowed some of his pride and asked her. He sighed and then pouted with a huff, "Come on, lass—help me, please..."

Brennan smirked, then walked around and, batting his hands away from the placket of his shirt, began to unbutton it gently. She looked up at his face and saw his frustrated pout soften into a lazy, crooked-mouthed grin as his warm brown eyes glistened in the flickering light of the fire.

"So, what did you do to end up in the Tower this time, Angelus?" she asked, her lips pressed into a firm line as she plucked free the last of his buttons and pulled the shirt away from his broad, muscular chest.

"It wasn't anythin' much," he prevaricated as she continued to undress him, although his resolution to conceal from her the circumstances leading to his confinement in the Tower crumbled like a dry scone as he felt the pads of her thumbs brush across his nipples as she pulled off his shirt. He cleared his throat, which had suddenly grown a bit dry as he watched her move, as if in slow-motion, and his mind filled with the thought of all the wicked ways he could bury his already-hardening cock balls-deep in her. "But I donna want to talk about it, lass," he grumbled. "Can we change the subject now?"

"The Tower of London is hardly a place where you'd end up for disturbing the peace or brawling, Angelus," Brennan clucked at him, ignoring his question as she stepped away from him, leaving him frowning as he found himself suddenly bereft of her touch. "What? Did you try to stick those fangs of yours someplace they weren't allowed? Try and drain a member of the royal family again?"

"No," he said sourly, holding up his broken hand and looking at its bruised, swollen shape as he turning it over in the warm, yellowish lamplight of the sitting room. "I wouldn't make that mistake again. I'm not that dumb, Brennan, despite what you and Darla may think."

Angelus nibbled the inside of his lip for a moment and shrugged as he remembered the nineteen year-old girl he'd met one evening at the opera one cold February night in 1850. He thought of how he'd taken her—not really against her will, but more in what was a case of highly persuasive coaxing—in one of the dark corners of the opera house where he'd stumbled on her just before the start of the intermission, wandering by herself. She'd been a virgin—which had always amused Angelus, who never ceased to enjoy the moment a young lady's body gave in with a pleasing pop as her virginity was torn away from her—when he took her against a wall in the opera house.

"How was I supposed to know she was the Queen's niece?" he asked. "I mean, 'twasn't like she stopped me in the middle o' me fuckin' her to say, 'Oh, kind sir, by the way, I'm Princess Elise of Hohenlohe-Langenburg.' She was too preoccupied with my cock blazin' a fine trail in that tight cherry pussy o' hers to think about much at all, and by the time I filled my belly with her sweet-from-her-very-first-fuckin' blood and let her pretty little husk fall to the floor, the damn intermission let out and the whole place started to fill with people and so..." He saw Brennan's impatient, unimpressed look and swallowed. "Come on, lass—I really didna know who she was..."

Nodding at him, she said, "Okay, then what was it?" She paused as she studied him for another moment and then said, "I haven't seen you in four or five days, I think, if I'm remembering correctly. Not since the night of—"

"—Darla's party," Angelus finished for her. "Aye, that's 'cause that's the night it happened."

Tilting her head, a look of clear interest writ on her face, Brennan asked, "What happened?"

A pleased look crossed Angelus' face when he realized that he had finally said something that had caught Brennan's attention. Licking his lips now that he realized he had an involved audience, the vampire said, "Well, after the party ended, and you and Darla decided to go about your own business, I went out for...heh...well, to get me a wee midnight snack, as it were, and found myself passin' a pub, The Horse and Hound, and o' course, because I would ne'er want it to be said that I e'er let a good pub pass me by, so I simply had to stop in for a wee dram, and—"

Brennan rolled her eyes as she stepped back, admiring the way the skin of his bare chest seemed almost golden in the firelight. "Because you didn't have enough to drink at Darla's party that night anyway, even though I saw you personally drain two bottles of Loch Lomond Scotch Whiskey?"

"Loch Lomond." Angelus rolled his eyes and snorted. "That shite was total bollocks," he spat. "Nasty swill that tasted like ass and didna do fuck all to get ya a nice buzz. There's decent Scotch whiskey, lass, I'll admit it, but that? That wasn't it. Why Darla fuckin' skimped on whiskey when she spent a king's ransom on oysters, Russian caviar, fine cheeses and all that happy horse-shite, I dunno. I told her to buy Jameson, Bushmills, or one o' the good Connacht whiskeys, but noooo..."

"Yes, yes, sweetness," she said with a smile. "So you couldn't get drunk off the cheap liquor you had endure at Darla's party, so you went out drinking afterwards..."

Angelus put his hands on his hips and cocked his head, wincing at the way his broken hand throbbed. He knew the fracture was already knitting together, but it was still painful and swollen, the skin drawn tight as a drum over his fingers. "Well, I went out to feed one need, you know," he said with a sly grin, "and just so happened to find me a way to feed another. Surely you're not sayin' there's any crime in that."

"You're rambling, Angelus," she snapped, her mood suddenly shifting decidedly more negative as his incessant babbling and self-absorbed lewdness began to annoy her once more. "You do what you want to—you always have, and I'm quite sure you always will."

"Aye," he said. "That's probably very true."

Rolling her eyes again, she then prodded him, "So why do you think they picked you up then?"

"I was tryin' to get to that part before you interrupted me," Angelus told her. "Now, if you'd let me continue, lass?"

Gesturing at him in a grand manner, Brennan said in a slightly mocking way, "By all means, Angelus, pray continue."

He grinned at her, ignoring her condescending tone, snickering before he spoke once more. "So, as I was sayin', I'd me a wee dram or two at the pub," he continued, before stopping for a moment as she shot him a knowing look, and he quickly amended his statement. "Or three, maybe, I don't know. I'm sure I lost count at some point."

"Right," she muttered sharply.

At the single sarcasm-ladened syllable, this time, it was Angelus who shot her a look that quickly silenced Brennan since he knew she wanted him to continue his story post-haste. She quickly nodded her concession to him, and smiling suavely, he continued.

"As I was sayin', I was mindin' me own business, chattin' up a pretty lass in a bright yellow dress with nice titties that her low-cut dress happened to show off very nicely." A smile cracked the vampire's handsome, stubbled face and he flashed his eyebrows, then said, "I mean, donna get me wrong, those titties of hers don't have anythin' on yours, lass, 'cause you've always had the most wonderful tits I've ever seen. Big and round, jus' the right size for my hands, so perfect for squeezin', ya know, and those nipples o' yours are just the finest treat ever made for lickin' and suckin', well, 'cept for that fine, sweet pussy of yours, which just might be the best tastin' thing ever, and I jus' can't get enough of that cream o' yours and how tight that little bead you've got gets when—"

"Angelus..." she scowled at him.

He licked his lips and grinned sheepishly when he met her impatient gaze. "Aye, lass," he chuckled. "So anyway, I'm chattin' up this young thing all the whilst her gentleman companion was on the other side o' the bar playin' darts and tryin' to make up the three pound he'd lost on the last game, and—"

Brennan closed her eyes and took a deep breath. "Angelus," she grumbled, raising her eyebrows expectantly. "Get to the fucking point."

"Aye," he feigned a laugh, arching his eyebrow as he recognized the tone in her voice and puzzled at her shifting mood. "So anyway, I leaned over and was gettin' me a closer look at this wee lass's..." His eyes flickered up to meet hers. "Aye, and so anyway, the bloke got pissed off, I suppose, that I was makin' a move on his woman, and we started fightin' and, next thing I knew I was bein' hauled off and shackled. I mean, sure, I made a couple o' cracks about this soldier bloke not bein' able to finish the job down in the Transvaal against a bunch of Dutch-speaking yeoman farmers, but—"

"How is it that you managed to let them catch you?" she asked. "That's not like you at all."

"Let 'em catch me?" he snorted, grunting again as he reached down to unbutton his trousers as best he could with his hands while he continued to speak. "I canna tell if I should be flattered that you're thinkin' that I couldn'a been caught unless I let 'em catch me, or that you think I'm enough of a masochist that I'd a let 'em catch me knowin' I'd be hauled off to the Tower to get used like a fuckin' punchin' bag for two and a half days."

"I have never been inclined to flatter you, Angelus," Brennan quipped as she watched his hands, one of which was definitely swollen, skim over the smooth olive skin of his flat belly as he tried to thumb open his trouser button. "Your sizable ego doesn't seem to require any assistance in that regard," she said as she watched with amusement as he struggled to unfasten the button with his left hand. "And, sweetness, I'm still not yet convinced that, despite your own sadistic tendencies, you don't have some latent masochistic desires."

Angelus gritted his teeth and, growling in mounting frustration, tried to pluck open the button on his with his right hand, but his puffy forefingers and swollen, purple knuckles refused to cooperate. Letting out another grunt, he looked up at Brennan and became annoyed when he realized she was just watching him struggle. "For fuck's sake, lass. Help me," he grunted. "Or are you just gonna sit there watchin' me for your personal amusement? If I canna get these trousers off, we're not gonna be able to get to the better part of the evenin's entertainments."

Brennan snorted at his words. "And just why do you think that I am going to be the purveyor of this evening's entertainment, as far as you're concerned?" She paused for a beat and then added, "I believe you asked me to tend to your wounds and sad, sorry state. I agreed to that only."

He stared at her, suddenly feeling like a trapdoor had opened up beneath his feet, reminding him of the one time he'd actually had a trapdoor drop under him the night he found himself on a gallows in Northumberland during the reign of King George III. His left hand flew up, and he scratched the back of his head as he searched her face for some sign that she was merely teasing him, as she was often wont to do.

"Wait—you don't wanna fuck?" he asked, the simply-worded question falling from his lips in a way that left no doubt as to his surprise. "Come on, lass," he pleaded with her. "I know you want a tendin' to yourself, mmm? You know I'm good for it, never mind this bollocksed-up hand of mine. I'm always good for makin' ya come, screamin' like a fuckin' banshee." He paused for a beat to flash a charming grin at her with a self-assured nod. "You know I'll make ya feel good, the way you know only I can, lass," He told her. "So come on. Admit it. You know you want it, too."

"Maybe I don't," Brennan said as she crossed her arms and lifted her chin in defiance of him. "There is more to my life than coming, Angelus. I know there isn't for you on most nights, but there is for just about every other individual on this earth, including myself."

Angelus looked up at her incredulously as she held his gaze, unable to believe what he was hearing. Then, his eyebrows narrowed, and he gave her a knowing smile as he snickered, "You're a liar, lass."

Arching her eyebrows, she tilted her head and then said with a hard, narrow-eyed stare, "I'm many things, but never a liar, Angelus...unlike some." She shook her head as she made a disdainful pffffft sound, then put her hands on her hips and bit the inside of her lip, her skin flushing with warmth as her nostrils flared at his insolence.

"You're playin' then," he said, hedging slightly as his frustration mounted. "You're always up for a good fuck, lass—and you know I always deliver when you need a good fuckin'—so why play me this way, huh? You're a woman of tremendous appetites, just like I'm a man who—"

"Surely I can't be the only option for satisfying your biological urges," she said sharply. "So, really, Angelus, why did you come here tonight? I'm sure there are plenty of other beds in London you could've stumbled into, from Darla's to Drusilla's to a Southwark's strumpet and many others in between. So, why did you really come here?"

"What are you talkin' about?" he asked, his dark, hungry eyes skimming along the length of her neck, along the hem of her silk robe. Her skin was deeply flushed, even more so than it had been when she opened the door just a minute before, when he'd noted her normally porcelain decolletage was slightly pinkened and glistened with sweat. "Huh?" he grunted, his nose scrunching a bit as he sniffed for the smell of her arousal, his brow furrowing as he detected it more faintly than he'd expected. Crestfallen, he looked down at his feet with a pout, then looked back up at her and muttered, "I mean, fuck. 'Biological urges?' What the fuck's that got to do with anythin'?" He toed off his boots, muttering under his breath as he kicked them to the side. "And I came here because I wanted to see you. Why the fuck else would I have come here?"

Shrugging her shoulders, Brennan said sharply, "Oh, I don't know. After all, it has been some time since I've been lucky enough to have you grace me with your presence, Angelus."

"Wait, what are ya talkin' about, lass?" he said in a low, dark voice, his words falling from his lips slowly and deliberately in a way that was uncharacteristic for him. "You've been actin' like you could give a shite whether I was here or not since the very first moment you deigned to let me enter your illustrious abode here, and that's sure been leavin' me thinkin' I made a fuckin' mistake comin' here tonight. But now you're all cheesed off 'cause I been neglectin' ya these last couple o' months?" He paused for a beat, shooting her a sharp look. "Never mind that you're the one that fuckin' shogged off to wherever the fuck you went ta, with no damn warnin' or anythin'. I'm surprised you even bothered to tell me 'bye' before you went off. I damn near fell outta my chair the other night when I saw ya..." He looked away and sighed, then turned back to her. "I canna believe it. I didn'a even know where you went, for fuck's sake. And you were gone awhile, lass—without a word from ya at all, so you can hardly blame me for lookin' 'round for some female company to keep, ya know."

For a moment, Brennan was tempted to react to Angelus' implication that he had, on some level, perhaps missed her presence for whatever his reason. But, then she thought better of it when she focused on his final sentence which implied a subject of immediate vexation on her part. "Female company?" she repeated, with a curl of her lip and a deadly edge softening her silky voice when she spoke. "So, that's what you call her, then?"

Angel's eyes narrowed as he recognized the shift in Brennan's tone for what it was and tilted his head at her as he tried to figure out what he'd said that had caused the dangerous change in her disposition. "Huh?" he grumbled. " 'Her' who? What the fuck are you talkin' about, lass?"

The look of hate that flashed across Brennan's face made her almost seem to be a completely different person for the few seconds that Angelus saw it. It made her seem dangerous and unpredictable—two qualities that he rarely saw in the witch in recent years and their indication that so-tightly controlled Brennan was teetering on the edge of being out of control excited Angelus in more ways than one. However, any ideas of using his considerable skills to either cajole or goad Brennan into fucking him right there on the spot suddenly evaporated with a single question that she hurled at him with all the venom and hatred of which he knew her to be completely capable.

"If you don't know of what I'm speaking, Angelus," she hissed at him, "Why don't you ask Helen about it? Because I'm quite sure she'd be more than happy to fill you in on all the details...and perhaps attend to your needs tonight as she's apparently done quite frequently over the years."

Angelus' face suddenly paled at her words as he realized he'd been caught in a lie. His nostrils flared again, and he could smell the peppery note of her anger fill his nose as he felt a swirl in his belly as the one thing he could never control or predict—her deep and roilingly passionate temper—threatened to break against him like a storm gathering on the horizon getting ready to assault the earth at a time when he was completely unprepared to deal with it.

"Helen?" he rasped, trying to buy some time to prepare himself for whatever onslaught she was sure to throw at him. "You...know about her?"

A knowing smile spread across her face as she nodded vehemently, "Why, yes, yes I do...and have for quite some time, Angelus."

"How?" he snarled. "Because I'm quite certain that you haven't been havin' tea and crumpets with the likes of her, lass. She's a bit too...flashy for your tastes, I think, compared with the normal company you like to keep."

Brennan's cold eyes, somehow, seemed to harden even further as she narrowed her gaze at him. "If by normal company you mean that I prefer to keep company with people that have the ability to be coherent at least twenty minutes a day before descending into their incoherently mad and delusional stupor, then yes," Brennan snapped. "She isn't quite to my tastes—she never has been and never will be...to say nothing of her irritating high pitched voice, incredibly high opinion of herself, and the fact that she has absolutely no class so that she'll flop down and spread her legs for just about any stiff prick that will rut between them."

"If I've told you once, I've told you a thousand times—I don't rut, lass," he huffed. "I fuck. I fuck, an' I fuck well. And mine's not just any stiff prick, an' you damn well know it. My cock's a fuckin' paint brush in the hand of a master, and the woman lucky enough to feel it 'tween her legs is a blessed canvas. No woman who's been fucked by me would e'er let some other nasty prick near her and ever think that what I done to her is any kind o' ruttin' at all."

Rolling her eyes at him, Brennan waved her hand dismissively. "Fine," she said. "It's true, you are...talented...in certain areas. But the fact of the matter is, I don't like to keep the same social circles that Helen does, but for some irritating reason she sees herself as my equal, and she chooses to keep the same social circles as me."

"What a crock of fuckin' shite," Angelus coughed in disbelief as he shook his head. "Quit mincin' words, lass. It's not your style, and it's just not becomin' on ya, mmm? This ain't about you havin' some hussy infiltratin' your precious social circles or bollocks like that." He rolled his eyes and snorted. "So you've got a problem with Helen," Angelus continued. "And, after that whole rant, you're tellin' me me fuckin' her has nothin' to do with at least makin' you angrier?"

Arching an eyebrow at him, Brennan said, "That's exactly what I'm saying, yes."

Angelus' dark brown eyes, their irises so dark that they were almost black, flashed for a moment before he smiled a suave smile at her. "Horseshite, lass," he chuckled. "Come now, mmmmm? We both know I know ya well enough to know when you're full of it. Granted, I'll be the first to admit that you're confident enough in ye'self and this wee arrangement of ours to not let this damn fine and oh-so-fuckable anger o' yours be jus' 'cause of me tuppin' Helen from time to time, you're a damn liar if you expect me to believe it doesn't irk you at least a wee bit."

Her nostrils flaring, Brennan finally admitted to him, "Fine. Fuck it. Yes, I'm annoyed...but not because of what you think."

"Oh?" Angelus said, clearly amused at her easy confession since he'd expected her to deny it in that stubborn way of hers that both simultaneously infuriated and inflamed him a bit longer before she actually confessed. "Then tell me. What's really got your pretty knickers in a twist, hmmm?"

Pointing at him, Brennan said, "Aside from the fact that even if she has a nice pair of tits, I expect even you to have some standards—"

"Aye," Angelus interrupted her with a sharp bark of laughter. "Well, there's a mistake you know better than to make, lass."

Ignoring him but for another flash of anger in her animated blue eyes, Brennan continued, "I detest being lied to, Angelus. You know I don't care who you fuck, but I detest the fact that you felt a need to conceal your rutting with Helen from both Darla and Drusilla, albeit poorly even for you, to the point that even dotty Drusilla knew I'd be pissed at the melodramatic subterfuge."

"Hey," he grunted. "I told ya, lass. I don't rut like some farmer's wee billygoat. I fuck." He narrowed his eyes. "Now, see, I'm onto ya an' your witchy tricks. You're jus' tryin' to piss me off."

She rolled her eyes, dismissing him with a pffft. "Angelus, if you want to fuck her, fuck her. You do what and whom you want—you always have and always will, just as I do. And, frankly, that's fine by me."

Tilting his head, Angelus smiled. "As ever, that's one of the things I've always respected about you, lass. There's no bullshite here."

"No, Angelus," Brennan agreed, some of her anger abating. "Too right you are—I'm definitely no bullshit. So, knowing that as you do, tell me—why all the skulking about, mmmm, since it's not like I'd ever need to feel threatened by the likes of her?"

His eyebrows furrowed at her remark. "Aye, now wait," he said. "You didna ever care who I fucked before, as long as I made sure not to come to ya stinkin' of her when I came back to your bed." He angled his head to one side and shot her a deeply skeptical look. "So why do ya even give a piddling shite about her at all? Surely you're not jealous, lass."

Brennan laughed out loud at his last sentence and then shook her head. "It's not like you'd really ever choose her over me, so what would I need to be jealous over?" she said as she crossed her arms. "If that twat ever gave you an ultimatum—me or her—I know I wouldn't need to fear coming in second."

Angelus arched his eyebrow and grinned. "You sure about that, lass, mmm?" he asked. "Because maybe she's a real good fuck, ya know, and maybe you should be a wee bit threatened, mmm?" He narrowed his eyes and then jerked his chin up at her as he added, "I might be if I were you."

Laughing at him, Brennan suddenly had the exact opposite response that Angelus had intended, causing him to frown a bit when she said, "Oh, please, Angelus."

"What?" he croaked.

"We both know the type of woman I am," Brennan said, her gaze suddenly shifting again as she uncrossed her arms and took a step towards him. "Otherwise, you wouldn't be here, aye?"

"Aye?" he snorted. "Since when'd ya start talkin' like the lasses in the old country, huh? So, you gonna start drinkin' fine Irish whiskey and fine Irish teas now? Next thing we know you'll be completin' the holy trinity and suckin' good Irish cock, hmmm? Which would be a damn fine thing if ya did."

"We'll have to see about that," she said, "but I wouldn't hold your breath. Metaphorically speaking, of course." After a moment, she narrowed her eyes and yanked his attention back to the question she'd posed. "Like I said, you know the kind of woman I am, and you know I am threatened by no one—no man, and certainly by no woman."

"Aye," he confirmed. "There is that." He paused and then said, "And I'd like to get back to the reason I came here, remember, lass? You, me, and me bein' tended to by your delicate touch?"

"If you're lucky," Brennan taunted him softly. "But?"

"But," Angelus smiled again, pleased she sensed his condition. "First, I'd be of a mind to know who tipped you off to me and Helen since it's been some time since she and I were last...ehhh, well...cavortin' as it were."

Brennan was quiet for a moment as she held the vampire's intense gaze before she nodded at him by way of beginning her response. "I think we both know," she began. "That I wouldn't be lying if I said that I got more than an earful upon my return from Somerset to Darla's dinner party a few days ago from your sire and your spawn."

"Oh?" Angelus said, knowing he needed to be careful not to press her in that moment lest she not tell him a bit of information that, for some inexplicable reason, he felt very keen on having in that minute. "So you're tellin' me that your bein' all pissed off at me and Helen isn't because Darla and Dru have been telling tales out o' school about me, hmmm?"

"No," Brennan said with a shake of their head. "Because, you see, they learned of it themselves from your very sweet and extremely charming friend, the poet, William—"

"Fuckin' William," Angelus hissed, his lower jaw sliding forward as his brown eyes darkened to the color of pitch. His unbroken hand clenched into a fist as he visualized his hands closing around his grandchilde's throat as he crushed the vampire-poet's trachea beneath his thumbs. "Drusilla wanted a little friend of her own, so that's how we got the boy-poet. Should've known the fool, with his gift for the gab and way with words, would open his big damn mouth when he shouldn't have. A vampire can pick his childe, but not his grandchilde. Piss on 'im, that boy."

Brennan's lips broke into a wicked grin even as her pale blue eyes stared rigidly into his. "So, out of purely intellectual curiosity, how long were you going to keep fucking her behind my back without me finding out, Angelus?" she asked. "I'm of half a mind to stake both of you for sneaking around behind my back and the insult of lying to me. I mean, sure, it's been a while, and I know you've been busy with your lovely childe, that weird little Miss Talks-to-the-Furniture, and my old friend Darla, of course. And, it doesn't really bother me, Angelus, if you twist the sheets with another woman, as long as you don't come slinking over here expecting me to lay back and spread my legs for you while you still stink of that other woman's cunt. In general, as I said, I think we both know that I'm well aware that you aren't a monogamous creature..." Her voice trailed off as she then twisted her lips into a particularly devious smile and added, " And, to be fair, despite the purely coincidental empty state of my bed this night, either am I."

Angelus narrowed his eyes and took a couple of steps, closing the distance between them until he could feel the silk of her loosely-knotted robe brushing up against the bare skin of his chest, which made his flat male nipples tighten at the contact. "Aye," he laughed. "So is it the empty state o' your bed this night that's got you in such a nasty mood, hmmm? Let me guess. You've been hard up these last few weeks, sorely in need of a good, solid fuckin' to put ya in the right frame o' mind? Is that it, huh? Is that why you're baiting me this way? You want to get me all riled up and make me so fuckin' crazy so that I finally get pushing into givin' ya the nice hard fuckin' ya want?" He licked his lips as his nostrils filled with the smell of her sweat and his eyes roved up from the glistening space between her breasts up to the base of her neck, over her rosy lips up to her glittering blue eyes. "Or, rather, maybe 'tis something else entirely?"

He fell silent for a moment, then made a humming sound in his throat before he shook his head and spoke again.

"You're jealous, lass," he snickered. "You're jealous of Helen, that she's had a bit more of me in the last few years than you have."

She threw her head back and laughed darkly. "What a crock of fucking shit," she snorted. "I'm not jealous of anyone. Why should I be? I'm not jealous of that blood-sucking twat Helen, of Darla, of Drusilla, or any other woman that walks this earth, human or otherwise. I don't care how many women, demons or female mammals you take to your bed, Angelus, as long as you don't come here reeking of them or—"

Angelus grunted his acknowledgement of her long-standing condition of their continued association. His grunt, combined with the look her shot her, seemed to appease her somewhat since the hardness in her eyes seemed to soften a bit, enough so that Angelus gauged she was closer to being once more amenable to tending to his needs. He felt a flash of want in the pit of his belly and his groin tighten with a sudden jerk. Deciding to test his theory, he leaned in, he reached up, and cupped the palm of his healthy hand around her jaw as he covered her lips with his. He slid his tongue along the cleft between her soft lips and her mouth parted, and he kissed her, deeply if briefly, pulling away just as her tongue twirled against his and her quiet moan of pleasure filled the space between their grasping mouths.

"So ya are willin' to tend to me hurts, aren't ya, lass?" he asked as he pulled his mouth away from hers, a lazy grin spilling across his face as he spoke.

"Mmmm," she murmured back, sucking in a deep breath of air as she licked the taste of his kiss from her lips with clear satisfaction. watched her as she reached up, drawing her finger down the long line from the notch at the base of his neck, over his sternum, between his pectoral muscles and finally over his navel, pausing momentarily before bringing the other hand up to unfasten his trousers. She plucked open the button closure at the top of his trousers, glancing up to gauge his reaction. "See how easy that was?" she inquired with a half-grin. "All you had to do was be honest. I know it's against your nature, sweetness, but everyone's better off when we're honest with each other, I think." She proceeded to pluck open the four buttons of his fly. "Yes, I think everyone's happier this way...and that you're one very lucky vampire that I'm such an...understanding individual like I am."

"Understanding?" he grunted with a jerk of his chin. "You, lass? Understanding?"

Nodding slowly, she tilted her head with a small smile. "Indeed, Angelus. Seeing as how I willing to understand that because of that oversized gigantic ego of yours, I'm willing to overlook the fact that for some strange reason you think you can get things past me. You might be able to do that with others, sweetness, but never me, right? That's why honesty really is your best policy with me since I know everything...or, at least, I eventually do, hmmm?" She punctuated her final words with a particularly vicious tug of his trousers.

"Maybe," he gasped as he felt her shove his wool trousers over his hips, the rough fabric sliding over the knee-length union suit shorts he wore underneath. He gritted his teeth and sucked in a sharp breath of surprise as she unbuttoned the front of his underwear and snaked her hand into the gaping fly, curling her fingers around his hardening flesh. "Holy hell, lass," he hissed, grunting as she tightened her grip.

"Is that what you wanted?" she asked, pumping him in her hand, feeling him harden in her palm with each stroke. "Because, I think since you just kissed me, it's definitely what I want right now..." She jerked him harder, grinning at seeing the cordlike sinews of his neck tighten and a low growl rumble in his throat. "At least," she continued, a tiny wavering in her voice the first sign that her firm resolve to resist his sensual wiles as she felt her own body starting to respond with want of him despite her best planned efforts to keep her own arousal at bay, "that's part of what I want. I want more, Angelus, but, really, but more than anything else...it really comes down to one thing." She closed her fist more completely around his thick length. "A little honesty, mmm?" She raised her chin and smirked as she watched his dark eyes squeeze shut as the muscles of his chest, arms and abdomen tensed and tightened. "That's all I wanted. I fucking hate being lied to, Angelus. Being deceived."

She slowed her movements, languidly drawing her hand up and down his shaft, dragging his skin over the hardening flesh as he groaned, gradually closing her fist more tightly around him as she watched him clench his teeth as he struggled to hold himself together under her caresses. Seeing and feeling him respond so quickly and completely to her touch set off a strong pulse of liquid heat between her legs. Brennan swallowed as she felt her resolve crumbling rapidly.

"Nnnnnngth," Angelus grunted, jerking his hips into her hand. "You fuckin' want it, don't ya, lass? You could barely wait to fish me outta my trousers so you could feel me again, the way you been missin' me all this time, huh? Now, don't lie, remember? Things work best between us when there's honesty, aye? I can smell it. You want me and badly. So this ain't about no lyin'—it's about you bein' sick o' lyin' in that bed o' yours rubbin' yourself off for want o' me, wadn't it?"

"You have no fucking idea, do you?" she hissed, the flash of want she felt between her legs now dimmed as her frustration mounted with each syllable that passed from his mouth. She pulled the inside of her lip between her teeth and bit down hard, nearly drawing blood as she tried to regain control of herself. "You're only capable of learning the hard way, evidently. That's why I had a friend of mine, actually a friend of both mine and Darla's, who knows a captain with the Metropolitan Police, have his acquaintance follow you over to the Horse and Hound."

Brennan gave his flesh one more firm stroke, watching the skin slide slowly over his glistening tip before she pulled it back again with a sharp jerk and stopped her movements altogether. She licked her lips and brought her gaze up to meet his now-opened eyes which stared back at her wide with surprise.

"Wait," he rasped. "You...you...you're sayin' that you got me thrown into the Tower?"

Brennan smiled and shrugged, but didn't release her grasp on him. "I had to find a way to get your attention," she said. "To remind you of that which you seemed to have forgotten, Angelus...and to punish you just a little bit for the insult of thinking you could pull one over on me."

"So you got me tossed in the fuckin' Tower?" he roared. "I canna fuckin' believe it, lass. You fuckin' did this to me? Holy hell. You fuckin' two-faced cuntish bitch."

He gritted his teeth and grunted loudly, taking a half-step back before the sudden and painful jerk he felt at the base of his cock reminded him that she held his most sensitive flesh in a tight fist.

"You're a wicked woman, lass. Wicked and fuckin' mad as a hatter," he muttered at her before he looked up with another jerk of his chin. "I knew I liked you for some fuckin' reason."

He glanced down and, for reasons he did not understand, felt himself harden even more at the thought that she'd actually been angry enough about his perceived infidelity to concoct a scheme to have him thrown in the Tower. He leaned his head back and swallowed, silently swearing that he'd sooner die than admit such a thing aloud to her.

"Aye, you've finally cracked, lass," he told her. "But I still like it even if I should fuckin' rip your throat out for doin' that to me."

"Oh, please, Angelus," Brennan scoffed at him. "If I didn't know better, I'd say that being around Helen has let her melodramatic tendencies rub off on you. First, we both know that's an empty threat since you aren't going to do anything to me that I don't want you to do to me. Second, it's not like I thought they'd really hurt you since we both know that with your...nature...it's a simple enough fact that you'd heal up well enough no matter after a couple or three good, solid nights of feeding and fucking from what they did to you. Besides, even if that weren't the case, we both know that you've gotten out of much more dire circumstances than that. I knew you'd finagle your way out of there before too long easily enough—though I must admit I'm surprised it took you two whole days to escape..."

"I can't believe you," he muttered, glancing down again to admire the sight of her slender-fingered hand wrapped around his erect cock before closing his eyes with a hiss, shaking his head and bringing his gaze to hers. "All that was your doin'?"

Brennan blinked her amply-lashed eyes prettily and grinned, hesitating before she answered his question.

"Well, it was my idea, yes," she confessed. "But, I'd be remiss if I didn't admit Darla's, Drusilla's, and William's assistance in the matter."

"William's assistance?" he growled. "Aye, and a fine lot of assistance he was, mmm? That's why you're a-standin' here with my big, fine, hard cock in your hand, because that limp, soft, pencil-dicked tyke couldn't get the job done with that pathetic excuse of a wee prick he's got tucked in his trousers. An' I'm sure that Darla an' Dru chipped in 'cause they were cranky and cheesed off because neither o' them had gotten the kind o' fuckin' they needed since—"

He coughed, and his rant came to an abrupt halt when Brennan gave his cock a sharp tug, drawing his tender skin over his red, swollen tip before jerking it back again. "Oh, Jesu'," he hissed. "Fuckin' hell, woman."

"Oh, come on, Angelus," Brennan said. "Besides, it's not like I've never not amply rewarded you for any confinements you've endured as a result of me or my efforts, hmmm?" she asked, tightening her grip on him as she finally began to move her hand again in slow, even strokes that surprised Angelus enough that he winced and bit down on his lower lip. "Isn't that so?"

"Aye," he said. "Fuck yes." He swallowed hard and stepped back with a stumble as his knees wobbled a little. He squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head firmly, uttering a long growl between his clenched teeth as a part of him rebelled at being manipulated this way. "You're a fuckin' piece o' work, you crazy witch. Why're you doin' this, lass? You get off on torturin' people, huh? Is this some kind o' new kink you been holdin' out on me about?" He sucked a sharp hiss between his teeth as the heel of her hand brushed against his tightening balls. "Fuck, lass," he whispered, closing his eyes as he surrendered himself to the feeling of being enveloped by her warm palm and fingers. "You want me to drill you into that damn wall o'er there? Just you keep this up."

Brennan shook her head. "No," she told him. "That won't be happing, Angelus—"

Angelus promptly cut her off. "Ohhh, fuck," he grunted. His eyes snapped open again, and he regarded her with a dark, smoky glare as his mouth curved into a lewd, crooked smile. "I told ya. I can fuckin' smell ya, lass. You can't ever lie to me lass about this, you know. I can smell it when you want a good hard fuckin' from a damn mile away. That tight, hot pussy o' yours is drippin', lass, just drippin' 'cause you wanna get fucked. You wanna good fuckin', don't ya, lass? You want me to do that to ya, huh? Lemme give it to ya, then, mmm? The way only I can give it to ya. Hard and fast, aye? Drillin' ya so hard ya can't barely breathe but ya don't care 'cause your whole body's on fire from the fuckin' you're gettin'. Or maybe long, deep an' so slow that you donna know where my cock ends and your sweet, hot pussy begins. Or maybe I can take ya in that tight little arse o' yours, since ya like it when I do that, mmm? Stretchin' ya out while I pound into ya. Oh, holy hell, there's no woman on earth or any of all the hells with a better, tighter, prettier, juicier ass than you've got, lass. Come on, just admit ya want a good fuckin' and tell me how ya want me to give it to ya, and—"

"No," Brennan said flatly. "I've had a long night, Angelus, and as much as I'd like to tend to all of your needs now that we've had this lovely little chat of ours, I really can't. I'm just not able to do any of that."

His eyes snapped open and his mouth fell open. "What?" he grunted. "O' course ya will. Why would ya?"

"I just can't, Angelus," she said, loosening her grip on him again. "Not now. But let me do this thing for you, right now, sweetness, so I can take the edge off of things and you can go home, and then tomorrow evening, you can come back, and we'll see about what other kinds of entertainments we can find, mmm?" She closed her fist again and began to stroke him again in long, firm, determined jerks.

Angelus arched his head back and gave a long, low sigh through lips that were roundly pursed, but he didn't utter a word as he thickened in her grasp. His broken hand hung uselessly at his side as his other hand reached up to brace himself, fisting the silky sleeve of Brennan's robe as she jerked her hand back and forth, occasionally swiping the pad of her thumb over his weeping, swollen tip and grinning at the sound that rumbled from his throat when she did it.

"Ohhh, fuck," he groaned. "Ohhhhh...ohhh sweet hell, lass...ohhhhhh, fuck!" He sucked in a sharp breath between his teeth, almost a backwards hiss, as he swallowed hard.

"Mmmm," Brennan murmured as she felt his balls tighten against the edge of her fist. "You like that, don't you? The way I touch you, like no other woman does?"

Angelus growled, then his gritted teeth parted, and his mouth fell open in a low moan.

"Ohhhhhh...ooooohhhh...nnngggth...ohhh, fuck..." He felt the floor begin to spin beneath his feet as everything seemed to collapse around him, and all he could feel was her, and how great she felt, and a bead of sweat dribbled down his temple and fell onto his shoulder as he leaned his head back and gritted his teeth once more.

"Ohhhhh..."

Angelus' dark eyes suddenly snapped open, and Brennan's gaze swiveled up to meet his as they heard a long, tortured moan cut across the room—a moan that was not his.

"Nooooooo," the anguished voice cried out from behind the heavy door to the bedroom. "Please...no...noooo..."

He batted Brennan's hand away, wincing at the jerk and the subsequent loss of contact, and his lips curled in a grimace as he grunted, "What's that? Who's there?" He quickly tucked himself back into his trousers, pulling his suspenders up over his bare shoulders and not bothering to button his fly as he took a step forward, pushing Brennan aside with his thickly-muscled forearm as he made his way toward to the bedroom.

"You keepin' someone here?" he asked, pushing the door open with the side of his broken right hand. "You fuckin' somebody else behind my back, huh?" He glanced over his shoulder to gauge her response as the heavy door creaked open. "You been lyin' to me, lass? Ha. So much for fuckin' honesty between us, huh? You some kind o' hypocrite now or what?"

Angelus snapped his head around, glanced into the lamp-lit room and found a woman seated in a dark, thick-legged walnut chair. Her hands were bound behind her back, and her ankles were tied to the front legs of the chair, leaving her thighs spread apart. She was completely stripped but for a sweat-stained, blood-spattered ivory silk chemise, her face, neck and chest marred with tacky streaks of half-dried blood, the smell of which sent a raw tingle of pleasure shooting up Angelus' spine. The woman's head was slumped forward, her sweat-damp black hair matted as it hung over her forehead. She groaned again and slowly raised her battered, bruised face and opened her brown eyes—as much as possible, considering her eyelids were nearly swollen shut—to meet his.

"Angelus," she murmured with puffy, lacerated lips, her cheeks perking up as she attempted a smile at hearing the sound of her lover's voice. A streak of blood ran down from the corner of her mouth over the curve of her cleft chin. "My dark prince," she said, her mouth hanging open as she uttered a happy gasp. "I knew it. I knew it. I just knew it. He came. Like I knew he would. Just like I believed. I just wanted one more minute with him, to feel our love, to bask in it, and he came. He's come to me, at last, my one true love..."

"Helen?" he said, his mouth falling open in abject shock. His eyebrows flew up in surprise as he took in the sight of her, his groin and chest both tightening at him personally seeing the first demonstration of brutality on Brennan's part since the night twenty years earlier he awoke, strung up from her rafters, to find her wiping the blood of two slain men off her silver blade.

Narrowing his eyes, he turned to Brennan and asked, "What did you do to her?" He narrowed his eyes and stared at Helen's beaten form for a few seconds, still somewhat taken aback by the extent of the beating that Brennan had given her. "I mean, holy fuckin' hell, lass. All my teasin' aside, I never really thought...I didna' think you were into other women, lass. Maybe I was wrong about you an' Darla, after all. I thought you two knew each other well because of all the cups o' tea you've chatted o'er all these years. Maybe you been sharin' more than crumpets with her, aye? So, you missed me enough that ya took ta' fuckin' another lass to keep the edge off, huh?"

"As ever, you flatter yourself," Brennan retorted sharply. "And we've been over this before, sweetness. I have no interest in the affections of other women. None whatsoever. To each his or her own, I say, but that has and never will be something that excites me in any way whatsoever."

Angelus rolled his eyes. "So ya gonna tell me why you have another woman, stripped damn near naked and tied up in your bedchamber, trussed up like a Christmas goose?" '

"We had to have a talk," Brennan replied, her voice gray and devoid of any apparent feeling. "It was one thing, her thinking she could fuck you. That was your doing, in large part, so I couldn't hold that entirely against her. But she didn't know when to leave well enough alone."

"Noooo," Helen moaned.

"Shut the fuck up, you stupid cunt," Brennan grunted, stepping forward and retrieving her silver dagger from the pocket of her silk robe and brandishing it in the dim light of her bedroom. She rolled the handle of the dagger in her hand before bringing its tip along the space between Helen's breasts and up to her chin. Brennan flicked the sharp point over her chin, breaking the skin and watching with a smirk as the blood welled up in the cut.

"Lass," Angelus said, reaching up and placing his uninjured left hand on Brennan's shoulder. "Come on, now, mmm?"

She shrugged off his touch and glared at him, her lips curled in disgust. "What do you want, Angelus?"

"You know what I want, lass," he said with a wicked grin. "An' it donna have anythin' to do with this. Let 'er go, mmm?" He paused for a beat as Brennan's head snapped up, and her eyes flashed a dangerous blue at him. "Now stop that," he growled at her. "It's not like that."

"Oh?" she snapped. "Then how is it?"

"It's not 'cause I give a wee rat's ass about this cheap piece o' baggage, in case ya were wonderin', aye," he told her defiantly. "But it's because all this nonsense is takin' up too much of your precious energies and I for one would much rather see ya investin' those energies in a wicked round o' fuckin' rather than whatever...games ya been playin' here." Angelus licked his lips as he inhaled the smell of Brennan's sweat, rich with the spicy scent of anger. "So come on, lass—let's be done with this so we can get to makin' the most o' the evenin', mmm?"

"Well, no," Brennan shook her head. "That won't be happening, I'm afraid. So you can take your honeyed brogue, charming smile, and smooth lies and get the fuck out because you've come in rather late in this thing that's between Helen and I."

Angelus considered her response for a moment and then asked in a curious voice, "So, how long have you been goin' at this...wee lil' pastime o' yours, lass?"

All of a sudden, the bound brunette's head snapped up as she sputtered, "She's kept me here for—"

Walking up to Helen without saying a word, Brennan proceeded to extend her right hand and slap the other woman as hard as she could across the mouth, drawing blood as Helen's scabbed-over busted lip began to bleed again once more. Retracting her hand, Brennan smiled coldly at Helen as she said in a simple, even voice, "Now, did I say you could open that filthy, fucking mouth of yours, Helen?" Brennan paused for a beat, her smile broadening as she glared at the other woman for a few seconds, and then shook her head as she continued. "No, I think not." Turning away from the bound vampire, Brennan looked at Angelus. "Now, why does it matter to you, Angelus? Don't tell me you were trolling for Helen before your unexpected stay in the Tower courtesy of my friend in the Metropolitan Police?"

Angelus narrowed his eyes. "What?" he coughed. "No—I wasn't lookin' for her. Like I told you, I was just gettin' me a wee dram o' fine Irish whiskey and chattin' me up a pretty little lass, just for fun, ya know." He laughed. "Ehhh, I didna say what kind o' fun, but suffice it to say she wouldna had to wait to see if her limp-dicked soldier boy—apparently just back from fightin' the Boers down in the Cape Colony—was gonna finish on top in his game o' darts, 'cause I was gonna make damn sure I finished her off on top."

Considering his snarky response, a true smile cracked Brennan's hard face before she asked him with an arched eyebrow, "Is that so?" When Angelus wagged his eyebrows in response, Brennan shrugged her shoulders and then finally answered. "Well, then, for your own personal edification, Helen has been here for about a week enjoying my...hospitality."

Angelus licked his lips for a prolonged moment, contemplating the delicious thought before he lifted his pitch-dark eyes to meet Brennan's impatient blue ones. "So tell me, lass, have you really been havin' at her—" At his words, Brennan gave him a hard glare that made him roll his eyes as he quickly amended his statement. "That is, you been torturin' her for a whole week?"

Narrowing her eyes as she standoffishly replied, "And what if I had, Angelus?" She paused a beat before she continued with a mocking tone coming into her voice that she knew would challenge him. "What would you say? Are you surprised?" She paused a second time, and then gave him a smile that would've curdled his blood had his heart still pumped it throughout his body, it was so cold and malevolent. "Or, have you forgotten exactly what I'm capable of, sweetness?"

Clearly turned on by her calculated ruthlessness, Angelus looked impressed when he swept his dark brown eyes up and down her lithe body. "I've forgotten nothin' about you, lass, absolutely fuckin' nothing. I remember everythin'..." This time it was his turn to stop for a beat before he tilted his head and told her, "Tell me what you've done to her."

Brennan stared at him, meeting his impressed gaze for a long moment. At last, apparently satisfied with what she saw, Brennan turned away from him to a small circular dark cherry wood side table. She reached for a silver dish and what looked like a silver utensil that was cradled on top of it. As she lifted it, a sloshing sound filled the air that was quickly followed by an involuntary whimper from Helen. At the sound, Brennan beamed happily before she finally answered the query that had been made of her.

"You want to know what I've done to her?" she asked him. "This crazy fucking bitch? Is that what you what to know, Angelus? Is it?"

Slowly, he nodded in reply. "Aye," he told her. "Tell me."

Tilting her head, Brennan complied as she explained, "Well, for starters, do you know what this is, Angelus?" She held the silver dish in one hand, but used her other hand to take the long silver utensil in hand as she lifted it up so that he could get a good look at what it was. "I know you've sacked enough nunneries and desecrated enough churches over the years to come across one or two of these in your time."

Angelus smirked and said, "Aye, lass, well—well, when I find me'self in a convent or church, the last thing I'm payin' attention to is the wee geejaws or trinkets that furnish the place, ya know. I'm far too busy takin' me liberties with the ladies o' the house to be fussin' with the silver, if ye know what I mean..." He narrowed his eyes and looked at the article, realizing it for the potential danger it represented to him, and then said, "Still...is that what I think 'tis?"

Her evil smile widening, Brennan tilted her head slightly as she replied, "If you think it's a silver bowl containing holy water taken from the sacred Chalice Well of the Red Spring nestled beneath Glastonbury Tor, a place of power to the women of my family going back well over a millennia, before it was blessed within the precincts of what was once Glastonbury Abbey, then the answer would be yes."

Turning away from Angelus, Brennan was going to set the bowl of holy water, and the silver utensil it contained, back on the table. But as she moved, she accidentally caught Helen's eyes. If such a thing were possible, the female vampire seemed to pale even further as she shrieked, "Keep that thing away from me you arrogant, uppity bitch!"

Helen's shrieks, normally a pleasant sound to Brennan's ears, merely served to infuriate and stoke her anger more than it was already was inflamed in that moment—not an easy thing to do either, given how furious Brennan already was with the vampire. Slowly, Brennan turned back away from the table and took a step closer to her would-be rival, still carrying the silver bowl in her hand as she walked.

"Oh, Helen," Brennan chuckled icily. "Oh, Helen, my sweet dear. You wound me. Your words really, really wound me." Her pale blue eyes flashed brightly for a minute as Brennan paused and then said, "So, now, of course, since you've hurt me, I'm going to have to hurt you, Helen. Because, remember, my sweet dear, the rule of three. Whatever you put out into the universe—positive or negative—it will always come back to you, come back on you stronger by a power of three." Lifting her hand, Brennan grasped the long silver utensil in her hand, dipped it into the water, and then lifted it high to fling it in the direction of Helen's face as she flicked her wrist three times. "Of course," Brennan chuckled. "I never said I'd be using words to wound you now, did I?"

Helen's screams pierced the air, but Angelus remained quiet as he watched the situation unfold with clear interest. As each droplet of holy water that scattered from the silver orb made contact with the flushed skin of Helen's face, the air filled with the sound of sizzling and popping as the woman's demonic flesh rebelled against the touch of the consecrated water.

Angelus watched and listened, his hands on his hips as his eyes darted from one woman to the other. He felt Brennan's raw and pulsing anger and complete disdain radiating off of her in waves, and his nostrils filled with two coalescing scents: one, the spicy smell of Brennan's smoldering jealousy and rage, and the other, the rich, smoky, and faintly sour scent of Helen's skin blistering with each flick of the orb, the latter of which reminded Angelus of the smell of pancetta frying in a cast iron skillet with capers. The brief memory of an evening he'd spent drinking grappa in a cucina in Vicenza was quickly shattered as Helen leaned her head back and shrieked again, twisting her head to one side as if she could somehow escape the drops of holy water that rained down Brennan's retribution on the ruined skin of her face.

As he watched his longtime witch-lover assault Helen with the holy water, Angelus felt his already-aching balls tighten and the low, almost painful tugging in his belly signal that his body was once more rousing after Brennan's earlier ministrations were interrupted. This time, however, his cock strained at his trousers—which still gaped open, held up by his braces—but the want he felt for her ran deeper than he'd felt in years, and seemed to mount more and more with every howling cry that passed from Helen's battered mouth.

When at last Brennan seemed satisfied with her work, the silver bowl not quite empty of holy water, even as fresh red welts bubbled up to mar Helen's once beautiful face, she gestured at Angelus with the utensil. It was about six inches in length, a long silver handle with a round piece of metal attached at one end. The orb was covered in holes through which the holy water could pass. Delicate Celtic knotwork decorated the metal handle even as Brennan grasped it.

Smiling at Angelus, Brennan finally said, "I've always loved this aspergelium. It was a gift from Queen Jane Seymour to my mother before her death in October 1539. While Henry VIII formally ordered Oliver Cromwell to begin the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1536, it took some years for the most powerful religious houses to be stripped. This aspergelium was taken from the altar in Glastonbury Abbey. Queen Jane loved my mother and knew she would treasure it. And she did. It was always one of her most prized possessions, along with a Book of Hours that my mother believed to have come from the Venerable Margaret's personal library. And, when my mother died, I inherited all her belongings including this trinket. And, I've always kept it with me and treasured it...although who knew it would be such a useful tool for dealing with devious and hateful bitches who need to be served their just desserts, hmm, Angelus?"

"Aye," he snickered. "Because there's nothin' more perfect in the world than a dagger-jabbin' witch slingin' holy water at the face of a blood-suckin' vamp who was fuckin' said witch's vamp gentleman friend." He cocked his head to the side and grinned at Brennan with a gleam in his dark eyes. "And for the wee sake of clarification, I am the gentleman to whom I was referrin'." Noting the way Brennan's eyes narrowed at his quip, he added, "And just so ya know, I canna tell ya how fuckin' hot it makes me watchin' ya, lass. I didna think ya still had it in ya after all these years—aye, but I'm a tellin' ya, I owe ya a fuckin' apology there, 'cause ya sure as fuck haven't lost your touch. No, ma'am." He licked his lips and took a step towards her. "Sweet fuckin' hell, lass, you make me want to take ya right fuckin' here, rip those goddamn clothes of your gorgeous body, and fuck your ever-lovin' brains out to hell right fuckin' now with whoever's watchin'."

Laughing at Angelus' rant, Brennan quickly flashed him a small if knowing smile at him before she finally took the bowl and dumped the remaining contents over Helen's protruding and ample decollage. The female vampire again screamed, convulsing in the chair, as she let out a slew of unintelligible curses. Brennan looked on in pleasure as she took a step back to view her handiwork. After a minute, Helen's cries faded to low hisses and slight whimpers. Brennan took that as a sign that she should continue her work. Moving back to the table, she set the empty bowl and her silver aspergelium down. She then reached for another item that was resting on the back part of the table. Grabbing a large silver cross in her hand, Brennan spun around and then advanced on Helen, brandishing the cross in her hand like it was another weapon—although, in a way, to Helen, as Brennan knew, it was a weapon to be feared...one of the deadliest kinds.

The feeling of empowerment that Brennan felt as she walked towards Helen made her blood sing in a way that she had spent a very long time in recent years trying to forget. Knowing that she shouldn't take too much pleasure in the anger and pain she was reveling in, lest she lose herself completely, but with Angelus watching, she couldn't quite help herself. In some ways, with her new audience of one, she now was driven to show him exactly what she could still do if she was of a mind and was pushed too far. With Angelus watching her, it was no longer about teaching Helen a lesson and then ending her sorry excuse for a ancient vampire's life. No, instead, it was something that Brennan wanted to take pleasure in...and have Angelus see her take that pleasure as she tortured his one-time vampire lover.

Taking a step closer, Brennan slowly lifted her hand and flashed the cross in front of Helen so the latter knew what was coming. Recognizing the familiar cross for what it was, since Brennan had used it many, many times on her during the past week when Helen had enjoyed her 'hospitality', the vampire shrieked again.

"No!" she cried out. "Not that fucking cross. Not again, you crazy and possessive bitch. No! No, no, no!" she repeated with a burst of emphatic emotion that surprised even Brennan given what she'd put her through the prior week.

Laughing at Helen's display, Brennan took the cross and pressed it to the vampire's left cheek. Helen jerked in her chair, the restraints and the weight of the chair to which she was snugly bound being the only things that kept her from falling down as she screamed. A sharp look came into Brennan's eyes as she shoved the cross more firmly against Helen's skin.

"So, I'm the one who's a crazy and possessive bitch, Helen?" Brennan asked with a dark laugh. Shaking her head, she continued, "You know, I don't mind being called a bitch. I actually take it as a compliment. I'd rather be a bitch then a whackjob. Because you know what, Helen? That's what you are...you are a crazy fucking bitch who's a complete and utter whackjob, as in you need to be taken outside and killed." Brennan stopped long enough to see Helen's brown eyes flash at her in fear, nodded and smiled again. "Oh, don't worry, Helen. I promise you, when I'm done teaching you your lesson, and have made a proper example of you, never fear, my dear. I will be killing you. And, I'll be taking great pleasure in doing that. Do you know why?"

Sarcasm dripping from her puffy lips, Helen spat at her, "No, but I don't think I'm going to have a choice in hearing what other crazy shit you want to spew at me, so get on with it, Brennan."

Her smile widening, Brennan pulled the cross away from Helen's cheek, "I never liked you, Helen," she said. "I never did. Not from the very first time your arrogantly presumptuous slutty self slithered into the room and I had to make your very unpleasant acquaintance. I knew right from the very first second exactly what you were."

"And, what's that?" Helen rasped, her eyes darting quickly to Angelus' as she tried to read the flicker behind his smoldering brown eyes.

"You're a user," Brennan said matter-of-factly, her jaw stiffening as she saw Helen's gaze briefly shift to Angelus. "And, I think that's why I disliked you from the very first. But, I really started to hate you when I realized what you did."

"And, what, precisely, Brennan, is it that I do that makes you want to kill me?" Helen snapped at her.

Tilting her head, Brennan opened her mouth and then saw Helen's eyes dart in the direction of where Angelus stood. Raising her hand, Brennan took her index finger as she tsked the female vampire. "Oh, come now, Helen," she chuckled. "Really? Is that the best you have? Because if it is, you really are going to have to try harder."

Helen's pink tongue darted out from between her swollen, cracked and scarred lips as she responded, "What?"

Shaking her head, Brennan replied, "That won't work. I'll tell Angelus what you've been up to when I'm damn good and ready...and not a moment before."

"What?" Angelus coughed, as if he'd suddenly realized he'd been asked a question by a tutor while gazing out the window at a pretty girl passing by on the busy street. He blinked a couple of times, shifting his weight from one hip to the other as he tried to ignore the low, round ache deep in his groin that seemed to get worse and worse with each passing second as he'd watched Brennan work Helen over. "What's she done t'you, lass?" He thought to add, 'other than doin' me' but thought better of it as his eyes skimmed Brennan's cold glare.

Turning around, Brennan answered Angelus' inquiry with a small shake of her head. "In due time, sweetness. In due time. First, though, Helen here needs to understand that she's been playing checkers to my chess for quite some time now."

As she slowly turned back to face the bound vampire, Brennan told her, "I've never made a secret of the fact that I've never liked you, Helen. But, you have no fucking idea how fucking glad I am that you've finally given me a valid excuse to wipe your sorry excuse for a vampire self off the face of this earth which you have blighted for far, far too many fucking centuries, you dumb fucking twit."

Brennan stopped for a moment, almost as if a new thought had suddenly occurred to her. Shaking her head, she continued, "You know, I've never really understood how you've managed, that, you know?" Nodding at her, Brennan clarified, "For as many centuries old as you allegedly are, how could you be so fucking dumb and not have managed to have run into a random piece of wood upon which you could do the world a favor and stake yourself?" She narrowed her eyes and then added, "And, by the by, I don't mean that as any type of advanced euphemism for some dumb asshole's hard cock. I know you don't really do subtle—have never done subtle since you're not smart enough. Indeed, for as smart as you think you are, it's actually too sophisticated a nuance for a troglodyte such as yourself to grasp. So, since it can't be said that I'm not kind or gracious, I'll explain why I'm going to take a very special stake that I've been saving for just such a special occasion as this one for a very, very long time.I'm going to take that lovely piece of blackthorn, and I'm going to enjoy very much using it to stab it through your withered and sorry excuse for a heart and so end your miserable existence."

Helen looked up through narrowed, swollen eyes and looked at her erstwhile lover, Angelus. Were it not for the fact that every limb and sinew in her body groaned with pain from the torture she'd suffered at Brennan's hands—her skin covered with welts, burns, cuts, bruises and gouges from the repeated beatings, holy-water dousings, candle-burns, punches, slaps, whippings and dagger-blows that Brennan had given her over the course of the week—she might've been aroused by the way he looked, standing there in a pair of soiled, rumpled trousers that gaped open at the fly, revealing the flat space below his navel that was covered with a faint shadow of hair before it disappeared into his undershorts, his chest bare but for a pair of dark gray suspenders that held up his unbuttoned trousers, his skin damp and—she could only imagine— sticky with his sweat. She raised her chin with a wince and looked into his eyes which stared back at her with a hardness that disheartened her.

The bright flicker she'd seen light up his warm brown eyes so many times when he'd called on her, the charmingly crooked grin that hung lazily off his kissable lips—all these she saw, but it was clear as she saw his gaze swivel away from her and towards the auburn-haired witch who stood before her that none of these were for or because of her anymore...if they'd ever been at all Helen saw the twinkle in Angelus' eyes flash, and she watched his smile widen as Brennan opened her mouth to speak, her head slumped a little as she realized that, no matter what happened that night or thereafter, she'd obviously missed something important. She wasn't quite sure how or why or when it had happened, but obviously something had happened between Angelus and Brennan—and somehow, a part of her disturbed mind that could still reason pieced together, the witch had become a threat to her. However, as soon as the thought entered her head, Helen quickly and finally dismissed it with a defiant sneer.

Seeing Helen flinch again at her words, while ignoring her brief sneer of derision, Brennan again smiled as she said, "As I said before, I could lie and say that I'm not enjoying any of this, because I am. I'm enjoying myself tremendously. So much so that I can't even verbalize it to you, although I'll try."

Brennan glanced over her shoulder at Angelus, who still stood there, watching her intently, and as soon as her eyes met his, the crooked smirk on his mouth widened into a smile as the point of his pink tongue darted out from between his lips, quickly appearing and then vanishing again as he grinned back at her. Her eyes swiveled downward to his waist, and, letting her eyes fall a bit farther, she saw the clearest possible evidence of what he thought of the scene he'd been watching play out before him. As her eyes blinked up again, she caught his gaze and chuckled softly as they shared an unspoken exchange before he shrugged, his eyebrows wagging back at her before she turned back to the woman bound before her.

"Yes, I'm going to enjoy this, Helen, my dear. Besides, why shouldn't I? I have no problem whatsoever admitting that I'm being just as much, if not more of a cold-hearted bitchy cunt as you usually are. Because taking such immense pleasure from culling the weak, stupid, shallow, aggravating user that is you from all existence. I'm fucking loving it."

At hearing the pleasure in her words, Angelus muttered behind her, "I just bet you are, lass." He took another step closer, his left hand brushing against the small of Brennan's back as a low growl rumbled in his throat. "And, just in case ya were wonderin', so am I." He leaned his head over her right shoulder and whispered, "An' if ya don't get this wee show o' yers movin' along a bit quicker, I just might have to take matters in me own hands, as we both know I've been apt to do for better o' worse from time to time, and do somethin' about this wee ache o' mine that's just about drivin' me outta my mind, mmm?" He pressed his lips against the back of her earlobe and nipped it gently. "I may just have t' yank that lovely robe off ya, throw ya 'gainst that wall there, and fuck your brains outta that pretty skull o' yours, and I donna care who the fuck's watchin'...aye?"

Helen glanced at Angelus as he whispered something to Brennan, howled in fury, and then gasped, "My dark prince, please, please don't hurt me like this. Don't leave me all alone out in the cold, my love. Don't be cruel. Not like this, not to me. You promised me—"

Shaking his head, Angelus snorted, "I promised you nothin', woman. Nothin'. And you're a bleedin' fool if you think I ever said anythin' o' the sort, aye? I never said nothin' like that."

"You love me," Helen insisted. "You fucking love me, Angelus, I know it."

Shrugging his shoulders casually as he shook his head with a snort, Angelus said, "Think that if it brings you comfort. But it ain't true, and ya fuckin' know it. I fucked you, but that's all."

This time it was Brennan who shook her head as she interrupted, "The more crazy the delusion, the more painful it is when it finally cracks, hmmm, Helen, my dear?" She then pointed at the vampire as she said, "You crazy delusional obsession that you've built up in your mind about this grand, dark romance that you had with Angelus never existed, Helen. It was never real. It was only real and only existed in your warped and twisted mind."

"No," Helen insisted. "It wasn't—it was real. It is real. My dark prince...he loves me. I know he does no matter how you've bewitched him now to think differently."

Brennan cocked her head to the side and stared skeptically at the vampire woman sitting bound before her. A smile broke across her face as she watched Helen struggle to open her eyes, their lids streaked with reddish-purple bruises and nearly swollen shut. Helen's lips parted and a faint sigh passed between them as she looked up expectantly at Angelus, who stared back at her over Brennan's silk-robed shoulder with dark, flinty eyes that brokered no sympathy. Her own dark eyes—or as much of them as could be seen the way they were swollen from the repeated beatings she'd taken at Brennan's hands—looked at him with a watery fondness, and she pursed her cracked, puffy lips together as if trying to blow him a kiss through the air, the sight of which made the old witch throw her head back in laughter.

"It's not like you weren't warned this would end badly for you if you kept behaving as you did," Brennan said, her voice low and velvety as she spoke in an almost wistful way. "You were told that you'd come to this end if you kept pressing, kept pissing off the wrong people. You crossed the wrong person, Helen my dear, when you ignored those very wise warnings. Because I'm not the type of person you should fuck with, ever."

Clearly unimpressed, Helen snorted at Brennan. "Oh, please," she spat. "You think you own him. You always have. Well, I've got news for you, you stupid bitch. I knew Angelus long before you ever did. I've known him longer, and I'm more important to him. You're just doing this because you have no respect for the fact that he's with me. You can't handle it. You've never been able to handle it. He loves me, and—"

"First of all," Brennan snapped, her anger creeping into her voice again as she cut off what she knew would be Helen's latest rant if she didn't interrupt her. "You're more than fucking crazy or delusional if you think Angelus ever loved you."

Brennan's eyes flashed to meet the male vampire's as she spoke. Angelus raised his chin as his eyes widened, his mouth opening slightly and then closing again as each of them stared back at the other, trying to read the other one's expression. His jaw jutted forward and his gaze narrowed again, holding firm to hers for a couple of more seconds before a quiet laugh tittered in his throat. He winked back at her with a flicker of what she could only guess was amused respect, then indicated with a quick, slight upward jerk of his chin for her to continue.

"He loves me," Helen insisted, her voice raspy with mounting frustration. "I know it. My dark prince loves—"

"—no one but himself," Brennan said with an exaggerated roll of her eyes. "Jesus Christ, Helen. Try to grow a few neurons that you can put to some use, however limited, just for a minute before you go back to blathering your inane drivel that makes me want to vomit every time I hear it for even just a few seconds." She punctuated her sentence with a small gag. "The only thing that Angelus loves is himself...and fucking and killing and causing as much resultant chaos as possible...those last three not being in any particular order of predetermined preference."

Angelus coughed and straightened his back as he palmed Brennan's shoulder with his big hand. "No, no, no," he said with a snicker. "I can definitely say that I like fuckin' best. Fuckin' first, then makin' trouble, and killin' least o' the three. Not 'cause I donna love killin' an' seein' the way someone looks when they know they're drawin' their last breath, but 'cause makin' trouble an' fomentin' anarchy is so much more damn fun. It's always different every time, while killin'—well, there's only so many different ways to kill, ya know, and it kinda gets a wee bit borin' after a while. But making a rumble and settin' everything all ablaze so everybody's runnin' around bumpin' into walls and screamin' and carryin' on—aye, well, that's fun as hell. Not as much fun as fuckin' though, 'cause there ain't nothin' better than that, and ain't nobody as good at fuckin' as I am, as the both of you know well, but—"

Glancning back at Angelus, Brennan couldn't help but smile as she said, "See? You really don't know him at all. He's a simple enough creature, really, if so completely full of himself it's laughable at times. But, in any case, not to run off on a tangent, like I said, Helen, my dear, you were warned. But, you didn't listen. And, no, to address your earlier statement, I'm not going to take an almost giddy pride in staking you shortly because this is about me being jealous of whatever you think it was that you and Angelus had when he was doing nothing more than using your slimy old pussy as a convenient hole he could stick his cock into as the opportunities presented themselves from time to time. This is about what you were warned about when they all told you not to cross me, not to fuck with me."

"Oh, please, Brennan," Helen laughed spitefully. "You've always been a legend in your own mind."

"Darla told you," Brennan continued. "On more than one occasion, I know, she counseled you not to fuck with me. Even poor mad Drusilla told you not to fuck with me. That you'd end up the worse for it because I'm a very, very dangerous woman, Helen. And, I think your current situation proves that I'm not someone to be trifled with, let alone crossed. But, stupid crazy fucking bitch that you are, you've done that, haven't you? You've done that on more than one occasion, and added injury to insult in the process."

In the course of her rant, Brennan had taken a step forward, leaving Angelus standing there with his hand in midair before he took a step back, giving her space and shoving his hands in his trouser pockets as he watched her. Brennan walked around Helen's chair, circling her like a hungry lioness stalking her doomed prey, her back straight and a dark, predatory glimmer in her blue eyes. She propped her hands on her hips and rolled her shoulders back as she smirked at her handiwork bound in the chair—her dark hair matted with blood as she hunched over, almost every inch of her olive skin marred by a bruise, blister, abrasion, or laceration of some kind. The floor around the chair was dotted with specks of dried blood that Brennan took care not to step on with her slippered feet as she walked her way in a circle around the muttering vampire woman.

"So, my dear Helen, I'm going to do what I should've done a long time ago. You chose the wrong fucking witch to mess with and now you're going to pay for it."

With a curt laugh, Brennan paused for a moment, then turned on her heel and walked over to the dresser along the wall of her bedroom, across from her vanity. She stopped and picked up a gnarled length of dark brown wood—so dark it was nearly black—and held it admiringly, running her fingers along its bumpy yet smooth, knotted surface as she turned it over in her hands.

Helen turned her head with a grunt and, after a moment, realized what she was seeing and sucked in a sharp gasp between her teeth.

"What are you doing?" she groaned, her arms straining against their bindings.

Brennan turned around and laughed as she brandished the blackthorn stake with a wicked smile. "Now, I know this is hard for you, Helen, but try to stay with us, hmmm, particularly since I that you think that you already know what's going on here, don't you? I'm going to kill you," she said simply before she slapped the bound woman in the mouth with the wide end of the stake.

The blow opened up Helen's puffy open lip which began to bleed. After a moment, she recovered enough to speak again.

"So that's it then? We've finally reached the end, Brennan? Have you finally tired of me?" Helen asked, her words falling sloppily from her bloodied lips. "Or now that Angelus is here, is it really that you're suddenly jealous because he's admitted he's been fucking me off and on for the last few years when you've hardly seen a wink of him?" She leaned her head back—one of the only parts of her body she could actually move considering the way Brennan had bound her to the heavy oak chair—and snorted. "No," she said with a sneer. "You're not pissed that I've been fucking your little vampire boy here, but rather that I've been fucking that blue-eyed rogue of a father of yours."

Angelus cocked his head in surprise and turned to Brennan, then shook his head, glanced at Helen and back to Brennan again.

"Wait, what?" he coughed, quite sure he hadn't heard what he thought he did. He'd been a bit distracted with his own lewd thoughts as he was half-heartedly listening to the two women's banter. Surely he'd misheard the exchange, he thought.

However, Helen's next words clarified any confusion on his part as she spat at Brennan.

"Granted," Helen continued, "he wasn't as well-equipped as Angelus here, but he was more than serviceable, especially since he was very good with his tongue when he wanted to be and for a human, he had fairly adequate stamina and skills of endurance. He was always good for a couple of very nice turns each night. And, as might be expected for a rogue like him, he was always creative. Very creative, actually. You should be proud of your sire in that, Brennan. He never made me come the exact same way twice."

"How dare you, you cheeky, stupid, insipid, crazy little fucking bitch!" Brennan said. "Do you think I want to hear anything that you have to say about anyone, let alone me or my family?" She reared her hand back and, with a loud grunt, slugged the vampire woman in the stomach with every ounce of strength she could summon in that moment. "Just in case you didn't know the answer to that question, the answer's no, you stupid, worthless twat."

"Huh?" Angelus shook his head and blinked, looking down at his bare feet and scratching his belly distractedly, thenturned back to the bound vampire. "Wait. What are you talkin' about, woman?"

"Oh, this is rich," Brennan laughed as she drew her clenched fist back from where Helen had doubled over in pain at the sharp jab to the gut the witch had slammed into her as hard as she could. Not giving Helen the satisfaction of seeing her rub her now-sore knuckles, instead she turned to Angelus. She arched an eyebrow and looked at him, shaking her head as she saw him fidget, wiggling his bare toes against the well-burnished, centuries-old hardwood floor of her bedroom as he ran his hand through his sweat-damp, tangled, shoulder-length hair, scratching the nape of his neck as he looked up at her with a sheepish expression she'd only seen him use a couple of times in the twenty years she'd known him. His dark eyebrows flew up as corners of his mouth curved into a faint grin and his forehead creased deeply with uncertainty. Brennan rolled her eyes at his apparent display of utter cluelessness. "Please tell me that you're joking, Angelus."

"No, lass," he said with a bit of a grumble. "I'm not. I have no fuckin' clue what either of you two banshees are wailin' about."

Studying him for a minute, Brennan asked, "You honestly have no idea?"

"No," he growled again, suddenly feeling annoyed that he'd missed something important. "I don't know what the fuck is goin' on. Now you gonna tell me or not?" He raised his eyebrows expectantly as he held his lips in a petulant pout. "Either of you?"

Nodding at Helen, Brennan smirked. "Surely, you know," she said in low, dark voice. "Surely you know she's been fucking another man on a regular basis behind your back this last couple of years."

Angelus laughed dismissively. "No, she hasn't," he snickered. "Now, that—that I'd know. She's always only had eyes for me—which o' course is perfectly understandable, me bein' such a fine specimen of a man and all and being such a man, I have very, very special skills that she's always loved...let alone the, heh, impressively-sized tools I have to put those skills to use—an' I know by the way it felt when I was fuckin' her that she was only fuckin' me. 'Cause when a woman is bein' fucked by me, even if it's only every now an' again, she ha'n't no need for another man, no way. She's just puttin' on..."

Hearing Angelus' own bombastic description of himself made Brennan snicker as she shook her head at him. "Well, either you're not the specimen of world-renown fucking that you think you are or she has you and your sizeable ego duped," Brennan said. "And since I can vouch for the highly satisfactory quality of your skills in bed, I'm inclined to go with the latter."

"No fuckin' way she's been fuckin' another man," Angelus said. "Aye, there's no fuckin' way. She wanted me like a drunk wants whiskey—every fuckin' minute of every fuckin' day. She couldna do without me." He looked at Helen's battered face and laughed. "She was waxin' more than a bit obsessive, to be honest with ya, but it was kinda hot and intoxicatin' in a strange sort o' way, bein' the moon in some nutter's sky like that, and, well, to be honest, she wasn't a horrendously bad lay—not as tight as you, lass, but still wet and warm in a nice kind o' way and that dark Italian skin o' hers did pink up real nice when I'd get her off." He made a murmuring sound as he blinked away a private memory, then said, "But now that I got Dru, and I can have her when I need to dip my wick in a bit o' wacky, nutters ink, I sure donna need this wench anymore. Dru's easier to satisfy and a lot less fuckin' trouble, all and all. 'Twas about ready to get rid o' her, ya know, so it seems that ya did me a wee favor, you sweet lass..."

Angelus turned and looked at the Italian vampire for a moment, then grunted. "But, all that aside, there's still no way she was fuckin' another man. No damn way in all the hells, 'cause I'd know and I'm tellin' ya, she wad'nt doin' nobody else..."

"Oh, yes," Brennan said, stepping back again from the bound woman as blood dripped from a newly-reopened cut on Helen's lip onto the hard seat of the chair, forming a tiny red puddle between her sprawled legs. "You've been having someone else's sloppy seconds, sweetness. A human man's sloppy seconds."

His jaw hardened and his dark brows furrowed hard over his flickering brown eyes. "You're such a fuckin' liar, lass," he snickered. "You lie. Which, by the way, while I was maybe not as forthcomin' as I could've been before, but now you're out 'n' out lyin' 'bout this nonsense now, so we're even, s'far as I'm concerned. You and your pretty little lies, lass —" He paused with a shake of his head as he chuckled, more to himself than for any other reason before he added with a snicker, "You lie so sweetly, Brennan, it's almost endearin'..."

"Oh, really?" Brennan laughed derisively. "And, why would I lie, Angelus? What could I possibly gain from telling you something that that wasn't true since we both know if I wanted to tease you or torment you, I'd have much more...creative and effective ways to do it."

"Aye," he said sardonically. "Aye, 'tis true—you know how to drive me nigh as fuckin' mad as this bitch here, huh? For fuck's sake, lass. I know that better 'an anybody. So, right then. Tell me. Who is this other man that this two-pence baggage has been fuckin' behind my back?"

"Angelus," Helen moaned pleadingly. "My love, my dark prince—please don't do this. You know I love you, my handsome prince. I made a mistake. I'm sorry. I don't know what I was thinking. I don't know what happened...I-I...I must've gotten bewitched somehow by that devilish rogue of a man. A love potion, perhaps. He must have slipped it into my wine one night. His powers are great, and...even the way I am...the way we are...I wasn't immune to it, Angelus, and I'm so sorry, my love. Please forgive me, my dark prince, my one and only who will walk through the bonds of eternity with me by his side..." She saw the look in his eyes, which grew harder and more unforgiving as they darkened to almost black, their depths illuminated only by the way the lamplight glimmered against his smoldering umber irises. Helen whimpered and swallowed weakly, her strength fading from the abuse but more so by how long her demonic flesh had been starved of nourishing blood. "Please help," she cried. "Angelus, please...help me...I don't...I-I...please?"

Ignoring her, Brennan snorted and arched a sardonic eyebrow as she surveyed how anger had made rigid the chiseled features of her vampire lover's face.

"Who?" he asked through clenched teeth.

"My father," she said flatly.

The words hung in the air between them, heavy and thick, as Angelus blinked, his mouth gaping open as he processed the significance of what he'd heard. He shook his head, bringing his broken hand up to rub his thumb along the side of his stubbled jaw, grunting as soon as he realized he'd done it.

"Your father?" he asked, his brow deeply creased as he tried to make sense of it all. "Your father's been fuckin' her?" He shook his head again, glanced over at the murmuring, bleeding woman in the chair before him, then looked at his witch lover. "No fuckin' way. I donna believe it. No how, no fuckin' way."

Watching Angelus for a long moment, Brennan felt another flash of anger when a part of her thought that perhaps he was in denial because of his attachment to Helen. Then, when she continued to see his confusion color his cruelly handsome face, she realized that even Angelus wasn't that good an actor and that his state of surprise had to be genuine in and of itself. Nodding at him, she finally spoke once more. "You can believe what you want, but it's true," Brennan told him. "When she wasn't at Claridge's," she said, referring to the luxury hotel in the Mayfair district of central London. "She was spending her nights warming my father's bed at whatever little love-nest they'd taken to shacking up in on the East End, and that's been the case for some time now."

Angelus shifted his jaw from side to side as he considered the revelation. At last, he jerked his jaw at Brennan and asked for confirmation one last time. "Aye?" he grunted.

Nodding again, Brennan answered, "Yes."

Shaking his head in disbelief, Angelus turned to Helen. "You dirty little sluttish liar," he sneered, narrowing his eyes and glaring at the bloodied, beaten woman in the chair. "You fuckin' liar." He snickered darkly as his eyebrows hung low and hard over his smoldering eyes. Helen struggled to meet his gaze, her dark eyes scarcely visible between her swollen lids as she cocked her head to the side and tried to smile.

"Angelus, my sweet, dark prince," she whispered. "It wasn't the way she makes it sound, I swear. I was charmed by that wicked devil of a father of hers. Him and his magics made me do things that I..." She watched his eyes, hoping for a flicker of sympathy or forgiveness, but saw nothing in their dark, angry depths. "Please, my love," she begged. "It wasn't like that. I'm telling you the truth. I swear—"

After he'd cut Helen off with a disgusted hiss, he looked away from her in disgust and focused his eyes on the room's other occupant. "She said I was the only one," he said, forcing himself to bark out a laugh as he turned to Brennan,still smarting in disgust as he was over having been deceived and, worse, being so foolish as to not realize it. "O'er and o'er again, she did. That I was the only one, the only one she ever needed or wanted. She said I'd saved her, given her a purpose in life when no one else ever had, ever could. But what a clever little baggage she was because it turns out she was fuckin' full of it since it seems she lied, an' wanted to put out for a mere man. A warlock, even. Warlocks are even worse than witches—creepy and sneaky the way they use all their nasty magic tricks, and they don't even have a nice pair of tits to make it all worth puttin' up with. A fuckin' warlock? Holy fuckin' hell." His jaw tightened as he gritted his teeth before he cursed again, "Bollocks on all of it."

He looked at Brennan again and smirked at the glimmer in her angry gaze, the sight of which fanned the flames of the desire that smoldered low in his belly.

Shrugging her shoulders, Brennan said, "Well, it's not like I haven't been trying to tell you that for the better part of the last half hour, Angelus." Shaking her head, she then added as she narrowed her eyes at him, "And, setting aside that little insinuation you just made about my tits being the only thing to make up for me being a witch—which didn't get past me as they all never do, by the by, sweetness—next time, perhaps you'd be wise to try something different and actually listen to me for once, hmmm?"

"So, wait," he said, a faint measure of caution lining the edge of his voice as he saw a flash of bright azure flicker in Brennan's pale eyes. "So why are you standin' there so calm, lass?" he asked her. "I seen that kind o' look before, on the face o' the hangman who tried to hang me that one time in Tynemouth. What, are you now thinkin' you're the judge, jury, and executioner in this wee play trial o' yours? Brennan's law. A wee bit rich, isn't it? So much for being all cool, calm an' collected the way ya usually are, huh?"

"I am not angry," she snapped, the sharp tone of her response betraying her. "The plain fact of the matter is that I know that cosmic justice, a lovely little thing I like to call karma, is finally coming home to roost and will deliver this nasty little slut's comeuppance. I'm not being unilateral in any way, if that's what you're suggesting in your typical completely inarticulate manner, Angelus. I'm just saving the world the nauseating trouble of having to wait any longer for the inevitable."

"Right," Angelus sneered at her in obvious disbelief. "So you're just doin' a wee public service then." He laughed, staring at her hard as he watched her eyes closely. "But, see, I donna believe a word of it. You're pissed off, lass. Real fuckin' pissed off, though I'm not entirely sure I know exactly why. Tell me—which pissed you off more, lass: the fact that she was fuckin' me, or fuckin' your father?"

"Neither, actually," she said. "It was the fact that she was fucking my father, snuggling up to him and making him think she actually gave a fuck about him, all the while plotting to rip him off." She paused. "And in the process, ripping me off. She used my father, defrauded him, stole his money, stole my money, and then, on top of it all, had the audacity to fuck you behind my father's back."

"Ripped you off?" he asked, another look of unexpected confusion washing across his face. "What do you mean?"

"My father is a Member of Lloyd's," the witch explained. "As am I. And this baggage had an insurance broker friend of hers—who she was probably fucking, too, come to think of it—approach us to underwrite a group of shipments of aged, dried Connecticut pipe tobacco from Bridgeport to London. My father took a forty percent quota share in the risk, and I signed on for ten percent. Hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of cargo on these vessels. We agreed to take the risk of loss or damage on those shipments, in exchange for a profitable premium."

Angelus quirked an eyebrow, struggling to follow her explanation. "Aye, so?" he finally sputtered, hoping that, for once, Brennan would take pity on him and clarify the meaning of what she'd just told him.

"So," she continued. "It just so happens that I have a friend—"

Unable to help himself, Angelus cut her off as he said, "Aye, lass, we know you have lots and lots of friends."

Pursing her lips, Brennan said, "As do you, Angelus, although at least mine are more talented than the likes of Helen, including this particular friend who's a marine surveyor by trade. He can hold his breath for three and a half minutes when he has to check the condition of a vessel's keel, which, for a human, I'm sure you'll admit is quite a talent." She lifted her piercing blue gaze to his to challenge him to respond to he point.

"Still has nothin' on me," Angelus snorted cockily. "I can go down on you all damn night and never come up for air, though I'd have worn ya out lass an' have ya beggin' for the sweet mercy o' my cock lest ya pass out from want of it."

Rolling her eyes at him again, Brennan ignored his comment as she continued as if the vampire hadn't said a word. "As I was saying, anyway, my friend has a friend who has another friend—"

"What kind o' 'friend' are we talkin' about here, exactly, lass?" he asked. "Because I don't think it's just me, but ya seem to have a lot of these 'friends'. And an unusual number of sailor-boy friends." He paused for a beat before he narrowed his dark black eyes at her as she shook his head slightly, "All that time at sea, stuck on some kind o' tin can with a bunch of other sexually-frustrated bum boys. They get kind o' lonely for a lady's affections, aye?"

Brennan ignored his taunt. "And this friend of a friend knows some men who run ships out of Bridgeport."

"Aye, and?" Angelus prompted her again, his eyes glazing over slightly at her long-winded explanation.

"And," Brennan answered, her mouth taking on a firm line as she continued. "When one of those vessels failed to show up at the East India Docks when they were supposed a couple of months back, I found out through—well, let's just say some unofficial channels, as it were—that this stupid whore had cut a deal with the captain of the missing vessel and the shipper of the goods to split the proceeds of the insurance paid after the cargo was lost when the vessel was scuttled off the southeastern coast of Iceland. So, my-dear-if-quite-simple-at-times-Angelus, that means, in summation, that this crazy twat conspired to commit barratry for the express purpose of defrauding the underwriters—my father, myself, and the other Names that signed on to insure the shipment."

Angelus blinked and huffed an awkward laugh. "She ripped you off?" he asked, his lips curled back in stunned surprise . "And your da?" He turned to Helen, shot her a dark look, then shook his head and turned back to Brennan still seemingly unconvinced. "Really?"

"Fucking right she did," she confirmed with a sneer in Helen's direction. "To the tune of tens of thousands of pounds sterling, the dumb fucking cunt."

A grimace came over Brennan's face as she recalled the evening she'd stood on her father's doorstep, waiting for him to answer the door. She'd just been informed of the insurance fraud by her friend, John Travers, and she was furious. The door had swung open, and she'd seen her father standing there, hastily buttoning up his shirt, with a surprised look on his face. Just as Brennan looked up to greet him, she saw a familiar dark-haired, dark-eyed, olive-skinned female form in the doorway of his bedroom, clad only in one of his white button-down shirts, calling out to ask who it was at the door.

"You know I hate losing money on account of someone else's dishonest dealings," she said gravely, her gaze holding Angelus' for several seconds as they each recalled the very different way she'd demanded he repay his much-smaller debt that night twenty years earlier after she lost a small sum betting against him in a boxing match. "I absolutely despise a lying thief, far worse than a liar or thief alone, especially when said lying thief isn't near as smart or impressive a person as she thinks she is."

"Oh, for fuck's sake," Angelus muttered to neither one in particular as he tried to make sense of the strange and sordid revelation—and where it left him vis-a-vis Brennan.

Reaching up with his good hand to tuck a loose strand of hair behind his ear, he opened his mouth and was about to say something else when Helen raised her head again, her eyes by now completely swollen shut from the beating Brennan had given her in the minutes before Angelus arrived, and pleaded to him once more.

"Help me, my lover," she whispered. "My dark prince. Please..."

"You've got to be fuckin' kiddin' me," Angelus grumbled to himself. "She's still at it?" he asked Brennan with a roll of his eyes. "After everything you've done, and we've just talked about, she's still—? For fuck's sake."

Nodding with a sigh, Brennan said, "Unfortunately so. She has the memory span of a beta fish apparently, lasting about seven seconds on most things but for her delusional obsession with you."

"You just can't stand it," Helen suddenly spat at Brennan. "You never have...not since from the first moment when I staked my claim to Angelus and dared any and all to know that he was mine...mine and mine alone. You knew that and that's why you've really done this, isn't it? You knew that he'd chose me over you if I made him—"

Anger again flashed in Brennan's eyes. Her nostrils flared as, for some reason that Angelus couldn't discern, the witch stayed her hand against the bound vampire. He watched her intently, unsure why she continued to toy with Helen when it was as plain as day that she intended to kill her. For a moment, he wondered whether she was delaying for the sake of her own amusement—the thought of which sent a tingle through his limbs to see her enjoy delivering pain to another—or as a way of sending a message of some kind to him—that she was marking him as her territory, letting him know in the moments before she destroyed her rival what she would do to him if he ever betrayed her. He wasn't sure, but as the scene played out before him, he knew one thing: his desire for her grew more intense with each passing second.

"I've said it before, but I'll say it again, Helen dear," she said, the hard edge of her voice belying her politeness. "Shut your fucking mouth, bitch," Brennan snapped. "I would cut your lying tongue out of your nasty, insolent little mouth if I didn't know it would grow right back by dusk tomorrow."

"He's always liked my tongue best," the battered woman muttered under her breath, a crooked grin breaking across her puffy, bloodied lips as she heard the tightness in Brennan's voice. Her eyes were swollen almost completely shut, so she couldn't make out the features of the witch's face, but she took a certain pleasure in imagining the way the other woman clenched her jaw, her teeth nearly gritted as she spat her words. A wave of nausea passed through her as she realized the one sound she couldn't hear—her lover's voice, notably absent as she he stood there silently while the two rivals railed at each other. "To say nothing of my other parts. Always me, Brennan. Just me. Never you. Just me. I win. I always win."

"Like fuck you do," Brennan hissed, suddenly whatever had stayed her hand no longer holding her inactive as she brought her arm back and slapped Helen across the face as hard as she could "You stupid, insipid bitch. You think he gives a fuck about you? Huh? Then why's he just standing here like a scarecrow, useless and mute, as opposed to rushing in a like a knight on a white horse to save your slutty little cunt?"

"Wait," Angelus interjected, raking the fingers of his unbroken hand through his shoulder-length hair as his darkened eyes darted from one woman to the other. "Wait," he said again, turning to Helen. "Stop, woman. You're totally mad, you know, if you think I chose you over her, or that I was ever yours. You forgot the rules o' the game, didn't ya? You told me so yourself, back when you and I first started carryin' on together, mmm? How Darla didn't own me, an' how I was my own man. How'd you say it? 'No ownership, no possession, Angelus.' You told me that we could have anybody we wanted, but whoever you have, they're never really yours. Guess what's good for the goose ain't good enough for the gander, after all, aye? Fuckin' bollocks, all of your pithy-ass sayin's. You don't own me, Helen. You never did. An' I never chose you over anyone. I never chose you at all. I just fucked you. Full stop."

A couple of seconds of silence passed as Brennan stared at him in an unusual expression of surprise, then Angelus grunted and began to speak again.

"Fact is, you're both fuckin' killin' me here," he said. "You—" He smirked at Helen with a quick shake of his head. "Because ya don't know fuck all about me, if ya think I like your tongue all that much. That's why I only ever let ya suck my cock when I was fuckin' tired of screwin' your sorry, saggin' pussy or your nasty ass and was in a bit of a hurry to be goin' an' needed to get off so I could go about the rest o' me night. But ya were never all that good at suckin' cock—I mean, for fuck's sake, I've been sucked off by fourteen-year old virgins at a convent who were better at gettin' on their knees and suckin' dick than you are, so you're one crazy fuckin' bitch if you think for one fuckin' second that you're anythin' to write fuckin' home about in bed, alright?"

He rolled his eyes, then turned to Brennan.

"And you?" Angelus took a couple of steps towards his witch lover, coming close enough that he stood nearly nose-to-nose with her and could feel her breath on his stubbled upper lip. "You drive me almost as fuckin' crazy as this worthless piece of baggage, the way you tease me. Fuckin' gettin' me all cranked to hell an' gone, reachin' into me trousers and haulin' me out, holdin' me in your hot little hand and damn near wankin' me to fuckin' oblivion before ya stop. You been drivin' me fuckin' insane since the fuckin' night I met ya, down in Covent Garden, and ya know what? Huh? The more I fuckin' have of ya, the more I fuckin' want. You wanted some space, aye? Fine. So I gave ya some, but when all's said 'n' done, lass? I can't fuckin' stand it if I canna have ya. I used t' think I could go a couple o' months without that, without feeling that hot, tight snatch o' yours, but no—that wad'n't enough. So then I figured a couple o' times a month, but no—that wad'n't enough, neither. So then, I'm sittin' there in the clink of all fuckin' clinks, the fuckin' Tower o' fuckin' London, and I realize it—that ya fuckin' turned me nuttier than Dru, ya have, and so as soon as I got me outta there, I came over here. 'Cause ya fuckin' drive me outta my fuckin' mind, wanting to fuck ya all night an' all fuckin' day." He paused for a moment, then added, "An' I think that's the way ya fuckin' want it, aye? Me, outta my fuckin' mind, wrapped around your wee little finger so all I can think about is how fuckin' bad I want ya?"

His rant finished and his sudden burst of energy expended, Angelus watched Brennan intently, his eyes widening instinctively as he saw her fingers curl tightly around the wooden stake.

Helen made a tittering sound, then raised her head to speak, her eyes swollen little slits as she stared blindly in their general direction.

"If you were such a great fuck," she sneered, "then why did he come to me? Not just tonight, although that will serve as as good an example as any. Why did he, hmmm? And why did he just say what he did, Helen dear?" She paused, and when Helen said nothing as a pained look crossed her battered face, Brennan actually smiled. "Ahh, at last, is comprehension finally dawning, Helen dear? At last, do you finally get it, why he comes to me again and again and again, hmmmmm? Do you finally realize it? You're nothing to him. Nothing."

Helen arched her head back and grimaced before her eyes narrowed at Brennan. "If you were so damn wonderful," she said, "then why did he darken my door even just one time after you came into his life? If you were everything he wanted, why did he come around—and keep coming around, coming back to me—during these last twenty years?" She saw Brennan flinch slightly at her words and smiled at the reaction she'd elicited from the witch. Pressing her advantage, Helen smirked, "We both know the answer, Brennan. It was because you were never enough, you were never good enough. You never deserved him. You were just a sideshow amusement, a way for him to waste some time in the same way he did the numerous brothels he tramped throughout the city of London. You were no different from a Southwark strumpet to him. A good fuck, nothing more. And, that my dear, is why he always came back to me. Not to you. To me. Do what you want to me, but it doesn't change the truth, Brennan."

Seemingly exhausted by her outburst, her head dropped to her chest and groaned softly as she tried in vain to shift the position of her legs. Gripping the stake tightly in her right hand, Brennan stepped forward. She stood in front of Helen and grabbed the bound woman's hair, yanking her head up as she glared.

"There's only one woman in his life," she said to Helen. "Only one woman that he would do what he's willing to do for me: to deprive himself of sex—"

"I don't believe it," the bound woman snorted. "A man like Angelus, with his huge appetites, would never willingly deprive himself of sex for anyone. That's ludicrous."

Angelus cleared his throat to gain the attention of the arguing rivals before Brennan could respond.

"Aye," he said, tilting his head back as he stared down at Helen through narrowed eyes. "For her, and for her alone, though it fuckin' killed me to do it, aye—I'd go without. And have. If I have to sleep ten nights alone to rid my skin of the stink of other women for the chance to spend one night in her bed..." His voice trailed off as he turned and looked at Brennan, holding her hard, glistening gaze for several long seconds. "Then I'll sleep alone. That's the price I've paid, and will gladly pay again. And again. And again."

It was a rare moment, the room eerily among the three of them as Angelus himself fell silent and watched Brennan stand there, the blackthorn stake in her hands as the bound vampire woman sighed and began to whimper.

"That's right," Brennan said after a few seconds, grinning in satisfaction. "I am the one—the one who he'd wait for just because he's willing to do anything to have me. There's no one else for whom he'd sacrifice like that. And, I think now, finally, at the end, Helen dear, I think you've finally gotten a glimmer of enlightenment if you understand that that one isn't you. It's me." She jerked Helen's hair. "Get it? I'm the only one. I am, I was, and always will be—the only one. He chose me—just me. Understand?"

Brennan punctuated her statement with a sharp action as she pulled Helen's hair back hard so her neck arched and her naked chest was bared, reared her arm back, and plunged the blackthorn stake hard into Helen's chest. The female vampire shrieked once, tilted her head at Angelus, and barely had enough time to cry out his name one final time before Helen's form suddenly transformed into a pillar of gray, ash-like dust before it exploded into a cloud of particulate, and the loosely-formed remnants of her demonic bones collapsed into dust. All told, it took only a second, and then she was gone.

For her part, Brennan stood there for a moment, smirking at the thin layer of dust on the seat of the dark walnut chair as she surveyed her handiwork with untold glee before she swiveled her head around and shot a hard stare into Angelus' dark eyes. He stared back at her, a flicker in his dark brown eyes as he swallowed, his Adam's apple bobbing in his throat as he shifted his weight from one foot to the other. He felt something he'd never felt before, a curious warmth in his belly that lasted for but a second, then quickly faded as he saw her eyes flash brightly as her cheek rose in crooked smile. He winced as he felt the dull, round ache that had been pulsing in his groin suddenly grow tighter and more painful as the latent aggression seemed to roll off of her in waves, and the spicy smell of her anger swirled in his nostrils along with the musky scent of her arousal.

"I am the only one, Angelus," she said to him, almost daring him to contradict her, as statement to him echoed the last words she'd just said to his erstwhile vampire lover. But, so as to leave no doubt whatsoever in his mind as to her point, she added challengingly, "And I always will be."

Angelus blinked, then stepped towards her, bringing his hands up and cupping her face between his palms, ignoring the pain he felt in his broken hand as he covered her mouth with his and teased her mouth open with a swipe of his tongue. Brennan quickly seized control of the kiss and thrust her tongue into his mouth, grasping at his lips as her tongue invaded his mouth, tasting in his kiss the metallic tang of the dinner she guessed he'd stopped for on the way. Angelus moaned into her mouth as their tongues dueled, and he jerked his hip against her so she would know exactly how he felt after seeing her destroy another woman who dared challenge her for his affections.

Brennan pushed his hands away from her face, hooking her thumbs under his suspenders as she slid them off his naked shoulders.

"No matter who you meet," she said in a husky, breathy voice as she pushed him towards her bed. "No matter whose bed you slither into, no matter what, there will never, ever be anyone like me. No one who does to you what I do, what I can do, what I do do to you. It will always only be me. Just me, hmmm?"

"Always," he agreed, growling in the seconds before her mouth once more crushed against his in a forceful kiss that left no doubt that she wanted him as much as he wanted her. "Just you, lass," he murmured into their kiss. "Just you, always."

Their mouths grasped at one another with aggression and hunger, and Brennan found herself for a moment nearly lost in the sensation of kissing him. But, when she heard the growl sound deep in his throat and felt the fingers of his uninjured hand curl around her hip and squeeze, she growled back and pushed him onto the bed. He sat up, propping himself up with his good hand as a crooked, lascivious grin hung from his lips, and watched her lean over and reach for the waistband of his trousers and union shorts, which still gaped open from her earlier ministrations.

"Only me," she said. "No matter where you go or who you fuck, you'll never find anyone who can do to you what I do." She tugged his trousers and underwear off his hips and slid them down his thighs, a lewd half-grin cracking her face as his hard, swollen cock bounced free. "I promise you that," she added. "Never."

Letting the pleasure he felt from the anticipation of what she was about to do to him wash over him, Angelus took a minute before he finally responded. "So what are ya gonna do to me, then, lass?" Angelus asked, watching with darkening eyes as she pulled his trousers off and dumped them on the floor without so much as a backward glance. She then peeled his union shorts off and threw them to the side before she looked up at him and finally gave him an answer to her question.

"Whatever I want," she replied, signaling with a sharp upward jerk of her chin that he was to move from the foot of her bed. "Whatever the fuck I want, Angelus. And, you know what else, sweetness?"

"Hmmmm?" he growled as he watched her every moment through heavy-lidded eyes.

"After all of this," she told him. "You're going to let me have you in whatever way I want."

Moving backwards on the bed, scooting more than crawling on account of his injured hand, his dark eyes observed her every move as she followed him, stalking him across the bed as the moved on her hands and knees. She licked her lips as she walked her hands along the side of his naked torso, leaning over him and dragging the silky skin of her belly over the tip of him, laughing low as she heard him hiss at the sensation.

"Jesu', lass," he cursed as she pressed her hips into his, thrusting into him and feeling his full, rigid length against her damp curls. "Ya tortured 'er, then killed 'er. And now you're tryin' to do the same to me, lass? Huh?"

Brennan narrowed her eyes and rolled her hips back, pressing firmly against him as she chuckled. "You're no good to me dead, sweetness," she grinned. She sat up on her haunches, gazing down at him, then raised herself up enough to fist his thick arousal and brush his swollen tip across the damp cleft between her legs. "No good at all," she repeated again as she lifted herself up a bit, lining him up just where she wanted him before impaling herself on him.

"Oh, sweet fuck, lass," he cried out as her hot, slick folds suddenly swallowed him up to the hilt. "Ohh, Jesus fuckin' Christ, you're wet, lass. And so fuckin' tight...unnnnggth..."

"Ohhhhh," she sighed as she drew herself up, hissing as she felt him slide almost completely out of her, then thrust herself back over him with a loud, almost unfeminine grunt. "You're mine," she growled as she began to establish a rhythm, rocking her hips back and forth as she moved her body, slick with desire and tight with hungry, possessive want, over him. "You're mine, Angelus. Aren't you?" She rolled her hips, leaning hard into her hands as she felt him jerk his hips up to meet each of her strokes. "I'm the only one that makes you feel the way I do."

"Ohhh, fuck, lass," he sighed. He thrust his hips off the bed, sending himself as deep into her as he could, reaching up with his one good hand and curling the thick, long fingers of his strong, veiny hand around the curve of her hip. "Fuck, lass," he groaned, wincing as he felt himself bottom out inside of her, again and again.

"Say it, Angelus," she growled, driving her hips into his with a particularly hard downstroke as she felt him peel her apart and fill her the way no other man, human or otherwise, ever had. "Admit it. Say it."

"What?" he gasped. "Oh, sweet holy fuckin' hell...nnnnggth, aye, damn..." His fingertips dug into the springy flesh of her hip as he felt her body, so hot and wet, fold tightly around him and drawing him in even deeper and more snugly with each of her driving strokes. "Oh, fuck, yes, lass...I donna know why you wanna fuckin' talk when...oh, fuck! It's so fuckin' amazin' the way you fuckin' feel..." He bucked up into her at the same moment she stroked over him. "Shussh, lass," he said. "Don't talk. Just fuck."

"Only me," Brennan prompted him. "Tell me. Say it."

"No―"

"Yes," she insisted, as she stilled their rhythm. "Otherwise we're done here. Now, say it."

Angelus squeezed his eyes shut and reached his fingers around to the small of her back, pulling her closer as he jerked up and into her as deeply and forcefully as he could. He felt himself lengthen and swell inside of her. "Ohhh, fuck..." He opened his eyes and saw her pale blue eyes flash bright, then darken again to the color of the evening twilight as her jaw hardened.

"Say it," she hissed through gritted teeth, as she fucked him as hard as she could, impaling herself on him with brutal force with each rolling thrust of her hips. "Only me. I'm the only one." She slowed the pace of her movements. "Say it," she demanded again, before she resumed the rolling momentum of her fucking as a way to torture him into doing her bidding.

Angelus felt his balls tighten and an almost unpleasant pricking at his skin as he saw the energy crackle in the narrow space between her sweaty skin and his. Each time she rocked her hips back and he felt himself withdrawn from her, then swallowed up again, he felt his entire world begin to spin, drawing into a tighter and tighter spiral as her body tightened around him in a way that made it seem his mind was being torn apart. Her felt her muscles clench around him and the pricking heat against his skin seemed to envelop him completely.

"Aye," he cried at last. "Oh, fuck! Aye, for fuck's sake. It's true."

"What?" she growled at him. "Say it specifically."

"Fine, you fuckin' bitch," he groaned half in pleasure, half in misery. "You're the only one, lass—the only one who makes me this way, who drives me as mad as you do. Only one, now and probably only one that ever will. You...just you."

"That's right," she sighed, slamming her hips into his one last time as she shattered, quivering around him, sucking him into her tight, slippery, silky folds one last time before he, too, broke, flooding her as a flash of bright blue lit up the space around them. He squeezed her fleshy hip and pulled her into him, holding her there as he pulsed his release into her.

"Oh, fuck, lass," he groaned. "You're the only fuckin' one, Brennan. The only bleedin' one that does this to me. Just...oh fuck."

Booth blinked, rolling his shoulder as he tried to ignore the tingle of desire that surged up his spine, and he shifted his weight from one foot to the other, shaking his head as he struggled to make sense of the endless flood of sounds and images. The face of the woman he'd seen in these scenes was unmistakably familiar—a face he had seen almost every day for the last two and a half years—and the voice was without a doubt his own, though the words he spoke seemed strangely alien to him, and in some of the fragments, heavily laden with an Irish brogue the likes of which he hadn't heard since getting his haircut at the old barbershop in the Devil's Pocket neighborhood of South Philadelphia with a green, white and orange flag in the window emblazoned with the slogan Tiocfaidh ár lá ("our day will come").

What's happening to me? he thought, his breath catching in his throat as his gut soured with a sickening feeling of rising panic. Oh, God...help me.

---

-TBC-

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A/N2: Mmmmm, yes. Who doesn't love themselves some Angelus? He's just so...well, talk about sex on legs.

Admittedly, as sexy as that was, that memory was probably a bit freaky for poor old Booth, suddenly remembering himself saying and doing those things, never mind the shock of seeing Brennan like he'd never ever seen her before. Alas, his flashbacks aren't done quite yet. That one was long and complex enough that it needed its own very long, unbroken chapter. We—and our boy Angel-Booth—have a few more important flashbacks to endure before we can move back out of his head to see what happens next between him and Brennan.

In the meantime, we'd love to know what you thought of that little blast from the Victorian past. We'd love it if you left us a review... ::blinks prettily:: Thanks!