The Night of Darla

A/N Hello, kind of a follow up to my Spike prequel but not actually related. I am rewatching Angel so I am currently very excited about The Whirlwind. Just to update, I am preparing to start rewriting Angel S6 at some point in the next 6 months.

Virginia Colony, the world without shrimp 1609

The priest hovered in the doorway. The room had darkened considerably now the shutters were closed. The woman lay in bed coughing, the final stage was painful. There were servants all around the room, shielding their eyes from her lest they catch her disease in the air. She started listening when the priest told them to leave. Even the doctor went, taking away his useless medicines. She'd lived an eventful life, a boat ride across the Atlantic that landed her in the New World. Only it was pretty similar to the old world with more diseases. The land was harder and the men grew desperate in the evenings without harvest. She solved that problem, but in the spreading of her loins she had doomed herself to die. She believed in no God that could save her, she'd often been damned by such Gods when men cried out for them. How could a God let her lie here, let others suffer when they'd worked as hard as she? No, there was no God here.

The priest revealed himself in a act that made her believe the devil might be real. He had been watching her for weeks, haunting her from beneath her window. His shrivelled whines had sang to her. She believed he was death, with a cloaked body and creature-like face, he was unreal. He told her he was her saviour, that she would be reborn, live again as another. He bent down to her neck and plunged his teeth into the soft flesh. She was like a bruised apple, the flesh of her sores was weaker, more spongey, broken. He drank from her deeply, but she didn't writhe in pain, she had no will left within her to struggle. What would be the point? If he really was death, there was little she could do to avoid it. She closed her eyes and let unconsciousness wade out of her. With each gulp he drank, more of her life ebbed away.

When she awoke she was inside a wooden coffin, not yet buried. She couldn't feel the weight of the earth above her, just the sides almost crushing her. She felt at first that this must be hell, which angered her. She had been proven wrong about the existence of God. In life, she was by no means a peaceful person, she angered easily. But in death everything seemed heightened, every passing negative emotion was turned up. Her chest rose rapidly, breathing because of pure panic. She would die in this box if she didn't find a way out. Then she realised she couldn't feel her heartbeat. The simple thumping of her chest had gone, and her first emotion was relief. She really was dead. And that was good? It had to be better than her life had been, she found that nothing hurt her anymore. She was dead but she still had a conscious? Such things only existed in stories, in tales that puritans spouted. She raised her fists and thumped against the underside of the coffin lid, but the nails were drilled deep into the wood, forcing the lid only bruised her fists.

The wood began to splinter above her, but her fists had retreated. There was something above her ripping through the boards above her. She waited in the dark, realising only now that she could no longer feel the cold. Another little relief, although this one freaked her out more than anything else. She'd always been cold, her feet freezing most of the time, then with her disease she'd had a fever. Hot and cold and everything in between. Not being able to feel it anymore meant her sickness really had gone. More splinters rained down on her, the white shroud she was wrapped in was covered in little brown shards. She opened her eyes as the board was removed, she felt the rush of air as it was moved and then a peach face staring back at her. His mouth puckered and red, his eyes a dark yellow and his head balder than the moon. The priest was back.

He peered over her lewdly, his nails long and sharp perused her upper body. He wanted her, she could sense that, but he wasn't taking what he wanted. He was admiring her, like she was a toy. He held out his hand and she took it, this man was her saviour, after all. "Does it still hurt, my dear?" He asked, indicating the bite on her neck. She shook her head, she could feel nothing. "Good good, now why don't we get you out of there," he suggested, but she didn't have any say in it. He hauled her out of the coffin and up onto her feet, his hands slid around her waist naturally, as if he'd done this before. Now she was up on her feet she noticed her heightened senses ever more. The room was a dark, dank one that they were keeping her body in. The town had been erected in such a rush for the winter that, had she still be human, would've felt every draught chill her to the bones. Instead she could feel the air brushing past her, but there was no bite in it.

The priest looked back at her, he'd been scanning outside the door to check the roads were empty. Now he was enjoying watching her take in her surroundings. "It was time we baptised you," he said softly, taking his hand in her own. She'd be woozy for the next few hours unless she fed, he knew this, he'd seen it a hundred times. Each of his girls had crazed the taste after they'd first awoken. But he knew it was going to be different with her. She was his masterpiece.

The streets were dark at night, only weak lanterns lit the few buildings dotted around. There were more as you reached towards the main part of town but she had lived a rich life, you see, so there was the privacy of the hill. The priest took her down into the small valley, his hood erected and her feet still bare as they roamed the emptiness of Jamestown. They only needed one. As the priest walked he searched through the darkness, his biology was old enough that he could see well in the dark, she didn't know this, she only followed him.

He spotted the boy before she did. He was a teen, not a young one, and he was standing outside a house, fidgeting. Oh how he hated the fidgeting. He turned back to her and caught her eyes sharply, they were wide and scared and so new that he almost laughed. She would see, afterwards, she would see. "You first bite is sacred," he said to, but she wasn't paying attention. She was staring at the boy, she felt it then, the tugging. That string that would tie her to her victims, had just been strung. She refrained from licking her lips and looked back at the priest.

"Who are you?" She asked, her eyes moving back and forth from his demonic red eyes and the boy.

He lifted his hood down from his head, "I am your Master." She nodded in reply as he moved her in front of him, his hands on her back, nails digging in. "Take your first meal," he whispered in her ear. With a little push she took a step forward, then a few more, until she was standing in front of the boy.

"Ma'am? Are you lost?" He said, glancing at the window and then back at her again.

She smiled for the first time since waking and looked down at the cobbled street. "I don't know where I am," she said, "could you show me my way home?" The boy's head snapped up quickly and offered his services, he asked where she lived because he did not recognise her. Nor did she, him. When he turned to point down the street she moved, launching herself forward and biting the exposed flesh of his neck. He wasn't expecting it so he let out a wail, then as she kept sucking, he succumbed. The demon inside her exposed itself for the first time and her face got its bumpy appearance. She slurped the blood from his carotid artery until his body was lax against her. Then she detached her fangs and threw him to the ground, strolling back to the Master.

They stood behind a building and waited, watched as the people inside the house came out and found their son dead in the street. She laughed to herself, then to him as he stood behind her. The blood was still warm on her lips. She felt stronger, more alive than she ever had. Ironic that she was dead. "This is who you are now," the Master said to her, the streets clearing but the sound of wailing didn't leave. She thought it sounded like a lullaby.

"Who am I?" She asked him, her face reverting back to her human one. She hadn't known that was possible, she hadn't known it was possible to take life from someone and for it to feel this good. She didn't want to go to the whore she was. She needed a new name, the Master said he was going to baptise her.

"Darla."