Chapter Nineteen




For six straight nights, she crept out of the servants’ entrance in the basement to roam the darkened streets. She had to wait until the servants were asleep. This was usually quite late, given their duties, so it was seldom that she left before midnight or one o’clock. She went on foot because she could not involve Matthew in this, also because she had no money for a cab. Anyway, walking was better. She could see more and hear more if she were walking.

The city streets were quiet at night but not empty. In the residential neighborhoods, there were beautifully dressed couples traveling home from late night parties. In the business districts, there were men arranging merchandise on shelves, toiling over hot ovens, tallying up account books. Everywhere, there were prostitutes.

Buffy saw it all, but she thought of none of it. Her thoughts were too obsessively fixed on Drusilla to ponder over the fairness of a world that allowed her such luxury, and yet made a young boy slave about in a baker’s or butcher’s before dawn each morning.

She prowled as far as her energetic legs and hobbling long skirts would allow her to. Other vampires she dispatched en route without thought to how their demise might alter the future; she simply did not care anymore. Anyway, the dusting of those lesser vamps relieved her of some of her tension, because as hard as she looked and as long as she looked, she didn’t find Drusilla anywhere. It worried her. If Drusilla were not in London, she might be anywhere. She might be where William was. The thought terrified her, and she redoubled her efforts. Still, for all her hard work she found absolutely nothing.

Instead, something found her.

It was the sixth night—the last night—she went hunting. Two fledglings had accosted her outside a pub, and she effortlessly destroyed them, but it had taken time because she could not do so without the standard number of quips and retorts, the mocking of them for being so weak when she was so strong. It was nearing dawn by then, and she was exhausted from walking, ready to go home to a hot bath and bed. She was strolling home in the sooty, predawn light when he caught her completely unawares.

The attack came first not as a blow but a snatch, a heavy, muscled arm against her throat and pulling her backward against him. A stony jawbone dug into her cheek as the assailant lowered his head to whisper in her ear.

“Well, well and what a rich ripe plum of a woman to be ranging the streets at such an hour. Shall I take a bite, or be unselfish and call the others to have a share?”

It was a raspy voice, heavy with brogue, and Buffy’s heart almost stopped. She did not have to see his face to know who it was.

Angel.

No, not Angel.

Angelus.

She was so stunned that she might not have been able to move had her slayer instincts not suddenly kicked in. She elbowed him in the gut, and when his grip loosened, she twisted around to knee him in the nuts.

He grunted. “Bitch—”

“So I’ve been told.”

“This’ll be the last time, I’d wager.”

Angelus straightened up. He was bigger than she remembered: tall and heavy with muscle although perhaps that was because he was drinking human blood and not the butcher’s fare from the future. His hair was long and disheveled. Although he wore elegant clothes, he wore them with the air of a costume, and she knew his human self had not been born into the refined position he now assumed.

She raised her stake.

“You're taking bets, then? I’m going two to one on kicking your ass.”

His eyes widened at the sight of the stake, but he looked amused rather than afraid. He gave a crooked grin.

“Oh…pretty, pretty…kitty has claws.” He made a sort of backwards spin, one long leg shooting out so that the ankle hooked behind hers and pulled her to the ground. He was on her in an instant. His breath stank of death as it passed over her face when he muttered, “You’ll be a fun one to play with.”

“Playtime’s over—”

She brought her knee up and thrust him off, and then rolled clear. She was on her feet a second before he recovered himself, but she did not have the opportunity to stake him; he was too quick and she too far away.

The corner of his mouth turned down, dark eyes carefully scrutinizing as he walked a slow circle around her. “You’re a slayer.” It wasn’t a question.

“Haven’t you heard? Only one slayer per generation; you’ve already got yours.”

“I ripped out her throat.” A lie.

He threw something at her then, a heavy piece of steel or wood he’d pulled from the ground. Buffy jumped over it before it could hit her. She did a back flip to recover herself.

“Nice,” Angelus said approvingly. “I’ll wager you’re a limber one in the marriage bed.”

“You’ll never find out.”

She kicked high, aiming for the underside of his chin, but he was so quick. He grabbed her ankle and twisted it, pulling her down to the paving stones with a force that winded her. He was on her in a moment, straddling. He pinned her arms to her sides and gave her a grisly smile.

“Oh, I’ll have you if I wish—and I do wish. I’ll split you wide open and then drink what’s left.”

Buffy tried to knee him again, but this time he parked his ass right on her thighs and she couldn’t move her legs.

She couldn’t move at all.

~*~ ~*~ ~*~




Ninety miles away, in the darkened master bedroom of his family’s Wiltshire estate, William sat up in bed. Sleep was gone in an instant, replaced by an overwhelming terror he could not name or understand. There was only a clutching feeling of death and danger.

“Elizabeth—”

~*~ ~*~ ~*~




He pivoted his hips forward, so that it was his groin and not his bum that was pressing into her lower body. She could feel his erection digging into her hipbone, and she felt a sudden blind terror. Because Angelus never just killed his victims. He never just killed them. He tortured them first.

“Who’s taking bets now, huh?”

He yanked her right arm up and around, almost pulling it from its socket. She screamed, and he did not try to stifle her. Rather, it seemed to excite him, and he goaded her.

“Now, lamb. Let’s see how limber you really are.”

He released her injured arm to rummage beneath her skirts, and for the moment, she let him. Her arm was hurting so badly her mouth watered, and she wasn’t sure she could use it in any successful way even if she tried. It was when he dropped his head to look at what he had uncovered that she saw her way out of the situation. She was not in the position to butt him in the forehead, but she rose up as far as his grip would allow, and pulled her head to one side, crashing the side of her skull against his temple with a force that stunned them both.

Buffy recovered first. She slammed him with her good arm, knocking him off and to the side of her. She scrambled to her feet.

He’d knocked her stake somewhere, but she did not have time to look for it. He was on his feet and angry. The buttons of his trousers were undone, but for the moment, it was something neither of them took into consideration.

“Think you’re clever don’t you?”

“No. You just looked a little small to me. Girth matters in something like that you know, pencil prick?”

“Well, I guess she told you. Didn’t she, Angelus?”

This third voice—feminine and derisive—made them both pause in their battle. But whereas Angelus regarded the interruption with a kind of smug pleasure, Buffy was sent into even greater terror.

It was Darla.

And Drusilla.

~*~ ~*~ ~*~




Colin, the estate valet, stared wide-eyed at the trunk that sat parked in the middle of the Persian rug, clothing thrown helter-skelter into its depths. William paced around the room, his shirt collar undone and his hair disheveled. He was packing the trunk in a haphazard sort of way, almost as if he did not see what was before him.

“Sir—” Colin began.

“Do not talk now—don’t you dare!” barked William. “I gave you an order, and you are to follow it through! I am leaving tonight.”

“But the train schedules—we don’t even know—”

“Then I shall sit in the damned train station until the bloody thing arrives! I’m not asking for your opinion, I’m telling you to go wake up the grooms and tell them to ready the horses.”

His blue eyes were wide and almost maddened by his extreme fear; Colin edged nearer to the doorway.

“As you wish, sir.”

~*~ ~*~ ~*~




“I don’t like her, Daddy,” Drusilla said in childlike tones. “She looks as if she’d like to take our toys.”

“Ach, no, Dru. She is our toy. Don’t you see it? A fine blonde doll you can take apart…once I am done with her.”

Darla smirked. “There are definitely some possibilities, but whatever you’re planning on doing you’d best get it done. Daylight is approaching.”

Buffy—pressed back up against the brick wall by their approach—suddenly felt a flicker of hope.

Daylight! If I can just distract him until the sun comes up!

“Screw with me, and I’ll shove your damned toys up your ass.” She was mouthing off with far more confidence than she actually felt, but it was a good bluff. And it distracted them.

“Listen to the mouth on her,” Angelus chuckled.

“Hmm. And what exactly has her mouth been on?” asked Darla. She had just taken note of her lover’s unbuttoned fly.

“Hush, now. I was going to invite you to play.”

“I don’t like this play,” whined Drusilla. Her dark eyes bore into Buffy’s with an unsettling kind of understanding. “I see her future, and it’s all mixed up. Can’t we play something else?”

“Later, Dru. Right now, I’ve got a game to finish.” Angelus shook his head, and like a veil dropping, the demon’s face emerged. He smiled a sharp-toothed smile at Buffy. “Looks like I’m winning this one doesn’t it, pretty?”

Buffy’s eyes darted to the space behind him, the night sky that was just beginning to turn a hazy purple. If she could just stall him—if she could just hold him off a few minutes more—

But she didn’t even have a stake.

She groped blindly behind her back, hoping to find some sort of weapon. But all she felt was the rough brick of the wall, the jagged edged of a shattered window.

A window.

Glass!

She snapped off a piece of it and held it hidden behind her back. It would not kill him, of course, but she didn’t need to kill him. All she needed was time—

“Come on, my lovely. Don’t you have some reply to me?” He moved closer, leaning into her face in a way that was both hostile and flirting. Darla made an impatient noise.

“Come on, Angelus. Hurry up!”

“Ah, Darla, will you leave me be? You’ve got no mind for these types of things and no finesse. Blood tastes better when there’s a touch of fear in it.”

Big, calloused hands gripped her shoulders and forced her tighter against the wall. Buffy didn’t fight him, but one hand was behind her back, clutching that shard of glass. Waiting.

The moment came just as he drove for her throat. She heard the feral growl, felt the fetid, cold breath against her cheek. She pulled out her arm and slashed at him with the glass. Her attack was desperate and indiscriminant. He howled as the sharp edge of the glass came down on his head, slicing his scalp open to the bone. He released his hold on her shoulders, and she kicked him in the chest, kicked him away.

The other two came at her, but Buffy blindly, instinctively, evaded them. She must have cut Darla, because she heard a shriek, followed by the exclamation, “That little bitch ruined my dress!” But she didn’t stop to see. She didn’t stop to fight. She ran down the cobbled street and into the blessed, blinding light of the rising sun. She ran home.

~*~ ~*~ ~*~




William stared stonily into the face of the young groom that acted as coachman while Matthew was in the city. “Are you certain?”

“Yes, sir. That is what the ticket agent said. There are no trains to London this morning or tonight, nothing at all until five o’clock tomorrow evening.”

Silence. Displeasure.

The groom squirmed uneasily beneath William’s gaze. “I—shall I bring ‘round the coach for your, sir?”

“No.”

The brief answer did nothing to dispel the groom’s anxiety. He glanced toward the station, then back to his Master, wondering what he could say to please the man.

“I might inquire as to buying an advanced ticket?”

“Do not trouble yourself,” William answered brusquely. “It won’t be necessary. I am waiting here.”

The groom gaped at him.

“Sir—do you mean—are you staying all day and all night?”

“I mean I am staying until the train comes to take me away.”

~*~ ~*~ ~*~




Buffy burst into the house with a noise that would have woken the dead, and the servants, who were already awake, came quickly to see what was wrong. They found her in a crumpled, hysterical heap in the middle of the foyer floor. The bodice of her dress was ripped, and below the dirty hem of her skirts, the torn, loose leg of her pantalets had fallen. The men looked away to preserve her modesty, but the women stared. They stood and stared until Mrs. Fitzpatrick threw a rug across her shoulders, and ordered her to hold it closed.

“Go fetch Mrs. Anne,” she ordered one of the maids. The girl looked shocked.

“Ma’am? The mistress is still asleep—”

“And do you think I’ve taken leave of my senses? I can see for myself the mistress is still asleep, but this girl is in danger of having a fit. Mrs. Anne would wish to know! Go wake her.”

The girl left at once, and Mrs. Fitzpatrick turned, once again, to Buffy.

“Calm down, child!”

Buffy could not calm down. She didn’t know why. Maybe it was Angelus mauling her like that, a feeling that was so familiar and yet so alien. Maybe it was just seeing Angel a monster, that same monster that killed Jenny Calendar, a monster that was now at the top of his game. Maybe it was Drusilla, the realization that she could not protect William no matter how she desired to. Because she knew now she could never kill Drusilla, she could not kill any of them. They were in top form, and she had grown slow and soft in those months of idleness. Perhaps worst of all, they frightened her. She could not bear to face them again.

Which left William where?

Mrs. Fitzpatrick grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her. “Get hold of yourself! Do you want the mistress to see you in such a state?”

The mention of Anne subdued her somewhat. Not completely, but somewhat. She looked up at the housekeeper from underneath wet lashes. “Sorry—”

“Sakes alive don’t be sorry. Just tell me where you took yourself at such an ungodly hour."

“Couldn’t sleep,” she rasped. “I went for a walk—”

“A walk! At this hour! No wonder you should find yourself in such trouble. Was it a man? Did he—?”

“No!” She struggled to sit up. “No…he tried to rob me but I…I got away.”

Mrs. Fitzpatrick eyed the rug wrapped around Buffy’s chest, and she was obviously skeptical to the story. However, to her credit she said nothing. Not then and not when Anne burst into the room a few moments later.

“Elizabeth, what were you thinking?” Anne demanded, once she heard the story. “Wandering about the neighborhood at this late hour and without a chaperone! Do you wish to be killed?”

“Of course not,” said Buffy weakly. “I—I was—”

“You were what?”

Inspiration struck, and she said, “I was feeling upset about William. I went for a walk, just in front of the house…just to clear my head.”

The ploy worked, and Anne’s attention shifted from the attack to the more pressing matter of her son’s happiness.

“What happened with William, Elizabeth? Did the two of you have some sort of disagreement?”

“A disagreement…it was my fault.”

“That was why his departure was so abrupt?”

Buffy thought: That and the fact I jacked him off against his will.

Buffy said, “That’s why.”

Anne pulled her wrap a little tighter about her and uttered a small cough. “Perhaps—perhaps we might wire him about this—incident. I am sure he will return in haste. He cares very deeply for you; one argument could not possibly change that.”

“No,” she said quickly. The thought of luring him home out of some sense of duty or pity made her cringe. “No. Don’t send for him. Really, I’m fine.”

“Elizabeth—”

“Anne, please.”

“All right, dear, if you wish. Yet I cannot help but feel you are making a mistake.”

“I’m not, really. He’s busy where he’s at, and I’m fine.” She stood up, wincing as she did at the soreness of her body. “Well, almost fine anyway.”

Anne watched her closely, sympathetically. “Should I ask one of the maids to prepare a bath for you?”

Buffy nodded gratefully. “Thank you and—and tell them to make the water really hot.”

She could still feel those rough, horrible hands between her legs.

~*~ ~*~ ~*~