Once, it would have.  Once the sound would have driven him mindless with fury at the creature who dared wound his childe.  Even Angelus, the soulless, selfish demon would have been enraged beyond reason.  But now?

Nothing.

The sound did not tug at his heartstrings.  It did not impel him to hunt for whatever might bring and end to the sorrowful resonance.  It did not let loose a torrent of guilt.  It did not excite or stimulate.  It just was.

The impossibly pitiful sound of his childe dying a slow, painful death.

Squatting beside Spike’s prone form, Angel threaded his fingers of one hand through the bleached hair and violently wrenched his childe’s head backwards, causing the younger vampire to howl in pain.

The other hand held a pair of bloodied pliers with bits of dried flesh still clinging to the metal.

"You’re *certain* you didn’t feed on her, Boy?" he asked, his voice deceptively soft.

Spike shook his head as much as Angel’s fierce grip would allow.  "Nononononononono," he whimpered quietly.

He knew without a doubt that if he answered yes that his sire would use the implement in his hand to remove his fangs, and probably the rest of his teeth just for the hell of it.  Angel wasn’t bluffing.  He’d already used it to tear large chunks of flesh from his childe’s inner thighs.

His sire.

That was a misnomer.  This wasn’t *his* sire.  This wasn’t the slayer’s lapdog either.  Spike didn’t know what exactly this creature was, but he was terrified of it.  This creature would be the death of him.

How long had he been here?  He didn’t know.  The overwhelming physical agony caused the nights to mesh together into one never ending nightmare.  He prayed to a god that wouldn’t listen for a respite, for sleep, or even death.  None came.

Apparently satisfied with his childe’s sincere answer, Angel released his grip on the back of the blonde head.  Spike didn’t even have the strength to protest as his face smacked into the hard concrete of the basement floor, breaking his nose.  Fortunately his body didn’t possess enough fluid to waste on bleeding.  He had long ago exhausted all of his reserves of strength and blood by struggling futilely against the ever present manacles and shackles.  All of his struggles had been fruitless endeavors.  He succeeded only in rending the flesh of his wrists and ankles.  The wounds were still wide open, unable to heal because his sire would not deign to feed him.

There had been a time when Spike wouldn’t have minded having his sire shackle him up to conduct a bit o’ torture.  But that was a soul and a century away.  Angelus for all of his evil, sadistic ways had taught him that particular lesson out of affection.  It had been an intensely erotic experience for the younger vampire.  He had felt supremely loved as his sire had securely bound him, rendered him helpless and vulnerable.

The whole point of the exercise had been to make him understand just how much he meant to his sire.  To know that Angelus could put him in that situation and *not* exploit it, not make him wish for the blessed silence of true death.  Spike had felt protected, wanted, adored and supremely aroused.  The sexual bliss that ensued was the likes of which he had never experienced again.  Perfection.

Angel failed to utilize the techniques in quite the same manner.

There had been nothing tender or reassuring in his touches.  The only emotional feeling that had been reinforced was that Spike didn’t mean anything to his maker.  The physical feeling had been pain and pain alone.

The prick would often forget about him all together, leaving him for days in some excruciating position.  Of course it wasn’t any better when Angel did remember.  Spike knew that vampires healed from almost anything.  He also knew that he would have to exist well into the next millennium in order for these scars to fade.

All of this was for that stupid little cunt of a slayer.  Spike was dying at his master’s hands because he had dared to touch his mate.  His mate.  Since when?  He’d gone off and abandoned the stupid bint years before Spike had laid a hand on her.  It wasn’t worth it.

If he’d killed the bitch, tortured her like Angel was now doing to him, maybe he could understand his sire’s rage.  But he hadn’t.  He hadn’t even vamped up the sex.  He’d made love, *yes*, made love to the stupid girl as a human male would have.  No growling.  No claws and fangs embedded in perfectly tanned skin.  And most importantly, no glutting on her blood when he reached climax.

He’d been ... nice.  He’d licked and sucked patiently, stroked and fondled gently.  He’d whispered sweet words to her and languidly thrust in and out of her oh so willing body as she called another male’s name during her release.  He’d even worn a goddamn rubber.

Hindsight being 20/20 he would have thrown the bitch down in the dirt, had a good rut and drained her as he came *inside her*.  Even that wouldn’t be worth the horror he was putting up with now.

He’d killed two slayers before.  Why was this one so damned important?  He hadn’t even hurt her.  She’d *liked* it, regardless of the fact that she’d dissolved into a weepy mess as soon as the post coital bliss faded.  A weepy mess because the name she’d called out and the face she saw above her didn’t mesh.  He’d almost felt pity for her.

Almost.

The biggest kicker to this whole series of events was that Angel wasn’t feeling anymore lovey dovey towards his precious mate than he was towards his childe.  Spike could sense it when he mentioned the slayer.  There was no longer a reverent caress in his tone when he uttered her name.  Most days he just spit it out like the taste of it in his mouth made him sick.

Undoubtedly, at some point, Angel had wanted to find her so he could protect her.  That was a good while back.  The younger vampire was sure that his mission for finding her now had nothing to do with tender thoughts.

Angel wanted to punish her, just as he was now punishing his childe.

That thought lifted Spike’s spirits a tad.  At least he wouldn’t be the only one bleeding and broken on the floor.  At least she could pay for her part in their mutual trespass against her everlasting bond with his sire.  She was the one mated to the prick after all.  Just maybe Spike would live long enough to see the fallout.

The scent of blood hit him, and Spike woke in full vamp face.  He was sitting on the cold cement floor, propped against a wall, his hands bound behind him, his legs bound in front.

Angel was holding a glass of blood enticingly.

It wasn’t human.  It wasn’t even livestock.  It was vermin.  Asshole.  Spike knew that in his current situation he couldn’t be choosey.  If it bled, he’d take it.  He licked his lips in anticipation.

Angel fed him a tiny bit, not even a mouthful and then stood up.  He took a step back waiting for the recognition to hit, smirking.  Spike swallowed the red liquid as soon as it was on his lips.  It took him several moments for the new pain to make itself known through the haze of pronounced, bone deep ache he’d been living with for weeks.

"Bastard!", he tried to shout, but found he couldn’t.

Holy water.  The son of a bitch had mixed holy water in with the blood.  Not a lot.  Not enough to kill him, but enough to hurt like hell, enough to damage his tongue, palate, vocal cords and throat.  The question now was if Spike was desperate enough for the blood.  He acknowledged the grim reality that he was.

Closing his eyes, he opened his mouth for more.  Thankfully he was too dehydrated for the tears of frustration and self loathing to fall from his eyes.

Spike woke slowly, dimly aware that he was laying on hardwood and not the cold cement that had been his home for an eternity.  He was still tightly bound, illustrating there were well defined limits to his sire’s mercy.  The blood had helped.  He saw knew without looking that the flesh of his wrists and ankles was now scabbed over.  Far from healed, but no longer gaping wounds.

Sensing his childe was awake, Angel walked into his line of sight.  As Spike silently begged for permission to speak, he granted it with a curt nod of his head.

"Why’d ya move me?" he asked his sire.  It hurt to talk.  His voice was scratchy, harsh, no doubt due to the damage from the holy water.  His emaciated body shook violently from the bought of coughing that followed.

"Cordelia," he said tersely.

Spike didn’t speak again, it hurt too much, but his eyes were questioning.

"She got sick of listening to you screaming, or smelling the stench of your decaying body when she went down to do laundry.  I moved you to my rooms when she threatened to stake you," he explained, his voice completely devoid of emotion.

"I don’t want you to die, Spike," he continued.  "I have so much more in store for you."

Maybe the small amount of rejuvenation he got from the vermin blood wasn’t so great because now he had the energy to shiver at his sire’s promise.

Blood.

Real blood, fresh, no tricks this time.  It was animal, not human but at least it wasn’t vermin.  He drank deeply and was shocked to find that when he’d drained one glass it was replaced by another, and another, and so on until the incessant ache in his veins was assuaged.

He should have been relieved, but he wasn’t.  The gleam in his sire’s dark eyes did not bode well.  There was a reason he was doing this and Spike was undoubtedly going to find out soon enough what it was.

That he wouldn’t like it was a given.

Vampire or not, Angelus had never been one to fancy sex with a corpse.  Some things were ingrained.  Angel demanded an animated partner as much as his demonic counterpart.  Animated did not imply willing.  Trying to escape and screaming at the top of your fucking lungs was pretty damn animated by any standards.

Angel went to the trouble of chaining him spread eagle to the bed, face down.  It wasn’t necessary.  Despite the infusion of fresh blood, Spike was far too weak to mount any kind of significant protest.  Still, Angel was nothing if not attentive to detail.  Spike couldn’t help noticing his sire neglected the gag, intentionally.  Sick fucker had always loved to hear screaming.

The sounds were unmistakable as Angel slowly undressed, dropping his clothes carelessly to the floor.  As the bed depressed under his weight, Spike’s muscles went taut.  Firm hands dug into the flesh of his hips, and he bit deeply into his bottom lip to prevent himself from whimpering.

Despite his best efforts to keep quiet, Spike did cry out as his sire entered his unprepared body.  No lube.  That’s one of the reasons why Angel had fed him.  As Spike’s internal tissues tore under the onslaught, the infusion of blood eased his brutal thrusts.

It also made a mess, another perk as far as Angel was concerned.  It was pretty easy to make someone feel unimportant when they were chained face down on a bed with their own blood and your cum leaking out of their body.

The other reason Angel had fed him was that he wanted his most insolent childe conscious for the festivities.  Spike silently vowed if he ever found Darla he would stake the bitch on sight for the massive mind fuck she pulled on his sire – both incarnations, Angel and Angelus.

As his sire rammed into his body, jarring his frame with every thrust, Spike felt nothing.  Nothing outside of pain, that is.  If Angel had been truly raging angry with him, that would have been something.  There would have been some form of passion, but he wasn’t.  For all of the brutality and viciousness, he wasn’t *truly* angry.  There was a lingering disgust, a desire to hurt, but his heart wasn’t in it.  He was going through the motions with complete abandon, but this act was just as emotionally empty for him as it was for Spike.

It had been over a year since Angel had last engaged in sex with another being, the last time being the day Buffy would never remember.  Though the act had much more to do with punishing Spike than finding his own pleasure, he did get physically excited.  Their was too much blood and violence for him to remain unaffected indefinitely.   As Spike’s howls of pain faded into incoherent whimpers, he allowed himself to climax, glutting on a good portion of the blood he’d just fed his childe.

Grunting in self satisfaction, Angel pulled himself from his childe’s body, sitting back on his heels to survey the damage.  Spike’s abused body shivered with sobs the childe was helpless to stop.  He was dying.  The realization that his boy was dying stirred nothing inside of Angel.

With a few deftly executed flicks of his hands, Angel removed Spike’s bonds, kicking him off of the bed and onto the floor.  He landed with a sickening thud, unwilling to move.  Somewhere through the haze of pain, he became aware of the fact that Angel had left him alone ... again.

The End