Odalisque

Author: Elen

Parts: 16 - 20

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~Part: 16~

For the third day in a row, the girl had not been found in the park. They had lingered longer than it was safe yesterday and Harry had already been up before dawn to see if the girl was walking the dog in the company of one of the vampires. It was drizzling out, and Harry’s shirt collar was damp with sweat from the exertion of staying on his feet for so long. His grip on his cane was a little white knuckled as he paced the bachelor’s parlor they shared between their respective rooms while David recorded the non-observations of the prior day in his diary.

He was frowning at the page, wondering what he should say about Harry’s early morning stroll. It was dangerous, and foolhardy, and they were peers, holding an equivalent position within the organization they served. If they were truly peers, David would not have hesitated to chafe him for taking such a risk. But they weren’t really peers. There was over fifteen years of field experience that separated them, and while David had been out of the field for several years, nothing had changed that much.

“Damn it,” Harry swore, his cane catching on a bit of fringe on the carpet runner, forcing him to grab at the back of an armchair to maintain his balance. “She’s not coming back, is she?”

There were a lot of reasons why she might not be out walking her dog, but David Giles did not speculate. He believed Harry had scared her off, and he could tell that the idea had occurred to Harry, so there was no point beating that dead horse.

“I’ll wait until after luncheon, and then try again,” Harry said, almost to himself. The healing muscles in his thigh cramped and he groaned, sitting heavily in the armchair.

“No matter,” David said, sounding unperturbed. “It has never been clear to me what might be gained from her.”

Harry shot him an incredulous sideways look, expecting the rebuke that David had withheld.

“We’ve devoted attention to making contact with a young woman,” David elaborated. “For what reason? The fact that she has survived so long in the company of the Scourge is interesting, but she’s mortal, and we can only speculate about her potential usefulness.”

“It doesn’t bother you at all that she isn’t likely to remain mortal forever?” Harry asked.

David’s pen hovered over the page for a moment. He looked up at Harry. “Ah,” he frowned, “I beg your pardon, Harry. I didn’t realize that you meant to rescue her. I thought you wanted to kidnap her off the streets and bundle her off to London to be interrogated for every shred of useful information that could be wrung from her.”

Harry prodded the rug with the end of his cane. “Very funny,” he said sourly.

David capped his pen. “Not really, because to some extent it is only natural, and yet, we both know it is too dangerous to think that way. We have no reason to believe that the girl is even unhappy with her current situation. For all we know she is deeply attached to her masters and utterly loyal to them. In fact, everything suggests that this is as likely an explanation as any for her survival thus far. That doesn’t mean that it is true. Consideration of her needs as an individual has played no part in our calculations. Why is that?”

Harry frowned. “As you said, it’s a dangerous way of thinking,”

“It has nothing to do with the educated guess that she is one of the vampire’s mistress? Probably William the Bloody, from what we know about them?”

“She’s a human being with a soul,” David reminded him. “A representative of the very reason we exist; to serve and protect the innocent. And yes, it would be beyond foolish to imagine that she has survived in their company without getting her hands dirty, but as she remains human, she deserves some shred of concern for her most basic dignity. I rather imagine that she has been treated as a useful extravagance for much of her co-existence with her paramour.”

Harry cocked his head to one side. “And how should we treat her, assuming an opportunity arises?”

David looked thoughtful. “She’s not your average civilian, is she? Probably knows as much about vampires and more about the Scourge than you or I,” he pointed out. “I think we treat her as an equal. As a potential colleague,” he said. “It’s very possible that were we to somehow separate her from the Scourge, she would simply wish to return to whatever life she left when she came into contact with them, and it is more likely that that isn’t possible. One thing that we can offer her is the assurance that she will never be alone in the world, and that she may be useful.”

“Useful?” Harry snorted. “Oh, there’s an attractive pitch!”

David allowed himself a smile. “You aren’t a Watcher because you believe that ultimately you can do some good in the world? Don’t think of her as a woman, or a girl, or a common whore, or even an uncommon whore. Think of her simply as you would any person that we would seek to recruit. Think of her as a potential Watcher,” he advised.

Harry looked skeptical, wondering what the stuffed shirts in London would think of that notion. “Why?”

“Because, we simply do not have anything better or easier to offer,” David told him. “Look at their history. Even if we manage to separate her from them, she will be in a certain degree of danger for the rest of her life and if we are right, that she knows more about them than we do, then she must know that.”

He rose from the chair he was occupying, straightening it before he closed his diary. “So, how do we proceed?” The question was rhetorical. “London is considering diverting resources from a field office to broaden our field study. We both know it will take weeks, if not months, to arrange that, though it is likely to be approved eventually despite the risks.”

Harry thought about that. A field study of four vampires and one human was extravagant, but these vampires had never been hunted with any kind of success, and had on more than one occasion turned the discovery of the hunters into a hunt of their own. He wasn’t convinced that the risk adverse upper echelons of the Watcher’s Council would act quickly.

“We need locals,” David said.

“It will take weeks to train them,” Harry pointed out. “Might as well cable London and ask for an immediate answer.”

“No it won’t,” David told him. “There are other resources, and we’ll talk about that later. Another thing; this isn’t an adventure, Harry. You have a certain impetuousness that is valuable. It allows you to think creatively, but it also means that when you get bored, you tend to try to make things happen,” he observed. “That’s a valid approach to your work,” he allowed. “As long as what you risk when you get bored is confined to yourself,” he gestured to Harry’s injured leg. “A Fiyarl demon isn’t going to find you interesting or odd. You are just a thing to be killed. It isn’t remotely personal. That isn’t true about vampires. A vampire might find you interesting enough not to kill immediately.”

Harry scowled. “I can take care of myself,” he muttered.

“Possibly,” David agreed. “We are working together, and I expect you to also take care of my wife’s husband,” he said pointedly. “I expect that you will give some thought to the fact that we are hunting vampires who have made a point of hunting their hunters, and their associates, and their families. There are acceptable risks to what we do, and there are unacceptable risks. If you want to risk your own neck, that’s your affair, but when you risk your field partner, I expect the courtesy of being consulted,” he stated. “If you can’t do that, we need to pack our bags and go home.”

Harry looked incredulous. “You can’t think that if I fell into their hands, I’d tell them about you? That would be stupid, wouldn’t it? You’d be my only chance of rescue.”

David chuckled. “Harry, if you fell into their hands, as you put it,” he was wry. “You wouldn’t have a hope in hell of being rescued. If you disappeared for more than twelve hours, I’d cable London and be a train out of Prague at the first opportunity. Sacred duty? Vows of secrecy? Bullocks. If you lasted a day under torture, I’d tip my hat to you for giving me time to get away, but I’d not plan on it, nor expect it. It isn’t about bravery or fortitude. It is about being reduced by fear, by pain, by failure, to do anything for the blessed release of death, and that’s if you are lucky. So, no more going off on your own, before dawn, if you please. When it comes to vampire versus human, vampire wins. It really is that simple. That’s why they are dangerous. That is why we make them our business.”

Harry stared at him for a long moment. As dressing downs went, this was mild, and there was a grudging part of him that knew that he deserved it and that David was demonstrating a degree of courtesy in the delivery that was meant to get his attention.

“Fair enough,” he agreed. “So, what is our next step?”

David opened a drawer and removed a clean sheet of stationary. “A late lunch, I think.”

~~~*~~~

“It’s ugly,” Darla pronounced, not at all impressed with the chaise that had been delivered.

Drusilla was leaning against the doorframe, pouting at being denied the opportunity to eat the deliverymen who had brought the chaise and taken away the settee to sell on consignment. She did not argue with Darla. What the chaise needed was a throw blanket to drape across the foot and a few pillows. It was obvious she thought as she studied her fingernails.

Angelus was examining the mechanism that allowed the position of the back of the chaise to be adjusted. There were three deep brackets at the back of the base of the chaise. It was a fairly simple operation to lift the back of the chair out of one bracket and seat it in another. The angles varied from sixty, to forty-five, to thirty degrees, and at each angle the joints locked together smoothly.

“It’s brilliant,” he concluded. Well-made things, well-executed ideas, pleased him.

“It’s a piece of furniture,” William pointed out, his surmise that virtually anyone else in the household would be more interested in the topic of furniture, confirmed. Willow was still asleep, tucked up in his bed, where he would be right now if he hadn’t been woken up by a debate over the chaise that was taking place in Willow’s bedroom.

He had dispatched Cook to the kitchen with a request for a pot of coffee and food for Willow.

Dru’s little dog trotted into the bedroom, sniffing furiously, his beady black eyes seeking. He made his way over to the bed, his front paws clawing at the counterpane as he wiggled and arched his body, trying to get on the bed. He gave a sharp, disappointed bark and went back to sniffing. Reaching Darla, he sniffed at the hem of her skirts and gave a little doggie huff to expel her scent.

Dru and William exchanged amused looks at that. Fortunately Darla was paying no attention to the dog.

Darla was having a dinner party tonight, and she wanted Willow present, reasoning that she had not been seen out with them often enough. Angelus had an appointment with the estate agent at two, and he also wanted Willow for that. William looked annoyed. “Anything else?” he asked.

“The dog needs to be walked,” Angelus added.

“Then have him walked. We have a whole, crappy garden that he can run around in,” William pointed out.

Lucius, looking worse for last night’s adventure, was in the hallway with Willow’s tray balanced in one hand, reaching for the door to William’s room with the other. William rolled his eyes. He had probably pried himself out of bed for no other reason. “Leave it on the floor,” he snapped at him before he could open the door.

Lucius checked, bending at the waist to stiffly place the tray on the floor outside the door. He paused for a moment. “Will there be anything else?” he asked.

“Yes,” William told him. Darla had stepped away from the bedroom door to clear the sight line to the hallway, or to get a better look at both of them. “You can tell Cook that the next time I tell him to do something he better finish it, or I’ll make him wish that he had.”

Angelus watched with a slightly amused smile. William really wasn’t that arbitrary. Most of the demands that he made on the minions were simple and direct, goal oriented rather than process oriented. He didn’t care how his needs were fulfilled as long as they were fulfilled. Lucius was aware of this, and he knew exactly how unusual this was. It was written on his face, but it was also clear that he thought that being denied the task he had assumed was a kind of punishment, and that was interesting. Most of the minions resented doing things for the lone human in the household.

Lucius retreated down the hall. Smoothing his hand over the thickly cushioned back of the chaise, Angelus observed, “You do know that he is the only one that will do anything for her without being told to.”

“And I’m bloody sick of that, too,” William said. “It’s going to stop.”

~~~*~~~

Officially, the relationship between the Watcher’s Council and the Roman Catholic Church was non-existent. Unofficially, it was strained by the emergence of a Slayer in Rome who happened to be a Roman Catholic novice. The Watcher’s Council and the Holy See were engaged in a tug of war over who was going to control the Slayer that had strained a working relationship with the church that was already under pressure.

But that was between Rome and London, and in Prague, the tension was acknowledged, but less of an obstacle than it might have been thought. The Emmaus Monastery in Nove Mesto housed a small cell of lay brothers who belonged to the Order of St. Ubaldus. On the afternoon in question, Brother Emile was dressed in what he and his order regarded as civilian mufti, sipping beer flavored with raspberry liquor at a sidewalk table that belonged to a small tavern within sight of Emmaus’ towering spires. He watched the English arrive with interest, wondering how long it would take them to find him. It was in a manner of speaking, a test, as well as an exercise of simple curiosity and professional rivalry.

The younger Englishman was willing to play the game. His gaze was just a shade too intent, betraying a less than casual interest. The older Englishman gestured to the door, prepared to walk into the tavern to, no doubt, simply ask someone where he could find Brother Emile. It was the sensible thing to do, and Emile told the barkeeper to expect foreigners seeking him out this afternoon.

Moments later, the English emerged, the old man carrying two steins as his younger partner limped behind him using a cane. Emile folded the newspaper he had been scanning for the last quarter hour as the pair joined him at his table in the shade of a chestnut tree only now beginning to bud. As the wind blew, the table was intermittently showered with drops of rain that had fallen earlier and the detritus of spring growth, tiny, tender green buds that Emile rolled between his finger tips, savoring the fresh, earthly scent broken as the buds were worn between his ink and nicotine stained fingers.

The English began in German, with the introductions. They were a race that prided themselves on manners, mocked by Napoleon as a nation of shop keepers. Taking a longer view of history, Emile considered the manners a newly acquired veneer of civility. The children of the island kingdom were the sons and daughters of conquest, the surviving product of generations of depredation that had ended only when the English had become something a bit savage themselves. He found the Napoleonic wars particularly illustrative of this point. The British had fought a long, bloody campaign on the Iberian Peninsula with the cool calculation that dictated that they did not have to win a single battle to win the war. It was all a matter of losing well.

He repaid their courtesy by switching to English, which had the added benefit of ensuring that their conversation would remain private in so public a place. Brushing aside the honorific that he was entitled to, he invited them to address him simply as Emile.

“What brings to Watcher’s Council to Prague?” he asked, and then answered his own question, “Vampires, surely.”

Harry’s gaze flicked to David, who had initiated this contact. The Order of St. Ubaldus was a Roman Catholic order dedicated to the study of demonology. They were a bit out of step with the Church’s recent preoccupation with shedding its association with the more mystical elements of Catholicism, but they had always operated in the background. While the Watcher’s Council was primarily focused on vampires, demons, and the dark arts roughly in that order, the Order of St. Ubaldus had over the last century inverted those priorities as witch hunting had been dropped as a pursuit by the more public elements of the Curia.

“That goes without saying,” David agreed. “We’ve isolated a small, nomadic sub-clan to Prague.”

Interest sparked in Emile’s eyes, followed by amusement at the precise manner of description. “Have you? They’ve been here for centuries and you’ve only now noticed them?”

Harry felt himself bristle at the gibe, but David only looked interested. “Prague has not been a locus of activity for the Watcher’s Council,” he acknowledged. “We find ourselves in uncharted territory in need of a guide.”

The older watcher had passed another test for Emile. No journey to truth or enlightenment began without this kind of blank slate. By admitting what he did not know, David Giles had invited him to begin an exchange that would be mostly one sided.

He leaned forward. “We have two clans in Prague. In Stare Mesto, there is the primary clan, led by Ekaterina Cern’nsky,” he began.

Harry recognized the name, and started to speak.

Emile paused politely, waiting for a predictable response to this announcement.

“Ekaterina Cern’nsky was dusted in the 17th century,” Harry said, knowing even as he said it that he was going to be handed his lunch, so to speak.

Emile gestured to him. “The Watcher’s Council has a legend?” he invited.

Harry glanced at David to see if he had caught the casual usage of a term that the Watcher’s Council used. David simply nodded, as if to tell him to go ahead, and Harry continued. The ‘legend’ as Emile called it was the biographical information known about the subject. Setting aside his discomfort at the idea that a Roman Catholic lay brother knew enough about the Watcher’s Council to use their terms, Harry returned to the subject at hand.

“Ekaterina Cern’nsky was a 15th century Muskovite who married into a Bohemian family. She achieved a certain amount of notoriety in life for her cruelty to her serfs and for an interest in the dark arts. There’s an apocryphal story that she bathed in virgin’s blood that is attached to her.”

Bathing in virgin’s blood was a popular medieval canard, ranking up there with bestiality, and eating babies as an attribute attached to witches to imply notoriety. Harry had been trained to be skeptical about such claims, and that skepticism bled through.

“She claimed to be the progeny of Vlad the Impaler, which is unconfirmed, but by the early 17th century she was the indisputable master of Prague. She was dispatched in or around 1627 following an internal power struggle. Her clan never recovered entirely, and became fragmented into two small groups that nearly wiped each other out.”

David recognized that as a good summary of the Watcher’s Council’s legend on Ekaterina Cern’nsky. There was more, but it would do for now.

Emile smiled at that. “That’s one version of it. The Order of St. Ubaldus’ version is that she orchestrated her demise in 1627 and was actually destroyed in 1845 during the Hungarian uprising against the Hapsburgs. This account was accepted by Dom Xavier Alegro of blessed memory, who was at the time the head of our order, and has yet to be conclusively disproved, but Ekaterina Cern’nsky has more lives than a cat, and she’s very much alive, or undead, if you will.”

“I thought only the Holy See was infallible,” David ventured with an appreciative smile. The Watcher’s Council had similar problems. Once something was established as a fact in the vast archives of the Council, it was nearly impossible to dislodge it, even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. You simply learned, over time, to navigate the gray area.

Emile shrugged, “Ah, but we all dream,” he quipped. Returning to the matter at hand, “The Stare Mesto vampires who follow Ekaterina Cern’nsky numbers range at any given time between twenty and forty. They control Stare Mesto and consider the city their hunt. The Jewish Quarter is more or less off limits. You might want to pay a visit to the Rabbi Meir. He and his predecessors have managed to convince the vampires that hunting Josefhof is too expensive an undertaking.”

David nodded. “You mentioned two clans?” he prompted.

Emile sat back in his chair. “Another interesting story. The vampires of Zlata Ulicka, the gold alley. Very small clan, numbering ten for the last two centuries. Zlata Ulicka is the home to a community of alchemists that were brought to Prague at the turn of the 17th century. They co-exist in an arrangement that we have not been able to infiltrate. Obviously, our interest is centered more on the alchemists than their vampires. Zlata Ulicka is virtually impenetrable. Unassuming in appearance, even humble, but heavily warded.”

David frowned. “Are they a splinter of the Cern’nsky clan?”

Emile shrugged. “According to the Cern’nsky clan? Yes. Rudolph II brought the alchemists to Prague, for the usual reasons.”

“Transmutation of base material into gold, hence, Gold Alley,” David followed.

“Precisely, but without breaking the veil of confession,” Emile’s distinction referred to what was known to a priest/confessor and what was known by other means, “his interests were more specific. He died insane from syphilis,” Emile explained. “So, the alchemists were tasked to find a cure. It began innocently enough with the usual cast of charlatans, only their claim was that the blood and dust of a vampire was the key to transmutation of disease and gold.”

This was not a new or unheard of theory. The regenerative powers of vampires had invited speculation about their blood for centuries, as for transmutation to gold, the central feature of alchemy’s claims rested on difficult to obtain ingredients or objects of power, such as the Philosopher’s Stone. In the 15th and 16th centuries the Watcher’s Council had been highly diverted by exploring both areas of research in what was now regarded as a rather embarrassing chapter in the organization’s history.

“But there are real practitioners in Zlata Ulicka?” David concluded warily. Alchemists were largely charlatans, what the Order of St. Ubaldus and the Watcher’s Council considered to be witches were not. The two organizations parted company on how witches should be dealt with. David Giles had no innate magical talent, and as far as he knew Harry didn’t either, or they would not have risked a meeting. The Order of St. Ubaldus tended to take a kill them all and let God sort them out approach to practicing witches that the Watcher’s Council found overly simplistic and wasteful.

“Very much so,” Emile agreed. “Again, you may wish to interview Rabbi Meir on the subject. My order’s presence in Prague has been somewhat sporadic,” he conceded. “But, this is not what brings you to Prague.”

David nodded. This was how the game was played. It was his turn to trade. “We are tracking a sub-clan of the order of Aurelius,” he said.

Emile extracted a pack of Turkish cigarettes from his coat pocket. “The order of Aurelius,” he repeated with a small smile. “Interesting. Nomadic?” He lit a cigarette, giving the cylinder pinched between his fingers an exasperated look. “It’s a filthy habit,” he said, more to himself than them. “The Scourge of Europe is in Prague?”

David nodded, not at all surprised that Emile had worked it out.

“Very interesting,” he allowed, eyeing David narrowly. “This is not a social call, then?”

“No,” David agreed. “We need eyes and ears, preferably locals who can blend in,” he said. “They’ve established a lair in Nove Mesto. The exact location of the household has been narrowed down to the area around the park on Vladiskvy, the one—“

“I know it,” Emile interrupted. “You are certain?”

David smiled. “Vampires are our principal adversaries. Yes, we are certain.”

Emile flicked ash to the ground at his side. The purpose of the meeting had been served. The Watchers had identified their needs and established what the interest was in Prague. The Order of St. Ubaldus would take that under consideration. They had their own priorities.

“We will meet tomorrow,” his voice rose slightly, as if to allow that attending the meeting was an invitation rather than an order. “Here,” he added with a small nod to indicate the tavern.

~~~*~~~

Willow woke up alone in bed. The smell of coffee reached her as she was waking, and she blinked, feeling mildly disoriented by the change in venue. It took her a moment to realize that she was in William’s room, looking up at the canopy attached to his bed. Using her pinkie, she scraped the grit out of the corners of her eyes, barely suppressing a yawn. She stretched, taking a mental inventory. Her hand went to her neck, her fingertips gingerly exploring the fresh bite mark that decorated her throat. It was starting to scab over already, and there was no bruising that she could detect. She felt a little sore. Running her tongue over her lips made her feel the ghost sensation of kissing, not the pressure and the texture of the kiss itself, but the tingly feeling that she had when they were kissing, that rolled down her chest like a wave.

It made her heart skip a little.

There was a pot of coffee on the bedside table, arranged on a tray with a tea cup, sans saucer, cream, sugar, and a plate of food. Triangular shaped wedges of thinly sliced dark bread with something white between the layers, pale green grapes, and petit fours. She sat up, holding the sheet to her chest, tucking it under her arms.

William was sitting at his writing desk. From the state of his hair, he had bathed recently, not bothering to do much more than towel his hair dry. His shirt was sticking damply to his back in places. He was writing, his left hand curved around in an unorthodox grip on the pen he was using. From her position on the bed, she could only see him waist up, but she knew that his foot would be hooked around the leg of his chair.

She reached for the coffee pot, her wrist shaking a little from the pull of the heavy pot as she tried to pour one handed while holding the sheet in place. The lid rattled against the lip of the pot and some of the coffee splashed onto the tray, soaking the white linen napkin that had been used to line the tray.

William capped his pen and rose, walking across the room in stocking feet, scooping something off the floor as he approached her side of the bed. It was the shirt he had been wearing last night. He shook it out, and then gathered it in his hands to slip over her head. When it was settled over her head, he reached under to guide her arm through the sleeve. The sheet slipped to her waist and his hand grazed her breast. He used his whole hand to shape her breast before rubbing his thumb over her nipple and squeezing it lightly against the side of his hand. For a moment she thought that he would make something more of the caress, but he pushed her arm through the other sleeve. Her hair was trapped under the shirt collar, and his hands slid between her neck and the mass of her hair to lift it. He leaned down to kiss her and she ducked her head, aware of the slightly sour taste in her mouth, more aware of how sensitive her lips felt right now.

He kissed her neck instead, below her ear, finger combing her hair.

“What time is it?” she asked as he sat on the edge of the bed beside her, his hip pressed against her thigh. He reached across her for an extra pillow to wedge behind her.

“Past noon,” he was smiling a little at her in his shirt. It was too big for her, the sleeves at least four inches too long. She looked adorable. He started on one sleeve, folding it over to form a loose cuff, and then folding it over again until her wrists were left free. She gave him her other arm, and he rolled that sleeve up as well.

“I should get up,” she said tentatively. There were things to do. The dog had to be walked. There was mail to answer. The estate agent was meeting with Angelus today, and he would want her there for that.

“Drink your coffee. There’s still time for you to get dressed,” he noted. “Do you want a bath?” He added sugar and cream to the coffee cup for her.

Her scalp felt a little itchy. Last night, or early this morning, when he finally let her go to sleep, he left the bedroom to get a basin of warm water and a washcloth and he washed her, running the warm, damp washcloth over her back and legs before he made her roll over and repeated the process, washing her arms down to her fingertips, wiping her face. Pressing an extra washcloth over her eyes, leaving it there while he washed the rest of her, leaving the insides of her thighs for the last, blotting her clean with the warm, wet washcloth, soothing her swollen labia with his cooler tongue.

When she didn’t answer immediately, he looked over at her curiously, seeing the flush in her cheeks and the sleep softened, dazed look in her eyes. He handed her the cup, admiring the picture she made. Her fingertips bracketed the thin bone china cup carefully as the china absorbed the heat of the coffee. She raised it to her lips, hesitating when she caught him watching her. Her fingertips slipped a little on the cup and she made herself pay more attention to what she was doing. The coffee wasn’t that hot, but it was still hot enough to burn.

“I must look like a mess,” she grumbled, embarrassed by her clumsiness with the cup.

“Your hair is pretty wild,” he conceded. It was all tangled and mused from last night. “You won’t have time to wash it before the estate agent arrives, but there will be plenty of time this afternoon. Darla is having a dinner party tonight,” he reminded her. “We are expected,” he made a face at that, glancing at the plate of food. “Don’t you want something to eat?”

He picked up the plate, examining the small sandwiches. “What the hell is this?” he wondered, lifting the bread.

“Cream cheese with cucumbers,” Willow determined.

“Yuch,” his lip curled.

“No, it’s good,” she insisted. “Yum! I can’t live on chocolate and biscuits alone.”

He held one corner of the sandwich to her lips, and she took a bite out of it. She adjusted her hold on the coffee cup to free her hand and reached for the sandwich. He pulled it back, frowning at her. “Mind your coffee. I’ve got the food,” he insisted. “I was talking to Cook this morning, and I was thinking that tomorrow we might take a supper cruise on the river. Would you like that? There’s dancing,” he noted.

“Dru won’t like that,” she warned him. Drusilla did not travel well over water.

He gave her an assessing look. “No, probably not,” he agreed. Why bring Dru into it? “Do you want to do something that Dru would like too?”

Confused by the question, Willow took refuge in her coffee cup, taking a sip, thinking all the while. “Don’t you?” she finally asked.

His eyes narrowed. “Of course,” he admitted. “Nothing I like better than going out with my girls,” he said blandly. “Fancy an evening out with us? With me and Dru?” He sounded skeptical. “Or, are you asking a question?”

Willow considered that for a moment. She was asking a question, but it was one that was hard to frame. She wondered if he was thinking this through very carefully. He was spending a lot of time with her, and very little with Dru. Last night she had gotten the impression that Dru was annoyed with him about that, which might have been his problem, but she was in caught in the middle if they started quarreling over her.

He offered her the sandwich again, and she took another bite. When she was little, her parents had a woman who came in and cleaned for them three times a week. She would leave treats for Willow in the refrigerator. Zucchini bread with cream cheese and pineapple, graham crackers with peanut butter and Dream Whip, cut carrots and celery packed in used glass jars filled with water to ensure that the cut veggies would stay fresh and turgid, and little tiny sandwiches made from dinner rolls. Sometimes, after she had her snack and finished her homework, they would play cards, or get the good silverware out and polish it at the kitchen table.

“We are separate and unequal,” Willow observed.

That unwittingly Dru-like observation, wrung a smile out of him. “Something like that,” he agreed.

“Because . . .” she frowned a little, “nothing has changed. Not really. We are, more or less, what we’ve always been.”

He thought about that for a moment, tapping the remaining bit of her sandwich against the plate. “There’s a bit of that, too,” he agreed, casting an almost wary glance at her, no longer smiling. “But, the world is made new, in you. I can’t undo it for you—and, I wouldn’t if it meant that I couldn’t have you. I’m selfish that way. I’m selfish, beyond the bounds of reasonable self-interest. I’ll never give you up. That’s a promise, and a threat. I won’t have you thinking otherwise.” He sought her eyes. “Do you understand me, Willow? I won’t give up anything to have you and I’ll have you whether you want it or not. That hasn’t changed.”

She looked away first, but she nodded. It was left to him to decide if it was an acknowledgement or acceptance. He was betting on the former. His fingers threaded through her hair and he kissed her forehead, and the tip of her nose before ducking his head to kiss the fresh bite mark on her throat.

“Finish your breakfast, sweet.”

~~~*~~~

The process of detangling her hair had eaten up time. She was dressed in a blue morning dress with sheer white gauze between the oval neckline and the high-necked white satin collar that buttoned in the back. A small silver and crystal hummingbird pin gave the collar a spot of color. It was too much to hope for that she would only be required to make introductions before being dismissed. Instead, Angelus gestured to the settee, and Willow was forced to take her place there.

Darla wasn’t going to like that, she thought. The rooms that would be used most during her dinner party would be the first floor dining room, salon, and possibly the library as a retreat after dinner for the gentlemen who smoked. Darla would want the salon to be thoroughly cleaned and left in pristine condition before dinner, and they were in the way of that operation. Bypassing the settee, she made herself touch Angelus’ sleeve to get his attention.

He looked down at her. “Yes?”

“I think that you might find the library more comfortable and more out of the way at this time of day,” she suggested, reverting to English in a last minute burst of inspiration.

The estate agent spoke English, but not particularly well, which meant that any business would be conducted in the common language of the house. The salon was the most central and least private of rooms on the first floor. Making everyone work around him would not have bothered Angelus in the least, but the idea of being overheard reached him. It was not a natural train of thought for Willow, and he saw that too, pinching her chin. She was trying to get them out of Darla’s way, tactfully, suggesting a reason that would appeal to him with a subtlety of mind that he found pleasing.

“Quite right,” he said, his eyes crinkling at the corners at how pompous he sounded. He steered Willow ahead of him, with one hand resting on the small of her back. “My cousin is a treasure,” he told the estate agent who murmured something complimentary in agreement.

~~~*~~~

William lounged on Drusilla’s bed, combing his fingers through the neglected Miss Anne’s brown ringlets, straightening her starchy petticoats. She was dressed in a jaunty red velvet dress with corded trim and tiny buttons fashioned from jet in a pinwheel design. Of all of Dru’s vast collection of dolls, Miss Anne most resembled Drusilla, though Dru was oblivious to the resemblance. Dru never, to his knowledge, missed having a reflection. If she had not been required to seek help with her hair or her dresses, she would have anyway. Nothing pleased her more than being the object of someone’s admiring attention whether they were brushing her long, dark hair or buttoning her dress.

She was sitting on the opposite side of the bed from him, sorting out a length of velvet, her needle moving smoothly in tiny stitches as she sewed a length of cloth to the back of the velvet. The seam she was forming between her fingers encompassed a bit of cording that she had made. This morning’s project was a throw blanket for Willow’s chaise. There was a sewing room on the third floor with a sewing machine. Dru liked the lock-stitched results the sewing machine produced, but she didn’t care for the machine itself. The sewing room was stocked with bolts of fabric and furnishings and discarded clothing that Dru might use to make doll clothes.

She nudged his extended leg to get his attention and he picked up the book he had been reading to her. It was a volume of poetry chosen at random. He consulted Miss Anne. “What shall we entertain the Princess with?”

Dru cocked her head to one side, looking at him curiously with a small mysterious smile. He was deaf to her dolls voices and they knew it. Sometimes they mocked him for it, with silence, or amusing non sequiters. Miss Anne was his favorite doll, and knowing this, she tended to be more polite than the others.

Interpreting Dru’s silence as the doll’s, he sighed. “No opinion? Cruel, cruel lady. What if the Princess is displeased with my choice? What then?” William murmured, casting a sideways glance at Dru.

“No tea and cakes for you,” she rejoined. No tea and cakes, the direst of consequences. It was an old joke between them, and he grinned back at her.

He liked to think that Dru’s tea parties were as much for him as her dolls. It was one of the first things he remembered genuinely missing after he had been turned. Not so much sunlight and a body temperature, but the daily ritual of high tea. His mother, even in failing health, had always insisted on tea and the family cook had worked hard to find things that would tempt her fading appetite. On most days they would take tea together in her sitting room, and he would read to her. Dru’s tea parties had been mostly playacting before Willow came into their lives. The girl had to eat, so the character of Dru’s tea parties changed to include real tea and real cakes.

He had a memory of Willow from years ago, half fainting from hunger as she gamely pretended to eat, and his smile faded a little. He hadn’t always taken very good care of her. It was hard to gauge needs that were impossible to personalize, and most of the needs that he learned to pay attention to were by trial and error. Her trial, his error. And even now, she was sitting downstairs with Angelus and some irritating wanker, probably dying for a bath and a few minutes to herself without someone demanding something from her.

Which, unfortunately for her, did absolutely nothing to mitigate his desire to be the one on the receiving end of her undivided attention. When she escaped Angelus’ attention, he would be waiting for her.

Dru knotted her thread and snapped it off with her teeth and he started reading. The volume was Tennyson. He read at random, until she poked him again, this time with the needle. “We are one and one and one and two and two and sometimes three,” Dru informed him. “Sooner than it was meant to be.”

He let the book close without marking his place. “Sooner in what way?” he asked. The directness was a little unexpected, but not entirely unwelcome. Dru’s little game with Willow last night in the bathroom had mostly been for his benefit. He got that Dru had sensed him in the other bedroom, and that she had played on Willow’s fear to tease him, but at the same time, there had been a hint of real menace that he knew he could not afford to ignore.

Using the sharp tip of the needle, she opened a scratch across his shin, her fingers following it to gather the small amount of blood that wept from the scratch. She sniffed at her fingertips before licking the blood off.

“You are full of her. Blood and brains. All singing.”

Like a giddy chorus of hellish cherubs, no doubt, William thought. He really couldn’t recall being more content, more happy, living or unliving.

“Yeah?” he eyed her thoughtfully.

She gave him an almost pitying look. “You worry too much,” she said. “I saw it long ago. The stars sung it to me. Miss Edith knows. Daddy knows. Even Grandmother.”

He frowned a little at that. It was odd, but he was a tiny bit disappointed. He wasn’t sure what it was that he expected. Maybe an echo of the intense jealousy that had been his to bear when he realized that it would never be just Dru and him, but Dru and Angelus, with him somewhere on the margins. Dru was as completely bound to Angelus as William was to Dru. It was in large part simply the nature of the childe-sire bond, though in his case he thought it was a little more complicated than that.

She didn’t have anything more to say on the subject. No comfort to offer, no advise. It was all meaningless. Things happened and there was nothing to do but accept it, or twist and turn, unwittingly to the song’s rhythm. There were times when she felt ancient compared to William, though she was hardly more than a decade his senior. Drusilla cast aside her sewing. Miss Edith had nothing more to offer on the subject. She was taking a wait and see approach.

~Part: 17~

Willow was almost surprised to find her room empty when she returned to it. She started her bath before undressing. After the estate agent departed with a hand written page of instructions, she took Mr. Buttons for a quick walk around the park. It was still raining, and the park was deserted. By the time she returned, the hem of her dress was sodden and her nose was starting to run from the unseasonable cold. She only had a few hours to get herself ready for Darla’s dinner party, which meant no lingering in the bath. It would take hours for her hair to dry enough to put up.

She looked in the wardrobe for something to wear, very conscious of the bite mark on her neck that had to be concealed. There was an oyster satin gown with a high neck that would do, though it looked like something a much younger girl would wear. with large, puffy sleeves that billowed to her elbow and narrowed to little more than lace covering her arms from elbow to wrist. It looked like an old fashioned and unflattering wedding gown, at least to Willow, who had never lost the feeling that evening clothes were variations on prom and wedding attire.

She was putting on the dress when Matilde knocked on her door, and entered after Willow acknowledged the interruption. She didn’t look happy to be there. Darla had sent her to help with her dress and hair. She finished buttoning the dress up the back. Willow sat at her dressing table while Matilde impatiently brushed her hair. William wandered in during this operation.

His expression indicated that he wasn’t particularly taken with the dress, but he didn’t say anything about it. He simply smiled at her, picked up Willow’s hand to kiss it lightly, and told Matilde if he saw another wince, there was going to be hell to pay.

She finished putting Willow’s hair up with a bit more care before excusing herself.

William lifted the lid on her jewelry box, examining its contents with a thoughtful look. With years of practice, she had chosen a dress that would conceal his bite mark on her throat. The pearl choker might have worked just as well for that purpose, but it was a valuable enough piece of jewelry that he kept it in his room, and she hadn’t thought of it. He found an oval locket and lifted it by the chain with one finger. He let it fall back into the box and snapped the lid shut.

“Come across the hall, and we’ll find something for you to wear,” he invited.

She looked up at him. “I’m in character for the poor relation from a Bronte novel,” she said.

That made him smile. “I suppose you are,” he agreed. “Poor pet. You haven’t had a decent bit of alone time all day, have you?”

“I walked Mr. Buttons in the rain.”

He frowned at that. “I don’t want you walking the dog, in the rain, or otherwise.”

She started to open her mouth and then shut it, rising from her dressing table to go with him to his room. He went to the dresser and opened a drawer. Flat black boxes holding her jewelry were casually mixed in with his socks. He opened a lid, examined the contents, and rejected the choice, tossing it back in the drawer and reaching for another box until he found what he was looking for.

It was a diamond necklace on a gold chain with earrings to match. He held it up for her, an expectant expression on his face.

Willow feigned surprise. “Oh. Do I get to express an opinion on this?”

He had been expecting something like this. Tell a woman you love her, and she thinks it changes everything. He removed the necklace from its velvet bed and walked around behind her to fasten it around her neck.

He held the box out to her and after a moment of hesitation, she took the earrings, one by one, slipping the wire through the holes in her earlobes, two bright spots of color staining her cheeks. He stood back a little to admire her. The dress she was wearing was oyster satin, fitted through the bodice with a small bustle in the back. The skirt was a confection of asymmetrical ruffles of pleated organza that arrowed up from the hem to her left hipbone. It was a fussy looking dress and it didn’t suit her.

He went back to the drawer to find a ring, settling on a spray of pearls and diamonds with a matching hairpin. Matilde had piled her hair up, slightly off center, leaving a cascade of curls to fall on the opposite side of the part in her hair. The style was an echo of the ruffles. He tucked the hairpin in under a wave of her light auburn hair where it peeked out, like a flower nestled in her hair. The ring went on the third finger of her right hand, though it could have been worn on any of her fingers save her pinkie. Her ring size did not vary from left hand to right or index finger to third finger, which was fairly unusual according to a jeweler who had measured her fingers for him.

He kissed her fingertips lightly, holding her hand. “It would do you well to keep in mind that we really are sorting out what is amusing and what is not,” he warned, keeping his tone light and even. “I’m not a suitor or a customer.”

He held her hand for a moment longer until he was certain that she grasped the point that he was making and then he let her fingers slide from his grasp and turned his attention to getting himself dressed for Darla’s dinner party.

~~~*~~~

It was always interesting to meet the descendents of people he had killed, Angelus reflected. Wolfaert Adorne was the grandson of one such victim, Jan Adorne. Outwardly pious, a pillar of the community, Jan Adorne had a secret life. He belonged to one of the Illuminati cells that littered Europe in the mid 19th century. The character of these secret societies varied. There were those that were committed to real economic, social, and political change, but more often it was bored, thrill seeking bourgeoisie indulging their more exotic tastes. Jan Adorne fell into the later category. He had been very useful in the short time Angelus had known him, advising him on investments, providing him with entertainments and a fresh supply of victims.

Wolfaert knew nothing about that. His grandfather had died of a heart attack on a business trip as far as he knew, and this had happened decades before he was born when his own father was a child. The two men were chatting amiably when Willow and Drusilla entered the salon to be introduced to the guests who had already arrived. Willow felt the usual attack of nerves that preceded evenings like this one. Darla commandeered her, keeping her at her side as she made introductions.

When William finally graced the salon, nearly everyone expected was already there and it was nearly time to retire to the dining room. Willow found herself seated near the foot of the table between a brother and sister pairing, an English girl named Claire Hamilton and her brother, George. William was seated between Drusilla and Isabella Neri.

Dinner started with cold strawberry soup served in small, chilled bowls with a spoonful of unsweetened whipped cream and a mint leaf garnish. Paulus and Andreas served. Claire Hamilton was busy trying to get her brother to talk to Willow, which frequently meant that she was craning over Willow’s head, or making unsubtle non-verbal gestures to engage her brother. Willow briefly met William’s eyes across the table as she was trying to pretend that she was oblivious to the exchange between the Hamilton siblings. He was listening to something Isabella Neri was saying with a show of polite interest, but his eyes were bright with humor.

She looked down at her strawberry soup to keep from laughing.

Darla had planned a five-course meal. Willow had learned from experience that this was far less food than it sounded like. The strawberry soup covered the bottom of the bowl with less than an inch of depth to it. Each course was a relatively spare offering, sometimes decoratively arranged on the plate with a splash of sauce or a colorful garnish, requiring no more than a polite bite or two between removes. Wine was consumed in much more copious amounts, glasses refilled as soon as they reached a magical half full mark when Paulus or Andreas would smoothly top off the glass.

After dinner, two groups formed. Coffee, wine, sherry, and the petit fours that had appeared with her breakfast, were served in the salon. The library was the destination of choice for smoking. Brandy and whiskey would be served in the library. At a pointed glance from Darla, Willow went to the piano and started to play, sight reading the sheet music that was left there. The socially awkward George Hamilton came over to turn the pages for her, offering her a wry smile.

His sister was engaged by Drusilla, pinning Darla down since she was determined to remain within hearing of Dru, who could drift off on a tangent. Dru had Mr. Buttons in her lap, and was clearly showing off all of the dog’s tricks. Dru was showing Claire how to extend her hand, and Mr. Buttons took the cue to daintily lift his paw and place it gently in the cup of Claire’s hand like he was doing her an immense honor. Willow almost lost her place with the music, but George quickly directed her attention to the correct bar.

When Claire was able to escape Drusilla and Mr. Buttons, she joined them and George offered to get them something to drink. They traded places at the piano, with Claire playing Schubert from memory. It took longer than it should have considering how well Claire played, before Willow correctly identified the piece as Sonata in A.

Compared to her teen years in Sunnydale, she felt pretentious and slightly ridiculous playing name that tune with classical music. There was no radio, no television, and no movies. The Hamilton’s were in their early twenties, more her contemporaries than anyone else invited to this party. Music, books, a handful of journals and magazines in circulation, plays, and the opera were to the Hamilton’s what MTV and obscure, late night cable to Willow and her friends. When it was her turn to return to the piano, she chose from a folio of sheet music that William had brought with him from Vienna. Claire joined her on the bench seat. Not for the first time since she had been introduced to the piano and violin in this century, Willow thought about taking a musical leap forward to the 1990s to play something she missed.

Unfortunately, her memories of music were never that complete. She remembered maddening little bits and pieces of songs, like the plinking notes that proceeded the lyric of a Lisa Loeb song—but she couldn’t recall the words. Trying to work it out on the keyboard or the violin threatened the fragile memory, sometimes making the song unrecognizable to herself. It had taken her months to work out the piano overture from Eric Clapton’s Wonderful Tonight.

The Neri’s were the first to leave, but their departure was a kind of signal, and gradually the other guests filtered out into the night. William and Drusilla left soon after the house had emptied followed by Angelus and Darla. Willow started picking up abandoned glasses and cups in the living room and almost ran into Lucius in the hall.

“You’ll soil your dress,” he pointed out, taking the cups from her.

She looked down at the dress. “It’s all ruffle-y,” she pointed out, thinking that a hideous accident with coffee wouldn’t be a bad thing. “I look like a powder puff.”

They were having a kind of conversation, Lucius realized. They were alone in the house, having a kind of conversation. He wasn’t sure how to prolong it. “Is there anything I can bring you?” he asked.

She looked startled by the question. “N-no,” she shook her head. “I was just going to pick things up and then go up to my room. To read,” she added, though she couldn’t imagine that he cared. “But, thank you, for asking.”

“I’ll get a tray, then,” he offered. If she wanted to pick things up, he could carry them to the kitchen for her.

She smiled. “Good idea,” she agreed.

She returned to the salon and finished straightening furniture and cleaning up while she waited for Lucius to bring a tray to collect the glasses and cups that had accumulated. When he arrived, she thanked him for the tray and asked if he would open the windows in the library to air it out.

While he was in the library, she filled the tray, straightened the pile of sheet music that had ended up resting on the piano, and covered the keys. She was reaching for the knob that controlled one of the gaslight jets when she felt the crawling pins and needles sensation of her barrier ward warning her that someone or thing was coming very close to the house. Reminding herself that no one could get in, she went to the front door, opening it cautiously to look out.

It had stopped raining, but the air was damp and cold. She felt rather than saw Lucius come up behind her. “Do you hear that?” he asked.

“What?” Willow cocked her head to one side, looking up at him curiously.

He was listening to something she couldn’t hear. “Singing,” he said.

Willow’s eyebrows lifted. “Like real singing, and not water running or star’s spinning, or—“

“Real singing,” he confirmed. “Miror quaenam sis tam bella,” he repeated, haltingly, sounding it out without understanding the words.

“Okay,” Willow nodded. “Singing aside, there is something out there,” she announced. “Any sharp wooden objects at hand?” she asked him.

He looked at her, frowning.

“A stake,” she said helpfully. “I need a stake.”

A noise reached her. Someone was on the sidewalk using a stick to make a clattering noise against the wrought iron fences that sepearted the sidewalk from the houses on the street.

“Get away from the door,” he said instead. He had been almost relieved when she asked him to open the library windows. When they were alone in the salon the need to touch her made his palms itch. If he didn’t know it was impossible, he would have sworn sweat was forming, making him want to wipe his hands off. His instincts ran to two goals: feeding and continuing his existence. He knew that if he touched her, he would fulfill at least one of those goals and violate the other. He would feed, amongst other things, and William would obliterate him.

Even now, distracted by the high, clear voice that was growing stronger, and aware of the possibility that there was an undetermined threat outside, he was even more aware of how close he was to her. Close enough to sink his fangs into her throat and watch the glowing oyster satin resting against her skin bloom crimson with blood.

Unbeknownst to him, his face had started to change.

Willow saw it out of the corner of her eye. Her now dry umbrella was resting inside of an umbrella stand in the foyer. She grabbed the handle and jerked it out of the stand. The pointy end of the umbrella was wood.

“That better be because someone is prowling around outside,” she warned him. “If it’s for me, there’s no one around to surprise with the creative use of certain spells.”

She took a step over the threshold onto the porch, holding the umbrella at her side. Lucius swore softly under his breath. It went without saying that if anything at all happened to her on his watch that his un-life would not be worth un-living.

“Come back inside, now,” he insisted.

“Shush!” Willow waived at him.

She heard a high, clear voice, singing. “Mica, mica, parva stella,” and turned, eyes widening at the familiar nursery ryhym. On the sidewalk a small girl in a black dress with a green shawl trimmed in white fur was skipping towards them. She was wearing an odd hat that looked to Willow like a fez held on her head by a band of black velvet that attached to the flat crown of the hat, fitting snuggly under her chin. A tear drop shaped loop of black velvet rested against her forehead, where her hairline should have been. There was no hint of hair, just smooth white skin disappearing under the brimless hat.

“Miror quaenam sis tam bella,” she sang, a mysterious little smile playing on her lips. Almond shaped eyes regarded them with a certain gravity that was full of curiosity and courteous reserve.

Willow considered the child. Unaccompanied at this hour, wearing what looked like a fifteenth century costume. Right. Nothing unnatural there, she thought with an inward snort.

“Super terra in caelo,” she teased.

It was a common enough tune. She placed it at once. Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star. Willow knew this version of it, and joined her, singing, “Alba gemma splendido.”

She inclined her head gravely. There was a hack coming down the street, in no great hurry, drawn by a light draft horse that looked to Willow like an oversized Shetland pony.

“Mica, mica, parva stella,” they finished the song together, “Miror quaenam sis tam bella.”

Lucius’ attention was on the little girl, who was no little girl. She opened the gate, but paused there, looking at them curiously. Looking at Willow. She was ignoring him. It went well with the whole little girl angle she was working. A child approaching a strange couple would look to the woman first.

“May I come in?” she asked.

Willow stared at her, trying to figure out what was going on. She saw movement out of the corner of her eye. Someone was coming around from the back. She spared a breif glance in that direction and saw a young man, casually strolling around the corner of the house.

“You can try,” she answered.

The child pouted. “Don’t want to,” she said, caressing the gate with gloved fingers. “Someone’s done something to make it whisper ‘go away’,” she mused. “I wonder what you know about that?”

Lucius slid past her, meeting the charge of a vampire on her right who had jumped from the ground to the low wall surrounding the small porch. Lucius swept his legs out from under him effortlessly and was pulled off the porch to roll across the ground with his advisary.

At a glance she could tell that Lucius was overmatched. The other vampire was countering him rather effortlessly, tying him up by prolonging the fight rather than ending it quickly.

“You really should invite us in,” the second vampire advised, stepping into the light that was spilling out of the open door behind her. He was what William would have described as a relict, dressed for an age that had come and gone two centuries ago right down to the knee breaches and the fancy buckle shoes. Long, curling black hair fell over his shoulders.

To Willow, he looked like a pirate. Actually, there was some merit to his idea, she decided, watching three more vampires pile out of the hack. Counting the driver that made a total of seven. She counted it out in her head, exactly how long it would take her to shut the door, bolt it, reach the cellar under the butler’s pantry, unlock the door, find two loaded crossbows in the dark.

When it came to storing weapons, Angelus was a vampire without pegboard and masking tape, but willing to improvise to impose order on his armory.

Chances were she was going to die horribly, and for some reason, that made her feel almost like her old self again. She brandished the umbrella of pointy death. “Yeah,” she scoffed, “like I’m stupid enough to invite all of you, or some of you, like you, and you, and you, but not him,” she dismissed the vampire Lucius was fighting, “in,” she finished, and then she feigned dismayed realization and scrambled back into the house to slam the door shut and throw the bolt.

It wouldn’t hold them long, she guessed, running down the hall, tripping over her skirt as she pushed through the swinging door into the butler’s pantry, mumbling the words to the spell to unlock the celler door since she didn’t have time to go rummaging around for the keys.

Fortunately, when it came to weapons, Angelus was nothing if not organized. She found the crossbows hanging from their arched bows, loaded, with a quarrel of bolts below them on a peg. The later she slung over her shoulder, while she took a crossbow in each hand. Her left handed grip was not so good, but it would give her a chance to get two shots off before she had to drop one of the cross bows to reload, so it was worth taking.

She heard the front door give as she crept towards the swinging door. She made herself wait until the door was pushed open before she brought the cross bow in her right hand up to fire. To her horror, nothing happened, and she realised too late that she had forgotten to release the safety.

“Crap, “she muttered, mostly to herself, but the piratical vampire heard her and laughed, sounding geniuinely amused. “It’s really been forever since I’ve encountered a human who even had an idea about how to fight back,” he told her.

Stupid safety on the crossbow, stupid plan on the letting the vampires in, and stupid skirt on her dress making it impossible to kick the vampire moving towards her in the narrow confines of the butler’s pantry. She backed up, hurling the crossbow in her left hand at him.

He batted it aside, reaching for her at the same time that she found the safety release on the crossbow. With no time to aim, she fired.

At close range, the bolt didn’t just hit him, it went right through him, on the fleshy part of his side. He paused long enough to feel the entry and exit wound, pushing his index finger through the hole while Willow fumbled with the quarrel for another bolt to reload. She slipped on her skirt and fell on her butt. The fall changed her perspective on the room with the looming vampire. Butler’s pantry. There was a block of knives on the countertop that in her rush to get into the weapons locker, she hadn’t noticed, and on the end of the counter that extended beyond the cabinets with a rounded lip was something even more welcome. A gun, holstered to the underside of the countertop.

It was, she knew, something Angelus would have thought of.

She didn’t bother to dig for a word or a spell, she just went to power. The crystals buried outside the house in the shape of a pentacle sprang into her mind, all connected and intersecting in lines, and then reshaping and forming around her in a three dimensional construct where everything slowed to match the touch of stillness in the center.

For the vampire who was, to his own mind, toying with her since he had very strict instructions not to kill her, but to bring her back to Zlata Ulicka, there was something wonderful and terrible about the way her eyes bled black. He hardly heard her speak.

The knives left the block of wood, pivoting at a right angle in midair, hardly hanging there a second, quivering slightly, before they hurled themselves at the broad back in front of them.

She rolled to the side, grabbed the pistol out of the holster, keeping the crossbow, as she forced herself to scramble over the injured but not dusty vampire, and run out to the hall. There were two vampires in the hall. A dark haired female vampire and a nearly bald vampire who looked like he had been turned in middle age. Raising the gun, she shot the female vampire in the head and took more time to aim the crossbow at her companion. The bolt hit him center mass, and he hardly had time to register surprise before he collapsed in a shower of dust.

“About time,” Willow muttered to herself as she reloaded the crossbow and stalked past him and out the badly damaged front door. The odd little girl was still out there, humming to herself as she watched Lucius getting pummeled.

She raised the crossbow and shot the vampire stradling Lucius’ chest between the shoulder blades. Lucius had seen the coachman finished off by Angelus, so it wasn’t the shock that it had been to realize that a mortal wound was so final. Still, he found himself looking up at a deus ex machina, glowing in blood spattered white, with eyes as black as onyx who hardly spared him a glance.

“Get up,” she ordered, taking aim with the gun at the little girl.

“That won’t kill me,” she sounded serenely unimpressed. “The Bohemian Reii welcomes you to Prague,” she said, without a flourish or a bow, just very matter of fact.

Lucius stumbled to his feet, swaying a little. He swiped at the blood running from his nose. Willow handed the crossbow to Lucius. With hands that were not quite steady, he managed to get a bolt from the quarrel slung over her shoulder and ram it into place, covering her back.

The male vampire with the long, curling dark hair appeared in the door supporting a female vampire whose face was . . . mostly gone. She was leaning into him, one arm flailing uselessly.

The Bohemian Reii? Wonderful. Vamps with a little club, and a name, and probably a secret handshake. Willow frowned at the sarcastic train of thought, and shook it off.

“I counted seven. There are two down, two dusted,” Willow said, her voice low enough that Lucius recognized that she was talking to him. She had not responded to the odd greeting, and he realized that she had no intention of responding.

“Two unaccounted for,” he told her.

~~~*~~~

God, he was hungry. The last hour of being confined in a house full of humans had whetted his apetite. Four blocks away from the house he found what he was looking for in a dozing coachman waiting for his fare. Enough to sate his appetite and leave something for Dru who looked a bit put out at the expediency of his feeding.

She made a shushing motion with her hand to her lip and pointed to the house. William looked at the house seeing a modest two story townhouse, mostly dark, with lights on in a second floor room. “Yeah? So?” he said.

“It’s late for callers,” she pointed out. “Very late.”

His eyebrow lifted. That was true enough. Someone would be leaving soon, only to discover the now dead driver. Drusilla gestured to him to join her. She walked up the short sidewalk to the door, grasping the knocker. She turned to give him a sly smile and then knocked in a few short, hard raps.

Flanking the door he looked at her, smiling a little. “You are so odd,” he said fondly while they waited for the door to be answered.

A hastily dressed man appeared at the door, looking flushed and annoyed. His expression softened only slightly when he saw the well dressed woman standing in the doorway. Annoyed, but puzzled, he looked out to his coach, seeing the box empty.

“Is there something wrong?” he asked, setting aside his curiousity about the missing coachman.

“Fornication,” Dru hissed at him, sniffing loudly. “The stench of fornication is on you!” she proclaimed dramatically, her voice rising. “Adultry! This is a house of fornication and adultry, and you will pay for your sins.”

William snorted back a laugh at that.

The man at the door heaved a long suffering sigh. “Oh, for God’s sake. Who put you up to this? Was it Tiriac? Very funny, now go away!” he said, trying to shoo her away from the door. “The joke is over, go on now,” he added. His hand crossed the threshold and Dru struck, pulling him out to her and into William’s grasp. He wrapped one arm around his chest and held on to him as Dru pushed his head to one side and sank her fangs into him. While she fed, William’s lips stroked her ridged brow until she was sighing in contentment and dantily lapping at the last of the blood.

Never one to simply drop her victim and run, Dru took his dead weight, positioned it and herself against the intact barrier at the door and let go of him. He sort of slid and fell back on the floor with a solid thump when his head connected.

The sound roused the other occupant of the house, who called out from upstairs and Dru looked at him with a question in her eyes. William gave it a pass, extending his hand to her. “I’m full,” he pointed out. “Rather have a nice walk with you, my ripe, wicked plum,” he crooned.

She preened under his gaze, licking the corner of her mouth as they glided away, hand in hand. They had spent many a night roaming around with no particular object in mind. Dru was much better company than anyone gave her credit for being. She could be counted on to deliver observations that were always unique and sometimes extraordinary. She took a great deal of pleasure in the night, turning her face up to bask in the starlight, her dark eyes soaking in her surroundings with a preditorial avidity that he found mesmerizing. She was as graceful as a dancer, her body occasionally, deliberately, brushing his.

After the build up, the kill was faster than he expected. Getting into houses was one of Dru’s special talents. She could talk anyone into letting her in, and if that failed, her prodigious gift for thrall, turned her victims to putty. After the killing, she could spend hours picking through other people’s things. He was a little surprised that she hadn’t taken anything. She had a habit of picking up things for Willow in particular that sometimes was less than pleasant on the receiving end.

“No presents for Willow or Mr. Buttons?” he asked when their path had them circling around to the park.

She gave him a secretive sideways look. “Presents for your golden boy,” she said with a sly smile. “Left all alone in the house with her. Such lovely thoughts in his head. He wants blood and flesh, and soft sounds, and salt tears as warm as rain to drown in.”

William looked at her, trying to work out a meaning. “Her? You don’t mean Willow?” he said, disbelieving.

“He doesn’t call her that. He doesn’t call her anything at all,” Drusilla explained. “She’s just ‘her’. It’s lovely, isn’t it? The stars through the damp sky?”

Lucius and Willow? Oh, no. Hell no. “We are going home,” he said.

~~~*~~~

Angelus’ plans for the evening were to follow the delectable Miss Hamilton home for a tryst in the garden. They had been seeing each other for weeks, ever since they had been introduced at a party in the week after they had arrived in Prague. He knew Darla was following him, which only made it more fun for him. Claire was waiting for him in the arbor, nearly blue with cold, but no matter. Her eyes lit up when she saw him, and she breathed his name like it was a prayer.

“Beautiful, Claire,” he answered her, taking her gloved hands in his own. “I wanted to kiss you all night, so badly,” he said, pressing his lips to her hands.

“Oh . . . yes,” she said, her blue eyes taking in everything about him with evident pleasure. “Please,” she raised his face with her fingers.

Their lips met and clung, hers trembling a little.

“This is madness,” he whispered, impressed at how guilt riden he managed to sound. “I’m married—“

She winced a little. “I know,” her forehead came to rest against his. “I keep thinking about that. You, your poor sister,” she sighed.

“Don’t,” he whispered. “I can’t bear to think that I’ve made you sad thinking about me. Tell me a good thing about today,” he urged. “Anything, darling. Just one good thing.”

She smiled a little. “I like your cousin,” she admitted.

“Willow?” Angelus gave her an encouraging smile. “I’m so glad,” he said. “I hope that you can be friends.”

“Actually,” Claire ran her fingers over his lapel, “I was thinking that she might suit George very well,” she said with a wry smile. “Is it crazy? I’m trying to coax my brother into paying suit to your cousin so we can have some excuse to see each other more often? I’m a terrible person.”

For a second Angelus actually considered it. The Hamiltons were very comfortably settled financially, and he savored the idea of seeing Willow married, and then slowly killing the groom, the groom’s sister, and all of the annoying guests. It sounded like fun. He had a feeling that William would be a spoil sport about it and exercise his veto.

“No,” he soothed. “You aren’t terrible, Claire. Far from it,” he assured her. “A bit frozen, though?” he noted. “You should go inside,” he encouraged.

“When will I see you again?” she asked.

He tilted his head to one side. “Sooner than you think,” he teased.

~~~*~~~

Andreas was in the stables the whole time, feeding the horses, cleaning their stalls and adding fresh straw. Matilde had left with Paulus and Cook and he was on his own. He thought that after he was done in the stables, he might return to the house and see what Lucius was doing. The horses were a little restless tonight. He put it down to a lack of exercise and being shut in the stable while it rained.

The sound of the gunshot from inside the house got his attention. For a moment he froze, one hand on the lead shank of the disfigured mare. She tossed her head, snapping him out of his moment of startlement.

There were holstered pistols in both carriages. He made his way into the carriage house to get both of them, tucking one into the waistband of his pants. He made his way from the carriage house to the kitchen door. Once inside the kitchen he moved quietly up the hall. Like Willow, Andreas knew that there was a large cache of weapons in the under the butler’s pantry. He cautiously pushed the swinging door open, taking in the evidence of a fight. Blood on the floor and walls, the discarded and damaged crossbow, and the open cellar door. For a moment he very seriously considered leaving, quietly. Instead, he found a stake in a step shaped basket at the top of the cellar stairs and went out into the hallway. The front door looked broken, like someone had kicked it in, and there were two figures outside the door that reeked of blood.

~~~*~~~

Nothing had gone right, Nicholas reflected as he held Madwyn to him. He was relatively certain that she would heal, but the head wound that had been inflicted on her was severe. It looked like the point of impact had been the bridge of her nose. Her left eye was oozing clear fluid and he could see grayish tissue where the bullet had exited the back of her head. She was unable to speak, and a mewling sound of distress wept from her throat as her hands moved in an uncoordinated way.

This was Sian’s raid. She was the least imposing of all of them, easily mistaken for a child. The idea had been to lure the girl out or trick her into inviting them in. In the event of plan A, they were to grab her and go, and plan B, wait until the vampires returned and pick them off one by one. This was partly his fault. Once the girl was outside of the house, he had thought that they could finish this by intimidating her into inviting them inside.

He had not expected her to not only put up a fight, but to fight so well. The little bit of magic she had used had gained her time, but most of the fight had been an almost admirable demonstration of ingenuity. Madwyn was too badly injured to be useful, and she had dusted two of their party. He couldn’t recall the last time anyone had done so well against them.

“We appear to be at a stalemate,” Sian observed.

Nicholas wanted to correct her. This was no stalemate. As long as they were prohibited from killing her outright, the girl had an edge on them. Not that she knew that, but still, a bluff was a bluff, and if she refused to be bluffed, their position was tenuous.

He didn’t have the opportunity to discover how she would respond. Andreas had gone to one knee, using the door and the stair for cover. He fired a crossbow bolt into the back of the female vampire. Nicholas barely had time to feel her body jerk with the impact, before Madwyn exploded in a spray of dust that sparkled in the gaslight.

Moving forward, Andreas reloaded and found a new target, coming at Lucius and Willow from their left. He took his second shot. The bolt struck, but the shot was not fatal. Lucius had chosen to take out the vampire shadowing them on the right, which just left the injured male vampire and the tiny vampire at the gate. The male vampire was almost on them when Willow tore her attention from the small vampire at the gate and gestured to him, and he appeared to stop, as if some invisible force immobilized him.

Lucius didn’t bother with the crossbow. Feeling a grim kind of recognition as the dark haired vampire realized that he couldn’t move, he nodded his head once, slowly. Holding a bolt like a stake, he finished off the injured vampire.

The tiny vampire at the gate simply disappeared. Willow looked around for her in vain. The coach was still on the street, the horses pulling it, moving restlessly in their harness, setting their tack to jingling softly.

“Get in the house, now,” Lucius urged.

Willow didn’t debate with him. She picked up the hem of her skirt, climbing the stairs, stepping around Andreas with a whisper of satin ruffles as she crossed the threshold. She sat on the stairs, holding the gun in her lap, leaving a smear of gunpowder residue on the oyster satin. Lucius followed her in and shut the door as well as he could. The door knob was on the floor and the wood around the bolt was splintered.

She stared at the door, almost as if she expected someone to come through it.

“What the hell was that?” Andreas asked the question that had nagged at him as soon as he heard the gunshot.

Lucius was just as baffled. He shrugged, shaking his head.

Willow regarded them wearily, feeling herself cast in the awkward position of explaining one of the facts of un-life to the un-living. “Vampires don’t get along with demons and they don’t get along with other vampires,” she said, unselfconsciously quoting Ruppert Giles. She gestured to the door. “That was the resident big bad inviting Angelus to come out and play, which really isn’t smart.”

The two vampires were looking at her, waiting for her to elaborate.

She could only shake her head. “Trust me on this. Making an enemy of Angelus, or Darla, or William, is almost always the last mistake that you ever make.”

~~~*~~~

For William, who almost expected to be walking in on a domestic drama, the actual drama enacted on the front stairs was taken in at a glance. His girl, his lovely, sweet natured Willow, was sitting on the stairs with a gun in her lap. When he came through the door, Andreas and Lucius pivoted to face him, both armed, and by all appearances, both putting themselves between anything coming through the door and his girl.

Drusilla’s gaze swept the foyer, lingering on a smear of blood and brains that decorated the wall, scarred by a bullet hole. William brushed past Andreas. Willow met his gaze. “Seven vamps, calling themselves the Bohemian Reii. One of them got away.”

“One?” he started to question that, and then shrugged it off. Hell. One out of seven? He looked around. “How did they get in?” he asked.

She shrugged. “It seemed like a good idea at the time,” she said. “Lucius was outnumbered outside, and it split them up.”

William looked at Lucius. “I want to hear about this,” he told him, taking the gun from Willow and handing it to Lucius. “And I want to know who thought to do anything but lock her inside and keep anything from getting at her.”

“That would be me,” Willow admitted.

Lucius nodded. “That’s true. She injured two of them and dusted another,” he said, having missed the vampire she dusted in the hall. Recalling her count, he frowned. “Or was it two? It all happened so fast.”

“Two,” she acknowledged. “Butler’s pantry, knives, slowed one. Crossbow, hallway, big pile of dust. Gunshot to the head,” she made a vague gesture at the blood decorating the wall without looking at it, her expression registering distaste. “Crossbow, front walk,” she looked at Andreas. “We held them off until Andreas flanked them from the inside of the house, and then Lucius and Andreas took down two each.”

On the heels of this extraordinarily succinct explanation, Drusilla came to sit beside her on the stairs. “Was it fun?” she asked.

Willow gave a snort of surprised laughter. “Uh . . . yes,” she admitted. “They were doing the whole spooky, menacing, the Bohemian Reii welcomes you to Prague thing, and thanks for the welcome, and here’s a nice ass kicking to send you on your way,” she summarized. She mimed a cheery wave, “Have a really crappy night!”

A reluctant smile tugged at the corners of William’s lips as he watched Dru draw Willow back into her arms. “You saved Mr. Buttons and Miss Edith?”

Clearly this thought had not occurred to Willow and she turned her head to look at Dru. “Exactly in that order,” she said without cracking a smile.

William shook his head. “If one of them got in, then let’s assume there is more. Sweep the house, top to bottom,” he ordered, “and then, let’s get this mess cleaned up,” he took charge. “Dru, my love? Stay with Willow until I let you know that the house is secure.”

Dru pouted. “Give her back the gun and let her shoot them. That sounds like more fun.”

“Bullets won’t dust a vampire,” Willow told her.

Dru smiled. “But it is painful,” she said with a sly, oddly respectful grin, echoing Willow’s thoughts on the matter. If she ever got back home, they were going to start using guns if she had her way about it.

~~~*~~~

Watching Angelus’ performance in the garden, Darla concluded that she was supposed to be angry or jealous. Old habits die hard. From what she had gleaned of the matter when he was first turned, her childe’s most significant relationship had been with a disapproving father. To a certain extent, Darla had taken the place of Angelus’ father as the person whose disapproval he courted. She was judicious about lading out her punishments.

The Hamiltons interested her. There was an adventurousness to the sister that she could appreciate, otherwise, she couldn’t see anything particularly interesting about her other than the fact that she had Angelus’ fleeting attention and lacked the potential to become another Drusilla. She didn’t seem to have any particular gifts that might make her more valuable in Angelus’ eyes.

She let Angelus catch up with her. She really wasn’t hungry, and Darla suspected he wasn’t either. The dinner party had kept them in, and though she was centuries past the restless feeling that came when night hours were curtailed, she could still appreciate being away from the house. Prague had not been her choice, it had been Angelus’, but she loved the house, and she had grown to like the city. She could almost see them, if not settling in Prague, maintaining the house and using the city as a stopping off point between travels, much as London had once been for them.

“It went well, don’t you think?” Angelus said after his longer stride had put him a half step in front of her before he adjusted to her slower gait.

She smiled at him. She ran to keep up with no man, and he knew it.

“I met our estate agent today,” he told her. “His name is Mueller. He’s Austrian.”

Darla didn’t look at him. This was her favorite part. The slightly nervous chatter that brought out the rolling cadence of his brogue as he waited and wondered what she knew and how angry she was about it and how she would retaliate. He was never boring.

The afternoon was spent reviewing the arrangements that Willow had made, largely on Angelus’ instructions, regarding banking, the ownership of the house, and accounts that had been set up to maintain the house’s needs. None of which particularly interested Darla, though she gave Angelus credit for managing the means that provided them with a lifestyle that suited her perfectly. While other vampires lived below ground, on the margins, in the shadows, they lived extremely well, enjoying all that humankind had to offer.

Who would have guessed that inside the drunken, discontent boy she had found in Galloway, who had gotten by too long on looks and charm, there was this amazing creature who was filling the silence between them with his hurried discourse on their finances? He had made a fortune for them, made it possible for them to travel and live virtually anywhere in the world without discomfort. He had shaped a family around them, and as annoying as Darla found each of them, she understood that they were, on the balance, rather remarkable. Drusilla, William, and very soon, Willow.

It might have been very different. The life they had suited her, and so did he, even when he was making an effort not to suit. Maybe even more so. She’d never been in love, not living, nor dead. She didn’t love him, not really. He was just hers, and she had chosen well.

~~~*~~~

Even before they reached the damaged front door, it was aparent that something had happened while they were gone. Cook was standing just inside the foyer, evidently on guard. The salon was empty, but the dining room was not. The tableware and serving pieces had all been cleared away. There was an unfurled street map of Prague on the table as well as what looked like magical components. Willow was sitting in one of the armchairs that belonged at the head and the foot of the table with a thick black leather bound book in her lap. She was still dressed in the gown she had worn to dinner, but it was sprayed with dried blood.

William was standing with his hands apart, braced on the edge of the table, watching Willow until he heard them come in, and then he stood up, spinning around to face them.

Angelus was direct. “What happened?”

“After we left, Willow felt something setting off her barrier wards and went out to take a look. Seven vampires,” William nodded to the out of doors. “Lucius got drawn away from her trying to keep one of them off her, so Willow thought it would be a good idea to invite a few of them in to split them up. Andreas was in the stable and he helped out.”

Angelus started to turn to her, but William slid in between them. “Only one of them got away, and she’s reversed the invitation and strenghtened the wards,” he told Angelus.

Angelus looked down at the shorter vampire, who stood his ground. He mentally reviewed what William had told him. “Reversed an invitation? Didn’t know that could be done,” he admitted.

“Now you do. Clever girl is my witch,” William told him, retreating as far as the edge of the table, leaning against it. “She’s going to try a locator spell, see if we can’t find what we are up against.”

Willow tilted her head to one side, feeling like she was at a bizarro-world Scooby meeting—with Darla and Angelus, and William. Dru wandered in next, doing a twirl. “Did you hear the lovely news? Our Miss Willow saved Mr. Buttons and Miss Edith from bad people.” No one could look as bloodthirsty and childishly gleeful at once as Dru.

William shook his head when Angelus’ attention returned to Willow. “Ask Lucius. He tells it better,” he gave Willlow a sideways look, “the way she tells it, she stumbled, fell a lot, and managed to wound two of them and dust another two. The way Lucius tells it she was less inept.”

Willow looked up at him. “Actually, I’ve been thinking about that, and it seems off,” she said. “I don’t know what they wanted, other than to announce their presence, but it seems to me, we were outnumbered, and caught flat footed. If it was supposed to be an ambush, what was slowing them down?” She shook her head and shrugged in answer to her own question. “Maybe killing wasn’t on the agenda for the evening.”

Angelus had her go over it again, coaxing details out of her, with Darla adding questions as they went along. Eventually Lucius and Andreas were invited into the dining room to give their account of the evening.

“Bohemian Reii?” Darla repeated when Willow came to that part. She looked at Angelus, who shook his head. “Lucius?”

Moderately surprised at being included in the discussion, the younger vampire shook his head. “It didn’t mean anything to me.”

Angelus gestured to the book Willow was holding. “William said something about a locator spell,” he prompted.

She smoothed her hand over the page she had been reading. “There are a couple of promissing spells, including a general locate demons spell that looks pretty neat. I’ve got the spell components for that one, but, I was thinking . . . if the spell could be altered to pick up vampires only, that would be more useful. I’m not really sure how to do that,” she admitted.

“Just do what you can,” Angelus told her, gesturing to her as if he expected her to get to it now.

“I thought it might be better to do it closer to dawn,” Willow volunteered. “At dawn, where is a vampire going to be?”

~Part: 18~

Willow performed the locator spell on the dining room floor. Preparing the spell components had consumed several hours, and to her surprise, Angelus assisted in the time consuming process of grinding spell ingredients with mortar and pestle, getting the precise weights and measures worked out, and then following the spell book instructions for her while she combined the ingredients.

They had odd little moments like this when she almost recognized him, or recognized Angel in him. He wasn’t moody or brooding the way Angel was. In part it was the nervousness that she felt around him, all the time. Even when she had known him in Sunnydale, with the soul, he made her feel nervous without ever meaning to. The only difference was that her nervousness made Angel uncomfortable while Angelus seemed to savor it. He was giving her plenty of space to work, and she thought it was deliberate, that he was making an effort to keep from distracting her.

Once everything was ready, they returned to the dining room. Darla and William had gone into the salon, but when they appeared in the hallway, carrying the spell components, they left the salon to join them in the dining room.

Willow made the decision to work on the floor. It just seemed easier to her to achieve and maintain her focus there. The map was spread out in front of her. She took her time once she got settled on the floor. She felt a little light headed, partly from exhaustion, partly from the magic she had used earlier. She re-read the spell until she was satisfied that she had it memorized, and then she set aside the book and cast her circle. Raising the cup containing her spell ingredients, she invoked the Goddess and began the casting, sprinkling the ingredients over the map.

For a minute, nothing happened, and she frowned, wondering if she had missed something, and then the map started to sparkle. Glittery bits coalesced. A pleased grin broke, and she thoughtlessly murmurred, “Oooh, pretty!”

William snorted back a laugh. She had started out the evening looking elegant, if demure, in the oyster satin, and now she looked like a bit of a ragamuffin, dirty and dishelved, with her skirt rucked up around her to accommodate a pose that no one would have considered for such attire.

Willow studied the map intently, not sure how long the effect would hold. Before she had started she had carefully marked the map with their approximate location so she wouldn’t have to puzzle it out later, and sure enough there was a concentration of the glitter there. The next significant concentration of glitter was to the west, distractingly dense. So much so that she almost missed the sparkle moving together across the river, in the castle district, arrowing in towards—

Power punched back, like a fist, slamming into her forehead, snapping her head back, making her grit her teeth and physically scramble backwards to get away from it, breaking her circle and terminating the spell. Her hands went to her face, half expecting to find blood. For a moment she just held her forehead, and then she gave vent to the feeling. “Ow!”

William reacted first, reaching her and kneeling down beside her. “Are you all right? What happened?”

“I think so,” she confirmed, rubbing her head. “It was going great and then, pow! I could feel power punching back at me,” she said woozily. “I’m going to have such a headache,” she predicted. “There’s a magical signature that’s a doozy,” she mumbled.

“Zlata Ulicka,” Lucius volunteered. “Alchemists have lived there for centuries.”

“Well, thanks for mentioning that,” Willow sniped, covering her mouth with the back of her hand. “Something demony there too, I got that much before I got pushed out.”

William eyed her warily. “You’re looking a bit green, pet,” he observed. He shook his head, looking up at Angelus. “According to Lucius, she shot one of them in the head—massive head wound, eye hanging out of the socket, and doesn’t bat an eye,” he relayed, inviting contrast to her present queasiness.

“Oh . . . I really am going to be sick,” Willow realized as the memory of the injured vampire intruded.

Lucius and Angelus looked around for something, anything, a basin, a towel. William just scooped her up, carrying her through the narrow hallway to the kitchen. Andreas was dozing in a chair, and as soon as he heard them coming he jumped up.

“Get the door,” William ordered, carrying her out into the garden. The sun was coming up, but this side of the house was still in the shade in the early morning. There was a low bench on the walk between the back of the house and the coal bin. He set Willow down on it before he turned back to Andreas. “Get her a glass of water from the pump.”

Somewhere between the dinning room and the garden, her skin had grown clammy. It was an almost pleasant distraction from her heaving stomach. Too much magic. She put her hand on the back of her head gingerly, wondering if she could feel the pulse that was sending throbbing waves of pain through her head.

He squatted down in front of her, gathering her until her head was resting on his shoulder. “Just breathe,” he suggested, rubbing her back.

“If I throw up, I’m throwing up on you,” she told him.

“It would serve me right,” he agreed, kissing her head. “Give it a minute, and then, you need to go to bed.”

Andreas handed him the glass of water and withdrew to the doorway where Angelus and Darla were standing.

The fresh air helped her regain her equilibrium, and Willow managed to make it up the stairs on her own. She considered undressing and settled for removing the most easily removed elements of her attire, the hairpins, jewelry, stockings, and her slippers, then she got in bed, curling up in a ball under the covers.

Dru came in and sat on the bed inside the curve of Willow’s body. She made her roll over on her back and smoothed her hand over Willow’s cheek. Accompanied by a wave of nausea, Willow felt the mattress move as Dru swayed. She was like a cobra, preparing to strike.

“Look into my eyes, dearie,” Dru cooed to her. “Princess will take it all away.”

~~~*~~~

Drusilla had retired for the evening while they were still working out the details for the locator spell. After Willow had gone to bed, William, Angelus, and Darla conferred. William seemed to be the only one who found Willow’s resourcefulness to be a little disturbing. According to Lucius’ version of the events, the confrontation might have been avoided entirely had she simply stayed in the house, though Lucius didn’t actually attach any blame to her for that.

In fact, both Lucius and Andreas seemed to feel that without her, things would have gone much worse. He wondered if Angelus and Darla were picking up on the subtle shift in attitude that had taken place.

He really wasn’t surprised when he went up to Willow’s room to find it empty. He went to Drusilla’s room in search of them, and found his sire and his lover in bed. Willow was on her stomach, her head turned away from the door and Dru was sitting up beside her, with a paint brush, pretending to paint her back with one hand while the other was buried between Willow’s spread legs.

He undressed and joined them in bed, kneeling on the opposite side of Willow’s body, his hands roving over the cool flesh of his dark goddess, gleaming in the dark, sliding his fingers over her smooth, hairless cunt. Her eyes shone, dark and fathomless, seeking his. She raised the hand holding the paint brush, using the silky horsehair bristles to trace his eyebrow and cheekbone down to his jaw. It tickled more than anything else, and his gaze dropped to Willow, who was intensely ticklish, and lying oddly still despite that.

“She was too squirmy,” Dru explained.

He knew before he rolled her over what he would find. She was blank eyed from thrall. More or less. There was a flicker of awareness in her eyes that hinted that she was at least on some level aware of what was going on, but trapped inside of it.

Dru leaned back against the pillows that were propped up against the padded headboard of her bed. She slid one arm under Willow’s neck, bending her head to whisper into her ear. “William’s here, lovey,” she said, nuzzling Willow’s cheek, kissing the corner of her mouth.

He sat back on his heals, biting his lower lip, a frown gathering, his erection deflating a bit. He didn’t want her like this. He wished that he had been here tonight to see her take on no less than seven vampires with nothing but her wits and two inexperienced minions to rely on. It irritated him that Dru had done this to her. Robbed of her choices. She didn’t deserve to be treated like this, and for that matter, neither did he. If it was Angelus, he would have suspected that it was deliberate, since it was Dru, he decided that it was just her warped judgement at work.

Her hands moved over Willow’s ribs, arrowing in to cup her breasts. Moving like a sleepwalker, Willow moved her leg, sliding it over his hip as her body rose in invitation. Catching his eye, Drusilla ran a wickedly sharp fingernail over his breast bone, leaving a trail of blood welling in her wake.

“You aren’t afraid of anything,” Dru whispered, bringing her blood wet fingers to Willow’s lips. “You are our fierce, beautiful girl, and someday the world will tremble before you,” she said, drawing her fingers across her lips. “I’ve seen it, in a vision.”

She gathered more blood from the seeping wound, that even now was starting to close and applied it like it was perfume, to Willow’s throat, the space between her breasts, slipping between her thighs. He watched two of Dru’s long, elegant fingers penetrate her, her thumb moving over her clitoris. Her head fell back against Dru’s upper arm as her back arched into the caress and Dru turned her head to her, kissing her.

With an almost imperceptible sigh, he moved closer, giving Willow the support of his thigh under the leg she had moved to draw him in. The slow, undulating motion of her body lifted her breasts. “So fierce,” Dru purred between kisses, her long, dark hair falling to lay on Willow’s shoulder, a long lock curling over her breast. He bent his head to the other, letting her nipple brush his lips as she pushed herself into Dru’s hand.

“Show him what you really are,” Dru said.

He didn’t have time to ponder the meaning of that. One seond he was hovering over her, feeling annoyed with Dru, and wondering how to get out of this, and the next, he was on his back. It was impossible. She couldn’t move that fast, and she didn’t have the strength to overwhelm him even by accident, but she had. Her legs were tangled with his and she was bending him back awkwardly at the hips, rubbing herself against the hardening length of his cock as she licked the last of the blood that Dru had drawn off his chest in rough, cat-like swipes of her warm tongue, looking up at him through the tangle of her hair.

Her sharp little fingernails dug into his upper arms. She was whispering something in Latin, licking his throat, her blunt teeth scraping his skin, her warm, wet cunt sliding over his cock. He heard Dru’s hand come down sharply on her ass, the sound loud. She slanted her mouth over his, thrusting her tongue into his mouth, refusing to let him take control of the kiss, even when he would have broken it off for no other reason than to let her breath. It was Dru who pulled her off of him, leaving him panting as she pushed Willow up until she was stradling him, her hands tangling in Willow’s hair as she nuzzled her throat and bent her head down to take one of her nipples into her mouth. It wasn’t exactly that he couldn’t move, it was just that he felt like he was moving through tar. Now that his legs were free, and he didn’t necessarily have to worry about hurting Willow, he managed to straighten out the awkward angle of his body, but the effort and concentration that required was enough to make him feel a bit worried.

Dru was kissing her way down Willow’s stomach, one arm behind her to support the arch of her back, the other hand on his chest. Willow was pushing her head down, leaning back so far that her hair fell over his thighs. He knew exactly when Dru reached her clitoris by the way her body quivered, her hips canting forward. He could imagine Dru using the cool tip of her tongue to tease her, though he couldn’t see anything but the back of her head.

The hand on his chest moved down, fingernails scoring his chest, the scent of blood and sex thick between the three of them. Dru’s arm left Willow’s back and she collapsed against his legs, lifting her own until her feet were flat on the mattress, bracketing his rib cage. She was keening softly, her ass rocking against his cock as she neared orgasm. He could move just enough to grasp Willow’s ankle, and it was driving him wild, the sounds they were making, the contrasting hot and cold sensation of their smooth skin on his.

They came apart, Dru lifting her head, pushing Willow off of him, stradling his head. He found that as soon as she lowered herself to his mouth, he could move his arms enough to lock them around her hips. He wanted to flip them over and fuck one of them while he feasted on the other, but no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t seem to get his shoulders and hips to cooperate. A frustrated growl left his throat and he heard Dru laughing, even as she bent at the waist, one hand braced on the mattress near his hip, the other on his cock.

He groaned at the sensation of Willow’s warm mouth surrounding him. He wasn’t sure who was doing what to whom anymore. It didn’t matter if it was thrall or magic, or both. He spent so much time trying to control both of them, in one way or another. His tongue lashed Dru’s clit. Willow alternated between his cock and kissing Dru while her hand moved up and down on his cock, never letting him come.

The lessening of the magical restraint that Willow placed on him was a gradual thing, like the thrall that was wearing off, the spell that held him faded until he was able to turn the tables on them. Instinctively, he reached for Dru first, rolling her on her stomach and thrusting into her cunt. She drove him crazy sometimes, with her games, and her insatiable craving for pain. She couldn’t get off without someone hurting her, and he hated it. As soon as he was satisfied that his cock was sufficiently lubricated he withdrew from her and forced himself into her ass. She was grabbing at Willow, leaving little half moon marks in her skin that welled with blood.

When she tried to pull Willow to her to taste the blood she had drawn, he grabbed a handful of her hair and visciously yanked her head back. “Mine,” he reminded her, shaking her.

Dru shuddered, moaning, grinding herself against him. He pushed her head to one side and sank his fangs into her throat in a deep, hard bite, the kind a preditor used to hold its prey through its death throes. She came, collapsing under him in a show of submission that he would have found touching if he wasn’t so furious with her. He relaxed his hold on her throat, feeling her blood dripping over his lips as his eyes picked Willow out.

Thrall bound or not, she seemed to recognize that he was in a dangerous mood, but Dru held her still, stroking her stomach, smearing blood with the sweep of her fingers. “I’ve seen it,” Dru whispered. “Falling, always and ever, slow as a leaf tumbling on a breeze, but it could be like floating, or flying,” she moved her head, shifting and squirming out from under William. She sat up, shivering at the pain the movement caused, dark eyes shining. “Come to me?” she entreated.

Willow slowly placed her hands in Dru’s, allowing her to pull her upright as Dru leaned against William, lifting their joined hands over his head to include him as Dru’s arm settled behind his neck. She laid her head against his shoulder, her forehead resting on his throat. The deep bite mark he had inflicted was still bleeding freely.

“This is Willow,” she told him, as if they were being introduced for the first time. “She’s never anything that we expect her to be,” she went on, tugging Willow in, closer. “My beautiful, terrible, wicked boy, looking for his Goddess in the night sky,” her lips touched his ear as she lowered her voice to the barest of whispers. “Look closer to the ground.”

He had a memory of coaxing her into a position that was awkward for her in the big sleigh bed that dominated his old bedroom in the Charlotte Street house. He had been leaning against the footboard, sitting on his heels, holding Willow by the waist as she stood on the mattress, wobbling a little, looking skeptical. He had wanted her to stradle him until she was resting on his thighs. There had really been no question that she was going to do it, and his wheedling tone was more to molify her than anything else.

She had choices. From her point of view, they were usually lousy choices, but she had choices. Of course, when she actually reached him, he hadn’t been able to resist pushing his face into her smooth thighs, bumping his nose against her warmest, wettest flesh, tasting her while she clutched at the arms holding her, too worried about falling to fully appreciate the caress, which just made him linger over it.

She had always tasted good to him. Once he settled on keeping her, he spent a lot of time showing her how to please him, managing along the way to discover that it wasn’t necessarily skill that he craved. It was this, the blush that warmed her skin, and the slightly uncoordinated way that she moved when she was a little overwhelmed. It was the way her heartbeat took off when he talked to her.

“My girl has the most delicious cunt. I want to wake you up with my head between your thighs, my tongue lapping up your sweetness. You’re so wet for me. Feel that, baby? Feel how your cunt flows for me? Like that?” His lips, tugging on her clitoris, making her legs tremble. He had guided her down to him, whispering to her to use her hand to spread the lips of her cunt apart as his cock butted against her, feeling her fall heavily, awkwardly against his shoulder as she did what he instructed. He tried to control her descent even as his instincts were screaming at him to thrust into the hot, wet channel that was ever so slightly resisting his penetration.

When she was settled on him, his cock embedded in her to the root, he had to stop to get her organized, because she really didn’t understand how to do this, how to plant her feet on the mattress and push with her legs so she could move up and down on him at her own pace. Her halting attempts were full of concentration and uncertainty. She just sort of bounced on his thighs, using the footboard to balance herself.

He had tried to explain to her how to move, an exercise that decended into the ridiculous. “It’s like riding a horse,” he told her. “Just lean into it and use your legs to—“

“I don’t know how to ride a horse,” she pointed out, since he seemed to have forgotten that.

He had spent a fair bit of time after that teaching her, but never really getting beyond just staying in the saddle and handling the reins. The little grey mare in the stables, the one that had been ruined by the coachman, had been meant for her to ride.

So he had tumbled her back on the bed, laughing, because she was so clumsy, and so delicious, and when he hit the right angle inside of her, the expression on her face was everything he wanted.

This was just wrong. It was her body, her welcome warmth surrounding him, her scent, her soft sounds, but she felt off to him. The movement of her body as she stradled him, exactly as he meant her to then, was unexpectedly fluid, like she had channelled Dru’s grace. Her gaze was direct. There was no fear or uncertainty, no shyness or shame, no hint of thoughts flying through her head. Sometimes she looked so lost that he couldn’t look away and leave her even more alone.

He couldn’t bear looking at her like this. Threading his fingers through her hair, he pushed her face into his throat and made himself concentrate on what did feel right, his hand moving over her back. I’ll make this up to you, baby, he promised himself as her body rose and fell on his with mechanical efficiency. Dru was pressing up against his back, her arms moving against him as her hands guided Willow’s hips.

He barely registered the sting of her fingernail opening up a cut on his throat, grimly concentrating on finding his release and ending this hideous parody of Willow fucking him. If it wasn’t the worst fuck in memory, worse even than his first time with Dru and Angelus, he might have come when he felt Willow’s tongue pressed into the scratch Dru had opened on his throat, or from Dru biting his shoulder while one of her slim fingers worked its way into his ass. It was the pressure on his prostate that finally accomplished it, and he held Willow, his arm clamped down on her hips as he jerked against her.

~~~*~~~

He was determined to get her cleaned up and back in her own bed, and then he and Dru were going to have a little talk. Dru followed him into Willow’s room, turning down the covers for her, but when she started to get in bed with her, he stopped her with a seldom used word.

She looked so startled that it might have been funny, except that he was angry, and not seeing the humor in it.

“No?”

“No,” he repeated.

She wrung her hands, her eyes liquid with distress. Normally, she had him at the fussy hand movements. He waited. Next came a cringe, a whining moan, the rolling eyes, the tearing at the hair. He crossed his arms over his chest, waiting. The interesting thing was that he actually saw it register, when she realized that he wasn’t going to relent.

There was no little girl pout or a pretty peekaboo stare through her absurdly long eyelashes. She reached out and threaded her fingers through the brace that he had not pulled up over his shoulders when he pulled his trousers on. “There was such pain and confusion,” she said.

He cocked his head to one side, wondering if she would say more. “Bad dreams, and,” she frowned, and then she hit her head with the heel of her hand, hard enough for him to want to catch her hand to keep her from repeating the gesture.

“I made it go away!” she sounded agrieved.

“You made her go away,” he corrected. “Next time, just come get me.”

From her expression, he guessed that she didn’t think much of this plan. “Mine, Dru,” he reminded her. “And I don’t want you crawling around in her head.”

She let go of the brace she was fingering. “I made her not afraid.”

“Oh, right,” he drawled. “That’s what she needs—to be less afraid. God damn it, Dru! She walked out of the house because she was curious about what was in the yard. If that was you or me inside the gate, what would have happened? She isn’t afraid enough. She never has been.”

She flicked her fingernails at him. “They weren’t very clever vampires,” she said dismissively.

William gave a short laugh. “They were idiots,” he agreed.

“Miss Willow is clever,” she pointed out, swaying a little, her eyes fixed on him watchfully

“Hideously,” he nodded. “And she has more lives than a damned cat, but—“

Dru tilted her head to one side and made a shushing noise. “I’ve seen her with us, my William,” she said, her tone soothing. “Having grand adventures, our beautiful, terrible, fierce girl,” her gaze shifted to Willow, with something like fondness softening her features.

He studied her for a moment. “You’re positive?” he asked.

“Positively positive,” Dru nodded once. “Always and ever. It cannot be altered.”

“Then, we are agreed. You’ll never do anything like this again, because I won’t stand for it,” he told her.

~Part: 19~

While William’s fighting preference ran to fist and fang, he understood the value of versatility. Angelus had dragged him from bed to spar. While they were sleeping, Willow had gotten all tangled up in him. There was a red place on her shoulder from where he had been mouthing her skin while he slept and his hands still carried the warmth and scent of her body. She clutched at him when she felt him pulled from her, inadvertently leaving a long scratch on his hip.

Angelus had one arm around his waist, pulling him back against his body. Instinctively, William stiffened. Still annoyed with Dru, he was in no mood for Angelus’ games. His grandsire’s fingers stroked his bare thigh, raising his fingers to his lips. The scent of Willow’s arousal reached him. She had been pressed up against his thigh, her cunt warm and wet against him. His morning erection had deflated a bit when Angelus had started rubbing himself against his ass. It jerked back to life at the familiar scent.

Angelus chuckled in his ear. “God, you are so easy,” he said with fond contempt.

“Sod off,” William retorted. It sounded weak to his own ears. He twisted out of Angelus’ grasp and pulled the sheet and blanket up over Willow, who was sleeping the sleep of the exhausted. He adjusted the pillow under her head. When Angelus reached for him again, he eluded his grasp, leaving the bed.

Angelus sat on the unoccupied side, near the door, watching as William looked around for his clothes, most of which had been discarded in Dru’s room. He found his trousers and pulled them on, one leg at a time, buttoning the fly over his erection. His eyes narrowed a bit when Angelus picked up a long, curling lock of Willow’s hair.

“What do you want?” he asked, distracting himself by examining the scratch that was visible above the waistband of his trousers. It was already starting to fade.

Angelus rubbed the lock of hair between his fingers. “It’s a long list,” he said with a grin. “I wanted to spar, but I’d settle for chaining you up and fucking you until your pet wakes up.”

That was supposed to be insulting. Angelus had a finely developed sense of protocol when it came to his audience. Bending him over and buggering him in front of a minion was nothing less than a punishment, and Willow was less than a minion. William found himself scrutinizing Angelus. Or maybe not.

“It’s probably not wise to suggest that the route to getting a little respect around here is staking vampires,” William told him. “Seeing as how we are vampires. Though, when it comes to method, you might be on to something because she might just think that it’s more about you being a scary, sadistic bastard. She doesn’t think the way we do.”

Angelus smiled at that. He kissed the lock of hair he was playing with, and rose from the bed. “Thinks I’m a scary, sadistic bastard, does she?” he looked pleased.

They came up the back stairs with Dru between them, one arm around Angelus neck, one hand tangled in William’s hair. Their hands clasped under her thighs, forming a seat for her. Dru hopped out of the cradle of their arms, sinuously winding herself around Angelus. She blew William a coy kiss. He almost rolled his eyes, but managed to refrain, catching the kiss instead. “My William still loves Princess best,” she cooed.

“That is never in doubt,” William told her.

Angelus did roll his eyes. He gave Dru a sharp slap on her ass that made her eyes narrow and her nostrils flare delicately as she absorbed his scent. “Make yourself useful, Drusilla, or go back to your room.”

There was never any doubt since Dru was there, but that they would work with weapons. They were using the long, narrow third floor attic space. The small windows were shuttered outside, letting in slivers of light. The attic was the largest unbroken space in the house. Angelus had arranged trunks, packing crates, and unused furniture to create obstacles.

Angelus tossed him a staff, a slim, balanced length of wood polished smooth. William caught it one handed and twirled it, testing the balance. Angelus picked up its mate. He was starting slow today. Sometimes he sparred weaponless, which made it more of a challenge for William to fend him off and hold onto the weapon. Sometimes he chose a different weapon, so it was staff versus sword or knives.

Dressed in no more than his trousers, William sized up the advantages that he had already conceded. He was bare footed and Angelus was not. Being barefooted on the wood floor would improve his traction, he would be more agile. The splashes of sunlight on the floor were going to burn like hell if he didn’t manage to avoid them. He deliberately placed his foot in one now as Angelus circled him just to make sure that Angelus knew that he knew and wasn’t going to be distracted by that.

At a greater distance, Drusilla was circling them. She could enter the fight at any moment, on any side, just to liven things up a bit. The minions were about, set to mastering basic fighting skills, an aspect of their training that had been given indifferent attention.

He was ready. When Angelus came at him, he countered. The sharp sound of wood cracking together in staccato bursts over the sound of shod and bare feet moving over creaking floors punctuated the fight. It was impossible to ignore. The speed, precision of movement, the viciousness of the fight, was riveting. Drusilla’s capricious role in it was perfect. She make no effort to balance the fight. William was smaller and faster. Angelus was bigger, and stronger. She was as likely to go after whoever appeared to be loosing as not, and female shaped and beloved, she was simply another combatant. There was no pulling of punches.

For Lucius, the battle was also instructive. Ever since William chained him up, he had thought about killing him. Actually, he’d thought about killing Willow and then killing William before he could retaliate. Now he realized that it wouldn't be as easy as that.

~~~*~~~

Willow woke up at midday without a headache or any lingering ill effects from her use of magic. Partially, this was because she was more careful, but mostly it was because of what Dru did to her. She remembered all of it, from the sheer relaxation, the wonderful, heavy feeling of sinking into the feather mattress to the taste of blood in her mouth. She remembered what Drusilla showed her, and thinking about it made her want to fall back into the deep, dreamless sleep she had emerged from. That, or seek another kind of oblivion.

She was alone in her bed and her room, a circumstance that had become less and less common of late. The privilege of having her own room and a semblance of privacy was relatively new. She scooted back against the pillows behind her head, scrunching them up behind her neck and shoulders. Her nose wrinkled at the smells coming from the disturbed bedding. She needed a bath, and longed for a shower. A nice hot shower under the pressurized jet of a showerhead. Closing her eyes, she got a quick mental picture of herself, naked, in a driving rain, which was probably as close to a real shower as she was likely to get anytime soon.

Shaking the image off, she opened her eyes again, taking in the changes that had been made to her room. There was the new chaise in the corner, unused as yet. The dress from last night, the one that was too bloodstained to be worn again, was lying in a crumpled heap on the ground near her dressing table. She had been too tired to take it off when she came to bed. She remembered Dru helping her take it off later.

She bent her knees, her feet flat on the mattress and lifted the sheet, making a kind of tent over her body as she looked down at herself. There were reddened marks on her stomach from Dru’s fingernails. She ran her hand over them, feeling the slight sting and an itchy sensation. Her hand moved on, over the curls that concealed her, feeling the crunchy residue of mingled bodily fluids as well as the dampness that was new.

She was certain that she had fallen asleep in Drusilla’s room, which meant that William had brought her back to her bed. She turned her head, studying the arrangement of pillows to her right and the disordered linens before searching her own mind for impressions. He had brought her back to her bed and stayed with her.

If William were here now, she would have wanted to . . . she closed her eyes again, wincing a little. It would be comforting to think that it was all Drusilla, using her, manipulating her into using her magic to hold him down, to make him still for her, to make him at her mercy. The thought of it made her press her fingers against her own flesh, made her open her legs wider as she slid two fingers inside herself. Drusilla had shown her what she might become, what she was becoming, and the only thing that frightened her now was the idea that it wasn’t as horrifying as she knew it should be.

She had seen herself, felt herself to be, a soulless and unprincipled thing, with the will to take what she wanted, and it felt like she was free.

~~~*~~~

When William returned to her room he found it empty and ordered. Just standing inside the door he was able to process several things. She had bathed, changed the sheets on the bed, and dressed, but she had not lingered long in the room. His gaze drifted downward as he stretched his perceptions beyond the room, seeking the sounds and scents associated with her. Failing to find them, his jaw clenched. If she had defied him by taking that stupid dog out to walk, they were going to re-visit certain lessons that she should have heeded.

He discovered that she had gone no further than the garden. With the sun slanting down on that side of the house, he couldn’t see her without exposing himself to direct sunlight, but he knew she was out there and he waited for her in the kitchen. She came in, following the dog. In the moment before she shut the door behind her, she was framed in sunlight, pink cheeked, a sheen of sweat turning her skin dewy, the light dazzling the red and gold tones of her hair. It was the view that he had been cheated of due to the closed shutters.

It was the view he was cheated of due to the differences that would always define them.

He had dreams of her in the sunlight, just beyond reach, refusing to acknowledge his presence in that way that she had, with just the slightest hint of unease and stubbornness to suggest that she knew what he expected. He started to smile when he saw her doing it now as she pushed the bolt in and fumbled with the floor bolt that was a little trickier to manage. There was just enough tension in her shoulders to tell him that she knew he was there in the shadowy depths of the kitchen, but that she wasn’t quite ready to acknowledge him.

She turned, shading her eyes, not from the light, but from the darkness in the shuttered kitchen. He hadn’t bothered to turn up the gaslights that hung in copper hooded globes in two rows from the ceiling. The change from sunlight to darkness left her night blind, but she knew he was there, waiting and watching. He could tell it from her heartbeat.

The dog was scampering about, whining, his tongue hanging out, wanting water or food, providing a distraction. Blinking, she cautiously made her way to the sink. When she opened the cabinet to find a dish for water, she looked at him directly, over her raised upper arm. It was a brief look, and then she was fumbling for a bowl, setting it on the counter. She started priming the pump. He watched, his gaze lingering on her breasts as they moved with the up and down motion of her arm. The dress she was wearing was something new. It was a lightweight mint green silk embossed with tiny flowers. The low neckline and puff sleeves left her arms, neck and chest to the swell of her small breasts bare. Her skin was pink with sunburn. She had left her hair down, falling to her waist, held off her face by a ribbon that gathered the length at the nape of her neck, that was now hanging slightly askew.

She filled the bowl and stooped to set it on the floor at her feet. Mr. Buttons rushed forward, noisily lapping up the water. “It warmed up today,” she observed. “It finally feels like spring.”

That observation reminded him of his midnight picnic, aborted several nights ago. He made a mental note to himself to work it in if the weather held. “Are you feeling better?” he asked.

She retrieved a glass and filled it with water from the pump. “I’m fine,” she said.

He studied her face in profile as she sipped her water, wondering if she was that thirsty or if it was simply a way to put off talking to him. He thought that it was probably a bit of both. He picked up one of the knives in a block on the work bench, setting the point in a groove in the wood and spinning the knife by the grip. “You are fine,” he repeated, injecting skepticism. “Can’t hardly look at me, but other than that . . .”

She finished drinking her water and set the glass on the counter. “I can’t really see much more than spots,” she said in her extra reasonable voice.

“Dru had no right to do that to you,” he told her.

Puzzled by his tone, Willow frowned. Did he think that she was angry? Unnerved, yes. Angry? She was careful about what she let herself get angry about. Anger was not an emotion that she could easily afford, and it was Drusilla. In her own weird way, she meant to be helpful.

“What do mean?” she asked. “What did Dru do to me that . . .” she smiled wryly, “is anything worse than anything else?”

He paused in his knife twirling operation. “Thrall,” he said flatly. “She was mucking around with your mind.”

Willow nodded. “Right. And that’s . . . cheating? Or taking advantage? Or forcing me to do something I don’t want to do, which would be such a huge change of pace that I can see why you are disturbed on my behalf.”

He frowned at her. “Don’t know if I care for the new penchant for sarcasm, pet,” he drawled.

Mr. Buttons butted his head up against her ankle with a sharp little bark. She retrieved the now empty bowl and refilled it for him, sitting on her heels to scratch behind his ears as he lapped the water more slowly now that the immediacy of his thirst had been sated. She had found a small wooden ball to throw for him, a game that he took to with great enthusiasm while they lingered in the barren garden. The spur of the moment request for a dog had mostly been meant to placate Dru, but Willow had never had a pet, save for some goldfish and Amy, and she refused to think of Amy as a pet. She had grown fond of Mr. Buttons, despite some of his more annoying behaviors.

She had no idea how to answer, so for once, she kept her mouth shut, resisting the impulse to fill the uncomfortable silence. What could she say? I didn’t mind it so much, myself? In fact, when I woke up this morning, I lay in bed and masturbated while I fantasized about riding your cock while you lay motionless under me, vamping out, and that the idea of fucking you, of making you feel a tenth of the frustration and helplessness and lust that is my lot, was so powerful that it made me come?

Those thoughts were hers alone. She had no intention of sharing them, and not just because they made her feel slightly uncomfortable, but because . . . there were things that she would never tell him. No matter what he claimed he felt about her, he hadn’t earned her trust, or her loyalty.

He had them, whether he knew it or not, but he had never earned it.

No matter what she suspected she felt for him, there was just enough resentment, just enough awareness of how wrong it was, to keep her from ever making it more than a curious aspect of the unreal world. The darkness inside of her was no longer alien or circumstantial. It had always been there. It was, in part, what had allowed her to survive more or less intact. It was the cold fist that held onto everything that had ever meant anything to her. It was the thing that kept her from telling him everything, even though she suspected that his innate skepticism would prevent him from lending any credence to her story.

“It’s not new,” she said as she rose. Her penchant for sarcasm as he called it wasn’t anything new.

He could feel them edging towards something that would probably end badly for her. She was in a peculiar mood, and had been for the last day he realized, thinking back on their conversation yesterday, when she woke up. He thought that she was testing boundaries that would always exist between them.

“I thought you wanted to make it last,” he challenged. “You told me you did, but you’re just determined to provoke me, aren’t you? Is that what you need? Do you need me to be your bloody cross to bear? Can’t admit that you want me, that you need me, that you give yourself to a monster and that you love it,” his voice was cold. “Do you need me to make it easier for you to pretend that you don’t have a choice? Is that why you aren’t angry about what Dru did to you?”

She had been expecting something like this, and here they were, back in the kitchen, where their most recent and most peculiar argument had taken place. She had not expected his strangely benign mood to last. Thinking back to the evening under the bridge, she had an inkling of how she could head it off. Testing her theory, she made herself approach him. He was standing at the workbench, his hand clenching and unclenching around the haft of a long triangle shaped knife that terminated in a sharp point. She laid her hand on his, her fingertips resting lightly on his wrist.

He went absolutely still and she took a step closer and then another, until they were nearly touching, until she could have kissed him easily by rising on her toes and pressing her mouth to his. She might have done exactly that, but his head moved in a deliberate way, ducking as his eyes sought hers. She had seen him do this with Dru countless times. Their eyes would meet and they would share a look full of secrets, savoring a silent communion that no one else was part of. The look he gave her wasn’t the same look he gave Dru. It was slightly amused, as if he recognized what she was doing and was willing to concede that it would probably work.

She frowned at him, wondering if he had just manipulated her into a kind of capitulation. His free hand came up, his fingertips resting lightly on her skin from temple to jaw. His nose brushed against the puckered space between her eyebrows. He kissed the tip of her nose. “Sure you don’t want to fight?” he asked, his voice low and husky. His breath gusted against her skin as he laughed softly. “Oooh. Made you mad, did I? Can’t hide it, love. Your eyes give you away,” he tilted his head, chasing her lips when she started to pull back away from him. He turned his body just enough to keep her there, between him and the workbench that was at her side. “Thought you wanted to kiss me?”

“Not so much anymore,” she shot back, feeling slightly foolish for being drawn in by his show of annoyance.

His fingers traced the outer edge of her ear and tested the heat in her sunburned cheek. The contrasting coolness of his skin was almost welcome. She couldn’t avoid his gaze, in fact, she was determined to hold it now that she could feel her nipples contracting as his fingers stroked her cheek, her ear, and her bare neck down to the scabbed over bite mark. If he looked down, if he made a single, stupid crack about her body’s reaction . . .

He turned serious. “I didn’t like it,” he said. “Felt like you weren’t there,” he admitted. He knew a little about how Dru’s gift worked. She didn’t put anything in anyone’s head, she just tugged out what was already there. The idea that Willow could see herself forcing him to submit to her wasn’t unappealing. It was the feeling that she wasn’t all there that bothered him so much. It was the fact that he had been cheated of finding that aspect of her on his own. Dru had served her up on a silver platter, and lovely gift that it was, it wasn’t given.

His hand drifted down, tracing her clavicle, his fingertips following her breastbone, feeling the heat coming off her reddened skin. His fingers dipped into the vale of her breasts above the low neckline that displayed the tops of her small breasts. “This is pretty,” he commented on the dress. His hand itched to palm her breast, but he held off. “Are you still interested in the supper cruise on the river? We could do that tonight. Fancy it, pet?”

“Are we bait?” she wondered. The coolness of his hand against her sunburn was making her feel shivery.

He smiled at her. “Clever girl,” his tone was warmly amused, even approving. “Not so much as Lucius will be, all alone on the quay, waiting for us with the carriage while we dine and dance,” he took her upper lip between his, closing his eyes as his tongue stroked it, tracing the crisp bow of her lip. “You are so warm,” he murmured. Her lips tasted faintly of apple. Apples were out of season. Where had that come from? He let go of the knife and twisted his wrist to capture her hand, twining his fingers through hers before he moved their joined hands to the small of her back.

He turned his head, lips slanting over hers, seeking more of the sweetness lingering in her mouth. Breaking off the kiss abruptly, he licked his lips, savoring the small taste. “Want you, now,” he whispered as her eyes opened and widened.

She was so easy to read. Not at all averse to the wanting, but alarmed about the setting, where anyone could walk in on them. He gave her a little push, releasing her hand, bending his head to kiss her throat. “Go to your room,” he ordered huskily. “I’ll be up in a minute, and I'd better find you there,” his tongue stroked his scabbed over bite mark. “With your skirt up around your hips and your hand between your legs, making yourself ready for me.”

She made a small sound in the back of her throat that he took for assent. “Go on,” he urged, giving her another nudge when she seemed unlikely to tear herself away from his attention to her neck.

She left the kitchen and went up the stairs, not really seeing anything. Inside her bedroom, she kicked off her kidskin slippers. She had made up the bed earlier with fresh linens, and stared at it now, feeling a trickle of damp heat between her legs. Her heart was pounding. Underneath her dress, she was wearing a shift and a pair of the voluminous underpants that covered her down past the top of her stockings. Not wanting to wrinkle the dress, she took it off, and the underpants, but left the shift and her stockings on and then got in bed, feeling the velvet counterpane against the backs of her thighs. She lifted up to pull the shift up to her waist and settled back down, feeling the velvet against her bare ass.

The lightweight shift was sheer enough that she could see her nipples clearly outlined against the thin fabric. Shuddering at the mental image William’s instructions had left in her mind, she bent her knees, letting her thighs fall open and ran her fingertips lightly over the lips of her cunt, spreading them apart. Her middle finger followed, delving into the slick space between her legs, moving up to rub her clit until she was panting.

She traced the opening of her body with her fingertips, eyes closing as she imagined the sensation that she was denying herself, wondering what was taking him so long.

She barely registered the sound of the bedroom door opening and closing. “Keep your eyes closed,” he warned.

Willow bit her lower lip. He moved so quietly. It was impossible to tell where he was in the room. When she felt his hands on the inside of her knees, pushing her legs further apart, a low moan wept from her throat and her hips rose as she wantonly rubbed herself against the caress of her own fingers.

“I love watching you finger yourself,” he murmured. “My pretty little whore, such a naughty girl, you are, sweet. Slide those pretty fingers into your wet cunt, love. I want to watch you get yourself ready for my cock.”

She slid two fingers into her channel, rubbing the heal of her hand against her clit while he stroked her stocking covered legs.

“Did I tell you to take off your dress?” he asked in a deceptively mild tone.

Willow’s shoulders pushed back into the pillows behind her as she arched her back.

His hands squeezed her thighs, hard enough to get her attention. “Did I tell you to take off your dress?” he repeated the question.

“No,” she moaned.

“That’s right,” he agreed. “Roll over, baby,” he whispered. “Keep your knees bent. I want your sweet little bum wriggling in front of me while you fuck yourself.”

She rolled over, feeling the velvet gently abrade her sunburned face. His hands on the backs of her thighs kept her legs spread open, and then they moved up to squeeze her ass, separating the globes. He rubbed his cheek against her ass and then pushed her up, higher, his cool tongue licking her fingers as they emerged from her cunt, making her push back against him.

“You taste sun ripened, peach,” he told her huskily. “My sweet sun ripened girl with her juicy cunt flowing all over me. I want to taste that. Eat it all up.”

His hand landed sharply on her ass, making her cry out at the sudden sting.

“Music, love. All of your pretty sounds,” he licked the backs of her fingers again, the tip of his tongue gliding over the narrow bridge of flesh separating her vagina and anus. His hand cracked down on her ass again as he rimmed her tightly puckered anus. “Like to put my cock up you,” he said. “Fuck you so hard,” he growled, feeling her shudder. His hand came down on her ass again. Her skin was pinkening from the spanking.

She felt the wool of his trousers against the backs of her legs as he freed himself. The wet head of his cock brushed against her hand as he hit her again, making her moan. His arms went under her thighs, circling around, his fingers locking together at the small of her back, pressing her back down as her hips were canted up at an awkward angle. His cock rubbed against her hand more insistently. She moaned as her fingers slid out of her to wrap around his cool, hard length.

He made a purring sound. “That’s it, love. Take my cock and put it where you want. I want to feel you taking me inside you.”

She guided him inside of her, and he hissed at the heat of her, but he kept his thrust shallow, just teasing her with the head of his cock slipping in and out of her, his arms under her thighs keeping her from pushing back to increase the penetration.

“Didn’t tell you to take off the dress, did I?” he taunted.

“No,” she gasped. “Will . . . oh, God, Will,” she wailed softly.

He licked her back above his joined hands, tasting the slight saltiness of her skin. The scalloped lacy hem of her shift had ridden up her back to pool at her shoulders. “Pinch your clit, baby. Not going to fuck you, yet,” he slid a little deeper inside of her, rewarded with a moan that sounded painful. “But, I’ll let you come, and then I’m going to put you on your back and lick every drop of you up while I fuck your mouth.”

Her back arched and he thrust into her hard, burying himself in her as she came.

His fingers kneaded the small of her back, making soothing circles as he knelt over her in an almost prayerful posture, his tongue tracing her spine. His slightest movement sent little aftershocks of pleasure racing through her. Her forehead was pressed into the counterpane as she tried to catch her breath. She pressed the palm of her hand to her abdomen, avoiding her clitoris. Closing her eyes she concentrated on the way he felt inside of her.

She felt the vibration of his appreciative chuckle against her spine. “Love that, don’t you? Feeling all full of cock?”

With a gusty sigh, Willow tried to blow part of her hair out of her face before giving up and squirming to free the arm trapped under her to push her hair out of the way. His vocabulary for sex, his total lack of inhibitions about talking about sex, usually enhanced the experience. She didn’t really need the extra stimulation, and he was being obnoxious.

She turned her head to look at him. “Yes, you feel good, inside me,” she said, paying him back in kind with a patient, humor the vampire tone.

He unlaced his hands and sat up, laughing at her tone of voice as his hands slid over her hips and he eased his arms out from under her thighs. She might have moved then, but he kneaded the globes of her ass, effectively keeping her still. Then he withdrew from her body in a slow, deliberate way that made her suck in a quick breath. His hand landed on her ass again, followed by a kiss before he got off the bed and started taking off his clothes.

Willow rolled over, pushing her shift back down, watching him. His hair had gotten too long. He was careless about things like that. There was a bruise over his ribs on his right side and a healing bite mark on his throat that made her eyes widen a little. Feeling naked, she reached for the counterpane to turn it down.

“Don’t,” he said, and then with a slightly annoyed expression, he amended, “Please don’t.”

Please don’t made it more of a request, except that it really wasn’t a request. It was just a more polite way of saying ‘don’t’. She shook her head. “On the subject of sorting out what is amusing and what is not, please don’t,” she smiled when she found herself repeating the phrase, “confuse the issue by saying one thing when you mean something else.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You meant it when you said don’t. Please don’t is a request, except that in this case, it really isn’t,” she pointed out. “It’s confusing.”

He grunted. “You seem to have sorted it out,” he commented, walking back to the bed.

She eyed him warily. “Am I wrong?” She lifted the edge of the counterpane and flipped it over her body with the velvet side against her skin.

She wasn’t wrong, and it annoyed him to realize it. Before he had come up, he had solved the mystery of the apple taste in her mouth. The Neri’s had sent a fruit basket with a bread and butter thank you note acknowledging Darla and Angelus’ hospitality. The fruit had been stored in the ice box. Pears wrapped in gold foil, smallish apples the color of honey, pale grapes, and a representation of the citrus family made up the basket. It probably cost a bloody fortune. He had retrieved a couple of the apples and a paring knife. He picked one up now and sliced into the fruit. A rivulet of clear apple juice wept into his palm and he licked it off.

“You like it,” he said, casting her a sideways look. “You like being in between the tension of having a choice and not having a choice,” he stated matter of factly, his lip curling. “Gets you off,” he told her, wondering if she would deny it. “I put my hand over your lips, or tell you to spread your legs, and,” he raised an eyebrow, “any of this sound familiar, love?”

He offered her the piece of apple that he had liberated. When she reached for it, he retracted it slightly, brushing her hand away, feeding it to her.

She took the piece of apple between her teeth and tugged it out of his fingers. She leaned back against the pillows. “I wonder where you get apples this time of the year,” she mused.

It was not a deliberate change of subject, or she would have betrayed herself by looking flustered or distracted instead of puzzled and curious.

“I don’t know,” he shrugged, stretching out next to her. Willow stacked a pair of pillows for him to sprawl against and he kissed the corner of her mouth.

Holding the apple with one hand, he sliced into it again, freeing a wedge. He used the flat of the blade to offer it to her.

She took it between her fingers, holding it as she bit into the fruit, her tongue stealing out to swipe her lower lip. The apple was cold from the ice box. Recently re-stocked with ice, the ice box was extra cold, which wasn’t so good for some things. The urn of milk in the ice box, for instance. Sometimes the solids in the milk formed clumps of sludgy ice when the ice box was too cold. Poured into hot coffee or tea, the rich butter fat milk tended to curdle if it was too cold. It was, however, perfect for chilling fresh fruit. The apple was tart, crisp, and nearly ice cold. It reminded her of after school snacks in the kitchen of Jesse’s home, with Jesse and Xander, and Jesse’s grandmother.

William watched her eat, her even, white teeth sheering into the apple, eyes almost closing as the taste of the apple was released. Her gaze lost focus as she got lost in some thought. He brought the apple to his mouth, wanting to taste what she was tasting. His teeth pierced the thin, tough skin and he broke off a piece in his mouth with a sharp sound, like ice calving.

Willow’s head rolled back a little as she turned her head to the side to look at him. Her fingers, cool and sticky with apple juice, touched his face. Her expression became rueful. “You aren’t like anyone in the whole world, are you?”

He squinted at her, wondering what she was talking about. “How’s that?”

She gave a spare shake of her head, her thumbnail scraping lightly over the nearly invisible beard stubble that was coming through. Their eyes met for a moment, hers a paler green than he was accustomed to seeing, like sunlight coming through a shifting canopy of leaves. He could still smell sunlight on her overly warm skin, and he wanted more of it.

“More, please?” she requested politely.

Without giving up her eyes, he cut another wedge off the apple and gave it to her. He flicked the tip of the knife he was wielding against the counterpane she had pulled over herself, smiling lazily when she looked at him curiously.

“More, please?” he mocked.

She shrugged and he took that as assent, even as it occurred to him that he wasn’t in the habit of asking for anything. She had been right about that. He sat up, pushing the counterpane off of her. She started to adjust her position as her half clothed body lost its cover. Under the counterpane, she had been lying with her legs slightly apart, one knee bent. Using the point of the knife against her thigh, he let the pressure of the sharp point make her still, watching her eyes for her reaction to the restraint.

Wariness crept into her expression. The point of the knife had not broken skin, it was just pressing in enough to create a slight dimple. He eased the tip off her skin, using it to flick the lacy, scalloped edge of the shift that had ridden up her thighs. She had stopped chewing to look at him, a tiny frown puckering her eyebrows. He loved that little frown, the way it made her look at him like he was a problem to figure out. He used the knife to tease the lightweight shift up her thighs, imagining the shivery whisper of the lace against her skin, imagining himself taking away that sensation with the firm pressure of his hands.

He looked down at the apple in the cup of his palm. There was a smooth, flat section of it. He brought it to her thigh, sliding the fruit over her skin.

Startled by the cold, damp flesh of the apple against her skin, Willow sucked in a breath full of half masticated apple. Her throat protested, and she rocked forward, her head nearly colliding with William’s as she tried to cough out the apple she had inhaled.

He caught her, stroking her back as she coughed into her hand. A half strangled moan of mortification emerged, and he smiled, smoothing her hair back. “Are you all right?” he asked, trying not to laugh.

She nodded against his shoulder as he lifted her hair off the back of her neck. “Poor pet,” he murmured, breathing in the sun warmed scent of her hair. Her forehead was pressed lightly against his shoulder. “You are so warm,” he marveled. “Your skin is so hot. Doesn’t it hurt?”

“Not yet,” she admitted. “Maybe later.”

She coughed again, less violently this time, ducking her head to swallow to clear her throat. William felt her hands rest lightly on his ribs, and marveled at the sensation. She was just touching him, with no particular intent, and he could feel the warm pads of eight fingers, two thumbs, spread over his ribs. The warmth of her body, different kinds of warmth, from the trapped heat of sunlight in the hair under his cheek and the heat of her slightly sunburned skin, to the warmth she radiated, all so close. When she coughed the last time, her fingers had tightened on him briefly, and after she swallowed to clear her throat, her breath gusted against his chest as she got her breathing under control.

He still had the apple in the cup of his palm, and the knife between his fingers, leaving him with just the one hand to skim her back and her hair. Her hands moved, brushing his skin, withdrawing to his disappointment, only to return to rest lightly on his thighs, as if she meant to use that for leverage to straighten. She went still again when he rubbed his cheek against the silk of her hair, and then the back of her hand brushed his cock, making his erection jerk against her hand. It was his turn to suck in a surprised breath as her hands feathered up the inside of his thighs. An approving sound rumbled in his throat when her warm hands cupped his balls, her thumb rubbing the base of his cock.

She started to lift her head, or so he thought, and changed her mind, settling against him, her lips sticky and warm against his collarbone. Her fingers explored him with maddening delicacy. It made him want to grab her hand and show her how he wanted to be touched as if they had never done this before.

Her ‘friend’, Jane, had tried to talk him into a hand job because she was new at the trade and needed to learn something that required skill. That had not been as great a lie as he imagined when they were haggling. Almost everything she knew about hand jobs and sucking cock had been something he had taught her, and none of it was in evidence right now as she touched him not for his pleasure, which after eight years, was well defined territory, but out of her interest in touching him. She was touching him like she wasn’t quite sure what she was doing, or that he would like it, and when her hand closed around him awkwardly, her wrist locking because she had a bad angle, he let his head fall back and pushed himself into her hand.

She licked the skin her lips had been working, and lifted her head, looking at him. Her head tilted to one side, and he answered the question in her eyes with a crooked smile. “Do anything you want,” he invited.

“I thought I was,” she retorted, one hand moving to his lips as he made himself more comfortable by bracing one arm against the mattress behind him. It meant giving up touching her since he still had the apple and the knife in his other hand, and that really didn’t suit him at all, so he started to sit up with nothing more in mind than disposing of the apple and knife, leaving them on the bedside table, that was otherwise out of reach.

She pressed her fingers against his lips to stop him, and he obliged, opening his mouth to invite her fingers inside. She watched, seemingly fascinated, as his lips closed around two of her fingers, his tongue stroking them. He pushed against her hand again to remind her that she was holding his cock, and her thumb brushed over the head, pushing the foreskin back, wetting her thumb on the evidence of his arousal that was transferred to his shaft as her hand moved in a familiar up and down motion.

She looked down at him as he sucked on her fingers, drawing them deeper into his mouth in a suggestive way, then back up, making a study of him. Her eyes lingered on his chest, and she glanced over at the apple he still held.

He dropped the knife, and offered it to her, feeling like he was cast in a role reversal that went back to the beginning of time. Tempting her to taste the fruit of knowledge. His grip on the apple had tightened unknowingly and when he lifted his hand, apple juice that had pooled in his palm from the slightly crushed fruit ran down his wrist. She caught it on the tip of her tongue, tracing its path to his palm and it was all he could do to keep from crushing the remains of the apple in his hand as he closed his eyes, absorbing the cat-like stroke of her tongue on his skin.

She nibbled on the apple, long eyelashes sweeping down to veil her eyes as his opened to watch her.

She lifted her head, comparing the delicate, radiant whiteness of the flesh of the apple to his skin. She licked the base of his thumb experimentally, wondering if the dampness that lingered there would shimmer the same way the juices that oozed in miniscule quantities from the broken cells of the fruit did. She felt him watching her, and wondered what he was thinking. Her hand stroked his cock, almost mechanically before her gaze switched from his hand to his face. She half expected an expression that would match the way he was manipulating her fingers in his mouth. Lust, and a silent demand that would not be denied behind eyelids heavy with pleasure.

The desire was there, but there was something else, a kind of reticence that wasn’t really like him, almost as if he was holding himself still, and waiting for something that he was relatively sure that he was never going to get. It made her tug her fingers out of his mouth, uncurl her hand around his cock, though he made a protesting sound at the loss. She took the apple and the knife from him, turning at the waist to deposit these things on the bedside table, careful to set them on the runner that protected the gleaming wood veneer. He started to sit up, and she put her hand out, flat against his chest, to hold him where he was, getting a mental picture of holding him down last night, with magic, as she crawled over his body.

He straightened his legs out as she came back to him, opening her legs to straddle his hips, his eyes riveted on her with an anticipatory gleam. She framed his face in her hands, the way he sometimes did when she was under him, and he was inside her, and she leaned forward to kiss him, taking the fullness of his lower lip between hers as a soft sigh left him. He let himself fall back on the bed, taking her with him, her hair sliding around her shoulders to fall on either side of him like a curtain as they explored each other’s mouths.

His hands moved down to her hips and then over her ass, slipping under the hem of her shift to knead her flesh, his fingertips tracing the curve of her ass down to her thighs, grazing the lips of her cunt, making her aware of how wet she was, thinking of him, beneath her. There was nothing that Dru could put in her head, no notion, no image. That wasn’t in her peculiar gift. There was only the ability to find hidden things and bring them to the surface. Willow understood from her brief sojourn in Bristol that being a thing that could be bought and sold did not stimulate desire or even awaken a sense of her desirability. No more so than being possessed, being reminded almost constantly that her body was in and of itself something he craved. It was the hidden knowledge that she wanted him, wanted him beneath her, wanted him to burn for something only she could give him that made her shudder as he delicately ran his fingertips over the margins of her labia.

He broke off the kiss with a groan. “Christ! You are soaking wet,” he hissed, his wrists exerting enough pressure on her thighs to make her scoot up a bare inch.

“Closer, baby,” he murmured, kissing her chin, her throat, her breastbone, as she moved a little higher, his fingers sliding between the lips of her cunt. “Closer,” he breathed, kissing the upper curve of her breast.

She moved up more, feeling the slight resistance of the nap of the velvet counterpane against her knees. His mouth latched onto one of her nipples, his tongue lashing it fiercely through a thin layer of cotton as two fingers sank into her from behind, and her head fell forward, her mouth opening in a gasp that was lost in his hair.

His lips tugged on her nipple as his fingers slowly delved inside her. “Love that,” he murmured when he released her nipple, the fabric giving way more slowly, peeling away from her skin as the weight of the shift hanging from her back pulled it away. “Love your sweet cream coating my fingers. You smell like daylight, so ripe and spicy,” he urged her up higher in his arms. “Let’s get this off of you,” he grasped the hem of her shift, pulling it up.

Willow’s hands were braced on the mattress above his shoulders, and William’s efforts to get her out of the shift were frustrated. The shift, pushed up to her shoulders was falling in his face as he nudged her arm to get her to lift it off the mattress so he could slip one strap off her shoulder.

With a impatient sound, he gave up, his fingers sliding out of her. “I ought to beat your ass for making me stop,” he grumbled as he sat up, pulling her shift over her head.

She rested her forearms on his shoulders. “You didn’t tell me I could take it off,” she said, looking serious and a little smug.

“Funny, funny girl,” he said, his eyes drifting downward. Her shoulders were pink. The pinkness crept downward. He could feel the damp heat of her against his stomach. His fingers moved over her sunburned skin, pressing lightly, leaving little white pressure marks.

“How long were you outside?”

“Long enough,” she shrugged, “An hour or two.”

One hand rode the curve of her hip, the other rested on the mattress where his bent elbow supported his upper body. Her hair slid over her shoulders again, reforming the tent of her body and hair, trapping the sun-warmed scent of her once more. He wondered if it was possible to get drunk on a scent. He wondered what she would taste like, if he pulled her down on top of him and pushed her hair to one side to suckle the scabbed over wound on her throat until it was oozing blood.

“I want you more than anything I can think of,” he said simply. It wasn’t what he meant to say. He hadn’t really meant to say anything at all, but she was looking at him, and he thought she should know that.

She didn’t reciprocate. There was no corresponding declaration. She looked a little embarrassed, and perplexed, and her head started to fall forward, her hair shifting again to veil her eyes. His thumb rotated, and then followed the slight hollow of her hip. Her abdomen was covered with small scratches, places were Dru had opened her skin with her fingernails, tormenting him with the scent of blood and sex. A day later they were just scratches, marring the ivory of her skin, someone else’s marks on what was his.

Not for the first or last time, he resolved to take better care of her. To keep her more to himself since he was the only one who really appreciated her.

The awkwardness of his unacknowledged declaration made her chest feel too tight. It was in the almost innocent way he said it. They were naked and sex was obviously on the agenda, but it wasn’t just sex that he wanted. There was no leer, no innuendo, no subtext. She wanted to tell him not to do this to himself, while at the same time, in the spaces that would always resent him, there was a certain degree of satisfaction at the notion that he had walked into this trap of his own making. It was tempered by the fear that inevitably he would trap her inside it too, that he already had.

He was almost motionless. His perfect, sculpted body was quiet under hers, the arm he had propped himself up on not even quivering with effort. He could probably stay like this forever. Only the thumb connected to the hand on her hip moved, and she felt it all the more keenly, as his thumb strummed not just the skin but also the underlying structure of bone and muscle. She, however, could not stay like this indefinitely. She could already feel the slight tremor that was developing in her thighs and the tension in her back from leaning forward but holding her full weight off of him. There was a shivery sensation crawling over her skin from the repetitive movement of his thumb that demanded a response.

When she lifted her head to look at him again, he was watching her with a slight smile. His knees bent behind her and he lifted his hips a little. “Scoot back a bit, sweet,” he suggested. His hand left her hip, smoothing over her thigh to hook his fingers under her bent knee.

She understood what he wanted without any further words and unlocked her hands behind his neck, moving backward, feeling his cock under her as she let her weight rest in the cradle of his hips and his raised thighs, trapping his erection between the globes of her ass. Rocking forward a little, enough to shift his balance off his shoulders to his hips, his hands came up to frame her face, and then moved down over her throat and shoulders. His gaze lingered on her breasts before his hands reached them.

Below the neckline of the gown she had been wearing, her skin was startlingly white, more so than usual. He remembered, again, the first time he saw her, in an ill fitting wig, and a dress hanging off her thin shoulders, cheap, stiff velvet hugging her, the ivory of her skin made ashy with dirt, malnutrition, and cheap talcum powder meant to disguise the pale freckles dappling her skin, her heart beating so hard that he swore he could see her breast quiver with her heartbeat. After he had carried her home through the streets of London, he had taken off the blond wig, tossing it into a corner and he had slid his hands inside the top of her dress, the backs of his fingers against her skin as he ripped the fabric, showering her skin with the dirt and dust the fabric gave up as it came apart in his hands.

Then he had wet a washcloth and washed her, wanting to see what was under the cosmetics and dirt, curious about the packaging that came with the delicious blood that had filled his mouth. He had washed every inch of her, with no more thought than to shag her and drink her one mouthful at a time until there was nothing left.

“My beautiful girl,” his fingers found her nipples, stiffly erect. The first time he had taken one of her nipples into his mouth his arm had been laying across her throat to keep her still while he teased her pale pink nipple into a hard, rosy point with his tongue and teeth, his mind half on the anticipated pleasure of sinking his fingers into her and fucking her.

“Mine,” his fingers tugged on her nipples. His lips found the heat of her sunburned chest. He felt her breathing change as his mouth drifted lower. His tongue followed the curve of her breast to her other neglected nipple, curling around it before he coaxed it into his mouth. Her head fell back against his knees, her hair spilling over his legs. Flicking the tip of his tongue over her nipple his eyes moved over her bared throat. “So beautiful, my sweet girl,” he murmured, reaching between their bodies to run his thumb over her clitoris as a soft sound worked in her throat.

“Do you like that?” he breathed. “Do you like having my hands between your legs? Is that what you want?” he kissed the space between and slightly below her breasts as her hands threaded through his hair and she rocked against his, the pressure of his thumb working her clitoris.

“I want you under my mouth, with your lips around my cock while I taste you. Taste what I do to you,” his thumb rotated over her clit and then swept down to explore. “Christ. You’re so wet. Do you know how good it feels when you’re all hot and wet for me? Is it because you can feel how hard I am? So hard, love. It’s like an ache in the pit of my stomach. It’s like a stomach ache from starvation. From wanting you so much I can never get enough,” he grinned, “but, we both know I’m going to try. Always. Tasting you, filling you up with my fingers and my tongue and my cock, always wanting more.”

“Do you have any idea what that’s like, to want so much?”

Before she could even begin to formulate an answer, she was on her back, bouncing a little at the suddenness of her change in position, and he was looming over her, reversing position, his hands pushing her legs apart. His head lowered, his tongue coming out to slide between the lips of her cunt, and if she was wet before, she was soaking now, squirming as his hands held her legs apart. He made a sound, the kind of moan that she associated with something delicious passing over her tongue, and shuddered at the hungry passage of his tongue.

He lifted his head, looking up her body at her with a smirk. “Like that do you? Like having me between your legs, tasting your hot little cunt?” His hands stroked the insides of her legs and then one hand came down sharply in a stinging slap against her clitoris that made her cry out, and then twist her hips upwards as he penetrated her roughly with two fingers, twisting them as he finger fucked her. “That’s my beautiful girl. Love being fucked, don’t you baby? Fucked good and hard,” his tongue teased her clitoris as his fingers pumped in and out of her wetly, slipping out of her to pinch her clitoris before slapping it again.

She shuddered, her hands moving over his body, clutching at him.

“Starting to feel it? That coil in your belly, tightening up?” his tongue swirled in her navel. “When you come, I can feel it, squeezing me so tight. His face changed, his forehead pressing into her abdomen between her navel and her mound, changing, the prominent ridges rubbing against her skin like an oversized house cat. “Suck my cock, Willow,” his voice was harsh with strain.

Wrapping her hand around the base of his cock, she ran her tongue over the tip, tasting the precum, cool and slightly bitter. He was licking the cuts on her stomach, slapping her clitoris. “Yeah,” he panted. “Love your clever tongue on me,” he rasped as she traced a throbbing vein in his cock. “Lick it, sweetheart. “Lick my cock. Feel how hard you make me?” One of his fangs scraped over her skin, following the line of a wicked scratch, breaking her skin in a series of dashes and dots that oozed bright red blood. Feeling her stiffen at the sensation. Her skin was damp with sweat from exertion, and the broken skin burned. He curtailed the impulse to watch her bleed, and licked the wound, groaning at the small taste of her.

When she took him into her mouth, his head snapped back, alien eyes glittering ferociously, a low growl rumbling in his chest as he fought his instict to thrust into the heat of her mouth and fuck her into the mattress the way he wanted to. She had one hand braced against his hip as if she had a hope in hell of preventing such an outcome, and he roughly stimulated her clitoris, pinching and slapping it again before sliding two and then three fingers inside of her.

His tongue laved her clit, soothing her abused flesh, smiling as she arched her back, a pretty whimper trapped in her throat as she sucked him, her tongue swirling around his shaft. “That’s my sweet girl, my angel, my star,” he breathed, the cat-like licks of his tongue on her clit at variance with the almost punishing way his fingers were fucking her, “You taste like sunlight and magic.”

His hips rocked down in a hard thrust that had her pushing against him frantically, and with a frustrated growl, he pulled back, leaving the warm, wet cavern of her mouth with a wet sound and a gasp from her as she tried to catch her breath. He sat up on his knees beside her, licking his fingers clean of her before he shook off the game face. He couldn’t think of the last time she had done something like that.

“I didn’t mean—“

“Sssh,” he soothed, touching her lips. His gaze flicked to her abdomen and the scratch marks last night’s adventure in thrall and bloodplay had left on her body. A muscle in his cheek twitched and his eyes darkened. He’d spent years training her to behave like a trained seal in bed, letting Angelus, and Darla, and Dru work her over, and he enjoyed every minute of it, even now, he was rock hard, aching to fill her warm body, make her ache, make her moan, make her come with his name on her lips.

Make her.

He started to ask her if she really wanted this, and stopped before the words were formed. Right. What the hell was she supposed to say?

He felt her watching him, puzzled and uneasy. He gave her a spare shake of his head, and hoped that she would take the hint and give him a second to sort himself out. He wracked his brain for some insight, some memory that would make this . . . what? What? Comfortable? He frowned at that. Meaningful? That was closer to the mark, but not quite what he was reaching for.

Romantic.

His eyes widened as it hit him. Romantic. Oh, Christ, he really was far gone. Squirming over inflicting his sordid desires on his . . . not-so-innocent love. As if she would appreciate the distinction. Which, oddly enough, really wasn’t the point. How much had the life she had led cheated her from? Had anyone ever bothered to woo her? Had anyone ever written bad poetry addressed to her sweet, soft lips, or dreamt of stealing a kiss from the same? Had she ever known that just by walking into a room she made someone feel like their day was complete?

He raked his hand through his hair, the rich smell of her cunt lingering there, while he revisited the brutal way he had worked his fingers into her, mixing pain and pleasure, and relishing every sound she made, everything he made her feel, because it made him feel good that he could.

She reached for him, her fingers tentatively exploring his erection, making him shudder. His smile was rueful. “Nothing worse than anything else that has ever been done to you,” he quoted.

Completely misunderstanding what had made him think of that, she stopped touching him and for a moment there was a flash of anger in her eyes. It wasn’t enough that she didn’t have a choice in virtually any aspect of their lives, but now she didn’t even have a choice about what to be offended about? He was back on the business with Drusilla.

“I don’t know what you want from me, Will. Do I have your permission to be mad, or is it an order?”

Her waspish tone took him by surprise. “What?”

“It’s a vampire thing, right? I mean, you might not have Dru’s talent for it, but if you tried, you could do it, couldn’t you? You could pull me under enough that drinking me wouldn’t hurt. It might even feel good. It might even make me come,” she said, watching his eyes. She wasn’t sure if that was true. It was a guess. “Is it better for you if it hurts me?”

He flinched, and she knew that was not what he had expected. “Will . . .” she made herself stay where she was, rather than put a little more distance between them. “I don’t understand,” she admitted, feeling frustrated by the way he kept circling back to this. “I feel like we are talking about two different things, and . . . you can’t understand this. I know that. You can’t begin to imagine what it is like to feel—“ she made herself stop when he held up his hand as if to ward her off.

“Are you out of your mind?” he demanded. “I wasn’t talking about that, and no, it’s not better for me if it hurts you,” he sneered, knowing that it wasn’t precisely true, but shoving that aside. “You carry on about it like I’m killing you, and I keep telling you, if I wanted you dead, you’d be in the ground, or you’d be begging me to bite you.” He fingered the mark on his own neck. “Drusilla’s work,” he reminded her. “Nothing like having your sire’s fangs in your throat, kitten.”

She scooted back against the headboard, and he glared at her, daring her to even think about leaving the bed.

“I’m not planning on finding out,” she told him.

His nostrils flared as he drew in what was meant to be a calming breath. They had gotten way off topic. His jaw clenched as he resisted the urge to tell her that she really didn’t have a choice in the matter. Knowing Willow, she would take that as a challenge, and God only knew what she would do.

She had been shot once, stabbed twice, gang raped, and forced to engage in more acts of violence and sex than she could recall accurately. There was a sanity preserving grace in that. She made herself hold his gaze. “I carry on about it like you are killing me?” she reminded him. “It hurts. You are biting through skin and muscle and that hurts,” she said steadily. “And it’s frightening. Terrifying. You have to know that.”

He sat back on his heels, sucking on one of his incisors, looking like he wanted to be anywhere else. “Yeah, Willow,” there was a world of weary patience in that. “I know.”

She bit her lower lip, chewing on it as she sorted it out in her head. “You are mad at Dru because she did something that made me . . . not feel those things, so you can’t possibly understand why I don’t want to feel those things. Or you simply don’t care.”

“Well,” he said, bitterness edging his tone, “I stand corrected. The next time I get a craving for a nice mouthful of you, I’ll keep in mind that you’d rather I rob you of your will.”

“Rather than make me do what you want knowing full well that all the choices that you’ve left me with are bad choices?” she shot back. “This is stupid,” she said, feeling like she was in the wrong, that she had hurt him somehow, and knowing with grim certainty that eventually, she was going to pay for it. “She didn’t do it to hurt me, and that’s more than I can count on under the best circumstances. Let’s leave it at that.”

“I don’t drink you to hurt you.”

“But you don’t do anything to keep it from hurting me,” she pointed out. “So, you have your ‘nice mouthful’ of me, and expect me to be grateful that I’m allowed the dignity of feeling it,” she held up one hand. “No, I think I understand now. Really. Philosophic consistency. I get it, Sp—“ she cut off the name that almost fell from her lips, startled that it came to her now.

He caught the little slip of tongue, but shrugged it off. “Fine,” he snapped. “Are we done?”

Her fingernails bit into the palms of her hands. Oh God, oh God, what have I done? She swallowed hard, and nodded.

He almost rolled his eyes at that. The way her heart was beating, the whiff of fear that was bleeding through her scent, suggested that she thought this was far from over. “Knock if off,” he said. “I’m not going to beat you,” he lowered his upper body to the mattress, rolling over on his back. “I wasn’t throwing it back at you, or picking a fight,” he announced, sounding oddly subdued.

“No?” Willow was looking for her shift, feeling uncomfortably naked.

“No,” he insisted. “I was thinking . . .” he heaved a sigh. “I don’t know. It’s like what just happened,” he looked over at her, catching her in her discreet visual search for something to cover up. Probably the little number she had on earlier. He crawled to the end of the bed and leaned over the footboard to snatch it up off the floor where he had dropped it. “Looking for this?” he guessed.

“Thanks,” she took it from him and slipped it over her head. Her hair was trapped under the neckline in the back, and she slid her hand under the mass of her hair, pulling it out, and with it, the ribbon that had held her hair back.

She looked at it like she couldn’t recall how it had gotten there and he grinned at her bemused expression. He returned to his former supine position as she sat up on her knees, smoothing the shift down. He started to reach for her, and let his hand drop. “It’s to be expected, I guess. I don’t always understand what’s going on in your head, and being hampered by being mortal, you can’t imagine the things that I’m thinking, but . . . I wonder . . . I think about it,” he sounded defensive. He frowned at the ceiling. “I—“ he looked at her, “I don’t know what you understand, partially because even when you are telling me, there’s nothing that it connects to. Being bitten hurts,” he said. “Yeah? I’m a vampire, Willow, my Willow,” he drawled. “Let me know when you get to the bad part.”

She frowned, but she understood that he was making a joke at both of their expenses.

He rolled to his side, re-arranging the pillows and patting the space at his side. She settled in next to him, her back to his chest.

He shifted until his upper arm was under her head, and let his arm curl around, finger combing her hair away from her neck before he nested his hand in there, playing with the lace edging the wide straps of the shift.

“How do you know that I love you?” he asked.

She frowned, thinking that the question was rhetorical. It had to be rhetorical. He couldn’t expect her to have an answer.

He pushed the strap aside and kissed her shoulder, taking her silence on the matter as an answer, albeit a slightly discouraging one. “Yeah, that’s what I thought,” he said, sounding calm. “You don’t know. And, how could you?” He closed his eyes, his lips resting briefly on her shoulder. “I love you,” he whispered. “I love your stubborn little chin, and your wise and lovely eyes, and the way you hog the blankets in your sleep, and the way you fall into a book when you are reading, and how you carry the scent of sunshine into the shadows,” he kissed her throat. “I love lying awake and listening to your heart beat, and feeling this,” his tongue painted a vein under her skin, “under my lips. I love your blood and your life flowing over my tongue, filling me with you—“ he lifted his head, his fingers gently turning her head so he could meet her eyes.

There was so much there. Never any simple answers for his girl. Astonishment and wonder, anger and sorrow. She looked moved to tears. She also looked a bit tempted to tell him to bugger off. “It was the last part, wasn’t it?” he guessed with a crooked smile. “Can’t understand it? It just sounds seductive, unless you’ve had a vampire at your throat and you’ve wondered if this is the time that he doesn’t stop.”

Her ferocious intellect, her sensitivity, her amazing ability to take Dru at face value, to accept what life dealt her with extraordinary resilience and grace, rescued her now. He watched as her lips parted on a silent exclamation, the tears that had filled her eyes, spilling over. He watched her as she understood it.

“I love you,” he whispered tenderly. “So much. My beautiful girl,” he stroked her cheek with the back of his hand, “my angel. My bright and shining star.”

He kissed away the tears that spilled over her sunburned cheeks. “I love you,” he whispered, huskily. “When I’m fucking you? It’s not just . . . it's not just fucking. It’s you, it’s me loving you, loving your sweet sounds and your body, it’s me wanting you to feel as lost in me as I am in you.”

He kissed her mouth, tasting her tears, feeling her turn to him, reaching for him, praying to a God that he didn’t believe in that locked inside her somewhere safe was the same feeling.

~Part: 20~

It was Lisbon all over again, Angelus decided as he scoured the books he kept from the others, and especially from their too curious little witch, looking for something that would shed some light on last night’s unsuccessful raid. Willow was right about one thing. With the advantage of surprise, the vampires who attacked the house had suffered heavier losses than could be easily explained. Luck and the surprise at her willingness to fight back, and fight more effectively than could be expected played a part in countering the ambush. So, why didn’t they back down? Why didn’t they take her out of the equation?

In Lisbon, it wasn’t an organized fight. In Lisbon, no one group of vampires had been large or strong enough to exert any authority over the other groups. The territory that they had established a household in belonged to a small group who acted to defend their territory. Beaten back, their numbers diminished, they became prey for the vampires in neighboring territories who had wiped them out and then started fighting amongst themselves to establish primacy in the now unclaimed territory.

But that wasn’t what reminded him of Lisbon. No, it was the sleeping couple he had walked in on this morning, wrapped up around each other, oblivious. William’s mouth had been open over her skin, where neck and shoulder joined, lazily suckling her flesh, his thigh wedged in between hers, one hand possessively covering her breast, his thumb over her heart. Angelus understood the attraction. She was a good lay, and he could never get enough of the look in her eyes when she was compelled to submit to him, all that feeling trapped there was intoxicating. At the same time, he couldn’t imagine sleeping with her. She was too warm, too noisy. Breathing, beating heart, and the living tension in her body was distracting. He couldn’t begin to imagine having a warm mouthful of her skin under his tongue without the bite.

William had carved out a place apart from them with her, an unholy suspension of her humanity and his inhumanity. He had seen it in Lisbon, where she had been shot when they moved closer to the wharves to manage what was quickly turning into a kind of vampire civil war. The boy should have turned her then, just out of loyalty or the kindness of mercy, because she had been in such pain and there was nothing that could be done for her but dig the bullet fragments out of her flesh, and wait for shock or infection to kill her.

The sound of her screaming as the wound was disinfected with raw spirits had made Drusilla tear at her hair, moaning in distress. For nearly a week she drifted in deathlike unconsciousness, a sickly sheen of sweat dampening her face as she lost flesh to fever, and the stink of infection filled the room where she lay. William had nursed her, without any assistance. They had denied him that when he refused to turn her, refused to even consider that she might not survive. Darla had wavered on the side of Angelus turning her. She had considered doing it herself. They had agreed that if her condition deteriorated much more, that they would do what had to be done if William wouldn’t.

She recovered, and as soon as she was somewhat alert, and on the road to recovery, William went on a rampage the likes of which had been suggested in some of his more reckless exploits over the years. Their idiot boy had gotten too attached to his pet. As soon as she was well enough to travel, Angelus hit on the notion of Prague, of sending her there in advance to set up their household. Separating them for a while seemed wise at the time, and he was convinced that if she stayed in Lisbon after William’s retaliation for her injury that someone was going to figure out a way to kill her simply because William had inadvertently made it clear that keeping her alive was important to him.

~~~*~~~

“Welcome to Gehanna,” the man holding the cross on a long staff said in a tone that was full of dark humor and challenge.

‘Gehanna’ was not the storefront mission two blocks from the Jewish Quarter. It was the place to which you could expect to be dispatched if you didn’t touch the cross. David Giles stripped his glove and grasped the cross until his interlocutor was satisfied. Behind him, Harry was in the grip of the smell that had hit him like a wave when they came through the door. It was the smell of too many unwashed bodies in unwashed clothing pressed into too small a space. It made him gag a little, and Emile slapped the back of his head for that, but it wasn’t an unfriendly, or reproving gesture, and for the first time in a day and a half Harry felt like he had done something right.

David’s stiff upper lip pretense of nothing being out of order about their surroundings was what was probably expected of him, and it was the polite thing, but it didn’t impress Emile.

Following their meeting with the representative of the Order of St. Ubaldus they took the streetcar to the Jewish Quarter for an interview with Rabbi Meir, which had been on David’s agenda for the afternoon long before Emile suggested it. On the way there, David demanded that Harry review everything he knew about the Order of St. Ubaldus with him, particularly their antipathy towards magic users of all stripe. Later, Rabbi Meir belabored the point with him. While useful, the Order of St. Ubaldus was distrustful of magic to the point of paranoia.

This was in part because David was much more forthcoming with Rabbi Meir than he was with Emile. With Rabbi Meir, he had included the particulars about the girl they had observed, and their speculation about her potential usefulness to the four vampires over a lavish meal in the almost clubby confines of the Rabbi’s study in the company of his most trusted colleagues.

As a result of this, Harry and David found themselves in possession of the likely address of the house where the vampires were laired. If they had been able to watch the girl for a few more days, they might have had it on their own. They were much closer to it than they had suspected, but David had erred on the side of caution about following her. Twice a week the relief auxiliary of the Temple took in a large stock of donated food from the house in question, always in the early morning hours. This had been going on for weeks.

They had a potential avenue into the house that was only spoiled by the fact that they could not risk it themselves for fear of being recognized by the girl. Rabbi Meir agreed to send two of his students to accept the next delivery. They would be tasked to observe and report back to Rabbi Meir, who would in turn share the information gathered with the Watchers.

It was an arrangement David had no intention of sharing with the Order of St. Ubaldus, which was why they were there, having met Emile at the appointed hour only to be led here. The proximity to the Jewish Quarter had alarmed Harry, who thought that Emile was sending a not so subtle message that he knew that they were keeping things from him.

“You can get something to eat,” Emile invited.

Harry decided that it was a ‘when in Rome’ moment, and possibly a kind of character examination as he took his place in the line winding past a table where lay brothers were serving soup in wooden bowls with chunks of bread. When his turn came the lay brother serving him voiced a blessing in Latin, making a point of looking him in the eye. There was a cup of weak tea waiting for him, but he could hardly manage that as well as the bowl with his cane, and an older man with a puckered scar that ran from an empty eye socket to jaw who was sitting at the end of one long table resolved his dilemma by carrying his tea for him.

Breathing through his mouth, Harry thanked him and sat at one of the long benches that flanked the tables crowded into the room. The soup was a fish stew with onions, turnips, carrots, and cabbage. The cook had been unsparing with the salt and pepper. The bread soaking in the stew was chewy with a thick rind of brown crust. He discovered after a few spoonfuls of the stew that the seasonings were overwhelming his sense of smell and that it was easier to breath.

David sat across from him. He had accepted the tea, and Emile had followed suit. There was not a lot of chatter, just the sounds of hungry people eating. As soon as the food was consumed, some of the men broke out bottles and flasks to top off their tea. Harry felt like he was gaining focus. As a rule, he didn’t look at poor people. It seemed impolite somehow. Now he was looking beyond the shabby clothing and the lack of grooming and seeing faces that were old and young, thin and fat, marked by the circumstances of poverty, disease, and violence, and not. He caught the eye of a man who was probably his age, and saw a flicker of amusement there that made him smile wryly.

When all of the soup was served, baskets of left over bread were placed on the table and passed around. The bread disappeared into pockets. Cups of tea were refilled from pitchers that were passed around. Emile took this as a signal to stand up, claiming the attention of the gathering.

“We have an interesting task to consider in Nove Mesto,” he announced. “The English are vampire hunters. They have tracked four vampires across Europe to Prague. Vampires who have made a lair in Nove Mesto,” he laid out the particulars that David had shared.

There was a rustle as a group of men scattered throughout the room exchanged significant looks, all directed at one pear shaped young man with a scraggly beard who had a battered notebook in front of him. Emile nodded to him, and he briefly consulted his notes, hunching his shoulders a bit before he spoke in a voice that was unexpectedly birdlike. “We’ve seen the Zlata Ulicka clan prowling around a house in Nove Mesto for the last week,” he announced. “Last night they sent out seven—“

There was a murmur at that, and Harry thought he caught someone saying, “hunting party.”

“We lost them on their side of the river,” he admitted, “and saw none return.”

Emile turned to another man, sitting at a bench near the wall, now leaning against the wall with his hands folded over his stomach. “Tomas?”

He shrugged. “The Cern’nsky hunt the city. Their movements are more difficult to relate to the presence of a small clan in the city. I’d have to know where they had been to establish any indication of interest,” he said, and then belched. “What makes four vampires special enough for the English to track them across Europe? Why not just stake them if you know where they lair?”

Emile turned to David, who betrayed in no way that he had a precise fix on their location. “It has been attempted,” he said. “There was a vampire hunter in the last century who spent the better part of a decade harrying the senior pair, and in the end, they killed his wife, his infant son, and turned his eight year old daughter. When you hunt the Scourge of Europe, you risk becoming what they hunt.”

It was not an announcement that particularly impressed the assembled men, and Emile’s easy manner vanished. “These English belong to an organization called the Watcher’s Council,” he said, “and while Holy Mother the Church does not always agree with their methods, the Order of St. Ubaldus recognizes them as an absolute authority on the subject of vampires. If we undertake this task, we will do so with the English as our mentors, and we will show them that we have more than arrogance to apply to the mission.”

If anything, David looked more serious. “We do not ask that you place yourself in harms way,” he said. “Only that you watch, and report. This is a clan that has been nomadic for most of its existence. How long they intend to stay in Prague is impossible to know. What has brought them to Prague may be no more than a whim. We have no immediate intention to take direct action against them, even should an opportunity present itself. Our goal is to study them, learn more about their methods, associates, and capabilities.”

He already had his eye on the fellow with the notebook. “We are looking for assistance that does not draw attention to itself. People who can see and not be seen versus a predator that has every possible advantage.”

~~~*~~~

The seed pearl choker concealed the bite mark on her throat that was still too fresh to be mistaken for anything other than what it was. Willow wore it with an evening gown that had a black velvet tunic bodice attached at strategic points with jeweled clasps that fell over an ice blue column dress, affording glimpses of bare skin or the ice blue satin that peeked through. It was the most daring dress she owned, and William looked pleased as he tucked her hand into the crook of his arm to lead her out to the Brougham.

Lucius was waiting with the step let down and the door open for them. Willow spared him a quick glance, wondering if anyone had bothered to tell him the part he was playing this evening. He returned her stare without giving anything away and she was forced to manage her skirt as William handed her up into the carriage, joining her a moment later. He picked up her hand. She was wearing long, black evening gloves.

“Might have to keep these on later,” he smirked.

She cast him a slightly startled sideways look. They had spent the better part of the afternoon in bed. Her skin was still tingling from the sensations. He had been insatiable, nibbling, biting, licking, sucking, and fucking her relentlessly, until she was too tired to move.

“Aren’t you tired?” she asked.

He grinned. “Hardly,” he kissed the tips of her fingers.

“I am,” she told him.

He guided her head to his shoulder. She was wearing a pair of pearl earrings that dangled from a simple hoop. He played with one, the backs of his fingers stroking her cheek. “All you need is a bit of food and fresh air to wake you up,” he said confidently.

~~~*~~~

From the box of the Brougham, Lucius watched them walk down the narrow gangway to the docked steamboat. The steamboat deck, painted red, was actually a few feet below the level of the wharf where they were boarding with other couples and clusters of people dressed in evening wear. William had her hand, and his free hand was hovering at her back, ready to steady her if the slight bobbing motion of the steamboat transferred to the attached gangway disturbed her balance. When they reached the deck, she tilted her head toward him and said something that made him laugh. They were met by a steward who discreetly checked the tickets that had been purchased and directed them to the stairs that led up two and half flights to the uppermost deck, where the diners would eat and dance under the stars on this clear, almost warm night. William had made the arrangements after consulting Cook about the boats that cruised the river.

Lucius hadn’t seen her since she had performed her spell in the dining room and William had whisked her off to recover. According to Paulus she had been up briefly, and had taken the dog out in the garden in the mid-day sun, but by the time he was up, she was in her room with William, and the sounds of what transpired behind that closed door were always impossible for him to completely ignore.

He picked them out as they reached the upper deck, escorted to a table near the rail under a canvas canopy trimmed in gold tasseled fringe. Lucius’ eyes narrowed as William turned to speak to a jacketed waiter, possibly the wine steward. “Bring me a bottle of your finest,” he mocked under his breath, though deep down he knew that he was off the mark, William was rude, not pompous, and that she would never be impressed by that kind of display.

He noticed last night that William impressed her. It was clear once he returned with Dru that she thought that even if their visitors returned in greater numbers, that William was more than vampire enough to meet any challenge. After William was satisfied that the house was secure, the two of them were rarely out of each other’s sight or hearing for more than a moment or two. Willow made no mention of their exchange at the door before the ambush, and Lucius was almost certain that she had actually forgotten about it. Having seen her dust more than one vampire that night, he thought he understood why she wasn’t concerned about him.

On the third floor, in the former servants quarters, it was a topic of heated discussion. The little human, William’s pet, was no longer easy to dismiss. Since Lucius and to a lesser extent Cook, had never gone out of their way to be rude or unpleasant to her, they looked like geniuses. Matilde didn’t like that, at all, but she didn’t say anything.

~~~*~~~

Cook was on the wharf, trawling the wharf with Matilde, who it was decided could pass for his wife. The way her nostrils had flared when Angelus made that announcement had made him smile. She might be evil and undead, but with her round, plain face and dressed in one of the gowns that she wore when she was primarily a lady’s maid, no one would have mistaken her for a whore. She sort of looked like what he imagined his mother might have looked like, as unlikely an idea as that was. His mother had died when he was three and from the tight lipped looks his grandparents had when her name came up, he had figured out that she hadn’t been the most dutiful and esteemed of daughters.

She looked like what he would have liked to imagine his mother looked like, Cook amended the thought, and just because it would irritate her, he shared it with Matilde.

Cook schooled his expression into blankness when she called him an idiot.

Angelus’ instructions were simple. They were to hang about on the wharf, keeping Lucius more or less in sight, but not to watch him or draw any sort of attention to themselves. A simpering and dubiously affectionate Matilde was, to Cook’s mind, an attention getter as a spouse, so the touch of irritation was perfect. They were a working couple taking a stroll, watching the people in fancy dress boarding the boats. He had a covered pail that held two bottles of beer and a sandwich wrapped in wax paper in case they had to linger in one spot. Stopping to share the sandwich and the beer was plausible. When he was alive, he used to do that himself, though usually not with any kind of girl.

Andreas had been left at the house with the dark lady. Drusilla. That one sent cold chills up Cook’s spine, and it wasn’t just because she had killed him. She was insane. When those spooky eyes of hers focused on him he had a wholly inappropriate, and potentially painful desire to lay hands on a cross. He felt no mysterious pull to Drusilla, though the mechanics of how he was made a vampire hadn’t survived with the change. Matilde could and would, given an opportunity, provide a detailed account of her turning by the Master’s Sire. Paulus and Andreas, like him, lacked any memory of the event, but they acknowledged finding Angelus particularly compelling.

For a while, Cook thought that Lucius was in a similar no-man’s land with him, unfettered by any real sense of a connection to a sire, but of late, he seemed to be bowing under the weight of William’s indifferent influence. Cook didn’t know why it bothered him so much unless it had something to do with the girl. Of the four masters, William and Dru were the least demanding, and William wasn’t insane, so that put him ahead of Drusilla in Cook’s estimation. Lucius was quietly obsessed with the girl, and it was no secret. To a certain extent, Matilde was too. She had made no effort to conceal her disappointment that she hadn’t been killed last night, and her disapproval of the girl’s presence in the household went unstated.

Matilde was a vampire in search of a hierarchy, and the higher she rated in that hierarchy, the better she liked it, fueling her resentment of Lucius and the girl. After he had gotten past the unnerving hunger that gnawed at him when he could smell her or hear her heart beating, Cook’s resentment of her off-limits status had eased.

An old man in a bulky coat that was too heavy for a warm night was fishing off the wharf. Cook spared him little more than a glance. The coat gave him away. When you had no sure roof over your head, you kept all of your possessions close. Lucius was still on the box, one foot propped up on the fender. The Brougham was one in a line of carriages idling at the curb above the wharf. The other drivers were leaving their carriages, to congregate, exchanging gossip to pass the time. There were three taverns nearby, and the boat was not expected to return until eleven o’clock.

~~~*~~~

Drusilla had decided to trim William’s hair. She had taken a great deal off the length in the back and trimmed the rest. One long lock fell forward, dipping down to his unscarred eyebrow, lifting in the breeze. He had dressed for dinner in a dark suit with a white shirt and cravat paired with a vest complete with watch fob and chain. The fob hung on a dark red ribbon embroidered in black thread that repeated the pattern edging the round gold fob. On the opposite side, William’s initials were etched in the back with a date. The watch, chain, and fob had been a gift from his father presented when he graduated from Magdalen College.

Their table was a small square table attached to the rail by a hinge that trapped the edge of the tablecloth covering the table. A pale blue glass globe resting on a heavy silver leaf base held a lit candle. An overhead framework supported a canvas canopy. The side supports, rising from the deck at the rail and on the inner edge of the oval that separated the diners from the center of the deck were painted white and gold and supported lantern box gaslights that spread soft light. A string ensemble played in the center portion of the floor facing the wide stairway under the pilot house.

The passage of the steamboat over the river was surprisingly smooth. Willow watched the shore slip past at a stately pace, and smiled across the table at William who moved his cane backed chair around to the end of the table, taking her gloved hand to hold.

The smell of sunlight still clung to her hair, fading. The evening on the river would take it away completely, and yet, watching her with the lights reflecting off the water and dazzling her eyes, he could not regret it. She had changed so much in the years since he had found her, and what she was becoming now was an apogee. Time was slipping away, like the shore, and he hoped that it kept her distracted a little while longer.

He had ordered a bottle of champagne, and kept her glass full, watching her nose wrinkle as the bubbles tickled her with a small smile. The menu for the cruise was relatively light, possibly due to the prospect of motion sickness. The main course was a puff pastry filled with grilled asparagus spears and thinly sliced game bird that he took to be duck, but refrained from mentioning to Willow. He had discovered that duck and rabbit belonged to the previously unknown phylum of ‘cute’ animals that were not meant to be consumed, at least in her mind.

When the last course was cleared away, more musicians, forming a wood and string ensemble, joined the string quartet. The first dance was a waltz, and he offered her his hand.

~~~*~~~

Holy Mother the Church had developed selective blindness about vampires and demons, but the Order of St. Ubaldus had not. Carefully, reverently, Emile wiped off the surface of a leather portfolio removed from the wall safe in the office that was connected to the private library maintained at Emmaus for his Order’s use. He kissed the embossed crucifix on the cover, reverencing the suffering of Christ as he silently repeated the vow his order took.

There were four others in the office with him. Two were, like him, lay brothers, the third was their father confessor, Monsignor Koenig, the last was a pear shaped young man with a scraggly beard and a crusty, dried bit of spilt soup on his worn jacket. Mistaken by the Watchers for part of the street rabble that the Order of St. Ubaldus relied upon from time to time, he was a seminary student.

Emile broke the seal on the portfolio and opened it. It was a true copy of a portfolio that had been prepared at the Order of St. Ubaldus’ chapter house in the diocese of Westminster, numbered and initialed by the then head of their order, containing an order signed by Pope Pius IX.

“On the evening November 18, 1862 the Carmelite community of St. Catherine of the Cross in the diocese of Westminster, a community of twelve nuns and three novices, was utterly destroyed by two of the four vampires that the Watcher’s Council call the Scourge of Europe,” Emile began.

He began by laying out the lithographs. The first two pictures were likenesses stolen from the Watcher’s Council archives. “Darla,” Emile identified the woman, “Angelus,” his lip curled over the name, a name taken by Popes, a name that mocked the church.

“Within the precincts of the convent, they took a novice on the eve of her ordination, stole her life, animating her dead body with a demon.”

Monsignor Koenig said a prayer for the souls of their sisters in faith. Emile let him finish, setting down the lithograph of Drusilla, based on a portrait of her before her death. “She was one of ours,” he reminded them.

“We are charged to destroy these creatures, utterly wherever they might be encountered,” Emile told them.

“The Bishop cannot be involved in this,” Monsignor Koenig cautioned. “The church’s position in the Austrian-Hapsburg Empire has not been compromised beyond tolerance yet.” For the last fifty years, from the reign of Pius IX, the Roman Catholic Church had watched, impotent, as the papal lands in Italy were stripped from the church, as tithes were removed, as church property was confiscated, particularly in Italy and the German states. The church was struggling to redefine itself for a modern world, tucking away its Inquisitors and its witch hunters to appeal to the so-called educated masses.

The Order of St. Ubaldus had always been small, much smaller than their Jesuit brothers who had broadened their work to include education. They had absorbed the lessons that had diminished the military orders of St. John, the Knights Templar, and Hospitaler, the Knights of Malta. The Order of St. Ubaldus owned less than a dozen monasteries, preferring instead to lodge small groups of their lay brothers within the monasteries established by other orders, adopting the rule and mission of the host monastery where it did not conflict with the mission of the Order of St. Ubaldus.

“What about the Watchers?” the seminary student asked. It was a logical question. He would be working with the Watchers.

“Let the Watcher’s watch,” Emile instructed. “They use our weapons,” bitterness bled through his voice. The English had abandoned the true church. They used the cross rather than the crucifix, and claimed through Canterbury an unbroken line back to the first Bishop of Rome. Anglican clergy blessed their holy water.

“They do not use them well,” he charged. The diocese of Westminster had been attacked under the Watcher’s Counsel’s very noses in London, and this offence against the church was no more, no less to them than any other massacre perpetrated by the vampires in question. They owed the Watcher’s Council nothing.

~~~*~~~

The art of making jewelry from human hair was one that Drusilla had learned from her grandmother, though it had not reached its zenith of popularity until after Drusilla was dead. The cult of mourning, and the somber mourning fashions that prevailed after Queen Victoria was widowed in 1861, had more or less coincided with the end of her mortal life. From 1860 to her death two years later at St. Catherine’s Convent outside of London, Drusilla had never been out of mourning.

Her grandmother had not had mourning in mind when she taught Drusilla how to twist, weave, and knot hair into rosettes, cobweb fine net, and braids. The brooch she was working on now was a lover’s knot formed around study cord threaded with wire for stiffness. The double bows were formed out of her hair and Willow’s, collected from her brush. She was making the center knot from William’s hair. It was a kind of peace offering. Miss Edith had suggested it after Drusilla had shared the misunderstanding that had developed with her childe.

She had been left behind to protect the house. In this task, Andreas was supposed to help her, but she had seen nothing in him to suggest that he might be useful. He looked less than solid now, standing in the foyer, the grayish shape of his bones hanging on him like a suit of clothes. One foot in the grave, one foot out. It made him no different than most vampires she saw, and there were many in Prague, like ghosts, distracting, but unimportant, unable to truly impact events. Of the minions, only Lucius looked solid to her, the others were dead things trying to stay undead another day.

As her fingers worked, she listened to the psst, psst, and mumble jumble of voices, hissing at the ancient music and meter of the voice that presumed to be an instrument of vengeance. Vengeance was the provenance of Gods and certain demons, of which the voice was neither.

The nuns told her that her visions and voices were from God. She was his divine instrument, a true martyr—not a mad woman, not a bad woman, not devil’s spawn. A divine instrument.

Andreas cocked his head to one side in the hallway, listening for a moment to the woman in the salon. She was a picture of domestic industry sitting before the cold fireplace with a basket at her feet, her hands moving in her lap. She was also one of the most beautiful women he had ever seen. He found the pitch of her voice soothing, melodic, though she was speaking in her native English and he had no idea what she was saying.

“What I tell you in the dark, utter in the light; and what you hear whispered, proclaim upon the housetops. And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell. Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground without your Father's will. But even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not, therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows.”

She was a divine instrument. She would see sparrows fall.

~~~*~~~

It was not the tavern under the Charles Bridge, but one like it, a two story building with blackened timbers supporting the ceiling in the tap room. The post boys were left to keep an eye on the carriages, even those without a post boy like the Brougham Lucius was driving. Invited to join his supposed peers for a drink, he had left the carriage. Angelus had anticipated this, and told him to act normally.

The conversation was what was to be expected. Who worked for whom. Where had they worked before? Were any households looking for help, because virtually everyone was related to someone who needed a job. Had anyone heard about the coachman whose throat had been ripped out in Nove Mesto last night? Or the fellow last week, killed by the quayside? And did anyone know anything about repairing a broken bicycle, because the Master of the house had bought one of the infernal contraptions, and it kept breaking.

He sipped his beer, and participated in the formless conversation without volunteering anything about himself. A coachman from a house a block and a half from their home had recognized him on the box and invited him along, calling up a friendly greeting. “Haven’t seen you in a dog’s age, Lucius, isn’t it? Your mistress is out of mourning, is she?” he was saying now.

Another lifetime ago, that had been the ‘story’ about the American or English woman who had hired him. She was a widow. Lucius had forgotten that. He considered it while he sipped his beer. He hadn’t forgotten it so much as he had never quite believed it, he concluded.

Awareness of the passing hour, and the growing unlikelihood of a repeat of last night’s ambush, made him look around the tap room. The windows and shutters had been opened. The shutters were hoist above the windows and secured by posts outside, forming a kind of awning over the sidewalk, the flower boxes attached to them hanging over the edge. The glass paned windows were folded back in two panels to be secured by brackets to the wall to prevent anyone from accidentally running into them and damaging the valuable glass.

There was gaslight, but the jets were turned down low, and in the shadowy depths of the tavern, Lucius pondered creating another mystery to be discussed tomorrow night when the discovery of a dead body in some dark corner of the tavern might be generally known. He was looking for a likely candidate for this fate when a dark haired serving girl caught his eye. She looked familiar, but out of place. His eyes tracked her for a moment, admiring the sway of her hips as she sidestepped a table with a heavily laden tray on her shoulder.

A boy at a table nearby stood up, stumbling, and made his way to the privy. Calculating the time he had left, Lucius finished his beer and left his stein on the table to follow him. On the way, he bumped into the dark haired serving girl. He glanced down at her again, and got a quick flash of memory of a once white cap edged in lace, and eyes looking up at him.

The girl behind the tavern under the Charles Bridge. It wasn’t possible. He had drained her down to the last shuddering beat of her heart and left her dead body in the alley behind the tavern. It simply wasn’t possible. He could feel the heat coming off her body, hear her heartbeat, and he sniffed, eyes narrowing. It was her. Not even a hint of recognition in her eyes as she excused herself.

His meal forgotten, Lucius decided to return to the carriage. In the distance, he could see the steamboat returning, a curling cloud of smoke leaving its twin stacks to dissipate in the night air. He could hear music and imagined couples dancing, the ice blue satin of a skirt gently draping around the darker color of a pair a man’s of trousers. He knew he should be paying more attention, but Cook was out there watching him, and he was certain that Angelus was somewhere nearby.

~~~*~~~

The sandwich lay between them on the bench, untouched. Neither of them could even pretend an interest in food. They drank the beer instead, Cook curling his arm across the back of the bench, behind Matilde. She gave him a sideways look, as if to tell him not to get any ideas, and he had smiled good-naturedly at her. She was predictable, and he liked that about her.

He saw Lucius coming back and wondered if he had gotten anything to eat. Cook hated to go more than a day without a meal, even if it was one he was sharing. He knew that they could go longer. Matilde had gone three days once, as a punishment for some offence the Master had taken. Cook shuddered at the thought. Three days. They could go longer, though how much longer he didn’t know and didn’t want to find out. Left behind to clean up after the dinner party and stuck there after the ambush, Lucius hadn’t fed for at least a day, maybe more.

“There’s Lucius,” he pointed out to Matilde. “You’ve never hunted with him, have you? He’s interesting,” Cook said to make conversation. “He likes to—“

“Rut with humans?” Matilde supplied. “It’s from the taint in him,” she announced. “He’s William’s get.”

Cook tapped her beer bottle with his to get her attention. “I was going to say that he’s quick. It’s like watching a red tailed hawk. I used to do that. Come down here in the morning, and watch the hawks hunt the pigeons. Where do you get these crazy ideas?” he asked. “I mean, I figured out why William keeps his pet a long time ago.”

She frowned, looking at him, waiting for an answer.

“Because he can,” Cook said with a grin. “He’s got his nice bit of fluff. None of which has anything to do with us, other than the obvious. No biting the master vampire’s pet, and I’m getting the feeling lately that he not just talking about the kind of biting that comes with the fangs. Be careful what you say around them,” he advised. “she’s one of them, ‘Tilde. Not one of us. I’ve seen them together. He talks to her like he talks to them. One of us is not going to become one of them. If you want to stand towards the front of the line, that’s your choice, but I’m staying in the middle of the pack, where I can blend in.”

“She’s not one of them,” Matilde protested.

Cook shrugged, “Maybe not, but she is whatever William decides that she is, and what that means has nothing to do with her. He’s not the least of them, or the youngest, or the weakest. He’s one of them. We aren’t. They came here together, with no minions. Have you thought about what that means? What did they do with the ones that came before us?”

Matilde’s eyes were focused on the middle distance as she worked that out, shivering. Staked or abandoned, it hardly mattered, did it? The idea of being left by Darla made her skin crawl. “What do we do?”

Cook patted her shoulder. “Not a lot we can do, is there? Except stay in the middle, and blend in,” he nodded to Lucius on the box. “He can’t help himself. He’s always going to be in the front, and maybe that will work out for us, or not,” he shrugged. “There’s always someone to stand behind.”

For him it had been the redheaded footman who had died with Drusilla’s hand wrapped around his heart. He could no longer remember his name, but Cook was positive that he was the reason that he was undead rather than rotting a layer of lime under the compost heap in the garden.

~~~*~~~

The food and the champagne made her sleepy. The music didn’t help. Willow felt that if she could take a step in closer to William’s body and let her head rest on his shoulder, she would be asleep in seconds.

That’s the way she learned how to dance, staring wistfully at the crowded dance floor at the Bronze during the slow songs when couples were pressed together. Girls with their arms twined around their partner’s neck, boys with their hands laced over the small of partner’s back, swaying together, barely moving. It wasn’t really dancing.

She had been taught to dance properly. There were no country dances tonight. It was all dances for couples, waltz, polka, redowa, schottishe, mazurka, and minuet. The music gave a clue in the time, and William was leading, so all she had to do was recognize which dance it was, but they were, one after another, exhausting.

She was thinking about it though as she followed William in the demanding Schottische, a Bohemian country dance that had become hugely popular. The left, right, left, hop, left, right, left, hop, left, right, left—crap, she was supposed to have hopped, now, she was on the wrong foot altogether, and William was laughing, pulling her away from the dance floor back to their table to pour her another glass of champagne. He held the silver gilt cane backed chair for her, turning it towards the water as he resumed his place in the chair he had moved around to the end of the table when they were seated.

She looked over her shoulder at him and found him leaning on his elbows, braced on the table. “Catch your breath, love,” he advised, pointing to the shoreline slipping past, his voice a low, intimately pitched purr in her ear, when she turned back to the rail. “Can you see the Charles from here?” he asked, well aware that he saw much better in the dark than she did. “Look past the bridge tower,” he prompted.

“Hradcany?” she guessed, seeing not much more than the shadowy profile of the ancient and vast Prague Castle complex.

His fingers caressed the inside of her arm above the glove that came nearly to her elbow. “Yes,” he agreed. “Did you visit it before we came?” he asked.

She nodded. Before they came, she had, aside from shopping for the house, managed to visit Hradcany, the Jewish Quarter, and several museums, usually with Matilde or Sophia and Lucius, who always made a point of driving for her if she went out.

He tilted his head to the side, his eyes on her face in profile. “When we go home, would you like to see the Tower of London?”

Home. It gave her an odd pang, and at the same time she was almost startled to hear William refer to London as home. “It could be arranged. Edward or one of the cousins could go with you. They’ll ask you a lot of rude questions,” he conceded, “but, you wouldn’t have to go alone.”

“I don’t mind going places alone. I like it,” she insisted.

“Hmmm,” his eyes narrowed. “Don’t know if I do, pet,” he said mildly, his gaze shifting to the shoreline. He lifted her gloved hand and kissed the back of it before sliding his fingers over her palm. He smiled, “I do like these gloves,” he teased, slanting a look at her, and laughing softly at the blush that was creeping into her cheeks.

They stayed at the table for the rest of the cruise, sipping champagne and nibbling on a selection of small crumbly biscuits filled with a variety of preserves and dusted with powdered sugar. William insisted on feeding her to keep the powdered sugar from getting on her gloves, even though they unbuttoned at the wrist in order to free her hands for eating.

She accused him of having a fetish about feeding her, and he lifted his eyebrows before seeming to acknowledge it. “I think it’s a vampire thing,” he glanced over at her to see if she was taking him seriously. “I need to feed you.”

She looked skeptical, having heard William’s callous views on the care and feeding of minions, which was essentially that if they couldn’t care for or feed themselves, then they weren’t going to be kept. She had seen the principal applied to fledglings and injured minions over the years.

“I’ve never noticed that you felt the need to feed any of your . . .”

He nodded, “Well, no, not minions. But, you know, Dru,” that went without saying, “Angelus, if I was in the right mood. Darla, if I was feeling charitable,” he snarked, “You.” He waved a biscuit dripping blood red raspberry preserves. “Daddy’s got a nummy treat,” he teased.

Her nose wrinkled. “Eeeew!”

He ate the biscuit in two bites, chewed, and washed it down with a mouthful of champagne. “It has to be some instinctive, primal thing, pet because there is no way in hell I’d willingly expose myself to Angelus while I’m putting together a snack for you unless it was some kind of impossible to deny thing.”

“Really? Angelus? What does he do? Stand with his arm crossed over his chest and look disapproving?” It was his default expression when it came to William.

“Something like that,” he agreed. “Sometimes,” he chuckled, “he gives me advice.”

Willow looked horrified and intrigued. “Do I even want to know?” she ventured, her nose wrinkling.

He pinched her chin, “Nah, give you nightmares, sweet.” Her eyes looked a little heavy lidded. Partially from the champagne, he guessed, but she was tired. The last few days had been a bit much for her. “Knackered, aren’t you?”

The yawn that had been threatening for hours, finally broke and she let it speak for itself.

He scooted his chair closer. “Not much longer now, and we’ll be on dry land and I’ll take you home. Tuck you up in bed.” He considered kissing her. He wanted to kiss her, but they were in a public place and it really wasn’t the done thing. For himself, he didn’t mind, but . . . he lifted his eyes to meet hers. “I really want to kiss you,” he said.

She froze, and he sighed. “I’m not going to, pet.”

“Oh,” she breathed, and then her gaze shifted to his lips and her tongue stole out to wet her lower lip, and she looked back up at him. “Um . . . okay.”

“Okay,” he drawled right back, fascinated by her reaction. “I like kissing you,” he confessed, picking up a biscuit full of apricot preserves. “You have the softest, most kissable lips.”

There was something that flashed in her eyes, so fleeting that he might have missed it if he wasn’t watching her so intently. His earlier insight about what she had been deprived of had been an epiphany. He hadn’t consciously been thinking about how to turn it to his advantage. He understood, the night under the bridge, that there were things that he could never expect from her, and he accepted that. But it didn’t mean that he couldn’t . . . woo her.

It was a novel idea, and an oddly pleasant one, though he knew Angelus would have a field day with it when he picked up on it, but that was a small price to pay.

How could he have neglected to tell her these things? Jesus. He really was an ass. It was on the tip of his tongue to elaborate, but he made himself stop. He didn’t want to overwhelm her, and she was hideously clever. If she thought that he was manipulating her, the slender toehold he sensed that he had gained would dissolve.

“Will?” her tone of voice was tentative.

He made himself sit back, and drink the last bit of champagne in his glass, gesturing to her to go on with whatever she had been about to say.

She looked down at the table, thinking, and then at him. “I had a good time tonight.”

He was pretty sure that wasn’t what she was thinking about saying when she said his name, but he let it pass. “It was a good idea,” he said with a small smile, because he wouldn’t have thought of this if she hadn’t looked interested when she saw the boat on the river.

~~~*~~~

From the roof of a hotel on the Stare Mesto side of the river, Angelus and Darla met the surviving quartet of vampires whose lair on Zlata Ulicka was at least partially compromised. A note requesting the meeting had arrived at mid-afternoon. With William occupied with Willow, it was something that had been easily kept from him. Angelus saw no reason to alter their plans for the evening. The invitation was for all of them, himself, Darla, William, and their witch, but he had no intention of delivering all of them into potentially hostile territory.

The rooftop was not deserted. Rising an additional story from the alley side of the building was the element of the building that housed a kitchen and service area as well as the stairway access to the roof. Strings of electric lights were attached to an expansive pergola painted a shade of green that blended with the patina on the exposed bronze flashing on the rooftop. Wrought iron tables and chairs separated by heavy planters on casters filled with ornamental trees shrubs with powder puff blossoms and a classically themed fountain spraying water into the night sky gave the rooftop a garden feel with a spectacular view of the city.

From this vantage point, Angelus could make out the running lights of barges and at least two steamboats on the Vltana.

The maitre d' directed them up a short flight of stairs to a terrace that was largely empty but in clear view of the roof garden.

He registered disappointment, but not surprise or annoyance in the way he and Darla had accepted the invitation from the three female and one male vampire on the terrace. They studied each other, and the impression of age that he had from the two older vampires was a little off putting. They were truly old, possibly older than Darla’s ancient sire. He recognized the vampire ‘child’ from Willow’s description in a costume that could have been taken from a fifteenth century Northern Renaissance painting. She was wearing scarlet trimmed in sable with a fez-like hat of gold covered by a film of gauzy white fabric that formed a line where her eyebrows should have been. The low neckline framed small breasts, possibly on display to erase any doubt about her age when she was turned. She was so small that Angelus understood how Willow could have mistaken her for a child.

It took him a moment, but then he recognized it. The resemblance to a Northern Renaissance painting was not casual. The costume was an almost exact copy of one in a painting by Roger van der Weyden.

The other ancient vampire was unexpectedly tall, nearly twice her height. His waist length white blond hair was unbound, casually swept over one shoulder, otherwise he was as conventionally garbed as Angelus in a dark suit that he looked mildly uncomfortable in. Incurious, almost blank cornflower blue eyes studied them without any particular interest. Where the little van der Weyden vampire had her hands folded in front of her almost prayerfully, her ringed fingers on display showing the tell-tale signs of advanced aging in a vampire in the length of her curling fingernails, the taller vampire's hands were loosely curled to hide his fingertips.

The other two female vampires were younger, possibly younger than Darla. One dark, dressed in a loose banyan that was more appropriate for daywear, and the other, blond with large gray eyes that were tempered by a certain amount of weary patience. She was the only one of the group who was seated, and Angelus found himself amused by this little hint as to who was in charge, as well as intrigued that one of the youngest of the vampires was the acknowledged leader of the group, a mystery that was worthy of further exploration.

“Do we start with the usual maneuvers, or do we get right down to business?” Angelus asked.

The younger vampire nodded. “We attacked your lair, for which we lost over half of our clan,” she said, giving away a lot more information than Angelus would have if he had been in her position. “Our lair in Zlata Ulicka is impenetrable, though I am certain this is something you plan to ascertain for yourself.”

He waited. They were talking, and there was no point in giving up what advantage that represented until they stopped saying anything interesting.

“We will demand neither compensation nor retribution, for our losses,” she told him.

If over half of their clan was eliminated, they were not in a position to demand anything. “Very generous,” he commented dryly.

“We think so,” she agreed, gesturing to a settee covered with a striped cushion. “We are not in neutral territory,” she said as Angelus and Darla sat, facing her. “This is Stare Mesto, and it, and the whole of Prague, are claimed by my sire,” her lip curled a little on the last word. “Ekaterina Cern’nsky,” her head dipped forward, and Angelus realized that she was expecting him to recognize the name.

He gave it a moment before he allowed his lack of recognition to bleed through. He gave Darla a sideways look and saw her smile a cool, brittle, ground glass smile.

“Never heard of her,” he stated flatly.

The dark haired female vampire’s weight shifted from one foot to the other. “I’d give a fang to see the expression on her face if she heard that,” she said, her voice dry and amused.

A smile ghosted across the blond vampire’s face. “Esota,” she indicated the dark haired vampire. “Lulach,” the older male vampire gave them a curt nod, “and, Sian, who is known to your household,” she matched Darla’s brittle smile. “And you are Angelus and Darla,” she said, an eyebrow lifting with a hint of disdain. “We know this because we make a point of being knowledgeable.”

Darla felt Angelus tense as the jibe landed. Her boy prided himself on being knowledgeable and he had just had his own arrogance and rudeness paid back.

“And I am Thomazine,” their hostess concluded, not rushing, but not lingering over the discomfort she had inflicted. “We have more in common than not,” she directed this to Darla. “For two hundred years we have managed to maintain our independence from my sire, much as you have, childe of Heinrich Nest.”

Shit! Angelus studied his fingernails, trying not to betray any sign of discomfort, and knowing that he was failing to some extent. The depth of knowledge that they were casually displaying about them was startling.

Darla gave a shrug. “We like to travel,” she made it bland.

Thomazine cocked her head to one side. “Yes,” she agreed. “You like to travel. Lulach,” she looked over her shoulder, “likes to travel. I’ve always thought I would have time for it.”

Esota looked at her as if to dispute this, but held her tongue. Sian smiled, finding the comment amusing.

Angelus flicked an imaginary speck of lint from his trousers. “I’ve always thought Paris was nice this time of year,” he drawled, sounding bored. “If you do not seek retribution or compensation, what do you want?”

“To remain independent,” she didn’t flinch from the question. “We are dangerously weakened. Our numbers could be increased,” she acknowledged, “but not in any way that would protect us in the short term.”

Angelus smiled at that. “You can’t be very knowledgeable if you think we have the least interest in your problems,” he shot back.

“My problem is your problem,” she told him. “If someone did an injury to your childe, how would you react? Would you leave them to their own devices and tell yourself that they had it coming? Would you offer them the mantle of your protection? Or would you see it as an opportunity to re-establish your authority and finish what they began?”

She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter what you or I would do, because we have something in common. More to the point, what would your Master do? Because your Master and mine have something in common.”

Darla’s fingers moved to rest on Angelus hand, her fingernails tapping lightly against his skin. It was the only sign she gave that what Thomazine was suggesting had made an impression on her.

“That’s a warning, is it?” Angelus said. “We can be out of Prague in twenty-four hours,” he bluffed. He had no intention of leaving Prague just yet. “There is a whole world out there. You might want to see what it has to offer.”

Thomazine’s chin lifted, her eyes narrowing. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I’ll take that under advisement. I think that, like you, I’ll leave when it suits me.”

Angelus chuckled. “It suits me to live again another day,” he told her. “I’ve had to run to ground before, more times than I could count. Thinking that you are above running is going to get you staked. It got six of yours staked last night by a human and a pair of fledglings,” his tone was pure acid.

Anger and uncertainty flashed in Thomazine’s eyes and Lulach checked an involuntary move towards her, a low frequency purring growl rumbling in his throat. It wasn’t a threatening growl. It was meant to be comforting. For a moment it dragged Angelus’ attention away from the younger vampire and he pondered the unusual circumstances that might drive a vampire as old as this one to serve one so much younger.

He also found himself responding to the calming purr. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Darla’s eyes widen in wonder.

“We’ve exchanged our pithy comments,” Angelus said, acknowledging that his own stepped over the line. “What exactly do you have in mind?”

~~~*~~~

‘I really want to kiss you . . .’

“Careful, Willow,” William’s hand rested briefly on her back as they made their way across the gangway to the wharf. A section of carpet had been rolled out and Willow distracted herself with wondering if this necessity was what inspired the red carpet of her time. The wharf was covered with gray paving stones that sloped into deep grooves between the pavers, as if the grout or concrete, or whatever held them together, had been washed away. They would have been impossible to manage with her long dress, even in her relatively flat evening slippers. The carpet made it possible to walk up the grade of the wharf, though she hung onto William’s arm anyway.

Lucius was waiting for them beside the Brougham with the step down and the door open. He had lit one of the candles that were mounted inside the carriage in a lamp backed by mirrored glass. William handed her in and found his packet of cigarettes, shaking one out and lighting it. He sucked in a hearty lungful of smoke. It gave him an excuse to linger outside the carriage, and he had gone without a smoke for hours on the boat.

Cook and Matilde were sitting on a bench. Cook looked bored, but resigned to it while Matilde was paying critical attention to the passing knots of people streaming off the boat.

William shook his head at the picture they made. “They look married,” he observed, amused by the pairing. “Bloody well eat him alive, she would.”

He was speaking in English out of habit and Willow thought he was speaking to her. She moved from the outer side of the bench seat closer to the open door of the carriage.

“Who?” she asked.

“It’s nothing, love. I’ll just be a moment,” he said over his shoulder. His attention turned to Lucius and he switched to German. “Anything interesting happen?”

“Interesting?” Lucius repeated. “I saw someone I drained and left for dead, alive, but other than that, no.”

William looked at him. If it was true, that qualified as interesting. “You don’t see that everyday,” he mused, taking another drag on the cigarette, weighing the odds that Lucius only thought his victim was dead. “Where?”

Lucius described the tavern while William smoked, his eyes restlessly scanning the wharf, settling briefly on an old codger who seemed to be napping over a fishing line. He caught Cook’s eye and gave a slight nod to the fisherman, miming pushing a pair of glasses back.

Cook looked puzzled, and then a flash of enlightenment dawned. He nodded. William wondered if he was going to flash him a thumbs up sign. Very subtle, they were.

“Let’s get my girl home. She’s ready to drop,” he said, taking a final drag on the cigarette before dropping it and crushing it out under foot. He ducked into the carriage, pulling up the step that folded inside the door. Lucius shut the door behind him and William secured the latch.

Willow would have slid back to the other side of the seat to make room for him, but he stopped her, stepping around her nimbly to sit on the other side of her. He leaned back against the seatback and stretched his legs out.

‘I really want to kiss you . . .’

She glanced over at him cautiously, not wanting to stare, and definitely not wanting to be caught staring, but wondering a little if he was going to kiss her. Not that it was a big deal or anything. It wasn’t like he hadn’t kissed her before. It was a little different that he had announced that he wanted to kiss her and then hadn’t followed up on that, by kissing her.

He caught the sideways look, and misread it. “We’ll be home soon,” he promised.

The wharf was at the foot of the Palackeho Bridge, and it was a short drive over the bridge into Nove Mesto to the house.

It was never a good sign when Drusilla greeted you with a reference to scripture. She met them at the door. “Matthew, 10:29—one will fall!” she announced, grabbing Willow’s hand and waist to dance across the foyer, “but, not us, dearie. We’ll dance on clouds of feathers and blood,” she confided, eyes softening as she looked down at Willow.

William found himself following them up the stairs. Drusilla had pounced on Willow as soon as she walked through the door, talking animatedly about what she and Mr. Buttons had done while they were out. Drusilla had made the dog a chew toy out of some scraps of fur that had been stuffed and sewn into a misshaped dog figure with an overly large head and stubby legs.

The dog was dragging it in front of him since it was too large for him to carry in his jaws without it dragging on the ground. Willow seemed to find it more interesting than amusing as she watched the dog sit with it positioned between his two front paws, occasionally pausing to bite or chew on the toy.

William went to sit on her chaise, in the far corner of her bedroom. It was a comfortable piece of furniture, even if it wasn’t up to Darla’s tastes.

Willow sat at her dressing table to take her hair down, and Drusilla made a sound of protest. “Going out, not staying in. It’s not time for bed,” she scolded.

“Willow is staying in, my love,” William told her.

Dru eyed him quizzically, and then turned back to Willow, tucking her fingertips into a section of Willow’s hair, smoothing it with her thumb. “Better to know than not to know,” she observed.

Willow ducked her head. “I think so, too,” she agreed, scooting to one side of the vanity bench.

Dru took the hint and sat beside her, her hand moving from Willow’s hair to her cheek. She cocked her head to one side as if she was listening to something, and then leaned forward to kiss her, her free arm moving to Willow’s waist below the velvet bodice. She paused, her lips hovering over Willow’s and then smiled. “You can have what you want if you take it,” she told her, then she patted Willow’s cheek and rose, holding her hands out to William.

“Such lovely secrets I have to tell,” she told him.

Without leaving his place on the chaise, he held his hand out to her, pulling her down to lay against him, her abdomen resting against his hips. Stroking the cool softness of her cheek, he smiled into her eyes. “What did you do tonight while we were out?”

She gave Willow’s back an arch look. “I made presents, for Christmas,” she caroled.

Willow was taking her hair down, brushing it out. She glanced over her shoulder at them when William didn’t say anything, and figured out that the present Dru was making had something to do with her. Her expression became rueful. Dru was childish. Half the fun of the present was teasing her about it and it would be spoiled if she didn’t show enough interest to guess at what it was. Willow was childish enough to feel curious.

“You’ll never guess what it is,” Dru was smug, “though it’s right at your fingertips,” she wiggled her fingers at Willow who was brushing her hair.

William got it. Dru’s sudden interest in cutting his hair now made sense. She was making something for Willow, and it had his hair in it. Willow simply looked puzzled and tired, but she was trying to come up with a good guess.

William pulled a lock of Drusilla’s dark hair through his fingers, carrying it to his lips, and she frowned at him. “You are not to give hints,” she scolded.

“Hm?” He feigned ignorance, but out of the corner of this eye, he checked to see if Willow was taking the hint about the hair. She was looking at them, and the small smile she wore looked a little forced, and the slight frown suggested that she was confused. She was clever, but when she didn’t get something right away, when a joke or a comment went over her head, she got an almost frightened look on her face. For a brief moment, as he wound Drusilla’s hair around his finger, he wondered who had taught her to fear not knowing the right answer.

His attention returned to Dru, who was stroking his chest through his clothes, tracing and shaping the contours of the vest. He smoothed the lock of hair he was playing with against his lips, quietly reveling in the heavy, silken quality of her hair, savoring the scent that clung to her hair. The warmth of Willow’s body did things to her scent, cooking it into a spicy mélange of impressions. Dru smelled like nothing and no one on earth. She smelled like fresh air, like water trickling over lichen covered stone, like crushed violets. The purity of her face was such that she almost looked plain, and then she would cast her dark, wicked eyes on him, or smile a certain way, and he would find himself marveling at her, his dark Goddess.

“I get so lost in you,” he told her.

“Wonderful games tonight, my love,” she whispered, treating him to one of her secretive smiles, “Even if Miss Willow refuses to play,” she pouted.

Willow was taking off the pearl choker, laying it flat on her dressing table. The earrings joined it, and she rubbed her slightly sore earlobes, not wanting to examine the feeling that she had been excluded. “Is it bigger than a breadbox?”

Dru huffed at that. “No,” she said, and then rolled her eyes. “And it’s not a breadbox,” she added.

It was an old joke between the three of them. They had been in Calais, forced to wait out the day in a warehouse when a maid at the hotel that they were staying in stumbled on a pair of dead bodies carelessly left propped up at the foot of Dru’s bed, and forgotten there while the three of them slept in an adjoining room that forced them to vacate the premises with a deeply annoyed Darla and Angelus. To pass the time, they played endless rounds of twenty questions, with Willow and Angelus emerging as the most difficult to confound.

Angelus had started the ‘bigger than a breadbox’ question, using it so predictably that it started to become a joke, and eventually, Willow stumped him, leading him through the maze of questions until they were sitting across from each other on crates, like duelists. Forced to conceded defeat, Angelus asked her what it is was, and she had raised her eyebrows and said, “A breadbox,” which had made Angelus frown at her for tweaking him with his own joke.

She took off her shoes, walking on stocking feet to her wardrobe to struggle with the dress, buttoned up the back. William and Dru exchanged glances. Dru pursed her lips, and William lifted an eyebrow, running his tongue over his lower lip. She crawled up his chest to capture his lower lip, worrying it with blunt teeth.

Willow pinched and pushed the small, hard, satin covered buttons through the holes. There were a ridiculous number of them starting just below her shoulder blades and going down to the small of her back to support the fitted bodice of the column dress under the loose fitting velvet bodice that lifted over her head. She got the dress off first and carefully hung it by the straps before removing the tunic-like velvet top of the dress and hanging it over the dress. The dress had been too fitted for any undergarments other than a corset and a long slip with three rows of black ruffles that were meant to be visible if the hem of the dress rode up at all. She unfastened the draw string waist of the slip and stepped out of it, hanging that up too.

The corset fastened at the back in a series of crisscrossed ties that were meant to pull in the waist and keep it flat, but were worn without that constraint. She untied it and eased it off, placing it in a drawer inside the wardrobe where she found a shift to wear to bed.

She glanced over at William and Dru. They were all tangled up in each other on her chaise. Dru was wearing a black dress with fitted sleeves and a high neck in shiny bombazine. On her the modest dress, almost severe dress was becoming. She wore black well.

She slipped the shift over her head and let it fall before going back to her dressing table to roll her stockings down. They would need to be soaked in cold water before she went to bed, and she quietly moved to the bathroom to wash her face and brush her teeth with the stockings slung over her arm. After she was finished with her bedtime ritual, she hung the stockings to dry over a towel that was hanging and returned to her bedroom, half hoping that they would be gone, and with them the confusing feeling that she could almost feel pressing against her chest.

~~~*~~~

Drusilla broke off the kiss, rubbing herself against him with a predator's smile. “I’m hungry,” she announced.

“I think we can work in a bite before we go hunting,” William told her, trying to recapture her lips.

She laid her fingers on his lips, ducking her head a little, her gaze sparking with a hint of concentration as her fingers traced the outline of her lips. He stilled instantly, suddenly aware that she was trying to tell him something.

“Have you had a vision?” he asked carefully, not wanting to break her concentration.

She gave him a spare nod. “I was meant to be,” she said, her lips tightening in a moue of irritation. That wasn’t what she was trying to tell him. She tried again. In her mind she could see the sparrow falling, its feathers bloody. Death was in the natural order of things. She was a part of that, bringing order to the chaos, bringing death because life required it. Those thoughts she might share with Angelus, who would savor them with her. William, her darling, lovely, wicked boy, didn’t think deep thoughts about what they were, what they were meant to be.

“Priests and monks,” she managed to say, finding the words that belonged to the things that they would hunt. “They mean to make us no more,” she looked at him, wondering if he understood, “but I see them. I know,” she gloated. “And I willl creep up on them, quiet and soft, and make them no more.”

Uh, oh. William stared at her, thinking, wondering where Angelus was. Hunting priests sounded like his kind of game, given the right circumstances. Generally, Angelus preferred not to bring that kind of attention down on them, but under the right circumstances it was one of his favorite past times.

“Are you certain, my love?” he asked.

She nodded. “I can feel them,” she said simply. “They would torture Daddy and Grandmother, and stake me, and you, and burn our precious,” she tilted her head to the bathroom. “They burn witches.”

He nodded slowly. Vampires on the left, priests on the right, death and terror to all comers. It suited him. Burn his witch, would they?

Drusilla crawled off of him, gesturing to the closed bathroom door, and making a shushing motion with her hand to her lips. It went without saying that Willow was not going to be brought in on this new development. He smiled wryly at her, but nodded his agreement, rising from the chaise.

He wandered over to her dressing table, scooping up the jewelry she had removed, and tucking it in his pocket before running his fingers over the bristles of her brush, mentally reviewing who was in the house at the moment, and who he would take and leave behind.

The bathroom door opened and Willow stood for a moment in the open doorway, fumbling with the knob that turned down the gaslight in the bathroom. She still had that look on her face, the one that he associated with being left out on something she was sure that she should understand. It made him smile a little to see her so uncertain.

“I’m going to bed now,” she announced, looking at them like she wasn’t sure why they were still there.

He looked at Dru, who shrugged.

“We’ll be out,” he said. “I’ll leave someone to keep an eye out,” he added. “Do you need anything before you go to bed?”

She shook her head, moving into the room, towards the bed, and then pausing. She looked so sleepy and perplexed that he felt a wave of affection rise, and then she turned to him, moving slowly. Her fingers curled around his wrist, under the sleeve of his suit coat, using his wrist for balance as she rose on her toes to awkwardly press her cheek to his, missing a little, the slight bit of beard stubble on his jaw rasping her sunburned cheek, making her flinch.

His eyes widened a little. He couldn’t think of a time when she had done anything like this, expressed anything like a desire to touch him one last time before they parted. It was unexpectedly moving, and he before he could react she was moving to her bed, turning down the covers to climb inside.

Drusilla was smiling a little. She frowned at him meaningfully, a look he read as, don’t just stand there, stupid!

He went to the bed and tugged the linens up under her chin, tucking them in around her until she made a sound of protest and tried to fluff her covers. He leaned over her, kissing her mouth, eyes drifting shut as he absorbed the texture of her mouth, so soft and pliant. “Go to sleep. We’ll be home when you wake up,” he promised, and then grinned. “Might be waking you up when we get home,” he added, since it was more likely than not.

~~~*~~~

The elders were just coming in as William and Dru were heading out, and Angelus stopped them. “Where are you off to?” he demanded.

“We’re feeling peckish, and you told me to scout Zlata Ulicka,” William reminded him.

Angelus grunted, exchanging a look with Darla. “Forget that,” he said. “It’s no longer an issue,” he gestured to the salon. “I want to talk to you both. Where is Willow?”

“Asleep, by now,” William stated. “She’s a bit knocked up, needs some rest.”

Angelus assessed the likelihood of that. “I don’t want to fuck her. I want to talk to her,” he said, half suspecting that William was getting territorial about his pet. “Get her up,” he ordered.

Glaring at him, William hesitated. “It won’t wait till morning?”

Darla interposed before Angelus could react to what was starting to sound like a refusal. “We can talk in her room. It won’t take long,” she explained.

William heaved an annoyed sigh, and marched back up the stairs to Willow’s door. He went in, leaving the door ajar, seeing her head turn toward the door as he came in. “Need you to wake up, love,” he said gruffly, resenting Angelus for demanding that he wake her.

She pushed up on one elbow. “What is it?” she asked as he came over to the bed.

“Hell if I know,” he admitted, nudging her over in the bed to sit on the edge beside her. “His highness wants to ‘talk’ to you.”

Following William into the darkened room, Angelus heard that and let it pass. Darla drifted past him, her body brushing his. She went to the table in the corner where the chaise was arranged and lit the lamp that rested there. She sat in the armchair.

Not noticing that Drusilla was no longer with them Angelus began, addressing William. “There is no reason for you to scout Zlata Ulicka. We met with the clan that lairs there, and they are no immediate threat to us,” he summarized.

Dru had bypassed Willow’s door to go to her own room, and she came in from the connecting bathroom, carrying Miss Edith. She kicked off her shoes and joined William and Willow on the bed, walking across the foot of the bed to the center and sinking down on the other side of Willow. She looked up an Angelus. “Miss Edith, too,” she explained, and then smiled brightly at Willow. “Daddy is telling bedtime stories.” She held her fingers to her lips. “Sssh. Listen,” she said, hugging Miss Edith.

Angelus gave Dru as slightly bemused look before continuing without the implied, ‘before I was so rudely interrupted’ that would have fallen on deaf ears. “What can you do in a real fight, Willow?” he asked.

Feeling uneasy, Willow had to check the impulse to move closer to William. She made herself sit up, rubbing her face while she tried to formulate an answer.

Her increased heartbeat was giving her away. William held up a hand to stay Angelus, turning to Willow. “I know you are half asleep, love, but no one is angry with you. Just answer his question,” he sought her eyes.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I guess it would depend on what kind of fight it was, and what was available, and how much time I had to prepare,” she hedged.

Angelus glanced over at Darla, who smiled. “You have two days. It will be a raid on a lair. You’ll have the four of us, most of our minions, and four more vampires on your side. We want surprise and maximum damage.”

She blinked several times processing that. “Against what?” she asked warily.

“More vampires,” Angelus told her. “By this time tomorrow I expect a full list of any spell components that you might require,” he told her.

Willow pushed her fingers through her hair, frowning. “I don’t understand,” she said slowly. “You want me to . . . do what exactly?”

“That’s a good question,” William growled.

Darla took over. “We’ve upset a balance of power, and before it becomes an all out war, we are going to even things up,” she explained. “It’s not that complicated,” she told William. “According to the sole survivor of last night’s raid, Willow was the difference that cost them so much.”

Willow’s mouth opened in a silent ‘oh’. Something like guilt flashed in her expressive eyes before she looked down, and hastily tugged the sheet up over her chest. She gave William a long, puzzled look. “Okay,” she said slowly. “I need more information,”. “I need as much information as possible about space, floor plans, how many vampires . . .” her voice trailed off.

Angelus was looking at her with a strange little smile on his face. “We’ll talk some more,” he said, nodding his agreement.

Darla took that as a signal and rose. “What did you do?”

Willow shook her head. “Something I shouldn’t have been able to do, but I think I know why,” she said. She looked at the table beside the chair Darla had left. Drusilla turned with her, and Willow extended her hand. A book lying on the table slid an inch, and Willow stopped. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath to refocus her concentration. When she tried again, the book snapped open, pages flying, and she grimaced.

“Um . . .” she frowned. “When I did the spell to set the wards outside the house, I used crystals. I buried them in the ground in a pentagram and cast the spell from the cellar, which is pretty much dead center, which has created a kind of fixed locus of dark magic?” her voice held a note of uncertainty. “I felt it the other night. I needed power, and it was there, and as long as I’m tapped into it, I have power, a lot of power, but I should be able to float the book? But when I try it goes,” she wiggled her fingers at the book, “not floaty.”

“Except this morning, with the locator spell,” she pointed out, her voice so soft that William saw Angelus lean forward ever so slightly. “I was inside a circle, using a spell, with components, and I think the circle and the ritual refocused the energies in a way that blocked out the interference.” She looked around at her audience. “It’s a theory,” she admitted. “I mean, it was just the one time that I was really aware of the crystals, but I’ve done some spells—“ she frowned, “not so much spells, as just directing energy, and it feels very weird and . . . not good. Like the locator spell? That felt good.”

Angelus was following this with more interest than Darla was. She was still waiting for Willow to answer the question. Aware of her impatience, Angelus gestured to Willow. “That’s interesting, but what did you do?”

Willow’s finger’s twitched and her hand shot out. The book shot across the room at her hand with enough force that William, reacting with reflexes she couldn’t match, deflected the book before it could hit her unprotected hand.

“Except, with knives,” she said in a small voice. “And, there’s this spell, to make things freeze . . . and I did that,” she said.

“Show me,” Angelus commanded.

“I’d rather not,” Willow said. Before Angelus could react to the unprecedented refusal, she rushed on, “Aside from not entirely understanding how it works, without a circle or the ritual to focus the energy it passes through me, and I’m kind of weak right now from yesterday, but I think it would be more to the point to see what I can do outside of the ward set around the house.”

William ran his tongue over his teeth, watching her in a bemused sort of way. Apparently there had been a bit more to her hocus pocus demonstration the other day than she had let on and he was a bit annoyed to realize that he had missed that by not pressing for more details from her. They would talk about that soon, he decided.

Darla looked to Angelus to gauge his reaction to Willow’s refusal. From the look on his face, she deduced that he recognized that it was the best approach. His attention was divided between William and Willow, and he looked like he wasn’t pleased about something.

Drusilla bounced on the bed. “More stories, please,” she put in.

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