Prowlers"Long ago, our ancestors sacrificed their children to the leopards...The souls of the children grew inside the leopards until the leopards themselves became human..."
--"Cat People" (the screenplay)Camp outside Bubastis, Egypt 1889
Her call is like a mad woman's scream, an angry pain-filled screech in the dry chilly night. She almost sounds like Dru on some of her bad days, `cept Dru really is mad.
"Daddy's pet doesn't want to play with him," Dru observed in that bizarre innocently cynical way of hers. "Why does Daddy always want pets who don't want to play with him?" She kisses my cheek softly and I hug her closely with one arm as she climbs gracefully into my lap. My girl is well-fed, I always see to that no matter what Angelus says.
*Why indeed?* I can't say I understand Angelus's penchant for force and rape. Oh, sure, maybe when the undead thing was relatively new to me I went a bit wilding myself. There's a tremendous rush of power-aphrodisiac to a vampire-in forcing and maneuvering another being to service you against its will. Tears, rage, suffering and submission is all gravy to a demon. So I did my share. But it palled quickly for me, maybe `cos I see what it did to Dru and I love her, but also `cos it's just-pointless. I mean, in the end, I already know I'm gonna get the best of my victim, it's inevitable, I'm bigger and a hell of a lot stronger. I'm wastin' friggin' time torturing a creature who never had a chance when I could be eating and making love to Dru! I got over the wilding fast.
It's not a big surprise when one of our guides, a rather brawny Arab, approaches my tent to tell me Angelus wants my help with his guest. I give Dru another kiss and leave her sitting daintily in my folded canvas chair, her tiny hands folded neatly in her lap. The Arab murmurs to me respectfully that the other guides and campers are deeply troubled by Angelus's choice, that it is dangerous to keep the young woman, she does not belong with us and no good would come of it, could I not attempt to influence him...?
I snap at the guide to shut his freakin' hole. Frankly, I agree with most of what he said and I wish like hell I'd sent Dru with Darla to Austria to wait until this little expedition was finished-no way was I allowed to bow out `cos my sire's a flamin' idiot and never got around to studying any eastern languages and needed me to interpret for him. Why the hell'd he want a dangerous female creature he couldn't even speak to is beyond me. But he's the sire, he's got the say and here we are.
It's uglier than I imagined. Angelus has the biggest tent, of course, and he does like to travel in comfort. Lamps burn on several low tables placed strategically throughout the tent sending an incandescent glow upon the oversized floor cushions and the silk covers of Angelus's low bed. I don't want to know where he managed to procure that table of thick solid English oak built at the most perfect dimensions for Angelus. It's just the right height so that the victim strapped upon it can fellate his cock if he wants them to, and it's low enough that Angelus can get a perfect "hand" to beat and punish his captives.
My own flesh screams when I recognise the table, I've spent some time on it myself, when I was new-made and drunk enough on my new power to think Angelus couldn't tell me what to do. He taught me very thoroughly how mistaken I was about that. Fuck me, how'd he managed to get it packed in with all our traps? We're supposed to be traveling light! The camp attendants would've been straining and grunting to carry that thing!
The girl-she is female even if she's not true human-is quite beautiful. Her skin is surprisingly light, lighter than even some Europeans, and her musculature is sleek and spare though she's not lacking girlish fascinations. Her long hair, draped over one shoulder and hanging off one side of the table, is incredibly curly and looks very soft. At first glance it seems ink-black but now I realise it's a blend of dark brown and black.
Angelus has been merciless in his courtship. Her lithe back and pert buttocks are striped, cut with a ruthlessly well-placed cane. Many of the stripes are already in a rapid healing stage. Lycanthropes heal bodily damage fairly quickly if the injury isn't done with silver weapons. Part of me wonders why Angelus isn't using silver on her. Her ass is a perfect cloven heart shape mottled with switching and handprint bruises and bite marks. I smell the injury of her bound wrists. Although Angelus used a strong silk rope she's still fought the bonds so hard they chaffed and blistered her wrists. I know her arms and shoulders must feel wrenched and sore from working and tugging, straining for freedom to escape.
Angelus snarls at me as I take in the sight of the prone bound woman. Angrily, he steps out of the shadows and wrenches her slim legs open. She winces and bites back her cries as he probes her cunny, then draws his fingers out, disgusted.
"Dry as a bone!" he rages.
I almost want to laugh at him but I have a little more sense than that. I just swallow twice and blink a little bit. Angelus's anger is not entirely misplaced, after all. He's a damn good-looking man and the women he torments usually are attracted to him on some level. I've seen him drain a protesting woman dead as she came over and over in his arms. I don't even want to think about what he's done to Dru over the years, much less when she was still a human girl and he brought her over. Dru's eyes flash fire for Angelus sometimes, and I know that, however terrible he was, some of it gave her incredible pleasure.
"Well," I answer him slowly. "Grease her up a bit."
Angelus's hard lips get mulish and I sigh inwardly. Angelus doesn't want to lubricate her with a little oil, he wants her own arousal to dampen her for him. I suppose the idea that not every female can get off on being whipped by a cruel stranger really reaches Angelus. He's too good at what he does. He could fuck her dry, but that would take away from his triumph, his mastery of her.
I glance down into her sweetly rounded face. Even her human face has a feline cast to it. Her eyes are a rich green-golden hazel and I see the dumb angry pleading in them. The wereleopard is a natural predator with few, if any, natural enemies. She does not understand what's happened to her, why Angelus hunted her down in the desert like any common animal and spread and bound her on a wooden table to beat her. Her own hunting, no doubt, has been to fill her own hungry belly, or to fend off an invading cat, a male invading her territory when she wasn't in a receptive season for him. The concept of hunting to please her ego is alien to her.
Beautiful, innocent savage! So sorry, nothing I can do to help.
Without thinking, I gently caress the pleat of her thick hair along the side of her face. To my surprise, she turns her face towards my hand and begins to purr, a soft mysterious rumbling inside her. I feel an unusual warmth spark inside myself at the reminder of my mum's old house moggie, Reinard.. Cat's purring is a soothing sound, almost a lullaby really. I remember my mum napping in her favorite settee with Reinard, drowsy-eyed and affectionately curled on her lap, rumbling away.
Swish! Cra-aaack!
The cane snaps across the firm lush globes of her ass and she shudders all over. The girl's head rolls to the side, more forceful against my caressing hand.
SNAP! Angelus, grinning evilly, applies the cane mercilessly. She whines, a low mewling sound, and lowers her eyes from my horrified comprehension. I sense the sudden lift in her body temperature, her elevated pulse. And still that precious rumbling inside her goes on uninterrupted as I stroke her hair.
Crack! Crack! SNAP! CRACK! He lays five blows upon her, steadily harder with each stroke. She screams, not an actual scream but a panther's roar which sounds like a scream, and she yanks vainly against the silk rope bonds. The entire table groans from useless struggling and I realise the ropes are not natural. She's too strong to be held by ropes. Angelus found a witch to enchant rope for him? The witch must have been as psychotic as he is.
Angelus lays the cane on the table alongside the girl and eases a hand beneath her belly, reaching for her sex. I already know what he'll find and his smile is frightening even to me. She has a delicious arousal, musky and sweet. She stops purring, though, when Angel's fingers enter her.
She squirms, she squeals, she fights the rope and the wood and the live corpse's touch. Angelus grips her hip with his free hand and holds her still.
"Fuck, Spike! She's a tight little volcano!" Angelus draws his hand away and I see his fingers glistening with her abundant essence. He sniffs it appreciatively and I see the strangest expression in his face as he licks and laps the fluid with thorough swipes of his tongue as though it was really good blood. He's glowing with passion and pleasure.
I help him slacken the tension on the cords binding her wrists. She can move a little more now. More importantly, Angelus can position her as he wants her for his pleasure. He tears his trousers down and I see he's rock-hard and ready for her. How long had he waited for her to let down for him?
"Where're you going?"
I sigh as my sire interrupts my exit attempt. Does he really think I want to stick around for this? The girl is less in control of her stoic silence now that she's been roused and she struggles and whimpers against Angelus's hold when he joins her on the table in one agile leap, kneeling between her splayed thighs as he hitches her hips into the angle he wants. Something inside me wants to cry for her, I don't want to watch this, it's bad enough I'll hear it outside-
"Get up here," Angelus orders carelessly. "Pet her some more."
-and I damn sure don't want to participate.
There's not enough slack in the ropes for her to raise her upper body. She lies in an abject posture of submission, head low, hands bound in front of her, legs spread and hips lifted to offer Angelus access to what he wants. She trembles all over and little growling noises come out of her.
"Shhhh...Pet..." I stroke the smooth skin of her face and she closes her eyes, still trembling.
She screams horribly and Angelus joins her in a satisfied snarl when he thrusts forward to possess her utterly. She thumps her forearms hard against the table and squeezes her eyes shut as she wails and tries to buck him off. Angelus smiles sadistically and thrusts even harder against her. He's well planted in her and she hasn't got the leverage to get rid of him.
"Mmmmmmmm..." Angelus gently rubs her ass with one hand. "Like a silk glove sewn shut around my cock."
She quiets after a while and lets him ride her. As Angelus moves in and out of her, I smell blood from where they're joined. The bastard can smell it too but it doesn't make him any gentler with her. I pet her pink-flushed little face, trace her curving eyebrows. Her tears leak down the side of her face and splash on the smooth oak beneath her, and sometimes they splash my fingertips. Her tears are warm.
Angelus reaches under her body to fondle her. With him, this is all about degradation, and that's where the pleasure comes in for the victim. After all, if he can't make the girl come, make her like it on some level, where's the degradation?
Like I said, Angelus is too good at what he does.
It doesn't surprise me that she's passionate, her eyes welled with passion long before Angelus found her female softness and played with it, pinching her nether mouth and lightly circling her clit until she begins to writhe again, breath rushing eagerly. I smile a little sadly as she begins to ride his caress. He thrusts against her body and she lifts back up to him obligingly. Angelus closes his eyes and sighs-that doesn't happen very often. I smell her heavenly arousal and the trace of her bloody virginity leaking down the insides of her thighs and my own cock stiffens. I'd love to have this girl-creature if she wanted me.
She purrs louder and her eyes widen, looking straight up at me. I think she's starting to peak. I gently trace her ear, a delicate little seashell, then pet the soft spot of bare skin behind it with the pad of my fingertip. She's panting and sweating quite a bit.
"Let it go, baby," I coax her. "Just let it happen."
I wonder what he'll do with her when he's done? He's not into letting his victims go and she'd be awfully dangerous to keep alive. I doubt she'd make a good slave and he can't keep her tied on the table her whole life. He's probably gonna kill her and maybe that's for the best. Poor beautiful desert child...
She screams-not an angry roar this time but a woman's delight. Angelus smiles his approval and gasps as her body ripples and tightens against him and he pumps her harder, snapping his hips against her bottom. She screams louder and I realise she's experiencing several climaxes. Her entire face contorts, hazel eyes glow green and widen.
"Fuck!" Angelus growls, shutting his eyes and thrusting as far inside her as he can go, grinning widely. Whatever trouble she was to get to this point, he obviously thinks it's worth it. "Yes, damn good," he praises her, his voice quivering slightly as he comes down from a hard climax and pulls slowly out of her.
The ropes snap, breaking apart, and she screams again.
I stare down at her stupidly for just one sliver of time, marveling at the beauty of her sudden change. Her coat's not pure black, not really, it's actually black with very dark brown spots on it, just like its leopard cousins. Her musculature is lean and sleek and still temptingly feminine-or maybe I only think so because I can still smell her passionate arousal. Even as she rolls gracefully to one side and onto her back, one evil clawed paw whispering past the left side of my face, drawing blood.
I back off. Post haste.
Angelus is a fast devil but he's ill-prepared for this sudden change right after he's had the fuck of his life and the female panther doesn't hesitate to take advantage of the fact. Her rear legs are still bound to the table so she can't move forward, but her forelegs are free so she simply rolls over backward, clasping Angelus in her forelegs.
They fall down in a heap on the sand in a right unloving embrace. Angelus is screaming, I can hear his flesh being ripped off of him. Sounds of panic outside from our guides and hired companions. They knew or guessed something like this would happen.
"Spike!" Angelus gasps. The wereleopard is upon him, throttling him. I remember the guides explaining that to me, they don't maul their prey to death, they grip its neck to asphyxiate it. Angelus should be safe from that but that won't stop her from tearing him to pieces. "Cut `er loose! Cut `er loose!"
For a moment I don't understand him. Then I reach for my heavy Bowie knife-a souvenir from Dru. I crawl towards my sire as he struggles to grip the huge black leopard and keep her from tackling me. Frankly, I'm fucking scared. Don't know what the hell to expect. This is a wild animal-with a human's shape from time to time. And right now it's an animal with a human's anger.
I saw away the ropes where they're fastened to the table legs and the leopard takes an amazing rushing leap all the way to the other side of the tent and exits through the leather flap.
Outside, the screaming begins in earnest. I hope she doesn't kill all of them in her rage, Angelus is gonna need quite a bit of blood to heal, he's a fucking mess.
Two months later, in Vienna
"That wicked kitten scarred my white knight!" Dru gently kisses the creased line in my left eyebrow. We'd tried everything for it. I'd drunk enough blood to heal ten times over.
How the hell I'd get one permanent scar after Angelus is mauled almost into separate pieces and hasn't got a mark on him to show for it is a mystery to me. Dru thinks the bitch was in love with me and left her mark to prove it. Darla says it's `cos I'm still so young, my blood is still contaminated with enough humanity that I'd still be able to scar. Angelus doesn't really give a damn why and offers no opinion on the subject.
I'm grateful to that beautiful cat-girl, whoever she was. She woke up something fascinating in me that night. I'd actually gotten complacent and comfortable with my vampirism. The idea that I'm immortal and more powerful than most. That nothing can hurt me. I see now it's not entirely true. There are adversaries out there in the natural world very worthy of a vampire. Something I could fight and break, and bring to heel and enjoy doing it because, after all, the real pleasure in breaking a person, taming her is when she is powerful and dangerous.
Like the Slayer.
~Fin~