Title: The Long Journey Into Darkness
Author: Crazy_Girl_Mary
Email: crazy_girl_mary@yahoo.com
Disclaimer: The two main characters are Joss', but I'm not stealin' I promise I'll give them back when I'm done.
Summary: A female is on the run from a killer, and he's not going to give up until he has her right where he wants her.
Pairings: Female/Male. This story has a female character a human, and a male vampire from the Buffyverse, but names are not used anywhere in the story. I did this so the reader could envision any characters they wanted. So if you have a thing for Willow/Spike, hey man it's them. There were two characters I had in mind when writing it and some subtle clues you may pick up may lead you to that conclusion, if you want to know who they really are then you can email me and I'll tell you.
Category: Angst.
Spoilers: None, complete AU, just a girl and a vampire.
Rating: NC-17 parts for sexual content, brutal torture, and character deaths.
Author's Comments: This is my latest work, and I think the fact that I've progressed as a writer shows. I'm probably more emotionally attached to this story as corny as it sounds but I still desperately want to know any thoughts, feelings, praises, and most of all criticisms, so please please let me know!

Part XXVI: Confrontation with Pain


I know I would’ve normally passed out for longer but I’m quickly shaken back into the grim reality as his fist makes contact with my cheek. I feel my head bouncing on the concrete and the pain doesn’t even register because my brain is preoccupied with other thoughts.

“Bitch!” he rasps, and I’m happy I angered him although I’m not completely sure how I did. Did he want me to let Jaime kill me? Did he expect me to let Jaime kill me after all?

My hand slowly comes up to my neck and he nods his head menacingly as he towers over me. He didn’t think I would give Jaime the chance to taste me. I feel too weak to talk and when I do not respond he grabs my arm and starts to drag me across the floor to the counter. Maybe he was expecting an apology from me, yeah right. I can’t keep the surprise from surfacing to my face as he gently lifts me to my feet and sits me on the counter. He smiles so sincerely and leans me back to lie on the smooth cool countertop like a gentle lover, a gentle adventurous lover getting ready to explore new uses for the cool hard marble surface. Fuck his mind games. It’s amazing how he can go from brutally evil to gentle and kind in a split second but that’s all part of his manipulation and games, and his temper is easily flared.

He walks slowly away from me, turned away, like he’s daring me to try and escape. I don’t even move. I know what’s coming, and I’ve been waiting for it. The sooner he tortures me the sooner I’ll die and the sooner this whole situation can be over. I’d say it’s long over due after the years of pain and suffering he has caused me, and anyone that ever became close to me. I except what’s coming just wish it would come a little quicker.

His shadow blends eventually into the darkness as he slowly pads to the other side of the massive room. It seems like minutes before he emerges holding a few lengths of rope. He stops at my feet and smiles looking past my exposed areas to my glass eyes searching desperately for any emotion to feed off of but I’m fresh out of sustenance by choice.

“You really are beautiful when you’re suffering,” he mentions maybe just to hear his own chillingly striking voice echo through the silent concrete shell.

“My suffering beauty pales in comparison to yours.” He looks fairly surprised that I’ve actually answered. Probably not expecting me to play his game but I’m bored enough and brass enough to step up to his challenge.

I don’t reply to her quip just smile to let her know I’m happy she’s all the way in this then move slowly around the counter to her arms which are already draped off the edge waiting to be tied so I answer their calling and she doesn’t struggle, doesn’t even flinch and it makes me wonder if the ropes are even necessary for my dark little whore. I pull out a stool and sit at her side to admire my prisoner as I light a cigarette. I take deep satisfying drags as I scan her body and the fag is gone before I notice. The cherry burns my fingertips and I drop it to the floor and don’t bother to stub it out. Then I pull my tight black tee shirt over my head and drop that to the floor as well. She doesn’t try to avoid my eyes but stares defiantly up at me in challenge. How can she challenge me when I have her tied, naked, and ready for torture to a counter in my lair far from anyone who could save her or hear her screams? I guess that is why she’s her.

I pull out the set of knifes and the torture kit that has been waiting so patiently under this very counter in a locked cabinet for the moment when their metal edges can rip open her perfectly tender, gleaming, and dirty skin. First I pull out a large knife but that’s for shock value only, a small knife makes more precise cuts and there is less risk of killing the subject before their time. She may know this but I hear a gasp escape her lips that even she may be unaware of. These gasps, the looks in the victims eyes when maximum pain is achieved, and the look of complete helplessness are the things I live for, the things I torture and hunt for.

Next are gadgets that look like all different size corkscrews, a lighter, a few nails, and a chemical kit. Her eyes flicker with what one normally takes as pain but I put that past her and guess it might be longing. She’s not afraid but longs to be tortured and die and this is the one request I’m happy to answer for her.

Despite the heat in the room her whole body is covered with goose bumps, maybe the fear is getting to her. Out of character, but all the better. I mean that is what I wanted, to break her. I’m not stupid enough to believe this won’t take a long time, wonderful misery filled hours, maybe days, are waiting for us. She knows this as much as I do. Most people don’t know that torture is not primarily to invoke a physical reaction but a mental one. I don’t wanna find out what her insides look like or how they work, I’m past that, It’s more about the things I can make her do, the feelings I can make her have, and how far I can push her mentally and physically. See what she can do for me, what creamy emotions I can suck out of her body. Let the assessment begin.

I pick up a small scalpel. It is well used but well loved and taken care of, so it has been polished to a perfect mirror shine. I hear her hold her breath as I stand from my stool and lean in close to her bare flesh with the weapon gleaming in the firelight. “Scared?” I ask her lightly. My face is inches from hers and I slide the blade up to her cheek always light enough to avoid cutting her but enough to flush the skin and leave a trail of the metal’s hasty ascent.

She doesn’t answer, or move, just stares defiantly into my eyes and waits for the pain to begin. Is she impatient? Does she regret wanting this? Does she regret angering me? Does she regret not killing herself years ago when she had the chance? I would ask her all these things but I know she would never reveal the answers so I have to search for them deep inside her skin and her soulful angry eyes. Where to make the first cut? Where to mar the beautiful skin? Jaime’s bite on her neck has stopped bleeding but it will remain a message to me for eternity that he got there first and in his haste and inexperience and hunger he didn’t even bit her on the right side, the side that enables the most blood to flow easily into a starving mouth. I let the knife skim down her glistening skin to the scar and she gasps as I start to gouge it out relentlessly with the small knife.

I recognize the anger and madness as it descends on me and I embrace it. How dare she let him taste her… mark her? I scrap away the skin bearing the bloody mark and by this time I’m on top of her on the counter. My full weight pressing the held breathe from her lungs. I’m overtaken by my hunger, my extreme desire to taste her for the first time after all these years. I lean towards her neck and the demon takes over my body, but that voice in the back of my head screams that now is not the time. I pull away from her and it takes a few moments to return to my natural form. I look down and am satisfied to see a glimpse of complete horror in her eyes. She is probably not horrified by what happened but by the internal argument I had and the fact that the animal deep inside didn’t win out and end her life like she so desperately craves. She now knows that I am nothing compared to the demon and that she is facing two enemies instead of the supposed one, like Dr. Dahmer and Mr. Hyde.

“That was interesting,” she mumbles.

I frown, the nerve of her to speak. If this should be interesting for anyone it should be for me. I decide I have to move away from her neck but I still want to see her magnificent eyes so it’s disappointing. I jump from the counter and get a towel and damp it under the sink. I sit it on the counter for now but I’ll use it to collect spilled blood and avoid stains. I move to her feet, as far away from her neck as I can get and pick up the scalpel again. I pull the stool across the tile floor and the noise is shattering after moments of silence so thick it hangs in the air like clouds. She doesn’t stir or move, but her heart is beating fast with adrenaline. Good, I hope she’s scared to death.

I grip the big toe of her right foot with my free hand and trace the knife-edge along the surprisingly soft skin teasingly for a few moments. I would normally have music on but I don’t want to risk any sounds depriving me of her breathing patterns, her first moan, her first cry, her first scream, or any threats. I let the rounded point of the blade break the skin at the front of the toe while watching her face over her beautiful body for any signs of pain or pleasure or anything.

Her eyes are closed, her jaw clenched, and her face poised, waiting for the pain to begin while not allowing the slightest hint of anguish to shine through. I admire her in these moments but I also love how she can make me want to hurt her more then anyone else I’ve ever known. I follow the curve of the toe into the foot, pushing the blade in a little further as I move along. I follow the arch of her foot to the heel then move up the back of the heel and I feel her foot twitch trying to pull from my grasp for the first time. I smile. That hurts huh?

I pick up the towel immediately and wipe off the blood as it starts to flow down her leg then move to the next foot and follow the same path. Then I go back to the first and make similar lines moving from each individual toe to the heel, and repeat this on the left foot as well. I want to hear her scream, I can barely wait, maybe a little test could give me what I crave before she’s ready. “That wasn’t that bad was it?” I ask as if addressing a child who had to get a needle or a tooth pulled.

“No, you must be losing your-” She didn’t get the last word of her sarcastic reply out because I stabbed the scalpel deep into the bottom of her foot and it emerged from the other side. She’s stronger then I thought. I thought she wouldn’t be able to contain a scream because she would be in the middle of replying but she managed to surprise me again. I’m going to enjoy myself with this one. A small trickle of blood emerges at the corner of her bottom lip, which she’s biting to keep from screaming in pain. With a smile on my face I stab the other foot and let them lay back down on the counter. I watch the blood run out of her feet and puddle on the smooth countertop, then follow the backs of her legs along the curves. The blood begins to overwhelm the area and starts to spill over and splatter on the clean floor and make puddles there too. So much blood from such little wounds. I wonder if she’ll pass out, she’ll lose a lot of blood but the wound on her neck isn’t really that bad.

The smell of her blood is intoxicating and I feel like I will never be the same after it has seeped through my skin. I decide that’s enough for today, or at least a few hours. My head is spinning and I feel on the brink of losing self-control. I usually wouldn’t mind, but I want this to last, and I’ve come this far without tasting her, I want it to be special this time. I put the knives in their cases and back in their locked drawer. Then I check each rope to make sure they are secure. After I’ve checked the ones at her arms I lean down and kiss her forehead softly just to see her clenched eyes open and stare. There’s definite pain in her eyes, but there’s also strength and determination, just the things I’ve struggled all this time to destroy. I will destroy all those things and then she will truly be mine.

Part XXVII: After Thoughts


Fuck. Just being alive hurts like fuck. Each heartbeat throbs through every part of my body and pours steaming blood from the holes in my feet that can’t even began to close. Each breath, each thought, each twitch of movement heightens the pain until only the word is swimming in my brain and that’s the only thing I can register. There is plenty of blood on the counter and floor to swim in, seemingly much more then is left in my body, but that is where my thoughts choose to swim. Why can’t they just leak out and free me from the burden of contemplation and concentration at times like this. Why can I just not be here in this body my excuse for a soul calls home? Why can’t I just zone out and leave this pitiful existence even for a second? I remember that I tried that for a few years, just gave up and gave in to drugs and alcohol and even those agents couldn’t help me escape this or the pain, no matter how much I consumed, the pain was always piled up at my doorstep like the morning mail when I was sober enough to get it, and the longer it took to get it the more there was waiting.

The glass of vodka is the reason my thinned blood continues to run. Everything he does is for a reason, so coldly and carefully calculated while seemingly so random in its maliciousness. Like how he made sure to strip all his clothes from his body right before my dizzy eyes with his evil grin and then retreat to the shower still wet from my voyage. One of his deepest desires is to evoke an inner turmoil within the women that he tortures, and I’m no different. No, if different at all, he wants this from me with more fervor then any other. He makes our minds and spirits despise him without question or room for the contrary while he tries to make our bodies crave him with as much certainty.

And he always wants us naked. The stripping of our clothes, while making torturing all the easier and giving him a pretty sight, also has a symbolic and devastating effect. The physical stripping represents the stripping of all our strengths and strongholds against him, to leave something weak and easily manipulated to his every whim. I lay here in my physical and mental nudity and, like always, wonder how it is I can analyze things so clearly and annoyingly at a time of such physical and emotional pain. The problem with being strong in body and mind is that you are not easily broken down, and you can clearly see each step. The sad truth is that it took all his physical and mental torture for me to see just how strong I am, though I still doubt my worth to the world or anyone else. The only being I’ve ever succeeded in doing justice to is him. Anyone else only ends up hurt, but he is always happy with my responses and if not he hurts me, and that makes him even happier. I could never disappoint him, everything I do, and every reaction to his actions is above satisfactory. I can recognize that he thinks this while still knowing that whatever I do demeans me all the more. There is nothing I can do to disappoint him, yet he still manages to make me feel like shit, like it’s never good enough for even him. No emotion he can elicit from me can please me or clean me and although I know it’s all part of his games to make me feel like scum, I know that calling myself or seeing myself in any other light would be false and ignorant.

I have no pride, I don’t think I ever have, just the shell of confidence I threw on in the mornings, the chip on my shoulder that moved in when I was eight years old and got stuck there; all these things were tools to keep others from questioning me in their own perfect-little twisted screwed-up minds and kept me from questioning myself. I thought if others saw me as a tough, brush everything off, person, that was what I would become, but sadly it just put me inside myself and gave me the interesting position to look out and see just what kind of person I was showing the rest of the world. I didn’t try to change, just wallowed in it for the rest of my life; I mean why change when I was going to die anyway. Why not wallow in self-pity and feel a little false dignity?

Now here I am on the last leg of my life, a perfect little pathetic victim, something I promised myself I would never be and I can look back with clarity and see that I wasn’t weak like I thought, and I didn’t need a hard rough shell because I really was strong. I can look back and see that I had something I so desperately sought and now when I need it most it’s no where to be found. I’m crazy, I know, but that’s the blood loss and the thoughts that you think when you are looking down the dark black tunnel you’ll travel to your death, but there is no light at the end of the tunnel, just darkness and emptiness like my life. Your afterlife reflects your life, I believe, and if you had a life full of hate and self-pity and self inflicted pain, then your afterlife will be exactly the same. By self inflicted pain, I don’t just mean hurting myself physically but consciously allowing myself to be put in the position to be hurt and not taking obvious measures to prevent the situation and pain. Like now, I could have prevented myself from being here, and not only by killing myself, but by using the displaced strength that has seemed to disappear and getting rid of the presented conductor of all kinds of pain, namely him. But I didn’t stop him, I didn’t take the precautions I knew I should’ve and now here I am.

All these thoughts are part of his campaign, his expectations of me. He knows I’ll buy into what he expects, and pass blame on myself, and he knows I’ll see this blame as weakness in and hate myself and my actions all the more. I know this is what he wants and expects of me, sometimes more, sometimes less, and I buy into it and give him what I want because I don’t know how to do anything else good or right but please him. That is, like I said, the only think I have ever succeeded in, in fact, I excel in it.

He is suddenly emerging from the steamy shower. My eyes close to avert the amazing sight. He holds a small towel, not to cover him, but merely to pat the water from his hair and hard chest as he approaches me. “I’m pleased with how this is going so far,” he comments and I can hear the smile in his voice that I can’t see on his beautiful face that I sense is ever so close to mine. Maybe he is expecting to startle me with that unfelt closeness when I open my eyes. Or maybe he just wanted me to smell his clean body over the strong metallic smell of my own blood and crave him in another world, another lifetime.

“Well, I’m feeling a little tired. Tonight will be a new adventure for us. I know you can’t wait beautiful. I’m going to bring you home a present, allow you to share your pain. Doesn’t that sound like fun?” His happiness shines and radiates from every part of his body. I don’t even want to try and figure out what that means, knowing his plans won’t stop them, but that doesn’t mean I won’t still try, that is unavoidable.

“We could have more fun alone,” I say lightly and open my eyes slowly to him.

His smile is broad and those happy lips are a little more then an inch from mine. “Always playing the hero. It’s just us here baby, no one to impress with your fake courage. You know you don’t really mean that and I wish you wouldn’t say things like that until you do. I might just call your bluff.”

I don’t respond. He’ll do what he wants, and if I were to dissuade him from his heinous plans tonight they would only be postponed for tomorrow or the next night. He gives me one last menacing grin then turns off the overhead light, walks through the fire glow, and climbs into his lavishly gorgeous bed stripped and thinking about me.

I feel the hours drive on, throbbing painfully in my feet and following up my legs to greet my sick stomach. There are no clocks to tick away the hours like a leaky faucet but the utter silence is just as maddening. The only sound through the whole house is the sound of my own breath, and if any additional sounds were to be made they would be as a result of me. There are no noisy appliances, no refrigerator motor, no washer and drier, and no ice cube maker dropping ice heavily into its plastic canister. There is nothing even close to resembling a normal life here. Even the roaring fire is unusually quiet and void of it’s characteristic pops and sputters until it begins to die down into a somber glow and even that is done silently.

I’m the only living thing in this semblance of a home, this cemetery of sorts, keeper of the dead, and soon I’ll be dead as well. Does he realize all these things when he tortures a human being? I know about his lust for the hidden thoughts of his victims but does he ever really understand. If I wasn’t in this situation, if for a moment I was in full strength and free from the restraints I would give him the new opportunity to experience the thoughts of a victim firsthand. I know I’ll never have this opportunity now, with certainty, and still that thought doesn’t bother me, it releases me in a way. The only thought that can fill me with complete unease and fear is the thought of what I could become after death while still fitting into the cemetery motif. After seeing what he did to Jaime and considering this carefully for the first time I know that is really a definite possibility.

Fuck. I was so close to fucking this whole thing up. I can never lose control, but she brings me just about as close as I have ever been. I let her get me so worked up and that act transfers the control from me to her. I won’t let it happen again. I can hear her heart beating like a lighthouse beacon. I’m lost in the storm and the waves and undertow are keeping me from going home, to the place I belong, indulging in her. She brings life and sound to this place and I might miss part of that when she’s gone, but I know that when she’s dead she’ll bring new life and sound to this place; particularly moaning, screaming, and breaking furniture. She’ll definitely bring life to this old body of mine. I doubt I’ve lost it, but ever since my fascination with her and our time together I haven’t been with anyone else except the few prostitutes resembling her.

She’ll be the perfect companion, her passion and anger and sarcasm will carry over and be intensified by the next life. Not to mention her strength, intelligence, and knowledge of what she will become. She might as well be a vampire already. She’ll already know how to feed, and she’ll have a unique position of knowing what her new enemy will do because she used to think like that and may still think like that. Her instincts will intensify and her senses will multiply. By my side she’ll be the perfect killing machine. She knows what she could become and the thoughts are probably tearing her up inside but she’ll never leak it. The only time I know her thoughts are when she calls out during a delirious dream deep in the night.

I beg the fates to let her fall into a troubled sleep and reveal her present passions and horrors to me but they curse my request and her breathing is steady throughout the next few hours. My body rests during this time but my mind is awake and dreaming about the things I’ll do with her when I get up. This is exactly what I needed, a hot shower to clean her from my skin and some time away from her to think and plan and clear my head. These attempts were not all met. Her smell is strong everywhere I go, and after I cleaned it, it just came back, but that’s not that bad. I was able to think about the situation I’ve gotten us into and the places I can take us from here, but I was not able to clear my head, just as I was not able to clear her smell.

Thoughts of her are with me at every moment, waking and not. All these years that I have followed her and stalked her, the only times I thought of someone else was when I was feeding and that was rare since my victims were often physically appealing because they reminded me of her. We have this in common. She went for Jonas because he has the same characteristics as me and she thought he had the same name. She can’t deny to herself and can’t hide from me the fact that she’s incredible attracted to me, and that is only another thing we have in common. She felt it first, and from that moment I have always known the strong link we would hold for eternity should she be sired.

Idle thoughts of the two of us together soon turned into an extreme obsession like none I have ever harbored before. At first I was not ready to take on another obsession so I avoided her and the thoughts that came with her. This was out of characteristic for me but I wasn’t really in the mood to do so much work. Soon I could no longer avoid this attraction and the closer I got to her the more I saw that I loved her as much as I could love someone. Everything about her was perfect and would be perfect after I changed her. She may think I only want to torture her, but to own her powerful mind and body has been my goal all along. A mind as strong as hers cannot be turned right away and remain attached to their sires. They are too independent and cannot be restrained. They need to be broken in life to be loyal, gruesome, and beautiful in unlife. I’ve learned the more you hurt a person and the more you make them hate themselves, the more they will love you in the unlife. It’s one of the mysteries many vampires never realize. I learned it young, and have been practicing it.

I want her to remain independent, basically, she will be able to leave my side and survive, but who would want too? Her passion will be the tie that holds our link together. Should I die, she would be lost without me, most likely. But that will never happen, so why worry. We will exist together for eternity, mating, feeding, pillaging, killing, hunting, stalking, and torturing together. We are perfect for each other and she knows this. She fights it because it is her nature now and that makes this process all the more interesting, and when we are together forever she will embrace our bond with as much dedication.




Next Chapter