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Paths

Chapter 11

Angel woke with a deep sigh of contentment. He had not dreamt, and he had actually slept, both of these novel for him. Even more novel was to wake to flickering candlelight, and Spike’s mouth descending to his.

Before he was fully awake, lips brushed his, and utterly aroused, with his customary waking hardness, he opened his mouth wide to enjoy the kiss. His mouth flooded with warmed exquisite wine.  He groaned and swallowed, and the sensual mouthful was repeated, some wine spilling down onto his chest.  Spike, straddled naked across Angel’s sheet-clad lap, dipped his head and licked at the spill.  Angel stretched his neck back at the pleasure, his flesh tingling from the erotic touch. 

Very slowly, Spike twitched off the sheet.

It was hard to tell in the soft candlelight, but Spike thought Angel blushed at the size of his erection, as if it said something about his dreams that he would rather remain private.  He bent once more and took Angel’s mouth, slipping his tongue in to retrieve a flavour of the wine, smiling into the soft warmth of Angel’s lips. ‘Good evening.’

Angel ran his hands up Spike’s back. For a moment, Spike thought Angel was just enjoying the touch of his bare skin, then he got that Angel was lifting him.  Arching back with pleasure, he allowed Angel to impale him on the hard, vertical evidence of his need. 

The both grunted with effort, Angel from feeling his foreskin dragged down hard by the tightness of Spike’s sphincter, Spike from the bizarre sensation of being slowly filled: stretched and taken.

Eventually, there was nothing left to take inside. They both stilled, panting and sweating heavily. Spike’s fingers were spread out over Angel’s broad chest, red welts blossoming where the tips lay, where he’d gored Angel unthinkingly as he’d been filled.  Angel held his hands loosely around Spike’s waist, half pulling him down and half holding him off, as if keeping himself ready to stop the descent if it hurt too much.

When his breathing stilled, Spike brought his legs up and crouched.  Angel whispered an incoherent curse of realisation before Spike lifted up and began to fuck him.

Angel flung his arms back, trying desperately to find something to grasp, but there was only wall.  He braced his strong arms like a man trying to hold himself on a cross.  Spike watched the flare and hardening of every muscle as he rode up and down on the preternatural hardness of Angel’s erection.  Once more his prostate gland seemed to swell to unnatural proportions, dominating his whole body, sending huge, crashing waves of pleasure into his dick, which responded beautifully to the stimulation, rising of its own accord and spraying Angel’s chest with precum.

The waves of pleasure flowing down Angel’s cock and through his groin were so intense that Angel closed his eyes, reducing stimuli to that which counted, bucking helplessly beneath his ardent rider.  When Spike’s lips touched his though, he opened them once more. Overloaded now, he surrendered to the all-encompassing pleasure.

Spike parted his lips and….

Angel licked something, frowning.

Spike chuckled and continued to tongue small squares of chocolate between Angel’s lips, pushing them in with a grin.  He fed Angel from his mouth for a while then, with a moan, used his fingers to work the sticky mass in, pushing into Angel’s mouth like a careless toddler, wiping chocolate around his soft walls. Deliberately, with great concentration, he smeared some out over one of Angel’s cheeks. Then he drew a broad band over the bridge of the aristocratic nose.  Angel lay beneath his lover, allowed himself to be messed by food, and did not once complain that it ruined his dignity.

When his game was finished, Spike sat back on Angel’s hardness.  He came out of his squatting position and knelt.  Sinuously, like a snake, he dipped at the waist and rubbed his cock up Angel’s belly. Angel groaned, stretching his facial muscles, making the mask of chocolate crack.  Spike slipped his arms under Angel, lay on him and dry fucked him hard, each thrust and withdrawal making the heavy erection in him swell and twitch. 

 

Angel felt that sense of being overwhelmed once more. There was almost too much physical sensation to cope with. He felt like exploding with the vast pressure inside, and then Spike slipped his hand back and sought out his balls. Lying untouched, unnoticed, hard and heavy, one touch and Angel’ brain almost fried with the increased intensity.  He yanked his legs up to give Spike better access, and the movement sent him thudding even harder into Spike.

Hands on Spike’s waist, they did it again: Angel thrusting his hips in time to Spike’s fucking. 

They didn’t miss a beat and fucked each other hard and fast until, accompanied by startled cries, something hit Angel’s chocolate mask, mixing brackish salt with the sweet sugar.  When he recognised the intoxicating aroma of his childe’s sex, his body erupted in response. 

Arched with the intensity of his release, only Angel’s head and heels touched the bed.  Spike continued to ride him, but more gently, squeezing and releasing to milk Angel into his body.  As the last shots tickled his sensitive walls and began to flood out around his friction-hot hole, he flicked out his tongue and began to clean Angel’s face—chocolate, cum and sweat—with long, sensuous licks.

 

When they were both done, Spike stretched out limpid and sated on Angel’s body, Angel raised his head and said softly, ‘Good evening.’

Spike chuckled, the rumble of amusement vibrating between them. 

Angel made a sound of contentment deep in his throat and rolled them so he could lie on his side, Spike’s back tucked to his belly.  Idly, he stroked Spike’s hip, then almost more idly, slipped a finger into his sopping hole.  He murmured in appreciation and played with the slickness for a while: easing it in and out on his fingers, probing the soft walls, testing the stretch of the gradually retightening muscles.  Spike’s moan of pleasure was lost on a sharper note of intense delight when Angel’s cock suddenly re-entered him to be just as swiftly withdrawn, and then fingers worked him once more.

It went on for hours: the teasing tickling and stretching, the deep probing and playing and then, when Spike least expected it, a sudden penetration by Angel’s hardness.  Angel would arch, thrusting in; Spike’s whole body would be plunged into spasm at the intrusion, but then he’d be empty again and aching to be filled.  Time after time Angel climbed Spike up the long, slow stairs to release, only to turn him around and ease him down before they reached the summit.

Finally, Spike could take it no more.  He pushed up onto his hands and knees and begged in a low, submissive tone, ‘Please, finish me off. Please….’

Angel made a high-pitched noise of delight in his throat and knelt to Spike’s backside, positioning himself.  He lay over the slim, smooth back and with rapid jerks of his hips, humped them both to prolonged and very messy orgasms.

Spike was so stretched when they’d finished that Angel plopped out with a squelching sound.  With a groan of temporary exhaustion, Spike eased down onto the bed, Angel lying heavy over him like a blanket of predatory muscle.

Slowly, Angel lifted his hand to Spike’s head and stroked his skull absentmindedly, as if he were rewarding an obedient pet.  Spike grinned into the mattress and didn’t mind Angel’s strange expression of affection. 

After a while, quite naturally, as if it were something he did every day, Spike said lightly, ‘I love you.’

Angel stopped the intimate stroking of his thumb around Spike’s ear. He’d heard that said to him many times before by different people and it always meant the same: at this moment, what we’ve done has made me love you.  He didn’t hear this in Spike’s words, he heard you do realise that I’ve always loved you.  He was surprised that two such different sentiments could be contained within the same words.  He went back to his stroking. He wasn’t ready to admit this truism yet, not quite so able to admit that his entire persona of the aggrieved sire was a sham.  Instead, he bent his face between Spike’s shoulder blades and nibbled lightly into the skin, licking over the bites, blowing on the cool trail of saliva. 

In a soft voice, he said, ‘You always were a fuckingly bad demon.’

Spike smiled inwardly. He heard Angel’s better sentiment disguised in this comment.  He knew it wouldn’t be long before it came out of hiding.

Angel suddenly changed the subject and said with a slight catch to his voice, ‘You liked that.’

Spike had drifted slightly under the sensual touch of Angel’s fingers on his scalp and dragged himself back to nod.

‘So… I’m thinking… maybe I would.’ Angel’s hand poised mid-stroke, tense as the rest of his deceptively draped body.

Spike rolled them, careful not to separate their flesh too quickly. Side by side, face-to-face, he stared into the deep pools of brown and smiled. ‘I’m thinking maybe you would, too.’

Angel ruffled his stubble once more with a fond smile and sat up. ‘I have to go check in with the evil empire for a few hours.’

Spike stretched at the sense of anticipation he felt stiffening him once more.  He folded his arms behind his head, blatantly allowing Angel to see this arousal.  ‘You coming back here afterwards?’

‘Aren’t you coming in?’

Spike groaned and curled on his side, twitching the sheet.  ‘’S middle of the night….’

Angel stared down at the figure alongside him and had never felt such a struggle to leave a bed.  He swatted Spike hard on the rump and went in search of his clothes.  He leant in the doorway when he was dressed. ‘Spike?’

‘Hmm?’

‘I—.’

Spike opened one eye, listening intently.

‘I won’t be long.’

Spike smiled. Angel would say it in his own good time.  He gave him a dismissive wave as if he didn’t care one way or the other and went back to sleep.

 

 

Angel had not enjoyed the beauty of the night so much for a very long time. It was like the old days: a heady sense of power, the earth alive under his feet, blood scent strong around him. He considered fetching the car but decided to walk.  Even the air tasted good, so he smiled and breathed. Demon and human, both warring sides of his nature swelled to the beauty. He didn’t consciously put down this newfound appreciation of a familiar L.A. evening to Spike, but he did play their wake-up sex through his mind as he strode along.  If he grinned occasionally, if he walked with a particular spring in his step, he assigned this to the breathing and let it be.

After a while, he began to sense that he was being followed. As soon as the realisation came to him, it struck him that he’d been followed since leaving Spike’s apartment, only then he’d been too distracted to notice. As it was a human, he wasn’t too concerned.  However, he did stop and window-shop for a while, trying to catch the reflection of his stalker in the glass. 

For a fleeting moment, he saw a figure.  He walked on again, brow lowered. He’d recognised the man, but he could not place him.  This, more than the fact of being followed, freaked him slightly. Not only did the artist in him take pride in never forgetting a face, the demon in him couldn’t. Photographic memory shouldn’t be selective, and Angel was angry that it seemed to be so now.

The anger did him no good, for when he decided to confront the man—turning a corner and waiting for him to catch up, hands on hips and leather coat swaying to his ever-present demonic power—he made a serious error of judgement. 

The man appeared around the corner and stopped, startled, and Angel recognised the janitor from work.  If he had not been so angry with himself for not instantly remembering the man, he might have been more cautious. As it was, the fact that this little pissant, ugly cleaner of other people’s crap actually had the audacity to follow him, threw Angel’s caution to the wind—he, with his heady sense of power; he, hearing the power of the earth under his feet; he, feasting mentally on the blood of this human. He, hot still from Spike caresses and smelling still of that warm body….

‘What do you want?’

The man tipped his head to one side thoughtfully. ‘Well, you, I guess.’

Angel began to turn away dismissively, and that was the last thing he remembered until he woke with his head throbbing, the taste of his own blood in his mouth, and bound, the predator subdued. 

He lifted his head, more cautious now. He had badly underestimated the situation, and he would not make that mistake again. His experience told him that as he had woken—thus apparently not dead—he would soon be free and whoever had done this to him would be dead. That was just the way things were. He was over three hundred years old. His enemies weren’t.

He was lying on a bed in a small room, but it wasn’t a… real room.  He sat up, ignoring for a moment his cell, and examined his bindings. He was handcuffed behind his back, and the cuffs were attached by a chain to the floor.  One surreptitious yank and he concluded they were magically enhanced, so he put his thoughts to other things that he might be able to affect.  He was naked, which did not bode well. He decided not to think about this either.

That only left his room to consider. It appeared to be made up of three false walls on rollers and a fourth one off to one side. The gap allowed him to look into the larger room beyond, which appeared to be a windowless basement. 

‘Good, isn’t it?’

The small man came into sight in the shadows of the larger room.  Angel stayed calm. ‘I don’t recall your name.’

‘No. You never asked it.’

‘All right. What’s your name?’

‘You can call me Sir.’

Angel smiled and didn’t bother to reply.  He tested his restraints and said instead, ‘You know you can’t keep me here.’

The man look intrigued. ‘Actually, I don’t. I’ve spent the last few weeks studying very useful things, Angel: how to tranquillise you, how to restrain you…. Seems to me I’ve done a damn fine job. But I always did like to study new things.’

Angel suddenly felt his blood run cold, which as it was always fairly cool, and didn’t really run, was a very unnerving sensation. With a slightly high-pitched tone that he regretted but couldn’t alter, he said, ‘Ingram.’

The man began to clap in a theatrical, ironic way.  He came closer into the light, a few feet from Angel. ‘Well done.’

Angel asked softly, ‘How?’

Ingram twitched up an eyebrow. ‘I guess little Bennie was just one of life’s unfortunates—wrong time, wrong place, ya know? He was outside the lab, dabbing around with his pathetic mop and his pathetic life and Kazam! I come winging out of Spike’s body with nowhere to go!’

‘So you took him.’

Spittle flecked Ingram’s lips as he bent close. ‘I had no choice! Do you think I wanted this body? Look at me, Angel! Look at me!’

Angel did and decided not to risk a reply.

Ingram heard it anyway. ‘Yeah. I can’t even fuck a dog like this! Look at me!’ He held out hands that were slightly gnarled from a lifetime of water and strong cleaning chemicals. His arms were thin, short even for his five-foot stature.  His face, flushed with fury, resembled the surface of a crater: small eruptions scattered over his nose and in the corners of his mouth, bleeding yellow pus where he’d shaved the tops off.  He had very little hair, which was unfortunate as his scalp was peeling off, great flakes of it falling to his thin shoulders when he shook his head.  ‘I was the most beautiful man in New York, Angel. When I got sick I took Spike’s body, and then I was the most beautiful man in L.A.’

‘What? You think you can take my body now?’

Ingram suddenly lost his anger.  Like a balloon pricked, he withered. ‘No. I can’t do it again. Spike’s was carefully planned—all my intelligence, all my planning, all my money went into that one. This was a blind, panicked fleeing. I hit the man so hard I knocked the life out of him and stuck fast, like a burr inside his mind.’

Angel would rather Ingram wanted his body for a swap. The alternative, given he was naked and currently helpless, was not particularly attractive.

He didn’t need to ask, for the man suddenly looked up from his reverie and said more cheerfully, ‘So, you stole Spike’s body from me, and I’m going to make you pay for that.’

Angel kicked out with his foot, ineffective but enjoyable. ‘I gave it back to its rightful owner.’

‘Oh, and such a great use he’s made of it.’

Angel could have kicked himself, but a grin of pleasure crept around his defensive lock-down.

Ingram immediately came closer. ‘Oh. Now, that’s interesting. You two have finally gotten it together.’ 

Angel tried to look nonchalant. ‘I was fucking him long before. You know that.’

‘You were fucking me, Angel. I was in his body, so you had no choice.’

Angel didn’t dignify this with a reply.  ‘So, let’s get this thing on. I’ll go along with it for a while, then I’ll escape and kill you for good.’

Ingram didn’t appear to hear; he wandered over to one of the walls and wobbled it. ‘Do you like this place? It’s great, isn’t it? One of my old studios.’ He peered out into the darkened basement. ‘We brought them here. They performed, and we filmed them. Can you believe that people would pay to see kids being fucked by old men?’

Angel half rose to his feet, but the chains prevented him standing fully.  ‘You bastard.’

‘Oh, don’t give me that judgemental look, you hypocrite. I sent them home alive! What did you do, Angel? How many of your child victims did you leave alive?’

‘You have a soul!’

‘And what’s that?’

‘Huh?’

‘Go on, I’m intrigued. I’ve studied extensively all my life, and I’ll be damned if I know what it is.’

‘It’s the desire to live a good life.’

‘In whose definition of good? If you were a Crusader, you’d be applauded for hacking the heads off heathen children. If you were a member of the Inquisition, you’d go to heaven for torturing and burning harmless old women. If you were in al-Qaeda, you’d be a martyr for flying a plane into a building full of innocent people. So, you tell me, Angel, because I’m intrigued: what’s a good life?’

‘This isn’t. This isn’t the way to make things right.’

Ingram began to laugh. ‘Who said I wanted to make things right? I want the world to burn. I want to bring kingdoms down and have people kneel in fear at my name. But I’m a fucking janitor with halitosis and acne. So, I’ll get my kicks where I can. I’ll play with you until the goodness is all gone, Angel, until you cry out to your dark gods for mercy.’

Angel leant back against the headboard and swung a leg lazily off the bed.  ‘Jeez, where have I heard all this before?  Oh, yeah—hell.  Funny old thing: the devil had a small dick, too.’

Ingram came close, almost too close, but he backed off quickly.  ‘What’s your pleasure Angel, front or back?’

Angel stretched, as well as he could with his arms pinned behind his back. ‘Surprise me, little man; I’ve been tortured on both before.’

Ingram began to laugh. ‘Who said anything about torture? I know you’ve been to hell, Angel. How could I recreate that delight? Oh, no, I’m going to recreate something much more pleasant.  Now, Angel, if you’re ready for your close-up….’

He reached behind the fourth wall and produced a gun. Aiming it at the helpless vampire, he shot him in the chest with a large dart.  Angel writhed, clearly trying to fight the drug, but he sagged and lay still.  Ingram snickered. ‘Yeah, as if I’m as stupid as I look.’ He fired again.  Angel rose and bellowed in anger, but this one actually did knock him unconscious, and he sagged, finally defeated to the bed.

 

 

The idea occurred to Spike just as he was drifting off into an orgasm-induced snooze: he’d surprise Angel at work.

It seemed right in so many ways: sealing this newfound relationship; reminding Angel of the old one—the one where he spent an inordinate amount of time pissing his sire off.

He grinned and peeled out of bed, eying ruefully his new mattress. If he didn’t know better, he’d be doing more than just eyeing the brown stains. There were some major advantages to being a vampire: brown stains were pretty much always chocolate.

Humming quietly, he stood under some very hot water for a while, turning his head in slow rotations, enjoying the sensation of the stinging heat on his scalp. Dressing, he grabbed his keys and phone and headed out to the office like a regular employee.

He’d genuinely forgotten his new appearance until a girl from the typing pool entered the elevator with him and squealed her delight, insisting on touching it.  As squealing women wanting to touch him up in elevators was an opportunity never to be missed, he surrendered gracefully and bowed his head.  He was tempted to offer something else to touch, but he was saving that for someone else.  More people came in; the admiration was repeated. He was getting bored of it now, particularly as he couldn’t see how pretty he appeared to be.

Harmony was the last obstacle. She was less complimentary, and Spike wondered if somewhere in the air that filled her brain, connections were being made. New hair; new beginnings. To have new beginnings, you usually had to leave the old behind.  She did run her hand over it, but whatever she thought, she kept to herself.

‘Poof busy?’

‘Huh?’

‘Is Angel busy?’

‘He’s not here.’

Spike kept his curse inside. No need to seem too disappointed.  He wandered down to Wesley’s office instead.

Wesley looked up from his books and swore.  Spike frowned severely. ‘Don’t. You’re a man. I’m a man. We don’t talk about hair.’

‘Oh. Well, it’s very nice.’

‘Thank you.’

‘So, are you feeling quite well after your adventures in the land of the nonentity?’

‘No thanks to you, yes.  Did Angel call in?’

‘No, should he have done?’

‘He was coming in. Guess he got distracted.’

‘He’s probably out saving damsels. He does that sometimes.’

Spike flung himself into the armchair and lit a cigarette. If he couldn’t annoy Angel, then annoying Wesley was a pretty good fallback position. ‘So, we were going to discuss getting you a real life, Wes.’

Wesley went back to his books. ‘I have a life, Spike.’ He added in a very low voice, ‘Unlike you, I might add.’

Spike grinned inwardly but said in an aggrieved tone, ‘Jeez, human, that’s below the belt.’

‘You should know.’

‘Are you insinuating something?’

‘I’m not the one who sat down very gingerly.’

Spike opened his mouth to make a very cutting reply but couldn’t think of one.  He stood up nonchalantly. ‘I’m going to Smurfville.’

‘Any message for Angel when he gets in?’

Spike studied the human to see if he was taking the piss once more, but Wesley was pouring with great concentration over a scroll. He stubbed his cigarette out on it and ignoring the indignant cry, went toward the elevators.

He passed an hour or so trading insults with Illyria, then made his way back up. His initial plan to just surprise Angel and hang around annoying him was changing.  Now his mind roamed over their night and day together. He could taste Angel’s lips on his and wanted that taste for real. He wanted to push his tongue into Angel’s mouth to see if it was as good as he remembered. He wanted to bend Angel back over his desk and grind them together, matching heat and urgency.  He wanted to push Angel closer to the idea of being taken. He was so close. He’d sensed Angel’s curiosity to try something new, sensed his slow capitulation to the idea of being penetrated.

Achingly hard, he emerged into the lobby to find Angel’s office still empty.  He stormed in and flung himself into Angel’s chair as if that sacrilege would conjure the dark presence. It only conjured Harmony, nervously shooing him out. He ignored her, put his feet up on the desk and made himself at home. He reckoned now he had a special dispensation from the boss.

 

 

Angel woke with his head pounding, and it felt as if a long time had passed.  He was uncomfortable, and when he focused his thoughts, he realised he was fastened at each wrist and ankle to rings in the floor and bend double over something hard that pressed uncomfortably into his belly.  He swallowed the need to vomit and wondered how long he’d been in this demeaning position.

‘Wakey, wakey.’

Angel opened his eyes and saw the feet of the human to one side. 

‘Fuck off.’

‘Goody. We begin.’

‘Ingram….’

‘Yes, Angel.’ The human was walking around Angel, and the imprisoned vampire kept his gaze fixed on the feet.

‘You don’t want to do this.  Believe me.’

‘No, you don’t want me to do it.’  He stood between Angel’s open legs, and Angel closed his eyes to the indignity of knowing that he was fully exposed to the man’s gaze.

‘Let’s begin.’

Angel tensed himself for the first lash against his back; he’d been tied down and whipped like this once before, but that had been over the back of a chair and he’d been seven.

When nothing hit him, he opened his eyes once more and twisted his neck around as best he could.  Ingram was talking softly on a cell phone. When he finished, he snapped it off and went into the darkness of the basement beyond the lighted room.

Angel felt oddly let down. He tested his restraints.  Each wrist was fixed by a manacle to a ring securely mounted into the floor. The arrangement gave him enough slack to rise off the box slightly and twist from side to side. He wasn’t too sure he liked discovering that.

His legs were spread as wide as they could go, similarly fixed to the floor.  The only movement he could make was to clench his exposed backside. He didn’t like this discovery too much either.

There was the sound of voices and he tensed again.  All he could see were feet, and this time there were two sets.

Suddenly, someone squatted down into his line of sight.  A man stared at him for a long time not speaking.  Angel stared back. 

The man rose and said to Ingram, ‘He’s very, very special. Thank you.’

Ingram appeared to preen, for his voice was warm and oily, ‘I told you so. A thousand up front and another when you’re done.’

‘How long do I have?’

‘Take as long as you want. He’s not going anywhere.’

‘Wanna watch?’

Ingram didn’t reply, only flung himself onto the bed, which was in direct line of sight, Angel noticed, of the only place he could look from his upside down position.

The second man, who had looked nondescript, not like any torturer Angel had ever seen before—and he did have some right to judge—walked out of sight behind him.

Once more Angel tensed for the whip or the knife or hot irons but noticed that Ingram grinned and licked his lips at this small, fearful movement, so forced himself to relax.

He did more than tense when the man behind him drove deep into his anus.

Angel arched as far as his restraints would allow and screamed. It wasn’t the pain, which was excruciating; it wasn’t the instant smell of blood, which embarrassed him.  It was something else, but he wasn’t able to accept that something and shut it away.  It began to fester even as the human rode him, panting and grunting and mumbling inanities: like that? want my cock? nice tight arse….

The pain subsided after a while. His whole backside became a dull ache, pounded by the man’s hips as he ground in, slapped and punched by him as he pulled out.  He could still smell blood, but it was dried now, whatever had torn in the first thrust, healed.  He just wanted it to stop.  It became repetitive: in and squirming around that hurt, out and the slapping and the inanities, as if he was expected to reply: yes, I do like being raped; yes, I do want your greasy, stinking cock in my body; yes, I did have a tight arse, and I was saving it… but that thought was locked away with the other that had now stopped festering—it had begun to ferment instead.

At last it was over. With some loud gasping and more specific inanities about quantities of sperm, the man shuddered into Angel, hanging on like a dog trying a quickie in the backyard and expecting to be kicked at any minute.  He fell away, and Angel felt fluid draining from him.  He followed its trail down his leg. It seemed unnaturally hot, but he allowed that this might only have been his imagination. After all, he could hear the greedy murmurings of the crowd, too. 

 

 

By dawn, Spike was anxious. He couldn’t show it, as that implied too much that he was unwilling to share.  Wesley declared that, having worked all night, he was going home.  Spike trailed him to the garage, smoking furiously.  Wesley yawned.

‘So, you wanna go for a drink or something?’

Wesley looked startled. ‘God, no! I’m going home to relax in a nice hot bath, read the paper, and get a few hours well-deserved shut-eye!’

‘Oh. Well, what if this case Angel is on is important and he needs you?’

‘He knows where I am. He can always call.’

Spike seized the cue eagerly. ‘And isn’t it kinda off that he hasn’t? I mean, not that I’m bothered or nothing. Nice without the big poofter for once.’

‘I would have expected him to call, yes. Perhaps he’s undercover.’

This was a little too close to some more depressing thoughts that Spike had entertained all night waiting for Angel to arrive. He had pictured Angel leaving his bed and making his way straight to… another. He knew now that Angel was insatiable. Perhaps Angel had only ever intended it to be a one-night stand. Perhaps he’d taken his well-exercised erection to someone else to enjoy.  Undercover was exactly the thing he didn’t want to hear.

Wesley climbed into his car and tried to shut the door. 

Spike could think of no excuse to keep him so let it go. ‘When will you be back?’

‘I’m going to return to daytime hours now things are back to normal. Tomorrow.’

‘Oh.’

‘What?’

Spike lit a cigarette, pouting. ‘What if Angel’s not back by then?’

Wesley looked surprised. ‘Why worry about hypothetical events? Don’t we have enough real ones to worry about?’

Feeling suitably chastised, feeling more like a stupid bint than he ever had in his life before, Spike nodded and stepped back from the car.

He sought out some of his poker buddies, and plied with beer, coarse jokes and snacks, he swiftly regained some nads.

 

 

Angel’s descent into madness wasn’t immediate, but it was thorough.  It began with the eighth man to take him. There wasn’t anything particularly significant about this one that made him stand out from the others—until he’d finished. This one renegotiated the price. This one said he didn’t get what he’d paid for. This one said the fuck wasn’t good enough.

The repressed thoughts burst through Angel’s barriers and began to seep their poison into his mind. Coupled with lack of blood, this poison made him vulnerable. Vulnerability made him defenceless.

By the time the count had reached twenty, he’d pretty much stopped counting. He pretty much stopped doing anything, and the price continued to drop.

Ingram had been present for every fuck, but had left between times, sometimes talking rapidly on his phone, sometimes to himself. It seemed madness was not far from his mind either.

Angel had no sense of time passing.  He seemed to heal between each man, for with each one he bled. Other than that, he could not tell whether he’d been there for a day, a week or an eternity. The last option scared him, and being scared scared him some more.

At thirty, Ingram had to pay the man back. As he said, if he’d wanted a snuff fuck, he’d have killed the trick himself. Fucking the long-time dead, so he said, wasn’t his gig.

Ingram vented his fury on Angel’s body for a while, kicking at his legs ineffectually.  Then he came around to Angel’s head and squatted down. ‘You’re not playing the game, Vampire.’

Angel was in his own world, and interesting things were happening on the platform, so he did not reply.

Ingram nodded to himself and disappeared.

As Angel didn’t notice he’d gone; he didn’t see him return.

He felt it though.

The pain kicked him out of his memories, and he crashed into the present, rearing up as much as he could with a startled release of breath.

Ingram giggled. ‘That got your attention.’  He came around to Angel’s head and swung the baseball bat loosely in his hand.  ‘That was just the handle, Angel. Wanna hit a home run?’

Angel moaned faintly and strained against the chains, but he could feel his body’s weakness. He had no blood, no strength of his own, no life. He had only what he stole from others—their life force—and he sank into lassitude against his restraints.

Ingram didn’t even bother to work it in slowly. He did grease it, but only because he wanted to watch the slide, only because it substituted for what he wanted to do, but couldn’t in his inadequate, impotent prison.

Angel only knew the first moments of the horror, for he passed out just as the thickest part of the bat met the final resistance of his sphincter muscle. Without blood, he knew it would not heal. The thought was almost comforting, and he dipped into insensibility with the knowledge that anything else pushed inside him now would find almost no resistance at all.

Go to Chapter 12

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