Chapter Five

The servants in the dining room all straightened a bit when their mistress’ guests wandered in. The dark haired girl was almost dragging the tall, dark, distinguished looking man, energetically swinging his hand, humming a little snatch of a song, her dark eyes sparkling. There wasn’t a person in the room that didn’t immediately hew to the fact that there was just a little something off about her, but at the same time feel a little charmed by her. The blond woman made them feel more at ease. She seemed to look everywhere and nowhere at once, reducing the servants in the room to the status of the furniture, which was actually a relief.

The dark haired man looked like he might actually talk to them, and Lucius was nowhere in sight. While the opinion below stairs was that Lucius had become a bit puffed up with his importance, he had more depth of experience dealing with the mistress, and was the most logical choice to interact with these people.

He glided into the room at last. “May I freshen your drinks?” he asked.

Dru took that moment to strike, and no one, Darla was forced to acknowledge, could match the speed of Drusilla’s strike. She was like a cobra in doll clothes, lunging, game face in place, snapping the neck of a strapping man with thinning red hair, her fangs ripping through his throat as second later, her hand punching into the cavity of his chest to massage his shuddering heart as she drank deeply.

For a moment everyone froze.

The cook, standing in the service entrance thought that the clumsy clod Wilhem had startled the pretty girl and compounded his error by stumbling on her. He shot forward to drag the oaf off of her before he crushed her, horrified at this nearly unbelievable lapse. He had spent hours refreshing the shaved ice chilling the caviar and the latkes. He’d been up since four o’clock the previous morning nursing the pastry dough to its thin, flaky tenderness. The mistress had wandered into the kitchen to seat herself at his worktable and watch him work, asking questions about where he had learned to cook.

A footman standing approximately vertical to his counterpart simply could not reconcile what he was seeing—the girl’s hand was wrist deep in Carl’s chest and great gouts of blood were spilling down her velvet skirt, glistening wetly in the heavy nap of the fabric. His eyes rolled back in his head and he fainted.

The blond woman, a cool, social smile on her lips, turned to Lucius, her face changing into something monstrous. He spun away from her, with one thought. One purpose. He’d left her alone, upstairs, despite his uneasiness about her ‘family’.

She jerked him back, one improbably strong arm cinched around his neck. He tore at her arm, no longer caring that she resembled something female, kicking backward and smashing his elbow into her ribs. He broke free and raced for the stairs.

Darla laughed breathlessly. “Oooh. I like him,” she crooned.

Angelus was draining the cook. He raised his head.

Darla fluttered her hand at him. “He’s mine, darling. Enjoy,” she said, taking off after the majordomo. Her skirts hampered her on the stairs, and she cursed them, knowing full well that if that fool burst in on William, Dru’s hot-tempered boy would eviscerate him. She snarled, baring her fangs. The most promising one of the lot Willow had found, and he had to be a noble fool.

She caught him eight feet from the door and flung him into the opposite room, slamming the door shut behind her, leaning back against it, she let her mortal face return. The man was panting with exertion and fear. Such a lovely smell, she reflected. It went nicely with the cedar chips in the fireplace.

She raised her finger to her lips. “Sssh” she gave him her most charming smile, the one that had lured countless people to their deaths. “Our William doesn’t want to kill her,” she confided, revealing her understanding of what was running through his mind, running her fingers lightly over the tops of her breasts. “He’s just fucking her,” she shrugged. “It’s always the same with them. You’ll see.”

“What are you?” he demanded, his voice shaking.

“Anything I want to be. As is Angelus, and William. Dru? She’s a whirlwind of everything and nothing, but she amuses Angelus,” Darla’s voice was soft, lilting, teasing. “You can be anything you want to be. You can be like us. Like William? Rutting between the soft thighs of a soft, rich, pampered woman. Filling her with his cock. She makes the prettiest sounds when she’s riding his cock, our William’s girl does,” Darla laughed softly, cruelly, enjoying the stunned look on his face.

He was handsome. At least six feet tall, and well made. She wondered what his hair looked like when it was freshly washed and loose around his shoulders. In the careful, neat queue he wore, it looked like antique gold. His eyes were cornflower blue around the enlarged pupil.

“Close your eyes, and you can hear them. You can imagine that it's you making her cry out as you fuck her like an animal.”

He couldn’t believe this elegant woman was saying these things to him, speaking to parts of his mind that recoiled from her words even as his body reacted in ways that filled him with horror.

“You are a monster,” he spat at her.

Darla laughed. “Of coarse,” she agreed, the bell of her skirt swaying as she approached him with a roll of her hips that would do the coarsest of streetwalkers proud. He opened his mouth to shout for his mistress, to give her this one warning, and before the sound left his mouth, she backhanded him with a force that sent him crashing to the ground, blood filling his mouth, and then she was on him, shoving his head to one side and biting into his throat, he gasped, and choked on the blood in his mouth as the world faded to black.

Darla raised her head, licking the deep bite mark in her victim’s neck almost as an afterthought as she listened with the intensity of a hunter.

She could hear William and the girl in the bedroom across the hall. The sound of a glass breaking and a brief struggle. Her lips curled. If that little bitch reached the hall, she was fair game in the hunt, and William knew it. He had better shove his cock in her and fuck her unconscious. Stupid boy. She licked her lips.

Her head swiveled, two more heartbeats, nearer. Prey. She rose, automatically straightening her skirt, smearing the blood from her unconscious, but still living victim on her bodice and strolling boldly into the hall.

Two women, maids by the look of them, were in the hall, looking more puzzled than alarmed. “You there,” Darla called out. “Which one of you is my maid?” she demanded.

The two women exchanged baffled glances. “Are English speaking servants too much to ask for?” she complained, reverting to the German patois she had learned in Pennsylvania two hundred years ago to repeat her question. The handsome boy awaiting her seemed to understand her well enough a few minutes ago.

The plumper brown haired girl bobbed a curtsey. “That would be me, Mistress,” she said. “How may I serve you?”

“I’ve spilled wine on my dress,” Darla told her as she approached. “I want you to take care of it before the stain sets.”

“Yes, m’am,” the girl bobbed again.

There was an annoying habit, and Darla didn’t care too much for female minions anyway. Angelus was the one who specified two women. Left to his own devises, he’d turn a harem.

“We heard a sound, m’am, like someone falling,” the other girl said. She had a bit of a bold look about her. Dark hair and eyes, and a full lower lip that looked promising.

“As did I,” she said haughtily. “Why would your majordomo be fumbling around in Master William’s room, I wonder?”

Matilde and Sofia exchanged looks. “Sofia will check, m’am. If you will follow me, we’ll put you to rights so you can rejoin your family.”

Darla tilted her head. “Hmm. You would be Willow’s personal maid, wouldn’t you?” she guessed. Plump, practical farm girls had no appeal for Angelus, and this one appeared to have her wits about her.

“I have that honor,” the girl admitted.

Darla could almost hear William in her head, in one of his ridiculous accents, saying something like, ‘makes me want to heave’. “Now, you are my maid,” she said sweetly, following the girl.

He kissed the corner of her eye, catching one of her tears on the tip of his tongue, savoring it. Her tears, her sweat, the sweet, hot juices that flowed between her legs, each had a different flavor, but there was a quality that each shared with her blood, some underlying, essential element that his body recognized and craved. He felt her warm breath against his chin, and lightly kissed her mouth as well, tasting the apple-y wine and the fruit he had fed her.

“Have a bit more,” he encouraged. “The bread, maybe?” he suggested.

She licked her lower lip, tasting him on her lips, and nodded.

“I missed you desperately,” he said, shooting her a sideways look full of mock despair. “Spent my nights getting pissed and my days hugging my pillow to my chest, no one to fight for the blankets, or to drool on my shoulder in that charming way only you possess.”

His playfulness made her ache. Sometimes, when he was in a good mood, he was so . . . tender with her, and sweet.

He insisted on feeding her.

“You manage the glass, darling,” he said when she sat up a bit more and reached for the plate. “Fainting like that does wonders for a bloke’s ego, but . . .” he glanced down at his semi-erect cock. “Don’t fancy you making a habit of it, least of all tonight. It’s been too bloody long since I’ve . . .” he pinched her cheek. “Hmmm? Seen that pretty blush? Caused it?” he teased, feeding her another bit of bread.

“More wine?” he asked, seeing that she was near the bottom of the glass.

“Are you trying to make me drunk?” she tried to match his mood.

She had no head for liquor, and no stomach for it either, which was why he passed on the rich looking latkes. All that sour cream and wine wouldn’t sit well on her stomach, another black mark on the majordomo’s book. Drunk, no. Relax her a bit? Definitely. She was strung as tight as Angelus’ ass.

He took the glass from her and handed her another bit of the bread. “Finish your dinner, love,” he ordered, going back to the table to refill her glass. There wasn’t much more than a half a glass left in the bottle, so he ran his finger through the sour cream and caviar, licking it off and washing it down with the wine in the bottle.

“Drinking from the bottle,” she tsked. “What would Angelus say?”

“Sod him,” he said rudely. “I’m continually amazed at this obsession with a lot of silly rules that have sod all to do with being basically outside of any rule save—“

“I do as I please,” Willow interrupted, doing a horrible imitation of his accent.

He laughed. The accent was crap, but it was funny. He picked up her replenished wine glass. “It’s a fine line you tread. That was definitely a bit of cheek, but amusing, so, when I turn you over my knee, I promise, it will be one of those nice spankings that turn your ass pink and get you all hot to fuck me.”

She heard him, and opened her mouth to say something, and then shut it, sitting bolt upright in the bed. William heard it too, footsteps, pounding up the stairs, followed by the sound of someone falling, hard, across the hall, and a door slamming shut.

She froze, one hand clutching the counterpane to her bare breasts, her shoulders hunching in as she squeezed her eyes shut, visibly cringing. She drew her knees up to her chest.

It had started. The scent of blood reached him, and he had to exercise some control to keep his game face from coming on. For a moment, he stared at the door. It was Darla up here, hunting. His gaze flicked to Willow, but he realized that her voice was too muffled through two doors for his lover to hear. The cringing was . . . annoying.

“Stop that,” he snapped at her.

She ignored him, rocking, making some God awful mewling sound, like someone was hurting her, which, he felt like telling her, could be arranged if she didn’t get a grip on herself.

“Willow! Stop it, this instant,” he ordered, not bothering with a threat that he would be stuck with following through on. The last time he had done that she had been unable to walk for a month, a month in which he had wondered if he had crippled her.

She lifted her head, staring at him, looking very much like something he’d like to hunt, and then she was hurtling out of the bed for the door.

Without even thinking about it, he got rid of the wine glass to free his hands, diving after her, his hand hitting the door before she could reach the doorknob. Stupid little bitch! What did she think she was doing? There were three vampires in the house on a hunt, and one bloody step out that door would make her fair game. Angelus, Darla, and Dru were fully capable of killing her in a fit of blood lust. Angelus’ stone cold bitch queen would cut her heart out in front of him just because she could. At least Dru would feel kind of bad about it, if she remembered killing Willow. And Angelus? William’s blood ran cold at the things he might take it in his head to do while he was killing her.

“I can’t let it happen, I can’t let it happen,” she moaned, pulling futilely on the doorknob. It was almost funny. He was holding the bloody door shut, and she hadn’t a chance in hell of matching him in a contest of strength.

“Please, please,” she begged. “I’ll do anything you want. Just let me make it stop. I have to make it stop,” she wept, demonstrating a complete lack of any semblance of rational thought, William decided.

She was right over the bleeding bend if she thought that running naked through the house during a hunt was going to do anything but introduce her to a whole new definition of rape and a nasty death. He hadn’t been particularly gentle with her over the years, and she had been the entertainment in more than his bed, but he lacked Angelus and Darla’s twisted genius for sadism, and he knew it. Didn’t bother him a bit. Their little joint project was his lovely Dark Goddess, and while he worshiped the ground Dru trod, he wasn’t completely stupid about her. He’d kill Willow himself, or stake her if she was undead, if she ever went the way of Dru.

Using his shoulder to keep her from opening the door, he wrapped his arm around her waist to drag her away, but she hung onto the doorknob with the tenacity of a terrier. He squeezed her wrist. “Let go,” he hissed at her. He was not relishing the prospect of her causing a scene that Darla would no doubt overhear. Smug, cold bitch that she was, he thought, he would never hear the end of it.

Willow’s hair whipped around her shoulders as she shook her head.

He applied more pressure to her wrist, gradually increasing the pressure while he spoke to her as calmly and rationally as he could manage. Decades of practice with his sire paid off. “Let go, love. Let me take you back to bed. I’ll make it all go away, sweetheart.”

“Liar,” she spat.

Bloody hell. Of course he was lying. “Sweetness, I don’t want to hurt you. Let me take care of you, baby.”

She should have been screaming. Christ, he was hurting her. Changing tactics, he relaxed his grip on her arm and then bore down again, brutally.

A ragged sob was her only concession to the pain.

“Ssshh. Don’t weep so, love. You’ll make yourself sick,” he crooned to her, his lips inches from her ear.

“Please,” she tried again.

Any second now he was going to break her fucking wrist, and even if he had the first clue about where to find a competent doctor to reset it—another lesson learnt, evidenced by the crooked index finger on her left hand, and her tendency to limp a bit when she was very tired, the lingering products of two poorly set breaks—there was no question of bringing a doctor here tonight.

“Baby?” he put some steel in to his tone. “I don’t want to hurt you, but I’ll break your arm and call it a good day before you get out of this room. Now,” he spaced each word out, cold and precise, “let go of the God damned door!”

Her hand relaxed just enough for him to yank it off the door, and he scooped her up, carrying her back to bed while she wept uncontrollably, her badly bruised arm lying between them.

“Sshhh,” he rocked her, smoothing her hair with his hands. “Why do you do these crazy things?” he asked, furious with her for the scare she had given him. “Maybe next time, I’ll hunt, and you’ll bloody well watch. You think then you’ll understand when I tell you—“ he heard his voice rising, which meant that he was the only person in the room listening to anything he had to say.

She was making that sound again, that made him want to make her stop. He covered her mouth, pinching her nose shut. If she couldn’t breath, she couldn’t make a sound. “No more,” he told her, his voice clipped. “I’ve had enough, Willow. No more.”

She stared at him, her head jerking back, once, twice. He figured once more, and then he’d let her breath again, but she went still, and then she stopped resisting, her great, tear drenched green eyes, so bright that he almost didn’t mind when she cried, and he hated weeping women, fixed on his. And the brightness started to waver.

Matilde went to the closet to find a gown of a similar cut for the lady to change into. That would be quickest, and would avoid the necessity of changing undergarments and petticoats. “There’s a sapphire blue in cut velvet,” she began.

“My favorite,” Darla purred.

Matilde jumped. She was right behind her, so close that the maid froze, uncertain what to do. The mistress was very particular about what she wryly described as her personal space, and she and Matilde had worked out little signals for such things, like a soft clearing of the throat. She had found it touchingly amusing that the courtesy that the mistress demanded of her maid was one she was careful to return, and once or twice, they had shared a quiet laugh at their odd habits.

Other than falling into the wardrobe, Matilde had nowhere to go, and whatever she might have thought or said about this state of affairs, would never be known. With a sense of uneasy astonishment, she felt herself drawn back against a soft body. A cold, wet, surprisingly rough tongue, not unlike a cat’s, licked her neck, and then the white hot agony of a crushing bite made her arch away. The involuntary movement of her body drawing a low growl, a tightening of the arm around her waist, and a deeper bite.

She had the oddest sensation. It was like someone was pulling the blood out of her veins, and she frowned at the absurdity of it as her life ebbed away.

The first real, full-throated scream of the night came from William’s room when Sofia found Lucius lying on the floor. That wasn’t when she screamed. It was when she shook him and his head lolled back, unsealing the coagulating wound and a spray of blood hit her face. That was when she screamed, a full-throated, desperate scream of abject terror—something Angelus liked to call dessert.

He and Dru had hunted the first floor with ruthless efficiency. Angelus never had any intention of turning so very many humans at once, so it was given that there would be some that would not survive the attack in any condition to be turned, but he thought, as he stalked through the library, pausing to scan the titles on the shelves, was it too much to ask for a bit of entertainment to liven up the proceedings?

At the bone-chilling scream, he abandoned his perusal of the titles with a happy smile. “Dessert!” he caroled cheerfully.

Drusilla had already beaten him to the stairs and was racing up them, her skirts rucked up to her knees as she took the steps two at a time. When he reached the room, the boy on the floor was starting to come around. Angelus figured that Darla had left him there to enjoy later. The girl was on her knees, her arms around Drusilla’s waist as she sobbed into her blood soaked skirt.

For once, Dru looked nonplussed. She cast a baffled look at her sire, and then, like a bird, lifted her head, cocking her head to one side, a sweet smile turning up the corner’s of her lips. “There, there,” she patted the girl on the top of her head. “Ssssh. Don’t weep so,” she said. “You’ll give yourself a tummy ache.”

Angelus frowned at her, and then he caught it too, what was the inspiration for Drusilla’s grossly inappropriate and unwittingly hilarious attempt to comfort the girl they were going to kill one little tasty bit at a time. It was that idiot childe of hers and his softhearted human consort.

For every time that Willow did something that impressed or pleased him and made him feel the tiniest bit envious of William for having the wit to coddle her along, she went and did something so stupid or pointless, that he was moved to incredulity at the boy’s patience.

Not that it actually lasted that long. He went from billing and cooing soothing nonsense in her ears to telling her he’d break her arm in something under a minute.

Since this seemed to work, Drusilla reached down to one of the arms wrapped around her, looked at Angelus, and snapped the girl’s arm.

He felt her heart slowing. Oh, no you don’t, the thought ran through his head. She’d loose her nerve. Her body’s insatiable demand for air wouldn’t let her beat him on this particular playing field. He could feel the muscles in her chest fighting to expand, and he could feel Willow, her lips under his hand, gritting her teeth to resist the pull to try to breath.

“Oh, fuck,” he muttered, relaxing his hold on her face, watching her stare turn into a desperate, outraged, protest. The stupid, pig stubborn, bitch was now holding her breath. He dumped her on the mattress and the second she hit it her mouth opened and she was sucking in air. To cap the evening’s entertainment, one of the maids started screaming her head off, and Willow was covering her ears, trying to block it out.

“Well, this is a lovely evening we’re having,” he said, more to himself than her. He got up, flung open the door and glared across the hall at his sire and Angelus.

“Do you bloody mind? Trying to get a leg over here, and that bitch’s caterwauling isn’t doing anything for me. Stuff a sock in her mouth.”

Angelus leaned against the frame of the bedroom door, his dark eyes traveling over the enraged, naked vampire, looking amused at the display of temper. “Problems, boy?” he drawled. “Need suggestions?”

William turned his head to look back into the bedroom. “Pet? You move an inch from that bed, and I swear I will chain you to the foot of my bed and keep you alive until you’re a toothless old hag.”

“I want to die,” she whimpered.

“Now, William,” Angelus mocked. “She wants to die. That’s so sweet. Isn’t it Dru? Miss Willow wants to die,” he waggled his eyebrows at her. “Tell your boy to finish the job, and make us a new addition to the family.”

The sobbing chorus of ‘I want to die’ got cut off in mid whimper.

“Oh, so now you change your tune?” William muttered. “It’s all ‘I want to die’ until it sinks into your thick skull that I haven’t wasted eight years of my unlife only to forget to bring you back,” he shouted at her naked back.

“William,” Dru pouted at him reprovingly.

The sniveling maid started winding up again, and Dru slapped her face. “Hush now. We’re talking,” she said as if the maid was the one with the inability to grasp what was going on.

William grinned at her. “Thanks, Princess,” he said.

She graciously inclined her head. “You’re very welcome my darling, delicious, depraved boy,” she returned.

William looked her up and down. She looked glorious, her long hair falling free, a bit of blood forgotten in the corner of her lip, and her dress smeared with blood. She was breathtaking. “Dru, you’re so bleeding gorgeous, you make my eyes hurt to look at you.”

Willow hugged her knees to her chest and wondered if shouting, ‘then go fuck her,’ might push him just hard enough to . . . what? Beat her? She squeezed her eyes shut.

“Well, that’s an attractive look,” Darla drawled as she came down the hall. “I thought you’d be enjoying your reunion with your . . . with the girl,” she waved in the direction of the room. “No? Lover’s quarrel? Little spat over the inevitable, and yet somehow—“

“I get it, Darla,” William said, refraining from telling her to piss off.

“You do well to keep a civil tongue in your head with me, William,” she warned.

“Unless you beg for an uncivil tongue,” he shot back.

“How . . . vulgar,” she sniffed, as if he was beneath her, and technically speaking, he was, by two generations.

“Joining us?” Darla asked.

William looked into the room at the two victims on the floor. The majordomo he had been looking forward to killing slowly was in there, and the bird wasn’t bad looking. Everyone looked fat and happy and well fed. He frowned at Dru. “What happened to saving something for me?” he asked.

She looked guilty. “Oops?” she offered.

He glared at his lover’s huddled figure on the bed. “Given her track record, if I chain her to the bed, she’ll bleed to death chewing through a limb,” he said.

Angelus’ shoulders shook with a silent laugh at this observation. Half the time he wanted to beat William senseless, but the rest of the time he was fairly amusing. Their eyes met, and William gave him a small nod that suggested that he was past the worst of his temper tantrum.

“Well, then,” Darla gave him a little wave. “Ta. Give Willow a kiss goodnight for us,” she said.

Dru blew a kiss at him and he mimed catching it and clutching it to his heart. She paused before blowing another kiss. “Now, this one is for Willow, you insatiable thing,” she cautioned.

“From your lips to—“

“Her luscious pink parts,” Dru inserted.

He winked at her. “Every precious inch, sweetness.”