Chapter Six

“I hate you,” she said, her voice flat, emotionless.

“I’m not overly fond of you at the moment, ducks, so right back at you,” William retorted, his hand on her shoulder forcing her to her back.

He had lit the branch of candles near the bed before he had returned to it. She wiped her snotty nose on the back of her hand, scrubbing at her face like an over-tired child. A man’s voice erupted across the hall. “No, God no,” he yelled hoarsely.

He watched her lips move, soundlessly, his own thinning. He had lit the candles for more light to get a closer look at her wrist, not entirely sure he hadn’t broken it. He gave it his attention, moving her hand this way and that.

“Are they all dead?” she asked in the same toneless voice.

“Does it sound like it?’ he shot back, before relenting. “Your majordomo is wriggling on Darla’s hook, and the little sloe eyed maid? Heard her giggling down the hall. Seemed to find it pretty bloody amusing that you were getting shagged,” he said, knowing that she hated being made fun of just about worse than anything.

Something flickered in her expression, gone too quickly for him to identify. “I don’t think its broken,” he said, “but I don’t think you’re going to be up to scribbling in one of your journals for a few days either.”

Their eyes met, and something spiteful flamed to life in hers. “Too bad for you. You always like it better when I use that hand.”

His lip curled. Well, fine, he snarled inwardly. Just fucking fine. We can play that game too. His hand fisted in her hair, dragging her up by it, flinging her face down, her hips across his thighs. The firm white globes of her ass were pushed up higher as he got his legs under him, resting his ass on the backs of his legs. He shoved her hair away from her face, clamping his hand down on the back of her neck when she would have turned her face to the mattress.

He ran his hand over her ass, his fingers rubbing in slow circles, testing the pliancy of her skin. She had the most beautiful skin. Ivory toned, and other than the random bite mark and freckles, unblemished. He pushed her thighs apart. “Keep your legs spread, or by God, I’ll fuck you with every remotely phallic object in this room, and keep you from coming until dawn.”

To add emphasis to his threat he roughly thrust three fingers in her cunt, feeling her body stiffen as her vaginal walls resisted the bulk of his fingers stretching her.

He pulled his fingers out of her, and started slapping her, working on the tender backs of her thighs, feeling her fighting her own instinct to evade his hand. She bit down on her lower lip to keep from crying out, and he figured that she wasn’t quite done with her rebellion for the evening. Coldly angry with her, he refused to be goaded into hitting her hard. The smacks stung, her thighs were turning an angry red, and each one had to hurt like hell, but he wasn’t going to be goaded into laying into her.

When his hand came down abruptly on her untouched ass, a yelp escaped her.

He smiled at the sound and ran a soothing hand over the backs of her thighs, using his fingertips only, knowing that she would feel the light, teasing touch more powerfully.

He gave her other ass cheek a stinging slap, his fingers stroking her neck, smoothing her hair. Her breast was peeping out between his thigh and her outstretched arm, he moved his hand down to run his fingers over it using the same light, teasing touch, slapping her ass again.

“Gets you all hot when I spank you,” he reminded her, feeling her cunt, warm and damp against his leg.

“I hate you,” she whispered again.

His fingers followed the curve of her ass, dipping into the wetness of her cunt, spreading the outer lips apart. Watching the awareness work on her in her eyes. He chuckled. “Mmmm. I’m feeling you hate me,” he mocked. “I’m feeling your hot pussy, dripping on my leg. You want to rub your cunt against me, don’t you?”

His thumb thrust into her, swirling around, sliding up between the pink cheeks of her ass to press against her tightly puckered anus. Her legs started to clench together, and then she realized what she was doing and moved to separate them.

His thumb pushed into her. She panted, her eyes wild. “Will . . .”

“I love fucking you,” he said as his thumb sank into her.

She rolled her hips against his leg, trying to get some friction on her clitoris, and wailed softly as he fucked her ass, hard, with his thumb, knowing she was getting off on the pain as well as the pleasure his fingers were affording her as they slid between the wet folds of her sex.

Her hands were fisting in the disordered mess they had made of the linens, her face contorted, as she gasped and mewled, and shook under his hands.

“Tell me what you want,” he demanded. “Tell me, and I might just let you have it, pet.”

“Fuck me,” she moaned.

His hand left her neck to slap her ass. “Pay attention! I am fucking you,” he snarled. “Tell me what you want!”

“Aaaaaah,” she wailed as his fingers rubbed her clit.

He slapped her ass again. “Stop that,” she was frantically rubbing herself against his leg. “I’m not going to let you come until you tell me what you want.”

Gritting her teeth as much from the weird mix of pain and pleasure as frustration, she gritted out, “Fuck me, with your cock, in my cunt.”

He pulled his thumb out of her and moved around between her legs, spreading them further apart while she pushed up on her elbows, her legs trembling as she eagerly pushed her hips back.

“Now, that’s what I like,” he said, holding her hips, and kissing her reddened ass, his cock rubbing against her slit. He lined the head of his cock up with her weeping hole, his hands sliding up her hips to cup her small, firm breasts. “Push back on to it, love,” he encouraged.

She pushed back, feeling the head of his cock breach the opening, “Goddess! Will!” she cried out as she felt the walls of her cunt stretch around the cool hardness of his cock, inch by inch as she pushed back.

“Take it all up in you, love,” he grunted, throwing his head back as the added tightness coupled with the heat of her made him gasp for unneeded breath.

She shuddered, twisting her hips as she drove herself back on him, her ass snuggled up against his abdomen. His hands moved back down to her hips, holding her there. “Mmmm. I can feel your cunt quivering around me,” he said, slipping one hand around to find her clit. “I’m going to make you beg. I’m going to make you scream.”

Sofia’s broken arm lay at an unnatural angle. Her shoulders were on the bed, just barely, leaving her head to hang over the side. One of her eyes bulged as the dark haired man thrust his cock deeper into her mouth. Lucius could see just that much of her face between his hairy legs.

His pants were down around his ankles, and he hadn’t bothered to take off anything other than his frock coat, which he had carefully hung up on a padded hanger before handing another padded hanger to the blond woman. He undressed the dark haired girl first, in no hurry about what he was doing. Her blood stained clothes were carefully removed and hung, or folded neatly. Together they undressed the woman, caressing her painted body. Her nipples were dark with rouge.

He tried to crawl away, and got as far as the door, no longer caring that he was taking the coward’s way out, but they hauled him back, striped the heavy drapes of their corded tie backs and tied his wrists tightly, looping the excess around an unused chandelier hook in the ceiling; pulling and pulling, until he made himself use his legs to keep from having his arms pulled out of the sockets, and still they pulled, hoisting him higher, until he was on his toes.

The dark haired girl tossed Sofia on the bed like she was a rag doll, making her scream as her broken arm was violently jarred, the displaced bone bulging against her skin.

She tore at the maid’s simple clothing. The light, but sturdy dark blue wool that Sofia had been so proud of, shredded like tissue silk, leaving wicked wheals of blood on her skin that the dark haired girl, the mad girl they called Dru, licked away with inhuman growls and purrs. She buried her dark head between Sofia’s thighs, Angelus moving behind her to hold the maid’s ankles apart.

Under other circumstances she might have even enjoyed it, Lucius thought. Bold, sloe eyed Sofia had rubbed herself up against him more than once as he recalled, with an unmistakable invitation in her eyes.

She stared blankly at the ceiling her eyes glazed with shock and pain, whispering the words of a prayer she probably learned in the workhouse.

The blonde woman cut his clothes off with a knife that never touched his skin. “I have some skill with a blade,” she commented, seeming to take pride in her neatness at splitting seems and leaving him unmarked.

Sofia grunted and jerked. Angelus rested one of her bare feet on his shoulder, unfastening her breeches, he took out his cock, stroking it in one hand, guiding it between the legs of the girl sucking the maid’s cunny.

Her name is Dru, he reminded himself. He had them straight in his head now. Dru. Darla. Angelus, and William.

The sound of flesh slapping flesh sounded like a gun crack from across the hall. Dru lifted her head, pink juices staining her face and smirked. “Someone’s been naughty,” she said in a singsong voice. Her fingers rooted in the maid. “Not to worry,” she told her. “William is making it a nice spanking,” Angelus slapped her firm ass and she squealed, pushing back against his invading cock. “Slapping, tickling,” her tongue danced over Sofia’s sex. “So very nice,” her eyes rolled back in her head and she turned her head, biting into Sofia’s soft white thigh.

“Blood and honey,” she pronounced when she lifted her head and watched rivets of blood trickle down the girl’s thigh. She pouted. “Hard, Daddy,” she said in a complaining tone.

Darla grabbed his chin, brushing her naked body against his; the tips of her breasts were startlingly cold against his chest. Her hand rested against his thigh, squeezing. “Just when I start wondering why everyone thinks that girl is so smart, she surprises me,” Darla said.

He wasn’t sure who she was referring to so he kept his mouth shut while she prodded and squeezed and explored his body like he was a horse at an auction, all the while, her body brushed against his, the coldness of her skin confusing him. She was freezing.

She stood behind him, her hand stroking his cock to hardness. “You’re an impressive specimen,” she breathed in his ear.

“Would madam care to see my teeth?” he said coldly.

She kicked his feet apart sending a jolt of tearing pain through his shoulders even as she cupped his sack, working his cock in a relentless way. I won’t, I won’t I won’t, he chanted in his head. “What’s your name again?” she demanded.

He refused to answer.

She squeezed his balls hard, making him scream. “Your name!”

He shuddered as she cupped him gently, her cold touch almost soothing to his abused flesh. “Lucius,” he groaned.

“Lucius,” his name rolled off her tongue sensuously. She kissed his back, his ribs, one of his nipples, sucking on it lightly while her hands continued to work his rod and sack, her thumb swirling around the head, making his cock jerk in her hands.

“Lucius,” she murmured. “Are you listening?” she asked, cocking her head to one side, cutting her amused gray eyes to the closed bedroom door across the hall.

He glared at her. He was listening now. Flinching at the sound that came at regular intervals. Slap, slap, slap.

He found himself listening for something else, and not hearing it. She wasn’t crying or screaming. It amazed him. For a moment it occurred to him that there was some small victory to wring out of this.

Darla smiled as she saw his expression change. Oh, he was going to be fun to break, she gloated to herself, meeting his eyes. He relaxed into her hands, no longer fighting her.

His lip curled. “I usually pay for this,” he said. “What’s the going rate?”

She jerked back, eyes narrowing. “Angelus? Dru’s not paying any attention to you,” she pointed out. The girl was far to busy finger painting bloody patterns on the maid’s stomach. “I think it’s time for Lucius to find out what the going rate is,” she sneered.

Angelus looked over at her, and gave Dru another smack on the ass, pulling out of her with a sickening plop, his breeches barely riding his hips as he strolled over, probably intent on beating him to death for the insult to the ‘lady’.

He circled around him, pausing behind him while Lucius’ back tensed for the blow that was sure to fall. He was startled to feel the man’s hands on his buttocks, roughly pushing them apart. “Oh, no,” he moaned, panicked by the idea of what he might do to him. “God, no!” he yelled frantically.

Darla smiled coldly at him. Lucius felt the broad head of Angelus’ cock press against him, his hands on his spread open ass keeping him from moving more than a few inches while the strain on his shoulders became nearly unbearable.

“Try to relax, dear. It always hurts the first time,” she mocked, picking the scraps of his clothes up off the floor. The mistress’ black velvet button fell, unheeded by her, from the pocket of his ruined waistcoat. Lucius watched it roll across the floor until it was almost hidden from view by the bed hangings, and then all thought, all breath was driven out of his body as the man rammed his cock into his ass. His head fell back, his face forming a mask of agony as Angelus grappled and grunted, hips bucking fiercely as he fought to bury his cock in him.

“Almost,” Angelus grunted, “makes me,” he started thrusting harder now that Lucius torn passage began to ease becoming less hard to penetrate, but deliciously vise-like, “believe,” his large hand grasped Lucius’ cock, “in God,” he said as he raped him

A wild, hopeless, animalistic sound reached the servant. Tears spilled down his face as he realized that it came from his throat.

“Relax, boy,” Angelus said.

From across the hall, there was a new sound, no more sounds of a beating, but a woman’s voice, moaning, with words he was grateful not to understand in between. But he wasn’t to be spared that for very long.

Darla rooted around in a drawer and produced what appeared to be a riding crop that she slapped against her hand. “Not being able to speak English is a draw back,” she commented, strolling back over. The tip of the riding crop lashed the head of his cock. Compared to the thick cock in his ass, it didn’t register, and she brought the crop down on his chest, making him cry out again.

“Don’t ignore me when I’m talking,” she said with real menace. “We are going to have lessons in English, my boy,” she said.

“Tell him about buggering, Darla,” Angelus chortled. He kissed Lucius’ sweaty throat. “Tell him that I’m not going to stop fucking him until he comes, and I’m not going to come first,” he said.

Darla cocked her head to one side. “You do realize that you are speaking in German?”

“That’s right,” he said. “So, you better start thinking of something that’s going to make you spill,” he counseled Lucius, “I can fuck something this tight for hours,” he slammed into Lucius again.

Dru’s victim had passed out, and she prodded her a couple of times and sat up, pouting. “No toys for Dru,” she whined, casting a longing look across the hall.

“Daddy will share, my darling,” Angelus said to distract her. Contrary to William’s thinking on the subject, Angelus had no real desire to see Willow turned yet, and Dru was a little dangerous after so much anticipation.

She clapped her hands delightedly, gracefully gliding off the bed. “May I Grandmummy?” she politely asked for Darla’s permission.

“Go ahead, Dru,” Darla agreed.

To Lucius’ amazement, this graceful, delicate, swanlike girl hooked her arms under his knees and pulled him off his feet. For the first time since he had been tied up the ache in his shoulders disappeared as the tension was relieved, and it looked completely effortless on her part.

“Mmmm, nice, Dru,” Angelus purred, appreciating the change in the angle of penetration.

She stared into his eyes. “Be with me,” she murmured softly, her head moving sinuously. “Be in my eyes,” she invited. “Be in me,” she breathed.

“What do you see, Princess?” Angelus asked.

Dru gave him a conspiratorial smile. “Grandmummy knows. She’s ever so clever,” she said. “No, cream for my tea,” she said, part of some dialog only she was party to. She leaned forward and swirled her tongue around the head of Lucius’ cock. He bucked and writhed in her grasp.

Across the hall, Willow was hoarsely begging William to fuck her. Darla smacked the riding crop over the boy’s ribs, providing a mocking translation, while he babbled a litany of pleas for release, bucking up into Dru’s mouth until he came with a violent shudder.

Angelus pumped himself into him once, twice, and came with a heartfelt groan on the third stroke. Dru dropped him with an air of ‘my work is done’ and licked her lips while Angelus steadied the boy until he was sort of on his feet, trails of blood and seminal fluids running down his legs.

Angelus slapped his ass. “You’re a good fuck,” he told him, biting into his shoulder.

Dru let her face change. “Treats for everyone, Grandmum,” she declared, biting into his hip. Darla caressed his lax face, turning his head to the unmarked side and biting in.

Lucius had no idea, no real understanding, of the passing of time as he watched the dark haired man—Angelus—fuck Sofia’s mouth. She had a look in that one eye, almost like she was startled, or that, perhaps there was something she wanted to say.

The two women and been rummaging through William’s things, talking and laughing at him in the way woman laugh about their men. Age was relative. Drusilla looked and acted the youngest of them, a girl barely out of the schoolroom by the look of her, but from the way they spoke, it was clear that William was the youngest. The conversation drifted in and out of German. Angelus wanted them to speak in German.

He argued with Darla about that. “Don’t teach them English,” he said, again in German. “We speak German with the minions, and keep English for family business.”

Admiration for this way of thinking flashed briefly in Lucius’ mind.

“Can you believe all the things that boy has brought for her?” Darla asked. “He can’t remember to have his stupid boots polished, but he buys sheet music for her? And—“ she started laughing as she held up a seed pearl choker. “Anniversary present? Nothing but jewelry says thank you for being my whore for, what is it, nine years?”

“Eight,” Angelus corrected. “Breath through your nose,” he instructed Sofia.

Her stare remained unblinking, and desperate, pleading with Lucius, who was having a hard time thinking anything other than better you than me.

It had been quiet across the hall for some time now. The memory of those ardent, anguished, wanton moans and screams made Lucius squeeze his eyes closed as if he could crush his unwanted knowledge. But, when he closed his eyes, he got a mental picture of his mistress, sitting in the red leather chair near the fire in the library, her head thrown back in ecstasy her skirts pushed up past her knees, her legs over the arms of the chair while William fucked her. And she turned her head to see him watching her, smiling in her gentle way, unperturbed by her dishabille, saying “No cream for my tea.”

That evil black haired bitch had done something to him to put such a picture in his head.

“Grandmummy,” Dru wagged her finger at her. “Mustn’t call my William’s poppet bad names. She spins and dances in my head, singing lovely songs, all dressed in white like a sweet, darling dolly, with lace, and ruffles, and pink ribbons in her hair.” She smacked her forehead repeatedly with the heel of her hand as Angelus grunted his way to a climax. His semen spilled from Sophia’s gaping mouth.

“Take a break, slut,” Angelus sneered at her. “You’ll be on your knees sucking cock for a week the next time you fail to swallow every drop.”

She gulped, rolled her head to one side, and vomited weakly on the carpet, making Angelus jump back in disgust. That was almost funny, and Lucius found himself wanting to laugh.

The bedroom door across the hall opened and William emerged. He had pulled his breaches on and a linen shirt that he hadn’t bothered to button. He strolled in, looking around, his thumbs hooked in the waist of his pants. “All I have to say is, I’m not picking up after you,” he warned them.

Angelus smirked, his mood restored. “It’s your room,” he pointed out.

“So? I don’t have to stay in it,” he reasoned, stepping around the slimy mess on the floor under Lucius to go to the dresser. He flipped open a silver box, removed a cheroot and flicked his fingernail over a match to light it, taking a deep drag. He turned around to lean against the dresser, running his hand over his bare chest, the picture of post-coital satisfaction.

“You know what you are?” Darla asked him.

“A good looking bloke?” he guessed.

“A walking cliché,” she said, nastily. “What? No chocolate,” she dangled the choker. “No armful of roses?”

He snapped his fingers. “Chocolate!” He frowned, looking around the unfamiliar room. “The thing about killing everyone after they have unpacked your luggage is that no one is alive to tell you where they stowed your stuff. Where the hell would someone put a box of chocolates?”

He raised an eyebrow at Darla. “You nosey bints have been pawing through my things, haven’t you? Seen a box of chocolates? Its in a tin, about,” he spread his hands apart, “this big. Cadbury,” he specified.

“We were in Vienna and you bought nasty mass produced chocolate?” Darla looked at him like he had grown a second head.

“She likes the Cadbury, and it’s the thought that counts,” he retorted.

“No, its not,” Darla assured him. “And, pearls? I thought pearls were for debutantes and matrons?”

“Where do you think I got it?” he asked, rolling his eyes. “Got to start killing women with better jewelry. Emeralds?” his eyes narrowed on Darla.

She sniffed, but gave him a grudging nod. “Better,” she conceded.

Dru drifted towards the door, but William intercepted her, slinging his arm around her waist and burying his face in her hair. She stroked his hair and face. “Kitten’s in a briar, gnawing and biting. Ribbons don’t break,” she said sagely.

William’s facility for deciphering Dru’s more obscure rambles was unmatched. “Kitten’s sleeping, warm and cozy,” he assured her.

“And safe?”

He kissed the palm of her hand tenderly, grateful again to her for even caring. Angelus and Darla never cared beyond how useful his lover was. “Safe as houses, my black beauty.”

Her forehead came to rest against his. She seemed utterly unselfconscious about her nudity. “And we must always keep her safe. Miss Edith, and Miss Willow, for they are the most favorite to come and have tea and cakes with Princess.”

William made as if he was going to bite her nose, and Dru giggled and swirled around him. “I feel alive,” she declared, spinning until Angelus caught her to him and she cuddled against his chest.

Darla found the box of chocolates on the upper shelf of the wardrobe. “Cadbury,” she called out her find.

“Oooh, you’re a peach,” William declared. She tossed the box to him. “Got a bit more smoothing over to do,” he admitted.

“Go with the pearls,” Angelus suggested, refraining from mocking the notion of making up with a mortal girl. Willow had passed the bounds of ordinary mortals a long time ago, and she was going to be one of them.

William’s comment was calculated. It was a toe dipped into the bloodied waters to determine if blood lust had been sufficiently slaked to consider Willow off the menu, if she did leave her room. Not that he was planning to wake her up for a tour of a house full of dead bodies, but just in case she took a flier for the door. She kept him on his toes.

“The pearls?” William frowned. “Chocolate’s the thing. She’ll eat it. The pearls? She’s just as likely to tell me to do something that is, physically impossible, or just damned uncomfortable, to myself, with them,” he predicted. “She’s gotten a bit a cheek on her over the last two months. I blame you,” he told Angelus.

“You haven’t rubbed off on her in the slightest,” Darla offered slyly.

He shrugged. “Got the fists and fangs to back it up, which my lovely, sadly, lacks at the moment.”

Dru’s fingers circled one of Angelus’ nipples as he played with her hair. She smiled. “I have such a lovely idea,” she said with a pretty pout.

“What’s that, Dru?” Angelus asked.

“Christmas Eve,” she said. “We can have cakes and presents and pretty sparkles, and my William can make Miss Willow no more,” she said, clapping her hands together, “and then” she said breathlessly, “on Christmas Day, she will be with us . . . like the Christ child. Our own sweet, Christmas-born childe.”

The three other vampires stared at her, bemused at the imagery from the former novice.

“Sometimes I think that the church put as much of the bizarre in her head as either of you,” William broke the silence.

“Hmmm. Without the disturbing religious imagery, it isn’t a bad idea,” Darla conceded.

Angelus grinned. “You just want to avoid a repeat of the Christmas Eve caroler massacre,” he accused. It was one of William’s more spectacular bloodlettings, and Angelus had let himself be talked into joining in.

“Should have gotten a bloody medal for that. Public service, we were performing. They were butchering the Carol of the Bells, and I rather fancy that one.”

Dru started humming it.

“Oh, hell,” Angelus glared at him. “Now look what you’ve started. You can just take yourself off and cuddle up with your bed warmer, but we’ll be listening to this for hours.”

William just laughed and looked around. “So? What’s good to eat? I’m feeling a bit peckish.” he eyed the boy, who was sporting several different sets of bite marks. “I think I’ll pass on the mobile, if no one objects, and have a spot of . . . this sorry leftover,” he gestured to the girl.

Being William, he didn’t bother to wait for anyone to object.