Chapter Twelve

David Giles stared at his reflection in the mirror. He was forty-five years old, and he had married late. His wife, Catherine, was the daughter of a colleague. If he disappeared off the face of the earth, she would have the comfort, if you could call it that, of knowing, more or less, what had happened to him. She and their two children would be taken care of. After he had left his salad days, and gotten past the notion that he had to live to the fullest since the next day could be his last, he had gone the other way. The way of safe investments offering a steady return, and frugal living.

Harry was still in the grip of the adventure of the job. The young woman they talked to yesterday, possibly at the risk of her life, was nothing more to him than the means to an end, which David had to agree, had very definite possibilities for enhancing their knowledge of the four vampires dubbed the Scourge of Europe. He didn't care for Harry's notion of capturing her and taking her to London, and hoped that cooler heads would prevail.

Taking her seemed a fairly simple proposition. She walked the dog at least twice a day, and she was always alone. But it wasn’t that simple. Taking a well-dressed woman of means off a street in a respectable neighborhood presented unique problems. The likelihood of well-intentioned interference from the servants or residents of the neighboring homes was extremely high. The authorities would be drawn into the matter, making it more difficult to spirit the girl out of the country. Harry’s plan was simple, a snatch and run for the train station, and then a train bound for a port city and passage to England.

It sounded simple and workable, but there was no reason to believe that the girl would cooperate with them, which meant that she would have to be kept confined or unconscious for the duration of their journey, which would draw attention and slow them down, making it easier for them to be followed.

He understood Harry’s frustration. He had felt it at one time himself. The object of their mission was to observe, record, and report. It was fairly boring, which was why it was work. Pressing too hard, extending too far from their brief was dangerous.

A contact in the Foreign Office had made it possible for them to lodge with a family with connections in Prague. The pattern for the Scourge, or the Fanged Four, as David had started calling them in his head, was to ingratiate themselves with the local gentry and wealthy merchant families. Once that was accomplished, they tended to feed fairly discreetly for a period escalating into a burst of violent blood letting which usually preceded a migration.

Harry had introduced the topic of the English family two streets over with their hostess at dinner, and she was familiar with them, noting that they had been invited to a supper party hosted by a mutual acquaintance, and if Harry wished a formal introduction to the girl they had encountered, she was confident that she could arrange it.

Since he couldn’t kick his junior under the table, David was left to look blandly pleased for his friend.

“Come on, David, old son,” Harry said impatiently. “It’s time for our daily constitutional,” he was worried that he might miss the girl in the park.

David was praying that they would.

The Willow that lived in the not real world didn’t believe in coincidence. There was just enough of a breathless note of falsity in the limping young man’s, “We meet again,” greeting that she felt the hair stand up on the back of her neck.

Her anxiety stemmed solely from being female and relatively alone with two men, one of whom had yet to politely step off the path to allow her to pass. Mr. Buttons gamboled up to him and barked a sharp greeting, his wispy plume of a tail wagging.

“Hello, there . . . Mr. Buttons, I believe,” he said, leaning heavily on the cane as he awkwardly bent to offer his hand to the dog to sniff.

He snatched his hand back hastily. Mr. Buttons' playful impulses ran to snapping at fingers, and once they were retracted, jumping up after them. Confronted with both behaviors, the Englishman stumbled a bit and his friend caught his arm to steady him.

In charity with the spoiled little dog’s bad manners, Willow bit her lower lip to keep the smirk that was forming from becoming too obvious. While the older gentleman steadied his companion, she stepped off the path into the muddied grass to walk around them.

“Oh, I do beg your pardon, Miss,” the older man had the grace to sound embarrassed about her retreat from the path to pass them and continue on her way.

She ignored it, and kept walking, feeling her anger build with each step. She glanced down at herself, her lips thinning. She was wearing her coat over a very proper dress, with gloves and a hat. In a world where clothing meant a lot, she was practically wearing a sign that proclaimed that she was a respectable person. Respectable young women were not approached in public places, and men did not lie in wait for them for casual conversation. There was a part of her who recognized that these rules were a little silly, and deeply foreign, but they were rules that were generally accepted by the rest of the world that she was forced to participate in.

So, what was it about her, in particular, that had inspired this attention? Was it some kind of signal she wasn’t aware of giving, like the so-called gaydar? Did the two Englishmen see her and form conclusions that were approximate to her ‘station’ in life. What was that? Whore-dar?

Her temper was in no way improved when she reached the house to be confronted with a smirking Lucius. No doubt mentally revisiting all that he had been made privy to the prior afternoon. She unsnapped Mr. Buttons' leash and coiled it up in hands that trembled, opening a drawer in the table against the wall and tucking the leash away before removing her gloves.

“Did the pets enjoy their walk?” he asked.

Rage such as she had never felt burst through her. Normally when she got angry, her heart pounded and her mind went a little blank, leaving her to regret the loss of control, and her inability to think of anything really mean to say until it was too late. This was different. This was colder and harder, and while it didn't lend her any immediate assistance with a snappy retort, it led her down another path. Before she could stop herself or think about the inadvisability of what she was doing, her hand shot out and she spoke one word, in Latin, in a register she hardly recognized.

The vampire’s eyes widened when he realized that he couldn’t move. At least not a lot.

“Right now, I could open the door, and with one good push, you’d get your one last walk under the sun,” she told him in a voice that shook. “And I strongly suggest that you keep that in mind the next time you decide to refer to me as a pet.”

William had emerged from the salon, catching the end of her angry outburst. He was frowning, walking in a slow circle around the vampire. He cocked his head to one side and put his hand out to test his immobility. Panic was creeping into Lucius’ eyes.

A small smile played on William’s lips. “Nice speech, love, but it was in English. I don’t think he got more than the idea that he was playing with one very irate witch.”

Ignoring Lucius for the moment, he turned to her, his hands moving towards her. She flinched and took a step back. He lifted an eyebrow and moved more deliberately, practically daring her to take a second step. His hands went to the buttons of her coat, working them free for her, his eyes searching her face.

“Has something upset you?” he asked as the bit of color in her face from the walk or her display of temper washed out of her face. She looked upset.

She didn’t know what to make of his rather bland reaction to her use of power that she was almost positive he didn’t know she had at her disposal.

“Yes,” she said, closing her eyes for a moment, as he stepped behind her to ease her shoulders out of the coat.

He held the coat for a second and went back to Lucius, moving the vampire’s arm until it was extended and slightly bent at the elbow. He draped the coat over his arm with a grin. “I don’t think I care for you making my girl angry,” he told Lucius in German. “Lucky for you that she got her own back, isn’t it?”

He offered Willow his arm. “I’ll make you a cup of tea, and you can tell me about what is bothering you,” he suggested with a charming smile. “Does that go away on its own, or do you have to,” he wiggled his fingers in Lucius’ direction.

She made a twisting motion with her hand, like she was taking something back, and the vampire was free. Following his instinct to attack, he lunged at her, and William caught him easily by the throat, his thumb digging in cruelly. “Ah, ah, ah,” he mocked. “I catch you so much as baring a fang at her, and we’ll be beating you out of the rugs for weeks,” he promised, releasing him with a backwards shove. “Hang her coat, will you?” he pulled Willow along with him, down the long hall to the kitchen.

She thought, any moment now. Any moment now he’s going to start thinking about what he just saw, and . . .She stumbled when they left the hand carved wool carpet runner at the flagstone threshold of the kitchen and his free hand went to her waist to steady her. There was a small step down into the kitchen. The house was oriented on an east/west axis. Shutters had been drawn over the kitchen windows to keep sunlight out. When he was sure that she had her balance, he released her and went to turn the gaslights up for her.

He patted a work stool. “Need a boost up, love?” he asked, looking back at her, hovering just inside the door.

Worrying her lower lip, she approached him, he put his hands out with a small smile. Automatically, she rested her hands on his upper arms as he lifted her up to place on the stool. He cupped her chin, his thumb gently freeing her lower lip. For a moment she thought he was going to kiss her, but he straightened, and tapped the brim of her hat. “Still wearing your hat,” he pointed out. “It’s fetching, but I thought you might want to take it off.”

He walked over to a shelf, retrieved a teakettle, and went to the pump to fill it before setting it on the warm stove, opening one of the jets to heat the water. She removed her hatpin and took the hat off, stabbing the pin back through the crown as she watched him warily. He was locating cups, the teapot, and a tin of tea. The metal ball for steeping the tea was in a drawer of cutlery.

He dangled it. “Always thought these things look like a mace,” he said.

“Morning star,” she corrected. "A mace is a cudgel with spikes. A morning star is attached to a mace . . . it also has spikes . . ." she decided to stop talking.

His eyebrows lifted at that, but he shrugged. “Morning star, then,” he said agreeably, unfastening the catch and filling it with tea leaves. “What happened on your walk?” he asked. Possibly, she was angry about yesterday. She hadn't touched the jewelry box as far as he could tell. Listening to Darla? He should have known better. The plan for the evening had been to go to the opera, and it seemed likely that Willow might go with them when he had bought the necklace, if not she could wear it another time.

“How angry are you?” she needed to know, interrupting his train of thought.

He shrugged snapping the infuser shut and threading the hook through a small hole inside the rim of the teapot feeling like he was forgetting something. “I haven’t decided. One thing at a time. What happened on your walk?”

She looked down at the scarred surface of the wood worktable in front of her. “It wasn’t anything really,” she admitted. “Yesterday, a gentleman spoke to me,” she glanced up at him, shrugging. “It was the dog. He had a cane, and anything that looks remotely tree-like means only one thing to Mr. Buttons,” she said ruefully.

Unexpectedly, William flashed her a conspiratorial smile. He opened a cabinet in search of something to go with the tea. There was a bakery box of biscuits on the second shelf. “It’s not just trees. The little bastard tried to hump Angelus’ leg yesterday, and Dru was clapping like it was the most wonderful thing she had ever seen saying, ‘do it again’. Darla laughed, so Mr. Buttons lives another day,” he explained.

Willow’s lips turned up in a small smile that quickly faded. She looked down again, her thumb tracing a scorch mark in the wood.

"C'mon, love. It can't be that bad," he said. "Did he drop something on the ground?" he teased. She had what he considered a rather overdeveloped concern about garbage being placed in garbage receptacles.

"No," she looked up at him. “It was,” she frowned, feeling the burn of humiliation again, and feeling a little ridiculous for making so much of it, “Oooh! Surprise? We meet again,” she grimaced. “Just so . . . obvious,” she rolled her eyes, “and, I know . . . I really do know, better than anyone, what I am, but . . . it’s a good neighborhood, and the way I’m dressed? And, how could they know?” she asked the table. Her face felt hot.

Somehow unburdening herself was not making her feel better. He probably thought she was being overly sensitive. “It made me angry.”

He leaned back against the counter, watching her, picturing it, figuring out the parts she wasn’t mentioning. She walked without an escort during the day out of necessity, but also for all of the reasons that she mentioned. She had reason to feel threatened as well as offended by the behavior of the man in the park, and he had every intention of addressing that problem at his earliest opportunity.

Lucius just had the misfortune of making her feel more threatened and offended, and to a certain extent he was mildly amused at the way she had retaliated. On the other hand, it presented another problem.

“Tell me about what happened out there,” he invited. “What was it that you did?”

She fidgeted. “A spell,” she said, and then made a face at the obviousness of that. “It doesn’t work on living things—well, it does, but it stops everything, so they tend to die,” she clarified. She had accidentally killed a rat that way before she figured it out, and you would think that was no big deal, but then there was a rat named Amy, and it was a big deal.

“And, how long have you been able to do that?’ he asked, a little bemused by the guilt that roiled in her expression. What the devil had she killed that had her looking like she had done something awful?

Her eyes lifted to meet his. “Six months?” she sounded less than certain. “We were still in Lisbon, and . . . there were all those rats, from the wharves.”

Ah, a rat. Vermin. That cleared up one point.

He heard the water coming to a boil and turned back to the stove, using a pad to lift the arm of the kettle, pouring the hot water into the teapot. He turned down the jet on the stove and put the lid on the teapot. “What else can you do?”

“What do you mean?”

He shot her a look that was neither amused nor indulgent. It was all business. He gestured to a crock of metal and wood kitchen utensils to her right on the workbench. “Any chance you could send something in there flying across the room.”

Her mouth went dry.

He read the answer in her eyes, and felt fear crawl up his spine. It didn’t set well with him. “Jesus Christ,” he swore. “Are you telling me that if you loose your temper you could stake me?”

She wasn’t telling him that. “I haven’t, have I?”

And, why the hell not? “Why not?”

“I don’t know,” she admitted, looking confused and frightened.

“Think of a better answer, pet,” he warned her. “I’m in no mood for word games.”

“I don’t know!” she clenched her hand into a fist. “Don’t you think I’ve ever thought about it? I don’t know. Sometimes I hate you so much that I don’t think I can breath past the way it fills me. You deserve it. You’re evil, and you are cruel, and you don’t give a damn about anything but what you want,” she said, feeling an odd little part of her rejecting this summation without finding anything in particular wrong with any single part of it.

“That’s the sum of it,” he sneered. “So? What’s stopping you?”

“I don’t know,” vehemence made her space each word out. “I just can’t.”

He moved so fast that she had no time to react, one minute she was sitting on the stool working a new groove into the wood with her fingernail, the next moment she was twisted back over the table with his hand on her throat, the other pushing her skirt up and ripping her under things. Then he was shoving two fingers in her, making her arch her back to get away from him, and the pain he was inflicting on her with an utterly cold look on his face. He let up on her throat enough for her to lift her head and then he slammed it down. Only the mass of her hair, pulled up in a bun spared her head from the impact with the table. He withdrew his fingers and rammed them back into her sore passage, making her cry out involuntarily.

“Getting angry, pet?” he taunted. “What do I have to do to make you mad?”

She was going to have more bruises, she thought dimly, feeling her mind go blank with the pain of what he was doing.

“I can fuck you right here. Would that make you mad?” he used his thumb to assault her clitoris, which was also sore from the previous day, and she turned her attention to the plastered ceiling.

“Look at me!” he roared, infuriated by her passivity. “God damn it, I’m getting some answers from you and if I have to beat them out of you, that’s starting to sound like a good day to me.”

She stared at him. She wasn’t going to beg him not to hurt her.

It had been years since she had done anything like it, and he saw it move through her eyes before the thought was translated into action. She jackknifed her body, swinging her leg around to kick him. Hampered by her skirts, he hardly even felt it, but he thrilled to see a bit of fight in her, and relaxed his hold on her enough for her to get free. She scrambled back, swinging her legs over the side of the workbench and picking up the first thing to come to hand, a thin, fragile china plate.

She seemed to realize that as weapons went it was ludicrous, but she drew it in towards her chest, her wrist and arm curving around it, and let it fly, spinning with more force than he might have credited her with. He knocked it aside, vaulting over the table after her as she ran towards a butcher block to yank a long carving knife free.

“C’mon, pet,” he motioned to her. “Let’s play,” he invited.

She backed up, eyes darting, looking for an escape route.

“The only way out of here is through me,” he told her.

She backed up another step, feinting left, and throwing her weight against the butcher block to slow him down as it skidded over the glazed brick floor into him. She ran for the kitchen door throwing the first of the bolts, then kicking the floor bolt free and heaving the door open. He got his arm around her waist and flung her across the room to collide with a brick wall. This time, hair or no, she felt it when her head hit the brick with a sound that made him wonder if he hadn’t really hurt her this time. She slumped to the floor, one hand braced flat on the floor as she tried to shake off the buzzing in her ears.

He shut the door and re-engaged the bolt before walking across the room to retrieve the knife she had dropped.

“You stupid, bitch. There is no such thing as a fair fight,” he told her, hefting the knife and burying two inches of the blade into one of the wood posts that separated sections of the plastered, white washed outer wall.

When he got closer, her free arm came up to shield her head and she cringed against the wall. He pulled her up by the arm she was trying to cover with, figuring that she had had enough. He didn’t understand it. If she had some way to defend herself that he couldn’t counter or match, she was either being incredibly stubborn in refusing to show it to him, or incredibly stupid not to use it. Or, she didn’t really think he meant to hurt her. Or she didn't care. For some reason that bothered him most of all.

He was trying to process what was most likely when her head fell against his chest. He had no warning. He had automatically reached out to brace her other arm, unwittingly opening his stance up to her. She wasn't a graceful person. She had trouble at times managing the bulk of her skirt, and he was accustomed to catching her before she fell. She kneed him in the groin, and if he had to breathe, he wouldn’t have been able to. As it was, he dropped to his knees and felt like he was going to puke up his crushed testicles.

“You can call me a bitch, or a whore, or pet,” she spat the last at him, and he had the odd thought that he was up on Lucius in that regard. “But, I am not stupid,” she yelled at him.

“I’m mad now,” she spluttered, hands on her hips, seeming more put out about being goaded into losing her temper for a second time in less than an hour than anything else, “Happy?”

She took a cautious step out of his immediate range and concentrated on the knife. It vibrated for a moment as she tried to free it from the wall. Her lips twisted into a snarl and her eyes . . . William wondered if he was imagining it as he cradled his abused balls. Her eyes turned black. He felt something crawl up his spine, part fear, and part . . . lust.

The knife flew out of the wall with enough force that she threw out her other hand to stop it and it hung in the air, quivering. She stared at it for a moment, seemingly perplexed. When she reached out to touch the handle gingerly, the energies collapsed and the knife fell with a clatter that made her jump back with a startled squeak.

They dove for the knife at the same time. She got there first, but he rolled her over on her back, straddling her hips and pinning her wrist to the ground. He looked down at her. She was wearing a dove gray silk banyan with a bit of cording at the notched throat and cuffed sleeves finished with a silver button set with marcasite in a floral pattern. The cording at her throat was repeated on the double-breasted placate of the dress in a stylized floral pattern.

“This is pretty,” he said, watching her chest heave. He leaned forward to rest on his elbow, making sure that he placed it above her free arm, leaving her with a very limited range of motion if she decided she wanted to fight some more. His finger traced the outer edge of her ear. “Willow, my Willow,” he crooned, sounding remarkably affectionate. “What am I going to do with you, sweet?”

“Master William?” Lucius cleared his throat, standing just inside the kitchen threshold.

Cool blue eyes warned her against speaking. ‘Not a word,’ he mouthed, raising his head. “This better be good,” he warned. “What do you want?”

“I heard . . . something . . . fall—“

“Get out,” William spat, and then changed his mind. “No, wait! There’s a pot of tea steeping,” in an abrupt change of mood, he grinned, tugging on Willow’s earlobe. “Yum. Tea!” he teased her. “I’d like that, and a plate of shortbread, and see if you can’t find some chocolates. There’s a tin in my room, on the bureau, I think. See that tea is waiting for us in my witch’s room.”

He bent his head to Willow’s, resting his forehead on hers, winding a loose strand of her hair around his finger as he held her eyes, feeling her rapid, shallow, humid breath against his skin as Lucius transferred the tea things to a tray and left the room, probably cursing both of them.

Relaxing his grip on the wrist holding the knife, he stretched his index finger to reach the blade, opening a cut on the tip of his finger. He released her wrist, as if the idea of her stabbing him really hadn’t ever concerned him. He traced the outline of her lips with his bleeding finger.

She grimaced when she felt the cool, sticky wetness of his blood on her lips. “The problem—your problem, Willow, my Willow, is that you aren’t bloodthirsty enough. Deep down, you’re too soft,” he told her, lifting his head. He kissed her upper lip, savoring the taste of her lips mixed with his blood. “That’s why you let that harlot sell you when she wasn’t crawling between your pretty thighs. That’s why you let me hurt you,” he frowned at her. “It’s your own fault, you know. You are smart, but you make stupid choices.”

She felt stupid, holding the knife that she wouldn’t use, that would only do a relatively minor injury if he could goad her to use it.

He took the knife from he unresisting grip, making a tsking sound as he sat up, running the flat of the blade over the corded silk between her breasts, miming a stabbing motion. “Far too trusting,” he mocked, throwing the knife.

It stuck in the wall with a satisfying thwack. He slid his hand under her neck and pulled her head up, licking her lower lip clean before he thrust it in her mouth, making her put her hand up to try to push him away.

He stood up, pulling her up with him, smoothing her skirts down while she swayed. “Oh, by the way, that little trick with your knee? Pull a stunt like that again and I’ll give you to Dru with a request that she pluck every single hair from your body from the neck down,” he told her, delving into a matchless arsenal of threats for something non-lethal, painful, and humiliating.

The green of her eyes turned brilliant with angry tears. “God, you’re beautiful,” he said with a tender smile, tucking her hand in the crook of his arm. “The tea ought to be lukewarm by now, just the way you like it,” he pointed out as he steered her through the kitchen, bits of china crunching underfoot.

They walked up the stairs, William keeping up a light dialog. Lucius was coming down the stairs, and William stopped him, urging Willow to continue up the stairs without him. “I’ll be right up,” he said, waiting until he heard her door shut behind her.

The smile left his face. Standing on the same stair, a half a head shorter, he exuded raw power. “Remember our little chat the day you died?”

Lucius felt the skin on the back of his neck tighten. William’s voice dropped nearly to a whisper. “The things that I would do to you, if you ever fail me or mine, will pale in comparison to what you understand about suffering. That includes her. Especially her.”

“I remember,” Lucius managed to say.

“Run and tattle to Angelus or Darla, and you’ll be looking over your shoulder for me for the rest of your un-life to make good on that,” he promised. “Where are they?” he asked.

“S-sleeping,” he stuttered, startled by the whiplash quality of the question.

William appeared to be thinking about that for a moment. Nodding to himself, he continued up the stairs and let himself into Willow’s room, shutting the door behind him.