Chapter Ten
Buffy left unconsciousness behind rather grudgingly. Her head was aching and her eyelids felt like they were tied down with heavy weights, making her want to drift off into oblivion again. She forced herself to stay awake, raising her hand to her head where the throbbing was the worst. The rattle and clink made it clear that she was chained up.
She struggled and managed to open her eyes, although it took her quite a bit of time to get them to focus. When they did, she wished she were still unconscious and ignorant of her predicament.
The room she was in was on the dark side. She was lying on the floor, manacled by her wrists to the wall, and in the dim light provided by the flickering torches and candles, she could discern a bed, a chair, a small table and a post in the middle of the room. She could also make out the vague outline of an armoire and another cabinet, but nothing else was visible.
She felt her head clearing and sat up, leaning her back against the wall as she tried to gather her strength. She pulled hard on her chains, but they didn't budge, not that she truly expected them to. She knew she wasn't getting out of them without help or luck, and she had a good suspicion that both of those things were a long way off.
"I see you're finally awake."
She didn't respond, but it didn't seem to matter. He strolled into view, his shirt unbuttoned almost to the waist and a big smile on his face.
"So, got it all figured out or do you need a little more time?"
She didn't answer him again, and this time he slapped her hard across the face:
"Sorry, Buff, but you are going to participate, one way or the other."
"I've figured it out."
"That's my girl. I'll bet you're surprised to see me."
"My word of choice would be ‘sickened'."
He pulled a chair up close to her, but not close enough for her legs to reach him.
"Now that hurts. I mean, I might be evil, but I've got feelings too, you know?"
She stayed silent, and Angelus grinned as he looked her up and down.
"You know, I'd forgotten just how stubborn you can be. That'll make this a lot more entertaining."
Neither of them moved, just staring at each other until he shook his head and made a "tsking" noise. He reached for something on the small table, and in one swift motion, stood and jammed a knife halfway into her leg. She groaned but bit back the scream that was fighting to escape, and her efforts made him laugh.
"The thing is Buff, I'm planning on having lots of fun with you for the next couple of days, but if this is how you want to play it..."
He carefully grabbed onto the handle protruding from her thigh.
"...well, I'm fine with that, Slayer."
He slowly wiggled the knife back and forth his eyes on hers until finally she cried out. He yanked the blade clear and licked the blood off with obvious delight.
"Mmm...nothing tastes better than that."
Buffy's head was down as she struggled to control her pain and fear.
"I'd be happy to start carving you up right now, but unfortunately I can't. I need you in relatively one piece for the big ceremony, so making you bleed too much isn't really an option."
He wrenched her head back by grabbing a fistful of blonde hair.
"But there are so many other ways to cause pain, and luckily for us, I know them all."
She spit in his face and he pulled back in a rage, wiping the spittle off with his hand. It was now his turn to visibly fight for control:
"You little bitch. You always were good at pushing Angel's buttons, but as we both know, I'm not him. Don't expect me to lose it and let you destroy all of my plans. Sorry sweetheart, I've worked way too hard to get us here."
"Faith will find us."
He sauntered back over to her, looking not the least bit concerned:
"I suppose she will...eventually. Faithy will sniff around in a panic until she picks up our scent, and then she'll come rushing in like a bitch in heat, ready to save us both."
"She won't be here to save you."
"No, but since I've got her precious savior in here with me, she'll have to be extra-special careful. See, all of those warm feelings she has for him are going to make it hard for her, trust me, I remember the last time. Unlike you, she won't kill Angel, she'd rather die herself than kill him."
Angelus eyes were glittering with disdain, his voice full of mocking scorn:
"After all, he saved her, put her on that hallowed path to redemption, and cue the sappy muzak. They're both filled with guilt and a desire to make amends, comrades to the bitter end. They're so much alike it's amazing, don't you think?"
When she didn't reply, he grabbed her leg where the knife wound was still throbbing, and twisted and squeezed until she moaned from the pain.
"A simple ‘yes' or ‘no' answer will be fine, Slayer."
"Y...Yes."
He gave a final twist, then released her, his smile making it clear how much fun he was having.
"I will say one thing for you, Buff, you've definitely got a type. So much so, now you're even willing to eat pussy to stay with it."
She said nothing, still recovering, but this time he didn't seem to care.
"I mean, who would have ever figured a straight arrow like you could swing the other way? ‘Buff, the Muff Diver' does have a certain ring to it, like something out of a children's book by that author...What's his name?"
When she didn't answer, his hand moved to hover over her leg threateningly.
"Dr. Seuss."
"That's it, Dr. Seuss! He'd rhyme ‘Buff' and ‘muff' with ‘fluff' and ‘huff'...maybe even branch out to...'tough' and ‘enough'. I should write it myself, I'd make millions."
"Good idea, why don't you go do that right now?"
His gaze met hers and Buffy felt a chill roll its way down her spine.
"I could, but I'd want to write it in your blood."
Despite being scared, Buffy refused to show it:
"Oh, well in that case? Children's books, so not for you."
He laughed and continued on with his original train of thought:
"All of that girl on girl lovin', I'll bet you're just dying to have a real man inside you again."
She pulled on her chains, not liking where the conversation was heading.
"Is that fear I smell? But Buff, you love this body. Of course I won't be all gentle and tender like your beloved Angel, but then it's not like you're a virgin anymore either."
His grin was nothing but evil, and Buffy could barely stand seeing Angel's face so hideously perverted.
"So just how many times have you been fucked by now? Let's see: at least twice a day with Spike, and Faith is such a whore, well when aren't you two going at it? All that screwing and you still want me to give it to you good, don't you, baby?"
She remained silent and he grabbed onto her hair again. The instant he had a grip, she rolled and kicked him with her steel-toed boot. She nailed him good, blood spraying out from the split on his cheek as he flew back hard against the wall.
Her voice rang out strong and clear:
"Was that good for you too, baby?"
He leapt to his feet with a snarl, his face vamped out:
"You're going to regret that."
"I don't think so. The only thing I regret is not staking you years ago."
He approached her carefully, his human smirk securely in place:
"Well, well, well, look at you. No longer the simpering schoolgirl who loves her man so much she just can't kill him, even when he's slaughtering half the town."
She refused to look at him and he laughed:
"Hey, I've been meaning to ask...Did Giles ever get over that whole neck snapping thing that happened to Miss Calender? That was such a shame."
Buffy's eyes met his:
"When I get the chance, I won't hesitate to kill you. Angel would want me to."
"Strong words, Buff. Too bad you'll never get the opportunity to prove them true."
He sat down in the chair again as he pretended to think out loud:
"But seriously now, I've been penned up for a really long time...I think fucking you might be just the thing I need to loosen me up."
He laughed as he looked at her, his hand absently toying with the buckle of his belt.
"Oh come on, it's just us here, don't act like you wouldn't love it. You've always had the hots for the world's sorriest excuse for a vampire. Why, I can remember him popping your cherry like it was yesterday. You were such a little slut...'Oh Angel...God, that feels so good', you just couldn't get enough, could you?"
She said nothing as she tugged vainly on her chains again.
"'Oh Angel, do it again. I love you, Angel. You're the greatest lover ever. Oh my God, Angel, I think I'm coming!'"
His hand rubbed rhythmically against the front of his pants, his eyes taking in every flicker of emotion on her face:
"I don't know though, maybe we should wait. It'd be so much better if Faith were here to watch us go at it. What do you think? Would it turn her on or just make her crazier? Would she cry? Would all of those tiny little insecurities come bubbling to the surface when I made you come right in front of her? Would she be convinced that you still wanted me, but ended up having to settle for her?"
"I think she'd shove a stake up your ass and then kill you slowly for raping me."
He stood up, his lust plain to see.
"Gee Buff, you sound a little hostile, guess it's all that repressed sexual desire. Well don't worry, I'll make it good for you. I'll have you moaning those sounds you make, those sexy little gasps and whimpers...Mmm, just the thought of it is making me so hard."
His hands unbuckled his belt leisurely, his eyes locked on hers. She strained to pull loose, but the chains didn't give at all.
"I've been waiting for this for a long time, lover."
His hands went to his zipper, lowering it gradually inch by inch.
"Oh come on, Buff. You know you want it. My cock in your pussy...so much bigger than Faith's delicate fingers...finally satisfying you in a way you haven't been since your first time."
She closed her eyes as his hand delved into his pants.
"Mmm...Buffy..."
She tried to think of other things, but the noises he was making, the groans and sighs kept invading her, and she couldn't quite block them out.
After a few minutes, he let out a loud cry and called out her name. It wasn't long before she heard him re-zipping his pants, and she opened her eyes to find him grinning at her. He mockingly asked her:
"Was that good for you too, baby?"
She turned away from him, but he didn't seem to care.
"Gee, I hope you're not too worked up, I wouldn't want you suffering. Unfortunately, I can't fuck you properly right now, there's this whole ‘purity' thing involved. At first I was worried you had to be a virgin, but it turns out we just can't have intercourse before the ritual."
She couldn't remember the last time she'd felt so grateful.
" But afterwards? Well don't you worry, Buff. After the ceremony, I won't let anything keep us apart, not when I know how deprived you've been. I promise I'm going to fuck you...to death, but right now? Well right now I've got some errands to run. I should be back soon though, so until then, mi casa es su casa."
He viciously backhanded her, smacking her head hard into the wall and knocking her out again.
"Sweet dreams, lover."
********************************************************
"'Calm down'?! I'll calm the fuck down when B's safe!"
"Faith, we must keep our heads."
"Yeah, you keep yours. I'm gonna..."
"Got it!"
Willow's voice rang out loud on the speaker phone.
"Excellent! What have you discovered?"
"Angelus is the only one trying to cause an apocalypse. He needs an original Slayer, one made the old-fashioned way, to complete some ancient ritual."
Faith was pacing back and forth as she listened:
"So pretty much everything he told us was a lie?"
"It looks that way. The word I got is that there are no demons and no guy he was guarding. He's probably been Angelus for at least a month now, maybe longer."
They heard the sound of a crash and glass breaking on Faith's end:
"How the hell did Angelus get loose?"
Willow hesitated.
"You got the answer or not?"
"I don't know for sure, but that case Angel was on when he was here..."
Giles interrupted:
"It seems more than likely that Angel lost his soul somewhere during the course of that investigation, but we don't quite have that sorted yet. The important thing is..."
"The important thing is he's got B. Red, any line on where they are?"
"No. He's got something blocking my locator spells. It's going to be at least a day or two before I can..."
Faith's voice exploded from the tiny speaker:
"B doesn't have a day or two! We have to find her now!"
Giles tried again to calm her:
"We're all well aware of the time constraints, but Faith..."
"No! No more waiting! I've got that list of demon joints you guys rustled up, I'm gonna go see if I can find out anything. I'll check in every hour on the hour. Willow...please."
Then she was gone, leaving Giles and Willow sitting in a pained silence. It was Giles who managed to compose himself first:
"Right then. Willow, please focus all of your efforts on finding Buffy. I shall concentrate on how we can restore Angel's soul, as well as how it became unanchored in the first place. There have to be answers, and we shall find them...now."
**********************************************************
She woke to the feeling of Faith's lips on her. They were so cold, but she couldn't help smiling. They were nibbling on her neck and they seemed different...and so cold.
Her eyes snapped open and she tried to pull away, but Angelus gripped her hair to prevent her from going far.
"What's the matter? You were enjoying it just a second ago."
"That's when I thought you were someone else...anyone else."
He kissed her then, a short, brutal kiss that pressed her lips back painfully against her teeth, cutting them slightly. He stood up and turned away from her, tasting the small amount of blood he'd caused to well up.
"Mmm, tasty. So Buff, I was thinking about how we could get around that whole ‘mingling' dilemma, and I think I've got it. How ‘bout giving me a blowjob?"
"Sure, I'll be happy to bite it off for you."
He spun back to her with a cruel smile on his face:
"Gee, figures you wouldn't know how."
"Oh no, I know how. In fact, I'm quite good at it. Spike taught me."
He actually growled as he stalked over to her:
"What did you just say to me?"
Apparently Angelus and Angel did share some of the same buttons, and Buffy was determined to keep pushing them:
"I said Spike taught me how to..."
He hit her then, once, twice, three times and she could feel her left eye swelling closed. He grabbed her roughly by her hair again and pulled her face close to his:
"Did he tell you he learned from sucking mine?"
"Oh, so you're the one he called ‘needle dick'."
With a roar of fury, Angelus hauled her to her feet by her throat, and Buffy began struggling for air. He held her aloft, fully vamped out, and her arms protested as the chains lost their slackness.
"I wonder if your ass would find me small."
She kicked him with all of her strength right in the crotch, and he dropped her as he fell to his knees in agony. She quickly reached out with her legs, wrapping them around his neck as she squeezed for all she was worth.
It was a fight to the death. His hands grasped her legs trying to pull her loose, but Buffy clamped them together as tightly as she could. She twisted and turned, desperately trying to wrest his head from his shoulders while he tried to get an arm between one of her legs and his neck.
He fought to stand, trying to gain some leverage, but it didn't work. She merely rose with him, suspended in the air by her chains and her legs wrapped powerfully around him. They could both feel it, his tendons and bones were starting to give way. She had him, but then he was able to reach the knife and he slammed it in up to the hilt. Her scream echoed off the walls, yet incredibly Buffy didn't let go.
Her vise-like grasp did relax just slightly from the impact, and that involuntary reflex allowed him to wedge a hand between himself and her leg. After a brief struggle, he managed to pry her loose just far enough to slip down and away from the death she was so effectively delivering.
He hit the ground with an undignified thud, his neck and shoulders screaming with the strain the Slayer had placed them under. He collapsed, sprawling onto the floor with his hands massaging his throat, as he tried unsuccessfully to ease the searing pain.
Buffy landed hard on the knife side of her leg, and the pain radiated an excruciating fire throughout her body. She lay still, breathing in as deeply as she could and expelling the air slowly, trying to stay conscious.
Several minutes passed before Angelus felt steady enough to get to his feet. His hands still rubbed at his aching muscles to soothe the pain, and he did not look pleased, not at all. He walked over to where Buffy lay, pulling her to him by the knife handle.
She clenched her jaw in an attempt to deny him the satisfaction of hearing just how much it hurt, but as he kept jerking her around with it, the pain became too much and she could no longer hold in her screams. By the time he stopped, she was nearly shrieking out her anguish.
He brought his mouth close to her ear to make sure she heard him through her torment:
"Nice try, Buff. You almost had me."
She moaned as he continued torturing her, her eyes squinched tight against the unrelenting waves of agony that were totally swamping her.
"It was a win/win, right? Either you get me so mad I kill you, or you dust me and wait to be rescued. Very brave and clever, lover. Also very stupid."
He twisted the knife, and Buffy's eyes rolled back in her head as she let out a soundless scream. The tears were now pouring down her face, every tendon and muscle in her body flexed. She was straining, her body completely contorted as it struggled to escape from a pain there was no getting away from.
"You're getting off easy, Buff...for now. I can't afford for you to lose a lot of blood, remember? But if this keeps up, I'm going to find out just exactly how much needs to be in you when I perform the ritual, and let's just say that removing the rest of it won't be all that pleasant...At least, it won't be for you."
With a final twist, he stood up and walked off into the darkness, reemerging with several more chains. He shackled each of her ankles, linked them together, and then locked another chain around the link. He pulled her legs taut, stretching them until Buffy groaned, then secured the chain to a large hook in the floor.
"Sorry, no more Mr. Nice Guy."
Satisfied that the Slayer wasn't going anywhere, he walked over to the bed and grabbed a sheet, tearing it into strips. He went back over to her and began tightly tying a tourniquet around her leg. When he was finished, he gently touched her cheek.
"This could hurt a little, but I'll make sure it feels much worse than that."
He was as good as his word, jerking the knife clear just as roughly as he could. Buffy flinched, and the cry of pain she tried to muffle was like music to his ears. With a grin he tossed the knife safely out of her reach and began applying pressure to the wound.
"So, while it is true I can't have you bleeding to death, as I said there are plenty of other ways to make you...uncomfortable. And just so you know, I'm keeping track of everything you do, and as soon as this ritual's over, I'm going to make you pay for every single thing."
He checked to see that the flow of blood had slowed and began bandaging the wound.
"Of course, you know me, Buff. I'll probably even make you pay for the things you didn't do."
What Buffy knew for sure was that she wanted to be somewhere else, anywhere else, but she wasn't. She was with Angelus, and she was his prisoner. As hard as she wished for it to be otherwise, it didn't seem like that was going to be happening any time soon.
She closed her eyes and tried to imagine herself safe in her own bed, wearing her favorite pajamas and wrapped up tightly in Faith's strong arms. She'd be talking incessantly about whatever had happened that day, and Faith would finally laugh, kiss her gently on the head, and then tell her to shut the hell up and go to sleep.
She would snuggle in closer and drift off as she listened to the soothing sound of Faith's heartbeat, so strong and constant as it...But here there was only her own heartbeat pounding out her terror and pain as she lay helpless, bleeding and chained, with only a monster to keep her company. Buffy wanted to go home.
