[Reviews - 62]
-
Table of Contents [Report This]
Microsoft Word Chapter or Story | ePub eBook Chapter or Story | Printer Chapter or Story

Has been viewed 2636 times

- Text Size +




Many thanks to Holly, Schez and Slackerace for the wonderful beta job and a special thank you to BSB for the advice to update my summary!

Chapter Seven

Angel jolted awake, shivering.

Alcohol had never affected him harshly before—not even when he was human. He’d woken with a splitting headache more times than he cared to remember, but not with his body shuddering with chills and reverberating with the shock.

He slept with the nightmare of his death chasing him into every corner, laughing as he disintegrated again and again. And every time that consciousness slammed into him, the grave realisation that his hours were numbered sunk even deeper into his psyche. He didn’t want to give that vision credence—didn’t want to believe it held any truth, though the part where Buffy allowed Spike to bury himself deep between her legs was more than enough to show his world had shot way past Hell on its way to oblivion.

Morning was still several hours off and Angel clung to the shroud of darkness that reassured him and kept him calm, even against the cracking thunder of a building storm outside. It was funny, in a really foreboding way. Until he focused on the shimmering white ghost of a dress worn by Dru as she stood in the corner of his room, illuminated in stark, terrifying flashes as lightening threw bursts of light through his window.

Angel gasped.

Dru being strange wasn’t anything new and he shouldn’t really be surprised to see her here after her confusing entrance at Willy’s earlier, but the shock of her appearance seemed more sinister and more evil than anything he’d had to witness since regaining his soul—the first time. The second hadn’t given him time to acclimate before he was facing down the terrors of a place he would eventually end up, just for being the kind of creature he was.

She looked ethereal, beautiful in a haunting way, and yet the look on her face was enough to terrorise him into fits of hysteria. She took one step toward him and Angel shrank back in his bed, recognising for the first time—as a supernatural being—the horror of having a monster in your cupboard.

The storm raged outside and another opportune streak of lightening illuminated his room, as well as the pale, vamped face of his insane childe.

“Dru?” His insides were gripped with a tripling of unknown terror as she took another slow step forward.

“It’s time,” she said, drifting toward him as if on nothing but a current of air. The sway of her body mesmerised him almost instantly and Angel felt himself relax and tune out the elements around him in favour of concentrating on Dru. The words piqued a swelling curiosity and Angel found the question tumbling from his lips without being aware that his brain had even processed it.

“Time for what?” There was no wary hesitation in his voice, just a cool wish to be informed about something he apparently was clueless about. All the fear at seeing a ghost-like figure in his presence was artificially gone as Dru continued her hypnotic dance, channelling the soothing effects of the rain beating down on the roof.

“Time to be new,” she confided, her voice calm and more authoritative than it had ever been before. And layered behind the vocalisation were meanings that Angel didn’t have to have voiced out loud to understand. Hidden explanations bombarded him in an attempt to allay his fears. He just knew if Dru stopped moving and he was back to the shocked vampire who’d woken amidst an angry storm to find his sanity-challenged childe in his bedroom, he wasn’t going to take it well. In fact, he could quite easily commence screaming like one of the little girls he’d often scared to death before he’d ripped their tiny throats out.

“I don’t want to be new. I want to stay exactly as I am.” The part of Angel that was locked inside himself was horrified as Dru stepped closer, her sombre expression belying the excitement twinkling in the depths of her eyes.

“It’s time to let go of who you are. Don’t you want to be free, my Angel?” She was so close now, close enough that he could see her clearly without the aid of an impromptu lighting strike, even though he was rather wishing for one to shoot through his window and fry him on the spot. Being scorched by the elements was starting to look a whole lot more preferable to standing here and taking Dru’s crazy talk seriously.

Her meaning hit him like a sledgehammer between the eyes and Angel blinked at the imagined impact. His demon sprung to attention and leaned toward her, eager to hear what offer she could lay on the table that would gain for him respite from the ravages of guilt.

She smiled sadly before a word could even fall from his lips.

“Daddy sees freedom in monochrome, but Princess sees it in all the colours of the rainbow. You’ll see. Just trust in me and you’ll see all the streamers and balloons you could ever wish to.”

Those words were not the ones that convinced him. Dru asking him to trust her brought back too many memories of near capture and ridiculous close calls that Angel shuddered just to think of. It was also enough of a warning for him to wrench the last part of himself that she’d held with a death grip away from her influence and take a much desired step back.

Shaking his head violently to totally dispel the magic Dru had subdued him with, Angel grit his teeth and waited. Since when did Dru know more than parlour tricks and the lightest, most useless hocus pocus ever invented?

“Dru, you know what? I’m pretty okay with having a soul. I’d kind of prefer it if you didn’t try and muck around with things you don’t really understand, and don’t presume to know what this kind of life means to me. I’m happy having a soul—not perfectly happy mind you, because that would be…bad.” His brow crinkled at how unfair that was. After a hundred years of offering penance, couldn’t he be a little bit happy now? Just for like, half an hour each day?

“I will make you what you were born to be. There is no other choice.” There was no more commiseration with his confusion left, just pure determination as she stepped closer again and gently bestowed a goodbye kiss on the corner of his mouth.

Her smile seemed nostalgic, in that ‘it-was-good-to-know-you’ way, and Angel felt panic explode inside his body. Too late he realised she’d backed him against his own wall, and too late did he remember he was a vampire and could easily toss her away or glide to safety over the bed and out the door.

Too late as she withdrew a wicked and gleaming sacrificial dagger and stabbed it deep in his gut.

“Oh fu—” Angel screamed at the pain, only having seconds to wonder if he should be happy it wasn’t a freaking sword again, and he could feel his own body dusting as he still managed thought. He imagined it like in the mirror, each part of him flaking away until finally only his face remained, and then even it became…

Dru stared at the little hill of her dusted sire in shock.

Right up to this moment her confidence had never wavered; she’d never questioned the voice in her head that had planned and plotted and then waited for the moment to begin the change. She’d implanted the image of his annihilation in Angel’s head and yet she’d never watched it herself—had never prepared herself for seeing the destruction of the one who’d shared his blood with her, nor expected the screaming pain the severing of their connection was to create.

Dru whimpered as she fell to her knees, dropping the knife in his remains as the wailing tore through her reed thin body in a rapid fight for release. Shaking her head in denial, she desperately tried to block out the voice that was begging her to be strong—to go through with the plan so they could be with each other again.

Grief rocked her and Dru collapsed, coating herself in the dirty remnants of her sire. The voice grew louder, harsher and angry as she lost her focus and was crippled with loss. As her mind grew weak, the demon surpassed its usual level of strength and forced her to pick up the dagger, and while eyes shot wide in terror, the blade slashed down her arm, slicing her open violently enough to make the blood flow fast and strong.

Dru screamed, her head aching and her body weakening as she struggled to stand, finally dropping the dagger again as it lost its seductive lure. The squeal of wind entered through a window that slammed open and Dru began wailing anew, ashes and dust rising around her so thick she began to choke.

The pain that whipped through her was enormous, making her stolen blood hot and rushing rapidly through her body. Her muscles stretched and contracted excruciatingly as Dru clawed and bit at each new spot the pain visited. At once she was surrounded by the destroyed leftovers of her sire and she wailed at her mistake, wanting him back with every remaining coherent thought in her head.

There was no time to wonder what she’d done, and whether she’d been manipulated by something darker than herself. Instinctively she knew there was nothing that could stop this from continuing and so she allowed the tears to rain down on her cheeks, allowed the cries to erupt from her throat. She allowed herself the hatred that bubbled and boiled under the surface, never suspecting it was part of the process. That the emotion was the final ingredient to remake them both into what they were always destined to be.

Dru fell to her side, whimpering miserably against the tearing pain she could no longer bear. It ripped her apart and then sewed her shut again, mending fragments of her brain that often skipped several beats before it had anything constructive to say. The colours twirled around her head and she watched them drunkenly, then projected a blood-curdling scream into the violent, stormy night as they formed into a blinding white light and forced its way through her chest.

The tormented vampire’s mouth hung open, the gaping hole in her chest charred and splintering as tiny particles of her body disintegrated and merged with her Angel. Piece by piece of her fell away until all that was left was thought, and then Drusilla, childe of Angelus, sire of William the Bloody, of the long and prosperous line of Aurelius, was gone.

Time ticked slowly into a full minute as silence and awe raged in the bedroom, the wind knocking tree branches against the window evidence that not all had fallen in the world. The mystery was barely beginning to be counted when a sudden whir of life collected the dust and tossed it viciously into the air.

There was fury in the reconstruction, busy Powers forcing together what should never have been taken apart. But still, the hand was loving in its attention to detail, and a smile was bestowed as creation came to life. The dusted vampire tornado lost its anger as particles disappeared from the swirl, and eventually it left behind two half-humans, naked and breathing deeply on a cold stone floor.

Although their hearts beat slower than was normal, and despite the cold blood flowing through their veins, they lived. And were dead. Vampires made anew, ensouled, yet still deadly and powerful.

And so it began—as one race was reaching an end, as evolution was always want to do, another began.

The natural order was scrambled once more.





You must login (register) to review.