Lionesses

Lionesses

Part 6

I was lucky. Hard by Simon’s house, I found a small dwelling where the occupants were away. Neighbours had taken in the few livestock, so both parts of the house – those for humans and those for animals – were empty. I could not enter the human part, but the livestock quarters were open to me.

The next hours dragged by. I knew that Sekhmet was safely hidden, so I slept as much as I could. Because of that, I missed the beginning of the commotion. With about an hour to sunset, I heard raised voices coming from Simon’s house, and I saw a servant come out running. The voices fell silent, but a little time later, the servant returned, with three old women and some of the city elders. The elders waited outside, whilst the old women went in. There was absolute silence in the house.

Every instinct was on overdrive, but there was nothing I could do until the sun went down. When it did, though, I was ready to do whatever was necessary. The moment I could, I would snatch my love away and make a run for it. I could feel that Sekhmet, too, was poised for flight. We both understood clearly that the woman we adored would brook no harm to her father or her people. A swift getaway was much the best option. Well, it would have been.

The three old women marched out, grim-faced. They were followed by Simon, his grip tight on Palestrina’s arm. The servants scurried after, a gaggle of frightened geese.

Simon came to an abrupt halt in front of the elders. His face was white, his eyes dark with hatred. Palestrina was pale but carried herself with dignity and pride.

“I accuse my daughter of fornication with a demon.”

NO! NO! By all the powers of light and darkness, what has happened? What has this man done?

In the astonished silence, he ripped away her shawl and pushed her head over, holding back her hair so that the elders could see my fang marks. Mine and Sekhmet’s.

“She has consorted with a demon.” He turned to the old women. “Speak!”

The eldest of them stepped forward.

“She has known a man. She is no longer virgin. All three of us can attest to that.”

She bowed her head and stepped back.

What have they done to her? They have been poking and prodding MY MATE! I could feel the growl rumbling into my chest at the thought of what she had just endured.

Still Palestrina was silent. I do not pray, for I know something of what is out there. I have found nothing yet worth praying to. But I prayed then, to any god that would listen. I prayed for the sun to go down, so that I could get my love safely away. There was nothing. Even gods fear to tamper with the workings of the universe.

One of the elders spoke to her.

“Have you nothing to say, woman?”

Woman. She was nameless, no longer an individual, no longer a person to be respected.

Her chin went up a little higher, her back a little straighter. Her voice was strong and clear, redolent of love.

“Yes, I have a lover, and yes, he is a demon. But he is my mate, and he is a good man. He seeks salvation for my sake, as well as by his own wish, even as most of you here have sought redemption for your sins. He wishes to be baptised into the new religion, and to start a new life with me, at peace with my father. Will any of you deny us this?”

It was brave but foolish. But I suspect that even a lie would not have served. As I said, Simon was a man of his times. He was angry with the Christians for rejecting him, and for classing him as no better than a demon. And he was both angry and afraid of the lover that Palestrina had taken. His daughter would pay the price. I determined to pay it with her. After all, it was my fault that she was here. I could never even reach her in time – I should be ashes before I had covered so much as half the distance – but I knew what would come next in this tragic little scena and and I would not live without her. I could not let her go alone.

It was her father who passed sentence.

“She is guilty from her own mouth. There is only one penalty.”

He picked up a rock from the stony soil. So did all the others present, and they prepared to stone her to death. I tensed myself to run, to get as close to her as I could, but she knew.

“No!” she screamed. “Remember…”

She got no further as the first stone, from her father’s hand, struck her in the mouth. The weight of my oaths to her felled me like a blow, and I sank to my knees in the doorway. I could still see what was happening. And I could still hear. As that first stone had landed, Sekhmet kneShe She always knows important things. I heard her howl in her place of refuge, just as she had for Acathla, three and a half thousand years ago.

And I heard…other things. You will never have seen a person stoned to death. Or heard it. The thwack of rock on flesh. The crunching sound as rock meets bone. The wet sounds as flesh is crushed and split. It isn’t small stones, you know. They use rocks, the size of half a house brick today. Or bigger.

I still hear it I s I sleep.

I have seen a great deal of death. I have brought death to more creatures than you can possibly imagine, although I remember every single one. Their deaths have meant many things to me – pleasure, entertainment, the thrill of the hunt, a good meal. Many of them have been singularly unpleasant deaths – for the dying, that is. I am a vampire, a demon, and I have a strong stomach for death.

I have lost those I cared about to death, and those deaths havesed sed me enormous sorrow. Family, mates, lovers, companions; in my long life I have lost them all. Never let anyone tell you that demons do not feel. We are creatures of passion and excess – vampires certainly are, all of us. We can experience the full gamut of human emotions, if we will but understand it. Many of us are also creatures of denial, and so we do not always understand the feelings that we have. Nevertheless, what we were informs all that we become. I was born of passion and in passion. So passion has ruled my life. That has passed to all my line in some measure or another. Or perhaps it is simply that we choose those of equal passion as our childer. And just as our human senses, taste, smell, sight, hearing, touch, are much more acute than your own, so are our passions. They run darker and deeper than you can ever know.

Grief is one of the darkest passions, and that is what I felt in the light of the westering sun on that afternoon when my mate died. It was a physical thing, ripping through my gut even as the rocks tore into her flesh. Even as my claws tore at the stone slabs of the floor, leaving bloody tracks in that miserable hovel from which I had to watch the death of my soul mate. The death that I had brought upon her because I had been weak and impetuous. My love for her demanded that I go to her, even though it meant my own death. Indeed, I would have welcomed death. But my love for her demanded that I honour those oaths, so newly given. To wait for her. To wait for the childe of the fourth generation. So I knelt in the muck of the byre, watching her father, and the rest of them, stone her to death, tears rolling freely down my vampire’s cheeks, vomiting out onto the straw the red bile that was all that remained of my last meal. Murderer. Monster.

It went on and on until she was a crumpled heap in the dirt. Stoning is not a quick death. The murderers gave her body a cursory glance and went off to hunt for me, believing me to be in the city somewhere. She was to be left where she lay until they found me. Only then did the sun show pity, and sink into its rest.

I went to her, knowing what they did not know, that she still lived, just. I could hear her heart flutter, hear her tiny rasping breaths. I had some hope that I could at least turn her, that she would allow me to do that. But a person who is going to live, even as a vampire, generally has more brain matter inside their skull, and less of it soaking into the dust. Even healed, she would never be the same. I found that I did not want to do that to her. Still, I had to ask, give her the choice. It was a miracle that she was still conscious. I dared not lift her, there were so many broken bones. I simply knelt in her blood, and bent over to her.

My first words to her were words of love. I hoped that my face would show her dep depth of that love. But I couldn’t touch her. Anything, even the lightest of kisses, would have been agony for her broken body. They had been thorough. And there was no time to waste if I were to give her a choice.

“Do you wish me to turn you?” My voice quavered as tears threatened, and my throat closed, but I didn’t care.

She tried to smile, although her face and her teeth were smashed almost beyond recognition, and beyond any power of her body to carry out so simple an action. I thought she hissed “No.”

“No?”

With a supreme effort, she managed to move one hand to rest on mine. Again the breathless hiss.

“Help him…wait…”

She could manage no more.

I bent to her ear, and whispered more words of love. And promises. I would wait for her. I would bury her and my book as she wished. I would care for the childe still to come. I would never stop loving her, and someday, we would spend eternity together. I promised her.

She rallied a little.

“Take…”

I didn’t understand.

“Try again my love. What do you want me to take?”

But she couldn’t. It was then that I felt a presence at my side. Sekhmet had come into the city. She knew what Palestrina wanted. She moved to the other side of her, and sank her fangs into my mate’s neck. Palestrina tried to smile. With cold tears sliding down my face, I did the same. Together we k thk the life from her, such as remained, and took her into ourselves. She is always with me, now. A shadow of her true essence, but a presence nonetheless. Many times I feel that I have disappointed her, failed to live up to her expectations, but I have her love still. If only I had her.

When we were done, I sat for a moment or two, bereft. Sekhmet, too, was still, her head bowed. Then we heard the sound of the mob returning, still searching for me. I scooped the broken body up into my arms and fled with Sekhmet back to our cave.

We buried her there, wrapped in the furs on which we had made love. In death I gave her the necklace that I had mean giv give her in life. Sekhmet pawed out a shallow hole – the rock was close to the surface – and with my bare hands, I brought the rocky roof tumbling down onto her grave. She would be safe from desecration there. We were both sore and bleeding when we had finished. Well, it matched how we felt inside. With her I had also buried my book.

You have heard of the Egyptians’ Book of the Dead? That was it. Oh, archaeologists think that they have found it in the Pyramid Texts and the Coffin Texts, on scraps and scrolls of papyrus, but they have only found conjecture and speculation and pretence. The priests of old had heard of my book – I never speak of these things, but still, knowledge seeps out somehow, albeit imperfect and corrupted – and tried to recreate it for their Pharaohs. None of those inscriptions work. They akin kin to a child’s make-believe. They have tried to write rituals for bringing their Pharaoh to eternal life, and for giving their Pharaoh the power to protect their land forever. Nonsense.

Some few of the priests, though, had a greater understanding. Their Books of the Dead were also entitled The Book of Coming Forth By Day. The spells they contain are meant to prevent the dead from coming forth by night, leaving their tombs barren and empty. Coming forth as vampires. My childer, my minions. Those spells never worked. You have my word on that.

My book, the original Book of the Dead, is my journal, named in a fit of whimsy, although it was doubly appropriate now. My history. My notes on demons and on magic. It certainly tells of a way to eternal life, the way that I unwittingly travelled. And there are spells in there that I have learned. Many of those spells are the fruits of the search for a way to return Acathla to life. It was a dangerous enough book until I met Palestrina. And then it became mor.

.

I have told you that she was a powerful sorcerer in her own right. What I have not told you is quite how powerful she would have been. I have met many magic users in my life. None were as powerful as she. And none were less corruptible by that power.

During our time together, she tried many ways to help me, to help Sekhmet, to restore Acathla. These are all recorded in the book. All might have worked, if she had had full access to pow power. But she was young, and needed both time and experience. With me, she would have had that, and who knows what would have happened to us all then.

The book, then, contains a great deal of Palestrina’s magic. She had said that she would try to return. She wanted to return to me, but if she could not, then perhaps she would return to her own magic. So I left the book with her. What you call Plan B. I don’t need it, after all, to remember the contents – a demon never forgets – nor do I need it to remind me of the way she looked when she wrote in it, the way her little pink tongue would lick her lips as she laboured to make the lettering as neat as possible, the way she would smile in triumph as another spell for the future was recorded. I can do a very good job of torturing myself without any help at all.

Peter, John and Philip? I took no action against them. Palestrina would not have wished it. Their deaths were entirely human affairs – you humans are good at that. And I have relics of them. Pieces of their bones, braided into my very special whip. Those apostles serve me, now. They almost killed Angelus, but he was strong enough to survive. That is good. What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger. Seth may be confounded yet.

Simon? He punished me by noising it around that I had killed his daughter, and that the consequences of that death lay on my head. That calumny has followed me all the days of my life since, in this dimension and others. Although I suppose that, in its most fundamental essence, it is true. Her death was my fault, and I deserve to suffer for it.

He punished the Christians by giving them the burden of the fight against vampires. It was thought that he was deranged by grief, but in my view it was malice. He found some demons from the Adraste dimension, perhaps the most knowledgeable magic users of all, and he bought from them a spell of the most enormous potency. It took the power wielded by ancient symbols, power to protect humans against demons, and gave that power to the symbol of the Cross, and to the Christians’ holy writings and relics. And he targeted vampires alone. He didn’t have the strength to do more, although I’m not sure he really wished to. He said it was so that vampires might never hurt true Christians again, in memory of his daughter. He died as part of the casting, pouring his life essence into the force of the spell, so that it would be maintained forever, across the planet. His spell holds good almost 2000 years later. The trappings of Christianity can now hurt vampires in a way that the symbols of other religions cannot. And so he got some measure of revenge on all of us.

~~~~~~

That, then, is the story of Palestrina. Sekhmet and I have returned to the cave each year, but of late civilisation has been encroaching on her solitude. Now the developers have moved up as far as the cave, and the archaeologists have found my greatest treasures. But even when I am not there, the cave is never left unguarded. This time, though, the guard was incapacitated for a while. The message only reached me on the very night I sent Angelus off to recover her. I have faith in him. He will do what is necessary. When he brings her back here, she will stay with me. I think she will like the Lion Courtyard.

**************

When Sekhmet and I return to Aurelius’ house, he is waiting for us, as if he had known we were on our way. Perhaps he did. He and the lioness have been together for a very long time now. Who knows how they have learned to communicate? I wonder if he knows that there is some bad news amongst the good.

I get some searching looks from the rest of the clan, but they make way for me. Aurelius is in his chair. His throne. Spike and Drusilla are chained to the wall where I was…No! I won’t think about that.

I stand in front of him. No bows, no homage of any sort. Just me. I expect Sekhmet to go to her accustomed place by his side, but she doesn’t. She sits on her haunches next to me. As if she, too, were waiting to be judged.

“I have what you sent me for.”

There is a small rustle behind me, a collective sigh of relief, perhaps.

I am surprised by the look on his face. It is only there for a second, but it is one of absolute love and joy intermingled. These may not be emotions that I myself feel – in fact I’m astonished that any demon should feel them – but I can certainly recognise the expressions, and I file it away for future reference.

I open my satchel and bring out the book. When he takes it from me, he puts it aside almost impatiently. That is a surprise – I had thought that writings as old as this must be of value to him. Then I take out the velvet-wrapped bundle. Handling the bones was odd, as if they should have some meaning for me, some connection, but they are clearly human, and so they can be nothing to do with me. Nevertheless, back in that room, I was impelled to do my best to show respect for them. More respect than a cardboard box, for sure. And it is with some reluctance that I hand them over to him. I wonder why?

He takes them with what I can only describe as reverence. When he looks at me, I could swear that his eyes are shining, as if with tears. This is an old and powerful vampire, to the best of my knowledge the oldest and most powerful on the earth today. What are these bones to him? The older members of the clan seem to know, and I experience a sudden flare of temper at being excluded like this. But I don’t let it get the better of me. After all, I still have to give him the bad news.

“I am sorry, Aurelius, but they are not all there.”

His response is clipped and sharp.

“Tell me.”

“The man who had them was a senior curator at the Museum. He had taken the bones and the book home. He had copyists copying the book, and he had sold some of the bones. Three ribs and half of one thighbone. I understand they have gone to sorcerers.”

The silence behind me is deafening, leaden.

“He is a minion, now, yours to do with as you please. There is another one that I have made into a childe. I have learned that he is the one who made the sales. He will know where to find the missing parts. The bodies are in the curator’s study. There are a great many antiquities there, too.”

I reach into the bag again, I had intended to keep what I took, but I am somehow compelled to offer him this. A necklace of gold and lapis lazuli, very old. For some reason, Sekhmet whined when she saw it. When he takes it, I could almost believe that there was a hitch in his breathing, if he had needed to breathe. His attention is riveted to it, and he lays it gently over the cloth wrapped bundle in his lap.

Aurelius’ eldest comes forward, and kneels in front of his Sire.

“If you will permit, I and my family will undertake to find the missing bones.”

“Thank you, Japheth. You will need to have access to Angelus’ latest childe, then, the one still at the curator’s house.”

Aurelius turns to me.

“Angelus, will you permit this?”

With those five words, everything has changed. I am a member of the clan again, with status. With the ability to say no. I may have to defend myself if I do say no, but I am once more Angelus of the Clan of Aurelius, and the entire clan knows it.

A movement catches my eye. Spike. He’s jealous of the new childe! Well, well, well, who would have believed it? I can have a lot of fun with that. But Aurelius is waiting.

“I am happy to lend him to Japheth for as long as necessary. Once he is brought here, I will make the position clear to him.”

I turn to Japheth. I know him by sight and by repute, but I don’t know him. He has a look of Aurelius though, a look that just the two of them share. I cannot decide what it is, but that knowledge seems to hover just outside my grasp, as if I should know. It irritates me, but I set the problem aside for another day. There are more immediate things to clear up.

“If you need to keep him for any length of time, will you tend to his upbringing for me? Until he is returned to me?”

“Of course.”

Spike is beside himself, and even Dru has a small pout. It won’t be just the three of us, and they don’t like it. Tough. I’ll enjoy having a new childe to model in my own image.

Aurelius despatches minions to fetch the two vamps-to-be, clear up the bodies, and bring into his possession every single item of value from the other house. That will be quite a haul, then. Well, I’ve got some of the best bits here. I wonder if he will try to claim them, now that he’s given me my status back? Japheth returns to his family, and Aurelius turns his attention to me.

“Well, Angelus, what shall we do with you now?”

WHAT! It’s OVER, surely! Finished. I’ve taken my punishment and carried out the task he gave me. And he gave me back my status, didn’t he? What now?

He looks down that disdainful nose at me, from the height of his dais. Sekhmet hasn’t moved from my side.

“You will stay here until I say that you may go. You will give me your word that you and your childer will remain here. Without that, you *will* remain, in chains if necessary. I should prefer your word, but I will have your compliance. Which is it to be?”

Why? Why does he want us to remain? And how long for? I’ve got things to do, plans to put into action. Apocalypses, that sort of thing. Nevertheless, this is perhaps the most powerful creature I may ever meet. Are there things I can learn from him? Should I make the most of a bad job?

“How long do you wish us to stay?”

His tone is sharp.

“Until I say you may go!”

I glance at Spike and Dru, and then look back at him. He nods. I walk over to them.

“I am inclined to stay, to see what we can learn here. You will stay, too. Do you understand?”

Spike looks mutinous – nothing new there, then – and I lean over to whisper softly in his ear.

“Cross me on this, *boy*, and I’ll show you that Aurelius knows nothing about punishment.”

He nods mutely. He’ll keep his word, as best he can. I look questioningly at Dru.

“We need to be here, Daddy.”

Who can ever understand the workings of Dru’s mind? But that seems to mean she’ll obey. I return to Aurelius.

“You have my word. We will stay, of our own free will.”

I feel the need to make that point. Aurelius looks sceptical – he understands very well that Spike and Dru have exercised little free will here, but that is as it should be. He takes what he can get, though.

“Very well. Let us introduce your childer. There are those here that you should meet, too.”

And with that, we seem to be back to normality within the clan. Spike and Dru are released from their chains. I am a master vampire, even if I am one of the youngest here, and I am no longer outcast for the sins of the Soul. Thank the Lords of Hell for that. Now I can think of no shadow that might hang over the Apocalypse I have planned. Surely Acathla will grant me pride of place in his hell, and I shall have toys and playthings for the rest of eternity. I shall miss some things, of course, things that I had forgotten. The opera, the ballet, fine wines, the smell of snow in the mountains, the moonlight on the sea; all of them better for a warm body in my arms whilst I drink down the hot, sweet, pulsing blood. Still, the blood aside, these are human things, not demonic. I’ll manage without them.

***************

You may wonder why I haven’t gone after Palestrina’s bones myself, rather than allowing my eldest surviving childe, Japheth, to take on that responsibility. It was the first thought in my mind. But as head of a clan, it is a mistake to try to do everything yourself, even the important things. Even the personally important things. It is good to allow others to do as much as possible. It helps bind the bonds more strongly, makes certain that the younger members continue to grow and learn. To be more capable, as they will need to be if anything happens to me. I may be powerful and eternal, but I am not invulnerable. I can be killed. I may, indeed, be killed, or worse, if I go up against Seth. And so I do everything I can to make sure that the clan can function without me, yet are tied to me with bonds of steel. And to Palestrina. I still have an eye to the future.

I have taken Palestrina into my rooms, where she will stay until a suitable casket is made. I stand a little aloof from the gathering, now, as I watch Angelus and his whelps circulate amongst vampires they only know by repute. He is suave and charming, with the darkness of obsidian and the sharpness of flint. He still has touches of madness, although some small amount of sanity has returned to him as he remembers the pleasures of this earth. And making a new childe speaks of an eye to a future. The signs are good. Drusilla was wise to get him away from Sunnydale and Acathla. The punishment he has taken here has brought him back a little to himself, as well – just as I intended. Strange, but true. His physical pain has countered his mental suffering of the last hundred years. You wouldn’t understand. You are human. This is a demonic thing.

Yes, I know what he plans to do, and I know he has Acathla. I contemplated taking the demon away from him, but he seems as safe there as anywhere, for the time being. At least there are none of my bloodline in Sunnydale just now to accidentally open the portal. Before Angelus leaves, I will look around for a better place to keep Acathla. It cannot be here, and it most certainly cannot be here, so long as Angelus is here and not yet stable.

I have never stopped looking for the right magic to release Acathla. I have never lost hope, but I am coming to believe that I may not accomplish that task until Palestrina is returned to me.

So I will keep Angelus here until I am satisfied that he no longer wishes to end the world. He always loved the more sensuous pleasures that the world had to offer. I don’t think it will be too long before his nature reasserts itself. The nature of this beast is to enjoy life to the full. Hell would be a big disappointment to him. I’m counting on him seeing that.

What’s that? You think that I am a monster, still, for the punishment I meted out to him? Do you understand nothing?

We are not humans, we are vampires. We *are* monsters. I think we agreed that earlier. But we do have our own demonic codes and rules. It is absolutely forbidden to slay your Sire. The only possible penalty is death. Similarly for slaying a grandsire, or for lining up on the side of the Slayer and vowing that every vampire in existence must die. You know that he has done all these things. Or that Angel did. Most of the clan see little difference between Angel and Angelus, and do not understand that where two spirits inhabit a body, the demon is not always the one in charge. He had the soul for one hundred years, and even that isn’t long enough for a peace to be reached. For each spirit to learn to live with the other, to learn to compromise a little. For the demon to corrupt the soul, perhaps, and for the soul to corrupt the demon.

Most of them wanted his death at first. I gave them something else. I gave them a victim with a grossly unreasonable punishment. I gave him the death sentence three times over, and the older ones know it. That whip doesn’t just have the bones of saints braided into it. It is wreathed in spells, including one for driving demons out of bodies. No vampire has lasted more than twelve hundred lashes before they have embraced that spell and left the body to fall to ashes. It is one of my crueller methods of execution. As soon as his mettle became clear, they were on his side, willing him on. We like an underdog, a plucky loser, as much as you do. I gave them that. They wanted him to live through something that no vampire has lived through before, and by doing so, they forgave him all his sins, whether they realised it at the time or not. They even have a sneaking admiration for him, now. It was the only way. They may not quite trust him for the future yet, but the past is forgiven. Small steps.

And how did I know that he would survive where no other has? I didn’t. Not for certain. But I was sure that Seth had picked someone stronger than most as his plaything for the centuries to come. And I knew what Angelus needed to have in order to survive the pain. His soul mate. Neither of them knows it, of course, but I do. So does Sekhmet. Our knowledge came from our shared blood, the blood of Palestrina. It showed us the Slayer imprinted through his being, his flesh and his spirit. Cut him in half and you would discover her. Sekhmet tells me that if you were to cut her in half, you would find him.

And it was Sekhmet who has the power to bring them together as they were. Another small gift from Palestrina’s blood, allied to her own demonic abilities. The Slayer kept him here, when he would otherwise have embraced his final death. No one else could have done it. They would willingly walk through the fires of Gehenna for each other, though they don’t know it yet. And the soul? Angel? That will, indeed, be complicated. But interesting. Word of a demon.

We all have gifts from Palestrina, Sekhmet and I more than most, but the Clan of Aurelius is definitely different from other clans. We all exchange blood with each other, and that has made us different. We are not the same demons as others.

Angelus hates me for what I did to him on his only other visit, but that was necessary. I bonded him to me in the sight of the clan – there can be no doubting that – and he became equal to a childe of my own. He took Palestrina’s blood direct from me, during that bonding. It has helped him. I know that she held his hand during the whole of his punishment. And he carries my imprimatur, my approval, my mark on his shoulder. He is mine. My responsibility. Mine.

He took more of her blood, along with mine after the flogging, after the Watcher’s potion prevented him from accessing the Slayer’s power and I had to feed him myself. It has given him… powers… abilities. Oh, nothing big. Demons are creatures of magic, so all can use it to some extent, and this doesn’t change that by much. But it does change it, and even I’m not sure exactly how. I know it will make him stronger, and so will the essence that he took from the Slayer. The Watcher’s potion will wear off soon. He took her blood – twice – and she tasted his. Oh yes, she was here, but in a complicated sort of way. And not so that you could see. Let’s leave it at that.

Taking a mate is a state of mind, and an exchange of blood. They are mates, now, although they are going to have to find that out the hard way. Denial is simply not an option. I shall watch with interest to see how this plays out. I wonder how far Seth’s hand is in this, another torment for his plaything, or whether this is the best possible defence Angelus could have against Seth? Time will tell.

The tattoo? Have I not told you about that? Ah, yes. It certainly marks him as mine, but the winged lion was not originally my mark. It was Palestrina’s, her sigil and seal, adopted on her eighteenth birthday. She said it made her think of me. I took it for my own after her death, adding only my initial. It is that tattoo, woven with spells as it is, that permits Palestrina’s blood to work so well within him, helping him, strengthening him. Much more so than with any other member of the clan except myself and Sekhmet. It is as if he, too, had drunk from her veins on that terrible afternoon. Without the tattoo, Sekhmet could not have brought the Slayer to him during his ordeal. Who knows what other aid we will be able to give him through its magic. None of the others knows, of course. They think that it was simply a whim of mine to mark a promising but headstrong youngster who was already in a state of rebellion against Nest. I don’t think any of them begrudged him that particular rebellion, because they despised Nest. They loved Darla, though.

All I can do, now, is keep him here until his continuing sanity is assured; give him someone to hate almost as much as he hates the Rom. Someone whom he thinks would not be under his sway if we all take a trip to Hell. Someone who would make it worthwhile giving up the Apocalypse for, so that he can have vengeance in a more earthly way.

Me.

We’re already a good way down that road, so I think I’ll take us a bit further. The evening is coming to an end, and there are arrangements to make…

“Angelus.”

I hold out a hand to him as I take another sip of the very fine claret that we are drinking.

“Come. It’s a very long time since you were here last, and you didn’t stay to grace my bed even then.”

Only a Sire has the right to do this, and I am the only sire left in the line to Angelus. I am the only creature in all the dimensions that can command this demon, can rightfully force myself upon him. Any others would be killed, either by Angelus himself, or by the rest of us. He will hate me, but he will obey. I think.

If looks could kill, I should be a small pile of dust. But the look is gone in an instant. Sensible boy. He’ll store it away, though, to add to the fires of his hatred. He really, really detests submission. You can be sure that I’m going to exploit that with a vengeance. His hatred of me is, after all, my own sacrifice on the altar of our survival. Your survival too, come to that. You should be grateful.

So, he comes with me, this proud and haughty demon, this dominant alpha male. I can tell that he is plotting how to take away my power, take the Clan from me. Good, that will give him something to live for.

Seth chose well, from his point of view. He has a demon with six of the seven deadly sins in very large measure – pride, envy, gluttony, lust, anger and greed. Some more than others, that is true, but he’s no stranger to any of them. Never sloth, though – could you ever imagine Angelus being slothful? And his counterpart, Angel? Oh, yes, I know a great deal about Angel. There was never a time when my eye has not been on him. The soul has six of the seven heavenly virtues, to match. Faith, hope, charity, fortitude, justice and temperance. At least, he does when he is with his soul mate. Faith and hope were a little hard to come by in that lean century that has just passed. But he never quite gave up on them, or he would be dead now. The other one? Prudence? Have you ever known Angel to be prudent? No, me neither.

Seth can play him like a violin, in so many different ways, but he has the strength to live through it and still face more. I cannot be seen to help him. But I will. Sekhmet and I both. For as long as we can.

************

I have kept Angelus here for almost three months, and he hates me with every cell of his body. He wants to love me, as all vampires should love their Sire, for I have exchanged enough blood with him that I truly stand in place of a sire to him now, and that makes the hatred all the more poignant. All the more painful. There’s nothing like a family feud for plumbing the depths of bitterness and passion, don’t you think?

The exchange of blood has had an interesting repercussion. The Slayer’s essence still runs through his veins. And I have tasted it. We’re all family now. What difference will that make, I wonder?

He doesn’t show his hatred of me, though, except for the occasional look in his eyes, or perhaps a fleeting expression on his face. Nothing I can openly take exception to. The clan are gone, most back to their homes, Japheth to try and recover the remainder of Palestrina’s bones, taking Angelus’ youngest childe with him. I know that Angelus has kept from me the almost completed copy of my book that the forgers had made. That’s fine. He should be able to make use of some of it, and at least Seth cannot say that I helped him to access the magic it contains. I have made it in my way to finish the copyists’ job – he has a complete book, now.

And I do believe his sanity is returning. We have availed ourselves freely of the entertainments offered by Cairo – and other cities – and Angelus has become a popular figure in certain circles. I’m very well connected. I have allowed him plenty of rein to enjoy himself, and he has found many pleasures amongst the women and young men here, pleasures that reinforce the fact that he is a dominant alpha male. But at the end of it all, each day, he must return to my bed and submit, and he hates me for it. Again, in a very complicated way.

We have been to a diplomatic ball tonight, although I made him leave his two whelps nd. nd. Neither of them could be trusted in that sort of company. We are back in my rooms, and even the wine – and the blood – which we have drunk doesn’t make this any easier for him. We are both naked now, and I intend him to learn that, although he may be one of the most accomplished lovers in the world, I can still show him a thing or two, even after all these weeks. That should fan the flames of envy – and hate – nicely. It doesn’t help that Sekhmet, who always has free access, is here, too, and she is very restless. I have never seen her like this. She is growling and pacing, and flashing her fangs in distress. And I know that she is very distressed, I can feel her in my blood, but I cannot understand the cause.

I go to her, to soothe and comfort her, to try to learn more of her distress, when all hell breaks loose with her. She throws back her head and howls, as she hasn’t since Palestrina was st to to death by her father, since Acathla was petrified and turned into a gateway to hell by Seth. She is beside herself, and in her frenzy she seizes my shoulder, her fangs, all seven inches of them, buried to the hilt in my flesh. If Angelus wants to kill me, now is the time for him to do it. I am helpless in the grasp of a demon cat who weighs more than twice as much as I do.

Yet he doesn’t. He walks over to Sekhmet and throws his arms around her head, regardless of the fact that she is shaking me as if I were a doll, as if I were Drusilla’s Miss Edith. Angelus holds on, whispering in her ear. It does no good. She is crazed beyond hearing. So he straddles her back, grasping her jaws firmly in both hands, and drags them apart by main force. As soon as I am free, I join my weight to his in holding my companion down, our bodies blanketing hers.

Have you ever tried to restrain a pet cat? An ordinary domestic moggy? If you have, then you know how hard it is. They only have eighteen claws, five on each front paw, and four on each one at the back, but it is as if each paw had developed circular saws. Then there are the teeth. It takes four strong men and a large bath towel to hold down an unwilling pet cat. And still blood is spilled. Imagine holding down a sabre tooth that runs to 400 pounds and has demonic strength. With circular saws. After a very short time, we are definitely the worse for wear. But it has been enough. Sekhmet is sobbing now, crying like a kitten, her body otherwise quiescent.

Between us, we get her onto the bed, regardless of the blood that Angelus and I are freely spilling – the minions can take care of that. We both know what is needed, even if not why, and we hold her close, I at the front and Angelus spooned up to her back. She continues to cry, but gradually I begin to understanmongmong the roiling emotions, just what is wrong.

It is my fault. I should never have left him unguarded. In my concern that Angelus would bring about the end of the world, I have seriously underestimated the Slayer and her companions. All my fault. Acathla, left by Angelus to await his return, is dead. Sekhmet’s soul mate, whom we have spent five and a half thousand years trying to free from Seth’s stone prison, is dead. Five and a half thousand years entombed in stone, for love. Dead, for love. I cannot help it. My tears join with Sekhmet’s.

Angelus is uneasy. Our shared blood tells him that something is grievously wrong, but he cannot tell what. So he asks me. What to tell him? That his means of destroying the world is gone? I settle for the other truth.

“Sekhmet has a soul mate from whom she has been forcibly parted for five and a half thousand years. He has just died.”

He is silent – what, indeed, could he say? But his hold on the lioness tightens, and I feel him try to comfort her with his touch and his thoughts. We lie there for a very long time, two vampires trying to comfort a bereaved lioness, all of us bearing the scars of other lionesses. Palestrina. The Slayer. Our sad little pride.

**************

Aurelius has decided to let us go. Spike, Drusilla and I will go straight back to Sunnydale. I have been away too long. I have things to do.

In many ways I shall be sorry to end this world, as you know it. I’m almost sure that Aurelius will never come within my grasp in the Hell dimensions. He has made me suffer pain and humiliation. He has made me submit. I dearly want to take everything away from him, to see him humiliated, tormented, tortured.

And the Slayer. I am puzzled by that. I know that my visions of her were just that: visions. Figments of my imagination. But they seemed so real. And what about that single hair I still have? Where did that come from? Why does my blood burn when I think of her? Still, I know what I should do. I should put her in her place. Make her see that she is no match for me, that she has no hold whatsoever upon me. That all she can ever be to me is a toy, a plaything. For my own peace of mind, I should do that. But there won’t be time, what with the Apocalypse and all.

Still, Acathla has waited this long. Perhaps he can wait a little longer. Just a few days. Even if I don’t have time to deal with Aurelius, I can at least deal with the Slayer. Play with her for a while, until I break her. Like just another toy. Forget those visions. Forget the way I felt. Forget that she ever seemed like the breath of life. That isn’t what demons feel. I don’t even breathe.

***********

Angelus has gone, but he’ll be back. Perhaps to bring me down, if he can. I won’t let him succeed, though. I have too much to live for. To wait for.

The ancient Egyptians had many strange, varied and often conflicting beliefs, you know. Or they seem strange, now, to us. To you. One of the reasons why they began to mummify their dead, for example. They believed that after a period of time, three thousand years to be exact, the soul would return to the body, to reanimate the dead flesh. This could not happen if the flesh had rotted, so they preserved it as a mummy. How on earth they imagined a soul could reanimate a thing with no organs, and stiff with preservatives and resins, I really don’t know. All nonsense, of course – just how many 3,000 year-old mummies have you seen lurching out of the tomb? Movies don’t count.

All nonsense. Except…except…perhaps some of it isn’t. Oh, souls certainly don’t come back to rotting bones, but perhaps they do come back to new bodies and new beginnings. If they are allowed. If nothing else tethers them. And 3,000 years seems to be about the length of time a soul needs in order to once more brave the journey back to the flesh. How do I know? From bitter experience. When I reached that age, it seems that my soul was still tethered to the consciousness it had had. It came home. Angel was not quite so alone as he thought. I was a little luckier – I had had time to mature, to mellow, to cease being quite such a …driven…demon. Sekhmet? Yes, she, too. She lost a lot of her anger about that time. It was still a dreadful experience for me, and it took much more than Angel’s century to reconcile the two halves of my being. To regain my sanity. I have discussed this with no one. I do not believe that any one else knows, although I think Japheth suspects. He, too, disappeared for a couple of centuries after he reached that age. But we never speak of it. None of the others are of an age yet. Of those that were, Japheth is the only survivor. It is a cruel ordeal.

I h I had had my soul for half a millennium when I met Palestrina. Soul and demon, we had reached some sort of compromise. Soul and demon both, she loved me. I am still a vampire. Still a monster. But perhaps I am not a great deal different to you. Nevertheless, I am what I am.

And if souls do return in new bodies, perhaps Palestrina will. If she does, perhaps she will remember me. Perhaps she will return to me, to her blood, to her magic. Ultimately, and despite what her father did, I was responsible for her death. I deserve to be punished, and I have been. But I have only another thousand years to wait. Sekhmet may have to wait longer.

THE END
16 October 2003
We pick up the main story again in 'Pride'.
If you've read this, leave a comment - especially now, when Angel fans need some encouragement.... Thanks