By Rhi
Disclaimer: I don't own them
Spoilers: This follows Ats ep "Forgiving" and contains spoilers thereto.
Distribution: Sure, just let me know.
Feedback: Is always nice. DarkRhiannon@aol.com
Rating: NC-17 with extreme!!! warnings for language, rape, torture, character death
and angst.
 

Holding Connor after believing him doomed, cherishing the small life that he'd never
imagined could exist, was more happiness than Angel's soul could handle. The
blissful joy of Angelus smiled down at the innocent boy in his hands. "Hmmm, so
many possibilities here, little one. I could have some minion raise you until you're old
enough to turn and I'd have a childe who is also my child. That sounds intriguing. And
who knows what abilities you'll turn out to have, born of that whore Darla and me."

"On the other hand, though, I'm feeling a bit peckish, son. Got all these wounds
chasing after your sorry little ass and you just lay there and scream at me. It seems
right somehow that you should take care of my hunger before I get out of this
hellsforsaken place and back to the fun in my city. I have some scores to settle there."

"Or I could just leave you here, nah, too wasteful. You know what grandpa always
said waste not, want not. Oh, sorry, you never met him. I ate him. Guess I'll eat you,
too." Grinning in psychotic glee, Angelus vamped to game face, prompting his infant
son to laugh with wonder at the sight that Angel had entertained him with. He was still
laughing when Angelus ripped his throat out and sucked every drop of blood from his
tiny body.

Connor's blood was marvelous; truly powerful, though completely human. Angelus
felt renewed energy flow through him, tingling from his head to his feet. He dropped the little corpse to the floor of the shattered hut and left without a backward glance, hurrying back to the Gate that called to him with promises of the pain he would soon inflict on everyone the soul had loved.

*

Spike lurked in a dark corner of the Hyperion hotel, pacing restlessly back and forth
and chain-smoking with no regard for ashtrays or the polished marble floor. This was
taking too long and he had never had the patience of his sire. Angelus would plot for
years to destroy prized prey, torturing and maiming first one loved one, then the next
until the poor unfortunate felt damned and despondent. Only then, when he'd utterly
destroyed the person, would Angelus feed. He claimed that nothing tasted better than
despair in the blood.

Personally, Spike thought he was crazy. Spike liked his blood spiced with sex or
violence, preferably both at the same time. Pheromones gave it a great kick
combined with adrenaline. Slayers practically reeked of both when you fought them; it
was why he'd sought them out.

Suddenly he felt a change in the pressure surrounding the glowing Gate. He looked
up and growled as a dark mass took shape within the scintillating energy. With a
huge boom and a rush of foul-smelling air from somewhere Angel appeared in all
his flowing black-dustered glory. He knelt for a moment in the center of the gate, then
rose, brushing the dust and dirt from his arms as if he hadn't a care in the world.
Spike looked at him sharply. Something was different about the pouf something
was, oh, fuck. This wasn't the Pouf at allspice could sense his true Sire standing
before him and knew that all Hell was indeed about to break loose.

*

With what little life remained to her, Buffy felt Angel's familiar presence surge through
the Gate she held open. Finally she could let go. She screamed, allowing all the pain
and anguish caused by the dread magics ripping her life energy from her body to
escape in the terrible cry. The Gate collapsed around her, its energy snapping back
into her helpless figure like a bolt of lightening. She convulsed in torment, the spikes
ripping new gashes in her limbs where they had almost healed. Her scream turned
into a feeble moan as she gasped for breath, trying to hold onto some semblance of
life.

*

Spike heard the Slayer's scream and felt the energy snap into her as the Gate
collapsed. Dismissing Angelus, he raced for the stairs--leaping to the top and
throwing himself through the door to help her. He ran to Buffy's side and stopped,
nonplused by the damage she had taken holding the Gate open for his damned sire.

*

Fred rushed forward grabbing Angel and hugging him with all her might. "You're back.
But." she paused in worry, "where's Connor?"

Angel smiled gently down into her pretty face. "Connor? Oh, yeah," he held her close
and whispered, "well, I was hungry for a little snack and he was just the right size to
tide me over till I got back here. But, hey, thanks for asking." Still holding Fred to him,
he buried his mouth under her hair and sank aching fangs into the pulse beating
there so rapidly. He drained her small body in four heartbeats, before anyone even
knew what had happened, then pulled slightly back, licking the blood from his lips
with his voracious tongue.

"Fred?" he said loudly. "Hey, guys I think she's fainted from grief or something. I..."
he paused dramatically, "I couldn't save Connor. Holtz killed him after all. God, I'm so
broken up I can barely stand myself..." his voice trailed off and he sank to his knees
with Fred still clutched to his broad chest.

Gunn rushed forward to help, sorrow for Angel filling his kind face. As he drew near,
Lorne shouted, "NO!" but it was too late. Angelus sprang from his crouch, dropping
Fred's lifeless corpse to the floor and reached with powerful hands to grab Gunn's
head. With one quick snap, the vampire hunter died, his strong body falling to the floor
as Angelus pulled his now healed hands from it and brushed them together happily.
"I never get tired of doing that," he grinned and started towards Lorne.

The green skinned demon backed away in horror as Angelus approached him. "So,
from what Cordy tells me, just removing your head isn't enough, is it Lorne. Or do
you prefer babycakes? I'm *not* really partial to nicknames myself, they kinda get
on my nerves. Know what I mean?" With no further ado, Angelus punched Lorne in the
head, knocking him across the room and unconscious with one vicious blow.
Smiling with unholy glee, he turned and headed for the stairs. "I smell the bloody of
my favorite slayer," he sing-songed.

*

Buffy's face was ashen, nearly all blood drained from it, leaving her almost
translucent. Her short blond hair lay stiffly clumped in brown dried blood. Her slender
body looked as if the life had been sucked out of it. Gaunt and stricken, she raised
suffering eyes to the vampire who loved her. "Spike," she whispered, "Did Angel..."
"Yeah. He's back. Didn't bring the little nipper with him, though. I didn't bother to ask
why he had a bunch queued up to interrogate him already."

Buffy's hazel green eyes filled with tears. "Then I failed. It was all for nothing if he
couldn't get his son back."

"Oh, I wouldn't say it was all for nothing," Angelus joked playfully, striding into the
room. "After all, you've never looked better, Babe. Nothing like blood, skin and a few
spikes to get me in the mood. Well," he paused, making a face at Spike, "not that kind
of Spike unless you're feeling properly subservient, Childe?"

Spike growled at his sire and stepped between him and Buffy. "Oh, Spikey. How sad,"
Angelus drawled. "Still yearning after my sloppy seconds? Not that she isn't a tasty
little lay, but really, how pathetic can you be? This is not how I raised you at all," he
added, shaking one finger at Spike mockingly.

Spike just glared at Angelus and stood his ground, waiting for the inevitable rush that
he knew was coming. Angelus didn't disappoint, throwing himself at Spike with a
vicious roar and tossing him across the room to go crashing against the wall like so
much garbage. Spike pushed himself shakily to his feet and attacked his sire.
Angelus had fed, and fed well, while Spike had rushed to LA with no thought of
anything but saving Buffy. He was hopelessly outmatched by his sire's considerable
bulk and freshly fueled strength. Angelus pinned Spike to the floor with one powerful
leap, ripping at his throat and draining what little blood Spike had in his veins.
Grasping his childe's battered body, Angelus tossed him out the window, watching
with glee as Spike crashed two stories to the ground below.

"Tsk, tsk, tsk, Buff. Cheating on me while I was gone was bad enough, but with
Spike?" Angel shook his head in mock sadness. "Now, Buff, that was just a really low
blow. I don't fancy appearing on Jerry Springer in the "My ex fucked my childe and now I'm pissed" show. Really, Buff, I'd think you'd have more taste. Mmm, but you do look so enticing, with all your blood painted around you so prettily. Oh, and I love the look! Short hair becomes you, darling."

As he taunted the helpless Slayer, Angelus unfastened his jeans and fingered his hard white cock before walking forward to crouch between Buffy's bloodied legs.

"Tell me, Buff, does this hurt?" he said, and twisted one of the railroad spikes in her
foot. Buffy screamed hopelessly as the delicate bones were crushed and ripped again.
Blood welled up from the wound and Angelus dabbled his fingers in it before bringing
his hand to his mouth and sucking the blood from it obscenely.

He grabbed the other spike in her right foot and ripped it completely out, then grabbed
the dainty foot and brought it to his mouth. He licked gently around the edges of the
gushing wound in a parody of foreplay, then plunged his cold tongue into it and
chewed on the torn flesh and broken bones jutting from it.

Buffy shrieked in anguish as he tormented her, trying unsuccessfully to free her hands
from the spikes holding her in place, but failing. Her strength had gone to the Gate.
She had nothing left with which to fight Angelus.

He crawled sinuously up her naked, broken body and leaned over to kiss her blood-
stained mouth before lapping at the tears that poured from her horrified eyes. Pushing
at her dry cunt, he entered her in one hard thrust, smiling at her pained moan. He
grabbed her hands in a parody of lovemaking, rubbing his thumbs against the edges
of the stakes that still impaled her wounded palms and playing with the blood that
poured from them.

"Oh, Lover, this really is perfect happiness. This is great. We should have tried this
before, Buff! I don't know what was stopping me. Oh, wait," he paused, "you sent me to
Hell! My triumph turned into total failure and  500 years of torture. Bitch," he hissed,
thrusting harder into her helpless body.

Buffy closed her eyes against the sight of her one true love destroying her. It was easy
now to let go, to remember Heaven and hope and pray that soon she would be there
again. She felt her tenuous hold on consciousness fade away and she smiled.
Perhaps she could be happy again, truly happy. This time, she was certain, no one
would be able to bring her back. Angelus wouldn't leave them enough of her to use.
Angelus leaned over and bit into Buffy's neck, his fangs breaking through the scar
tissue from the bite that Angel had so reluctantly bestowed years before. Buffy
groaned in painful bliss as the bite catapulted her into orgasm, then sighed as
blessed blackness took her into gentle arms.

Angelus drank deeply from the Slayer and her blood combined with Connor's in his
undead veins with explosive alchemy. He shrieked in sudden pain and pulled back
out of the now dead body of the Slayer. Backing into the wall, he looked at his bloody
hands in frenzy as he felt the Soul once again anchoring itself into his body. But
something was wrong. The demon's last thought as it was expelled from the body
forever was, *Fuck, is this what they meant by Shansu?*

Angel fell to his knees in shock and total confusion. Where was he? What had
happened? He'd been holding Connor, rejoicing in his beautiful boy and then pain
and darkness and no. *Oh God, please, no!* The blood on his hands, on his jeans it
was Buffy's, he looked up and there was her lifeless tortured body still impaled by the
spikes he had played with. And Connor. His boy. He had killed his boy. *No,
NOOOOOO!* He collapsed on the floor, panting for now necessary air and praying for
death.

It came in the form of his battered and beaten childe. Spike lurched into the room and
cried out at the sight of his Slayer dead and raped by his sire. He grabbed Angel's
shaking form and sank teeth into his neck, then winced back at the terrible pain that
flared in his skull. "Human? You're fucking human? You bloody bastard. You killed
her, you killed your child and for that they made you human? God damn you to hell,
Angelus. I'll find a way to kill you, I swear it on my blood and hers. If it's the last thing I
do, you will pay for this."

Spike turned from his erstwhile sire and pulled the three spikes from Buffy's broken
body. Lifting her gently into his arms, he strode from the room without a backward
glance at Angel, still kneeling against the wall.

The end.

Author's Note: I have to tell you, this is NOT how I wanted it to end. But the logic flowed and the muse demanded and I shocked myself, so here it is. I'm sorry.
-Rhi
 
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