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 Angelus
Unbound: Chapter 5
Disclaimer: I don't own them. Mutant Enemy does. All hail Joss Whedon. Spoilers/Ships: This is AU. Angelus/Buffy. Distribution: Sure, just let me know. Feedback: Is always nice. darkrhiannon@aol.com Rating: R for violence and sex. Author's Note: This one has been Jossed into kingdom come by Calvary. But you can still…enter my nightmare… -Rhi Buffy was screaming. Pain ripped through her body like a live thing, tearing at her muscles and shredding nerves until she was certain that she must go insane from the torment. Warm softly lit clouds gave way abruptly to cold dank dark and she screamed harder, moving hands that felt as though they'd been flayed to pound against the surface too close to her face. She was trapped, confined, and suffocating. She felt it, even as she drew breath to scream again in hopeless, terrified agony. Abruptly, she woke. She opened her eyes, breathing heavily in the close dark. Where? *I'm not in my room. Where's my light? Wait…* The night's happenings flashed through her head. *I'm at the mansion. That's it. The fire must have gone out. But it's so dark. And it smells.* And she was naked, she realized, her hands crossed over her chest and her head resting on... "Oh, No! No, please!" Buffy moved her hands to press upward and felt the too-familiar satin of a coffin lining. She turned her head from side to side eyes wide and searching the impenetrable darkness for any sign of light, but there was none. The pillow under her cheek was slimy and half rotted. That was when she began screaming. * Angelus had fallen asleep on the floor stroking the finely wrought metal of the coffin. It had been a bitch and a half to drill through, but well worth it, he'd thought as he drifted off. Pleasant dreams of hunting innocents through the back streets of London, Paris, Istanbul, and St. Petersburg occupied him as he growled in his sleep. The screaming, when it started, simply melded into the dream, echoing down the dark labyrinth in which he hunted. Abruptly he woke, recognizing the voice in the screams as the only voice he truly wished to torment for eternity. Buffy was awake. Angelus grinned and sat up, listening to her increasingly frantic pounding on the inside of the coffin. The space inside was too tight for her to use those powerful legs to kick the top off, and he was fairly certain that she didn't have the physical strength in her arms to punch through the metal. He could hear what was left of the lining tearing at her attack upon it. Her hands hammered furiously upon the inside of the lid and she began to howl in terror and pain. It was music, sweet terrified music, to his ears. He smiled evilly to himself and settled himself comfortably to listen to the lovely strains of his mate's mind breaking. * She couldn't get out. Her knuckles were broken and split, pain lancing from them up her arm as she battered hopelessly at the metallic lid of the coffin. She was certain it was a coffin, certain now that she wasn't dreaming. She was dead again. Somehow, they'd buried her again. They'd brought her back again. Had she died after fighting Bringers with Angel? Poor Angel, he'd never forgive himself that he'd failed to save her. But her last memories weren't nearly as cloudy as they'd been after Willow resurrected her. She remembered fighting, remembered being wounded. Buffy forced herself to a state of almost calm. *Think rationally, Buffy.* But it was so hard. She could feel herself suffocating, feel the heaviness of earth and dark pushing at her just as it had when she'd been ripped from heaven, just as it did every night in her dreams until she had to completely exhaust herself in order to sleep at all. She was shaking like a leaf, every cell in her body screaming for air, for light, for freedom from this terrible tomb. She brought trembling hands up to her face, covering it and cowering there in the dark. Her skin shrank from the touch of the dank satin. Her nose burned with the stench of decay all around her. What if she was dead? Was she in hell? *Is this what hell is?* she wondered. *No. No. I'm dreaming. That's it. This is just more nightmare. Ok, Buffy, you're dreaming. That's it.* She forced her body to calm, closed her eyes and attempted to slow her frantic breathing. *I'm in a nightmare, just like the others. I just can't wake up right now. I'll be calm and wait, then I'll wake up. I'll… I'll count, that's it…1.2.3.4.5.6.6 feet under. Underground. Ground. Dirt. Worms. Maggots and worms and things crawling all over…NO! 6.7.8.9.10.11.12… * The screaming had stopped long before Angelus was ready for it. His mate was tougher than he'd anticipated. He'd been sure that entombing her in her worst nightmare would break her immediately. Of course, he'd been wrong. Buff was stronger than that…she'd proved that to him before. He wondered how long she'd manage to keep herself calm before the next round of hysteria. He stepped to the kitchen and availed himself of some bagged blood. He hated the stuff, it reminded him of soulboy, but he didn't want to miss a minute of the drama unfolding in his living room. * Buffy was on 843 and still hadn't managed to wake up. She was shaking uncontrollably now, and each tremor rubbed her oversensitive skin against the fetid satin of the coffin she kept trying to believe she wasn't entombed in. It wasn't working. Hysterical screams were rising from the pit of her empty stomach, now roiling with nausea and fear. *Please let it be a dream, please let it be a dream,* "Please let it be a dream," she said and opened her eyes to darkness. The screams ripped themselves out of her throat as if she was nothing but an empty vessel containing nothing but terror and she lost control, pounding and ripping at the lid above her face until she felt the warmth of her own blood dripping onto her face from her lacerated hands and torn fingernails. Still she ripped at the lid, tearing desperately at the unyielding metal and screaming, screaming, screaming until her voice gave out to hoarse whispers and then to nothing at all as she sobbed in utter exhaustion and despair. At last she passed out, even her Slayer's constitution too weak to sustain such fear and pain. * Angelus smirked at the crescendo of screams leaking from the coffin. Buff sure had some lungs, he'd grant her that. Eventually, though, her voice grew raspy and hoarse. It finally gave out and the desperate hammering on the lid was interspersed with periods of silence. Each pounding fit was interrupted by longer silences until at last there was no sound at all. He unlatched the coffin slowly and gazed warily within. She was everything he'd hoped for, dreamed of. Buffy's exhausted face was spattered with her own blood, her hands dripping with it, and her torso liberally covered. She was out cold, even her pulse slow in the aftermath of her terror-induced hysteria. Angelus lifted one slender arm out of the coffin and began licking the blood from her lacerated fingers, sucking each one into his mouth and cleaning it before moving his way down her wrist and arm. He grabbed the other arm and bathed it similarly, reveling in the unbelievable taste of Slayer's blood, *his* Slayer's blood, as it dissolved on his tongue. Sweeter than the sweetest port, tangier than the limes his merchant father had shipped back from Portugal, softer on the tongue than the finest chocolate, her blood was purity, power, perfection. He lifted her gently in his arms and climbed the stairs to his suite, where he carried her naked body to the bath. Holding her close in his arms, he ran a warm bath while he licked her blood-spattered face with long, sensual strokes of his tongue. His mouth moved downward to lap at the scar he'd placed on her neck so long ago, Marking her as his, and only his, for all time. He was tempted to sink fangs into her; reclaiming her as his own, but even her exhausted slumber would not withstand that. Instead, he stripped his clothes carelessly from his muscular body and climbed with his delectable prey into the warm water. Buffy didn't even stir as he bathed her, cleaning her blood-stained hair until it shone. Her body stank of fear and blood, and he bathed away even those delicious smells until she was clean. Angelus climbed lithely from the tub, his mate held gently in his powerful grasp as he dried her and bandaged her poor wounded hands. Then he took her to his bed and curled himself next to her, grinning as he awaited her next rising and his plans for her then. To be continued… |
