Author: Elsa Frohman Feedback:elsa@frohman.net Rating: PG-13 Spoilers: Through Sleeper Summary: Just who is the demon, and how did he coexist with
a Victorian poet for 122 years?
In the beginning, there was hunger. That's what we are, you know --
hunger, burning, gnawing, all-consuming. Want. No personality, no
direction, no awareness.
Then you get pulled out of the ether and jammed into a dying human.
That's where awareness begins.
The first thing most vampires see is the inside of a coffin. The
first thing we remember is the dying struggle for breath of the
human host. And the first thing we consume is the host's mind
-- the memories, emotions and aspirations of a life terminated.
Then comes the first battle, the battle to be born from the earth.
The compulsion to get out is overwhelming. Without understanding
what he is clawing his way towards, the vampire breaks out of the
coffin and digs his way up to the world -- trading the black
confinement of freshly-dug earth for the pale light of a moonlit
night. Eyes more sensitive than the human ever knew open in a field
of headstones. He looks around and knows that he is where he
belongs -- amongst the dead. And he stands up, ready to be their
champion and increase their numbers. He is hungry, powerful,
perceptive.
On that night, the first face I saw was the one that would define
my life and fill my heart for the next century and then some. She
stood over my grave, my princess wrapped in a regal cloak of
midnight. She was beautiful. Her glossy, raven locks were loose
around her pale face. Her dark eyes burned. And her lips were
crimson with the blood of her most recent victim, whom she held at
arm's length by the scruff of his neck. The young man dangled limp
from her hand, beyond struggling. She hardly seemed to remember
that he was there. Her eyes were on me, seeing my birth and smiling
the smile of a mother pleased with her child.
And I knew that she loved me. She had called me into being to be
her child and consort. My heart opened to her. I would exist for
her. I would serve her and adore her. I belonged to her as
completely as one being may give itself to another.
I would be Odesius to her Penelope, Lancelot to her Guenevere,
Tristan to her Isolde.
And that's bleedin' odd, innit?
I mean, vampires aren't supposed to imagine themselves heroes, are
they? I put it down to the slurry of fevered dreams I'd just
consumed from the host. William, he called himself in typically
dull fashion, but he saw the world through a scrim of romantic
imaginings. He was a bloody dreamer, wasn't he? And by infusion, I
caught a bit of it. By the time I'd sorted out that I was a demon,
not a classical hero, the die was cast. My course was set.
Perhaps if my sire had been a typical vampire, she'd have slapped
the silliness out of me before I had my first drink of human blood.
But she wasn't typical; my dark princess was loonier than Canadian
currency. She called me her brave knight. And I couldn't think of
anything I'd rather be. I was her protector, her champion, her
lover and her caretaker.
We lived together in a half-fantasy world for more than a century.
Everything was ours -- after we got out from under the thumb of
that bleedin' wanker, Angelus, that is. That happened soon enough.
Gypsies fixed him right good.
Angelus was experienced, crafty and cruel. He made my first years
as a vampire hell. Well, I suppose it's supposed to be hell,
actually, but he made it worse than that. He considered my Drusilla
his. And he never let me forget it. I fought him, but I couldn't
win. He had too much practice. I'd probably have been dust not long
after I emerged from the grave, but for Drusilla. She'd made me and
she wanted me, so she protected me. Angelus wouldn't destroy her
because she was his, so I survived.
He found me useful, though. I relieved him of the responsibility of
feeding her when she was too out of it to hunt for herself. And I
kept her quiet when she had her howling nights. I held her through
the times when she screamed about the things that were coming to
tear her to pieces. And I followed her when she wandered off into
the night to find dark angels and mystic jewels.
When she first took me back to the lair, Angelus looked me up and
down and sneered. "Bit of a poof, ain't he?" he said.
Darla came over and did her own examination. "A fair face, though,"
she said with that little laugh of hers that speaks of anything but
humour. "How long to you think he'll last? I think we'll see his
dust before the week is out."
"No Grandmother, he'll be standing when your dust is scattered and
scattered again," Drusilla said, her jaw set and eyes determined.
"And he'll be better than Daddy. He'll take what Angelus runs from
and make it his own."
Angelus and Darla laughed long and hard over that. But I showed
them I was anything but a ponce.
Those first years, I killed with ferocity and abandon. Enough so,
that Angelus was threatened. He tried to take the edge off my blood
lust with many a beating. For all his cruelty, he was a careful
bastard. Didn't like to take chances. He was all about strategy and
planning and laying low between kills.
Not me. I only had to see the way my sweet princess' eyes lit up
when I tore the head off a victim with my bare hands to know I had
a calling. The things I did, the terror I inspired -- few vampires
have equaled them. And borrowing from William's store of classic
tales, I came to see myself as Loki, the god of mischief and
misbehavior. And didn't that annoy William?
My early excesses ensured that I didn't have to deal with William
very much. My killing rampages repulsed him. He withdrew to become
less than a whisper in my mind. I had his memories and his
knowledge, but none of his gentle impulses.
But he wasn't gone. I wasn't that lucky. As a man, he'd dreamed of
traveling the world, and now that I was actually doing it, he kept
peeking out to see the things he'd imagined in his mortal days. He
couldn't completely disengage because so much that was going on in
the world interested him.
That's where one of my oddest habits -- as a vampire -- came from.
William, though he would never have admitted it, was a bit of a
sensualist. And when I wanted to consult him -- as happened now and
then, because after Angelus left us I sometimes needed help with
strategy -- all I had to do to wake him up and get him to take
interest was to find something interesting to eat. Not the way
vampires eat, the way humans eat. He developed a passion for lo
mein when we were in China, and even sampled the barbecued dog.
Wherever we went, William wanted to taste the local cuisine. If
he'd lived, he'd have aged into one of those grossly fat old
bastards, the way he liked to eat.
I put up with it, and over the years, I came to enjoy William's
snacks. He couldn't say the same about my sustenance. He never got
used to the taste of blood.
I won't go into the specifics of the next hundred years. I'm not
patient enough to reminisce for that long. We'll skip forward to
the next turning point in my unlife -- my arrival on the hellmouth.
After more than 90 years of absence, Angelus reappeared then -- a
strangely appropriate person to find at the gates of Hell, even if
he did have a soul. And before I spied Angelus, I got my first look
at the creature who was to destroy me -- the Slayer. Not just any
Slayer, this was *the* Slayer, Buffy Summers.
She was dancing, her arms raised above her head, her tits bouncing
inside her flimsy halter top, her golden hair flying around her
face. She didn't see me, I lurked in the shadows watching her lithe
figure wriggle and gyrate. Killing her wasn't the first thing I
wanted to do to her at that moment. But my Drusilla was waiting for
me, weak and ill, and I put aside all thoughts but the coming
combat.
I won't go into my skirmishes with the Slayer that fall and winter.
We fought and fought again. And her battle against me and my dark
princess led to the events that culminated with Angelus losing his
soul and returning to us. Bugger.
It still makes me angry. Even though it's all over between Dru and
me now. If she came back now, I'd turn away from her. But I still
can't think about him touching her, with me right there, unable to
do anything to stop it, without the rage rising in and sticking in
my craw. You know what my curse is? It's not being damned for all
eternity. It's that Angelus has first claim on any woman I love.
And because of that, I did that which sealed my fate. I went to the
Slayer and offered to help her defeat Angelus. I changed sides. I
thought it was a temporary thing, but sometimes you don't know the
turning points until they're behind you. The big change for me
didn't come when the government weasels shoved this chip in my head
or when I went to win my soul back. No, my fate was sealed when I
went to the Slayer and said I'd help her. Took a long time to
figure it out, but there it is.
After that, it was over with Dru. Took me a while to know it, but
it was. Then came the chip, and that knocked me for a loop. I might
not have survived that, but that I had William backin' me up. Took
a while to adjust, but he and me, we came to an agreement, and he
helped me through. Had to start putting things in my blood, though.
He couldn't bear the taste of it, so I'd put in Wheatabix and burba
weed to mask the flavor and keep him from withdrawing in disgust.
And just when I was getting the hang of not killing humans, fate
rose up and bit me again. I suppose I'd loved her for a long time
before I recognized it -- maybe from that moment when I saw her
dancing at the Bronze. She was light and life and passion. I was
drawn to her as a moth to a flame. Of course, William objects
strenuously to that simile. Says it's a cliché. Well, I don't care,
that's what it was.
It's brutally appropriate that she was the instrument of my
destruction. Slayers destroy vampires, that's what they're about.
Ironic that she killed me with her burning eyes and her slender
thighs and her warm, tight cunt -- not a wooden stake.
I thought I was possessing her, but I wasn't, she had taken me
instead. William watched it all with sympathetic detachment. I made
love to her with every thing I had. I lost myself in her body. I
felt her respond to my touches. I felt the way she craved my flesh,
hungered for my cock inside her. I reveled in my ability to make
her feel -- the one thing no one else could do.
But in the end, it was a chimera. She desired my body for a while.
She desired me not at all.
When she cast me off, I had nothing left. I was nothing. Everything
I had once been was gone. I wasn't Loki anymore. I was a pathetic,
useless shadow of who I thought I ought to be.
And when I snapped, when I ... hurt her, even William couldn't help
me anymore. I called out to him and got no answer. He couldn't make
me what he had been but was no longer. I was alone, truly alone for
the first time in 122 years.
In that pit of despair, I resolved to do what no vampire in his
right mind would ever do. Bloody hell, no vampire *out of his mind*
would do what I did.
I'd seen what happened to Angelus. I knew it was a curse. I knew it
wasn't going to be comfortable. But I didn't know how bad it was
going to be. How could I? I did all those killings because I didn't
know what it was doing to me. I couldn't know, could I? I sought a
soul, and I won it. Ironic, Angelus had it forced on him. I reached
out and took it willingly. Maybe that's what Dru was talking about
all those years ago.
When it was done, I couldn't go on. I called forth William and he
took the reigns -- and not graciously, I might add. That was one
pissed off poet who stepped up and took over. But he couldn't stand
up under the weight of the stains I'd put on that soul any more
than I could. You'd think he'd understand that it wasn't him who
did all those things. But he didn't see it that way. It was his
hands, and his fangs, and he wouldn't and couldn't shrug off the
guilt.
That's how the other got to us -- through the guilt. It left a door
open, and he came in and twisted us into knots. He made us see
things. Made us do things. He taunted us and cajoled us, punished
us when we tried to fight back, rewarded us when we obeyed. He
carved out slices of our memory and put in things that never
happened. He made a right mess of us.
But I think he made a mistake. Yes I do. He let William see the
Slayer. Not his false Slayer. No, he let him see the real one, in
all her radiant glory. He saw her, and finally understood what
happened to me. My dear, ineffectual alter-ego finally saw the
warrior queen he dreamed of so many years ago. He came alive a
little bit, and he grew a backbone. He's going to fight now.
Not that I think he's much of a warrior. He's not me. He's all the
bits of me that think instead of acting. He can't do it on his own.
But he doesn't have to. The Slayer saw him -- saw him as she was
never able to see me. I guess I won't be bitter about that -- makes
sense, don't it? I'm a vampire. How could she love me?
And I'm here for him too. We're on the same side now, fighting for
the same thing.
I'm afraid now. Can't help it. What we're fighting is stronger than
anything we've ever faced. It's stronger than anything the Slayer
has ever faced. But she's not facing it alone either. We'll be
there watching her back.
If we can't do it, nothing can.
We've got to sing for ourselves now. Can't let the other tune get
through. We'll sing my song now. I'm teachin' him the words.
Last night a little dancer came dancin' to my door
Last night a little angel Came pumpin' cross my floor
She said "Come on baby I got a license for love
And if it expires pray help from above"
In the midnight hour she cried- "more, more, more"
With a rebel yell she cried- "more, more, more"
In the midnight hour babe- "more, more, more"
With a rebel yell- "more, more, more"
More, more, more.
She don't like slavery, she won't sit and beg
But when I'm tired and lonely she sees me to bed
What set you free and brought you to be me babe
What set you free I need you here by me
Let the bastard try to get through *that* with his wimpy folk song.