Special thanks to Alicia for the beta!!

                I walked home that night, well not to my home since I don't have one right now, to retrieve a few things. I took a few of my CDs - autographed ones from the Sex Pistols concert and my zippo, a change of clothes and then I was off. I left.

                I knew I couldn't stay there. I couldn't stay and see his face when he told me I was a murderer. I couldn't stand to be there and have him hate me. I… couldn't have it end like Miami…

******

                I'd never felt sweat dripping down my back quite as much as that summer of 1922. It was the hottest week of record, I believe. For one who stays room temperature, things like sweat are never a hindrance but when the temperature reaches one hundred and thirteen, room temperature is a hazard.

                Everyone was feeling the heat, including myself. It was miserable and made you want to take your clothes off in the middle of the street, thinking you'd find relief, but at the least the clothes absorbed the sweat off your back. Even the carriage ride, which usually provided some form of breeze, made my brow drip on my new suit and left stains in the armpits. I found myself killing several gents on the way for a new suit that would go to waste in a matter of hours.

                Still... the appeal of Miami drew me there. Not the women though. No, the women chose a much cooler climate when Dru got a vision of lava and announced she would not go. The decision pained me little as I'd wanted to strike out on my own a bit more - see what trouble I could cook up without Darla's constant demand for order and properness or Drusilla's mindless prattle.

                I chose Miami sheerly for the new thrill. Gambling was legalized, and rumor had it that Miami was one of the only cities in the States, at that time, which was lax on Prohibition. Since traveling to the States a few years prior, I found myself desperately longing for Europe - fine scotch followed by Brandy and blood at the tables was always marvelous when Darla allowed us the opportunity to visit Monte Carlo.

                As soon as I stepped off the carriage, I could feel the stifling heat. I could almost see each drop of humidity in the night air, feel it landing on my skin as I walked, looking for the cheap quarters, where the laborers and blacks lived. Cheapside had always provided a more colorful evening than the posh places Darla preferred to frequent.

                Sure enough, once I found it, I had a gay time of bar fights and blood and beer and fine rum, brought in from the Caribbean islands. Good music and whores were always available at a local pub or brothel and entry was easy with money stolen from corpses.

                Three days I stayed, dealing with the heat, sleeping on hunks of ice purchased with my blood money. Three days of blood and drink and scandalous sex that made the girls cry with pleasure before I drank it from them. Three whole days of lounging around during the day and playing at night. Three days.

                The third night ended the same. I crept back to the bar where I'd taken residence - rented a room for a few days under the name Moseley, whom had previously held the reservation. I snuck in just as day-light broke and called the barkeep to send up a maiden with more ice. The price of ice that week had doubled, but Jacob Moseley was kind enough to pay for my indulgence, nice chap that he was.

                Ice placed in the tub, I curled up with it and slept off the night's debaucheries - two whores, three bar patrons and a puppy that was being obnoxious in the alley where I fed off the first whore.

                Three days spent living the single life of a vampire, just forty years old.

                The forth night began much the same as the others. I dressed myself in the cleaned and freshly pressed suit of one of the previous three bar patrons I'd finished off the previous evening. Then I struck out, seeking that night, good company and good drinks and a new source of funds. I found the funds when I learned of the location of the safe in a local business, from a woman wishing to save her life. A snap of her neck and a little breaking and entering earned me a few hundred dollars, enough to pay for the room a few more nights and keep me in Brandy and ice.

                It was when I was walking down an alley, having pocketed the money, that things changed.

                Through all the haziness and humidity, and blood, and whores, and ice baths… I'd felt something- *some*thing. Something was coming. I'd felt change - premonition; perhaps Dru's gift had somehow rubbed off on me through the sex and blood games we played. Regardless of how, I'd  felt something on its way the entire carriage ride down.

                It was as if the sky, in addition to being so filled with invisible dew, was also filled with magic or… blackness? Despair? Sadness or pain? I'm not sure how to describe it, but for me, it was deep in my gut, in the very depths of me, in every drop of blood I consumed. And as I walked down that alley, I realized what it truly was.

                It was Sire.

                I felt it clear as day- *Sire*. I stood in the alley and let it fill me in a way it never had before - the overwhelming, deep-rooted feeling of Sire. I'd never noticed its presence or its lac k- never in the previous forty years. When I arose and looked into his eyes, I'd understood everything we were. When I drank of his blood the first time, I'd understood everything *he* was - every power he had over m e- every ounce of control over everything I was. I'd understood that he created me - that he chose me- that he kept me. I accepted that power because there was no other choice. I accepted Sire as my lord and savior and forgot every Christian teaching and verse ever muttered.

                When Angelus left, when I had last seen him in China, I had not understood. I found Darla in the house tearing it apart - shredding the bed with a knife, shrieking and screaming and crying, hysterical. I had not understood when he'd left four years previous. But I finally knew, that night in China, when I went searching for him, when I found him dining on cats, that he was not truly my sire. I understood that nigh,t that he was truly gone because, for once - for the first time - I didn't feel that overwhelming and absolute power looming over me.

                But in Miami, standing in the suffocating heat of the alley, I felt something. I didn't feel that power, but I felt something else - the blood in my veins calling to me 'Sire'. My sire was close and I longed to see him, touch him, open his veins, have him open mine. I went crazy that night searching. I felt him deep in my being - felt him close, in the city perhaps. I tore it apart, snapping necks of useless people who held no information. I spent the entire night searching, asking, finding the demon bars and asking any demon for information on Angelus of Aurelius. No one knew of him, or knew of his whereabouts. But *I* knew.

                I spent the fifth day in my tub of ice, concentrating on that feeling inside me. Concentrating on that feeling of Sire that embedded itself in my core. I nearly went mad wondering if I'd just had something that was making me hallucinate the entire event. But as long as that deep feeling of sorrow and despair and utter hopelessness was hanging on the air like the dew, I knew I wasn't wrong. Sire - it was there. *He* was there. And as I was pondering where I might find him, it dawned on me to look where I'd last seen him.

                That night, I hit the streets - looking in shacks and barns and vacant buildings, abandoned houses or ones in mid construction. I looked all over, leaving splatterings of blood behind - little drops, so if he *was* staying in one of those places, he might smell me - pick up on my scent, recognize it and know I was looking for him.

                That night, I was famished by the time I headed back to my room and I took with me two whores looking for one last score for the night. I took them back, and took my pleasure of them both, before finishing them off and passing out on the bed beside them for my day's slumber.

                It was that night, a couple of hours after sunset, that the door opened and I sat up quickly, worried about my stay ending if the bar owner found me with two corpses. I sat up and my eyes adjusted in a second to the sight of- "Sire."

                "William…" he said softly. "You… I… felt you here - wasn't sure you'd want to see me, but when I- I got your message."

                "Sire," I said, jumping off the bed and rushing to him, but something was different. It was *so* different - the look of him, the scent - putrid and rotten. It was in that second that I realized the despair and hopelessness - the deep sadness was not a premonition - it was sire.

                "William…" he whispered and looked into my eyes and I'd never seen such a thing in his eyes. Pain. Even when Darla had him strung up and beaten so badly, blood oozing from his skin, his eyes had held pleasure or disgust - never pain. Never anything resembling pain;I'd doubted my sire could feel it at all.

                I pulled him inside quickly, and shut the door, and he froze in front of the bed. "*Will*… I… can't…"

                Darla, shortly after he'd left us in China, had said the word 'soul' to me in her rantings and tears. She cursed the soul and the gypsies that had stolen us of our kindred. But I hadn't understood what it meant - until I saw the fear in his eyes as he stared at my two companions of that evening.

                "I'll get rid of them," I said quickly. "Never you mind them, Angelus."

                "*Liam*," he corrected.

                "Liam- you… reek, Sire. You need clean clothes, a hair cut… I'll- I've got money. Strip your clothes and I'll send them with the maid for washing."

                "William, Childe, you don't understand what-"

                "*Sire*," I stopped him. "Let me… *let* me." Let me take care of him, is what I wished to say, but I didn't. "Just let me. Okay?"

                And I knew he would - the desperation and loneliness I felt inside, saw in his eyes - allowed me to strip his clothes. "Into the tub," I told him. "Start filling the tub. I'm going to fetch more soap and a set of shears."

                He nodded and walked into the bathroom. I took a few minutes to run his clothes downstairs and paid extra for them to be washed and for extra soap and shampoo. Then I scoped out the exits of the building and made quick work of disposing of the bodies in an abandoned building, marked for demolition.

                I raced back and found him in the tub and looked - my sire. He was still my sire - thin but my sire. The same delicious cock that could make me scream and beg. The same lips that would curl up as I begged for another lashing from him, or for a scrap of attention. The same hands that could make me die, or bleed, or cry, or both - all three.

                "Still a deviant, I see?" he asked as he looked up at me.

                "For you? Always," I said. "Same body that created me, saved me."

                "Killed you," he corrected. "Killed so many - hardly words for it all."

                "Angelus- *Liam*… you mustn't… let's get you washed, okay? Paid a bit extra for shampoo, but it's necessary, innit?"

                It took three fillings of the tub and half the bottle of shampoo and half a bar of soap until the scent of vermin and decay abated. But despite the stench, as my hands moved in his hair, over his torso and arms, I knew it was Sire. My sire.

                "Are you and Drusilla still traveling with Darla?"

                "Yes," I answered, wrapping a clean towel around him. "Came down here by myself for the Scotch and gambling. The north isn't as much fun - what with the liquor gone. Girls were headed to New York, I believe. Something about shopping for new dresses and petticoats I suspect. Though it's so hot, I wonder if I couldn't have found a brothel in New York that overlooked the law."

                "It's Hell here," he said as I lead him out to the bed that now had clean sheets, courtesy of the extra tip I gave the maid. I locked the door so she couldn't come back in, since I doubted the crowd downstairs would appreciate a couple of poufters nesting above them. "It's Hell."

                He stood at the bed, staring at it.

                "You need some rest," I tell him. "You need… to rest."

                "I've rested," he told me. "I've rested, I've bled, I've screamed, I've cried, I've stabbed my heart and still nothing. It's *stuck* inside me, keeping me… in Hell. And I deserve I t- for what I did… what I've done. Wil l- you can't kill. You shouldn't kill - mustn't do it. Do you understand? You must fight the urge. You *have* to - for me to even… for me to be here… you must not kill. Do you understand? DO YOU?!" he was shaking me then, and growling, eyes yellow, looking at me. "DO YOU UNDERSTAND, BOY?!"

                "Yes, Sire," I said. I had no idea what to do or what to say… how to help - how to feed him if he didn't want me killing. "Yes. I understand."

                "Promise me, Will. *Promise*. I can only stay if you promise. No killing."

                "I promise," I replied and he stared into my eyes, deeply. I'd never felt his gaze so penetrating, so deep, so… soulful.

                "Do ye?" he asked, stroking my cheek softly and I nearly melted - nearly combusted from the heat in the air and the heat that flushed my skin and the burning desire for Sire.

                "Yes," I whispered and leaned forward a bit. He stepped away. "Sire…" I requested softly. "Sire, please."

                "Not your sire, William," he told me, as he touched my cheek again. "Not your sire."

                "You'll always be," I informed him. Even if I felt despair, and pain, and agony, and torment inside - I still felt Sire. *My* sire - Angelus.

                "Oh, sweet William…" he said, tilting his head, and I leaned forward again and my lips touched his - brushed them - he still felt like my sire. He still pressed his mouth to mine, like my sire and still enveloped me in a heated kiss that saw us toppling onto the bed, and him pulling at my clothes and crying the whole time as he made love to me. I'd never heard my sire cry, never tasted his salty tears falling on my face, never felt him so tender and powerless. It was a surreal experience - watching him, looking in his eyes as they cried and listening as he whispered names of people I knew not, whispered words in Gaelic that I'd never heard.

                When he was done - when we were done - he lay beside me and fell asleep.

                For two days he slept, muttering words in his sleep, pausing sleep every now and then to kiss me and push himself inside me, and cry and weep as he did. I had no idea what to do. I wanted to slap him, and tell him to snap out of it, but I knew it wouldn't work. I felt his despair, and emptiness, and longing, and regret so deeply in my being and it enraged me - it choked me. It tormented me, and burned me in ways I couldn't imagine. It taunted me, as did the promise. By the third day, I was famished. I had no idea what I'd do for food, and had no intention of eating cats or vermin, or whatever he'd been consuming.

                By the third day, I was feeling trapped, and caught and blinded by his pain, and angry that he had it at all - infuriated that he wasn't my sire, angry that he wasn't hunting, incensed that he was using my body for his solace and pleasure and I hated myself because I still wanted him simply because he was my sire.

                On that night, I rose and dressed - he was still sleeping. I'd steal away for a while and get a belly full of blood and a cup of Brandy, and some smokes and a new suit for him - as the one that had been washed was still full of stains and old dirt, unsuitable. I headed out, finding a whore relatively quickly, for a hard fuck and suck. I needed to work out a little frustration, and she was a feisty one who liked it when I slammed her face against the wall as I fucked her.

                When she was drained, I carried her carefully back to the building that was starting to smell. I'd have to convince him to get out of town, or find a newer place on the other side of town. I needed to be gone before the authorities found my feast of corpses and started their manhunt. I dropped her in the pile of perhaps fifteen or twenty and set off to find a cup of Brandy and a tailor's shop I could rob.

                I was just outside the building when I was thrown against it - his eyes yellow and gleaming. "YOU PROMISED!" he screamed and punched me. "YOU PROMISED! NO KILLING!" he shouted and kicked me hard back through the door in the building. "And THIS is how you keep that promise?! THIS?! YOU MOSNTER!"

                "Not tonight," I whispered as he held my neck so hard I could barely get the words out.

                "LOOK AT THIS!" he yelled and punched me with one hand as the other held my neck. He threw me to the ground and landed on his knees on my back, knocking the sense out of me. I'd never felt *that* from him before - pain like that. "LOOK AT IT!" he growled and twisted my head up to force me to look at the pile of rotting flesh. Then he punched the back of my head and I nearly passed out until I felt the knife sear through my back. "YOU ARE DEATH!" he screamed and I felt another stab in the shoulder.

                "Sire," I whispered. "Please…"

                "I. AM. NOT. YOUR. SIRE!!" he roared, close to my ear and I could actually feel venom in each of those words. "NOT your filthy sire, Boy. NOT. Not a monster like you, William. Not filthy like you, not hardly. LOOK!" he said and shoved my face in the dirt. "You are dirt, William. Filth, slime. You should be punished, spend an eternity being punished." Another punch in the head as I felt him yanking my pants down as he continued to scream and growl and stab my arms and hands. "You KILLED. You MAIMED. RAPED! MURDERER!" he railed as he slammed his cock into me and I howled from the pain - all the pain - my blood, the scent of decay… choked on my own vomit and his misery that filled my core - made me try to fight, to make him stop, made me beg.

                "You are FILTHY! Damned. Monster. Horrid, ugly, dirty, thing. Don't deserve to be alive. Should be in that pile. LOOK! UGLY DEMON! Look at what you did! What you do! What you are - you're NOTHING! *NOTHING*!" he screamed and hit me, stabbed me, *raped* me.

                "How could I *ever* touch something as heinous and hideous as *YOU*?!" he said and kicked my head and I blacked out.

                When I woke a few days later, I was back in my room. The clean suit was gone and there was a glass of water and aspirin on the bedtable. I no longer felt sire inside.

There *was* a piece of parchment there - a note perhaps? I picked it up but all it said was: Will, I-

I traveled that night, painfully, biting my tongue as I winced from the pain of the multiple stab wounds and torn insides. But I needed to be far away when the bodies were discovered. Once in Georgia, I found a motel and rented a room for a week while I recovered. I returned to Darla and she was furious when she sensed I'd been near him, let him touch me when she'd forbade contact with him. That's when Drusilla and I parted ways from her and struck out on our own - newly reborn. Spike and Dru.

                And that was it. That was the last I saw of my sire until I landed in Sunnyhell and found him playing lapdog to a *slayer* of all people. And when I saw him, even when he came back desouled… we never spoke of Miami. We never even broached the subject of Florida. Souled and unsouled - he was shamed either way with that experience I suppose. And I was hurt and confused and left empty inside.

                "And that's why you're here," she states, stroking the cat sitting in her lap attentively, as if it understands somehow why I'm here.

                "Yes, that's why I'm here," I answer. "I'm here because… because I'm a monster - that's what he sees when he looks at me. That's all I am right now, but I understand the events of that week a bit more clearly now. And I understand what I need to know, what I need to be… to be Angel's. To be able to make this work, finally - once and for all."

                "And you're sure?"

                "I don't know," I say. "But it's the only thing I've got right now. It's the only thing I can think of that might help - that might make this work."

                "And if it doesn't?"

                "Then life isn't worth living and he can be my creator *and* my destroyer. I… wouldn't have come if I wasn't sure this is what has to be done."

                I've never been sure of anything in my life except blood and Angel. I want to be with Angel and this might be the only way. This might be the ONLY way to truly be with him - to make forever worth living.

                "Okay," she nods and approaches me, reaches out and touches my forehead. I hear her chanting words in Latin or whatall and then it's like FIRE shooting through my veins, hot, blinding fire - brightness that I can't even IMAGINE filling me - warmth and fire - lava pouring into me and I fall to the ground, blinded by the light.

                "It is done," I hear her say, though I don't see her. And then I'm alone.

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