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Melpomene (melpomene@graffiti.net)
Dark Phoenix
He saw her come out of the anonymous doorway and followed her. Tasty little morsel, just right for a midnight snack. He grinned imagining a variety of creative things he could do with her. As she walked briskly, alone down the street he was struck by the notion that he knew her from somewhere, it was hard to imagine, seeing as all the people he knew were dead, seven years had gone by and he still hadn't formed any sort of relationships with anyone, not even other demons. He'd shut himself off after she died, there didn't seem to be much point after that. He shuddered as the image of a sharpened cross came to mind, and violently he pushed it away, like he always did. He looked at the girl a little closer, but he still couldn't pick her out of the past he'd tried to forget, then she turned her face toward him, looking down the road with Chartreuse green eyes, she pushed her hair back behind her ears and he knew. Looking on, disbelieving his eyes, all he could think was She's dead, she should be bloody fucking dead! He remembered gorging himself on her. An exquisite vintage, the remembered taste of a vibrant intelligence lighted on his tongue, but that was not the point, he clearly remembered draining away her life, and leaving her cold and rotting. This one was no ordinary kill, he'd taken so much pleasure from her death, so why was she still running around with blood in her veins. He hadn't recognized her at first because her dress sense had changed considerably since the last time he'd seen her. Gone were the shapeless, cutesy sweaters, overalls and printed skirts in pastels. What replaced them was tight, industrial plastic, totally seamless and totally silent. It was molded to her body in absolute obsidian. And instead of a fresh make up free face, her lips were painted a dark red tinged black suiting her hair which had been titian when he killed her but now was the color of wine. He followed her through another anonymous doorway that led into an equally anonymous rave but she didn't stop, he watched her weave through the crowd and, with a purposeful step entered through another door within the club this one leading into a long quiet hallway. He chased after her not wanting to loose his quarry and when the door shut on this place all sound stopped. She was gone; Why don't I hear her? He continued on in the eerie silence of the place, finally coming to the end of the hall to find a labyrinth of information. There was row upon row of books, discs of all sorts, tapes, film, and even scrolls. There wasn't a soul in sight, it puzzled him that she could just disappear on him, after all he was an experienced stalker and better than average lurker. He raised his eyebrow, helpless, it was a feeling that he hadn't had in a while, a feeling that he didn't like because of it's association with parts of his past, from which the girl came, that he would rather have buried. And this was what he was going to do, bury it once and for all. * * * Her heart raced, the amphetamines sped around inside her and frayed her nerves. Right now she wished that her heart wouldn't beat quite so loudly and quite so fast because she knew that her little mouse could hear it. She knew he was here because she could hear his heart beating wildly too, which was the advantage of living on sensory altering drugs. This game was getting rather tiresome and she just wanted it over with, so this was her opportunity to end it. She could feel him moving with her heightened awareness and she moved towards him, but then he dropped out of her awareness. The little shit, he's learnt how to do my trick. But then she got lucky and spied his blood-shot eyes peering for her between stacks of discs, so she too muted down her heart beat, she saw his eyes widen in fear and sneered to herself. It was a surprise attack, her favorite, she came up from behind and dispatched him swiftly. The hunt was over and she had her prize; his head. She couldn't help feeling triumphant, this one had been a reasonable challenge and she was impressed that he'd mastered the ability to mute his heartbeat, but in the end he died as easily as the rest of them. The blades under her nails retracted automatically, allowing her to free her already loosening her from the plastic scarf she tied into it and wrapped the head up in it. Then she raked deep red tresses away from her face and casually slung the head over her shoulder. Her viridian eyes still glittered from exerting herself as she silently made her way back out to street level. * * * He had watched her decapitate the stranger, and without so much as a grunt. Her nails slicing through flesh and bone with such ease that he gasped. And it was all done in total silence and with so much grace he had a hard on. He smiled, this was definitely not the Willow he knew, this was a pleasant change. His eyebrows rose once again as she wrapped the head up. Mementos? This new incarnation of Willow was turning out to be someone worth knowing. He revised killing her off just quite yet. He followed once more, this time it wasn't so hard because she wasn't being as careful, she allowed her heels to click as she walked. Eventually she went into a building, one that he wasn't even aware existed here, in Berlin, he liked to think he knew the place well, having spent several years here on and off. When she left the building the head was no where in sight, making him reassess his earlier judgement that the head was a souvenir. It annoyed him that the little witch was turning into such an intriguing mystery. She made her way to one of Berlin's most chic apartment buildings and greeted the doorman as if she was home. He on the other hand stayed outside to ponder the question of the amazing creature who had taken possession of Willow Rosenberg's body. * * * Lune sank into her marble bathtub, finally able to relax, not that she really could be relaxed, not while she lived on amphetamines anyway, she had taken to smoking hashish to quell the punk band in her chest, well, not quite quell but at least, it was easier to ignore on hash. It wasn't easy having to depend on the drugs she took. She weighed out the pros and cons of her new life, and still, she found there was no way out of it, the only way out being suicide, and she wasn't ready to give up living just yet. There were just as many advantages as disadvantages to being an elite assassin for an obscure group of witches. One of these advantages being that she got to live forever in an technologically advanced body, the disadvantage being that maintaining this body meant she had to keep taking the drugs for the rest of her unnatural life. Unconsciously she exposed and retracted the blades under her nails. The blades themselves had been enhanced by magic, she had been proud of herself when she'd done that on her own. They would cut through anything as if cutting through margarine, she alone was impervious to them, her pride and joy. This was another advantage, she could now pursue her interests in magic to the fullest degree. The Hecate prided themselves in being the most advanced group of magic users ever known. They had done something quite different with magic, they blended it with modern science to create something that surpassed both magic and science, a new form of alchemy. The goal not something as trite and fickle as gold but something more poetic; invulnerability and immortality. It was this alchemy that had given her a chance to live again, the Hecate had taken her out of Azrael's grasp with it, she literally rose from the dead and so in return she was to be their equivalent of the arch angel Uriel. Reborn into this life, she had no choice but to obey or die again, sometimes she wished they hadn't chosen her, but most of the time she felt pride. The life she now lead also let her suppress a part of herself that she wanted to forget, so far she was having success, Willow rarely surfaced anymore, only occasionally when Lune was alone in the dark with only her thoughts of the past to keep her company. These were thoughts she wanted to banish and so she delved into being a ruthless killer to better ignore the little girl inside, just as she took hashish to better ignore the amphetamines' affect on her heart rate. But after a kill, Lune would force herself to reflect on her past, as a sort of homage to those she killed, letting herself suffer a little discomfort for them. Her past; after seven years she still remembered each and every face with clarity, no matter how much she tried to blur them. They were all faces of the dead, lifeless like broken dolls only these faces were twisted in pain and dementia. Her eyes threatened to fill with tears as the memories overwhelmed her. * * * As Buffy crumpled to the ground, lifeless, Angel's roar shook the ground. He let the demon take over for him that time, and didn't stop it until he'd turned Faith to an unrecognizable red pulp, grinding her into the ground as if trying to obliterate every last trace of her, along with the pain that she'd caused him when she killed Buffy. He finally looked up from his handy work with a human face to see the shock on Willow's face, still there after having watched him rip Faith apart. Angel had looked down at his bloodied hands and seen strips of Faith's flesh still clinging to his clawed fingers. He wiped his hands carelessly on his shirt, not even thinking about how he was wiping what used to be a person on to it. His anger was so cold that it froze Willow to the core and it was then that she knew that Angel's hold on sanity had evaporated, he felt no remorse. He grabbed her, his hands were covered in so much gore that she heard the squelching as his hand closed on her forearm. For a split second Willow was afraid that Angel didn't recognize her and would start literally tearing into her too but the hand just tightened painfully on her. "The Mayor's dead but there's still Drusilla to deal with," he said, his voice guttural, like an animal trying to shape human words without having much success. "Wh-what does she have to do with this?" "She was with the Mayor tonight, they were being intimate, VERY intimate. They were celebrating and I heard Faith and Buffy's names mentioned, apparently they wanted the Slayer out of the way before the Ascension. He thanked her, and now I know why." His voice had turned very cold and for the first time since he'd had his soul restored, Willow was afraid of him. "We are going to make her suffer for what she's done. Willow, I want you to give Drusilla her soul back." The implications were huge and both Angel and Willow knew it. Drusilla was insane, to give her soul back to her would drive her over the edge she teetered on. Willow was disgusted and Angel grinned in acknowledgement of that disgust. Seeing that grin, she dared not say no. Willow cursed Drusilla, even though she knew what it would do to her to have the soul she'd forgotten back., she felt a pang of guilt at doing it but seeing Angel's own dementia growing, she pushed this guilt away. Willow could feel that the curse was a success and nodded in confirmation to Angel, who'd been eagerly watching the whole process, he visibly sagged, but slunk away before anything could be said. Days later Giles found a pile of ashes in the library and a letter on the table. When opened all it said was: She's dead. Angel. It confirmed Willow's suspicions about Angel's sanity, he lost it when he lost Buffy. So they grieved over the loss of another friend, hoping Angel and Buffy were both in better places. But that wasn't the end, far from the end. Weeks later Willow found herself, along with the rest of her friends, in something which resembled a dungeon. She should have known that Spike would retaliate for what she'd done to Drusilla but grieving had preoccupied them enough for him to have easily abducted all of them. The next few months were a blur, but there were snippets here and there that couldn't be forgotten. Giles had moaned Jenny's name, it was horrendous because the moans were both from pain and pleasure. She could hear Spike's voice responding to this torture, "Agony and Ecstasy are used to torture the hell bound so you better get used to it." His laughter was the worst part of the whole exchange. Xander's pain could only be expressed silently. He didn't make a sound. Spike had attached a contraption to Willow's eyes "I'd like you to viddy this, love, it's real horrorshow." And she watched as Spike cut out Xander's tongue and destroyed his voice box, making none too careful incisions, due to Xander's mute thrashing, Willow's eye's had teared by then and she blessed those tears because they veiled the scene before her. "Finally, a release from having to listen to you whine and carry on." The only noise Xander could make in response was a horrid gulping. She watched him, wracked with silent sobbing, until one day there was nothing left on his face, just blankness and perpetually streaming tears. Cordelia was disfigured, her face taken away from her. No one would have been able to recognize her, her hair was shorn off like some macabre doll, "Murder Mayhem Barbie," Spike had called her, "Dru would have loved to play with you, but she can't now can she?" he looked pointedly at Willow. Cordelia hadn't lived through her transformation, so he cut off her arms and legs and head, laying them all in a pile in the cell, left so that the rest of them could watch and smell it while she rot away. But when Willow saw what he did to Oz she screamed and howled for him, as if mentally, she'd turned into the werewolf he once was. Spike had waited until a full moon, so that Oz would turn into the wolf he couldn't help becoming and had stripped off his fur, skinning him alive, literally. Afterward, Spike never wore his leather duster, instead he wore a thick fur coat. He'd smile knowingly at Willow and it would be enough to make her break down and cry. "He's very warm, you were lucky." Each of her friends died, first Cordelia, then Giles followed by Oz and finally, Xander managed to cry himself to death, leaving Willow alone with Spike. "Now, the créme de la créme, my sweet." He said it with a theatrical flourish of his hand. "I thought your little boytoy would never die. I've saved you for the very last for a reason, I wanted you to watch as they all died, just as I had to be there when my Dru tortured herself to death. Who would have thought that it'd be you, the lamest little duck of them all, who would be her undoing. You know, at first I thought it couldn't possibly be true, no, not the innocent little virgin, it couldn't be, but Angel confirmed it." Willow's eyes shot up to meet his. "Yes, Angel, you didn't know did you. It wasn't hard, he wanted to tell me how he'd hurt Dru, he thought it was finally over, he was a babbling loony by then so it was over for him, but not for you, sweet pea, you've got a way to go yet. We are all alone now, no more pesky distractions, love." By then he was whispering in her ear as she tried her hardest not to whimper. The first thing he did was to bring her the heads of her parents. He played out a grotesque puppet show with them, describing their gruesome deaths. All she could do was wrench out dry wretches for her parents. Even while she slept she didn't have any respite, her nightmares making her relive the deaths of her friends. But the worst was when time and time again she would wake up to feel him pinning her down, his body pushing her into the hard cement floor. He delighted in caressing her with a large disturbingly human looking paw. He never failed to wear the coat. "Not the innocent little virgin anymore. Close your eyes, maybe if you tried hard enough you can pretend that you lost it to your wolfboy." The first few times she struggled, but after that all she could do was lie quietly, having no energy left. She died with him buried inside of her, Spike simultaneously releasing semen into her as he drained away the last of her blood. * * * Lune went through each death in her head, the familiar smell of damp, sweaty fur clung to her like a ghost. She shook her head only then realizing that hot tears trickled from her eyes. Roughly she swiped at them, in so doing, sweeping away the memories she tortured herself with. She was a new person now, someone who could never be hurt like that again. She composed herself, looking forward to the next hunt.
- fin -
Part 2: Prometheus This story is not to be archived without permission. |