It’s cold, and I’m not sure exactly where I am. The floor feels like stone and there is a smell of old beer and coal, so it is probably a cellar, but I can’t see properly to be sure. It could be just a store-room. The house is large and we haven’t been living here long, there are plenty of places where I’ve never been yet. Not that it matters much either way. But it would be nice to know where I am.
I’m lying on the floor. I’m certain of that much, even if I have no idea of how I got there, or when. It could be minutes or it could be days that I’ve been lying here, with the gritty, cold slabs hard against the thin skin of my cheek and dirt under my fingernails where I have dug them into the cracks in the paving. Something has got driven right up, under one of my nails, and it is throbbing like hell. Why is it that the smallest things always seem to hurt the most? Or is it just that my mind prefers it that way, finds it better to think about that – rather than the other thing.
It is cold here.
There are noises, the sound of feet, bumping and scraping and shuffles, someone being made to do something against their will. And a voice. ‘No! I want to talk. Let me talk first. Let me explain why!’
Oh God, he’s coming.
I stand up. I am not going to be found still shivering on the floor when he comes in. Only when I stand I almost fall over again, because I suddenly discover just how dizzy I am feeling. Conceivably it has been days since I ate, or maybe it has something to do with the drumming pain at the back of my head. Perhaps I was knocked out and that was how I got here.
But somehow I manage to stay upright, even if I am swaying.
The door crashes back and light floods in. And behind the light, a shadow.
‘Sleepy head’s woken up, I see!’
She is silent as she is pushed through the door. He’s gagged her already, a bright blue scarf twisted tight over her mouth, the loose ends dangling down on one side, soaked dark with spit and brushing against the ragged red hole in her neck. He’s been feeding off her to keep her quiet. It’s possible she tried to let me out. Is that why he’s brought her here? Are we both in trouble now?
She isn’t tied up though, any more than I am; which I have time to wonder at, as she comes straight towards me, hands held out a little.
‘Don’t touch!’ We both freeze. But I’m still touching her with my eyes, still rebelling against his command. It will be all right, I’m trying to tell her. I won’t let him hurt you. I will make everything all right. He can punish me but I won’t let him hurt you.
Only it won’t be all right because there is nothing in her eyes at all now. He has to gag her to stop her screaming but her eyes and ears are deaf to what else he does. She has retreated behind her wall of madness and not even my promises or my pain will fetch her out until he lets her. She belongs to him, and from now on she will do and think whatever pleases him. Only I believe that deep inside there is still a little something that is free, if he would just let me find it.
‘Fetch the light in, boy.’
Typical of him. I know that what is about to happen in this room will be terrible and already I hate being in it with a loathsome fear, but just for a few seconds he is going to let me step outside. Just for an eye-blink, whilst I bring in the light, but long enough so he and I will both know, for ever afterwards, that I couldn’t leave her here, and came back of my own free will.
Free Will.
There’s a joke if ever I heard one.
‘I’m not a boy,’ I say automatically. Because I’m not. I was twenty seven when I died so that makes me almost thirty now. To look at him he should be the same. You would think we were brothers, or friends. But Angelus is over a hundred and thirty years old, and even if I live that long, to him, I will only ever be just his boy. So I fetch in the light and I ignore his silent sneer of contempt at my little rebellion. And I even close the door quietly when he gestures for me to do so, because he hasn’t tied me up yet and I must savour these last few moments whilst I can.
Angelus takes the lamp from me and places it up on a high shelf, carefully out of harms way from the things that are about to happen. It will probably get very messy soon. Though you are never quite sure how with Angelus.
That is rather the point.
Dru is waiting, as silent and still as a little bird in a hedge whilst a sparrowhawk flushes up and down its length trying to panic the small birds into flight. They are safe as long as they don’t panic, and Dru knows this as surely as the sparrows. She has explained it to me patiently a hundred times: you mustn’t run away from Daddy, silly. He will catch you and kill you if you run away. You must stay quiet and safe and if you are good sometimes he will play with you.
Only it isn’t much fun to be played with by Angelus. Not if you’re still sane.
‘Well get on with it then. You can see the chains.’
I can indeed, now that there is light to see them by. A pair of manacles hanging from the ceiling on the far side of the cellar. I can even see that it is a cellar now, with its squat empty barrels and rows of dust-coated bottles and the shrivelled relics of last year’s apple crop mummifying on the shelves. Wasted, since we killed the humans who picked them and laid them by for the winter, before we moved in to their house.
Isn’t it nice of him to let me see where I am.
I move over towards the chains. ‘I’m sorry.’ I say.
I am. I haven’t a clue what I’m sorry about. That I’m about to be chained up and tortured probably, or be made to watch while he screws Dru, or just left for a couple of weeks with nothing to eat: he’s done all of those things and more to me over the last three years, and I don’t know which it is going to be this time. It may not be anything special. He loves to be inventive for his own amusement, but when he just wants something out of you he knows perfectly well that any old pain will do, so long as there is enough of it. But I certainly am very sorry.
Very sorry, Angelus, very sorry, Sire. So you don’t need to do what you are about to do, because I’m already very, very sorry for what I have done.
What have I done?
I try to remember. Something about a girl wasn’t it? There was certainly a lot of shouting after I brought her home and I seem to remember we ended up fighting, which must have been when he knocked me out. Just some pretty girl he fancied and which I brought home for a surprise.
Not correct apparently. Not what was required. Of course he didn’t actually tell me what was required. Perhaps he wanted to stalk her himself, or kill her family first, or watch me do it for him, or let Dru seduce her. Maybe he didn’t think it was safe to bring her back here. Who knows? I don’t, so I’m left guessing. Maybe he just didn’t fancy her after all.
So I’m going to be punished. Taught a lesson I won’t forget. Only I’ve got to study hard to work out what that lesson is.
And I am studying, Angelus. I’m studying you every minute of every day and I will work it out. So I can know what you think, what you want, what will please you, and what will make you proud of me. What will make me like you. And then, when you’ve taught me everything you have to teach, I can leave. Only I haven’t got there yet, which is why you’re going to punish me.
I reach up for the first manacle, to snap it over my wrist, and am surprised to find Dru beside me, holding out her own arm towards me, almost pleading.
‘What?’
‘Hurry up, boy. Chain her up so we can get along.’
‘Her? But…’ I turn round on him. ‘It was me, Angelus. I made the mistake.’ I set my jaw. ‘And I’m not going to stand by and watch you hurt her.’
He smiles. ‘I’m not going to hurt her.’
Oh Jesus, no. Not that. Don’t make me do it instead.
Only Dru is pressing up against me and making urgent little squirms. She wants to be chained up. And now I’m utterly confused.
Of course she likes to be chained up when he screws her. Something about power I suppose, and not having to be careful or in control. I can understand that, might even see the attraction myself some day. Because for all that they call me ‘boy’ and treat me like a stupid child, I’m not one, I’ve got a brain, I have worked that sort of thing out for myself. But games are one thing, even with Angelus, and this most definitely is not a game.
Except for him presumably. He’s the only one enjoying himself here.
I chain her up, though, because she seems to be saying that it is the right thing to do, and although I don’t trust him for a second, I do trust her. She may be madder than a hatter and one of the most evil creatures ever to walk the earth, but she still understands Angelus better than anybody; so I’ve just got to trust her that this is right.
But then it very much isn’t all right because Angelus has reached into his pocket and brought out a whip.
The Scourge of Europe.
Only not as much of Europe has felt it as he likes to make out, because mostly he just uses it on Dru and me.
Oh, it’s an old friend, that whip. Except usually I’m the one chained up and being chummy with it, or else waiting outside for my turn, listening to what he’s doing to Dru. At least I’ve always had my introductions in private. He’s made me watch hers once or twice, and that was bad enough, but he’s never before made me do it to her.
Ever inventive, our Angelus.
Vampires are supposed to get off on pain, it’s one of their defining characteristics. And there is clearly something deficient in my make-up that I don’t. Oh I love the kill, don’t misunderstand me: the hunt, the chase, the feeling of my own power and strength and skill, and even just the bloody taste as I sink my fangs in. But I’ve never enjoyed watching them suffer. What’s the point? Who gives a damn what they are feeling?
Only no childe of the Scourge of Europe can be allowed to think like that; so today I’m going to be taught differently. I remember now what’s annoyed him, it’s my having killed the stupid girl too quickly. That is what the lesson today is all about. Chapter Seven: How to Enjoy Inflicting Pain. Look, I understand! So we don’t need to go through with it. Only we will, because I mustn’t just understand, I must know and feel and be. And Dru knows this, which is why she wanted to be chained up. She wants me to be the perfect little vampire just as much as Angelus does.
Well perhaps I can do it then, if that’s what she wants. He won’t make me enjoy it, but since it has to be done I’ll lay it on as gently as I can get away with, and pretend to myself I’m just play-beating her whilst we make love. I know she likes a bit of that when she’s making love, because if I have studied him well, then I have studied her to Sixth Form level; and when she finally comes only to my bed instead of his, I am determined to get it right for her. But for the moment we just have to get through today’s lesson.
‘Take your coat off.’
Angelus is running the lashes of the whip through his fingers, combing them out. There aren’t nine. Nine would be too conventional. There are only seven tails on this scourge, because seven is a powerful number. Seven leather thongs: each with seven knots. Magic and meaning, you see. Everything has to have a bloody meaning with Angelus.
So I strip off my coat and waistcoat, because, obviously, we don’t want me getting blood spattered on them. Angelus would never allow me to let my coat get dirty. It was expensive that coat. I had to kill three people before there was enough money from their assembled purses to pay the tailor. We didn’t actually pay him of course, but he wanted to see the money before he would start. So hard to find trust these days.
‘Stand up against the wall.’
And my stomach somersaults, because he’s changed the rules. Again.
I don’t want this. I really don’t want this. I can stand the pain. I can stand being knocked out and chained up and flogged until I howl when I haven’t any choice, but I can’t stand being made to stay put and take it like some bloody schoolboy, just because Angelus tells me to. Not when Dru is watching.
I am not a boy, and all I’ve got to do is say no and punch Angelus to sodding kingdom come and unchain Dru and leave.
Only she wouldn’t actually come with me. She’d think I was afraid.
‘It’s you or her, boy. Make your mind up.’
So I stand up against the wall, spread my arms a little to take the weight, dig my fingernails into the crumbling soft plaster and wait.
‘Now don’t move.’
And wait.
The first blow drives my whole body against the wall. I can’t feel anything at first except the force of it hammering in, because my nerves are too slow and shocked to respond immediately. As a child I’ve been spanked by my nanny and caned by my schoolmaster. And I’ve watched dogs being whipped and horses whipped, and soldiers and prisoners get whipped until they can’t stand. But none of them know what it feels like to be beaten by a seven-thonged cat, with seven knots in each thong, when a vampire master puts the full force of his strength behind the blow. So that your nerve endings are stunned into senselessness and then shriek back into life with a pulse of white hot pain, that is just reaching its peak when the thing lands back on them for the second stroke.
I grit my teeth and drive my forehead against the wall and try not to squirm because I know she is watching me. Watching with her dark, blank eyes and judging how I am taking this and I really don’t want that look to turn to contempt. I really, really don’t want that.
Only the pain in my back is becoming bad now. It must be fifty or sixty lashes that he’s given me by this time and my shirt is long since gone to shreds and half my skin with it. I can smell my own blood on the air and even above the whistle of the whip I can hear the rattling of the chains and the soft moans as Dru tries to come to me. She wants that blood and she wants me because I’m taking it so well, and I can smell her wanting. Which, I think, is why she had to be chained up in the first place. Dru can watch, but she mustn’t interrupt Daddy when he’s teaching the boy a lesson.
But I’m not a boy: I’m a man. And I can take this. I must.
After about a hundred it really begins to hurt. I knew an old soldier once, in his eighties, who had fought at Waterloo, he said he once watched a friend of his receive four hundred lashes, but that the maximum sentence then was twelve hundred. And he told me that you can’t feel anything after the first hundred or so. So why does it just keep growing and spreading? I want to scream now, to open my lungs and yell my heart out. So I dig my fingers ever harder into the wall and whatever it is that has got under my fingernail is driven still further in, and it’s throbbing and throbbing and I concentrate on that little pain. I can bear to think about that, rather than the blazing sheet of fire where my back used to be. Even though Angelus just got to two hundred. Because she is watching and getting roused by it; and he told me not to move; and I’m a man; and I can take this.
Then he stops. It must be somewhere about three hundred, or three hundred and forty-three. Some nice clever number that has some bloody meaning for him, no doubt. I’ve no idea. Only when I’m braced for the next blow it suddenly doesn’t come; and I’m wondering why.
Did I yell? I don’t think I did because my teeth are still clenched shut. But I might have moaned. It’s just possible I moaned.
Fuck.
Dru is quiet as well now. All her illusions gone, I suppose, the second I let a sound escape my lips. So the chain rattling has stopped and there is no sound from Angelus, no heavy breathing as he rests after his labours. Silent as the bleedin’ grave.
Is that it then?
Very cautiously I force my fingers to release, and turn my head just enough to see. The light from the oil lamp is a warm, rich, yellow on the soft brown wood and creamy plaster walls of the cellar. It glints off the shiny barrel hoops and burnishes the wrinkled russet skins of the old store apples to a golden glow.
Angelus is combing his fingers through the whip thongs again, running them carefully down each in turn, pressing with thumb and fore-finger, and when he reaches the bottom of each he gives a little delicate shake of his hand, like a cat fastidiously shaking milk drops off its paw.
It’s blood though: he’s cleaning off my blood; and gobbets of something white and spongy that is caught in the knots and used to be part of me. There is a great black pool on the floor as well, and I can feel it sloping in my shoes. He has streaks and flecks of it splashed all over him, like the wild daubings of some insane artist.
When he has cleaned the seventh thong he looks up and smiles at me. Raises an eyebrow. ‘Yes?’
‘Can I go now?’ the schoolboy phrase coming unthinkingly to my mind, prompting a smirk from him, even though it was said with a hoarse misery that no schoolboy should ever feel.
‘Why would you want to go? We’ve only just started.’
And I bury my face back against the wall, because he’s just raised his arm again.
I screamed at six hundred. I tried as hard as I could but there comes a point when it just isn’t bearable any more, however brave you try to be. He had got right through to the bone by then and I had reached the point when I knew I had either to yell or fall down on my knees and beg. And I wasn’t going to do that in front of her, not to him. I was never going to beg him for anything. I didn’t beg for my life the night I was killed and I wasn’t going to after my death. Besides, he had told me not to move.
I did though.
Somewhere around a thousand, although I think he and I had both long since lost count, my legs and my will finally crumpled away together and I slid down sobbing.
‘Please, Angelus. Please stop. I’m sorry. I’m sorry: I can’t take any more. Please.’
And he walked away. Just like that. Dropped the whip and walked out of the door, leaving me alone with Dru.
And the knowledge that he had done just what he wanted to me.
I got up, somehow, eventually, and managed to unchain and ungag her. Then I lay with my head in her lap, crying, since there was no point pretending she hadn’t already seen me humiliated, whilst she picked over my cuts for the threads left from my shirt and washed them and licked them better and murmured sweetly in my ear. ‘My boy. My little boy. He’s stopped now, Daddy’s stopped. You have to just let him play sometimes, when you’ve been naughty. You were very brave at first but you know you will never stand up to Daddy.’ Please don’t rub it in Dru. ‘Because Daddy knows best. And you have been a very bad boy. You know that now, don’t you? I was worried that you wouldn’t understand, I wanted to explain, but you know what to do now, don’t you.’
‘Yes.’
‘He had to teach you, and it did take such a long time, silly, but you’ve learnt now. You’re safe now. Your Princess has got you and Daddy’s stopped.’
Only he hadn’t stopped.
Because Dru had heard me yell and seen me cry and fall to my knees and beg for mercy. She had seen that I couldn’t stand up to Angelus and I couldn’t stand still when he told me to. And I wasn’t a man at all. I was just a scared, useless little schoolboy who had to be taught everything.
Which was why, three nights later, when my back had healed enough to let me move, I went out and hunted a young boy through the woods for six long hours, then held him down and drove a railway spike into first his hands, then his feet and then inch by slow inch up his chest until the shock and the blood loss finally killed him. And it was why I enjoyed it like a vampire should. I really, really enjoyed it. I enjoyed making that miserable little wretch suffer. I’d gone through hell and nobody had helped me, so now it was that little bastard’s turn and I was going to put every ounce of my hate and anger and fear and pain into doing it; whilst Angelus and Dru watched approvingly. And only when I had done that properly could it be said that Angelus stopped. Because I had finally learnt my lesson.
One day I must remember to thank him.