Bitter Consequences

 Chapter 1:

"He did what?" Angel growled, the sound rolling out low and deep from his chest. Doyle glanced down at the floor and back up quickly, smoothing his hair back in a nervous fashion.

"He... uh, he told Buffy that she wasn’t very...good."

Sensing that the demon wasn’t through, Angel impatiently motioned him on.

"He... well, he basically told her it meant nothing."

"That it meant nothing?" he repeated, his voice almost sibilant with wrath. "That impudent, snivelling boy told her that it meant NOTHING?"

He was roaring by the time he’d finished and Doyle had to physically restrain himself from cringing away in fear. In the dead silence after Angel’s outburst, he risked a glance up. A look of pure rage rippled- literally- across the vampire’s handsome face. Doyle shivered.

"I’m going to kill him." Angel’s voice was calm, but an undercurrent of truth rang through the threat, reassuring the demon in front of him that the boy’s death was assured.

"Just promise me one thing, Angel, man." The vampire questioned Doyle with a look. "Don’t get caught."

The ghost of a grin slid across Angel’s face, and he was gone.

*****

"What do you mean, he dumped you?" Sincerity and righteous anger were loud in Willow’s voice. "You mean, he- he... uh, Buffy? What exactly did he do?"

"Well, he just sort of told me that what we’d had was sort of, well, nothing." There was no camouflaging the look of extreme pain on the Slayer’s face.

"Nothing? But didn’t you two have a- a something, maybe?"

"You’d think," she replied glumly.

"You two didn’t... you know." Willow’s statement was followed by a curiously long silence on Buffy’s part. "You did?" The question was full of sympathy, but there was disappointment buried not too deeply in it, and Buffy felt the sting sharply.

"Yes. We did," she answered, more abruptly than she’d meant to. "I just thought, maybe, if I couldn’t have Angel..." she trailed off and concentrated on her hands, twisting them in her lap. They were already covered with red marks from her abuse.

"Oh, Buffy. I’m sorry. And I know what you mean-"

Buffy held up a hand, cutting her best friend off. "Look, Willow, you don’t know the first thing about it. The only guy you’ve ever slept with was there when you woke up. In fact, all the times you’ve woken up. Don’t tell me about how sorry you might be, ‘cause chances are, you’re never gonna have to go through this. You and your perfect boyfriend, with your perfect relationship and your perfect sex."She paused for a moment, fighting back tears, and then continued in a rush, unable to stop.

"And when you’re together? I bet you have a great time, don’t you? You talk about a movie that was neat, or a band gig that you want to go on, or- or the fucking weather! You’ll never have to tell Oz to close his eyes so you can send him to hell, or ask him to try and kill you so he can live." She finally looked up, meeting the redhead’s eyes. "Don’t ever tell me you know what I mean."

Willow stood, looking down at her uncertainly. "Alright, Buffy... if that’s the way you feel, I’ll- I’ll just go now." The Slayer said nothing.

"So, I guess I’ll see you in Psych tomorrow, right?" Still, no answer. Willow looked away, blinking back tears. "Bye," she said softly, and turning, walked back down the path they’d taken.

As soon as she lost sight of her friend, Buffy’s head bowed and the tears began to pour down her cheeks and nose, landing with wet splats on the tops of her thighs. A part of her knew that Parker simply wasn’t worth the amount of time she spared for him, but the rest of her was still grieving, in mourning for an innocence that had been lost much too quickly.

*****

Angel’s strides were quick and lengthy, eating up the sidewalk. His leather duster flared behind him and his boot heels clomped solidly on the pavement. An ever-present stream of gruesome, violent ideas ran through his head, all of them directed toward Parker. The little bastard. His pace slowed as he approached the school, the lighted walkways signalling his arrival on the campus proper. He could hear noise coming from the open dorm windows as he passed. The girls’ inane fits of high-pitched giggling punctuated the night air. He had a fleeting impulse to cringe from the sound. Lower, he could hear the voices of the boys a few windows in front of him. He paid minimal concentration to their conversation, intent on reaching Buffy’s dorm. He had to assure himself of her health. If Parker had done anything worse than Buffy had let on...

"Yeah, man. I mean, she’s the most bangalicious chick I’ve ever met! God! Buffy’s ass is just..." The rest of the sentence was drowned in the roar of laughter that followed. Angel stopped dead in his tracks. It had been about ten feet back. He traced his steps carefully and stopped outside a brightly lit window. He could see a group of boys through the screen, sitting around a keg. The one exactly opposite the window downed another gulp of beer and started to speak again.

"And she’s sayin to me, ‘But Parker, didn’t that mean anything to you?’ And god, she looked like she wanted me to say I loved her or some shit like that. And then-" he took another healthy gulp and wiped his mouth, "-and then she starts to cry. I shit you not." He chuckled to himself and drained the rest of his cup, crumpled it in his hand and threw it in the general direction of the waste basket.Outside, Angel’s hands had bunched into fists. His fingernails bit into the fleshy pad at the base of his thumb, drawing blood. It trickled out his clenched fists and started to hit the ground with a pattering noise. The smell rose up sharply to greet his nose. He wanted blood. Parker’s blood. More than anything in the world, he wanted to kill the boy who sat those few feet away, completely unknowing of the danger he was in. The visions in the vampire’s head were those of bloodshed, gore, torture, and the eventual death of the unlucky bastard who’d incurred his wrath.

Parker was a dead man.

Angel stayed outside the window for a few moments, letting the blind rage recede into the background. A calm certainty flooded in to take its place and the soothing rush restored his self-control. He could feel the demon, deep within, lashing out in fury at the bars of his cage; he had been so sure that it was his turn to come out and play.

Slowly, Angel turned and walked toward the nearest set of steps, right below what looked like the only entrance on this side of the dorm. He sat down and waited, listening intently to the people in Parker’s room. Eventually they would all go home, and then he and Parker could have a little... discussion.

*****

Crying wasn’t going to solve anything. What she needed right now was a good shower and some ice cream. That thought in mind, Buffy quickly slid off the bench and started back towards her dorm on the other side of UC Sunnydale’s small campus. Walking through the quad, the usual evening noise invaded her ears. A party had gotten under way in the nearest dorm, a couple sat smooching on a blanket under the stars... and that damn tickling at the base of her brain wouldn’t go away. She must be imagining it. He wasn’t here.

He never would be.

Buffy had realized early on that getting over Angel would take a long time and a lot of dates. Unfortunately, the time had dragged and the dates had sucked. Especially Parker. He really hadn’t been very good in bed, truthfully, but he’d seemed so sure of himself that she hadn’t wanted to deflate his ego. Now she wanted to pop it like a balloon and watch the pieces fall to the ground. She imagined grinding them into the dust under her boot heel. Sighing, she forcibly dragged her mind away from ‘Parker mode.’ Unfortunately for her emotional state, it switched immediately to ‘Angel mode.’

"Dammit!" she grumbled, turning the corner around one of the taller dorms. "I am not co-dependent. I am fine on my own." She looked down at the front of her pants, which still held traces of her earlier tears. "I just gotta make myself believe it."

*****

It had been hours. Excruciatingly dull, painfully boring hours. Patience was all well and good, but this was ridiculous. How much could these kids drink? Just as the last thought left his mind, the sound of raucous snoring started to emanate from Parker’s room. Amazing. They’d drunk themselves into a stupor. Well, all the better.

Angel quietly entered the dorm and started down the hallway to his left. Carefully counting the doors, he finally stopped in front a room numbered 09, though someone had taken a marker and drawn a 6 inside the zero. A picture of some Playboy bunnies graced the lower part of the door, underneath the noteboard. Shaking his head in disgust, Angel opened the door and stepped inside. Careless of Parker to leave it unlocked like that. He mentally shrugged and closed it behind him. The bastard in question lay stretched out on the floor, arm flung over his eyes, jaw hanging slack. His friends were all in a similar condition. The room smelled of drunk male, rank enough to cause Angel to wrinkle his nose. Carefully, he picked up Parker in a fireman’s carry and left the room, moving quickly down the hall and out the side entrance.

It must have looked odd, Angel knew. An obviously grown man walking down the street with a college kid thrown over his shoulder. Then again, it was a college kid and a Friday night- maybe it wasn’t that odd after all. He grinned in anticipation as soon as he saw his convertible and licked his lips. This was gonna be so much fun.

*****

Parker came to with a sickening lurch of his stomach. The alcohol contained therein had not settled well, and it felt ready to come up at any moment. Closing his eyes, he took deep breaths through his nose, trying to calm down the roiling. He tried to bring his hands up to cover his face and noticed for the first time that they wouldn’t move. In fact, he couldn’t stand up. Ropes securely bound his hands and feet and passed around his chest, tying him to a large, wooden chair. Shit. Buffy must’ve been more pissed than he’d given her credit for.

"Buffy!" he yelled, carefully studying his surroundings. The place was practically a tribute to contemporary stone architecture, with a stone fireplace and hearth, stone walls, and a cold stone floor, which his bare feet presently rested on. There wasn’t any furniture, from what he could see of the room, but heavy drapes hung over the lower windows, while sunlight streamed in from a few at the top.

"Buffy!" he tried again. "Look, baby, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it. I- I was in a bad mood." His calls came to nothing, and deafening silence beat against his ears.

"Buf-" he bit off the rest of the word as a figure finally emerged from a pitch black doorway on the other side of the room. He was tall, with dark hair and black eyes. And he was wearing... leather pants? Jesus. He’d been abducted by a flaming fag. Something of his thoughts must have registered in Parker’s face, because the first thing Angel did was smash his nose with a right hook. The vampire thought it was an adequate introduction.

Parker’s calls had changed to screams of pain and a bright spray of blood covered the front of Angel’s white tank top. It smelled great. The red liquid was running in streams down the boy’s lips and under his chin, coating the front of his neck and dripping off his face to land in spots on his bare chest. The dark man in front of him looked like he was enjoying the show. His face physically rippled. Staring into the beautiful golden eyes, Parker began to scream louder.

Angel was growing tired of the noise; it was too soon for this much racket. "Shut up!" he snarled, purposely showing a large amount of fang. The screaming stopped abruptly, as though thrown off by a switch.

"That’s much better. Now, where to begin? Ah, yes. Introductions." Angel wiped all the blood off his hand with his shirt and proceeded to run his fingers through Parker’s hair. Without warning, he suddenly gripped and pulled back, wrenching the boy’s head back sharply, baring his blood-covered neck. Angel’s eyes fixed on his adam’s apple. He wanted to tear it out of the little bastard’s throat. Instead, he gave the blood a long, slow lick. "I’m Angel," he rumbled, pausing to lick again. "And you’re Parker. The little shit that screwed my wife and threw her away."

Parker was having trouble breathing by this time. There was absolutely no way that air was getting up his nose anymore, and his breath was reduced to panting from fear and the strange angle at which his head was held. Which made it harder for him to speak. However, he was able to squeak out a couple of words.

"Your wife?"

Angel nodded, a chilling grin on his face. "She just doesn’t know yet." Smoothly, he stood up and walked a few paces away, then came back. Parker slowly raised his head back up, groaning at the pain. He watched Angel pace, muttering to himself. Random words floated to his ears, like broken pieces of a gruesome picture. "Fire... burn... dagger... chainsaw..." A decision seemed to have been made suddenly, because the pacing stopped, and the taller man quickly left the room. The loss of his presence was of little comfort to the boy, who was smart enough to know that Angel would be coming back. And he did, jewelled dagger in hand. If it was possible, Parker’s eyes grew even wider and a whimper unconsciously rolled out of his mouth.

Wasting no time on banter, Angel pressed the point of the knife into Parker’s skin just above the heart, causing blood to well up and run in a thin stream down the boy’s skinny chest. Grinning slightly, he leaned in to lick up the blood, following the trail back up to the breastbone. He chuckled, and his game face finally emerged. Startled and terrified, Parker forgot the rules and screamed loudly. As a reminder that he’d just disobeyed order number one, Angel quickly slid the dagger into the boy’s stomach, all the way to the hilt. Parker gasped and stopped screaming. The room went eerily silent.

"You weren’t supposed to scream, idiot," the vampire whispered, and quickly pulled upwards with the knife handle. Parker’s eyes rolled back in his head and he fainted, overwhelmed by the pain. Angel chuckled dryly and pulled the knife out with a jerk, watching the heavy streams of blood fall from the boy’s body. It covered the floor underneath the chair and started spreading outwards. Angel continued to kneel in it, letting the aroma of the dying boy wash over him with an intoxicating scent.

More to Come……….