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Distribution:

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Spoilers: None, really.

Rating: PG13’ish

Content: Liam, Angelus and Angel

Summary: In Pangs Angel tells Giles that he’d forgotten how bad it feels to be looking in at something he can’t have. That means he must have spent time before looking at something he badly wants and can’t have. This triptych explores what he might have been referring to.

Authors’ Notes

A little imp gave us the notion of co-authoring a story, and although we had no idea how to do that, we made something up as we went along. We hope you like the outcome.

1 As a linen merchant, Liam’s father would not have lived in a village, as we learned from canon, but in a town or city – Galway, in this case. We’ve tried to bring the two together.

2 The Connemara pony is indeed native to the area described. People at the time, and long after, caught them for domestic service, and this sturdy pony carried out all manner of tasks, from riding pony and peat carrier to pulling the cart to take the family to church on a Sunday. And horses from the wreck of the Spanish Armada did swim ashore to live wild with the Connemara, or were used in breeding some of the best Irish horses.

3 Gypsies in Ireland were usually called tinkers.

4 Monivea today is 16 miles northeast of Galway city. The village was created by Robert French, a member of the fourteen tribes of Galway, in the mid 18th century. He developed a linen industry on the estate and by 1770, there were 270 houses with 96 looms and 370 spinning wheels and a broad green for flax drying running through the village. These broad greens have been preserved by the local community and give Monivea its really unique feature today.

5 Protestant or Catholic? We have no definitive information on whether Liam and his family were Protestant or Catholic. At the time, Catholicism was suppressed across what would be the United Kingdom in an effort to stop Catholic plots against the Protestant Crown and against Parliament (cf the Jacobite rebellions of 1715 and 1745). We’ve taken the view here that the family may well have been overtly Protestant, but retained Catholic leanings.

6 The very first exhibition of what later became known as the Impressionist movement took place at the studios of the photographer Nadar in the Boulevard des Capucines on April 15^th, 1874. Monet, Renoir, Pisarro were the major contributors. The exhibition opened to general ridicule from the critics. However, the work of the impressionists led eventually to what is now recognised as Modern Art.

7 Otto Stark (1859-1926) was one of the major American Impressionists. Born in Indianapolis, Indiana, one of his best known works was “Suzanne in the Garden”. He was, of course, the genuine creator of this painting. I have taken severe liberties in this story, only because it is such a stunning picture.

8 The Boxer Rebellion – we know that the re-ensouled Angel caught up with Darla, Drusilla and William in China during the Boxer rebellion.

The Boxers, or "The Righteous and Harmonious Fists," were a religious society that had originally rebelled against the imperial government in Shantung in 1898. They practiced an animistic magic of rituals and spells which they believed made them impervious to bullets and pain. The Boxers believed that the expulsion of foreign devils would magically renew Chinese society and begin a new golden age.

The Boxer Rebellion was only limited to a few places, but concentrated itself in Beijing. The Western response was swift and severe. Within a couple months, an international force captured and occupied Beijing and forced the imperial government to agree to the most humiliating terms in the Boxer Protocol of 1901.

There were, indeed, heads on spikes during the course of the uprising.

REFLECTIONS AND LIES

A TRIPTYCH

‘Believe me, I'm not getting the good half of this deal. To be on the outside looking in at what I can't... Well, I'd forgotten how bad it feels.’ Angel to Giles in ‘Pangs’.

Prologue

I’m looking through a window at something I can never have. I’m standing here watching my son - *my* son – raise his glass in a toast to ‘family’. The irony of it is gutting me, but what other choice did I have? And so I’ve taken the deal with the devil, and the devil has taken my son. My firstborn. Likely to be my only born. Biblical, isn’t it? Poetic justice, too, if you did but know.

Does he still have my genes, I wonder? Will something of me walk the earth when I am dust? Perhaps it’s better if he doesn’t. It isn’t a legacy I would wish on any man.

I had such hopes for him. Such innocent, naïve hopes. You’d think I would have learned better by now, wouldn’t you? Learned that I can have nothing in this life that the Powers will not use against me to punish me for my sins. How many parents were bereaved because of me and mine? How many, in those centuries of depravity? How many are still losing their children to me? Drusilla is, after all, still at large and I carry the blame for whatever she does. So why should I be able to keep a child? Love a child? He was used in the war against me, a weapon for my destruction. He couldn’t survive it, and so I have given in and given him up. Now all I have to bear is his loss, and I can do that. I couldn’t, if what I had to bear was his ongoing torment and destruction. This is surely for the best.

And yet I have doubts. His father is not his father. Will the man somehow know that? Will it make a difference? It’s important to me in ways that I would find hard to explain to you.

Buffy discovered that Dawn was not her sister, that those memories were false. That hasn’t stopped her loving Dawn, protecting her, caring for her exactly as if she had been her sister. Giving her life for her. But Dawn is, after all, Buffy’s own flesh and blood. Summers’ blood. I think that makes a difference. How would this man feel if he knew who he was raising? If Connor retains anything of me? As I said, perhaps it’s better if he doesn’t.

I’m going to come here whenever I can; come and watch; come and make sure that my son is happy. That he isn’t a danger to himself or the world. It will be another blade to lacerate my soul, but maybe the Powers will be content with that; happy with another arena for regular self-flagellation; pleased enough to accept my pain that they don’t visit any more on him. We shall see.

But the irony of it is still killing me. How history repeats itself, as if the Powers had known how I would respond, and have arranged this as an extra lash in the flagellation. I have to believe that they did not. If I thought that this was a test that I might pass or fail, that they neither knew nor cared whether my innocent son should spend his life in guilt and torment and madness, that his distress might be only incidental to their harrowing of me, I really think that I would wage war on them too, as I intend to wage war on the Powers of Darkness. Perhaps I should just get rid of the lot of them, anyway, so that humanity can stand on its own two feet.

Still, thoughts of the past are strong tonight. Of my mother. Of Kathy. My father. And of my childhood best friend, Connor. The one for whom my son is named. The one blessed with a loving father. I had hoped that the name would be a shield for him, bringing more happiness than I had with my father. Stupid…stupid. As if the Powers wouldn’t take the opportunity to punish me a little bit more.

Secrets and lies. There are secrets here, reflections of the past, and lies that *nobody* else knows. Oh, not just what I have done here with Connor. Secrets going back much further than this. Secrets that only I know. Reflections that I wish were a lie, like my own. It started with that first Connor.

***************

PANEL 1

It was no surprise to anyone that Liam and Connor should be like blood brothers. They were of an age, and their fathers owned the two largest houses in the village. Village – that was perhaps a bit misleading. The settlement was on the outskirts of Galway town, close enough for men to go into town each day. Liam’s father would go to his business premises, and most nights would come home again. Some nights, when he worked late, or when the weather was particularly foul, he would stay over, but most nights he would go home. Being outside the town proper had advantages, though, and those were seized on by the boys. Fishing, swimming in the sea – especially since they were strictly forbidden to do any such thing – chasing sheep, stealing pastries, scrumping apples. Boyish things. No one, other than his father, thought of them as bad boys. Just typical boys.

Whatever they were doing, Liam was the leader. He led Connor into trouble, often. To his credit, though, he would always lead him back out again. And he was content to take the blame for their mischief. And that was all it was, mischief. At first, that is. Things started to change when he was thirteen.

An Englishman, Sykes, had set up a small business in the village. He was a factor, buying and selling on commission. Like many in Galway, and in the whole of Ireland at that time, he was a Protestant, attending church regularly on Sundays. But also, like many, including Liam’s family, he was a closet Catholic, gathering with the others in out of the way places whenever an itinerant priest should come their way. So Sykes was tolerated.

He bought and sold many things, from distant parts of the world, and his place of business, redolent with the fragrances of spices, of tea and chocolate and coffee, was a source of endless fascination for the boys. And he had a small lending library. The jewel in his collection was a large book of maps. Liam was attracted to that, like a moth to a flame.

Sykes would sometimes tolerate them. On hot summer days, he would sit for a short space of time, and talk to them about the lands of the east and their princes, of ships and sailors, of elephants and tigers, and snakes as thick as a man’s thigh. And he would show them those lands, in the Atlas.

Other days, he would have no time for them, and shoo them out of his premises. It happened on one of those days.

That summer, the boys had spent long hazy afternoons out riding, racing each other around the mountain pastures on their shaggy native ponies. They’d had them since they were ten. Before that, Connor had ridden the pony left behind by his elder brother Diarmuid, who had vanished at the age of sixteen. Their father had spent a lot of his silver, trying to find Diarmuid, his successor and heir, but there had been never a trace. It was a year before he gave up, though. And the eight-year-old Connor had found himself with both the succession and Oonagh. He knew which one he preferred.

Liam’s father had never allowed the boy a pony, even though they ran wild for the taking. Unlike Connor’s father, he was a cold, proud man, never showing affection by word or glance for his only son. Only disdain. His most animated encounters with his son were when he thrashed him for some misdemeanour, which was often. Otherwise, he kept aloof, leaving the rearing of the boy to his wife. But she, too, treated the boy with cool reserve whenever the father was around, and was only a little warmer at other times, as if she were afraid that her husband would find out that she had been kind to the lad. Many of the women, and some of the men, in the village shook their heads over this, but no one interfered.

With only the one mount between them, Connor and Liam rode together, bareback, on the sturdy Oonagh, a pretty roan mare. One bright spring day, when the boys were ten, Oonagh slipped on some mountain scree and unseated both of them. Connor fell onto grass, but Liam was not so lucky. He fell onto the treacherous scree and his head hit a rock hard enough to knock him unconscious, and to leave a wound that bled freely, frightening his companion. Connor, a strong boy, wasn’t strong enough to lift Liam onto Oonagh’s back, and the mare, skittish after her fall, was no help at all.

Then a couple of tinkers’ wagons came over the shoulder of the mountain, labouring over the barely-discerned trail. Connor, frantic that these gypsies might steal Oonagh, tried harder to steady her, and only succeeded in making her jib the more. Three of the men walking by the wagons took charge, one going to the frightened pony, and one to each of the boys. The eldest of the three lifted Liam’s limp body and, together with the other two, carried his charge after the wagons until they had reached the safety of the flatter pasture.

The driver of one of the wagons, an old woman – at least she seemed so to the boys, although she was probably no more than forty – clambered down and came over to inspect the lad. The man with Connor drew him to one side, speaking softly in Gaelic, offering the boy a blanket to sit on, and a few sips of some heady brew that made him splutter but that also made him feel warm inside, and much better. The man with Oonagh had sent a young lad racing to fetch water from the nearby stream and was now checking her over for injuries.

The old woman had Liam taken into the wagon and laid on a cot. The lad who had fetched the water grudgingly poured some into a basin for her, then happily carried the rest to wash the dirt from the mare’s grazes. As she washed the blood from Liam’s face and hair, he came to and, confused at the sight of her, started to push himself away, scrabbling backwards on the mattress. She shushed him.

“You’ve had a fall,” she said, her Gaelic thick and guttural. “Your friend and your pony are outside. “Now lie down and let me finish.”

When he was as clean as she could make him, she reached into one of the overhead cupboards, and brought out a small pot. She smeared ointment from the pot onto her finger and moved to rub it onto the wound, but Liam jerked away. She shushed him again.

“It’s only marigold and woundwort.”

She rubbed a little of the salve in, and examined the wound on his forehead, over his left eye.

“There will be a mark, although it will be very small.”

She glanced out of the open door, to where a young lad was leading Oonagh back and forth, under the scrutiny of a couple of the men.

“Scarred by a woman.”

Her laugh was throaty and deep. Then she took hold of his hand, and it seemed to Liam, still a little dizzy, that the hand grew larger, more manly, and the lines on it deeper and clearer. After a moment, she suddenly dropped his hand as if it had burned her. Her eyes were filled with an expression that he was unfamiliar with. Remembering it, much later, he thought it might have been compassion, but he was afraid that it might have been fear.

“Stay away from them. Keep away from women. They will bring you nothing but trouble. And beware of reflections and lies. Things are not always what they seem. Do you hear me? Do you understand?”

Liam nodded dumbly, not understanding at all, and then one of the men climbed into the wagon and gave him a few sips of the liquor he had given Connor. All three of them were judged fit to go home. Connor was welcomed back into the bosom of his family with much affectionate scolding, and their groom tutted over Oonagh’s scrapes and bruises but reluctantly pronounced himself satisfied at her treatment. Liam was thrashed by his father for falling off the pony, for drinking hard liquor and for ruining his shirt.

A month later, they went back to that mountain path, taking the slope at a gallop. Oonagh fell, her hoof in a rabbit hole, and broke her leg. The stockman who found them had not thought her worth the price of a bullet, and had slit her throat in front of the two boys, a petty cruelty that had cost him his employment when Connor, distraught and angered beyond endurance, told his father.

Connor could not be allowed to do without a mount, so the hunt had been up. His father had taken a group of men deep into pony country, that part of Connaught lying to the west of Lough Corrib and Lough Mask, bounded in the west by the Atlantic and in the south by Galway Bay. There, the native ponies ran free, few of them claimed in any way. They were the descendants of Celtic ponies, from the times of the Heroes when warriors had gone mounted, but everyone knew that a hundred and fifty years ago, horses had swum ashore from the wreck of the Spanish Armada. Many of those had been caught, and their blood had found its way into some of Ireland’s finest stock, but enough had stayed free. Enough to refine the wild Connemara just a little, without taking away its native stamina.

Connor had gone with the hunt, and Liam had gone with him. His father had been angry, but in the face of Connor’s father’s smiles and assurances had let him go. The men had taken a fine grey mare for their master’s son, and when they saw the hungry expression on Liam’s face, had not waited for directions, but had caught for him a lovely little black filly with a white star on her forehead, innocently assuming that their master had intended all along for both boys to be mounted.

So once the ponies were broken, the boys rode whenever they could, Connor on another Oonagh, and Liam on Wenda, named for her round white star, and because he thought her beautiful.

One sultry August day, Liam’s father had been displeased that his son had been riding instead of studying, and had threatened to sell Wenda. Then he had thrashed the boy, the thick leather strap that he used leaving livid welts that would make riding too painful for several days. Liam didn’t care for the pain – he would have borne that to be riding free – but the thought of Wenda, sold? Never. And so he had submitted.

The next day, another drowsy summer day, with gulls screaming in the sky and the dogs torpid in the heat, Connor was out exercising Oonagh, and Liam was locked indoors, studying. He should have been translating some Latin text – not that his father, who was learned only in trade, would ever know whether he had done it correctly or not – but the words remained nothing but spider strokes on the page. His mind was too full of fear for Wenda and resentment at his father. The man had spent years ignoring him, except for those times when he felt the need to admonish, chastise or punish him. Now, though, he had his father’s attention, and Wenda might have to pay the price.

When he was released for a little while at midday, he stepped over the hound, Bran, sprawled across the shadow of the kitchen doorway, and made his escape to Sykes’. But Sykes had no time for him, and sent him away. All he’d wanted to do was look at the Atlas. To wish himself elsewhere, and imagine he was in one of those places with princes and maharajahs, and snakes as thick as a man’s thigh. His need for escape was so deep, so desperate, that when Sykes was occupied with a customer, in the back office, Liam took the Atlas. Oh, not permanently. He would return it. He just needed to borrow it for a short time. He needed to sink into the exotic descriptions, and remember the things that Sykes had said. Nothing more. He needed it, so he took it, for a little while. He stowed it carefully underneath his bed, and returned to his studies.

His father was late home that night, and the family ate supper without him, just Liam, his mother, and his one-year-old sister, Kathy. His mother was completely taken up by the baby. She was, after all, the only other infant that she had managed to rear to this age. Three had not lived beyond a few weeks old, and another two had not lived at all. All of them had been daughters, and his father had been angry. Liam had dreaded the coming of the baby, thinking of squalling, puking infants that he had seen in the village, but she was angelic. She never cried, and she smiled beatifically at all around her. She was a happy child, and Liam was fascinated by her.

His mother went to put the baby to sleep, and Liam escaped to his room. To the Atlas. He sat cross-legged on the floor, and dreamed of those exotic places. The Nicobar Islands. The Spice Islands. Malacca, Sukadana and Makassar. Did the people have horses or did they all ride elephants? Where were the snakes that were as thick as a man’s thigh? He fell asleep like that. His father found him there several hours later. Sykes had not come looking for his Atlas – he knew well enough who had it, and was certain the boy would return it – but Liam’s father knew whose it was. The boy was stubborn, unrepentant, and his thrashing was thorough.

When it was done, his father stormed into his mother’s room, waking the baby, who started to cry. He could hear his angry father above the wails of the infant, though, and what was said shocked him, and meant that, bad as things were, they now were worse.

“He’s no son of mine! He’s a hell born bastard! He’s lazy and now he’s a thief. I will not have him bringing his good-for-nothing ways to our daughter. I wished for a son, and all I have is *him*! He’ll go the way of the bastard who sired him…”

Liam could hear no more, but he had heard enough. Quickly, he dressed, biting his lip to hold in the cry of pain when the rough material of his breeches scraped over the welts made by his father’s strap. His father. Not so, apparently. He was almost glad, but he was also terrified. If his father could threaten to sell Wenda, what might he do with an unsatisfactory son that was no son of his? And he was angry and confused.

He slid over the windowsill, his breath hitching at the pain, onto the scullery roof and then down onto the yellowing grass. A salt-laden breeze from the sea chilled the drying tears on his cheeks.

He could still hear the sound of voices, muted now, coming from his mother’s room, and wondered whether to climb the oak tree standing beside her window. But what would be the point? There was no mistaking what he had heard. He was a bastard, and an unwanted one at that.

He ran then, feeling the lash of the strap with every stride that he took, hot tears burning his cheeks, until he reached Connor’s house. There was a yew tree, growing next to the house. He’d used it like this before, although he had never told Connor. What he was doing shamed him, and he could never tell his friend. He clambered up into the cover of the branches. From there he could see without being seen. What he could see was the room where the family spent their evenings. The younger girls were doubtless in bed, but Connor and his eldest sister were still up, sitting with their mother and father. Connor’s father sat in a comfortable chair, and Connor rested within his embrace, occasionally casting loving glances backwards at the man holding him. His mother was reading to the family from a book that she held.

It was growing late, and Liam knew that the children would shortly be sent to bed but, just for a little while, he watched what he now knew he could never, ever have, no matter how hard he tried. A happy, normal, loving family. A loving father. The tears came harder then.

-0-

The next years were difficult for all concerned in Liam’s family. All except little Kathy. Everybody loved her.

Liam grew wilder and more restless as the rage inside him grew. Sometimes he wondered if he was trying to drive the wedge deeper between himself and the man who called himself Father. His mother remained mainly aloof, rationing out her kindnesses to him. Sometimes he wondered if it would be different if he had a different mother, one who would calm him and tell him that she loved him. Sometimes he wondered if that was what mothers were for. To take away the rage.

Only little Kathy gave him peace, and he repaid her in the only way he knew how, by protecting her from the anger of her father.

When he was seven, his mother had started to collect tiny figurines of angels. The first one had been sent to her on Lady Day by her eldest sister, the one who had never found a husband and who still lived in the family home, Monivea. It was a beautiful thing. More had followed, but none like that one. When he was sixteen, and Kathy four, the little girl, fascinated by the tiny figures shimmering in the candlelight, had picked up the one from Monivea. And dropped it. It had shattered into a thousand sparkling fragments. Liam had shouldered the blame and taken the whipping. Better him than her. It was the first of many times. Angelic she might seem, but Kathy was full of mischief.

His mother continued to have miscarriages. Two more daughters were lost, and there was still no sign of another son. Liam didn’t know whether to be relieved by that. He tried not to think about the future if another son appeared.

And often, he would go to the yew tree, hide amongst the sheltering needles, and watch the family he would never have. He tried to pretend that he was there, in the room with them, loved as Connor was loved, but all he ever found was more pain.

Then, when he was seventeen, his mother brought to full term a living boy child. The doctor told her that this pregnancy had been too hard, that she risked her life if she had another, that she was too old for another. But, with a new son in the cradle, she seemed content. Even Father seemed pleased.

The boy lived for two days, then the tiny wrinkled thing was put in the earth along with the rest of the man’s hopes. That night, he got roaring, falling-down, incoherent drunk. He slammed into his wife’s room intent on unburdening his sorrows. Liam, worried for Kathy, crept out onto the landing and crouched by the door. He heard clearly what was said, even though his father was slurring in a way he had never known before, and the words seared themselves onto his soul.

“I’m cursed, cursed to never have a son. All I have is that useless thing that came with you. You! A French of Monivea, pregnant to a Yorkshire rapist from the English Army! I wish I’d never taken you, when your father came with all his soft words and enough money to set me up in business. You and your swelling belly. I’ve tried to beat the evil out of him, but he’ll follow in his father’s footsteps, mark my words. How could anything good ever come from that? He can never be a son of mine. He’s wild… he’s…”

Just then, the man trailed off into sobs and incoherent mutterings, but Liam had heard enough. He ran. He had nowhere to run to, but he ran nonetheless.

It was a week before Connor and Oonagh found him, hiding in a small rock shelter, soaked and cold and hungry. He wouldn’t tell even his best friend, his blood brother, why he had run, and Connor didn’t press. After all, he had secrets too. Shameful ones.

When they got back to the village, Wenda was gone and Liam was sent to finish his education away from home, in Dublin. He had an allowance from his father, and he went back for vacations, but it never felt like home again.

In Dublin, he found himself on the fringes of society, a tradesman’s son and therefore to be despised, but he had enough money to join in with the hard-drinking, hard-living sons of the gentry. And even if he was the bastard son of a Yorkshire rapist, he would still show them that he could out-Irish even the Irish, with his drinking and brawling and wenching. And soon he no longer yearned for Connor and Kathy and Wenda; no more than several times a day, at least. And he only occasionally remembered the tinker’s warning.

It was here that he learned that eating with fingers, as they did at home, was no longer considered polite; here he learned what was expected of the scion of a nobly-bred family – disdain, contempt and disrespect for others – and here that he learned that he had talent for drawing. He learned to draw and he learned to paint, spending some of his allowance on lessons from a struggling, starving artist. He particularly liked doing watercolours at sunrise, although as his drinking and wenching grew more frequent, his need to bury the rage more and more pressing, his presence at sunrise became a rarer and rarer event.

Once, he took his drawings home, but his father found them and tore them to pieces in a fit of rage at his son’s newly learned ways. ((“I am ashamed to call you my son.  You’re a lay-about and a scoundrel and you’ll never amount to anything more than that.”))

And one night he forget entirely to beware of women and reflections and lies, remembering only his own self-pity, his need to be swallowed up by something that would take away his rage, to lose himself in a pair of knowing eyes. He succumbed to the lure of the exotic ((“I could show you – things you’ve never seen.”)). And lost his life to the vampire, only to find that his new and different life was still fuelled by the rage of the last one.

-0-

The young man Connor, as head of his household, stood by the graveside, not listening to the droning of the priest, but remembering other times. Times when, even though he was a hard and proud man, he would have given anything to have a father like Liam’s. Not a father who demanded that, when the family were sitting together each night, his son should curl up in his arms and cast him looks of love. A father who would come to him late at night and do things, demand things, that should never happen between father and son.

A father who had done the same things to Diarmuid, which is why Diarmuid had left. Connor had been too young to take with him, and Diarmuid had promised to send for him as soon as possible, but years had passed, and he hadn’t. When Connor had accepted that his brother was dead, and he no longer had the companionship of Liam, he had spent long hours one night rasping at the stitching of the girth of his father’s saddle. His father had gone to the hunt the next day, and being a neck-or-nothing rider, it had indeed been his neck when the girth had snapped at a particularly testing bank and ditch. He’d been brought home on a hurdle, quite dead, and each member of the family had given a private sigh of relief.

And now he surely was being punished. The companion of his youth, the man he hoped to always call friend, whose love had seen him through the worst years, lay cold and dead in the earth, never to be loved again. A judgement on him. He went home, then, wondering what to do with the rest of his life.

-0-

Liam’s father stood by the grave when all the rest had left. True, there might be grave robbers, but the sexton would watch out for those. There were other reasons for staying here, alone. He was remembering. Remembering all the things he might have done differently. And he remembered the night his other son had died, when he had broken the habit of a lifetime and got stinking drunk. He had reminded his wife that their son was not *his* son, but the son of an English soldier, a Yorkshireman, who had raped the sixteen-year-old daughter of French of Monivea. Then he had done something unheard of. He had broken down in tears. A wife should never see her husband cry. A wife needed her husband to be strong, always.

But that night, his wife had been the strong one. She had pulled him to her breast, and had told him of that night all those years ago.

“It wasn’t rape. It was never rape. He was a fine man, and he loved me. And I loved him. But he was a lowly lieutenant. He wanted to make something of himself, make a life where I could join him, be his wife. We only ever had that one night. He said that he would send for me, but he didn’t. I never knew what happened to him. Perhaps he died, perhaps it never meant as much to him as it did to me. But Liam was conceived in love. I have never shown him the love I felt, for fear of offending you, and my son has suffered for it. But he does not come of bad blood.”

She had held him until the crying stopped, but now he knew that things were worse. He knew why the lieutenant had never sent for her. The men of her family had killed him, slowly and painfully because the soldier had let them think he had raped the girl, taken the blame for it all. Then they had sunk his body into a bog, beneath a hurdle weighted down with stones. And he himself had been party to that, after her father had offered him gold to make the match.

It was a marriage of convenience, but he had grown to love her and, dammit, he had grown to love the boy. He just had never been able to show it. He had formed the habit of beating the evil out of him, and hadn’t seemed able to stop.

After that night, he had sent the boy away, to see if they could all make a fresh start, learn to live with each other better. But things had gone from bad to worse, and he hadn’t known how to stop it, and now the only son he would ever have was lying cold in the earth. The young man who had been so full of life would never walk the earth again.

At sunset, he yielded his place to the sexton, and went home to live out the rest of his existence.

***************

Connor’s said something to make his family laugh, and he’s laughing too. But as I watch him laugh a worm squirms inside of me. A worm of fear. Does he still have my genes? How much of his madness and torment was really because of those years in Quortoth? I strain to catch a glimpse of the expression in his eyes – is it still there? That lurking madness, that boiling up of torrential emotion. Or is it really gone, replaced by contentment and calm. Does this Connor not shriek and scream for the things he can’t have, like the one who stands outside this window now used to? Does he yearn for the unobtainable? Unwillingly, my mind strays back to another time and another place, where a monster was made even more monstrous by obsession and yearning.

PANEL 2

Darla heard the smash of wood splintering from the room above, followed by the tearing sound of cloth, and a torrent of swearing. She sighed and shook her head. “There are times when I wonder if I knew what I was doing when I made him,” she muttered to herself.

She waited, listening out for the inevitable follow up to the huge outburst from upstairs. It came, heaving sobs intermingled with curses, and then finally silence. Darla sighed again and slowly made her way up the narrow staircase to the attic room, knowing what she would find when she opened the door.

Angelus was sitting on the floor, head in his hands surrounded by a veritable carnage of paint, torn canvas, spilled water and shattered easels. He didn’t look up as he heard the door open.

“Angelus…you’ve ruined that new shirt.” Darla tried for levity this time. Sometimes her childe responded to it. Other times it infuriated him, she never knew which to expect. This time Angelus made an ineffectual attempt to wipe at the paint that covered the fine silk shirt.

“Didn’t like the colour in any case” he said. Darla laughed. “It was white, darling boy. Now…well spattered would best describe it, I suppose.” She stretched out one of her small hands, Angelus took it and pulled himself off the floor, towering over his tiny but formidable sire. He glanced around at the mess. “Best get someone to clear this up, then.”

“Why, so you can indulge yourself all over again the next time?” Darla said.

“There won’t be a next time. I’m finished with it.” Angelus scowled around at the ruined room. “Bloody ridiculous in any case, having an attic studio where the windows are all blacked out. What’s the bloody point?”

Privately Darla agreed with him, but had learnt the wisdom of keeping silent as far as any discussion with Angelus’s painting was concerned. Anyway there was still a manic glint in his eyes that boded ill for anyone unfortunate to cross his path, either now, or when they went out later that night. She had never come across another creature remotely like Angelus, and sometimes Darla wondered if something had either gone amiss when she had turned him, or if the magnificent young man she had lusted after had had something wrong with him instead. Despite being his sire, and supposedly in control of their relationship, there was a wildness in Angelus that occasionally unnerved her as much as it excited her. He was alert to the world in a way she could hardly understand, able to function well on far less sleep than was normal for vampires of his age. Sometimes focused to the point of obsession, restless and intense, Angelus seemed also prey to a profound depth and variety of emotions. At times it seemed like he perceived things in an entirely different way from herself. The way he sometimes described it to Darla, it was as though Angelus saw the world as if through a kaleidoscope – brilliant but fractured.

It was only after she had turned him, that Darla had discovered that her beautiful boy was an artist. She had been surprised, what little she had known about him had led her to believe that he was a gorgeous lout, intent only on drinking, gambling and whoring his life away much to the distress of his respectable merchant father. There had been no indication of other more creative and artistic abilities in the young man that she had taken for herself in that Galway alley. And there was no doubt that Angelus was very talented. He sketched and painted with a passion that Darla admired, but couldn’t fully appreciate. Her own passions lay solely with the flesh and the hunt. Angelus’s did too, but his need to express himself through paints and charcoal equalled his preternatural predator’s instincts. There were advantages. Darla had endless portraits of herself, in every conceivable position, which minimised the disappointment of no longer being able to gaze at her reflection in a looking glass. These portraits, along with all of Angelus’s work, had been drawn with vigour and certainty, and compensated a little for the exhaustion brought about by coping with Angelus’s manic energy and larger than life personality.

Now Angelus was pulling the shirt over his head, throwing it carelessly into the corner before marching out to fetch a new one. Darla watched him leave, mesmerised again by the sheer physicality of her childe. Mouth watering slightly, she followed him back to their bedroom.

-0-

Angelus had shaken Darla off after their hunting trip on the pretext that he had some card game to attend. Darla had rolled her eyes and pouted, but Angelus had simply shrugged and left her anyway. The card game did exist, but Angelus had no intention of going there. Instead, he found himself making his way to the Boulevard des Capucines, to the former studio of the photographer Nadar. The building was locked up and in darkness now, but this didn’t prevent Angelus from easily sliding one of the windows open and slipping inside. He felt annoyed at himself for being so irresistibly drawn back to what was inside the building. This was, after all the third time in one week that he had found himself retracing his steps here. He gently opened the door into a small gallery, and then stopped, transfixed by what he could see in the moonlight that flooded the long windows. Paintings. The walls were filled with paintings, but these paintings were like nothing that Angelus had ever seen before. Even in the moonlight there was a vividness and immediacy about these pictures that made Angelus shiver. He’d heard about this exhibition and had been intrigued by the ridicule that it had provoked so had come by night to see for himself. He had literally been stunned into stillness. He’d never heard of the painters, Monet, Renoir, Pisarro, but their work spoke more clearly than words ever could. One picture in particular drew Angelus like a moth to the flame. Monet’s ‘Impression. Le soleil levant’. Sun Rising. Angelus had walked the earth for two lifetimes as a vampire, and the memory of sunrise had faded long ago. Now this painting provoked conflicting emotions in Angelus. He wanted to see this picture as it should be seen, in daylight. More, he desired to see the world as this painter could see it – at sunrise.

He lingered, unable to tear himself away from the pictures, but the longer he looked at them, the more frustrated he became with the knowledge that despite all his power, he could never capture this sunlit world for himself. It was nearly dawn before Angelus finally pulled himself away from the gallery and slowly made his way back to the townhouse which he and Darla had commandeered.

-0-

“Angelus! What do you think you’re doing? Get away from it!” Panicking, Darla grabbed at Angelus’s coattails and dragged him into the darkness of the house. She had found him - panting and trembling - his skin beginning to smoke, in the garden where the sun was just beginning to edge over the horizon. She slapped him hard.

“Whatever possessed you to do such a stupid thing? It’s not like you’re some dazed fledgling.”

Angelus glared at her, and the wild expression in his dark eyes silenced Darla’s tirade. She clutched at her own throat as she felt it constrict with anxiety. Was this the onset of the madness that afflicted so many of their kind? Darla knew that very few vampires survived more than a few decades of existence, most could not face the prospect of immortality and ended themselves. She had watched Angelus for these signs, but had thought that his sheer vitality and lust for life as a vampire would save him from the descent into suicidal madness. Now she had found him trying to face the sun.

“You stupid bitch” Angelus hissed. “I nearly saw them. Another few seconds…”

“Another few seconds and you would have been dust.” Darla retorted. “Nearly saw what, in any case?”

“The colours. The colours of sunrise. I have to see them for myself. Why can’t you understand that?” Angelus was suddenly colder than ice. He drew himself up to his full height, still trembling slightly from the approach of the sun’s rays. “I’m going to bed now.” He turned on his heel and left Darla standing alone in the shadowed parlour. For a second she considered following and having it out with him, but there was something about Angelus – something so intimidating – that Darla thought better of it, and left him to his own devices.

-0-

Angelus stared dully at the canvas in front of him. To an outside eye, the painting was an arresting one, a finely crafted representation of the Seine by night. But Angelus was disappointed and frustrated. Somehow he couldn’t capture the immediacy of the pictures he had seen in the gallery on the Boulevard des Capucines, no matter how he had tried to copy the techniques that he’d studied so closely. He had wanted to use the bright colours that he’d seen in Monet’s work, but because he had to guess the effect that daylight would have on these colours the result was clumsy and false. Angelus had been forced back to the sombre colours of the night.

He could hear the sounds of packing elsewhere in the house. Darla had tired of Paris and wanted to move on. Angelus had wondered about staying on without his sire, but Darla had made it very clear that she was at the end of her patience with his volatile moods. They had had a terrible fight several nights ago, culminating in Darla’s threat to leave him and return to the Master. Angelus was pretty certain the threat was an empty one, but he couldn’t be sure, and wasn’t prepared to have the Master gloating over Darla’s abandonment of him. So reluctantly he had agreed to accompany her back to England.

Angelus looked around the attic studio one last time, and then closed the door behind him, abandoning the pictures that lay propped against the walls and on the easel. There was nothing he wanted to take with him. Nothing that satisfied him. He joined Darla in their bedroom where she was chivvying a minion to hurry up with folding her wardrobe into several large ship trunks. He leaned down and kissed her. Surprised and pleased, Darla dropped the dress she was holding and kissed him back.

“What’s brought this on? Not that I’m complaining, mind,” she asked. Angelus kissed her again and swept her up into his arms. “And do I have to have a reason to want to kiss you, now?” he said. Darla looked into Angelus’s dark eyes, and gave an inward sigh of relief. The wild glitter had gone, replaced by sardonic amusement. Thank the Gods she thought, calm waters once more. For the first time in weeks they lost themselves to passion, disregarding the presence of the minion, who dutifully kept packing Darla’s dresses while her mistress was savagely taken by her consort.

-0-

The calm waters continued over the next few months. Angelus found new and lewd pursuits that seemed to keep his mind off whatever had upset him so in Paris, and Darla and Drusilla were largely left to their own devices. Drusilla had soon become Darla’s charge as Angelus had quickly tired of the girl once he had sent her insane and then made her one of them. Although appealing in many ways, a lunatic vampire could be both wearing and hard work. Still, Drusilla provided Darla with companionship – and other things – while Angelus stalked the streets, creating havoc and terror.

Drusilla’s gift of the sight had remained with her after her turning, but it was a strange and twisted thing. Drusilla would fall into a kind of trance, half singing half moaning obscure and often seemingly meaningless words and phrases. It was only after events came to pass that she had predicted, that Angelus and Darla were able to piece together what Drusilla had been trying to tell them. They learned to listen carefully to the dark girl’s ravings.

Drusilla was sitting curled up in one of the large winged armchairs, chattering quietly to herself, and Darla was writing at the table when Angelus returned from his card game in one of the less salubrious areas of Soho. Darla looked up at her handsome consort, noticing that there was a tear in the sleeve of his immaculately tailored coat. Angelus noticed her gaze and grunted ill-temperedly.

“Bastard had a knife.”

“Careless of you to let him use it,” Darla said.

“Only for a second. Then he was begging me for his life…and other things” Angelus smirked at the memory. The card game had gone badly for Angelus, with him losing heavily to a young man who Angelus suspected of being a talented card sharp. Angelus could normally spot a cheater, their scent giving them away, but this chap had been superbly confident in his abilities, and there hadn’t been a trace of nervousness about him.

Angelus had lost apparently gracefully, and had wished his companions good luck and good night, and then waited until the young card sharp had left the gaming hell. Angelus had followed him silently, waiting his moment. It came when the man turned off the main thoroughfare and walked quickly up a short, but darkened street, not lit by the new-fangled gaslamps that were appearing all over London. The strike had been quick and clean, but Angelus wanted to let the young man know who it was and why he had been chosen. He released him long enough for the card sharp to be able to turn and see his attacker. Angelus had grinned, revealing his viciously sharp fangs. “You should be more careful who you choose to gull” he hissed. “Not that you’ll have a chance to take advantage of my good advice”.

Swallowing a strangled cry, the young man had suddenly lashed out, the blade of the knife he’d been palming flying towards Angelus’s golden eyes. But preternatural reflexes were quicker than even the fastest human ones, and Angelus had flung his arm between the blade and his face, taking the cut on his arm instead. With a snarl, Angelus took the young card sharp once more, sinking his fangs deep into the man’s throat. But instead of gulping the blood down, Angelus savoured it, sucking gently. His victim’s cries of fear were now sighs of passion. Angelus drew out the young man’s death, pulling away from him to listen to the weakening human’s pleading.

He laughed quietly as he heard his victim begging for his life, but at the same time desperately trying to regain the overwhelmingly pleasurable feeling of the vampire’s fangs in his neck. Angelus felt the card sharp’s heart slow, and pulled hard at the whitening throat. That final rush of life leaving the dying human, and entering him, left Angelus shuddering in his own ecstasy. Delicious.

He dropped the body and quickly went through its pockets, reclaiming all the money that the young man had won from him that evening, plus the other winnings from the rest of the gamers. Then, spotting the tear in his coat and shirt from the young man’s knife, Angelus had given the corpse a savage kick before leaving it to return to the women.

Darla fingered the tear in Angelus’s sleeve. “Shame. Brand new coat.”

Angelus shrugged. “I’ll get another.” His eyes wandered across to where Drusilla was playing with her dolls and a hand mirror. She enjoyed seeing the reflections of her dolls’ faces, even though she could no longer see her own. As she turned the mirror, it caught the flash of the candlelight and reflected it back momentarily onto the blonde locks of one of the dolls. The hair shimmered for an instant, and then returned to the flat yellow colour it had been before. Angelus went quite still. Darla glanced up at him enquiringly, and her heart sank. It was back. That manic gleam had returned to Angelus’s beautiful dark eyes.

-0-

He painted. Sometimes weeping, sometimes cursing, Angelus tried to capture that quality of light that he had seen for one fleeting moment. Darla avoided him, easy to do as Angelus only left his room to get more paints or hunt. Drusilla was plaintive, not understanding why her beloved Daddy had shut himself away, but Darla discouraged the girl from seeking him out.

Drusilla’s fascination for what Angelus was doing behind those locked doors grew the longer her sire hid himself behind them. She would sit outside listening to the increasingly dramatic sounds of frustration and rage, and quiver as she heard glass and other materials being hurled around the room, to be followed by yet more cursing.

One night Angelus nearly fell over her as he flung the door open and emerged, streaked with paint and blood, having bitten through his own lips in fury.

“Stupid bitch, out of my way!” he snarled, backhanding Drusilla as he stampeded down the stairs and out of the house.

Picking herself up, Drusilla rubbed at her smarting face and peered inside the room that Angelus had left unlocked. She crept inside. To her surprise, Drusilla saw the doll that she had been looking for propped up on a chair, its blonde hair reflected in a long mirror that was leaning on the other side of the chair. A pile of burnt out candles littered the floor around both doll and mirror. Then Drusilla noticed the painting on the easel. It was a strange thing, not the detailed representation that she had been expecting to see, but instead a composition made up of blotches and dots. Drusilla stood back from the picture and realised that it was indeed the blonde hair of the doll – but the doll itself looked more like a real person, as far as anyone would be able to make out, the oils had been so smeared, scraped off and re-applied so often. Then, to her delight, Drusilla saw the palette of paints that Angelus had carelessly abandoned in his flight from the studio. She picked it up together with one of the paintbrushes that festooned almost every surface. Giggling, Drusilla chose the brightest yellow on the palette and gaily daubed it onto the painting, streaking the carefully textured colours of Angelus’s work with her own clumsy efforts. Drusilla giggled again, enjoying playing this new game in her beloved Daddy’s studio.

Which is where Darla found her half an hour later, flicking paints off the stiff paintbrushes and onto Angelus’s painting.

“Oh Dear God. Drusilla, Stop!” Darla shrieked, appalled at the rainbow mess her lunatic grandchilde had made of Angelus’s work. She grabbed Drusilla’s arm so roughly that the girl cried out in both shock and pain. Darla slapped Drusilla hard. “You stupid little idiot. He’ll kill you stone dead for this, and I’ve half a mind to let him.”

“But, grandmummy, it’s so much prettier now – I was only trying to make it pretty.” Drusilla’s mad brown eyes were frightened. Darla swore under her breath and dragged Drusilla out of the studio. She summoned one of the minions to her.

“Get Drusilla out of here and well away – get a cab – find somewhere for you both to hide for the next day or so.” Darla handed the minion some money. “Make sure that when you do return, that you seek me out. If you see the master, don’t go near him, and don’t whatever you do, let Drusilla call to him or anything like that. He’ll stake her as soon as look at her unless I can do something to stop him.”

The minion nodded, terrified on his own behalf as well as for Miss Dru.

Drusilla and her escort had been gone only fifteen minutes or so when Angelus returned. He’d grabbed the first streetwalker who had been unlucky enough to cross his path, and drained her dry without any attempt at subtlety or artfulness. The girl had writhed in agony as the vampire had sucked viciously at the wound in her throat, the force of his mouth pulling the blood in the opposite direction of its natural flow. He’d dumped the corpse in the Regent’s canal, and returned to the house, feeling at least a little calmer. Darla met him in the hall.

“Not now, Darla. I want to get back up to the studio” he said but not unkindly.

“Angelus…before you go up….There’s something I must tell you.” Darla braced herself and recounted her discovery of Drusilla in Angelus’s room. Angelus listened to what he was being told without expression. When Darla had finished, he gently took her by the shoulders and moved her aside from the staircase, leaving her to stare after his retreating back as he went to inspect the damage.

-0-

It was even worse than Darla had described.

Angelus stood, frozen at the entrance to his studio. The canvas he had worked on so diligently was a complete mess, daubed and splashed with bright primary colours and completely destroying the painting underneath. Angelus’s first reaction was to find Drusilla and rip her heart out of her chest, but as he turned, something caught his eye. A flash of gold, just like the fleeting glimpse of light that he had seen in the reflection of the doll’s hair. Slowly, Angelus walked over to the canvas. There it was… somehow Drusilla had managed to achieve what Angelus had so signally failed to do, she’d captured the sunshine in the golden hair. Slowly, he picked up a paintbrush.

-0-

It was finished.

Angelus had expected to feel relief, elation, triumph. The painting was perfect. The sun gleamed in the girl’s golden hair, sparkled from her skin, shone from her white dress.

The greens of the foliage were vividly executed, with bright, splodges of primary colours – reds, yellows, blues – representing sun-kissed wild flowers. Angelus had lost himself in the colours, painting furiously and with a new sureness. The doll had merely been the jumping off point for him, what was on the canvas was something far removed from the porcelain figurine in front of him. This girl lived and breathed, loving the sun. And the sun loved her right back.

As he gazed at the picture, Angelus felt a strange and unfamiliar tightness in his chest. He couldn’t immediately recognise this feeling – anger, frustration, rage, fierce joy, lust – all these he knew, but this was completely different from those. He pressed a hand to the front of his shirt, trying to rub the feeling away. And then he remembered…

Yearning. In front of him was something that he wanted so badly, but knew he could never have. Over a century as a demon and Angelus had taken everything he wanted, had everything he wanted. This yearning feeling hadn’t existed for him since he had become a vampire, but now it was back with full force. With a strangled cry Angelus fled, leaving the picture - bathed in its own sunlight – to illuminate the room.

-0-

They had moved on.

The very next day Angelus had announced that he was leaving London for Italy. Darla and Drusilla could come, but he was going anyway…as soon as he could.

As was their way, the house was abandoned, the vampires taking nothing that could not be easily transported, leaving the landlord to discover that his tenants had flitted without paying the rent.

Swearing, the landlord stamped through the house, noting that at least it had been left in reasonable repair, and that the kitchen was as pristine as when he had let the house out. He made his way through the rooms, finally opening the door onto the attic room that had been insisted upon by his defaulting ex-tenants.

The painting of the girl in the sunlit garden stopped him in his tracks. He went over to the canvas and realised that the paint was still wet.

“Bleedin’ artists and their bleedin’ artistic temperaments…still, I’ll take this in part payment”.

So he did. The painting hung in the landlord’s house until a young man studying at the London School of Art chanced to see it when he came courting the household’s pretty daughter. On their wedding day, the young man received the picture from his father-in-law as part of their wedding present, and it travelled with them to New York. There they fell onto hard times and he was forced to sell the picture for a few dollars to a friend of the family. This friend had been trying hard to break into the world of art and painting, and finally he was given the opportunity to exhibit his work in a small gallery in Indianapolis. But he was one painting short. He looked at the picture of girl in the garden, bathed in sunlight – painted all those years ago in London by some unknown genius and abandoned to its fate. He’d based his style on that very painting, having fallen in love with its rich colours and dramatic textures, adoring the sunlight that reflected from the girl and her flowers…just one painting short….

The artist gritted his teeth and told the gallery owner that he had the required number of paintings to exhibit, and that “Suzanne in the Garden” was one of his earliest works.

The exhibition was a triumph, but not an unqualified one for the aspiring artist. Although there had been polite interest in most of his work, the visitors and critics had crowded around the painting of the girl in the garden, enthusing over the sunlight that flooded the picture and the vividness of the colours.

“Paint like this, Otto, and your future will be assured” the gallery owner said, clapping him on the back. Otto gave him a watery smile, and cursed the day he had ever yearned to paint like the true creator of the picture.

-0-

Years later, “Suzanne in the Garden” was featured as part of an exhibition about American Impressionists in the Museum of Metropolitan Art in New York. During one of the evening viewings a solitary figure – one of the many homeless who wandered into the museum on its infrequent free openings – gazed spellbound at the picture. He had stood in one spot for so long that the security guard had become suspicious and wandered over ready to shoo the rather noisome visitor out of the gallery. But he stopped, seeing the bright tears streaking down the grimy face of the tattered young man.

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it” the guard said kindly.

“I thought so,” murmured the young man, and wiping his eyes he left the gallery and his painting.

************

I’m here again, watching Connor. I don’t know whether to be pleased that I feel pain. Would it be worse, I wonder, if I felt nothing at all? If my emotions were as dead as I am? Perhaps so.

They have visitors tonight. Visitors with a new baby, lying in a carrying basket, gazing trustingly at the world around. Don’t trust too much, little one. There are monsters. Not under the bed, perhaps, but monsters, nonetheless. Look at me.

I remember another time with a baby, and a carrying basket. Not Connor. Never think of Connor…

No. Another baby. I sometimes wonder what became of him.

PANEL 3

Darla stares at me with contempt etched into every one of her desirable lineaments. And I do desire. I want her. I want my life back. I want my family back, even the despised William. I don’t want to be alone and hurting.

For a moment I stare back, and I wonder if I can do it, although I know the answer very well. I stare at everything I want, and can never have again. Because there’s a price to pay, an entry fee. The baby in the carrying basket. All I have to do is eat it. Just pick it up, drop my fangs, and drink. Forget that I saved him and his parents just a little while ago. Forget that they are now dead at the hands of my family, and Darla expects this one to be dead at my hands if I’m to be granted an entrée ever again to what should be rightfully mine.

But I can never have any of that again, because I can’t pay the price. The demon is raging, and hungry. Hungry for the baby, for the blood, for the crying and the pain. For Darla. But I can’t. I don’t know what sort of monster I am any more, but I’m not one of those that can eat this baby.

And so I prolong the moment, just to see her for a little longer. I doubt if I’ll ever see her again, although I want to, with every fibre of my being. And I want the baby. I’m going to have to learn to do without everything I want.

And then I know the moment is over, and I snatch the baby out of the basket and crash backwards through the window into the night. I’m huddled over the child to stop the fragments of glass from hurting him. It isn’t because I want to keep him safe, although I do. It’s because if he bleeds, I know that my resolve will be dead, and so will he. I didn’t need to leave quite so dramatically. I’m sure that Darla would have let me walk out with the child – almost sure. I just don’t know whether I could have – walked out, I mean; calmly and quietly left, with the child in my arms under Darla’s contemptuous gaze. I think I would have gone back, on my knees, and begged. So I took the dramatic way, as a message to myself. It’s over.

Now, I have to find a safe place for me, and food for the child, in the middle of the Boxer Rebellion. Great.

-0-

Such a disappointment. How incredibly stupid that this is one of the major feelings coursing through me at the moment – disappointment. The baby whimpers in my arms and I try to ignore it. This scrap of humanity must be getting hungry. I know I am. And I’m disappointed. After two years of abject despair I thought that I was finally back on a familiar path, one that I knew how to follow. Wrong.

The baby’s crying now, and suddenly I’m attracting stares and curious looks from passers-by. Is it so very obvious that I could never be this child’s parent?

I’m no further forward in finding a safe shelter for myself, or food for the baby, and I can smell that dawn is close. Then I turn yet another corner of this endless city and find myself facing the barricaded doors of a small church. I can both hear and smell that there are westerners inside the building. It makes my mouth water at the same time as my flesh creeps at the proximity of Christian artefacts. As I hesitate, the door is flung open and a young woman beckons frantically to me.

“Come in…quickly, it can’t be long before fighting starts up again.”

And almost before I know it, the decision is made and I enter the church, quaking as I pass the threshold. I freeze in the little hallway that leads to the main body of the church, unable to take another step forward. The baby cries again, and the young woman who let me in is immediately at my side.

“Poor mite, he’s hungry.” She glances up at me “You look like you need something inside you as well. Come through, we’ve not got much, but you’re welcome to whatever we have.”

Of course, unknown to her, the church contains a veritable banquet for one such as I. There are people crammed into the little church, men, women and children. My will is weakening…I have to get out of here or…or what? Tear their throats out while they hide from the rebels? Gorge myself on yet more innocent lives? Dumbly, I shake my head at her, and something in my expression must warn her not to press matters, for she takes the child from my arms and leaves me trembling miserably in the antechamber.

I can hear her whispered conversation with another, older woman. “Poor man, he looks completely distraught, I suppose he’s another poor soul who’s lost his family in this terrible place. Still, at least he still has this blessed little thing – is there any milk to be had?” Both women cast concerned – but kind? – looks across at me.

That’s it, the child is going to be safe – as safe as anyone is in this place – I can go, escape. But I’ve dithered a moment too long and the sun is rising. Trapped in this church now, unable to leave until the end of what is probably going to be one of the longest days of my already very long life.

-0-

They try to get me out of the vestibule, but I cannot. The young woman who brought me in comes to me with a cup of hot tea. I’ve no idea how they managed to make it in here. Churches must be different from how they were in my old life. My first life. She’s very concerned, whispering words of encouragement, trying again to persuade me to join the crowd. Even if I could cross the threshold, I would not. Some in there have been injured, and the blood scent is becoming unbearable. They fled in here from death, from the monster in the night. They brought the monster in with them, and I can barely control myself. It’s been two years since this soul was crammed back into my unwilling flesh, and, like a fledgling, I have difficulty in controlling myself. In finding a balance.

Still she persists, talking in a soft and soothing voice, telling me that I can sit comfortably, or lie down on one of the pews if I wish, speaking to me with the throbbing of her blood and the pounding of her heart. At last I find something to say, something to fend her off, to take the temptation away.

“I’m sorry, I just…need to be alone for a while. I can’t face a crowd of people just yet.”

She smiles, presses her hand against my shoulder then, mercifully, leaves. I hunch into the corner, and tuck my feet up onto the narrow bench, my arms wrapped around my knees. And I listen to the sounds of death outside. The Righteous Fists are destroying any western properties they can find, here in Beijing. They’ve been at this for a while now. It’s a miracle this church has survived. Perhaps it won’t. If they decide to fire the church, we will all be dead. I could anticipate that – I could just walk out of the door and into the sun. Given to the fire – a purification of sin. Can it purify mine? Only if it lasts for millennia. So I stay in the vestibule. Every now and again, I look around the partly open door – left, I think, to make me feel included, even though I am not – and see the pitiful band of refugees.

One of the women has a newborn child that she is nursing, and she has taken her child and my baby into the vestry to feed them. They have both stopped crying, although I could hear from the feeble wails of her son that he is sickly. The woman herself looks – and smells – far from well. I suspect she has a post-partum infection. It won’t get treated in here.

My baby. When did it become that? Yet I can still feel the weight of him in my arms, still feel the warmth of his breath, hear the rush of his blood and the pattering of his heart…

And I realise that I have lost control, and my fangs are down. In desperation, I drink the now tepid tea, and let it soothe the hunger cramps in my belly. I don’t think I’ll ever again drink tea without remembering this. Gradually, control returns and I look human again.

Human. I’m not, of course, but I don’t know what I am. I’m one of a kind. Unique. And alone. There is nothing like me on the face of the earth, I’m sure. Can you understand the depths of such aloneness? I’m not a proper vampire. Darla made that quite clear, although she didn’t need to. And I’m not a proper human. I look again at the gathering in the church, strangers trying to support each other, trying to save each other’s lives. And I hunger. I hunger for company, but I hunger even more for blood.

My thoughts are beginning to spiral down into despair – for neither the first nor the last time – when I hear a change in the timbre of what is happening in the body of the church. The murmur of conversation falls into a silence that I can only describe as respectful, and there is a sob and then a wail. The wail of an adult female, this time. And there is death.

The woman who has fed my baby is kneeling on the floor by one of the pews, clasping the hand of the new corpse. Her husband, I should think, and father to the sickly baby. There are other children in there, and they are looking on the dead man with wide-eyed and solemn gazes. This isn’t something they should see.

The woman who tried to comfort me now asks for help – help to lay the corpse decently out of sight of everyone else, especially the children; but the men here are largely the halt and the lame, or the elderly, none of them swift enough to find a place of greater safety than this, and everyone just stands there, clinging to the nearest warm body. Then one of the younger children starts to cry.

I cannot bear the stench of misery and fear, with no one doing anything to end it. And the women have been kind to me. I remember the ease with which I have entered churches when I was a demon, and before that, when I was a worthless wastrel, and wrapped in those memories, I stride through the door to the knot of silent witnesses. I move the two women, my saviour and the new widow, gently out of the way, and lift the corpse easily into my arms. I wonder for a moment if there could possibly be a crypt, but there isn’t, so it has to be the vestry.

“Wait here.”

They nod. And so I carry the corpse away from the crowd, away from all those accusing symbols of my godlessness. I take him into the vestry, and close the door, and lay him on the table. And I drink.

-0-

He’s dead of internal injuries. He must have taken a beating from the mob, and escaped. Thought he’d escaped. The blood is sour from the body’s efforts to heal, but to me, starving for it, it tastes like the finest wine. Even though I loathe myself, I cannot stop. Afterwards I cover the worried wound as best I can and leave the vestry. It’s hot in this country, and there’ll be no funeral for that dead man, he’ll have to be dumped somewhere along with countless others. I beckon to the old cleric who is trying to comfort the grieving widow.

“I’ll take the body away later.”

He looks up at me with rheumy eyes. “Bless you, my son.”

I step away, flinching. Then the young woman who first saw me is at my side, smiling at me. She’s holding my baby out to me.

“He’s fed and changed. Look, he’s asleep now.”

And then he’s in my arms once more.

“My name’s Ellen. Ellen Franklin.” She pauses. Startled, I realise that she is wanting to know my name.

“Angel…” I stop, confused. After Darla threw me out after discovering what the gypsies had done to me I spent two years completely alone. I doubt that I spoke more than a few words to anyone in that entire time, and then only to threaten or beg. The first time I heard my name spoken again was when I found my family here in Beijing. But it sounded all wrong. Angelus is someone else…not gone, but not who I am now.

“Hello, Angel. And the baby?” She’s peering at the tiny sleeping face in my arms. “What’s he called?”

That stumps me completely. “Uhh…I don’t know”. Ellen looks taken aback, and I try to explain.

“He’s not mine…I found him. His parents were murdered – missionaries I think – he was still alive so I took him…” They say if you are going to lie, then stay as close to the truth as you can. Ellen is smiling again now. “Oh, you are a good man. So many would have just passed by. There have been so many terrible things, it’s hardened people, I suppose.”

Remembering the drained corpse in the vestry I hang my head in shame.

“Well, we’ll have to call him something. It only seems right that you should think of a name for him, Angel.”

I open my mouth to correct her, but then decide against it. After all – what’s in a name anyway? Ellen pats my arm and then goes to take care of some of the others, leaving me standing awkwardly in the middle of the church aisle.

The baby stirs and yawns. He opens his eyes and stares straight into mine. He gurgles and yawns again, stretching tiny fists out and kicking his feet. And then he smiles at me.

The rest of the day passes in a kind of dream. I find myself perched on the edge of a pew, completely transfixed by this miracle in my arms. We are interrupted twice for him to be fed and changed, but then he’s returned to me, and I can resume my study of him.

He is so perfect. And so opposite from the dismal creature who holds him. Young where I am old. Innocent where I am guilty. Pure where I am tainted. So innocent, that when he looks up into my face, he doesn’t recognise me for the monster that I am.

Nathaniel. The name springs into my mind unbidden. Gift of God.

“Nathaniel…” I whisper, trying out the sound of it, and the baby laughs.

-0-

As the shadows deepen outside, he reaches up and takes hold of my finger. His grip is surprisingly strong, his little fist curled around the cold flesh of a monster. He pulls my finger towards his mouth, and starts to suck. I am, of course, barren of nourishment for him, as I am barren of all else. It is then that the impossibility of the whole position really hits me. I am a plague on the face of the earth, cold and dead and incapable of giving life of any sort. I will never have a child, *can* never have a child, *should* never have a child. This basic human gift is, and always will be, beyond my reach. I am not human. I am a thing, a desecration of everything human.

For an hour or two, holding this child has muffled the voices in my head. The voices of the dead. Of my victims. They should never be silenced. They should haunt me for eternity. So many of them. Husbands, fathers, wives, mothers. Children. Babes, like this one. I’ve drunk them all. And worse. Much worse. I shall never have a right to comfort of any sort, and especially to the comfort that holding a new life such as this brings.

In any event, he isn’t safe with me. He smells like food.

I steal the lifeblood of others to fuel my own profanity of existence. All I can offer this child is stolen, unholy and dead. If he had teeth, if he bit into my finger, he would find not life there, but death. I must find him a home as soon as possible.

Yet, I am loath to entrust him to a family here in this city, where his Western heritage might before long be his death. Nor do I feel inclined to leave him with an orphanage, if there is one. What future could there be for one such as him, with the country in such turmoil?

But there are more immediate considerations. He is hungry again. I don’t think that the woman who has fed him has that much milk to give. She is sitting in a pew at the far side of the church, her own child cradled in her arms. I can tell by the scent of her that the infection is spreading, and quickly. She cannot get attention here. Her child is weaker, too. Sunset is approaching, and I am minded to offer to get her to a healer, or a hospital. Whatever is available, and will care for a Westerner. Perhaps she will take my…take Nathaniel. When her own child dies, as he inevitably will, perhaps she will be grateful for Nathaniel, and raise him as he should be raised. His parents were good and gentle people. Foolish, but if we all paid the ultimate penalty for foolishness, there would be few enough humans – or demons – walking the face of the Earth.

I move over to the bereaved woman, who is crying silently, her head bowed with weakness and sorrow and pain. It’s harder than I thought, to ask her to take the child. Not only do I not want to let him go, but I can’t see how I can impose this extra burden upon her when she is so frail. First things first, though. I’ll offer to get her to a hospital.

As I am about to speak, there is a series of sharp raps on the door. Then there is a scream. I know what is happening. I’ve watched – and benefited from – earlier examples of what is happening. The mobs have found a Westerner and are killing…her. That scream was definitely a her. And they’ve noticed the church. They’ll burn this place to the ground if we don’t let them in. If we do, they’ll kill everybody here. Including Nathaniel. I don’t care if they kill me, if they put me out of my misery, although I feel that will be too easy a way out for me. I deserve to have to live a very great deal longer with my own personal demons. But I won’t give this boy up to them. Not willingly, so long as I can prevent it. Nor Ellen. Nor the woman and baby – I don’t even know their names. And I remember the faces of the children, huddled in a corner now. They were trying to sleep away the pangs of hunger, but the knocking has awoken them, and there is some fitful crying. Nathaniel remains quiet, looking at me with an unspoken demand in his eyes. I’m not sure what it’s for, but it’s something I’m definitely not equipped to give. I think he’s asking for salvation. Nevertheless, I have to try. And perhaps, if I can somehow save even one of these, perhaps just one of the voices in my head will quieten down a little. No. I don’t deserve even that much of a respite.

There isn’t any time, though, for reflections like this. The wolf is at the door. But I’m a predator too. Mad and crippled with self-loathing, but still a predator. And I’m still a much more terrible predator than anything out there. Except, they have numbers on their side. How many? Can I take them? Better try and find out.

There’s a small bell tower, and even though I have to make a precarious stack of furniture to clamber up in order to look more human, it’s the work of a moment to get up there and out onto the wooden roof. Those below me are watching anxiously. There’s a head on a spike out in the street. A man’s head, with a mane of white hair. I don’t know where the body is. People are milling around the surrounding streets, hundreds of them, but their attention is on something happening further away. Then comes another scream. It’s the same woman. So, a Western woman is being tortured or raped, or both. There may be other prisoners for the crowd to play with, keep their attention away from us. There are only about thirty men surrounding the church. Most of them are clustered around the closed door, their leader hammering on it with the hilt of his sword. A couple, though, have gone around the back, looking for another way in. I don’t think they are certain yet whether there are people in here.

I drop down silently behind the pair, and before they are aware of me, their necks are broken. That’s two less. Then it’s back to the roof. There are still too many. They have torches, and I don’t think it will be long before they are using them to fire the building. I’m considering my options, none of which seem hopeful, and the best of which seems to be to go back inside, snatch the baby and make a run for it, when I hear something a few streets away that might make the difference. Military boots and Western voices.

For a vampire, crossing from roof to roof is easy work. There are maybe a hundred or a hundred and fifty men, swinging their rifles like clubs, forcing their way through the streets. Their commanding officer follows on, with a smaller rearguard. I drop down into the middle of this rescue party. They’re German. I speak enough of that language to make myself understood. I don’t mention the piked head, or the woman being…well, whatever she’s being. There is no time for diversions.

The officer roars an order, and the column of men swings to the left, towards the refuge. They are almost too late. The men of the Righteous Fists have fired the church.

Two salvos from the soldiers, and the way is clear. The officer barks orders to his men, intent on breaking down the door, and I take advantage of the momentary confusion to get back onto the roof and down the bell tower. Everyone is huddled in the centre of the church, smoke and flames licking at the walls around them. In seconds, I have the barricade stripped away, and the doors open, spilling a couple of brawny soldiers into the vestibule. The men rush in and help the refugees out. I take Nathaniel from Ellen. As I do so, she reaches up and kisses my cheek – an unusual gesture in those days, to say the least.

“Thank you, Angel. You have indeed been our guardian, and I’m sure you were sent specially to us.”

Then she’s gone, herding out the children. The new widow is barely able to walk, and, wrapping my right arm around her waist, I half carry her out of the smoke-filled building, the crackle of flames, as the wood catches, driving me on. Her baby is now silent in her arms. I don’t think either of them has long to go. Damn.

The soldiers shepherd us down to the river, to a ship, heavily guarded by more soldiers, French this time. It seems that the Western nations have mounted a concerted effort. Other refugees have been rounded up already. The ship isn’t large, and there isn’t much room, but I find a quiet corner for my charge.

She’s almost unconscious now, and the baby is little better. She needs medical attention urgently, but I doubt there’s any to be had here. I start to rethink my options – maybe Ellen would be a better bet for Nathaniel – when there’s a small commotion behind us. Ellen is talking to two heavily armed men. Armed, but not military. She points at me, and they come over.

“Lady Amelia? Where is she?”

I’m confused for a moment, but quickly realise that Ellen has sent them not to me, but to my charge. The unconscious woman. I move aside and they see her, laid in the shelter of one of the deck housings. One of them, the elder, kneels down.

“Lady Amelia. Your father sent us to get you out. Where’s your husband? Where’s Mr Jarvis?”

She can’t make sense of what is being said to her. I touch the man on the shoulder.

“Her husband is dead,” I tell him, softly. “She needs medical attention as soon as possible.”

He nods curtly, and confers with his companion. They know there is a doctor somewhere. I see my chance. Perhaps my only chance.

“If you want to go and find a doctor, I’ll stay here until you get back.” And that’s what happens.

As soon as they are gone, I kneel by the woman and take the child from her unresisting grasp. I couldn’t do it yesterday, but I shall have to do it today. It’s for the best. This one is near death. Mine is hungry, but alive and healthy.

In the shadows of the deck housing, hiding my actions with the curve of my back, I let my fangs down, and take the baby. The thin blood almost chokes me as I gulp it down, thickly laced with self-loathing. Then it’s done. I place Nathaniel in her arms. She isn’t going to recover. She would know the difference, but the men won’t. With luck, no one else will, either.

Then the two men are back, escorting a third. I step away as he bends down to pick up Nathaniel, handing him to the elder man. Then he examines her. He is gentle and quick, but I can hear her heart slow and falter. In moments, she is gone. He stands up and shakes his head. He takes the baby and makes a quick examination.

“The little one seems well enough, but there was nothing to be done for the mother, I’m afraid.”

He hands Nathaniel back, then walks across the ship to those of his patients who are still alive. I slip away. I must get off this ship and dispose of the corpse in my arms in case it exposes my deception.

As I walk towards the gangplank, I see Ellen move towards the two men. They say something, but I cannot hear for the hubbub around me. I see her look at the baby, and she frowns. She looks around quickly, for me, I’m sure, but she can’t see me. She knows. I must believe she also knows that the baby I am holding was never going to live. And she says nothing, simply nods, kisses the infant on the forehead, then returns to the cluster of children. She wears a worried expression for a few moments, and searches through the crowd once more. She still can’t see me. Suddenly, her expression smoothes, she smiles at one of her charges, and I know she will not speak. Nathaniel deserves a chance. Although he won’t be Nathaniel any more.

I make my way out through the docks. I’ll bury this tiny corpse as soon as possible – it seems the least I can do – and then find somewhere else to go. Somewhere away from Darla. America, perhaps.

Even long afterwards, I sometimes wonder what happened to that child.

-0-

Back on the ship, the two men are perplexed. They know they need help. Their employer has sent them to rescue his only daughter and her nonentity of a husband. The baby is a complication they had not been expecting. Now, the complication is the only living survivor, and they are ill-equipped to deal with it. The chances of getting a wet-nurse here are nil. This is a naval vessel, but even the navy can be subverted to put in at the next port long enough to find a wet-nurse, if enough money is available. And they have enough money.

The younger man is new to this employment, and he asks something that is bothering him.

“How will the family feel about an orphaned child? All he has is a grandfather, now.”

His mentor smiles.

“The grandfather needs an heir. This child will want for nothing. Not even a name. He won’t be allowed to grow up with his father’s name. He’ll be raised a Wyndham-Price, you mark my words.”

The younger man smiled a little.

“Do you want me to take him while we find some where fit for the lady.”

The elder hands the baby to his companion, who holds him diffidently. Nathaniel promptly burps and sicks up onto the man’s shoulder. The young man sighs, whilst the elder gives a wry smile.

“There lad. You know what they say. No good deed goes unpunished.”

He turns and goes to find a member of the crew, to find somewhere fit to lay a corpse.

*************

Finale

So. There you have it. Fathers who have sons who are not their sons. Creations that carry false claims of title and creator. Families that mistakenly believe their lineage is an unbroken one. Reflections and Lies. Am I doomed to see this endlessly repeated and played out? Is this, then part of my punishment? To carry the knowledge of these secrets, these ever increasing burdens of knowledge? To know the truth and never be able to lay claim to it. To know my son and never be able to lay claim to him.

But then what is truth? Is it what we perceive? What we remember? Or is it always something different? Is it simply what we need it to be?

I thought I was strong enough to come and spy on my son and his new family, pretending that somehow I could help keep him safe. But now I realise that as ever, I’m kidding myself. If I keep going back, how long will it be before I want more? An accidental meeting - carefully engineered – a brief conversation… more? That building inferno of wanting him to recognise me. To know me. Too dangerous. For him, for those he thinks of his family, for those I think of as my friends, and for me.

He’s alive and well, and that’s a reflection that must be truth enough for me.

THE END

4 May 2004

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