Tell me a Tale

"Tell me the tale of your life," said the dark-haired young man from where he sat on the ground before the fire, one knee bent so it just touched his gold brocade vest, the other stretched out before him till the fine leather of his boot nearly touched the grate. The fire hissed ever so slightly behind the metal bars of its prison.

"To condense a century or two into one telling ? Dear boy, you overestimate even my dark powers." Yet she was anything but dark, as beautiful as a fine porcelain doll with her yellow hair and her bright, darting eyes. She laughed low in her throat like a woman content as she stroked her fingers through his hair, loosing the chestnut mass from its velvet ribbon, relishing the feel of him against her leg through the silken layers of her skirts.

The whimper that came from the other side of the hearth made her cock her head slightly, but Angelus didn't break his gaze, even when she motioned to the two mortals trussed up like game-birds on the mat. "Are you going to offer me a drink ?"

He smiled. "Tch, tch, Darla. Are you going to change the subject now ? That's such a..." He took her fingers in his own, feeling their cold delicacy and the bands of the rings she wore. "...pretty little...." He pressed his lips to the back of that delicate little hand and heard her indrawn breath, her little gurgle of laughter as he trailed his kisses up her skin. "....mortal tactic."

Those fingers curled in on themselves, then withdrew. He raised his head and saw that her face had gone very still as she stared at him. She looked so beautiful, and so obviously not alive, like a marble statue of a saint in a drafty church hall.

Rising to turn around, he buried his face in her silk-covered lap, smelling the faint scent of cinnamon and chrysanthemums. And maybe, just maybe, the faint stench of the graveyards ? The smell of the boxes in which they had been buried, the worm-rich soil they had clawed through like monstrous children swimming to the entrance of the womb to be born ?

He felt her touch his hair, running her fingers through it like a blind woman. Before she took his chin in those small fingers and raised his head. Mother, he called her. Witch, strega , Death's Angel.

"My Angel," she frowned at him. "My darling boy. Do you know, can you imagine for one moment how beautiful you are to me ?" She traced the line of his brow, then down his strong nose. "Your face is the face of Lucifer when he was cast down from Heaven." The fingers rested like the wings of small birds on his lips.

There was a groan of protest from the young man lying on the mat. His brown eyes were wide, his corn-yellow hair plastered to his scalp by sweat. His sister had moved so her face was hidden in his chest, but she could still hear. The stink of mortal fear came in waves to the two dead things posed in the semblance of twisted love.

Angelus smiled. This was the game they were playing. The game of command and control, the game of their tiger's affection. He parted his lips and tasted her skin with his tongue before cutting her finger on his sharp tooth. The blood was a flaming spark on his tongue.

Ah, but she was weeping. Like the image of an angel struck by a cruel hand, a clear tear falling so perfectly down the rounded curve of her cheek. Her fingers dug into his chin, and with a savage pleasure he clenched his fingers on her thigh, claws cutting through the sumptuous fabric of her skirt.

"The child was beautiful. Perfect in all her tiny miniature, her gold ringlets framing the face of a fairy. Fitting, then that she should have existed in a doll's house where naked cherubs caroused on the ceiling and everywhere there was the sweep of crimson, the glitter of cloth of gold. The scents were of perfume and powder and canaries sang in golden cages. There was always music, and food, and wine.

"But underneath all these smells of Eros lurked the darker lining of the cloud. The scent of blood, the sour stench of dirtied sheets, the smell of vomit and urine in secret behind locked doors when the dusty light of day broke the illusion of paint and fan....

"Best, such a strange word with so many meanings. Best in the business means most depraved, of course, where rich men could indulge their pleasures. And rich women too, let's not forget. You could do anything short of murder in those rooms, and someone else would clean the sheets and hide the proof. The walls would block the screams......you'd have loved it, darling. I'll have to take you to that district the next time we visit London.

"Little girl, the child of Lust. Little pretty plaything in the largest dollhouse any little girl ever had. And Mama ? Hmmmm......memories of black stockings and corsets over which breasts spilled in snowy whiteness, with the dark rouged aureoles of nipples rising like little suns over the white sea-froth of the finest French lace. Made by nuns, no less. Isn't that funny ? Made by nuns for the skin of a whore, for the tearing fingers of a nobleman wheezing like a whale in the gold and red sea of the bed. And in the evenings, with the red sun sinking in the sky over the city, I would help her dress. See her rise naked out of the tub so glisteningly beautiful with her curling red hair and her slanting green eyes. I'd help unpin her hair, help dust her skin all over with gold dust till she glittered like the goddess she was, my darling. A Goddess with feet of Clay.

"We were all bound by the rise and fall of the sun even then. We lived vampire days in vampire hours, when the time for work and life was night and day was when we slept and suffered.

"Sometimes her skin wasn't that perfect. Sometimes she had the prettiest weals and cuts all over caked with dried blood, but I was too young, too mortal to appreciate them then. Those were the mornings when she would lie in bed as pale as a ghost with one hand wrapped around a bottle of gin, moving only to vomit into the chamber pot beside the bed. And when she bathed sometimes she cried, and I would have to be careful with the towel or her hand would fly out freely.

"When I was little I remember she used to play with me, laugh even, sometimes. Ah, but she was young in those days, believing that in her cleverness she could play this game and win for herself and her little daughter. It was the realising she couldn't win then that broke her so exquisitely. Remember, my darling, there are many ways to break a man, but to shatter him you must first let him believe that he can win. Let him get within an inch of winning, then tear him back. He'll break into a thousand pieces, then it gets really fun.

"I hardly remember the other girls, though there must have been many. All beautiful, all skilled, all trapped and knowing they were trapped. Madame Mercier was the 'Madam', alright. I liked her with all a child's capacity for liking for a simple reason: she played with me as if I was a precious doll, fed me sweets and cakes and never had anything but kind, flattering words for me whereas my mother grew increasingly bad-tempered and quick-handed. Once, I remember so clearly, Madame Mercier gave me a beautiful rosary, all gold and seed pearls. Mama wanted me to give it back and I wouldn't, so she took a broom and in her gin-haze beat me so badly she might have broken something if the other girls, hearing me scream, had not broken open the door.

"Madame Mercier was very angry, of course. Mama might have ruined my looks. She told Mama that it was time we worked together, or she would put her out on the streets like the gin-raddled madwoman she was.

"Madame Mercier oversaw my clothing and ornaments herself. Sheer little silk stockings, baby blue garters thick with lace. Little nightgowns, negligees with necks purposely too large so they fell off one shoulder. A pair of Cupid feathered wings.

"The big bed became a stage, my Angel. The filmy curtains were the curtains of a shadow-play, where shapes rolled on the bed like fish under the glimmer-light of the candles and a little fairy knelt in a corner, darting, helping. It was a game, and some of the gentlemen were as handsome and fascinating as Adonis himself. Almost as beautiful as you, my darling, though you've learnt far more than they could ever dream of. I felt their hot skin, heard their grunts and fevered cries, caressed the contrast of silken skin and hair in their most tender parts. I knelt to watch and let them touch me , kiss me as they laboured over my mother. I smelt the sweat and fluids of a thousand men in that little cavern of silk and gilt and velvet.

"What is that you say ? Oh yes, my darling, if only you could have seen me then. I can imagine you in her arms, rising above her like Death himself as you tear open the neck of my chemise and kiss my cherub's mouth.

"It finished what shards of my mother which remained, our sharing this stage. Broke her like glass...you always wondered why I like grinding glass beneath my boot heel. It reminds me of her eyes in that time when despair finally turned to hate every time she looked at me. I was not her little girl anymore, I was competition. I was the reminder of her failure. Yes, my Angel, our Children are the symbols of our failure as well as our success. If you had been a failure I would have torn you apart and eaten your heart, the way a mother cat finding a dead kitten in the newborn litter will swallow it into herself.

"You know that little scar I have on my back, don't you, my darling ? You love to bite me there when I let you, just on that mark...my Mama gave me that. She brought in a gentleman who paid a lot of money, and he just wanted to cut me a little with that pretty pearl-handled knife of his as he plowed into her.

"I ran screaming, blood running all down my lovely stockings as I rushed out of that room straight to Madame Mercier. And Madame Mercier punished Mama, alright. Locked her into her room for three days with only bread and water. Sometimes I crept into the hall from the bed I was sharing with another girl whose great soft bosom I loved to lay my head on. I would crouch outside her door and hear her crying to God, weeping for her little girl. Her perfect little Darla whom she had lost forever.

"I worked on my own from then on. I was the darling of the House and I had my pick of the customers. I wore silks and diamonds, animal skins and ivory, veils and anklets. I was the scent and smell of a thousand men leaving their mark like dogs on a tree. No, darling, is the answer to you question. I was never the one who bled. There were many who wanted me to beat them, to bleed them, to humiliate them, but I never was the one in that position. I was still too pretty and young to mark yet.

"I had seen him once or twice before. A beautiful man, my Angelus. A man whom I had tried to see again, to gaze into his deep black eyes like an Arabian night. Ah, but he went to my mother. You see, he KNEW."

"He paid her in gold and jewels, this man. She said in those days that he made her weep with joy in the bed after she had wept with pain. No one knew who he was, this man with the lustrous black hair and hawk nose, but his presence moved like opium-smoke through the house. And my mother grew whiter and thinner, and more incandescently beautiful than ever, like a candle burning itself out because of the intensity of its flame. Men who had turned from her because she was falling past youth turned to her with yearning eyes once more, but her black-haired lover paid enough to keep her to himself.

"We watched him come and go, this man as sleek as a black cat, with something like ice and fire in his eyes that made us all dream strange dreams in the night. I watched him. I stared at him as he came in, and I never ducked my eyes when he looked and caught me. I stared at him as long as I could till it became like a challenge between us to see who looked away first, and my Angel, it was never me. I looked so long and hard I lost part of myself in his eyes, and grew to crave his glance. Always he would break away first, smile his slow, burning smile and touch his hat before vanishing into my mother's room.

"I ate out my heart with envy as we all did. We heard her screams of pain faintly, then her moans of pleasure behind those closed doors. And we wanted all the more to be the one in that man's arms, the man who was Lover, Terrible and Tender, and not just customer. And she grew thinner and thinner and her skin whiter and whiter.

"You know who that man is, my darling boy. You've seen him, received his blessing, been presented at his court. Ah yes, your eyes widen. The Master, my Angelus. In those days, more than a hundred years before you he had his beauty still, before he underwent the Rite of Passage that those who wish for great power must undergo, where the price they pay is that of their beauty.

"No, darling, my mother was not dying because of him. She was dying of the disease that ate away at her lungs and stripped her flesh from her bones like a ravenous hyena. It was the scent of death that she gave him, and which gave me to him.

"It was a week before she took ill that at last he spoke to me. I was coming down the hall after a gentleman had left, pulling the gauze and taffeta up over my bare shoulder and furious, my Angel, because I had been careless and this young buck had bitten me in the height of his grunting lust. I was put out and stalking down the hall in my high-heeled slippers, trying to pull a fringe of black lace over the bite-mark when a door swung open, making me start and stumble right into his arms.

"The first thing I realised was the pounding of this heart, and his hardness all around me. Hard his chest, his arms, his legs under their elegant breeches and white stockings. My brow rested amongst the lace at his throat and the skin of his neck was like ice. I made some murmur, some little heated protest, and he held me away from him suddenly with long cold fingers on my bare arms, staring at me with those eyes till I was dizzy and sick with his gaze.

"And he saw that bite mark. At that moment I saw something dark and terrifying come into his eyes and ripple across his aquiline face, almost as if he was changing to his true face which of course he didn't.

"And I'll tell you the secret, my darling dear. I WASN'T AFRAID. Not when his fingers circled my throat, squeezing lightly. Not when his hand cupped my breast, squeezing to the point of pain. Not when he gripped me with rough urgency and bent his head to my neck. Not when he broke skin and drank, fingers of one hand impatiently raising my skirts and finding that hot, dripping wet core of me that was starving for him already. The blood rushed to my head and whizzed in the veins under my face and I clutched at him when he thrust two fingers into me, the others roughly caressing my flesh. You have his skill, my Angelus, the same magic in your fingers and his instinct and delight in the game in your veins.

"I almost wept when he withdrew teeth and hands. I had been so close to that peak of ecstasy, so desperate to crest it that I bit my lip till it bled and shuddered with disappointment. His face closed off and he made to move away, but in my anger I grabbed the lapels of his fine brocade coat and jerked him to me. 'Don't you turn your back on me, sir !' I hissed in my fury, putting my face to his. ' Don't you think me some dockside whore you can use and toss aside, or I'll make you rue the day you were born. Use me, and I swear by St. Mary Magdalene that the day will come when you'll beg me to show you mercy.'

"Ah, you should have seen his look of amazement ! It was as if the horse he rode had suddenly turned and kicked him without reason. Then delight came into his face like the rise of the moon. With those cold long fingers, the fingers of our kind, he forced away my fingers easily and pressed a kiss to my forehead. 'Lovely Darla, my cat with claws. When the time comes 'twill be your Patron Saint of Whores that tosses you aside, not I. I shall be there.'

"In the days that followed he came almost every day. Always, stolen kisses in corridors and shadows though he could have thrown his gold into Madame Mercier's lap and had me in the foyer if he wanted to. Always he was ice cold and silently enthralling, his teeth cutting through to lap the blood as his fingers brought me again and again almost, just almost to that peak of pleasure. Once he pushed me into a hallway cupboard and made me raise my skirts so he could kneel between my legs to sip my moon-blood, his tongue driving me insane as I bit my arm to stifle my cries. And always he stopped just before that crest, so I could think, breathe and dream of nothing but him, hate nothing but him. I beat on him, spit curses of love on him, raged at him. And he would kiss me on the brow and go into my mother's room.

"All until the day her harsh coughing brought up blood and she could not rise from the bed. I was standing there as Madame Mercier raged and threatened to throw her out onto the street. I said nothing, clutching the curtain, watching the tight skin pull taut over the bones of her face as she coughed. Clutching those shadow-play curtains as the red spotted the handkerchief she held to her mouth.

" 'Why ?' I remember asking as I stood there beside her, staring at the death lurking beneath her skin. 'We come into this world with nothing, let us leave it with nothing. After all, when she goes, her body is nothing because the soul has left.' You see, I had the seeds in me even then, my Angel. I shall never forget how her beautiful green eyes rolled and her hatred leapt out at me even as the pain tightened its iron corset around her. 'Yes,' I said. 'Let her meet God naked as Eve met Him naked. It is only fitting.' "

" Even Madame Mercier was taken aback, but I said what I said not because of hate, my sweet boy. I believed my words. What then was the Body but putrefying flesh and bone without the soul ? It was what I had to believe to keep the madness at bay, to tell myself that this body that had been given to any man who asked was not what mattered but the Self of Me that was shut away inside, as inviolate as any Vestal Virgin.

"I did not work that night, but locked myself away in my room, knowing that he would come again to see her, to look for me. I did not eat, I did not drink. I do not know what I did, only that I was standing at the window as the last red flare of the sun sank under the horizon, and I heard his knock on the door.

"I remember that sunset so clearly. The way the sky burned with vermillion and teemed with reds and pinks and the faintest tinge of purple like an emperor's cloak. The sounds that drifted up from the street below, the tinkle of music and voices already rising from the great rooms on the ground floor. The world was going on without pause as if everything was as it should be. She was dying. My mother, the hated, the loved. My all. She was coughing her life up out of her decaying body and I was twining the curtains blindly in my fingers, drowning in love and hate of her and pure, blind panic. And he was knocking on the door.

"I saw again the curtained stage of the bed where the shadows and shapes shifted, moaned and strained in the candlelight. Where a cherub on her knees, bare save for her dove's wings, caressed the man joining with the woman, never seeing the knife he held in his other hand. The rising banging on the door became the banging of that child's heart and the wet slap of flesh on flesh.

"The door flew open and slammed closed again. I turned very calmly to see him standing there. The anger was clear in his cold, unnaturally smooth face, but when he saw me he paused.

" His eyes became black obsidian as he came slowly across the room to me, beautiful in dark bronze silk. 'And I'm sure you gave her all the comfort a dutiful daughter should.' The corner of his mouth curled in derision as I curled in shock. " 'I'm sure she'll go into Hell knowing that you love her, that you're the only one who ever loved her,' the beautiful monster continued lightly, taking off his expensive coat and tossing it to the floor as he tore at the lace around his neck. 'That the beautiful daughter she sold her soul and her worthless body for knows her sacrifice.'

"I told you, Angelus. He is the Master. He plays the game with a grace the Devil himself would be hard pressed to match. And as I stood there in shock, watching him casually undress, the rage rushed into me like molten lava as he knew it would.

"I screamed something inarticulate and snatched up the heavy silver candelabra on the table and rushed at him. Moving so fast I could not follow his motion, he struck the ornament from my fingers and backhanded me so hard I spun and fell to the floor, feeling as if my eyes were about to pop out of my head. Then I was fighting and screaming as he scooped me up around the waist and carried me bodily out into the hall, where he clapped his hand over my mouth, holding my jaw closed with two fingers under my chin forcing my head up.

"I saw Madame Mercier with her skirts in her hands, hurrying up the stairs, saw her still as she took in the scene. I mumbled, I tried to scream for help. And the monster who held me casually took a single ruby as large as a dried apricot out of his waistcoat and tossed it to Madame Mercier. She caught it, staring at me, then at the stone. And she turned her back deliberately and went down the hall as he dragged me to the door of the room where my mother lay dying, jerked it open and tossed me inside.

"His eyes glinted gold in the light with the hunger of a predator, and as the candle flames shivered in the gust from the door, likewise his handsome face rippled and changed into that of the Beast. My mother made a cry of protest which brought the blood spilling out of her mouth onto her bodice as she stretched her arm out.

"You see, my darling, she KNEW. She knew what he was, the thing that had given her pleasure and pain in her last days. She thought that he would give her easy death when the time came, but nothing was ever that simple.

"I scrambled across the floor to her as best I could in my skirts, stretching out to grasp her fingers as if they were my salvation. Mother Mine...... And he laughed behind me, laughter thick with the sound of the demon. Then I felt those hands, those hands which I now knew to have an unholy power, lift me and toss me over the end of the recliner by the bed. I felt him coming up behind me and kicked out wildly, driving my sharp heel into his flesh, hearing his growl of rage like the growl of a tiger.

"The blow he dealt me made the room spin dizzily and stars dance in my eyes as I hit the floor, but still I continued to fight feebly even as he ripped at my clothes, clawing bloody furrows in my skin. I cried out and muttered garbled sentences which were prayers to whatever power that was. Yes, Angelus, I was a fool then. A mortal idiot like the rest of them.

" 'I told you once before, pretty Darla,' the monster hissed his laughter at me as he tore the last of the flimsy cloth from my body. 'Where is Mary Magdalene now ? Protestant, Anglican, Catholic, it means nothing. There is no Heaven and there is no God for you, no Patron Saint of the Whores to protect you. I am here as I have always been here.'

" He threw me over the recliner again, driving the breath from my belly as my mother struggled to rise, her coughing reaching an alarming crescendo. 'No ? Not a child of the devil, so whose child are you ? That bitch over there vomiting blood like some drunk throwing up in an alley ? It's not the soul that matters now, the body is all.'

"What else is there to say, my Angelus ? He played a marvellous game that night and raped me in front of my mother. As you've felt firsthand, my darling boy, the Master was large and even with my profession, his size and the combination of my fear and confusion had me dry. He tore me so badly blood splattered the fine Chinese rug and I screamed like a banshee as my mother coughed her heart's blood out over her gold coverlet. He raped me for close to an hour with the strength you know we possess, till I was swooning with the pain and the loss of blood. Then he sank his sharp eyeteeth into my neck and drained me dry, to the barest point of a husk, before filling me with his blood again. As he unmade and made me anew he whispered the lessons in my ear that I have since taught you, my Angel. The only Truth there is and ever will be.

" 'The soul is nothing and the flesh is all. The flesh and the Blood that feeds it,' he told the thirsting young fledgling standing naked as the day she was born in that room. 'If you feel Hunger, sate it. If you feel Anger, spend it. If you like Pain, cause it.'

"And where was the blood in the room ? Soaking the sheets around the dying woman whose eyes were rolling back in her head already. She couldn't see me as I came close, Angelus, and I knew the frailty of mortal flesh. He guided me down on my knees before her reverently as if for Communion. 'Mother,' I whispered like some idiot human, then I was kissing her mouth and the blood was coming up in great gouts from her. The demon's hunger drank her down, drank her dry and gave her body up to Death and Worms. Then he became Mother, Father, Lover, Master and Guide as I am for you, my darling boy. I was his favourite, his princess at his court, learning the ways of our life and our darkness.

"Then on a visit to cold, rainy Ireland of the mists, I stopped at a local tavern and saw a delicious young savage with the charm of a devil and the face of an angel brawling in the common room. You know how the tale goes from there, my darling child."

"What a pretty little tale," Angelus said as he sat back languidly against the cushions. "A perfect little good-night story, my love." He opened his arms for her to lie back against his chest, her hair brushing his face.

His grin was feral. "Very much. My Grandsire's exploits always make the best of fireside stories, and all the more so when they involve you," his voice dipped low and husky, "Naked, bent over a recliner."

Terrified screams and yells of protest were muffled by gags as the two struggled helplessly, watching the tigers come close with hungry yellow eyes. A pretty pair they were, and all the more seductive in their fear.

"Sshhhh," said Darla, folding her legs sideways and taking the boy's head onto her lap, caressing his cheek with a finger. "Sweetheart, don't scream. It will only hurt very much for a very short while. I promise."

Angelus watched her with fascination as he lifted the weeping girl into his arms. She was like a diamond, changing with every change of the light and as cold. There was no one like her, his Dam. Not even this juicy little morsel struggling in his embrace. "There's a good little lamb." He nuzzled the soft warmth of her neck, delighting in her terror as he tore the flimsy shell of her bodice away, laughing at the outraged struggles of her brother. Her breasts were soft and heavy in his hands, redolent with her scent, and her flat belly was lightly furred with golden hair so fine as to be almost invisible.

"What are you most afraid of ?" Darla reached over and lifted the girl's chin with one finger. "What do you run from in your dreams at night ? What is your greatest phantom, the spectre that haunts you in the shadows ?"

Flesh tore under her fingers and ribs cracked. The sternum gave way with a snap like someone breaking a sap-filled branch off a tree. There was one strangled cry and she held the heart in her hands, still pumping, pumping with the furious force of Life as the blood came from it.

And Angelus watched as his lover, his Creatress held the dripping Fruit to her lips and drank. "You see, my dear," he whispered into the tortured girl's ear. "In the end the Flesh is all and where is your God in Heaven ? Is your Love Immortal ?" Then he bit down into her neck and there was nothing but the pumping of the blood.