Lord Rossendale: Fearless Vampire Killer
Discalimer: No infringement of the following characters and situations is intended.
Warning: Rated [MA] Mature Adults only. Contains strong m/m sexual scenes, violence, coarse language and adult themes.
Title: Lord Rossendale: Fearless Vampire Killer
Series: Sharpe/Angel
Author/pseudonym: By Jen, Sin, Dee
E-mail address: havisham06@yahoo.com
Rating: MA
Pairing: A/R A/W
Date: 31/10/00
Disclaimers: Don't own these characters, Joss Whedon, 20th Century Fox, Mutant Enemy, and the rest do. No copyright infringement is intended or inferred.
Warnings: sex (m/m)
Summary: Strange doings out on the moor.
Notes: Thanks to everyone who contributed to this little ficlet. I'm using Spike's original chronology here, cause it's slashier.
England, February 1815
ossendale frowned again at the flickering candle by his before, turning back to his papers. He started in fear, as a figure loomed at his side, a gasping laugh escaping him when he realised that it was only the flicking shadow of the candle's light against the wall.
He had grown to hate this draughty inheritance his Aunt Tabitha had left him. Jane had hated it from the first; it had taken a couple of months for the draughts, the rising damp, the cold cold rooms, the leaking roof and the dreadful isolation to wear away at him until now he found himself aching almost as much as Jane did to return to London. Only they had little money left, and Jane was not welcome. Exiled, he thought despondently. They were exiled.
He watched the words in front of him blur and swim, as tears of dejection leaked from his eyes to trail down his cheeks. With a small sound, one beaded, and then dropped to splatter against the written page.>>
A stern thumping on the main door roused him and from the sound of it they'd be through the door before his one aged servant attended to it. Plucking his pistol down from the wall carefully, and checking to see that it was indeed already loaded and primed he swept up his guttering candle, casting large dancing shadows about the hallway.
Biting down his fear he pulled the front door open, candle beside him and pistol pointed straight down into the white face of Tom Walpole, the local butcher and sometime poacher.
"Tom?" he asked, infected by the man's unease. "You've not been at my rabbits again," he demanded sternly. Rossendale could afford no game keeper and thus the local villagers made game of him, roaming freely over his lands.
Tom looked guiltily away for a moment, and Rossendale noted the man's coat, hands and breeched were covered in blood, and he looked like he'd been running through brambles like the very devil had been on his heels.
"You must come, Sir," Tom insisted.
There being no local magistrate, he at least, could afford a season in London, Rossendale, the local squire, was the next best thing to the law in the village.
"The tree," Tom indicated into the darkness cryptically.
"The old oak?" Rossendale asked.
Tom nodded, almost dancing with his impatience to be off.
"What..." Rossendale realised he wasn't going to get any more from the frightened man. He sighed. "Oh, very well. Lead on."
Pausing only to retrieve his coat, Rossendale set off after the butcher. Walpole was already waiting for him at the low stone wall of the lower field, shifting nervously from one foot to another.
Rossendale took his time. Damned if he was going to hurry for some poacher.
As soon as he fell in beside the burly man, Walpole turned and started off up the road to the moor. It was very quiet, and all Rossendale could hear was the heavy breathing of the man beside him, and the occasional skitter of stones kicked out from under their boots. His breath curled in cold wisps before his face and he began to wish he had taken the time to saddle a horse. Walpole marched alongside, silently, biting his lips and rubbing his bloody hands together distractedly.
Rossendale shook a little at the sudden realisation he was walking along a country lane in the middle of the night with a man covered in blood.
A man twice his size, at that, and with no reason to like him. His grip tightened reflexively on his pistol.
They scrambled over drystone walls, across scrubby uneven land only half visible in the intermittent moonlight.
This is it, Rossendale thought, this is where I die, alone in this barren field by moonlight with my throat slit. How unfair, he thought. It wasn't as if he'd been cruel to the tenants, for he had no tenants, just these endless barren fields of untamed moor, utterly useless and worthless.
The ancient oak reared up from the ground and just when Rossendale thought the end was very near he became aware of a low murmur of milling voices. There were people under the tree, waiting in the darkness.
Oh, god. This pistol almost slipped from his icy fingers. Then one of the figures waved a lantern and he saw by the flash of light across his features that it was the doctor. And the parson, and several others...all called out for...his eyes were drawn to the outline of the stark and skeletal oak, scrabbling at the sky like a giant, gnarled hand, and from the tree, just visible against the moonlit sky, hung the corpses of an entire family, swinging with low creaks, brushing against the branches as the wind kicked up, all from the oldest to the youngest, just a babe, staring down in lifeless horror, each with their throats torn out.
Rossendale covered his mouth with his handkerchief and retched dryly into it.
"Dear God," he murmured.
"I think you'll find God had nothing to do with this," the parson observed.
No, agreed Rossendale, silently, it was not. Perhaps because he'd read more widely than the parson, in more specialised fields, he alone could put a name to the horror they beheld. No ordinary murder, this. Of those they had plenty, and gibbets still danced merrily at the cross roads. These murders were not the work of a mortal hand, and the brutality was such that no one gathered under that dead tree even thought to question his request for the victims to be buried decapitated. These were remote parts and the people still followed the old ways, no matter what the parson might have to say on the matter.
Rossendale watched as then men carefully cut down the bodies, cutting them down without word or ceremony. They loaded them onto the back of the cart like so much dead wood.
Rossendale climbed onto the back of the cart, cupping his hand over his mouth again for a moment, before he regained his composure. He took the lantern from Tom and held it close.
"Animal bites?" asked the parson.
"Possibly," Rossendale was non committal.
"Then how did they get themselves up in that tree then, if they was already dead?" queried Tom, asking the very thing most of them wanted to forget.
"May I examine the bodies before you inter them?" Rossendale asked, ignoring the conundrum.
The parson gave him a questioning look.
"Anatomy is a hobby of mine," Rossendale explained and they all nodded in understanding. A gentleman's hobby, and fresh cadavers were so hard to get, legally anyway. No one would be laying claim to these. The family wasn't local, and indeed, they seemed to be all in travelling clothes, and it was doubtful anyone would claim them, the manner of their deaths being so strange and horrible.
+
"Just as I suspected," Rossendale announced to himself, peering close under candle light at the wounds on the eldest son, whose body was now laid out on a table in the doctor's front parlour. HE poked at the bite, the punctures from the two sharp incisors clearly visible in spite of the extensive tearing of the skin around them.
"What animal could have made such a mark?" The doctor wondered out loud.
"Dogs, perhaps. Large, savage dogs."
"But there are no other marks on them, their clothes are not torn, their skin unbroken and there is not even mud on their hands and feet."
Rossendale straightened.
"Dogs with human accomplices, it would seem."
"But why? If the point was to rob them, why not leave them dead where they lay? Why go to so much trouble?"
"To scare people, perhaps. To cause terror in the village, for no other reason than it would give them joy to do so. In London I saw men bound for the gallows who had committed crimes of such unspeakable atrocity and horror that one would scarce like to call them human. I believe that whoever committed these crimes, though they may have the body of a man, they do not have the soul of one."
And in those words, at least, he spoke the truth.
+
Rossendale became aware of light flickering in the windows as he rode home, bone weary, on a horse borrowed from the doctor. It had been a long night of dissection and burial. The manner of the family’s death had made most of the menfolk eager to comply with Rossendale’s insistence that they sever the heads of the deceased before burial.
At last, he was headed home. When he’d seen the first light in the window he’d been heartened, thinking Jane must be up, waiting for him.
Now as he topped the rise he could see the whole lower floor was ablaze with light.
He kicked his heels into the horses’ ribs and their breath came in misty gasps as they flew down the last mile to the door.
"Jane!" he demanded, bursting through the door. "Jane?"
"Why, John," Jane greeted from the doorway to the dining room, dressed in her finest. "Such an unseemly entrance, when we have guests."
She turned aside and he saw two very elegantly dressed and handsome young men sitting in his dining room drinking his best wine out of his best glasses.
The darker, taller one looked up and smiled a purely predatory smile.
Rossendale looked directly into those dark soulless eyes and he knew, he knew the truth of it. He felt his blood chill to ice in his veins.
"Jane, did you invite these gentlemen in?" he asked, trying to control his voice.
"Of course I did. They were travelling by night when their coach threw a wheel. I couldn’t very well turn them away, could I?"
"I wish that you had," he murmured, but in truth he knew Jane could not resist pretty things. And these were pretty things indeed, with their fine elegant clothes and their perfectly pale and shining skin. They were handsome, seductive creatures and he should have known better than to have left Jane alone in this house this night.
"Will you not have a drink with us?" the one with the wicked smile offered with an unmistakable Irish accent. His companion with the thin face and the dark, curling hair snickered.
"Yes, let us drink together."
"I don’t think so." Rossendale responded darkly.
"John! Don’t be so rude," Jane admonished. "These men are our guests."
He turned to her, exasperated beyond measure.
"Jane, these men are murderers. Cold blooded killers. I found their horrid handiwork just this night. And you’ve invited them into our home."
Finally, Jane looked suitably horrified.
"Murderers?" she asked again.
"Killers," Angel agreed in a whisper, close by her ear. He’d moved so fast she’d never seen him. He bared his fangs in a grin and she swooned in his arms.
"Like picking fruit from the tree," he smiled at Rossendale.
"No!" Rossendale started forward, but Spike held him.
Angel made to tear at Jane’s throat, then stopped.
"No," he decided. "Too easy. Too quick." He glanced upstairs. "Let’s have a little fun first."
+
"Wake up, kitten," Spike crooned, stroking Jane’s cheek softly.
Her eyelids fluttered.
"There’s a love," he smiled at her. "Look," he supported her almost tenderly, though his arms were like bands of steel around her.
"Angel’s got your man. We’re going to have our wicked way with him, then you, then we’re going to kill you in front of his eyes. Then we’re going to pull out his eyes."
"You!" Rossendale struggled but Angel had him firmly in hand.
"Quiet!" Angel shook him by the scruff of the neck like a kitten.
"John," Jane begged, but there was nothing he could do. It made Angel giggle.
"Let’s see how good your man tastes." He licked along Rossendale’s neck slowly, feeling the pulse beat fast under the skin.
"Mmmm, fear is so intoxicating, so delicious. So exciting." He turned John to him and kissed him full on the mouth.
Rossendale tried to resist, tried to turn away but the vampire was irresistible. His mouth was forced open the cool tongue found it’s way in and God help him, the way it felt, the way it stroked his own tongue, he wanted it.
Angel chuckled, stroking his cheek tenderly like a lover. "You little whore. You ever had a man, John? A real man?"
Rossendale tried to speak, but failed.
"You want one, I can tell," Angel purred, rubbing his hand down low over the bulge in Rossendale’s trousers. "You want it bad," he whispered in Rossendale’s ear, licking the soft pink rim.
He threw Rossendale against the bed, pressing his face down on the mattress, almost suffocating him.
Rossendale twisted his head so he could breathe. He heard Jane scream but he was powerless. Spike pushed her closer, so she could get a good view.
Rossendale couldn’t move. A dead weight was crouched on top of him. Angel crawled all over him, running his fingers through his hair, grinding his hips against him. Rossendale felt Angel rise up, pinning him to the bed with one hand in the middle of the bed like a beetle stuck on a pin. He heard Angel unbutton his trousers with his other hand. Then his own trousers were ripped down.
Angel cupped his hand over each cheek, slapping hard until he made Rossendale cry out. He slid one finger down between those curves, followed by his tongue, making Rossendale cry again, followed by a scream as Angel bit him. Just a little bite, a little taste.
Angel rose up, grinning, lips dripping with Rossendale’s blood. He touched his fingertip to his lips, and licked the blood clean.
"Sweet, so sweet," he pronounced. He gripped Rossendale’s hips, pulled him up and raped him.
Rossendale buried his face in the pillow as he felt himself split open. Fingers like stone bit into his flesh.
Angel slammed into him, fucking him hard and fucking him bloody. He came with a hard thrust that buried him up to the hilt in Rossendale then let Rossendale fall to the bed, discarded. He rebuttoned his trousers slowly, laughing. He slapped Rossendale’s cheeks again.
"You’ll like this one, Spike. A nice tight ride."
Fighting the bitterness of his humiliation Rossendale’s hand felt under the pillow for the loaded pistol he kept there. He’d been afraid of being murdered in his bed, but he’d always imagined it would be Sharpe who would do the deed. He cocked the weapon slowly, careful not to spill the powder in the pan. He drew it slowly towards him, as he felt the vampire’s hands and tongue on his body again. Heart thumping he pulled the gun from the pillow, twisted over and fired at the window.
The lead ball smashed through the curtains and the glass, ripping a hole and letting the first rays of dawn fall across the bed.
Angel snarled and leapt back. Rossendale grabbed the cross from above the bed and thrust it at both Angel and Spike, forcing them back. He pulled Jane from Spike and pressed them into the hallway. He threw the lamp in his hand at them. It erupted into flames at their feet.
"Get out," Rossendale snarled. Holding up his trousers with one hand he drew down a sword from the wall and advanced.
"Get out!"
The vampires retreated, always preferring the easy kill.
Angel turned on the threshold, all teeth and yellow eyes and snarled. "I will be back. I will be a plague on you, and your children, your children’s children and their children. I promise you that."
And with that, he and Spike fled, following the house’s long shadow into a ditch.
They would go to ground, burying themselves in the earth if they had to. He would hunt them, but for now…
He cradled Jane in his arms. She had fainted again. She would keep to her bed for weeks in a nervous exhaustion and prevent him from following the vampires, from having his revenge. She would never speak of this night, ever, and by the time the colour had returned to her cheeks Napoleon had escaped from Elba.
LA, The Present…
"Angel? Angel!" Wesley called, arms full of books. "Angel, where are you…oh, there you are," he smiled.
"Any luck at the library?"
Wesley nodded. "Some. I think I have something for you."
Angel took the books off him without a word or thanks.
Wesley shrugged. He was used to it. Especially of late. Angel had been sleeping less and less well, and Wesley was bearing the brunt of his bad moods. Perhaps just because Wesley was there, he was convenient, an easy target. Perhaps Angel still resented his presence. Perhaps Angel blamed him for some wrong Wesley had yet to realise he had committed.
"I marked the pages," he offered quietly.
Angel flipped open the books without even a grunt.
Wesley stood by him, at a loss and not a little on edge. He could take the vampire's coldness, if only he didn't adore him to the point of insanity. Again Wesley wandered through all the reasons that had brought him to this, standing at the right hand of the most vicious vampire in history. Fate, he thought again. Fate.