They think to control me.
They keep me naked and underfed, hoping to control me.
They are fools.
True, my recovery has been slow and has not been aided by first the cage then the chains, and the weak animal blood. Lack of stimulation meant that it was weeks before I even remembered my identity.
A month before I remembered him, my oh so treacherous childe.
I have no doubt that my captors have done it on purpose. They want me disoriented. They'd prefer I remain mad, an animal that they can leash and send to do their bidding.
But, I'm stronger than that. I have regained my senses, my memories, my hatred.
I don't know how long I have been chained in this windowless room, but, it doesn't matter. After eons in Hell, time means nothing. I am eternal, and I grow stronger by the day.
They no longer enter the room. Once they realized I was coming back to myself, they stopped coming near me. They talk to me through the window in the door, telling me my purpose, and that if I perform when the time comes, they will grant me freedom.
Hah.
I know full well that the freedom they offer me is a one way ticket back to Hell. They fear me too much to let me live, even as their pet demon.
Perhaps I shouldn't have ripped the heart out of that guard and eaten it in front of the woman.
It's moot now and I will be the doom of all three of them. The woman in her designer suits and Chanel No. 5; the older man, reeking of fear and the hint of power; the younger man...He interests me. He fears me, but he hates me, too, or hates what I am. Like a wounded wild animal, he lashes out, but with words, not claws.
And his hatred is leveled at him.
My darling boy.
I'll never forget the feeling of complete betrayal when I turned to see him standing behind me, and the stake in his hand turned me to dust.
It was worse than when he left me that first time to become a master on his own, worse than the betrayal of his soul being returned, worse than when I realized he was in love with that bitch of a Slayer.
He killed his sire. The worst sin, the only true sin a vampire can commit. Nothing could have prepared me for that. It wasn't even an option.
I wonder how he's survived the ensuing years. To kill one's sire puts the mark of death on a vampire. Already outcast from his own kind, how did Angel survive?
Or, did the Master and the vampires of Sunnydale believe the Slayer had killed me?
That seems more logical. My boy is strong and powerful, but even he couldn't survive being hunted with the kind of intensity a death mark brings. For, the vampire who slays a sire-killer gains position, respect, power, wealth.
It's a reward of which most minions can only dream.
A part of me wants to announce my childe's sin to the community, then sit back and watch the chaos that is sure to ensue, but I know I won't.
His punishment, his death is mine to deliver, and mine alone.
Not because my captors say so. Our objectives just happen to be the same at the moment.
No, Angel will die at my hands because he is my childe and it is my right.
I loved him once, for over a century, but that love is now gone. Burned from me by an eternity in Hell. Burned from me by betrayal so great the memory continues to haunt me.
For, when I looked in his eyes as he killed me, all I saw was determination. There was nothing of the love we had shared, of the respect he should have had for his sire, of the sorrow or regret his soul makes him suffer.
I was just another vampire to him.
And, for that, he will die with my name on his lips, as he did so the first time nearly two hundred and fifty years ago. He will die screaming and begging on his knees, surrounded by the cooling corpses of all those he holds dear, in the ashes of his dreams and the lost remnants of his redemption.
And, once he is dead, I will dance in his remains.
For, he will be just another vampire to me.
End