Chapter Seven

Ripper leaned his chair back on two legs and surveyed his surroundings. The place was a bit of a mess, but it was spacious, at least. Pretty well sealed off from stray sunlight, too, from the looks of it. Not so sure about the company here, though. Angelus would no doubt prove to be a bit of a drag. He let his gaze wander over to Spike. He was a bit more promising.

“Got a smoke?” he inquired, and immediately, Spike dug one out, and handed it over, then held out a lighter. Ripper took his first deep drag, held it in his lungs for a moment and then let it out with a heartfelt sigh.

“Oh, that’s good. Don’t know why I denied myself for so long.”

He tossed the lighter back to Spike, who caught it and quirked his brow a bit.

“No reason to now.”

“Sup’ose not,” Ripper said, savoring the moment.

It ended too soon.

The door to the factory banged open and a swath of sunlight poured into the room, vivisected down the center by a dark silhouette. Ripper threw a hand in front of his eyes and staggered back, knocking his chair over, and losing the cigarette somewhere on the floor.

The figure from the doorway strode into the factory.

It was vengeance personified... in the form of Xander Harris. It should have been laughable.

Actually, Ripper decided, as the shock of the sunlight faded and he was able to assure himself he was out of any direct rays, it was laughable. The boy looked somewhere between angry enough to pop and scared enough to throw up. He was holding a gun high in one hand. For a moment, he looked around wildly, his hair flapping as he moved his head, and then his eyes focused on Ripper.

Ripper grinned.

“Xander, dear boy. It seems you weren’t paying much attention to the lecture on ways to kill vampires. You see, bullets don’t-”

In less time than it would take a human heart to beat, Xander had the gun cocked and braced on his shoulder. A second beat, and he squeezed the trigger.

The hail of bullets came in low and sweeping, cutting across Ripper’s abdomen like a sword. He howled in agony as his world came down to nothing but pain and darkness. He vaguely felt himself hit the floor, and for a moment, he couldn’t even move.

Footsteps crossed the cement floor, echoing loudly in the empty spaces.

Ripper scrambled to his feet, clutching at his gut, with one hand, and the side of the table with the other. Slick, cool blood oozed around his fingers, but he could already feel the wounds healing.

“Little ponce,” he snarled, going full game face. Xander readied the gun again and fired, and this time, the bullets strafed across his shoulder and chest. The force of it knocked him back. As he tried to get his bearings back, he heard the roar of gunfire again, followed by a bellow of pain that sounded like Angel.

Suddenly, there were cool hands on his shoulder, helping him up.

“Ripper!”

Jenny, then.

He grabbed her arm and together they staggered back to their feet.

Out of the corner of his eyes, he could see Angel also getting back up. Xander was standing in the patch of sunlight, still holding his gun at the ready. Ripper stalked forward, gun be damned, that little shit was going to pay. He heard Angel and Drusilla and Jenny all closing in as well.

Xander fired again, wildly, trying to take down all four of them at once, no doubt, but only managing to catch Ripper once more in the shoulder. He did hear Jenny and Dru cry out, though, but it was unimportant. He had plans to teach this child a thing or two about vengeance.

The boy had the guts to look him straight in the eye as he approached, and the gun was steady in his hands as he leveled it at Ripper’s neck. Decapitation, now, that *would* do the trick. Ripper would never let it happen, of course. At the moment Xander’s finger twitched, he lunged forward and a bit to the side, feeling the heat of a bullet or two as they whined past his ear, and then he felt the far more satisfying sensation of firm flesh and bone colliding with his own.

For an agonizing moment, he and the boy grappled in the full sunlight, and then, with a shove, he toppled them both to the hard cement floor and out of the burning brilliance.

Xander was squirming beneath him, and the sensation flared through him. The heat, the life, in that body. The power in the blood he could all but hear singing in those veins. Xander was shoving at him, ineffectually. One of his hands was at Ripper’s shoulder, the other at his waist. Ripper snarled and snatched first the wrist of the hand at his waist, and then the one at his shoulder, and jerked both of the boy’s hands over his head, holding them there with one hand, pinning him to the floor with his hips, and twining their legs together.

He could feel the chest beneath his own heaving, probably barely able to get enough breath under the weight of his body. Xander’s eyes were wide, only inches beneath his, and his mouth gaped open as he struggled for breath.

“Idiot boy,” Ripper sighed across his lips, close enough to kiss him, “You really think you could have killed me? You’re useless, Xander. You always were. And now Buffy will probably come here, to try and save you, and you know what? She’ll die, Xander. Because, let’s face it. There’s one of her and five of us, and she’ll never be able to kill me, or Angelus, because she doesn’t understand, does she? That we’re not them.”

“Bastard,” Xander hissed, trying to look brave, but the pain in his eyes told a different story.

Ripper just smiled.

“In any case, you won’t be around to see it happen. Perhaps that will be a small mercy to you? Not that I care about mercy. At the moment, I’m just hungry.”

He bent his head down, found the smooth skin of Xander’s neck, and gently ran his tongue across it. The body beneath his stilled and stiffened, and he could feel his pulse racing still faster.

“Afraid, Xander?” he whispered against the damp flesh, feeling the shiver. “I was too.”

He let his fangs just lightly caress the skin over the jugular, feeling the pulsing heat call to him, and just enjoying the sensation for a moment, more sensual than anything sexual he’d ever done. He could smell the salty tang of tears, and watched as one drop rolled slowly over Xander’s jaw. He caught it with his tongue.

“What? Not begging for your life?”

Xander spoke, his voice rough with tears.

“Just fucking do it already.”

Ripper pulled back a bit, looked down again into the boy’s damp, defiant eyes.

“Beg.”

“Never.”

Ripper shook his head slowly. No, no, that would be no fun at all. He slowly tightened his grip on Xander’s wrists, feeling his bones shift, and watching as pain twisted his features.

“Come on, now,” he said, his voice gentle and cajoling. “Humor me.”

He felt a bone snap. Xander gasped, then said, “No.”

“Really, Xander, there are two ways to do this. The easy way, where you do as I say, and die quickly and easily, or the hard way, where you keep up this foolishness and suffer first. Not that the idea of making you suffer isn’t attractive.”

Xander’s long lashes fluttered shut, and Ripper could feel him making an effort to regulate his breathing.

Ripper bounded to his feet, dragging Xander with him by his wrists and his tee-shirt and he slammed the boy against one of the nearby support pillars, pinning him there again with his body, still holding his hands immobile above his head. Xander kept his eyes shut, kept trying to keep his breathing level.

With his free hand, Ripper reached around behind the pillar, searching amongst the stacked debris there until his hand hit on a small implement. A screwdriver, as it happened, he saw when he glanced down at it. Perfect.

He softly slid the long metal rod up underneath Xander’s shirt, trailing it back and forth lightly over his ribs.

“Come on, now, Xander. Let’s hear it.”

Xander let his breath rush out, and he was trembling harder than ever. Ripper could literally smell the terror on him, and it was doing wild things to him. But Xander didn’t beg.

Ripper dragged the phillips-head down lower, tracing small designs over the soft flesh on Xander’s flank. He angled it up, nearly perpendicular to his body. The air beneath the boy’s shirt felt blazingly warm on his room-temperature skin. Xander was panting, now, frantic in his fear. But silent.

“I always knew you were far braver than you were smart, but really, Xander, I thought you’d know when you were beat.”

He began to apply pressure, feeling the skin’s resistance pushing back. Someone behind him made a small sound, and he realized he had an audience. He didn’t bother to look back at the other vampires. As long as they stayed out of his way, he couldn’t care less what they did.

He pressed a bit harder, caught the first metallic scent of blood, mingling with the scent of the sweat that was now coating the boy’s entire body.

And then, suddenly, there was a shout behind him, and then the sound of combat.

“Damn it,” he muttered, glancing back over his shoulder.

The three other mobile vampires were standing in a loose ring around Buffy. He had to grin, though, at the sight of his Slayer, facing them all down. Jenny was the first to move, coming at her from behind. Buffy clearly heard her approach a mile away, and spun a quick, neat roundhouse kick at her, sending her flying to her side on the floor, stunned.

Angel immediately took advantage of the Slayer’s moment of unbalance after the attack, jumping in and grabbing her by the shoulder, trying to knock her off her feet. Buffy shook him off and slammed her hand against his arm--no, not just her hand. Angel staggered back with a scream, frantically clawing his shirt off. Holy water. Ripper could see the small shards of glass from the bottle still embedded in his arm, and his skin was red and steaming. Drusilla was distracted by her injured sire, and ran to his side, and suddenly Buffy was coming right at him, unchallenged, already reaching behind herself for her stake.

Ripper snickered and released Xander, hearing him fall behind him, but now all focused on the charging Slayer. He was ready for her first move, easily blocking the kick, and then ducking the punch that followed. All things he’d done with her in training, only now... Now he was just as strong, just as quick.

The fight was fast and brutal, but in the end, he got her pinned down, trapped between him and yet another pillar, with his right hand tight around her throat, and his left braced above her head. Her stake was long since lost somewhere beneath some debris. She hadn’t been giving it her all, he knew, and now she was paying for it.

“Giles,” she gasped, between panted breaths, grasping uselessly at his grip.

He shook his head.

”I thought I trained you better than that,” he said, making his voice sound mournful. Then, he just laughed. “Seems not. Not that it matters. Your loss is my gain.”

But just as he was beginning to feel her lose consciousness, it all went to hell.

The roar of gunfire was almost drown out this time by the intensity of the pain. It hurt so bad, he didn’t know where he’d been hit, he didn’t know that he’d fallen back away from Buffy. He didn’t know anything until an endless moment later when he opened his eyes and saw Xander, with fire in his eyes and the gun in his hand, and realized that he was now leaning against one of the packing crates, and that he was clutching his left hand in his right, and dear god, all he could really see of it was a bloody mess, and how could it possibly hurt this bad? Being shot through the gut hadn’t hurt this bad. And there went Buffy, dragging Xander out the door, and no one even tried to stop them, because the other vampires were all still down for the count: Jenny unconscious, Spike AWOL, Angel burnt and Dru fawning over him.

He slid down into a sitting position against the crate, clutching his hand.

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