A Little Knowledge Is A Dangerous--And Painful--Thing
by Tina Cooling
Copyright 1998

***

I was ambushed. Ambushed, I tell you. It's all the fault of the old #gasp crowd for suggesting this.

***

"This is gonna be a party," said Angelus, reaching over to Giles and pulling his head back, exposing his neck. "And you're the favor," he growled. "I can't wait 'til my Slayer gets here and sees your mangled corpse as her door prize. "But enough of that," he said, flinging Giles' head forward hard enough that his chin knocked against his sternum. Giles cried out in pain, and Angelus smiled. "It's much more fun to make you hurt before I kill you." He reached around behind Giles, watching him tense. "Poor Watcher," he said. "Not the big, tough guy you were when you came smashing into my warehouse, are you?" He snickered. "That's all right. Pretty soon you'll be dead and you can and brag to your Gypsy bitch about how long you held out before you screamed."

"Bugger...off," muttered Giles.

"Shut up!" Angelus reached for his collar and threw the librarian against the wall. "Damn you, shut the fuck up! Don't you realize what's going to happen to you? I'm going to hurt you. I'm going to make you beg me to kill you." He smiled slowly. "I'm going to tell you just what I did to your Gypsy whore."

Giles said nothing, only stared up at him coldly.

"She was so easy, you know." He chuckled, a cold sound, nothing like the warm laugh he'd shared with them before his soul had been ripped away again. "Just a stupid, blind sheep, staying late in one of the easiest places in town for me to get to. I broke her neck. I almost tore her head off her body, but I thought it would be more fun if you thought for just a minute that it was you she was in that bed to fuck, and not Death."

The Ripper had surfaced. Damn. There'd be no information from him. He'd have to break him down, get the librarian back.

"Do you want to know why I'm doing this?" Angelus whispered in Giles' ear. "You made me feel human," he said. "You and your damned Slayerettes running around like buffoons, calling on my help. You made me feel needed. You made me forget I didn't have a heart that beat, that I had another face."

*crack* One finger was broken. Some of them broke then, with the first taste of real pain, but Angelus didn't think that Rupert Giles would. He hoped not. The chainsaw would be so much fun to try out.

Not a whimper of pain escaped Giles' lips.

*crack*

Two fingers. He'd break the whole hand if he had to. Then the other hand. Then he'd start on the legs. There were a million ways to torture someone that left them alert enough to talk. It was more than time to get back in the practice of using them.

The End