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The puppet of the wolf
I have not made yet
encloses my right hand:
fur stubbles my wrists,
a tongue, avid, carnivorous,
licks between thumb and finger;
my knuckles bunch into eyes,
eyes of opaque flesh,
cunning but sightless.

The last house crashes down:
the wolf is on fire,
my right hand is on fire,
the wolf is gone.

-- Margeret Atwood, "The Puppet of the Wolf"

**********************************

Evil found its calling card here. Muted by the small child clinging to its mothers side and hushed from the chorus of laughter echoed from arcades. But it was here, in the drunken poverty and forgotten inhibitions.

You needn't look beyond the obvious to see the devil in the city of lights. Just move to the left one pace and peer past the glow of neon signs. There it is, beauty wrapped in its flashing golds. The night here is brighter than the day.

Vegas.

The sun holds a grudge against this sparking black. He is very angry with the people here, to think that they should have the power to rage against his brilliance. That once he has turned his back and set off beyond the horizon, they have the gull to mock him.

And oh, how Drusilla loved it. Loved looking up and seeing the buildings ten times taller then she could ever hope to be. It made her feel like a bird flying through the rafters of this town, small in size perhaps. But made up for in passion.

Yes, definitely the only place to be.

Drusilla wandered the streets nightly until purple soaked the sky and the sun rushed forward to see the mockery of his natural talent. She had no great plan for the place, just wanted to involve her senses in the greatness it held 'till the sun came back to melt the city in his rage and dry it up. Yes, she would leave the plotting to the sun, never daring to face his wrath.

Though, curious she was, if the feeling here remained when the lightless sky turned orange.

And inevitably, unforgettable blue eyes crossed her mind. Lacking a companion to share such thoughts with. Lacking a real voice to share the city. But no one would dictate her life. No one would force her.

Not anymore. That's what this was about, immortality. Existence above the majority. It was about freedom, to divide the teams as she saw fit. To move on to another as she willed it. To be alone in the sin streets if she wished.

And that's why she didn't bother in sorting out the chaos. Didn't second guess the inspiration floating through her head only to grow wings, mid-sentence, and flutter away to be forgotten.

Didn't matter, all in the name of Fun.

Yes, Drusilla was content to be anything but lonely here.

**********

Oz had never been to Nevada...but it seemed as good as anyplace. And it appeared, in his mind's eye at least, the type of place to match to his current emotional status. Bleak...dry....sapped of life. Prickly growth and too little notice from the heavens above.

After roaming around the less populated areas for a mere two weeks, tired with dealing with bemused and disgusted stares from locals in regards to his appearance and obvious status as an outsider, Oz was still just as contaminated with thoughts of Willow as before.

He didn't accomplish much more when he chose take his melancholy into the wilderness .The dunes and cacti could not talk to him. They didn't care about his past. They couldn't divert him. He felt a need to seep in the company of others...others that were just as downtrodden as he was. He felt self destructive.

Because he felt that he had failed thus far at living life in a manner he was proud of. A study of imperfection. Maybe he should try to fail in a manner he could be proud of. For a while, at least.

So he decided to head to a place that held an anti-climatic sense of perfection in his imaginings.

Vegas.

**********

The stars shifted abruptly. Dru's step halted and adrenaline poured through her nerves with so much speed it swallowed the lone butterfly whole. She felt a sorrow to no longer feel the beating of its wings as he tried to open the trap door inside and exit through her naval.

She didn't look up to see the stars move, because she understood that what she saw was not in the heavens to know, but in her. They pranced in the near midnight mind of Drusilla and she couldn't help but think that even their beauty was no match for the city.

A hand ran along her arm in such a snake-like manner that caused her to falter. Dru's body tensed on the inside before she remembered there would be no snake that would defeat the great princess. She looked to see the man who touched her.

Overly confident he stood before her. Sizing her down with his eyes that were dark but reflected Vegas' lights to shine in their blackness. Too old and too thin, he wore a large golden cross. More for fashion value than reason.

Thinking himself suave, he looked Drusilla in the eyes and said in the worst scottish accent she'd heard in years, "You look lost."

Her expressive features did their work. Eyes widened, innocent as can be. Mouth set in perfect 'slaughter lamb' style, she replied "No, not lost dearie. Just hungry..."

"I know a place we can go. Get you a meal..." He looked away from her eyes, down the street where he paused. When he focused to her once more, the snake was back. Playing with fire he didn't look in her eyes "Do some negotiating?"

Drusilla smiled and tapped the bottom of his chin with her fingers, pushing his eye sight just that bit higher, "Think you can feed me?"

He licked his lips, trying for seduction and failing to the point that Dru had to bite her cheek to not point out the absurdness of it. So she looked down, trying to blush. Be modest. He wrapped an arm around her waist and started walking them away from the streets, "Know I can, babe."

**********

Oz had been in the city for about five hours or so. He had stopped just long enough to park his van in a garage, and had set out on foot to seek self-molestation. Or at least an original version. His form was growing old, telling him the same sad tales and mocking him with the same fetid words over and over and over again.

He passed a multitude of blurred faces as he ambled slowly, with no destination, through the streets. Noticing all as usual....even at the depth of selfish paranoia, his mind was still accepting the data pouring in from around him in a panting, desperate manner. Usually the data was welcomed, filed away in tidy piles to be sifted through later and pondered.

Now it just gave him a further reason to be disgusted with himself. He could decipher so much from a minor piece of lint his mind could snatch up from the carpet of humanity surrounding him, yet he could not fathom his own world better than anyone else.

Yes, a rather egotistical thought that might not be expected from the likes of him. But while Oz was modest....he also knew that he had this odd power and felt no guilt about thinking himself a bit above the surrounding humans. To him, it was just admitting the truth.

No...not better... Just more evolved. His humility came from knowing it was the damn wolf. The wolf that had fucked his life up so much that all he wanted to do was run and run and run.

Start over, begin anew, overthrow the past. Call it what you would, it was running. Running was getting old. He had run the first time in a race against the wolf. He had traveled across the ocean to seek a cure, a way of control. Had traded his belongings....had even, in Mexico, sold the only other thing besides Willow that could fill him to the brim. His guitar. He had thought she would be there for him on his return. He had thought he had it all figured out, that control and faith was the answer.

"Deprive man of his life lie and you rob him of his happiness." A quote that had suddenly become a mantra for Oz.

Oz was a verbal minimalist. People took that at face value, but the thing was--it was a cover. He was so very much not a minimalist inside. The idea of minimalsim was one that struck a very romantic and ideal cord within him. So he tried to be that inside and out. Succeeded on one level.....so half a dozen on one side, six on the other. Right? 'Fraid not.....

Oz knew one other thing about himself to be true. He was an individual whom took all or took none. He could not bear to stand the middle ground. To him that wasn't even standing...it was crawling. Running, leaving Willow the second time was a prime example. If he could not have her as his love, his mate.....he would not have her in any form.

Of course Oz had asked himself if leaving the second time was necessary, and if it was not just a matter of pride. He could stay, he could attend college. He had actually begun to stop living for the future, when he would have the wolfself under his thumb and Willow in his arms.

It was like halloween in negative. Instead of dressing up as a monster to run around in the dark streets and adopt a different persona, he was shedding a costume that allowed him to run around in the light as himself. His true self.

He had believed that the wolf was a seive of sorts, catching the oz-bits that were essental to his true self, and thus his ultimate happiness.

Well, apparently that was not the way it was to be.

Two days after that last confrontation with Willow found him along the side of some freeway he had not bothered to note, just driving to take a ramp here, a left there, signs and direction ignored. He had pulled over to sleep only when the No Doz and the Jolt was not keeping his eyes and van drifting from the road anymore, and no amount of blasting the air conditioning and the stereo made him feel like he was real, and alive, and sane.

He had a vivid dream that morning. Troubled dream to match troubled sleep in the back of a van still strung with Willow scent.

In it he was sitting in a greasy cafe. The type with red, cracked vinyl seats and a poorly laminated menu with little bits of sticky thumbprints along the surface. He was hungry, but the waitress would not come to serve him. She would pass him and just look at him, this look of disgust and then she would point at the door with her pen.

I am hungry, said Oz. Feed me. Please?

This same exchange happened several times before another waitress approached his table with a bill. Oz tried to tell her he had not eaten yet, and he was hungry, and he had not ordered anything.

The waitress responded by tossing the paper on the table before him. To Bad. This is yours. Pay and leave.

Oz picked up the bill and read the scribbled letters.

FUBAR

That figures. Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition.

Oz spotted a sign that stated that yes, it was a casino. And that it had the best bar in Vegas, to boot. Yeah, Fucked up and he wanted a drink. Or five. Slam the wolf into submission for the night and all the ways that cafe dream could be interpreted.

**********

Drusilla's long fingers stretched out across her stomach. They played out over her chest, then hips, searching a rhythm but finding no need to adjust the new material. Her second skin held tight when she put her hands behind her back and leaned forward into the mirror.

There was no image of herself, but that's not what she spied as she leaned closer for her forehead to rest on the cool surface.

A smile as she said her 'goodbyes and thank-yous' for the hospitality these people had shown to a stranger. She told the ugly man she was sorry he had to die so quickly. Promising his spirit that if he were to come back, she would kill him properly next time 'round. Then she said it again, three times in fact. One for each section of his body that lay on the floor.

And the two girls received a kiss blown in their direction for allowing her to borrow their crimson threads. The clothes a sparkling red with the kind of dazzle only a vampire could truly appreciate. She told the first of the beauty in her eyes, and how she was happy to once more be wearing her favorite shade. And then told her that how she had landed in such a rag doll position she looked to be nothing more then dreaming. "Dream a dream for me, sweets?" She asked the girl, thinking it rude when there was no reply.

Then Drusilla propped herself to standing and scolded the second, Blood still falling from thick marks where Dru had hassled to obtain the brilliant reds. Ready to continue to yell at the unlady like way the woman had died, naked and defiled when a small voice ran up and down her ear.

With much excitement the little thing shouted, "Shall we play Drusilla? Shall we?"

She laughed at the childlike voice jumping up and down on the drum set inside. Dru imagined the little voice with hands clasped to his chest and large pleading eyes. She whispered to the deceased, "What do you think, lovelies?" She spun a great circle, arms wide to give their dead eyes a view.

She nodded in agreement to their silence, "Yes. Of course we shall play!"

**********

Oz slammed the empty shot glass down on the counter. Shook his head side to side and swiped at the booze induced tears gathered at the corners of his eyes. The roiling burn that had swam into his stomach with the first three shots was now drifting towards his limbs and beginning to spray his mind. Another shot and he would not be tearing from the impact anymore.

He had walked into the dingy bar and had asked for an entire bottle of Jack as soon as the bartender had looked his way. Nothing to chase it with. He wanted to feel that ripe, filling burn to its fullest.

He half expected the man behind the counter to do the "What's your story" bit, but the man had simply set the bottle down solidly on the bar next to Oz without asking to see I.D. Not so much as a pause except to take Oz's cash, or an amused look from the large bottle to the small Oz.

That lack of consolement gave Oz the first smile of the night. Yes. He was in the right place. A place where pity was as dead as the neon eyes of the people whom he had passed at the front of this small casino. Eyes that were glued to flickering, twisting rows of numbers as they pulled the bar along the sides of the golden machines they crouched before in prayer.

Oz appreciated that. He was seeking salvation much as they were. And had as little hope or determination to find such hollow sanctity, really.

(--I adore Thee, O Jesus most sorrowful; I praise and glorify Thee, and give Thee thanks for this most sacred and painful Wound--)

**********

Drusilla danced the lighted streets of Las Vegas, stilettos quickly abandoned the first time they caught garbage under their spiked heels. She watched the busy faces, of these busy folks and smiled that dazzling smile all women should have. Smiled the smile she knew made Spike fall to his knees and beg for her one more time.

And how unhappy it would make him to know she gave it to these odd humans, who barely noticed her grace in their hurry to get away from the filthy streets. How angry he would be to see these men of barely twenty uncaring of her charms.

It made her bounce in her stride and reach out to touch the ones who came within range. And the little voice pleaded, "We shall play! You said we shall play!"

***********

The bottle was nearly empty. Oz was mildly wondering about alcohol poisoning.

Oz also had to piss. Suddenly that was the answer to everything. Pissing.

Oz stood up, trying to anchor his eyes to the floor. Settled for letting his eyes bob along the surface instead.

He passed a man sitting further down the bar. "42!" Oz whispered to the man in passing. "Who would have known? And I thought all along it was love. Guess they told me."

With those words and a Zen approach to "ignore" from the addressed man, Oz continued on, trying to locate the bathroom through the wave of blinking lights and the wet, greed-stench surrounding them.

He wandered around for a bit, weaving an intricate path through the slot machines. He saw the front door, and decided that was his best bet. Duck down the nearest alley. He suddenly wanted out anyways. The lights were confusing, the smell in the air nauseating. There was just as much crap on the streets for him to wallow in, anyways.

So he left the casino, and began to sway down the street slowly, humming. He sighted an alley entrance...and made a beeline for the relative darkness.

...Or at least as much of a beeline as he was capable of. Which apparently was not much, if one judged from the annoyed muttering that came from those that kept--mysteriously, to Oz--jostling him.

He finally made it to a garbage can at the entrance and relieved himself just beyond the view of those passing on the street. He leaned his head against the rough brick of the wall and stared up at the stream of night sky weakly admitted into the alley (--No stars. No stars anywhere. Coruscate, coruscate, globule vivific--) thankful to just let his mind reverberate companionably with the alcohol mingling within it.

Until he was distracted by loud female giggles passing by. He looked up and caught sight of three garish women shouting out to a passing car. Prostitutes. Suddenly Oz knew what he wanted next for this evening to share with him. Step two in reaching a pinnacle in the art of soul flogging.

Oz was going to hire a hooker. How very un-Ozzy, the friends back home would say when that postcard came through the mail.

Yeah, well. What the hell did they know about his life right now? Or ever, really?

But Oz, the gang in his mind said, why this?

What better way to wallow in righteous pity and failure, friends?

**********

A breeze caught Drusilla, not strong enough to ruffle the loosely hanging hair, but enough to make her back tense. Her head fell back and her eyes closed. Listening to the wind sing a quick chorus before whistling off to its unknown destination, she picked up the quick taunt of the little voice, "Forward, Drusilla. Move forward quickly or you will miss the fun." Her brown eyes snapped opened and she took a hesitant step forwards. Slowly she began to pick up her pace with the lone thought, "Fun is good, fun is always good"

"Left!" The little voice hissed, insistent. Dru pivoted and cocked her head to the side, unsure of what fun a rancid alleyway could possibly hold.

A rat scurried through the dark. Her eyes lit up, but the little thing rolled his imaginary eyes, "Keep walking, m'lady. You'll see. Fun games to be had for all."

**********

Oz zipped up his jeans and eased his way back to the street. He managed to catch sight of the women further down the avenue. He started to hobble his way towards their retreating forms, yet they were passing quickly out of sight, soon undistinguishable from the melee thronging the pavement.

Damn.

No problem. The streets were filled with these women. He just had to be patient. And that was never a problem for Oz. As Xander had once told him, "If you had been a dinosaur, you would still be alive, man. I swear you could have been content to just sink in a ocean or something and wait it out."

Oz staggered back to the alley entrance and leaned against the wall, savoring the breeze that parted and fingered his hair. He let his eyes drift closed, and let his ears fill with the sounds of those passing him unawares as he hunkered in the half light.

**********

The wind picked up once more, lightly pushing her forward with a chill that washed her nerves.

The air shifted as the breezes hissed to her and when she opened her mouth to question their odd language they invaded her. Pushed themselves into her body and played in the borrowed blood. They told her of promises to be made and promises to be kept.

She turned without request to see him leaning against the wall. Could feel the uncontrolled power ebbed into his very soul begging for release.

But unsure where it was to be found

She looked him up and down. A small thing, filled with potential. Dressed in day old clothing too big and unfitting for his nature. Drusilla blinked and looked again with a new set of eyes, made for her to see in depth and pictured him dressed in black. Drenched in danger and soaked in death. The vision of a twisted little doll, kicked and beaten. Thrown down. He had been forgotten by the mistress that was to hold him and cherish him every night until she died.

She took a step forward, unaware of her movements save for the knowledge. Knowing that this new prize must be hers to own. She wouldn't forget him.

**********

A voice suddenly poked its way out from the alcoholic blur, close to his ear.

"Are you looking for a date?"

Oz drug his eyes open, the light pounding and pin wheeling down on him immediately, rasping and plucking at his eyes.

He tried to focus on the woman standing a few feet away from him demurely (--my soft rabbit my prey my lover--)....hands behind her back, hair forward to cover her face except for large doe eyes (--chase hunt devour it all all of her all of me--)

She was obviously what he was looking for. She was wearing a red dress (--blood--) glinting from stolen light and leaving her standing in an innuendo of the surrounding activity.

He noticed through his groggy cloud that she was wearing no shoes.

He cleared his throat, trying to push back his intoxication and surreal lust-thoughts, and straightened up the best he could.

"Um...yeah. Should we do it here? Or you want a room?"

No modesty, No generic cast in gloss and words to sloppily cover the deed to be performed soon. Does the wolf woo the rabbit before tearing its throat out and gorging?

Of course not.

**********

She would have thrown her head back and laughed at such a comment. Would have, but as it was she found herself far more fascinated with the creature in front of her than amused. Wanting to dissect the thing standing here if only to know if he truly was the predator she saw him as. If this presence inside him was one added to a million deeper meanings, or if he was something that never existed. A trick of the mind and poem in the air that somehow still remained real. Dru's hands fluttered above her waist. Seemingly weightless in the air, and her fingers stretched and her wrist turned in a parody of a waltz. One slipped forward and Oz took her skimming hand in his without hesitation.

Drusilla nodded, feeling proud and sure. Sure he was capable of all she would expect of him. She whispered through two digits of her free hand, "Not here, sweet boy." Her nose wrinkled in distaste as she threw a pointed glance to the ground. Oz made no move to notice the ants scurrying along the side of the shoddy brick building or molded sex ads stuck tight below them on the muddy, oily ground.

Drusilla swung his hand in hers, walking backwards to be sure he was paying attention and smiled, "We will find a suiting place for deviants such as we are."

**********

The ants did not disgust Oz. Nor did the thought of the filth and grimed history of this alley seeping into his hair and his pores as he took her on the ground. Pounded and stretched and buried into the crease of unjointed, moldy romance-- his self-respect and Being a chain around this stranger's neck.

But he followed her without a word, his eyes searching hers for permission to let go, letting her steady his stumbling feet with her pace as she led him into the light.

Because the wolf always goes where the rabbit leads. It simply is. Past and present and future and no thoughts, no pride, no introspection is needed or allowed.

It simply is.

**********

Dru found herself holding tighter to the hand between her digits. There was a warmth missing from his grasp she had come to expect from the living. Though they said no words as she led, there was a connection she could feel and wondered if he was aware of the situation. If he knew of the power vibrating around his skins.

She walked a straight line, unsure exactly where her destination would end at. Drusilla followed the city's hues and the heaven's lights, knowing between the two there would be a grand place for their hold up.

So it was no wonder when they found themselves in front of a great Vegas hotel. Perhaps not top class, but sturdy in triangular shape. Pitch black as the midnight sky. With only a triangular bulb placed atop and a large statue in front to prove it might be something special.

The Luxor

With a dazzling height that caused her to crane her head to look at the light on top pointing high to the stars. She wondered which it ultimately pointed to, and if that constellation felt proud of its spotlight from so far away.

**********

Oz finally took notice of his surroundings now that the woman leading him had stopped. It was all he could do at first to keep up with her twisting, dancing path through the streets. But he had let himself become pliant to the whims of her feet almost immediately, imagining himself an extension of the small hand that clutched his tighter and tighter. Letting his senses ebb away from everything surrounding them in favor of the gleam of her hair, the shape of her calves with their bare feet, the concave bend to the inside on her elbow.

He craned his eyes upwards to view the immense structure in front of them. Black glass reflected the lights of the city and the night sky, and before them a large sphinx greeted them into its belly and groin with outstretched paws and a calm unseeing gaze..

He felt a tug on his hand, and averted his eyes from those of the statue to his companion's. The woman had turned slightly to look at him, her eyes knowing and gleeful. She stepped closer to him and raised his hand to her lips. He thought for a moment that she was going to kiss his palm, but instead she held it up to her ear, perhaps listening to the music it had created so many times with callused tips, and then she smiled gently. She then held his hand in front of her face, obscuring his view of her features. Oz felt her tracing a fingernail along his palm--seashell shapes and a written language of her own devising.

"Where on your palm is my little line?"

She parted his fingers like a curtain so she could gaze through them with one eye down at his face. He wondered if she was smiling that little smile again.....it made him think of choke cherries, for some reason. A bright, small fruit that one wanted to cram into the mouth by the handful at first sight. However, the berry would pucker the mouth in a strange, cotton-like manner, leaving the tongue coated in a strange sensation hard to verbalize. A strange combination of sweet and tang and nothing. A naughty fruit.

He smiled at her, unsure suddenly of how to proceed. As if she sensed this, she spun quickly and began to lead him towards the entrance of the casino.

********

She giggled at the new scenery before them, so sudden with hardly a whirring tug of the glass door to announce their entrance. The lights were dimmer inside the hotel and it was louder. A frantic pace set by the people hollering and crying. Screaming for all reasons and then none at all.

But Drusilla didn't mind. Going so far as to rejoice in the extreme emotions of the Luxor. Oh, how this city brought out the worst.

The two maneuvered the crowd quickly, searching out the elevators to reach a destination for their grand plans.

And all the while, that small voice played around in the body of Drusilla. Made his own fun that echoed like thunder in her care-free mind. She wasn't too concerned with the vibrations he made by climbing to the top of her ear, announcing himself in the great auditorium. Idly she wondered if there were others there, to watch as he slid down the curved slides of her outer ear.

And oh! She gasped pointing as she saw a large sign indicating the elevators. She made eye contact with the boy, but he barely nodded.

She sighed, and listened to the clapping as the voice inside spun. So there were others watching his performance. She wondered how many, and if they had planned out this parade. Plotting against her in the auditorium of her ear? She found that silly.

They entered through the metal doors without noise, save for that of the slamming gates. And for a long while all was still. The only sound, the simple melody coming from the ceiling. Drusilla frowned. "Pick a number, dearest." And motioned to the key pad.

He choose a digit high on the list, and the wheels set into motion as the small box lifted. Drusilla blinked, with an energy behind the lashes. She stood taller when she realized there to be a force here, rocking the cage. And wondered if her little prize could feel it too. Surrounding the metal with all its strength. Thinking it a great shame such things did not exist in the physical. It could tear us all to shreds, she thought.

"Can you feel the force here smashing the ground, my little rag doll? A ping pong to the walls? It's coming from you and it's coming from me. We are so great locked here together. Our power, our... Nature.'

The boy blinked at her, and after a space replied, "You on drugs?" Another space and, "Have any more? I'll pay..."

"Hmm.." Drusilla sighed, a higher pitch than her normal voice, fingers twirled around the ends of her hair. "I don't have....drugs." Drusilla replied with a modest smirk, slow spoken adding the charm of the nights events. "Let nature do its work on your senses. Nothing else will make you more dizzy." She paused, listening to the light thumping on her ear as the voice tapped the microphone, "I live on the edge of my own mind."

Her new pet looked at his feet for a moment, but she didn't want that, and apparently the energy swarming and pattering around them did not either, for he raised his head--like the rag doll he was, on a string held by the giggling winds--and stared into her face. She was pleased beyond measure to see a trace of understanding worming its way into those eyes.

And the tiny arm hairs of Drusilla braided themselves and found the strength to rise up from her. They stretched out to claim the energy radiating the elevator. But Dru was certain they understood it to be a power not theirs to own.

Things were shifting in this little box of unrestrained power.

She sighed when her muscles tensed without permission. And sighed again when she realized they had most likely asked the excited voice spiraling inside her brain and he allowed them to contract. Still, its an odd feeling to not be in control of your insides.

And she paused to look at the doll. He appeared so deep in concentration that she didn't risk breaking his thoughts with her words. But decided for him that he understood the feeling of falling. Falling out of your skin, for her thoughts on the matter, when the wind picked up and you couldn't keep balance. Or didn't want to.

The doors opened and the energy, so great already, rushed out to the would-be freedom of casino halls. It smashed the wall ahead of them and then darted left. Dru's muscles relaxed and the hairs fell to their rightful place. She shrugged back and gathered her insides. "Nice."

They stepped out to the chilled hallway, Drusilla skipping ahead. As they passed each door that was not the one he had chosen for them, she would address it.

"Not you, naughty room!"

"We do not like the numbers you decorate yourself in. Your jewelry is sending us away. Goodbye!"

"My boy said he doesn't like you. So stop begging. He has chosen another."

Down one hall and up another, until the energy pooled at the foot of a door, a thrumming welcome mat for them, with the correct numbers affixed.

*********

They both stared at the door for a moment--Oz waiting for the prostitute to open the door, the prostitute waiting for who knew what.

The woman reached forward to caress the door, running her nails across and around the gold numbers. She then rapped on the door and stepped back, expectantly.

Nothing happened. Was someone supposed to be inside? Her pimp? Somehow he doubted that she was working for anybody.

A few more moments passed until the woman knocked on the door again, slightly harder.

Oz stared at the door, then to her, and then back at the door. He hesitantly said in a quiet voice, a library voice, the type used in places and situations where it seems sacrilegious to even speak, "Don't you have the key?"

The woman stared at him, uncomprehending, and Oz continued a little lamely, "You need a key."

The woman suddenly laughed, covering her grinning mouth as soon as the sound escaped. Keeping one finger in front on her lips in a hush-hush manner, she nodded, eyes still laughing.

"Shhhhhhh." She began to twirl around, stopping when she was again facing Oz. "Don't worry, Don't worry."

"I wasn't." He said, trying the door handle for the hell of it. You never know.

She nodded at his response, solemn. "Of course. Let me be back. I must have locked it inside, dear."

"Ok. Fine."

The woman waved at him and turned to continue back the way they had come. Oz watched her until she turned a corner and was lost to his view.

Oz shifted his weight from foot to foot until he decided that to sit on the thick carpet would be a better way to wait for the woman to return.

He did so and stared down into his hands lying palm up in his lap, and rolled this strange woman over in his mind and tried to hold her to the light to better see her.

But the wolf was being obstinate and would not let him have the collected data he was sure it had been collecting. It was sleeping.

Oz was unhappy at his excitement. Not the sexual...that was to be expected. But this darker edging framing it he could not place.

For one, he was rather surprised how the simple thought of being with a woman, this woman, had a calming effect on him. That was wrong. This was not about pleasure. This was about punishment. He should be feeling disgusted with himself right now, and if he still felt the need to take calming pleasure from her--take it from the deserved disgust and the knowledge he had sunk as low as he promised himself he would.

He had decided that to think of Willow the entire time might be fitting. The better to see his failures by.

But even though his thoughts were not leading him to the spot that he expected them too, it was ok. This odd woman was still a body he could drown himself in for the night. Tomorrow he would leave this city. Tomorrow he would step back into the light that was goodness and all things to be upheld (--though it hates me it must it won't give me rest--) and use tonight as a lesson.

But......

This woman, this damn woman was....different. He thought that by taking a hooker to bed he would be sleeping with darkness and....and he wasn't sure. And because of that he had expected...he didn't know, the same air of self-pity and irony that he had?

She had none. Oh, she was of the dark, but she seemed to take contentment and pleasure from it. A valid lifestyle with a bible that he had never been forced to read as a child. He hadn't known a thing could even truly exist. Wasn't everything cast down envious of those above? Was that not the point? Of it all?

She was this string whose frayed end had become tangled around him. To escape Oz could either cut his way from it or he could follow it hand over hand to the other end. Which, surprisingly.......or not.......was an intriguing thought to ponder. A possibility never considered.

Consider?

"Oz, what are you thinking?" He reached to either side and slid his palms along the carpet as if these unsettling thoughts had been caused by a poison spread by touch and could be wiped off.

He stopped his rubbing suddenly and pulled his hands away from the carpet to study the palms closely.

"Isn't that the point, though? Letting go? Not to have to think about what the right way is? All it has gained you is an..." He spoke the words into his hands. "...absolutely empty life."

And he closed his fingers around the cupped thoughts as he heard someone approaching.

He looked up and saw the woman happily holding up a card-key in her hand.

Oz took a deep breathe and stood up, all doubts forgotten for now, all thoughts now focused on what was about to happen to him in the room behind him.

**********

She wasn't hard to find, the maid. Dressed in the casino's colors and wearing a mask of annoyance as she vaccumed the halls. Old, but not too old. She was a simple memory to Dru. Crows. They land sleekly, black in contrast to the blue heavens. From afar a glorious sight. But then when you moved in close, to get a better look at such a thing, the details would kick in. The matted feathers and twisted claws.

Drusilla moved closer, calling out in a singing voice, "Madam?" The womans cringe was the only sign she heard the voice.

Dru walked until so close the woman was forced to acknowledge her presence with a fake smile and pretended she was hospitable to everyone she encountered. Her dull eyes proved she wanted nothing to do with the people here. "Can I help you?"

Unable to keep her tongue tied, and with no reason to, Dru was quick to explain, "There's a boy," And she pointed down the hall, though he was not in view. "He's mine." Dru's possesive eyes sparked in lust and she whispered, "I'm going to keep him for always..."

The maid did not roll her eyes but looked to the floor with a backpeddled step. Dru was on her heels, a step forward in a slightly longer stride. The housekeeper surpressed a chilled shiver and smiled fakely, "Do you need something?"

Drusilla's back straighted, her voice claiming childhood charm, "Yes." She snapped playfully, "A key."

"A key?"

She pushed herself forward a last step, and played out the scenario as though talking to an infant who would never understand if they did not already. "How am I going to keep him when there's no place to be kept?"

With the maid's second step backwards Dru jumped as though it were a game, bending her knees low and springing high. She laughed and the housekeeper stood tall, refusing to be intimidated. In turn posed her own threat, "Should I call security?"

Dru looked high to the ceiling, a small moth fluttering inside one of the light fixtures trying its hardest to escape its burning prison. She hummed a little tune to the winged creature then replied without looking away, "No... No, we don't need them." Her head was quick to snap down to begin staring straight through the maid, "Not yet."

The maid's stubbornness turned to be her downfall as she pointedly refused to be the first to break eye contact, even when she felt a storm muddling around in her head. And she was suddenly confused as to why this woman was intimidating her the first place, and confused as to why she was here. She said in a tired voice,"What did you need again..?"

"Hush then." Was the whispered reply and the maid was silent.

"Mmm." Dru cooed, leaning into the womans face so they were a bump away from touching, "The perfect thing." She reached down without breaking visualization to what she saw clearly in the womans mind. Tugging the skelton key, shaped like a card free from the maid's pocket.

She then nodded, patting the womans head, and couldn't resist.. "You look like crows. And feel like crows. Migrating around, as they do. Never happy to stay through the storm, are you?" The woman blink absently. With a cluck of her tounge, Dru pivoted and began to walk away throwing out, "Ta then and nevermind. I have what I needed, carry on as though it were nothing."

The maid shook her head and watched the retreating form of Drusilla.

The door shut behind them and Oz checked to make sure it was locked. He turned slowly, and instead of looking at Dru he glanced around the room with its one king sized bed in the center, stripes of light cast over the cover in bars of neon and nighttime.

He walked over to the mammoth window and looked out over the city, the lights casting a glow over his features like that on the bed. Perfect. Exactly what he had wanted, the night sky and city a witness to all that would happen.

Dru's fingernails scraped against the wall as she followed his movements with her eyes until he reached the window to wallow in the chaos below. She moved elsewhere then, taking in the king size bed and paintings above it.

And she bounced twice on top the springy mattress when she reached its pillows.

The air smelled sterile, impersonal and there was a sudden tension between the two. Drusilla looked back to the colored lights marring Oz's features.

As Dru watched, Oz turned around and faced the bed where she lay stretched out. They stared at each other in that manner for long moments.

Oz with eyes now reflecting the light of Dru's chosen shades, confusion and swimming colors and brazen electricity cast by the window. And Dru reflected his, eyes buried in the dark of the room, yet still shining with a stolen glow culled from the expanse beyond her reach where the light did hit.

He broke the contact by removing his hooded sweatshirt and pulling the shirt underneath over his head, to drop both on the floor by his feet.

She in turn smiled, licking her lips, feeling oddly predatory from her lower height

Drusilla crawled as far as the bars made solid out of neon rays striped the bed. Stopping moments away from the beams to kneel back, sitting on her toes.

Hesitant to reach her fingers through the gates of light. A test of will. To claim her prize beyond the prison of bright colors and tension.

But instead of dwelling on the dazzling shades and shapes before her on the bed she straightened her back and began to untie the fabric prison of her corset.

Oz stared at the way her chest arched out invitingly as she reached behind her back to loosen the bonds, letting the stiff material fall from her fingers over the edge of the bed to the floor.

He began to remove the rest of his clothing, shivering a bit in the artificial chill of the room and her evaluating gaze. Shoes, socks, and then the jeans and the boxers underneath.

Oz stood before Dru, letting the radiating dark and light slick his body.

A display for her. An object, nothing more. Please?

She looked him up down, examining the workings of the marionette before her. Smiling at the proud stitches that kept him together. She watched the light hit specified patches of skin and ignore others.

Drusilla pushed herself to rising, careful of light. Avoiding it like morning sun as she stood on top the downy mattress. The skin skirt was worked down her legs, making slight annoyed whispers as it clung to stay around her thighs.

Oz looked at the nude woman standing above him, her skin pale as his even in the relative darkness.

She crouched down once more, his rabbit, and ran her hands down her neck and between her breasts to rest above her navel.

Oz inhaled her scent, nostrils flaring. Jasmine. Powder. Something....else. Something to make his neck scrunch as the wolf rolled over in its sleep. What was the wolf dreaming of? Were the dreams sweet? Was there anxiety in the way its sides heaved?

Oz took the final, necessary steps to the bed and his prey upon it.

Their lips met for the first time in the space between where the light cast by the windows hit the nighttime of the room. Both twisted and rearranged cleverly upon the features beneath.

Oz opened his eyes when her tongue slipped between his lips, and couldn't tell the shade from the light, suddenly. And he didn't care, he didn't care. What his eyes were telling him was that this was good, this was bad--all rolled up into a taste of female and a scent of hair and the scrape of nails along his tense shoulder blades. This was meant as punishment, meant to chastise him for his recklessness, his assumptions, his past.

But it was good.

And a crack zinged along his sense of who he was supposed to be, his morals taking the brunt.

But it was good.

The air bloomed and receded between them as they moved and the hues danced along hair and skin. A shadow chased the light from a crevice to be twirled away in turn by another bright puddle. A race to see which could claim which...so fast and with such an unspoken collaboration that both collapsed and both just were.

Oz thought that maybe if he listened carefully, so carefully, he might see infinity in those tints.

Drusilla's nails raked down the muscled flesh of Oz's back only to leave welts when they continued upwards to feel each bone decorating his sides. And decidedly liked the way he was patched up.

When her wistful hands reached the top of his chest they floated against the light. Her nails trying elegantly to tear apart the bars as they shifted higher above her head. Drusilla fell back. Slowly landing in an almost awkward position with her knees in front and back resting on the heels of her feet.

Her fingers slowly dancing in the darkness above her. Stretched out she invited him to use her as a canvas. An expression of his pain and frustration. And she smiled to prove she could take it. Take his hurts and fears. He needn't restrain.

Dru was ready to pull up, drag him down to her and prove herself the perfect mistress when inside the auditorium the voice stood tall. "Testing." He spoke into the small microphone and the audience of Dru's mind all hushed.

She watched Oz through half closed eyes, as the tiny thing sang in his tiny voice. And she smiled, as she looked up to Oz and whispered the words sang for her only her to hear...

"Twinkle, Twinkle... Little star.."

Her heavy accent didn't slur the words, but rather pronounced them strongly. Every syllable hitting every nerve in Oz's frame. She watched him flinch as the last note hung between them. Watched his eyes narrow when it drifted into the grey of the room.

The small voice stopped his singing. But the audience wasn't upset as the microphone fell to his side. The entire room inside of Drusilla's head raced to the isles staring out into the outside world, hoping to get a peek.

She thought it odd, that they should care about her reality more so than they did their own. And all that energy in the elevator, and all that power as she held his hand..

Drusilla continued, softer, a jagged innuendo snaring the words into a shape never meant to be. Too harsh for a childrens' rhyme,

"How I wonder.....What....You are."

Drusilla never moved on the bed, keeping her seemingly submissive position. But the frail looking woman was in control now, as she forced eye contact with the simple gesture of not blinking.

Oz stared at the woman below him and rasped out the words, "Coruscate, coruscate, globule vivific." Twinkle twinkle, little star.

Does a fetus in the cloud of labor feel anything like this? A sudden realization that something has ended, but what, they can't fathom? And that they are at a moment that has set understanding before them, just out of reach?

What does it feel like to know that moment may be the closest they will ever come to touching such understanding?

Oz suspected that he was feeling something akin to that right then.

He would, must, touch it. He searched the face of Dru and the wolf rolled over again, more forcibly. Oz focused on that, trying to ignore the beating of his heart...

Wait.

It hit him with a fever force, causing a small noise to escape his lips. How drunk had he been? How wrapped in himself? How could he not realize that the woman below him had a heart that was silent? That her scent was off?

No, in Oz form his senses were not a fraction of the wolf's, but he should have realized what type of creature she was.

Just like he should have realized that this woman was one he knew in a past life called Sunnydale.

Drusilla.

Oz curled back into himself and closed his eyes, drawing his knees up under his chin. The shadows and lights were now mocking him, it seemed. Looking at them made him want to cry. Or scream.

But run?

"The dark is only real when you have your eyes closed. That is the only real darkness. Open your eyes." Drusilla's soft voice sliced through his turmoil.

He ignored her, huddling even tighter into a ball. Pulling himself out from under the slanting rays on the bed.

He had come to this place with the intention of letting go for a night, and saying "Fuck You" to a world that apparently hated him.

He didn't realize how strong that hate must be, until now.

But run?

How far gone was he? He gathered his damaged self up and thrust it back, and pushed the wolf forward to cover his eyes with its claws.

Oz did what was asked then. Opened his eyes. Really did this time, not running.

And another fatalistic crack formed within him.

Drusilla had to will herself still when those eyes opened. When the small frame relaxed and the face of her new toy, her doll, swung to catch her in an expressionless gaze. What was the verdict? Would he play? Was he a sturdy and fitting plaything?

Silence. A simple thing she was unused to. Him, being so different than her previous lovers. It added an edge, a very important quality to Dru. For light had taken not one, but two of her most valued subjects.

This was her revenge.

And so caught up in the idea of getting back at those powers that would allow all the things that had happened to her, happen--powers that had allowed Spike to leave the dark for humanity and Angelus to leave for a soul. She was unprepared for the violence that suddenly shook the room as she focused on Oz's eyes.

It was amazing. Unrestrained. Uncontrollable.

More than a match for Drusilla as it dominated the room. The walls rumbled in its fury. Willing themselves to not shatter by the sheer fact this force was not of the physical.

And as such, it could not break the barrier of her skin. Which didn't stop it from shoving at her, hitting with mute fists to get inside.

Drusilla's mouth opened first in awe and then in something much more extreme. She moaned as the energy exploded into her senses. Seeing red drapery drenched in stars. The voices inside her not only scrambled away from their peephole of the theater but raced further into her system. The microphone hit the stage, and the voices slammed the doors.

And all this... Coming from a mere poppet she had found in an alleyway...all his power, magnified ten fold. Drusilla tried at analyzing the data, but realized too late she was missing a value. The equation was incomplete, it needed a variable was too important to be left out.

Dru reached out, beckoning. He had the answer, of course. Would he comply? She let the question pose itself through her eyes.

Oz still looked at her with the same expression he had affixed to his face since he had realized who and what Drusilla was., and rose to slowly climb towards her. So life wants to play a game called Oz? Fine. Fine with him. If that was what he truly was--a jest--who was he to stop the wheel?

She mirrored his actions, smiling.

The shade and light screamed with glee to be once more combined over their shared charges, as the couple once more entered that motley zone that separated them.

Oz paused mere inched away from Drusilla's gloating features, and inhaled sharply.

He growled...low, deep in his chest.

Drusilla blinked, surprised. Such a noise from such a small chest! She paused to look him over as a thought began to form.

Her gesture of withdrawal only served to anger the wounded Oz. He grabbed her hand tightly, and she cried out in alarm, though it was not the pressure that caused her to do so, but the quick reflexes. It broke the forming thought from her mind before it could take root and bloom. He growled again, and the walls hissed in response to his fury.

The combination of the brute force applied to her arm and her unprepared state caused them both to topple backwards, Drusilla landing on top to fumble in the waves of legs and arms. Oz didn't care as they lay twisted about each other. Grasping Dru's hair he forced her lips to his own. She complied to his empty wolf-will, allowing him to dominate her even as she lay above him. Not in control, he reminded himself, and he flinched when Dru opened a welcoming mouth when his teeth bit too hard on her lips.

His blunt nails tore her thighs open, and scored her waist when he gripped too hard to turn her around. Dru found the action to be clockwork, mechanical in an odd way, but didn't stop him. Her hair fell a halo and Drusilla looked up with mocking innocence and smiles directed at his fueling rage. Playing with fire, going so far as to arch her back off the bed.

Oz avoided eye contact, trying to let the wolf do its will and shield him from this ironic situation with instinct. When Dru tried to capture his frantic eyes, he raked his nails over her chest, the objective to break her pleasure. Instead, she moaned loudly, lifting from the bed. The wolf was slipping, because the rabbit was not supposed to respond in this way.

He felt a mental jolt and realized that it was not so much the wolf pulling away, but the wolf pulling him forward. Through the spreading cracks, causing the now frail sanctity to crumble further. Though pulling was not the right word either. Beckoning.

And Oz was following with hesitation suddenly, testing the ground. Liking what he felt as he entered further into this new world, this amazing possibility.

And his lips were all over her in the next instant, kissing and licking. Possessing.

And finally Dru brought her hands up to his face, forcing him to her lips and eyes.

There was a nervous stomping in her stomach to accompany the kiss. Drusilla did her best to ignore it, biting her tongue against the tickled sensation as one little agitated voice raced his way up the stairs of her ribs, and turned fast to slide the isles of her throat.

She busied her senses instead on the boy before her. Her fingers tightened around his hair, forcing him tighter to her, forcing him harder.

He was slow to pull away, gasping for breath that he had not taken during the kiss, and hovered above her throat, his eyes flickering with indecision.

The little voice fell back to the auditorium, not bothering to pick the mic back up but rather cupped his hands around his mouth and cried out a warning:

"Don't allow the wolf his feast!"

She paused, her turn for sudden realization now, while Oz moved lower to her collar bone and placed brutal kisses there. Dru remembered a snatch of poetry she had once heard and quietly addressed Oz with it:

"The last house crashes down:
the wolf is on fire,
my right hand is on fire,
the wolf is gone."

Oz pulled back, resting his chin on her chest. How did she know these things? That he had been trying to shield a bit of himself, like an innocent child, from the fact of his actions and what they meant?

In the moment he had paused above her throat, he had been idly considering taking her life and then his own after. Making this into a kamikaze salute, letting go in a final physical way to mirror the internal one taking place.

But that would be walking the line. And Oz was not that sort. If there was anything of himself to be clutched after tonight, it was that.

Wasn't it obvious to her that he had made the decision already? Had made it the moment he had climbed to her after he knew what she was?

This isn't something you play with and if it doesn't please you, pretend it did not happen, Oz wanted to tell her. There is _nothing_ to go back to. You throw yourself away, and it is gone, damn it. Gone!

Isn't the fact he was here obvious that he had begun that process? Had perhaps begun it before he knew he really was, calling it pretty words like depression and bitterness and anger?

To show her this, he growled again and slid upwards along her front so quickly and roughly the friction caused him pain. Good pain, though.

Funny when you learn that one type of pain is actually pleasure that other types suddenly follow suit.

Oz poised above her, looking down into a face that was grinning maniacally. He was grinning too, he realized. Maniacally?

The thought caused him no fear and he did not hesitate. It actually made it sweeter.

Sweeter, when he pulled back with no warning and thrust hard--oh god--with an acute sense of yeeeesssss, to be in her and to feel her and feel him and to feel it all, so good, so...damn...right...in....the...world.

Sweeter, the way there were no bars of light and shadow upon the bed now to fight a claim over his body, either because they had shifted as the sky wheeled above them, or Oz had simply stopped noticing the difference, or their job was done and the battle decided.

Sweeter, the way Drusilla could match his strength with hers to flip him over. Strength a gift from the supposed darkness of the world that was wrong and--evil? Happiness, instead. Strip the definitions away and now you can see that you can reassign the words to describe the world you inhabit. Label them correctly this time, because you are defining it now for your own reference. Not anyone else's.

Drusilla was above him, holding his wrists above his head with a bruising--no, in his world of new terms, thoughtful--force. Oz writhed and struggled beneath her. Perhaps she thought he meant to escape, because she ground them both harder into the mattress, claiming his body to create her own rhythm.

Escape? Hell no. No escape. Just this--oh--this.....and ahhhhhh!

Is this sex? Is this...love?

No. No love to ever be found with this pairing.

But it was something-

-better-

(Her face flushed above him)

-clarified-

(His body intense and caught and pumping)

-it was right.

(Screaming holiness.)

And it was building, the wash both numbing and rejuvenating at once, and Oz barely heard Dru's voice in the thunder of one heart pounding between them.

"Who is this I now see beneath me?" She stopped, teasing. Causing his penis to cry, twitching frustration within her.

Oz threw out the words just to appease her, so he could go back to the building pleasure. "You don't want to know me."

Drusilla laughed and resumed her thrusting, the pleasure picking up almost where it let off. So close now....

"Oh, I already do. You are my heartbeat."

**********************

Oz did not answer the statement, just let himself be used, Dru's snaking body above him.

Oh God...Oh Dru...Is this your life? Do you always feel like this? And all it takes is handing over yourself to the...oh....this is pure...

....devotional.....

Oz shut his eyes and visualized the stars and planets swinging above them, aligning to the perfect position, to have their own orgasm.Is that how black holes were formed? Was the outcome collapsing in on oneself? Oz grinned at that mental image as he let himself writhe under Dru and twist his wrists against her tight grip, liking the way it felt.

Or was it this, beneath the heavens, in this room. Being sucked into the black hole of Dru and alternatives.

Oz's body jackknifed under Dru so hard they were both momentarily raised off the bed.

Dru was howling now, Oz dimly realized, caught in the ending. He opened his eyes and saw the welts along her chest that he had left and it was too much, too much.....

Oz was howling too. Not wolf howls, but low, guttural grunting screams as his body became one solid, blazing, tensed muscle--even his brain locked so tight it could not move within him.

And then, jerking and snapping and moaning, it was over.

Drusilla still had his bruised wrists beneath her hands, and in the sweaty silence now released them. She slid over to his side, squirming up against him and she whispered that it was good, he had done so well, he was a well made rag doll with such a clever piece of clockwork to please her with. She would treasure him and not drop him in the dust to be trampled and springs broken.

Oz began to laugh.

Just opened his throat and there it was, surprising in the way it just rolled out and sounded so full and right. Dru sat up to clap and coo at this, wriggling happily.

Oz was still laughing, dust settling inside his mind from the shaking and airing out he had given it, when the door opened and two guards walked in on them.

**********

Drusilla's senses were always on fire the moment a potential meal was in sight. Sitting up, her hands were quick to cover her breasts. A shocked gesture, an amused smile and "Oh looky, the bobbies have come to join!"

Her own laugh of broken bells filled the room. French tip nails slid regretfully across Oz's still prone and uncovered body before she rose from the bed. The moment was almost spoiled and such a little voice, swinging in her inner ear, cried out for revenge on these men that would interrupt them. Blasphemy to the perfect mood.

Standing tall, all pretense of modesty was lost in the moment. The uniformed men did their best to divert their eyes from the leggy brunette and her shapely form. Failing like the moth in a spiders web, but trying all the same, "What do you think you're doing here?" One of the armed men asked with a step forward to survey the room for potential damage.

Dru's teeth snapped the air. Making a point of grace for walking nearer the two. She gasped as though tonight's adventure had just been another human day for her. One more bad play for her to perform tonight. "Unspeakable things."

"Yeah?" It was the larger of the guards who walked to meet this strangely unafraid girl halfway across the room. When the two faced off they stood the same height, "Well, now the fun's over." His breath reeked of casino salad bars and cold coffee.

He grabbed Dru's arm.

The little voice gasped at such an intrusion. Drusilla did no such thing, growling low and startling the small, cold room--though the walls were quick to laugh.

For they knew what the duo was capable of.

His grave was already considered dug as she pulled her arm away from his dirty fingers. Dru hissed like the little girl whose mother refused her ten more minutes before bed, saying "The fun is _ not _ over!"

She had been well aware of the other man this entire time, her instinct running on autopilot. She kicked out sideways, catching him first in the groin and then in the head as he fell to his knees, mewling. The kick had been hard enough that a reddish dark stain was spreading along the fabric covering his crotch.

This was done in such a way that the second kick swung her around to face the first officer again. Dru grasped the back of his hair so that her nails bled into his scalp.

But it was alright, because his scream was sucked away in the stream ofblood Drusilla gulped like forbidden wine, smacking her lips when the tastebecame dull.

"Poppet?" She looked at up at Oz, red teeth dripping.

**********

Oz clutched at the rumpled bed sheets. He had not moved when the door opened. So much for the afterglow, he had thought in that startled moment.

He still had not moved when Dru rose from the bed to taunt the guards. Instead, he had found himself faintly amused by how they flicked their eyes back and forth, back and forth at her nudity.

He thought about getting up, but it seemed so difficult...too much like not letting go. And caring. And thinking. Lets just watch the nice man die before you, Oz.

Oz had not answered Dru, and was not really sure what she was asking to begin with.

Dru dropped the body. She walked past the bed, ignoring him in his spread eagled weakness. She crouched down to retrieve his jeans from the floor near the window, turning them to find the belt still looped through the fabric. She slid the belt from the straps, a smooth, dry hiss that made oz shiver with the idea that it was whispering possibilities to him. He shut his eyes.

Pausing to pick up his discarded t-shirt, Dru walked back to the injured man, apparently in shock, curled up on the floor. She used the belt to secure the man's hands behind him, though Oz wondered if it was necessary. Come on, the guy had blood oozing from his crotch. Didn't look like he was going anywhere anytime soon.

Drusilla then clutched his t-shirt with both hands and easily ripped it into two pieces. She used one scrap to gag the man.

Oz still had his eyes closed, listening to the sounds caused by Dru's actions. Hiss on leather, tear of fabric, clink of the buckle. Now positively screaming possibility at him.

Memories. In the park a couple nights before the full moon he lays on the grass. Staring at the sky and gripping himself and thinking about--tasting--a girl he had seen earlier that day on the street. Dirty little touches to his cock as Oz chances dirty little touches to the girl in his mind. Imagining pissing on her corpse. And other things. Fascinating thoughts, from where they come he has no idea, turned a corner and suddenly there they are. Feeling so guilty as soon as the thought has entered his mind...revolted, yet still chancing the touches, real and imagined, time and time again. Anything could cause such a thought, too. He likened it to walking into a bathroom stall at Disney world and finding a condom in the urinal.

It was like he was rubbernecking at his own mind.

Oz had been rubbernecking constantly ever since the wolf had entered him, pointing out things along the roadside it thought Oz might like to ponder.

Of course, Oz thinks, you see something along the roadside, you can't help but look. Tell yourself you are sick and nasty and wrong, oh god, you still look. Crane your head to follow, even.

Just a slick sound of a belt against fabric. An innocent sound, and he is rubbernecking. But this time it is different.

A hitchhiker named Dru is asking to stop for a better view, and possibly a souvenir. God, cheesy comparisons and metaphors all over the place tonight, thought Oz faintly.

Oz does that. Everything turned into a metaphor for a maybe song he might write.

Oz was sweating, suddenly.

And not for the reasons one would think.

**********

Drusilla's arms stretched out far from her body. One high, one low, wrists flowing in a circular pattern. Game show sellout girl showing off a parting gift, the helplessly armed guard

Her image was quite tantalizing, classic in silhouette form. An energy flowed from her, cheeks slightly flushed from her recent kill and the smile on her face showed off her great ambition.

Whimpered noises escaped from the the bound body as he tried so hard to resist the tears of pain and resist the end. But he knew, and the mirage wasn't happening. This moment was to be his last, the feeling was too strong to be avoided.

Drusilla absently noted his soul's plea. But laughed, kneeling on the bed and crawling until her knees touched her mate's ankles. She sprawled out the rest of the way, her hair fanning over his naked skin as her head rested on his chest. It was the most pleasant feathered sensation.

Still, she said no words, catching his hand before it had a chance to run through her skin. French tipped nails traced the creases of his wrist. Raising it to run the knuckles over her parted lips lightly.

And looked up to see his face. Smiling softly, as though afraid a sudden movement would cause him to run. He matched her smile, and cupped her jaw in his hand. Both tracing the outline of the other.

And she whispered, "Isn't it good?"

His gaze shifted beyond her to the struggling guard. Her mind's eyes followed his sigh, but never took her eyes away from his satisfied expression, "Can you smell it?"

Oz nodded, the fear circling around the room, mixed with sex. Overpowering aromas in his heightened senses.

Hers too.

She understood it. Everything. All his former fears, and cast away doubts. But Drusilla didn't share them. She knew he could give in, teetering on his ledge of false truths. He didn't understand, no. But she could make him. Show him.

Her personal protégé. And the light would loose him tonight. Not a promise, a fact. She would not allow her favorite figurine to leave this room unless stripped of purity and thrown into the Vegas lights with a fire in his eyes to match her own.

They were granted life above natural beings. Like the one dead on the floor, and other bound awaiting his sentence. Final death. They were given the power for destruction, was only right they use every fiber of it in living.

Take the chapel and priests inside. Take the world, and weave it to a little ball until the size was just right and could fit in your pocket. Most definitely, out to take the world. Or destroy it. Hers to own, should she request the honor.

And why not? Why shouldn't she possess all thrown her way? The choice for immortality was not given to her, but she opened her soul to take leave, for the one true dark to grant her this moment.

And her desire was power.

"It calls to me." There was an almost overbearing tone to her voice. The child gone, and wistful melodies as she spoke the second fact, "It calls to you, too." He already knew that, but hearing it said made it less superficial. This was for him, and him alone. His forbidden lust that she made him wonder why he had ever thought to resist. Fight what instinct and nature said was 'good' and 'pure' and 'right' and..

Natural.

She lifted her head from his palm, tracing a smaller crevasse there with her thumb and smiled, rising to her knees and beckoning he follow until he rose in the same manner.

"Our amusement." Her head lowered until she spoke underneath thick lashes and waved hair. "Ours to conquer. And we... We're above them after all, aren't we? We are all?" Her eyes wide, she seemed so lost.

At a loss for words, she appeared impossibly small for all the strength in her anything but frail form. And she waited for her sought out confirmation.

For this boy who didn't understand the feelings she brought out in him, to tell her it was true. Wanted to hear the luscious words from his mouth. On his tongue. Echoed in his teeth.

Oz looked into her eyes, trying to judge the honesty there, and realizing he would never know if this girl was honest. Whether she was very clever with her phrases and actions. Or followed her passion where ever it went.

It was his to turn away from. Or his to capture in his hands and take what They said wasn't his.

So it hardly mattered if she were playing him. Because she nurtured the side of him that needed this to be truth and he nodded. Confirmed her suspicion, "We are all."

The lost expression instantly disappeared, sadistic eyes smiling at him before she bounded up, smothering his neck in her curled brown hair. Her lips claiming his before Oz reversed the balance. Proving his rightful place in Dru's mind as he whirled her senses in fun to be had and fun to be seen.

The kiss ended abruptly though, Oz leaving a heated Drusilla. Never looking back as he moved from the bed, staring down the frighten guard.

**********

And it all came down to this. And this was? In the end?

"Quod Sum Eris." Dru said to him from her place behind him on the bed. I am what you will be, a motto for a gravestone.

Exactly. Oz could have told her that. And it was better than FUBAR for an epitaph.

And so he walked up to the cowering man on the floor before him, and realized the he was not unlike a God in this moment. God and Devil and mother and child and yes, even lover all secured within the sweat that trickled down the strangers face in sweet smelling strokes.

(--O eternal God and Ruler of all creation, You have allowed me to reach this hour--)

Oz had so wanted to rid himself of the regret and self-doubt he carried. He was tired of not only dwelling in the shadows but of composing the shadows themselves.

Change had entered this room to converse with him.

To greet it he must step into either total light or total darkness.

He was Oz. All or none, his nature cast. Even though he was beginning to suspect--no, knew-- that both shades were interchangeable and subjective.

Never fear your shadow-self again, Oz. It simply means there is a light shining somewhere nearby. You know where that light leads to. It can illuminate, but can also blind and paralyze. So ignore it and and use the dim haze cast by that glow to

(--Forgive the sins I have committed this day by word, deed or thought--)

Swipe the corners clean of the pain and the unending guesses and riddles you thought you needed. Piles and piles of them shoved into the corners, towering to a height you cannot even guess at, dry and fragmented to the touch. Sweep up the cracked shell that was you before tonight. It will not be missed by the new self.

Oz reached out to trace the man's throat before him and thought of Willow. To love her you must lose her. To which the wolf replied....."You judge me, but do you know me? I think not. I speak the truth...and I will not, cannot be lost."

And.......perhaps after so much anger and pain and loss and confusion the circuits that make up the soul simply cannot handle it anymore. The fuses blow and and the light goes out. Before him was the living, breathing preparation for living that life without the light to guide him--without even a desire for the light to help him believe. He didn't want to believe. He wanted to know. He was on the verge of that stark knowledge now, unfolding in the solitude of the room...and then...

(--Purify me, O Lord, from every spiritual and physical stain--)

Goodbye and hello.

(--Grant that I may rise from this sleep to glorify You by my deeds throughout my entire lifetime--)

And Oz kneeled to bite deeply into the throat before him with not hunger or anger--but with relief that he did not have to live twice at once anymore. Content now with the minimalism.

Oz was the one who gnawed at the tendons on the man's shoulder, eyes open. Not the wolf. The wolf was there, of course--how innocent could he be to have thought that the Wolf and the Oz were separate beings? The light and the dark? That he could control the wolf, or choose to ignore it?

(--and that I be victorious over every spiritual and physical enemy--)

Not just blood that poured down his chin and chest to pool between his toes. Truth in a living, breathing hue and shade. Not only another's life that he was taking. His, also.

(--Deliver me, O Lord, from all vain thoughts and from evil desires--)

Seek freedom and become captive of your desires.A mockery of the tangible.

Seek your desires and be free to become the captive. Travel the world over in search of what one needs, and return home to find it.

And if it tells you it does not want you......

(--for yours is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory--)

Give in to the darkness that does.

(--Father, Son, and Holy Spirit--)

Oz believes in Death.

Oz believes in Fate.

Oz believes they are neighbors.

And as he snorted in the scent and taste of blood and exhaled what was left of his light, he had a thought....

With the death of self, he is free to now be someone else's fate.

(--now and ever--)

He was his own. His caretaker, his chains in the eyes of the moon, Id and honor. He was the despair, the dream, the fallacy, and the truth in the shadow of a pebble of blood. He was his own blessing not in disguise. He was now the doll of the woman behind him that was now his wolf.....

...and he?

(--and forever--)

He was the rabbit.

(--Amen--)

End.