Pro Tempore
By Chris Moody

"I can smell her on you."

Cordelia froze, backed away from the short young man. Oz's face drew up in a half-snarl as he advanced on the slim brunette. In the dim of the library, just before sunrise, she could see the shadows on his face, fleeting flashes of pale, freckled skin watching through the dark.

A very brief moment of terror quaked her body, but she recovered. She was Cordelia fucking Chase, not just some random piece of meat walking the streets of Sunnyhell, the vampire's paradise. She wasn't going to be stomped down by some self-righteous fag werewolf who'd had a thing with just about every guy in the school at one point.

Including the librarian, the only man Cordelia might, emphasis on might, have been interested in. He was older, still had money, and a life that had a connection to the outside world. He could have been a ticket out of hell, but he ended up boning the little wolf boy.

Whatever.

"Take the attitude somewhere else, 'Daniel'," she goaded Oz, knowing how much he hated his full name, "it's been a long night, and I need to go catch enough sleep to ward off the bottomless black bags I see under everyone else's eyes." Toss of her long, silky chestnut hair and Cordelia pranced away, but Oz grabbed her arm. Fingers press deep, she could feel the bruise rushing to the skin.

She wouldn't notice one more.

"You smell like a fucking vampire, Cordy. Why is that? Huh?" The werewolf's face thrust into her own, his neck cocked back so they could be face to face. "You don't just smell like any vamp, you smell like the little one last night. The one you stopped from feeding on me."

((Death. Unearthly glow to the pale flesh stretched over muscle and bone. "Tough little boy, what are you doing out so late?" The vampire glided over to Oz, and he just kept thinking 'I've got to run, I can make it, I’m close to Larry's house, I've got to run" but he couldn't make his legs work.))

"Fuck off, Oz."

(("No!" The brunette ran, sides aching as she reached Oz. She put a hand up towards the vampire and her classmate, snatched it back. "Come on, Oz, come on." Her toffee eyes darted nervously back and forth from the boy to the woman. Oz's legs unfroze and they fled.))

"Oz? Cordelia? Don't you have class?" Giles came around the corner of the bookstand, his eyes seeing and understanding more than the children would like him to.

"Yeah, class." With a defiant jerk, Cordelia extracted her arm from Oz's death grip and made for the door, maybe hurrying, but not from Oz. She wasn't afraid of him.

~~

Just before sunset, and Cordelia prayed that the patrol would be a little late swinging by her part of town. Too many times in the last few weeks, she'd ducked under a car or behind a bush, closing her eyes and breathing in the silence as everyone with a pulse went in doors. Where only invitations could bring death in.

Words like "Yes" and "Please" and "More." Said because above anything else, even living, Cordelia craved feeling something.

"Lovely girl. You're such a very lovely girl." Velvet sex in the voice, elegant and plush, belied the appearance of the creature that shadows gave birth. Demure, petite, ice blonde hair done up in hundreds of thin braids. Brittle smile, cutting into the horror of her left cheek. As if the bones had just given up, refused stability, refused their duty of rigidity and form. The skin sagged, melting off her face like waxy residue.

She was the most beautiful woman Cordelia had ever known.

"I…I can't come tomorrow. That kid…"

The creature advanced, her talon hands spread out and upwards to encase Cordelia's smooth face in their grip.

"The arrogant one? He'd taste good. I'm so," she jumped up to lick from collarbone to jawbone, "very hungry."

"Whatever. He knows. If I come again soon, he'll find you. And he'll kill you." Hands brushing taffy brown highlights from Cordelia's face still. The vampire stepped back, ran the back of her icy hand down the girl's face. Cordelia's breath hitched, and she tried to remember that this wasn't about death. It wasn't about food. It wasn't about the good fight against the forces of evil.

It wasn't really about anything.

"Mmm…" Her voice drawled, dragged out and spread itself thin. High, thready laugh. "Maybe. I'm older and stronger than I look."

Cordelia didn't roll her eyes. She'd heard it before. But the vampire never explained.

"I used to be the Master's chosen. I used to have a mate. I used to be Darla, one of the Scourge of Europe." Her nails sliced a thin cut down Cordelia's arm, and Darla leaned in to lap at the welling blood. "Then, the gypsies cursed Angelus. And that whelp William and his whore Drusilla ran, and the Master turned on me. I wasn't the creature he'd made. I cried, I CRIED," Darla's fingers bit into Cordelia's shoulders, dragging down, pulling until they both crashed to the ground, "for Angelus, and the

Master sent me away."

"The…then why are you here?" Unbidden, the girl's hands played with the soft underflesh of Darla's arms, and the vampire's clenching fists released their prize.

Cracked, puss bubbling laugh, sour and rank like an open sore ruptured from Darla's mouth. "Lovely girl, I'm here because I needed my Sire. I needed to be near him. I had nothing and subjugation and pain became more acceptable than loneliness." She shifted, her body falling against Cordelia's. Cordelia found herself cradling the vampire to her chest, perversely rubbing Darla's arms, hoping to create warmth in the dead flesh.

"Now, the Master has new children. And he loves them best above all others for their spectacular cruelty. They are ourselves reborn and remade. Blood and fire, lovely girl, blood and fire."

Ourselves? The rest clenched deep in her gut, and Cordelia hissed her sorrow out in a long sibilant cry. Everyone knew what had happened to them. The best friends. The good kid and the clown. But knowing and hearing had become two different things. Now Cordelia believed that the boy she'd noticed and deliberately attracted just because she could was gone.

For some reason, that still had the power to hurt her.

"Did they do this to you? Willow and Xander?"

The creature in Cordelia's arms struggled, spitting her displeasure. "You know them?!?"

"Sorta."

Another laugh. "Sorta? Yes, child, they did this to me. Or do this to me. It's the most creative combination of smashing the bones and injecting acid under the skin. Sometimes they let it heal for a few days, so that the effects are more…dramatic the next time."

The brunette girl had nothing to say to that. Her fingers petted the now quiet creature laying full against her body. Cool to the touch and so silky, soft and sweet. It didn't make sense, that Darla tasted so good. Like vanilla and peppermint ice cream. Cold and creamy. She was dead, she should taste like…something dead and rotting, not something good.

Cordelia dipped her head down and kissed Darla's hairline. The vampire sighed, and relaxed, letting her body fall across Cordelia's lap. This didn't happen every time. In fact, she could count on one hand every time that it had. But it would happen tonight. And again, Cordelia would know that she was beautiful. And needed. And she would feel pleasure.

She would know that she was alive.

Nimble fingers removed Darla's white shift, disturbingly clean and fresh. Peeled back the flimsy cotton to reveal plum red nipples, withering to sharp peaks at the touch of air. Lowered her head to worship the breasts, licking up the blue-veined slopes to the nipples. Cordelia worried the tender flesh in turn, nipping harder and harder at Darla's urging, her bird-like hands plucking at the brunette's head. The vampire would not be satisfied until blood had been spilled. Wet gush of iron tasting blood fell over Cordelia's tongue. The creature beneath her moaned, grasped Cordelia's head and brought her up for a

kiss. Tasted herself in the humans mouth and the girl saw the skeleton grin on her lover's face.

Cordelia shivered and closed her eyes. She liked the coppery taste of the cold thickness pressing into her lips, the firm resiliency of Darla's tongue, the plump and cool depths of her body. She so didn't care about Darla's being dead.

She didn't.

Darla let Cordelia's head go and the brunette nipped and bruised a shadowy path down to soft blonde down. Parted the fur and slit with one hand. Cordelia breathed in the rancid smell of death, the sweetness of girlcome, and the musk of this woman's body. She danced her tongue along the edges of the curled in labia, smiled wide as the rose flesh began to unfurl and part, blooming with stolen blood. Cordy tickled up to Darla's clit and nudged it with her nose. Delicately extended the tip of her tongue and wetted the stubby bundle of nerves.

The vampire hissed.

The girl paused, but Darla's hips bumped her jaw hard. Cordelia's tongue continued its journey, licking harder around the clit in steady circular motion. She loved this. The strange elasticity of the flesh under her tongue, the spicy raw taste of this woman. Something elemental that satisfied a part of Cordelia lost to worry and fear.

Cordy let her hands dig hard into the pale hips in their grasp. She'd probably leave bruises, but she'd learned that Darla didn't really care. The vampire cared more about getting off, about being free of her 'family', than about a few dark half-crescents. And Cordy wanted to get her off. She wanted to know that only she could do this. Only she amongst all the humans, all the vampires, could make this precious, damaged female scream out her name while pumping her cool sex into Cordy's eager mouth.

Darla's hips subsided, flexing up as if to wrench the very last ripple of orgasm out of her body. Cordelia found herself very quickly flipped over, and Darla straddled the brunette. Stared down into the warm, brown eyes and moaned as she slid her body down the heat, settling her face into the crook of Cordelia's neck. Cordy watched the branches sway up above, set against a fuzzy gray sky. Closed her eyes. Felt Darla's still nimble hands work her out of her blue dress. Gasped as icy tendrils of shock wafted down her spine, Darla's fangs ripping into her neck. Cordelia groaned as Darla spread her legs, allowing the human girl to thrust her cunt up against the proffered leg. She madly rubbed herself up against the curved column of flesh, harder and harder, racing against the icy hot shock of her blood leaving her body. In a burst, her orgasm crested as Darla let her fangs recede, and a wave of darkness swam over Cordelia's vision.

Crickets and laughing death in the background. Vampires on their way to parties, nature willing the cycle to move on. Cordelia panted, her breath slowing, as she held Darla to her chest.

Tonight, there had been no bruises.

Tonight, she'd come out the other side again. Alive.

"I…I have to go soon."

Thin claw hands curled hard into Cordelia's shoulders. She stayed her ground and spoke again.

"I'm sorry."

"Yes, you are."

She blinked against the sudden pain of that. Cordelia hated it when Darla was cruel just to be cruel. She had a sharp, nasty talent for it. And few to exercise it on that would not hit back twice as hard.

Cordelia kept her eyes closed until she felt Darla rise off her body, heard a moist smack as they parted, their combined fluids smeared on their bodies. She sat up, reaching for her dress, when Darla spoke.

"I recommend that you take a trip."

"Why?"

"Because Sunnydale won't be….healthy for you."

Cordelia ignored her lover's words. What could possibly change in this hellish little burg that would actually make anything *worse*?

~~

Late, late night in the library and Cordelia had managed to get trapped by Mr. Giles into helping with research. Something about making up credits or something. Please. As if anyone would actually ever graduate Sunnydale High.

"Finding anything useful, Ms. Chase?"

No, you old fart, I'm bored as shit.

"No, Mr. Giles. Nothing new about this Master dude."

"Fine, then. Why don't you go rest in the teacher's lounge with the others?"

Cordelia stacked up the books she'd had open as she stood to leave. Reached for her bag, and slung it over her shoulder, wincing as it grazed Darla's bite, carefully hidden under a high-necked dress.

"Ms. Chase?"

She turned back to Mr. Giles.

"You know, life never really does turn out the way you think it will, does it?"

She thought for a brief blinding moment of homecomings and boyfriends, bright dresses and dancing 'till all hours.

"No, I guess it doesn't."

~end~