Who: Angelus.
What: For weeks Angelus has been playing cat and mouse with Wesley - neither one gaining the upper-hand. Angelus decides it might be time to finally step up his overall act.
When: About a month after losing his soul.
Where: Cleveland's nightclub scene.
Locked: Wesley.
Progress: Complete.
What most people failed to understand was that murder was an art form. A type of legerdemain with its own set of rules and expectations - it took genuine talent to commit a perfect murder. One that stood the test of time, as did a beautiful painting or an inspired passage of music. It was a damn shame the three were not quite viewed by the same societal standards, but whatever, whatever. What did it matter.
He enjoyed selecting and stalking, the symmetry of it all - simple, garden variety sleight of hand, a mix and match wardrobe of masks and personae, the sanctuary of out-and-out lies - enjoyed the physical challenge of tracking and overpowering his chosen quarry. What trust tasted like - the tang of betrayal. The spice of lust and sweet, heady ripeness of fear, terror. An oral history shared between mouthfuls of blood truer than any found in a dusty tome bound in dead skin. He was hardly content to only go after attractive young women, or scavenge from the homeless and destitute who had been found in abundance on the streets. No, Angelus wanted individuals that had a chance to fight back and escape. Not that they ever succeeded. But that was because no matter how good they were, he was better, not because he hadn't selected the strongest, smartest and fastest.
He remembered the way their eyes would flare open, like guttering candles, then dim to nothing at all. He remembered the warm, yeasty, coppery smell of living flesh, and how the scent shifted as bodies cooled. He remembered the way they felt, the feel of their bones snapping like autumnal twigs, the yield of skin, the texture of hair wrapped around his fist braceleted in ruby, cheloid traceries, suffering as an art form in a century of wanton bloodletting. And all his notions of continuance, all his thoughts of time and place, all his memories of past and present, remained bound together by that one constant, the ancient and immutable ribbon of warm, red blood.
The club was thumping several decibels higher than his patience stood for when he left the cruel chill of the street for the steaming redolent interior, stroboscopic and flickering with white light. Beams cut through darkness and illegal smoke and plucked puzzle pieces from the chaos of dancing bodies on the floor. Theatre elegance, over-elaborate, restored and polished to perfection, himself the only preternatural blemish here. It reached for him and he responded, so loud it had overrun the boundaries of sound to become almost a physical presence, something he could touch, something that could touch him in return; a blood-deep itch of percussion that spoke in crude and limbic terms of sensual pleasure. This was the place.
( We all want something, Wes. It's the way of the world. Everybody's got an agenda. )