Title: You Forgot To Mention Hell, Horatio
Author: JR
Email: JRR42@yahoo.com
Rating: PG-13 for language.
Status: Complete
Warnings: Nope. Not this time.
Category: Crossover with Highlander
Disclaimer: All other characters belong to their respective owners and are used without permission. This story is not intended to infringe upon any copyrights, nor is any profit being made from it.
This is what happens when you get involved with too many different fandoms.
Universe setting: For you Highlander fans, this story takes place sometime after ‘Archangel’ (sorry to all those Richie Forever people). Please forgive me for playing with the timelines of the shows, but hey, it’s fan-fic and I can do that ;-)
Thanks: As always, to Carrie, and to Marius, the oak and the ash to my birds in the forest.

The constant murmuring of the crowd came to an abrupt silence as the sound of the gong once again rang out through the chamber. An unnatural silence fell over the room as those gathered waited to catch a glimpse of the elusive vampiress that had brought them all together with her promise of power for the taking.

There was a stir in the entrance from which the group carrying Angel had emerged minutes earlier. Vampires twisted and turned, each seeking a better view of this new group to enter the chamber. There was, however, precious little to see -- nothing more than the same guards escorting a petite figure shrouded in a long, black cloak made of pure silk.

With sensual, feline-like grace, the hooded figure made her way up the four, carved into the natural stone, steps that led up to the altar. Moving slowly in order to work up a sense of anticipation, the vampiress first crossed to stand directly in front of her second-in-command. As she had previously ordered, Tonio sank dramatically down on one knee, bowing his head even as he reached for her hand to kiss.

Once the gesture was complete, Eleni pivoted as stalked away, this time stopping once she reached her chained captive. Raising her hand up towards his face, the vampiress ran a smooth hand along one of Angel’s high cheekbones. With an elegant touch, she allowed her fingers to flow down his jaw, pausing slightly over his sluggishly-pulsing jugular vein.

Bring her other hand upwards, Eleni dug her fingers under the edges of collar of Angel’s silken shirt. There was a moment’s pause before she tugged harshly. Succumbing under her vampiric strength, the buttons easily gave way, showering down upon the stone ground in a shower of little ‘clicks’. The ripped garment hung open loosely, exposing the vampire’s pale, broad chest for all to see.

As if examining her captive’s flawless skin for the first time, Eleni’s hands reassumed their downward journey. Using only her fingertips, the vampiress let her hands drift over Angel’s collarbones and across his pectoral muscles. Slowing her descent, Eleni lingered almost imperceptibly over Angel’s nipples, taking delight as the tender flesh puckered under her cold, teasing touch before continuing down across the muscles of his abdomen.

Once she reached the waistline of his trousers, Eleni’s hands reversed their course. Only this time, the vampiress used the back of her fingers. She could feel Angel tremble involuntarily from her stimulating touch, but that simply added to her own pleasure. He was her captive, hers to do with as she pleased.

As her eyes had been focused solely on her own hands, Eleni was taken by surprised when she glanced upward and found Angel glaring back at her. How dare he defy her, she thought furiously. He would suffer for his insolence.

Narrowing her eyes in anger, Eleni flexed her hands. Without so much as a thought, the vampiress sunk her nails into Angel’s chest and ripped downward, leaving ten deep, bleeding gouges in his flesh. Unable to help himself, Angel’s head flew backward as he hissed in obvious pain.

Seeing the tiny woman assert her dominance over the once feared Angelus, the crowd roared in approval. Amid a sea of cheers, laughter, and applause, Eleni turned to face her audience for the first time that evening. It was time to begin her era of glory.

With great care, Eleni raised her delicate hands to the edges of the silk that dipped low enough to completely obscure her face. The vampiress waited a long beat before throwing back the hood with a dramatic flourish. Keeping her head raised high, Eleni’s cold, brown eyes swept over the crowd with more than trace of defiance. She could sense them studying her, some fascinated by her beauty while others more cautiously waited to see if she could, indeed, control a crowd such as this.

Fortunately for Eleni, only a few of the faces she saw appeared to be openly hostile. She would, of course, speak to Tonio about it at a later time. Anyone the vampiress suspected might dare to challenge her authority would be weeded out of the Legion. Besides, giving Tonio fresh victims for his particular penchants would only be an added bonus.

Most of the gathered vampires, both male and female alike, were openly staring at Eleni. The vampiress could *feel* the lust -- the admiration -- pouring off the crowd in waves. Her nose was fairly tingling as pheromones filled the air. *This* was what she had spent 500 years working towards, and tonight, Eleni was finally going to meet her destiny.

“Hear me as I speak!” she cried out in a loud-but-sultry tone of voice. With a deft florish of her wrist, Eleni unfastened the clip that had been holding her cloak in place. The flowing black fabric rippled to the floor like a dark wave, revealing the skin-tight, red-leather bodysuit that had been concealed beneath the black layer of silk. Cut low enough to be considered indecent, the outfit left little of the vampiress’ Playmate-like figure to the imagination.

“I am Eleni Vasqeria Goya y Garcia, and after tonight, my friends, we are going to conquer the world!”

Back above ground, Adam was busy watching the two young witches preparing to cast Willow’s protection spell. In all truth, the Immortal was a tad bit...unsettled. He had just heard the burst of static that Oz sent every five minutes over the CB radio in the cab of the truck. Fearing that their cell phones might give away their positions were they to ring, it had been mutually decided by the entire group not to use the mobile devices during the implementation of Adam’s plan.

What was troubling Adam the most was the success they seemed to have experienced thus far. Everything was going exactly as Adam had planned, and while the Immortal was more than confident in his strategic abilities, centuries of experience had – sometimes rather painfully – taught him that this in itself was cause for worry. No matter how perfect and precise the plan, something *always* went wrong. It was just a matter or what it would be and how detrimental it would prove to be.

“Do I *have* to wear this thing?” Cordelia complained, hefting the mask that would provide her with precious oxygen.

“No, of course not. Unless, of course, you don’t care about breathing while you’re down there,” Adam commented. Seeing the brunette struggle to put the awkward contraption on, he reached over and plucked it out of her hands. “Allow me,” he said with a flirtatious smile.

As was her nature, Cordelia instantly reacted to the Immortal’s attention. That’s not to say that she ceased her grumbling.

“I’m gonna look like such a dork!”

“Oh, stop,” Adam insisted, adjusting the collar of her heavy coat to completely cover her neck. “Haven’t you heard? Oxygen masks are going to be the next big fashion trend. All the major designers are adding them to their spring shows. Trust me, I was just in Paris last month.”

In spite of – or maybe because of – her nervousness, Cordelia rewarded the Immortal with a short snort. Granted, it was based in disbelief, but it was laughter nonetheless.

Adam was about to join her when the sound of cheering echoed up from the open manhole. The Immortal felt a brief flicker of apprehension at the sound. They were over a hundred yards away from the main chamber. Even taking into consideration the way the tunnels amplified all sounds, it required a hell of a lot of bad guys to make *that* much noise.

No, the Immortal decided silently, this wasn’t going to be easy at all.

“I stand before you now, ready to share with you the dark power. Together, we will unite to become the most powerful army this world has ever known. After tonight, every creature -- both living and dead -- will bow down before you!” Eleni vowed, her voice rising as her excitement grew.

Another cheer rose up from the crowd, only this time it lacked the volume of the previous applause. While almost all of those in attendance were intrigue by the vampiress’ promises, there were more than a few skeptics among them, a fact which did not escape Eleni’s attention. It was time to re-enforce her words with actions.

“I can sense that some of you are not yet convinced that I speak the truth, that I am simply making empty promises.” Turning to face her chained captive, Eleni gestured toward Angel while continuing to address her potential followers. “I am sure that many of you have heard of this one, the once-favourite of the Sunnydale Master, one who once claimed the title of Master himself. It is such a shame that he has since become the great traitor, one who hunts his own kind, one who has been known to assist the *Slayer* herself!”

“Well,” the vampiress continued, her beautiful features melting away into her true, demon visage. “Behold the once mighty Angelus,” she sneered before leaning forward and sinking her fangs deeply into his neck.

Behind her, the crowd roared in approval as she drained away what little blood still flowed through Angel’s veins.

A shiver crept up Xander’s spine each time the sound of applause drifted down the corridor. Trying not to think about his fear, the teenager concentrated on the fire hose in his hands. He was pointing it at the floor while Giles stood nearby, keeping an eye out for vampires. The Watcher didn’t actually have to look far, however. Just around the corner and out of sight from where they stood was the archway that opened into the Vampire Arena. The short distance and a curve in the tunnel were the only things separating them from the five-hundred-plus vampires that were quickly working themselves up into a frenzy.

Right then, Xander would have given anything to be anywhere else on earth rather than where he stood at that moment.

Not surprisingly, Angel was experiencing similar thoughts at that same point in time. The exquisite white hot agony of Eleni’s teeth sinking into his neck both revolted him and excited him at the same time. While his soul shuddered at the very idea of what was happening to him, the demon residing within considered the bite to be a prelude -- foreplay into sensuous world only vampires could appreciate.

And it had been a *long* time since Angel had indulged in those kind of pleasures. Fighting his demon every second of the way, it took all of Angel’s Herculean control not to lose himself in the eroticism of what was happening. Unfortunately for his demon, the vampiric version of sex was *not* on the menu this evening.

Not if Angel could help it.

Soon, he told himself. Soon the bite would be over. It was mostly symbolic, anyway, since Angel had very little blood to lose in the first place. Eleni was working very hard to abscond with the precious few drops that welled up in the twin puncture marks she had inflicted upon her prisoner.

All he needed to do was wait for his opportunity to put a stop to all this madness.

“Alright, then,” Adam proclaimed before lowering himself into the open manhole. Even as he descended down the ladder, the Immortal kept a watchful eye out for any vampires or other threats that might cause problems. This was it -- the critical stage of the plan -- and surprises definitely had no place in the paradigm he had created.

“All clear,” he whispered, tilting his head back to peer up the ladder. Cordelia would be the next one coming down, followed shortly by Willow, who would wait topside in order to turn on the truck’s compressor pump. Amy had departed shortly after she assisted the redhead with her protection spell.

“Hey, Immortal-guy,” Cordelia said in a tone just a little too loud to be considered a whisper. “How ‘bout giving a hand here. C’mon, this thing is heavy.”

“Feed it down,” Adam ordered, stretching up a hand to grasp the fire hose that Cordelia was guiding down.

“Oh sure, take the hose but don’t help me,” the former May Queen protested. “I figured you of all people would grasp the concept of chivalry.”

“After my time,” he informed her with a roll of his eyes. Unlike MacLeod, who followed the seventeenth-century code as if it was some kind of holy text, Adam had little use for the entire concept. Romantic drivel and nonsense -- all of it, or so he believed.

A harsh tug on the fire hose ended any further debate on the subject. Within seconds of Adam’s action, the heavy canvas was filled with water. Only moments later, Willow descended down the old, rusted-metal ladder. Once the redhead stood beside them, the Immortal turned to Cordelia in order to issue some last minute instructions.

“All right. Now you remember how this works, correct?” Adam was rewarded with a sharp look from the brunette.

“The words are ‘May Queen’, not ‘totally ignorant’,” she retorted, tracing her fingers over the mechanism that would control the flow of water from the hose.

“Willow? Are you all...,” the Adam’s words were interrupted by the haunting wail of pain the echoed along the underground tunnel. It resonated within the Immortal, sending him unwilling back into memories of countless war-zones, disasters, and other atrocities to the human flesh that had been his misfortune to witness.

While the sound cry itself was awful, a testament to true, agony-filled suffering, it was nothing in comparison to the pasty, shaken look on Willow’s face as she forced herself to voice her suspicions.

“That sounded like...”




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