easier than saving to disk, just put it here

The two men sat parboiling in peace for several minutes. Giles let his eyes close and his head fall back against the rim of the tub. He heard Ethan, across from him, give that low, hedonistic grunt that said he was settling in for a long wallow in bliss. Giles' mind wandered off on that sound to memories of good beer, better music, hot days in cheap flats with anemic fans in the open windows trying to pull cooler air in from the streets outside. How strange to think of London in the summer as being hot after having experienced summers in California ...

He winced as memories returned.

"Stop it," Ethan muttered. "I can hear your blood pressure rising."

"This is shameful. I cannot take the time to wallow in a hot tub while the others--"

"While the others search for what comforts and solace they can find in between crises. I've met your children, Rupert, they're not sitting in corners bemoaning their fate."

Giles felt a knot in his stomach. "They've changed. We've all changed. There is no time for pleasures, we have a war to fight."

"During a war is when pleasures become even more important--or why the hell else bother fighting?"

"So that the innocents who know nothing of the war can continue with their innocent pleasures."

"Not all pleasures are innocent, my dear Ripper. And in difficult times they're frequently a good idea. Is not the deciding vote with the body? And is the body always ill-advised?"

Giles sat up. "It always disturbs me when you start quoting poetry, Ethan."

"It's a perfectly respectable English poet. It's not like I'm trotting out the Rimbaud or the Beaudelaire." Sighing, Ethan sat up as well. "Well, if you're not going to take a perfectly good chance to loll around happily, tell me what's happened? How in Janus' name did they get a Turok-Han, and what did they do with it?"

Giles closed his eyes again as he told the tale. "I can't stay away long. I'll need to pick up--oh, what was her name?"

"Chao-Ahn," Ethan told him. "In Shanghai, according to those files you gave me. Unfortunately, she's another one who hadn't been contacted, so she won't know anything of what we're talking about."

"Oh, dear."

"What?"

"Talking."

"You're making far less sense than usual, Rupert. Is it sleep deprivation or what?"

"They speak Mandarin in Shanghai, don't they?"

"Yes, they--" A more-evil-than-usual grin appeared on Ethan's face. "Still? You still haven't learned Mandarin? Of all the languages you know, you've never bothered to pick up one spoken by hundreds of millions of people?"

"I'm awake enough to drown you, and I imagine this place doesn't quibble about disposing of bodies. I take it that you in your unnatural and more than likely reprehensible dealings around the world have picked up Mandarin."

"Of course." The grin became absolutely diabolical. "Don't worry, Rupert dear, I'll look after you and translate everything you need to know once we get there."

"And that's another point. I rather left it to you to figure out how we're getting into Mainland China during a time of world unrest, and now I'm feeling very anxious about that. So tell me, Ethan. How are we getting to Shanghai?"

"I don't suppose you'd just accept a cheerful 'Trust me, Rupert', would you?"

"Not on my last day on earth with the hounds of hell nipping at my heels."

Ethan sighed dramatically. "Yes, the honeymoon is definitely over. All right, first we go to Hong Kong--"

"Shanghai's closer."

"British citizens are common in Hong Kong, plus there's a direct train to Shanghai."

"We'll need visas."

"Yes, visas are required," Ethan agreed blandly.

"No. Ethan, no. We're not sneaking across borders, there's no need."

"You take all the fun out of things, Rupert."

"This is serious business, Ethan, this is not Rayne and Giles on the Road to Shanghai."

"Of course not. You're far sexier than Bing Crosby, and I would object very strenuously to being compared to Bob Hope. Though I imagine Midori would look lovely in a sarong a la Dorothy Lamour."

connie! I love you! And Ethan. Oh, and Ethan.

Can I trouble you people for American words for 'knickers' and 'cheeky monkey'? And possibly something a Californian would say instead of 'I reckon', please? All in the name of better fic writing.

Am, panties for knickers. What's the context for "I reckon"?

Also, context for cheeky monkey would help as well.

knickers = boxers? panties? underwear?

cheeky monkey = silly goose, or something.

I reckon = I guess

what they said. What are your contexts?

dances the dance of Feedback Joy.

Yay! Just got feedback for my Prague stories! That takes the total of non-Buffista readers into, oh, double figures by now! grins.

That takes the total of non-Buffista readers into, oh, double figures by now!

Yay Fay!

I adore when people I don't know read my stuff. Heck, I'm even getting nice feedback from ff.net.

"I'm a feedback slut and I'm OK ..."

Whoohoo, Fay!

the rest of Donna, Ombra:

---

More:

That's what you think. "I have a villa, in the hills. It's only about twenty kilometres from here." She hesitates, and as she does so, he reaches out and tweaks her right nipple, lightly. Words spill from her in a rush. "Do you have a car? We could go there now."

The car suits the rest of him; it's a 1960s vintage Citroen. She has the windows down, and the night wind whips her fine hair into a tangle. As they head south and up into the ramparts of the mountains, she is aware of something more than the anticipation she usually accords her preferred routine of sex, food and death. This surprises her; she's several centuries old, after all, and believes herself jaded. What, then, is causing this tingle?

She turns her head to look at him. His hands are easy and in complete control of the wheel; he negotiates the thin ribbon through the tricky darkness as if he knows the way already. As if sensing her puzzlement, he turns his head briefly and smiles at her. Something in her swallows hard, wanting him.

She directs him. Up the curves and down the white road, among the tall cypress and here are her villa gates. She gets out and unlocks them; he eases the Citroen inside. With a sense of finality, she snaps the padlock home. He is hers now, for as long as she chooses.

He follows her indoors. There is no idle chat, no small talk, no questions as to what an American woman is doing living alone in this villa; he follows her upstairs without a word spoken. As the carved doors to the master suite swing closed behind them, he takes her by the hair and down on her knees hard before him. She doesn't object; in fact, she takes a peculiar pride in how good she is. After all, in another life and two deaths ago, she was a whore in Plymouth Colony. In her undead state, she has no gag reflex. Besides, it will be her turn, soon enough. The word "priapic" flits through her mind. She has never been this aroused before, in life or death.

He stops her after awhile, lifting her, tossing her across the bed. He has her skirts up around her ears, she hears herself whimper and then cry out, and as he sinks into her, she feels that same thickening of the blood in her belly, a hot coagulation of need. But there is something else, and she becomes aware of it slowly, almost too slowly.

This man, Lorenzo, he is drinking her. Not her blood, but her life force, or what he thinks is her life force. And suddenly, she understands what he is, and what he is doing, and why she has reacted to him this way.

Even as she reaches another in a series of seemingly endless orgasms, she pushes her mind to function. How does one kill what he is? Where are they vulnerable? She has forgot what his species of demon is called, has never heard of a living one. Shapeshifting, time-travelling, renewing themselves on the energy expended by the orgasms forced from those they fed on. Their supernatural weaponry was a kind of pheromone, producing almost unbearable attraction. How did she kill it? Right, you had to starve the things. Deprive them of life-force. They were invulnerable to anything else.

"oh please oh yes ohohohohoh..."

She hears herself moaning, and almost laughs. The joke is on both of them; he can't know, or at least he doesn't know, what she is. She has no life-force for him; her can't damage her. She can keep him here in her bed, letting him think he is in control. She can orgasm for the rest of time, if she chooses, and it will do her no harm at all; the only possible consequence is her own pleasure. He will starve to death, not realising what was happening, until he is too weak to struggle. And then she can feed.

"You are smiling," the demon Lorenzo tells her. "You are amused?"

"Not really," she murmurs, and gasps as he pushes her deep into the antique mattress, into yet another orgasm. "I'm just thinking how hungry I'm going to be, in the morning."

• * *

Shit. Someone please Doblerize me? I put up a drabble in the Wednesday 100, written (as drabbles tend to be) in the last few minutes at work -- which is all good -- but then I put it in my own LJ too, and I've now gone back and edited the thing four. gorramn. times.

The whole story is 100 words. It does not need my perfectionist self playing psychotic mother hen. Please take away my car keys....