IN a Corner of My Soul: Angel: Painting the Town Red

[dragonyphoenix]

Summary: Rewrite of season 1 with Giles as the Big Bad.
Master List for In a Corner of My Soul (previous chapters / scenes)

When Weirick had uncovered the room, it hadn't been the squalor as much as the room’s outright existence that left him dumbstruck. That as modern a zoo as Sunnydale’s would have an abandoned storage space, even one full of the detritus of decades, was as surprising as it was useful. It had taken him days to clear the space. An Egyptian fruit bat, badly preserved, had crumbled at his touch, adding to the dust. The posters describing the decreasing habitat of the black rhinoceros had been easier to clear away although they had sent dust bunnies flying when he'd picked them up. The multicolored mats, artifacts from some extinct play area, were cracked and rigid where they should have been pliable. They were also too large to move without being seen. He'd had to wait for the cover of darkness to discard them.

The paint, so ancient it flaked off at a touch, he'd attacked with soap and water. The concrete floor he'd mopped with bleach. Weirick didn't need the room to be pristine, but he did want it clean before he started in on the desecration.

For the Primal ceremony, the sacred circle had been red, his robe blue, and his face painted both white and blue. Nothing he’d read had said Eyghon’s color was black, but that had been the color Giles had tattooed on his arm so Weirick had chosen black paint for the mark, not a glossy black that would reflect light but a dark pit of a black.

Eyghon’s mark, taller than it was wide, possibly depicted a stylized demon with two arms upraised although what the curled whorls might be, Weirick couldn’t tell, not that it mattered. The mark had to be drawn out exactly. He didn’t have to know what, if anything, it meant. Weirick marked the space carefully, measuring and laying out the image in chalk first.

Before dipping the brush into the paint, Weirick thought back to the night on the beach. He’d been filled with Eyghon’s power. He’d followed the light, the bright splash of a beach fire, an illusory flash of safety on a darkened coast. He’d followed the sound, rock boom boom booming in a primal pulse. But most of all he’d followed the scent, the spice of sex in the air.

Weirick dipped the brush into the paint and started from the bottom, from the curved claws of Eyghon’s feet. On the beach, he’d stepped out of the darkness, behind his first victim, had wrapped two claws around as if hugging from behind, and in one movement had ripped through both neck and gut. He’d faded back into the darkness before the slow-witted ones had realized they were under attack. The boy had fallen to the ground and then the screaming had started.

He dipped the brush again and started on the first of the whorls. Once his prey had started running, he'd stepped into the light. The blind ones, slow ones, had-fallen-to-the-ground ones, hadn't seen him in the darkness. He'd wanted them to know what was coming. He’d strangled one with the guts of another. He’d shoved a heart into a mouth until a boy had choked on the blood of his lover.

Weirick carefully painted the arms raised in victory. The last of his prey, a girl, miraculously alive, he'd dragged to the shoreline and further so that the salt-laden waves had lapped over her dying body, fallen back, and then lapped over her again. Those screams, ah, yes, he’d almost been able to taste those screams. But the power had faded and the call had drawn him up the hills to the room where the dark priest, the one who was no true disciple, had waited. Not yet, Eyghon had whispered when Weirick had thought to kill. I have need of this one, but you may call on me again.

Weirick stood over the mark he had painted. The dark image seemed to call out the demon’s name: Eyghon, Eyghon, Eyghon. Weirick stood and knew his time had come. “The power will be mine.”