Revenge, Best Served HOT!!! - Chapter One

It was a beautiful night. The stars shone brightly in the velvet sky. The air was warm and balmy, the playful breeze scented with summer as it stole over the Cardiff rooftops. It was the sort of night the poets wrote sonnets about. The sort of night meant for love and romance. The sort of night that made you feel glad to be alive.

The sheer irony of the thought made the murderer smile. The pale, luminous moonlight caught the flash of his white teeth in the shadows, reflected back to him in the shimmering silver surface on the wall in front of him.

"Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who's the fairest of them all?" he asked sarcastically.

Nobody replied. Heavy silence reigned in the small flat, broken only by the distant monotonous hum of city traffic. And by one other noise - tiny, almost unnoticeable, yet still distinct to his ears.

The steady drip of blood pooling on a polished wooden floor...

She had recognised his face, of course. It would have been strange if she hadn't, he supposed, with everything that had happened in the past. She hadn't even thought to resist. He hadn't given her the time. There had been just that one moment of pure, crystallised shock as she saw him with the knife, and then he had struck, violently and without mercy. Now she lay on her back behind him, her eyes staring sightlessly towards the ceiling, her lifeblood draining from her slashed throat on to the floor.

He'd thought he would feel something when he killed her...something, anything at all, after all that had gone before...but he hadn't. No triumph. No regret. Just coldness. And the pain burning in his head that never went away, but only got worse and worse instead with every day that passed.

A small giggle escaped his lips. A pair of too-bright brown eyes regarded him from the mirror, dancing with the wild light of insanity.

See what you made me do, Doctor? She's dead, and it's all your fault.

Transfixed by his own reflection, he felt the familiar bitterness rising up to choke him. Somewhere out there, somewhere in time and space, the Doctor was still running, just as he always had, century after century after century. The man who makes people better, what a joke! Forever leaving his mistakes behind, forever refusing to face the consequences of his actions, without once looking back. Well, not any more. This time he would be forced to look back and he would pay dearly, with the blood of his friends.

You abandoned me, Doctor. You could have saved me, but even though I helped you, you did nothing. Everything I've done since then is your fault. All that time, locked out of the Universe, trapped and helpless, as forgotten by you as if I had never even existed. You've never even mentioned me again, have you? Never even thought of me. Because that's who you are and what you are. All that time for my anger and pain to fester, all that time for me to dream of revenge. But at last, I'm back. And now it's your turn to suffer, because no-one in the Universe hates you more than I do.

Still grinning, he raised his black-gloved forefinger and examined it carefully. It gleamed scarlet in the moonlight, liberally coated with the congealing blood of his victim. Slowly and deliberately, taking immense pleasure in the action, he began to trace a distinctive, circular pattern on to the glass. Eventually, satisfied with his efforts, he stood back and admired his handiwork.

This is for you, Doctor, he thought. A message that even you can't ignore, written in the blood of the innocent. And we both know that's the currency you've always dealt in, whether you choose to admit it or not.

Down below, he heard a click as a key turned in the front door of the flat.

"Hi, honey, I'm home!" a male voice called cheerfully.

For a fleeting moment, the murderer had an overwhelming urge to stay, to witness the delicious aftermath of his actions. But he wasn't ready to be discovered quite yet. He had to be patient, or he would spoil the surprise.

Heavy footsteps sounded on the stairs. The murderer snickered again, turning away from the mirror for one last glance at his victim, slaughtered on the floor like an animal.

And so the game begins.

Raising his wrist, he punched some new co-ordinates into the control panel of the vortex manipulator, just as the door handle began to turn.

"The Time Lords," he whispered to himself. "The Time Lords are the fairest of them all."

Then, as the door swung open, he vanished into thin air.