She stood still, hoping her eyes would adjust to the gloom, the stench and vice like headache making her stomach roil and bile fill her mouth.

"Come here," the harsh rasping command made her jump.

Cautiously she shuffled closer, wary of tripping over whatever might be in the room. A dry crack echoed in the space and candle after candle flickered into life, revealing a macabre sight. Nine black candles cast long leering shadows over a pentagram drawn on the uneven floorboards. Beyond the arcane sigils was a figure that loomed and wavered in the candlelight, the source of wrongness emanated from it.

Gretchen recalled Charles saying he would hesitate to call it human, but she could tell that if it had been human once, it most certainly wasn't now. She didn't know how she knew, but she had no doubts she was right.

"Step inside the pentacle boy," the rasping voice commanded her again and her head stabbed with agony.

She clenched her jaw and stayed where she was, fairly sure the thing across from her was trying to compel her to obey, and she was damned if she was going to oblige it. It made an irritated hissing noise and the painful pressure in her head got worse, like a vice being tightened on her.

"Get stuffed," she snarled.

"You dare to defy me?"

"Hell yeah I do, whatever the heck you are!"

The pain drove her to her knees but she held on to her stubborn refusal to shift closer the the pentagram. She didn't know what would happen if she did enter it, but she was damned sure it wouldn't be good. She sucked the moisture out of her mouth and spat on the floor, trying to rid herself of the cloying sweet rot taste. The creature had shuffled around the outside of the pentagram and stood over her, the palatable menace almost more than she could handle.

"What is protecting you boy?" It rasped.

She didn't answer, teeth gritted so hard she wasn't sure she could. She decided instead to concentrate on the fact this was the second, she hesitated over the word 'person', but the second, something, that had referred to her as a boy. For some reason it felt good, empowering, and her thoughts drifted back to what Angelus had said. There was nothing wrong with wanting to be masculine. She remembered her childhood years, insisting she was a boy, just like all the rest of the boys down the street. Her refusal to wear dresses, and the sick out of place feeling she had whenever she'd been forced to. Her anxiety and misery at being made to play with dolls when her mothers friends visited with their daughters in tow. Always being the 'Dad' when they played family, these memories and more tumbled over her like a cool wave of understanding. She wasn't female, her body was wrong, she'd always been male, felt happier being seen as male, maybe if she hadn't had other issues going on she, no, he, might have worked it out sooner. I'm a he Gretchen thought to himself, a surge of confidence pushing back the pain and nausea.

A sharp slap across the face, that knocked Gretchen backwards onto his ass, stopped any other thoughts beyond the overwhelming need to get out of the room in one piece.

"Were you listening to me boy?"

He sneered up at the monstrosity leaning over him.

"Can't say I was rot-face, I don't make it a habit to listen to eldritch horrors, that way lies madness, know what I'm saying?"

He kept shuffling backwards towards the door as he spoke, letting the words fall between them, erasing some of his terror.

"Where do you think you can run to?" It hissed at him.

"Well, anywhere not here seems like a good idea right now. Maybe the beach? The beach sounds nice, don't you think? You could meet up with some of your tentacled cousins, not that you're invited, but I expect you'd turn up anyway. You seem the party crasher type, no actual friends of your own so you have to steal some. "

Gretchen reached the wall and used it as support as he stood up, a tight anger pushing the pain back even further.

"You messed with my friends, that was a mistake, a really big mistake," he found himself growling out the words while groping along the wall looking for the door.

The creature made an angry hissing noise like a boiling kettle full of angry snakes and Gretchen found himself pinned, flat and breathless, against the wall by an invisible force. The magic crawled all over him, a sickening wrongness, seeking a way past his defences.

He bared his teeth and managed to snarl, "get fucked! I will never let you control me!"

The pressure increased until Gretchen felt his ribs creak under the strain, unable to draw in any air now. Instead of fear he felt a feral anger consume him, everything that had happened in the last few weeks, all the fear and worry was transformed into righteous fury and a need to protect his friends, his new life, his future. The anger seeped out of him, a slow trickle turning into a powerful pulse, pushing back the force crushing him so he could gasp in lungful after lungful of the foul air that filled the room.

He lunged for the door, feeling desperately for the door handle, trying to get free before the creature attacked him again. Just as his hand wrapped round the handle he was picked up and flung like a ragdoll across the room, his body sliding across the pentagram, collecting candles as he went. He hit the far wall with a bone crunching thud, hot wax splattering around him. The darkness thickened with malice, the three remaining candles guttering and spitting.

The creature stalked across the room towards him as Gretchen tried to regain his feet, making it as far as his hands and knees, spitting dust and candle wax. The force picked him up and flung him against the wall again. He felt something break inside him, a sharp agonising pain, which was quickly dulled and the damage mended. As he fell back on his hands and knees he wondered if that was normal, Angelus had said immortals healed faster if it was life threatening, but instant healing? He didn't get any more time to think about it as he was thrown from one wall to the next, each impact breaking one part or another of his body, and each time his body healing as fast as it broke.

At some point the absolute irony of it struck him and he started laughing, long crazed howls of mirth that made the creature even angrier. He was immortal, the creature could do whatever it wanted and it still couldn't hurt him. He was a man made invulnerable, basically a superhero, he lifted a finger to point at the creature, panting between bouts of laughter.

"Y..you can't.. hurt me."

It slammed him into another wall and he laughed harder.

"Can't you do any better than that?"

This time it made the mistake of flinging him at the doors and he flew through them, one ripping clean off it's hinges. His body smashed against the far wall and slid down, plaster and dust raining down on him as he sat on the floor, laughing hysterically.