Impressions (5 page)

W
esley and Gunn headed down Seventh Street in the getting-uncomfortable warmth of mid-morning. Angel himself ran the underground, ever in consideration of how bursting into flame could ruin his day. This particular day already had enough strikes against it…the dreams, the lingering sense of constant prodding by someone else’s emotions…Cordelia’s questions. She knew him best, and while he might fool the others for a while…

He’d stay out of Cordelia’s way.

He knew of several exits into the warehouses of the produce district; Wesley and Gunn found him lurking in the slightly arched truck drive-through of a warehouse, staring across sunlight asphalt to the neighboring warehouse. There, perched on the upper corner of a stack of metal melon crates, was the very Slith demon who had taunted him in Caritas.

“Odd,” Wesley said, squinting out at the demon with a thoughtful frown. “The Slith don’t usually come out in daylight. They’re very shy. And they certainly don’t cause trouble or draw attention to themselves. Are we sure this is what Cordelia meant?”

“Terminal Market, Muppetish demon,” Angel said. “What part have we got wrong so far?”

“None, I’m sorry to say.”

Gunn moved uneasily beside them. “Look,” he said. “Even if this isn’t from Cordy’s vision, it’s not
right
. We need to do something about it before someone gets hurt.”

“I should think the only one in real danger is the Slith demon.” Wesley let his crossbow drop. “Without a blowgun, they’re virtually harmless—unless you count bad table manners.”

“Tell me about it,” Angel said. The slug-sprayed leather duster would be at the cleaners for days. “But Cordelia mentioned—”

“Blowgun,” Gunn interrupted, succinct and tense, his gaze riveted on the Slith and his newly apparent weapon. “
Not
harmless.”

And now someone had noticed the little demon, and drew aside a vendor in a stained apron to point and question and laugh, obviously taking the being’s presence as some sort of prank—although just as obviously, the demon didn’t like being laughed at.

“These people live too close to Hollywood,” Angel muttered.

“Yes, and now they’re in trouble,” Wesley said as the Slith gestured vehemently at the gathering crowd. It ripped a flyer off the crate and shredded it with quick efficiency. “I hate to see the Slith hurt—but these people are going to get killed—”

“Killed?” Gunn snorted. “He’s making
spitballs
.”

“Yes, which he’ll then rub in his armpit, where his poison-generating glands will turn the spitballs into lethal projectiles.”

Gunn gave the Slith an assessing look, and winced. “That’s just plain nasty.”

“I still don’t understand why—,” Wesley started, but shook his head. “I suppose it doesn’t matter. He’s out there, and we’ve got to stop him.”

But Angel thought he might understand. He didn’t know the how or the why…but he understood. Take a vampire with a soul, one who understands darkness and anger and killing…one who constantly fights his past and the barely controlled demon within. Then take a quiet little creature who likes to suck on cinnamon-flavored slugs and go to bed early.

Introduce an outside source of anger.

Nothing new to Angel. But if it was affecting other demons as well…demons who had no experience with the dark extremes of their nature…

“We could have a problem,” he muttered to himself.

The others gave him a strange look in stereo. Wesley said, “I think we’ve established that.”

On the crate, the Slith dropped into a sudden crouch and put the reedy blowgun to what passed for its lips. No one shrieked or ran; no one seemed to suspect there was any danger at all. Angry Slith on one side; notorious vampire on the other.

Except—unlike the Slith—Angel still wore his do-good clothes. Tattered around the edges and no doubt a little thin right now, but…he stepped up to the edge of the shadow and flung his arms wide. “Hey!” he bellowed, startling everyone in the crowd; they looked at him with the kind of wary regard they might well have given the Slith had they been wiser. “I’ve been looking for you! Angel sent me.”

“He never!” the demon squealed back, a second surprise for the crowd.
It speaks!
But it lowered the blowgun to listen.

“They’re realizing he’s a little too articulate for a publicity puppet,” Wesley said, casually keeping his crossbow out of sight now that they’d been spotted by crowd and Slith alike. He smiled, a very British royal-smile-to-the-crowd expression, and added through his teeth, “I’m not sure if that’s good or bad…they’ll either run for cover or gather to gawk…”

“It’s L.A.,” Gunn said, making no particular effort to acknowledge the crowd at all. “I vote on gawking.”

Angel kept his eyes on the demon, on the blowgun that could so easily come back into play. Not the time to lose the Slith’s attention. He shouted, “You calling me a liar?”

“What are you doing?” Wesley said, his voice low—for no particular purpose, since the rising reaction of the crowd certainly covered anything in the range of normal conversation.

“Taking his attention away from the crowd,” Angel said, leaving
of course
unspoken…although he wondered if just possibly his judgment had been affected by those same subtle waves of negativity that messed with the Slith. If truly…he was just looking for a fight. “Unless you want to shove your way through all those people to get to him, by which time he’d be gone?”

“You’re a liar!” the Slith screamed at him. “You said you were Angel!”

“You going somewhere with this?” Gunn asked, also under his breath…but with that tone that meant he was restraining himself rather than trying to be discreet. “Because it looks like trouble to me.”

“Trust me,” Angel said, not turning away from the sunlit gathering and the furious little demon—and not sure he could do the same were their situations reversed. By now the crowd was watching the byplay, heads swiveling back and forth in unison, currently focused on Angel as Angel told the creature, “I
am
Angel!”

The Slith sputtered something inarticulate and gestured with the blowgun, finally sputtering out, “Lie! Lie! Angel is my friend! You—you—
boogerhead!
”

Gunn said, “Ouch. That’s gotta hurt.”

Touched by some of the same driving darkness that had so overwhelmed the Slith, Angel struggled to find just the right response. “Bite me!” he shouted.

Maybe that wasn’t it.

Or maybe it was, because the Slith lost it. He pounded the wire cabbage crates and screamed nastiness and put the blowgun to his lips—but by then the crowd was scattering, people shoving and pushing and cursing as they sensed an end to the benign moments of this terribly odd encounter.

A sticky spitball
thwapped
into Angel’s jacket, stuck there a moment, and rolled down a few inches.

“Don’t touch that!” Wesley told him, as if Angel had any intention of touching a spitball that had been rolled in demon armpit even if it
hadn’t
been poisoned.

“Incoming!” Gunn cried, but Angel glanced back up to see that he didn’t mean
incoming spitball
. He meant
incoming demon
. Faster even than he’d been in Caritas, bounding forward and propelled by rage, the Slith hurtled into Angel at chest height, knocking him right off his feet.

As he hit the ground, stunned, Wesley cried, “Sun, sun!” It made sudden sense when he felt his skin start to sizzle, right there where his pant leg pulled up in the scuffle to expose his ankle. But Wes and Gunn grabbed his jacket at the shoulders and pulled him back, opting to save him from the sun rather than the demon who pummeled ineffectively at his face.

Angel finally managed to swat the Slith off, making a cat-like roll to his feet even as he grabbed the Slith’s rubbery scruff and held him up off the ground.

“Now
that
was a girlie fight,” Gunn announced.

Wesley preoccupied himself with a search of the asphalt around them. “Where is it?” he said. “We can’t just leave it here.” He glanced at Angel. “Do you still have it?”

Holding the squalling demon out away from himself, Angel looked down at his jacket. There was a clear trail where the spitball had rolled down the leather—a sticky line already gathering dust. But no spitball. “Hey,” he said, giving the Slith a little shake, feeling its squalls beat against him just like the inexplicable emotions that drove it. Face it, drove them
both
. “I got the demon.
You
get the poison spitball.”

“Angel, this is no joke. We can’t—”

“Wesley,” Angel interrupted, his voice going hard in a reflection of that outside emotion, the angerhatekill he felt so keenly. “Do I look like I’m joking?”

There was a moment of silence as even the Slith stopped his struggle to watch Wesley’s reaction. Angel winced inside. In the street, the crowd began to creep back in. Still curious, still not quite believing they’d actually seen any of what they’d indeed seen. He didn’t want to give them any more evidence. By now, someone probably had a vidcam.

“No,” Wesley said after a long and considered moment, his serious features even more serious than usual, his eyes icy blue-gray and shadowed at the same time. “I don’t suppose you do.”

“I’m taking him back to Caritas before this turns into a sideshow,” Angel said. Back to the tunnels, safe in their shadows. And into Lorne’s club, where a demon might have to put up with bad singing, but could be sure no one else would do it deliberate harm. The Furies had seen to that, with their spell against demon violence within the club.

“Too late to avoid the sideshow,” Gunn said, indicating the crowd. “But if you don’t get out of here, it’ll get worse.”

With a glance to make sure the poison spitball was indeed not still clinging to his person, Angel left Wesley and Gunn to find it, taking along their more obvious weapons in one hand and the Slith in the other. After a few moments underground, it said sullenly, “Put me down, big bully. I’ll come.”

“Uh-huh,” Angel said, and kept walking. The Slith erupted into a frenzy of name-calling and futile wiggling, and after a moment hung limply again. Angel pretended that his arm wasn’t starting to ache. He took the turn that would get him to the underground entrance at Caritas, carefully stepping around the occasional blotches of sunlight from open gratings. The sunburn on his ankle still stung. Eventually he asked, “You seen your friend today?”

“
Real
Angel? Wouldn’t tell
you
.”

Angel stopped walking and looked straight at the Slith’s moody features. Crocodile eyes, half closed in an angry squint. Broad, triangular mouth so pursed with disapproval, it seemed likely to cause cheek muscle cramps. “Has it occurred to you that your behavior at that little scene was hardly Slith-like? That it even could have gotten you killed? That maybe I even saved your life? That there’s something going on here that’s bigger than you and me and
where’s Angel?
”

The Slith looked back at him. If possible, its mouth pursed even a little more.

“Fine,” Angel said. “Has it occurred to you that I can bash you against this concrete wall with pretty much no effort at all?”

The Slith’s gaze slanted over to the wall, back to Angel, and then to the wall again. “Haven’t seen him. He’s got a busy schedule.
Real
work.”

“And do you just happen to know what he’s working
on?
”

Those little eyes glanced again at the wall, “Not to say.”

Angel got the sense the creature spoke truthfully, but he persisted. “Something to do with a guy and a bowling ball bag. And maybe demons that don’t hang around long after you kill them.”

The Slith’s pursed mouth relaxed in surprise. “There has been this man, yes. Just a stupid human, not important. Don’t know demons.”

Angel hesitated, knowing he’d reached that point where he’d either have to accept the Slith’s story or indulge in a little bashing…except that he really
wanted
to do the bashing, which was way too wrong. And he had the distinct feeling that if he started bashing, he just might not be able to stop.

Maybe Lorne could do better.

“Hey,” the Slith protested as Angel headed down the tunnel again. “I spoke! Put me down!”

“When we’re inside Caritas,” Angel said. “And when you’re all comfy in a long-term chair. When Lorne says you’re safe to go, you can go. But it’s gonna involve singing, so I’d start picking out my favorites if I were you.”

•  •  •

Lorne eyed the Slith with a bleary gaze. “You brought him here…why, again? Sweetstuff, do I have
permanent sucker
written on my forehead?”

Angel hesitated, couldn’t help a glance at the forehead in question. “Not visibly.” He indicated at the sullen Slith. It sat on a bar stool with its gawky knees up by its ears and its thin wrists cable-tied together, sucking on a mollifying slug. “This is the one place he can’t get into trouble.”

“Hmm,” Lorne said flatly. “An original idea if I ever heard one.” He gave the club floor a distinct glance, and Angel followed it, for the first time taking in the unusual state of affairs. That he’d been blind to it before now made him wince inside; it only proved his distraction with the anger that thumped at his chest.
In
his chest, as though it had taken the place of his not-beating heart.

No one had claimed the stage—that was strange right there—but the tables overflowed with demons of all shapes and sizes. Unhappy demons and demon mixed-breeds who clung to their chairs as if they were safety nets and eyed their neighbors warily.

“I told you, nasty mojo,” Lorne said, lowering his voice. He gave Angel a once-over as obvious as a stage whisper and said, “This time I
know
you feel it.” The Slith leaned closer to hear, and Lorne pushed him away without looking, his broad green hand clashing badly with the demon’s rubbery blue face. He nodded at his customers. “They’re all afraid of what might happen out there. Or of what they might do.”

“Our little friend here has already
done
it…this is the best place for him. Along with most any of us, I’d say.” Angel, too, felt the relief. The relief of knowing no matter his anger, no matter his control—or lack thereof—in here, he was incapable of hurting anyone.