Impressions (6 page)

Too bad he couldn’t stay.

“I don’t suppose you know?” Lorne said. “
Someone’s
got to.”

“What’s going on?” Angel shook his head. “I can tell you that it’s not hitting humans. The others…they’ve noticed something’s up, but they’re all at their normal level of cranky.”

“Well, I’m telling you what, hon-buns. If this keeps up, I’m going to slip myself a Mickey and go into hibernation until it’s all over.”

Angel gave him a sharp look. “Can you?”

A walking stick of a demon approached the bar and plunked down his empty glass, gesturing a desire for more.

“Go away,” Lorne told it. “I’m having a
me
moment.”

The demon gave this statement silent thought and seemed about to protest, but looked around the club and reconsidered. The very number of customers made it clear that this was the place to be…with or without service. It ambled away, leaving Lorne free to say, “Can I what? Hibernate? I only wish. But when the emotional leakage around here gets too rough—trust me, I can fake it.” He reached under the bar to produce a pre-mixed pitcher of something so garish, it made a perfect counterpoint to his suit. “A couple of these will do the trick. You note I have them ready.”

“I did, actually,” Angel said. “Note that, I mean.” He raked another glance over the crowded room and steeled himself to leave it. To go back out where he had only himself to control…himself. “If you pick up anything useful…”

“Yeah, yeah, I’ll call. I’ve got an interest here.”

“And him,” Angel said, nodding at the Slith. “He stays. Until we figure this out.”

Lorne gave a mournful glance at the club, which was already showing the wear and tear of a capacity crowd. “I think they’re
all
here to stay,” he said, and looked longingly at the garish pitcher. But his natural inclinations won out; he cocked an eyebrow at the Slith and said, “Sing something for me. Or hum. If you hum, it’s got to be longer.”

The Slith gave him an intrigued look, its gator eyes going bright. It cleared its throat and began humming, a throbbingly nasal, wandering pitch that was quite clearly supposed to be
something
and just as clearly…wasn’t.

Lorne winced. “Ow,” he said. “Bad.”

Angel said, “What did you get?”

“Nothing more than I’m getting from any of the others—nebulous feelings of anger, a readiness to act on them, and a certain amount of puzzlement about the whole thing,” Lorne said, massaging his temple. “It’s just really
bad
humming.”

“Boogerhead,” the Slith informed him primly, apparently including everyone within hearing distance. He took a healthy bite of slug and turned his back on them.

Angel thought he probably had the right idea.

“What’s with you?” Cordelia said as Angel stalked through the lobby. She stood by the hotel doors, prodding the temporary plywood boards she’d just paid good money to have installed and wondering when the hotel would take another round of damage.

He didn’t mince words or waste pleasantries. “I’ve got armpit poison on my jacket.”

“Ohhh-kay,” she said. “Gotta love that segue.”
Segue,
a really good actress word to know for scene transitions and all that. She pointed at the front desk. “That pet accident stuff is behind there. I decided there was no point in letting it get all the way back to the maintenance closet. Where’re Gunn and Wesley?”

“Coming back any minute, if they didn’t get into any more trouble.” He pulled out the cleaner and the rag she’d looped through its handle. “I’ve never seen Caritas that crowded.”

“Lack of segue, total nonsequitur…you sure you don’t have anything on your mind?” She left the doors to look at him more closely as he dabbed Nature’s Miracle on his coat.

“Just all the answers we
don’t
have,” he said, and gave her his own close look, an inspection so intense that for a sudden startling instant she felt like he could see right through her. Just as she realized she was holding her breath, he said, “How about you? Anything on your mind? Visions? Glimpses? Even little ones?”

She shook her head, not trusting her voice—and then frowned, crossing her arms in fake defiance, more than a little shaken by that look. What did he think he’d see? And what drove him to look so hard for it? “You expecting something?”

He shook his head, just as suddenly distracted again. “Have a feeling.”

She narrowed her eyes, totally annoyed by his cryptic mood and by her reaction to it. “Maybe you should keep it to yourself, then. Until you feel like making sense or something.”

The door flung open with an emphatic bang, startling Cordelia—and to judge by their expressions as they entered the hotel, Wesley and Gunn as well. She winced and said, “Another entrance like that and you’ll take them right off their hinges. Where they barely are to begin with, you may have noticed.”

“Sorry,” Wesley said. “All that adrenaline from a successful round of demon-hunting, you know.”

“Besides which, they looked fixed,” Gunn added.

“Did you find it?” Angel asked, tossing the rag back behind the counter.

“Find what?” Cordelia asked. “Is everyone talking in code today?”

“Well…perhaps we weren’t so much demon-hunting as…”

Gunn grinned. “Spitball hunting. And yes, we found it. Disposed of it. You?”

“Left him at Caritas, getting hum therapy and hating it. You ever heard a Slith hum?” Angel raised a hand. “Never mind. Just don’t.”

Wesley turned to Cordelia. “And you?”

She gestured impatiently at the door. “What part of those newly boarded doors didn’t you see? You think some guy just came out of nowhere to do that? I’ve been doing my part.” She left her mouth open to mention the migraine, but closed it before the words came out. Getting attention and comfort was good, but those strange worried looks they tended to cast her way only added to the burden of the whole vision thing.

“Stranger things have happened,” Wesley said. “It’s just we
do
need to get a fix on that demon to have any understanding of the encounters. Especially now that we’ve lost the”—he looked at the empty butter tub and finished lamely—“ugly stone.”

“Be my guest.” She pointed him to the new identification book, left facedown on the front desk. He winced and rushed to rescue it, running a thumb along the spine as she said, “In order to use that thing, you’ve got to have details. Sure, there’s a choice for five appendages, but you’ve got to know what kind that fifth one is—is it spatulate or palmate, tubular or fringed…”

“Ouch,” said Gunn.

“I see your point,” Wesley said. He inserted a piece of paper into the book and returned it to her. Cordelia glanced at it. Some old notepaper with the zoo logo, no doubt soon to be appropriate for actual note-taking on her part. “Still, perhaps we’ll gather more data.”

“Be nice if we did that
before
another of them comes in here wrecking things,” Gunn observed, resting an elbow on the counter. “Especially if it’s going to do a smelly meltdown when we kill it.”

Assuming it didn’t get one of them first. But that was a factor they all lived with, every day. They just didn’t say it out loud very often. Cordelia sighed and ran a hand through her short hair. “I think we need to find that man,” she said. “The demon was after
him
. Or else we should find that guy who looked like Angel. I’ll bet he knows something.”

Angel instantly protested, “He didn’t look
anything
like me.”

“We need to find him, anyway,” Gunn said.

Cordelia felt it coming, like a mental sneeze. An incredibly painful mental—

Joggers. Brown hair, ponytails, mother and daughter running together blood and bright yellow skin, screaming—always screaming—

“San Vincente Boulevard,” she gasped from the floor. “That median park the joggers use. There’s this yellow guy with a weird mohawk not-hair and these knives…growing…from its arms—”

“Miquot?”
Wesley said. “Hunting joggers on the strip park is hardly up to their standards.”

“I wouldn’t call this hunting,” Cordelia said, pressing her fingers to her temples. Oh, ow. Shouldn’t there be some rule about no more than one vision per day? She was sure there should be a rule…. “More like…savaging. And…” She frowned, trying to grasp the most elusive part of the vision, the feel of it, the things that really didn’t come through as
vision
at all. Someone grasped her elbows from behind and lifted her to her feet, all but carrying her to one of the roundchairs.
Angel
. None of the others had that casual strength. “I don’t know how…but this is related to the Terminal Market thing.”

“To the Slith demon?” Wesley asked, incredulous.

“Yes,” she said, more assertive as the first shrieking pain receded into pounding waves. “And by something other than the fact that neither job is going to pay. I don’t know what yet…and I wouldn’t waste any time getting to those joggers.”

“This one’s yours,” Angel said,
though—was that regret?
Cordelia narrowed her eyes. Yes, he very much looked as if he’d be fine with tearing into some Miquot.

“Yes,” Wesley said. “The broad daylight and all.”

“Don’t worry,” Cordelia said, wincing. “The way the day is going, I’ll have something else for you soon.”

She wished she thought she was wrong.

A
ngel went back to the underground. Back to sewers and utility tunnels and areas that none of L.A.’s city planners ever envisioned…or even knew about. The perfect place to ponder dark thoughts, to let them pound home the knowledge…
I’ve got to figure out what’s going on. I’ve got to
stop
it.
But with no direct line of inquiry and with Wesley and Gunn handling the Miquot and jogger incident and Cordelia napping off her vision in a second-floor room, Angel did what the others expected. He turned back to the matter of the unidentified demon-turned-goo-in-the-lobby and the scrawny excuse for a vampire wanna-be who’d copped Angel’s wardrobe.

It still made no sense to him. Imitation as an indication of admiration…admiration of
what?
A young mortal’s callow irresponsibility, a hundred-plus of unspeakable evil, and almost a hundred years of living off rats? A few recent years of playing the good guy hardly made up for any of that. And the last thing he wanted was the responsibility of knowing someone else—
anyone
else—was using him as a template.

None of the denizens of the underground he spoke to seemed to think much of it one way or the other.

“Amateur,” snorted the highly humanized male Angel stopped not far from the hotel. He and his date were dressed for dinner out, wearing muckers and carrying their dress shoes through the sewers. “I heard something about it. He’s just a pretender.”

“Needs to be eaten,” said the hunchbacked Oua’shin demon crouched against the side of a sewer tunnel, gnawing on something furry. He paused to insert a long claw into his mouth and withdrew part of a stretchy pet collar. “Just making trouble for us all, not keeping the right profile, drawing attention.”

“Needs to spend a little time in a hellmouth,” growled an elderly hybrid with a face that hadn’t matched even before its human aspects had collapsed with time.

•  •  •

But they didn’t know where to find him. Or if they did, they weren’t admitting it…and Angel wasn’t ready to create resentment by switching from questions to intimidation.

Not yet.

No doubt the fake Angel had a small dingy cubby of an apartment somewhere. Possibly he had a pathetic pavement-scraping job and only threw on his Angel-making duds in his off time as his escape from banality to excitement. Angel spent a moment envisioning the man in dirty coveralls, picking up trash from some community facility or fast-food parking lot, a colorless being going unnoticed in the human world.

A shrill ringing noise startled him, echoing off the cement walls of the sewer on the way back to the hotel.
The cell phone.
For once, he had it; for once, he had it turned on. Somewhere…

He patted himself down, finally snagged it out of the inside pocket of his jacket, and fumbled it open. “Yeah?” he said, trying to sound like he’d been busy and successful instead of daydreaming in a sewer after getting nowhere.

“Vision,” Cordelia said, sounding frantic even over the hollow tones of the cell phone. “Sewer. Kid looking for his cat. About to get eaten.”

“Where?”

“Sewer!”

“Lots of those to choose from,” he reminded her, thinking sourly that all his weapons were at the hotel. This was supposed to be an amiable question-and-answer expedition, not another visionquest. “There’s gotta be something distinctive about it—”

“No, there doesn’t,” she shot back at him in the sort of strained whisper that meant she’d probably be raising her voice into that higher register if she didn’t have a splitting vision-headache. Or several of them. “Just find—”

The phone gave a forlorn beep and died. Angel scowled at it, a serious scowl that lesser life-forms would have known to flee.

The phone remained unimpressed.

Great. Kid, about to be eaten. Here in the extensive sewer system—at least he knew that much, and could stay out of utilities access and informal tunnels—with no clue
where
.

Except for his memory of the Oua’shin demon picking a pet collar out of his mouth.

Kid. Looking for his cat.

Angel ran.

And then stopped. That couldn’t be it. The hunchbacked Oua’shin hunted close to the ground…and they hunted animals, not humans. They never went above; never confronted humanity in any way.

A thin scream cut through the damp tunnel air.

Couldn’t be it.
Was.

He ran with a vampire’s speed.

The screaming would have guided him had memory not done the trick. He took a sharp corner, came upon the struggle—a dark-skinned boy, maybe six years old, skinny and flailing and panicked. The Oua’shin, clutching him with an expression of manic fury.

On the floor beside a still-rocking flashlight, something furry and bloody, an elongated lump with pearly jagged leg bone jutting out the end—

Angel scooped it up on the run, used his strength and anger and momentum to shove it through the Oua’shin’s gummy black eye. The demon stiffened, flinging his arms and legs wide in a death spasm. The kid squirted free.

Angel kept his head turned, waiting the instant it took to repress fang-face before letting the kid see him.

Except it wouldn’t go away. His own rage coursed through him, freed by the incident, startling in intensity, fogging his brain…

The kid cried. A weak, tasty sound…

Repulsed by his own reaction, Angel startled himself back into human visage. He gave himself another moment, made sure of it—and turned to the boy.

“Spike!” the child cried.

Angel wheeled around to search the darkness beyond the flickering flashlight beam, his eye targeting an image of the lean, bleach-headed vampire—but no. Not here.

Spike the
cat
. The boy’s pet.

Deliberately, Angel put his foot over the collar almost hidden in a shallow puddle. “He’s not here,” he said. “Let’s get you back aboveground.”

The boy’s smeared face took on an obstinate expression. “I saw him here. He hunts them big old rats.”

“It’s a big place,” Angel said simply. “He’s not
here,
here.”

Or most of him wasn’t.

Angel fought the sudden impulse to say,
Look, kid, the cat’s lying all around you in little bits and pieces, with most of him stuck between this demon’s teeth. He’s not coming back home,
ever,
so get your butt moving!
Instead, extra gently, he held out his hand. “Let’s go. I think you need a Band-Aid or two, and I have some with Blue from
Blue’s Clues.
”

That produced an extra-loud snuffle, as if the boy suddenly realized he indeed had a scratch here and there. He said doubtfully, “You do?”

Not really. They belonged to Cordelia. “I definitely do.” He retrieved the flashlight, and by the time he straightened he had a little boy clinging to his other hand. Ignoring the sweet smell of young blood, he led the boy back out to the early evening streets.

•  •  •

“We’re in trouble if we’ve got to jog this whole strip.” Gunn climbed out of his truck at the parking lot in the area defined by Pico and Venice and La Brea—and San Vincente itself, which held the median strip part that originated right here. He wished he’d chosen footwear that was less street commando and more joggerly. Then again, he wished he knew why the Miquot was riled up in the first place…and most of all he wished he knew why Cordelia had the faint smudge of worry on her brow when she looked at Angel. Of all of them, she knew him best…if
she
was worried, Gunn was worried.

Wesley exited the passenger side and slammed the door. “We won’t be the only ones in trouble,” he said. “Joggers up against a Miquot…I can’t imagine what would possess a Miquot to stoop to such an easy target.”

“Take it easy on the door.” Gunn shot him a scowl and added, “And how can a demon be possessed?”

“Just a figure of speech.” Wesley looked down at his loafers, then looked at Gunn over the hood of the truck. “Not that I don’t appreciate this fine parking job, but…”

“You thought we were going to cruise the strip park?” Gunn asked. “Sure, maybe we can go slow enough in the left lane to incite an L.A. freeway shoot-out. That’d be a nice break from Miquot.”

“It’s hardly the freeway,” Wesley said, in patient mode, opening his door again.

“People have tempers everywhere,” Gunn said, climbing back into the truck. “Or hadn’t you noticed lately? Anyway, she’d better not get so much as scratched.” He patted the dashboard and waited for the chance to pull onto San Vincente so they could prowl along the green strip with its random trees and regular bisections of slanting left-turn lanes.

“Just drive,” Wesley said, an edge finally creeping into his voice. “I’ll watch the median. Oh, and roll down that window.”

“The better to hear their screaming,” Gunn muttered. More innocents in the way of trouble…he wasn’t sure why L.A. didn’t wise up.

Because Miquot don’t attack joggers.

Not usually.

No,
usually
they were more of a tough bounty hunter type, going in for the big game, growing their own knives from their arms at will and taking on what challenged them.

Uneasily, he wondered what else might be going on in L.A., what other
not usual
things were coming down just as he started a fresh batch of kids as neighborhood demon watch. A fresh batch of cocky, overconfident kids who present him with the opposite problem Angel faced in his impersonator.
These
kids were so full of themselves that they didn’t leave room for seeing how someone else went about it. They were ready to strike out on their own, make their own names…and if he didn’t get them turned around, meeting their own dire fates.

Yeah, bad timing.

“Is that—?” Wesley said, pointing across the steering wheel at a flash of yellow. Someone behind them honked, then pulled around to pass on the right, gesturing nastily.

That particular shade of yellow, the way the figure clung to the trees and shadows…“Looks like it,” Gunn said, jerking the truck into a left-turn lane and ignoring the horn that sounded behind him. He bumped up on the grass, half-on, half-off the road, and cut the engine. “Plan?” he asked, groping in the space behind the seat for their weapons bag.

Wesley held up the crossbow he’d prepared, and a handful of bolts. “Turn him into a pincushion from afar. Then, when he notices—”

“You got enough bolts there so he’ll bother to notice?” Gunn asked dryly.

Wesley ignored him in a dogged way. “Then he should be weakened enough that between the two of us—”

Decisive, Gunn said, “I’m bringing more bolts.
And
another crossbow. I’ll load, you shoot. If we’re going to pincushion him, let’s do it right.”

“Fine.” Wesley hopped out of the truck as the first scream broke through the traffic noise. He headed for it at a run.

Gunn hesitated, and then followed his impulse to grab the entire weapons bag and bring it along.

These Miquot…too nasty to take any plan for granted.

Hefting the crossbow and weapons bag, Gunn sprinted after Wesley, the sparse trees and cars a blur to either side.
Damn thing ought to have chosen a better spot.
One that wasn’t so out in the open, where so many once-blithe people could witness the previously unbelievable.

Where two innocent women weren’t playing a horrifying game of keep-away from a yellow, fin-headed killing machine. Gunn could see them clearly now—enough to know they hadn’t wasted time trying to understand what attacked them or why; they’d split up, working to defend each other, not with strength so much as distraction. Brown hair up in saucy jogger’s ponytails, matching outfits…mother-daughter team. As Gun and Wesley reached decent crossbow range, the Miquot closed in on the daughter, and the mother kicked it and ran. The Miquot whirled to follow.

That’s not right.
Miquot were not stupid; they were not distractable. They were dangerous, intelligent, and cunning and as well-trained as any Slayer. Gunn set the crossbow to his shoulder; Wesley’s twanged beside him, and the first bolt buried itself in the Miquot. Gunn aimed and—

—thwap—

—his bolt sprouted from the Miquot’s arm. “Hah,” Gunn said. “Try growing more knives from that—”

“You had to say it,” Wesley murmured, cranking his crossbow string back with fervent effort as the Miquot sprouted several nasty blades along its arm and tore one off to fling at them—

—missing?

“He missed!” Gunn said in surprise, setting another bolt into place.
Aim and fire—

“So I noticed.” Wesley released another shot; it buried itself in the Miquot’s throat, which actually staggered the demon. The joggers weren’t slow to take advantage of their reprieve…they grabbed each other’s hands, cast Wesley and Gunn identical, terrified looks, cast the Miquot an even more terrified look, and ran.

The Miquot yanked Gunn’s arrow from its arm and threw it to the ground, heading for both Gunn and Wesley even as they released a simultaneous third salvo.

“Pincushion,” Gunn said, not hesitating as he reached for another bolt. “Not doing much good.”

“None of this makes any sense,” Wesley admitted, backing up several steps as the Miquot’s reorientation became a charge. “How those women survived even a moment—”

Gunn backpedaled, gave up on the crossbow—no way to get it cocked in time—and fell back to its convenient secondary function as the Miquot came within strides of them and turned for Gunn’s own personal self. He met the demon head-on and bashed it across the head. More wood splintered an instant later as Wesley did the same from behind.

The demon turned on Wesley, beyond fury, beyond thought, leaking nasty Miquot blood from every wound. Wesley made a noise of profound surprise. “That shouldn’t have worked!” he cried, stumbling back over the weapons bag with just enough time to pick the whole thing up and fling it at the demon. The Miquot knocked it away and leaped on Wesley.

Great. No crossbow, no weapons bag, berserker Miquot who didn’t seem to know enough to grab his own homemade knives—