Impressions Read online

  “It looks like a stone,” she said. “But it’s a really ugly stone.”

  “As stones go,” Gunn said, and smirked.

  Both Wesley and Angel cast him frowns, and Gunn shrugged. “I’m a guy,” he said. “So sue me. Anyway, it’s not like we have anything to work with here. Maybe Wes is right and it’s not worth the trouble.”

  Wesley protested, “I don’t recall saying—”

  “Inexplicable moment,” Gunn said, unmoved. “The world was never in any danger. In case you ever doubted my memory.”

  A little gathering of his brow gave away Wesley’s reluctance to actually take such a thing as safety for granted. “All the same—”

  Cordelia ignored them all, flipping through the demon book with dismay. “Look at this!” she said, a big frown on a mouth that was really meant for smiling. “I don’t even know where to start.”

  “It’s quite simple.” Wesley flipped it open to the beginning pages. “It’s just like a flower guide, or a tree guide. You started with the broadest level of characteristics—for instance, does it go on all fours or stand upright—and narrow it down. How many limbs, how many eyes…see this category, for instance. Two symmetrical limbs or three whorled limbs—”

  “Four bi-symmetrical limbs and a waving thing,” Cordelia said with certainty. “It’s that waving thing that keeps tripping me up. Maybe I should get Fred in on this. She’s good at this sort of thing. Books, I mean.” If she ever feels safe enough to come down. Cordelia heaved a great dramatic sigh and took the book. “Okay, I’ll keep trying. You know, just in case it’s actually the end of the world. Again.”

  A troubled look crossed Wesley’s face; he squinched his nose ever so slightly. “I think I’ll just wash my hands once more.”

  And suddenly Angel couldn’t deal with the whole postattack scene, all this casual normality. Not with his anger buzzing around inside his head like a saw, echoing off itself to create a reverberation that kept building and building and—

  “I’m outta here,” he said.

  “Oh, good,” Wesley said, entirely clueless. “See if you can track those two down.”

  Angel didn’t bother to correct him. Let them think he was out hunting their interlopers, finding the Angel impersonator—the sudden image of a Las Vegas full of Angel impersonators nearly did him in right then and there—when he was really simply not being there. At his own hotel. In the middle of his human friends, trying to hide his vampire feelings.

  He went to Caritas.

  “We were too late,” the elder priest intoned in a voice of doom that vibrated audibly in his long-nose. “The young one is dead, and now we’re missing two deathstones.”

  Six under-priests huddled around the empty pedestal, resplendent in their broad sash-belts but reserved and tense in posture. One of them said, “The young one’s deathstone is entirely raw. It must be recovered at once.”

  “This may not be as difficult as feared,” the elder said. “While the warrior’s stone is in the hands of one who hopes to gain from it, I have reports that the young one’s stone resides with those who lack all understanding of its true nature. It will not be as well-protected.”

  Another under-priest tugged nervously at his sash and said, “What of the families? Do they know anything yet?”

  The elder priest shook his head—a broad gesture indeed on a creature with a neck so thick. “All are under the impression that we’re remodeling this area in honor of the new stone. The young one is assumed to be involved. But we cannot keep up this deception for long.”

  “Not when you consider the consequences of the warrior’s stone going unprotected in the middle of that tightly packed city,” said the first under-priest. He was a strong individual, and he stood quietly—not fiddling with his sash or tugging the tops of his stubby round ears or even cracking his toes. “I judge we have very little time. I would like to volunteer to go to the city. I have some familiarity with it. I’ll bring back the young one’s stone.”

  “That must be first priority,” the elder agreed. “Both because of the stone’s raw condition and the likelihood of quick success. I intend for another of you to keep track of the warrior’s stone in the meantime. When you”—and he nodded at the first under-priest—“have returned with the raw stone, you will go back out to work together to retrieve the warrior’s stone.”

  The under-priests politely clicked their teeth together in acquiescence.

  But none of them thought it would be quite that simple. And all of them knew the trouble was already starting.

  Chapter Three

  It might be pig’s blood, but it was fresh and warm and served with a mint leaf up against the inside of the glass. Angel leaned over the bar and took a contemplative sip. Smooth and salty and just the right amount of tang. Just what Angel needed to take the edge off his nerves after the way the evening had started.

  “Good vintage,” he told Lorne, who was busy serving up something totally disgusting to a Veroscini demon several seats away. Angel thought he saw something move in the thick mustard-colored liquid. On stage, a barrel-chested demon in a leather vest and chain-mail breeches bellowed “Bat out of Hell” in nothing even approaching Meatloaf’s original rendition.

  “Nothing but corn-fed pigs for this bar,” Lorne said, appearing to take no notice of the Veroscini’s misbehaving drink. He exchanged a few quick words with the scaly demon and came back toward Angel counting a handful of coins. “No tip from him tonight,” Lorne muttered, smoothing his dark orange tie. “Just one of those nights.”

  “How’s that?” Angel asked him, taking another sip and letting it warm further in his mouth before swallowing. Beside him, a tree frog–like creature clambered up the bar stool, elbowing Angel along the way. Slith demon. Angel didn’t scowl, not quite.

  “Service!” the little demon demanded in his little demon voice, sitting on the stool with his twiggy arms and legs akimbo. “I want one of your Banana Slugs!”

  “Banana Slug?” Angel asked as Lorne rolled his eyes—so expressive against that green skin of his—and reached under the bar for the small refrigerator built into it. “New drink? I don’t remember that one being on the menu—”

  Lorne slapped a cocktail napkin down on the bar. On top of it was a giant slug—fresh chilled, still feebly writhing.

  “Oh,” Angel said. “Of course. Banana Slug. Right.”

  “Where’s the cinnamon?” the demon demanded, standing up on the bar stool to plant his splayed hands on the bar and glare first at the slug, then at Lorne.

  “Yeah, yeah,” Lorne said, and produced a salt shaker filled with cinnamon. He gave an expert flick of the wrist, powdering the glistening slug, and turned back to Angel as if they’d never been interrupted. “That’s why no tip. They’re all like that tonight. There’s some nasty mojo on the streets tonight—don’t tell me you don’t feel it. Slith demons like this one, for instance. Normally as mild as you’d please.”

  “No kidding,” Angel said, sorry he’d asked. And trying hard not to sound too interested as he sensed Lorne winding up for the long answer on top of the short. He should have just kept his own mouth shut.

  Or maybe that was just the nasty mojo talking.

  “Do you have any idea how hard it is to maintain my own cheerfully friendly demeanor when those all around me have given in to the Dark Side of the Force?” Lorne continued, gesturing at the stage. “Even with my amazingly perceptive self-awareness, some things are hard to take.” Another demon had grabbed the mike, dressed in oversized denims and a hooded sweatshirt with the hood drawn up and tied. He started in on a rap song, but between the lisp and the interference of his tusks, couldn’t begin to keep up with the rhythm. He quickly fell to mumbling and grunting—at least until he ran into a foul word, which he gleefully shouted with perfect enunciation. Lorne tsked and shook his head. “Now that young woman needs the influence of the elders she’s flaunting right now.”

  “Young woma—,” Angel started, but didn’t go a
ny further. He well remembered meeting Lorne’s severely undoting and not to mention masculineish mother in Pylea.

  Perhaps it hadn’t been a good idea to come here, good blood or no. He’d needed to get his head together, and somehow Caritas had pulled together all its most distracting denizens to keep him from doing just that. He stood, digging into his pocket for change—but when he glanced up, he found Lorne giving him a pensive look. “What?”

  “Hum something for me, babushka.”

  Angel shot him an annoyed look, but experience had taught him Lorne was nothing if not persistent. He hunted for a song, desperate to avoid “Bat out of Hell”—now running endlessly through his mind—for too many reasons to number. Finally he just made a flat-sounding, “Humhumhum.”

  Lorne gave a satisfied nod. “As I thought. You’re in a bad place, my friend.”

  No news to Angel.

  Lorne added, “And for no reason that I can see.”

  That came as news. Lorne could always pinpoint those tricky, slippery motivations that people tried to hide—even from themselves. Angel suddenly realized he’d been harboring a well-hidden hope that Lorne would offer him some easy answer, a concrete problem upon which to blame his inadvertent fang-face, his distraction, even the day’s dreams. Things he couldn’t blame on the irritating presence of an imposter about whom he’d only just learned. “What do you mean, for no reason?”

  “Are my words not coming out in English? What I said, sweetcheeks. No reason I can see. You’ve got the mood, all right, but there’s nothing particularly driving behind it. Unless you can enlighten me?” He gave the surly crowd a meaningful glance.

  “Haw!” little demon guffawed in mid-chew, spraying Angel with bits of slug. His attention was on the stage, where the excessively baggy pants on the rapping demon had contrived to fall down and bare far too much gnarled flesh.

  “That doesn’t mean you don’t need to be careful,” Lorne said, ignoring the interruption. “Au contraire, I think you need to be more careful than ever. Until you find the source of your disquiet, you never know when—Angel, are you listening?”

  Angel had, in fact, been swiping slug bits off his duster. “I hear you. In fact, I think the best thing to do is find a nice quiet room in the hotel and—” He paused, suddenly aware of the Slith demon’s intent regard.

  “Angel,” the demon said, swallowing what was left of his mouthful.

  At least he’d swallowed.

  “You’re not Angel! I know Angel! I’ve had drinks with Angel! Angel is my friend—and you’re not Angel!”

  Angel glanced at Lorne, brow raised. “You know this guy?”

  “He’s been here a couple times before,” Lorne said. “But I’m not the only demon hangout in L.A. If he’s been palling around with someone he calls Angel, it wasn’t in here.”

  “All right,” Angel said to the Slith. “Angel is your friend. Let’s talk about Angel. Like where I can get hold of him.”

  The Slith stood back up on his stool, looking up at Angel with his hands jammed defiantly on his nearly nonexistent hips. “You don’t get hold of Angel,” he said. “He gets hold of you!” And he took a prodigious leap into the seating area, bouncing off several tables until he reached the door.

  “See?” Lorne said, looking sadly at the empty plate and its generous sprinkling of cinnamon and slug slime. “No tip.”

  Gunn had places to be, all right. Fresh-air places, at least compared with the Hyperion’s current eau de demon. He looked at the teens gathered around the pavilion at MacArthur Park. Sullen. That stood to reason…they’d come off the streets to meet him here, for a single evening leaving behind the bleak rebellion that made up their lives to consider another way.

  Sullen, but they were here. And that said a lot too.

  Sinthea and Tyree would be the tough ones. Their expressions said as much, and their body language…he’d seen them around. For them he’d need to find responsibilities…and just the right amount of toughness back at them. The others…they’d present their own problems, but mostly they’d follow along with the other two. Fifteen of them, and he thought maybe half would stick with it.

  “We’re here to start neighborhood watch training,” he said. “You come for any other reason? Time to leave.”

  Sinthea pushed back sleek black hair, courtesy of her Asian blood. Her deep brown skin came from somewhere else altogether, and the streets gave her her attitude. She said, “I heard this was better than neighborhood watch training. Special. It’ll give us an edge.” She gave him a hard look, waiting for him to confirm it.

  “Could be,” he said. “Probably not what you’re thinking, though.”

  Tyree—as tall as Gunn, deepest blue-black skin and hair just shy of shaved entirely, gave Gunn a look of disgust. “Quit playing us. You think we’re stupid? This ain’t no official neighborhood watch program.”

  Gunn smiled happily, which took them by surprise. “No,” he said. “It’s not.” He gave them a moment to think about it. “Look—you all know the streets, right? You live the streets.”

  There was a general murmur of agreement, some fist-bumping, plenty of posturing.

  “Then you’ve seen things you haven’t mentioned to anyone else. You know things go on that most people won’t admit. You know it’s not just drugs and gangs and dirty cops that we have to worry about.”

  Some of them nodded; most of them looked uncertainly to Tyree and Sinthea. Finally Sinthea gave a short, defiant nod. “We know.”

  Gunn said, “We can do something about it. But first you’ve gotta understand what you’re up against. You’ve gotta know how to fight it. You don’t waste yourself thinking that tough is good enough to do the job. You’ve got to use teamwork and you’ve got to use your brains.”

  The youngest teen there, a wiry Latino who looked strong and fast for his age, said, “And why should we? We don’t got enough to worry about?”

  “Yeah, it’s a tough world,” Gunn said without sympathy. “And I’m sure you’re all busy being cool in it, and that great big load of righteous mad you’re carrying around probably tires you out.” He spotted a group of three murmuring among themselves, drifting off toward the small copse of trees between the pavilion and Wilshire Boulevard…minor drug deal, going down on the spot. He ignored it.

  “Here’s the deal. There’re things in this city to make you crazy—the people going hungry, the people getting killed, the people disrespecting you and looking down at you and acting like they know what’s best for you.” The words hit home; he could see the mood change, the resentment coming closer to the surface. “The thing about anger is…it can use you or you can use it. Personally, I like using it. And I like doing it in a way that no one else knows how. I like making the difference that no one else can make.”

  “Yeah, but do we get to fight?” the Latino asked.

  “Or is this one of those nicey-nice games you want us to play?”

  Gunn just smiled. Big.

  “Welcome back,” Cordelia said as she spotted Angel trying to slink through the lobby unseen. A token effort…if he wanted to go unseen, he would. Simple as that. “No customers, no visions. Which you know already, since we didn’t call you with any hot tips or anything. Oh, wait—in order to get a call, your cell phone’s got to be on, doesn’t it?”

  He got a quietly desperate look on his face, obviously wishing he had come through the lobby in stealth mode. Cordelia flipped through her latest copy of Entertainment Weekly, unaffected. The lobby was clean(ish), the vision factor was at zero, and she was about to call it quits for the night. She could afford to be serene.

  “Batteries,” he said. “I swear, I charged them—”

  “Uh-huh.” She tore her attention away from an article about Harrison Ford. “Look, you might as well talk. There’s obviously something bothering you.” And as usual, he’d rather be Broody Guy than get it off his chest. She bet he never even screamed into his pillow. Maybe they needed one of those squishy head things some peopl
e had around the office to poke and squeeze for stress release.

  Except she supposed they did often have squishy head things around the office. And they usually got rid of them just as fast as humanly—vampirely—possible.

  “Talk?” Angel said, inching a step closer to the stairs. Mr. Big Scary Vampire, about to run from a little conversation.

  “Yes, talk. If you plan to get all broody and moody and start keeping to yourself again, you should know that our old office space is still for rent.” Office as in she and Gunn and Wesley, out on their own and doing just fine. Except for Wes getting shot, of course. And Cordelia herself acquiring a third eye in the back of her head. But aside from that—

  “Is there a problem?” Wesley emerged from the bathroom, where he’d been washing his hands again. Not that Cordelia could blame him. Dissolving demon stink clung to the lobby like…like…

  On the other hand, there was nothing like dissolving demon stink.

  “No problem,” Angel said, just a little too quickly. “Any luck identifying that demon?”

  Cordelia sighed, trading the magazine for the demon guide; she’d marked her place with one of Wesley’s new chopsticks, much to his annoyance. “This wasn’t any more help than the database. Not yet, anyway. We’re still looking.” She gave her magazine a guilty glance. “I mean, we will be. But it’s late, you know?” A glance at her watch confirmed that much. Time for good little demon hunters to be home and abed. Gunn had escaped an hour ago, though she didn’t exactly think he’d been headed for bed. There was no telling what Gunn was up to when he wasn’t here; she hadn’t quite decided if he hunted vampire nests on the side, or if Angel Investigations was actually the side work. “We’ve been dealing with this all evening, while you were off…being off. I gotta think that if it was a big deal, I’d have had a vision about it already.”

  “Maybe someone else is meant to take care of it,” Wesley agreed. “Our interesting and familiar looking friend from earlier in the evening, perhaps.” A faintly disturbed look crossed his face; he lifted his arm and took a sniff of the cotton button-down shirt he wore. “It’s not my hands…it’s me.”