Impressions Read online

  “I told you,” Cordelia said. “It’s gonna take a warehouse full of Febreze to get this place back to its old musty self.”

  Angel probably thought himself off the hook; he turned for the stairs. No way she was gonna give him that—nor Wesley, apparently, for he said, “Any luck on your end?”

  “Any luck…?” Angel repeated.

  “Finding the two humans who came along with our dearly dissolved demon friend,” Wesley said.

  Angel hesitated, then said carefully, “I found someone else who’s seen the one who…looked kinda like…,” and he stalled out, looking terribly awkward.

  “You,” Cordelia filled in, blunt where he was reluctant. “And boy, doesn’t he have some nerve. I’m the one attached to the Powers That Be with these headaches and visions, and he thinks all he’s got to do is look like you—”

  “What is that all about?” he asked, moving back into the desk area, suddenly more animated. “Guy dresses like me, takes on clients in my name…”

  “Obviously a desperate man,” Wesley said.

  Angel sent him an annoyed glance, but it was brief. “He’s even been in demon hangouts, making nice. Telling them he’s me.”

  “Plenty of vampire wanna-bes out there,” Wesley said. “They generally run in different circles than the real thing, though.”

  “This isn’t a vampire wanna-be,” Angel said, and gave himself a rather violent poke in the chest. “This is a me wanna-be.”

  “Look, it’s no big deal,” Cordelia told him. “It’s an admiration thing, you know? For some reason this guy thinks you’re hot stuff and that your life is so much better than whatever pathetic excuse for a life he’s got on his own. Beats me why he chose you, but there you are.”

  Ah, she’d gotten his attention. And his most wounded expression. Actually a good sign…if he were truly broody he’d just have snarled something and gone upstairs no matter her precious words of wisdom. Cordelia flipped a page of her magazine. More Harrison Ford. Getting a little older now, but she still remembered the first time she’d seen him as Han Solo.

  “Hey,” Angel said, using his wounded voice to go along with the expression. “I just might have a few good qualities. I mean, maybe not once…okay, once I was pretty much a monster. I mean, for a long time I was pretty much a monster. But things have changed now, and I—”

  “Harrison Ford,” Cordelia said, stabbing her finger at the magazine. “The man saves little kids. In his own helicopter! Now there’s something to admire. Money, big toys, and a real hero to boot—”

  “Perhaps it was the cost of the helicopter,” Wesley suggested, very solemn…and entirely not. “This faux Angel had to go for something in his cost range. A few items of black clothing, some hair dye—”

  “Cheap hair dye,” Cordelia added.

  “This is serious,” Angel said. “There’s some guy going around reeling in clients with my name. With our name. And those clients are expecting real help. Do you think that scrawny wanna-be could have protected that man tonight? Killed that demon?”

  Wesley admitted, “I’m not even sure he could have cleaned up after that demon.” When Cordelia looked at him, one eyebrow arched in just that way she’d been practicing in the mirror for her skeptical actress look, he said, “Angel has a point, Cordelia. We do have a certain reputation for getting the job done. Even now, that man—”

  “And his bowling ball,” she said. “What’s up with the bowling ball, anyway? A new fetish?”

  “—even now, he could be in danger,” Wesley continued, undeterred. “Until we figure out which demon came after him, we won’t know.”

  “Right,” Angel said. “So we’ve got to stop this wanna-be. He’s a menace. And he’s annoying.”

  “Would that be because he’s so much like you?” Cordelia asked.

  Wesley said, “First we need to find his client. He’s the one in the most danger.”

  “I don’t know about that,” Angel said under his breath. But his expression was almost puzzled, as if he struggled with his own reaction.

  “I’ll tell you what I do know,” Cordelia said, grabbing her purse from the shelf behind the lobby counter. “First, I get to go home and sleep. Phantom Dennis will worry if it gets much later, and you don’t want to know what it’s like to live with a ghost on the edge.”

  “No,” Wesley said, a little bemused. “I don’t suppose we do.”

  “Anyway, like I said—no visions. Can’t be all that big a deal. We’ll look through these books again tomorrow.” She looked at Angel, giving him about one zillionth of a second to make objections. “That’s that, then!” she said brightly, slinging the satchel-like purse over her shoulder—not her actress-image purse, this one; this was the stake-holding, holy water–stashing version—and heading for the lobby doors. Gunn had managed to nail one of them shut, but the other was too warped and would never close. Home Depot time. Again.

  Behind her, she heard Wesley say, “I’m afraid I need to get some rest as well. The books are here, if you want to keep looking.”

  “I’ll be looking, all right,” Angel said darkly. “But it won’t be in books.”

  As far as Cordelia could tell, he’d left through the courtyard exit before she even closed the damaged door—at least, as far as it would go—behind her.

  • • •

  Angel walked the streets, hunting trouble as much as he hunted anything—and even he knew it was probably a good thing that those streets stayed silent and dark before him, almost as if his mood had pushed everything out of the way.

  Or maybe as if everyone else had found a dark corner in which to nurse their own inner grumbles.

  The fake Angel…imitation as admiration? Perhaps to a point. But what this baffling faux Angel had done went beyond. It wasn’t imitation, it was assumption of identity. And if you were going to assume an identity, why take that of someone who’s trying to atone for several hundred years of heinous behavior? Who would explode into fire when exposed to the sun? Who had the choice of living off people or rats…or giving up the hot rush of life for prepackaged pig’s blood?

  He not only didn’t get it, he didn’t want anything to do with it. Nor did he want anything to do with the way it stirred up his guilt of those extended years before the Powers That Be had stepped in. Before he’d met Whistler, and…

  Buffy.

  He didn’t want to think about those things at all, but something kept dragging his mind back to the anger that had started the whole thought cycle in the first place, and repeatedly started it all over again. So he walked the streets looking for something to distract him and he got into a minor scrap with a demon halfling that didn’t even bloody his knuckles and then another, bulldozing through the night. But the anger continued unimpeded, undistracted, and the rest of the world stepped widely around him.

  Eventually he returned to the Hyperion none the wiser, wrapped a bungee cord around the handles of the hotel’s front doors as a makeshift lock, and wearily climbed the stairs to his own room as dawn broke over the city. The bungee would never stop a determined interloper, but it would slow one down. And they’d do it with enough noise to reach Angel’s more than sensitive ears.

  Or so he hoped.

  It was almost morning by the time he shrugged off his clothes and left them in a manly heap on the floor. Sleep was what he wanted—that thing his body hardly needed but his human mind still craved as much as anything. Deep, quieting sleep.

  The Tuingas priest named Khundarr moved uneasily through the streets of the human city, his broad, flat feet slapping barefoot against the concrete with no notice of the broken glass. He was glad for the night…and at the same time wary of it. As late as it was, he didn’t walk these streets alone—but as a Tuingas priest, he was the only one immune to the deathstone emissions pulsing through the night. The only one truly sane.

  Already he could feel the uneasy roil resulting from the demon warrior stone’s rising feedback loop—and he could have found his way to the
raw new deathstone with his eyes covered and both noses plugged. It reeked of fear and desperation and anger, a shriller note overtop the deep emissions of the warrior’s stone. It might fade slightly during the day when a majority of the demons rested, but come the next evening the emissions would return in increasing strength.

  But the new stone worried him less than the warrior’s stone in spite of its obvious presence. For he intended to have the new stone this very night, but the warrior’s stone, zealously guarded by one who both knew what he had and yet had no idea, would continue to wreak havoc on the demons here. And they in turn would wreak havoc on those innocents around them.

  Sudden motion beside a building alerted him; he had his hand on his sash knife before the preternaturally quick beings appeared before him, surrounding him, circling him. They jeered at him, their fangs already dripping blood and their otherwise human features distorted by demonic forehead and eyes.

  He couldn’t understand their words, but he knew they played with him. They had no use for his blood, after all.

  “Don’t be foolish,” he told them, shifting so as to keep most of them in his sight as they danced around him, feinting with their makeshift clubs of broken wood. “This gains you nothing. Can’t you feel the power of that which drives you?”

  Not understanding, they laughed all the louder. As one, they leaped on him.

  A Tuingas priest is not without his resources. Khundarr tucked his vulnerable long-nose in tight and stood braced and balanced, allowing the blows to pass by or bounce off—but none of the vampires rebounded without feeling the touch of his knife. The light blows didn’t incapacitate the bullies…but the sight of all of them streaming blood while Khundarr stood untouched was enough to overcome the effects of the deathstone. The vampires exchanged a group glance and faded back into the night, not half so jeeringly as they’d come from it.

  But Khundarr, although unharmed, was more affected than they could know. This tangible evidence of the deathstone’s influence shook him badly. And it hardened a resolve already strong. Whatever it took, he would recover the raw stone tonight. Whatever.

  Khundarr let the raw new stone pull him toward the location of the young Tuingas’s death—a big building on a corner, with damaged doors that gave at his tug but then rebounded back into place. After a moment’s examination, he sliced through the bindings on the door handles. He didn’t expect the violent sproing! of the highly stretchy ropes, but once he rubbed away the sting of the part that had snapped back to hit his hand, he forgot about them and stepped into the large room beyond.

  The stone called to him. He found it halfway across the room, on a waist-high surface. It was immersed in a container of liquid with an overwhelmingly cheerful scent that almost contrived to cover the crucial scent of the deathstone itself.

  All deathstones had the characteristic odor of their owners’ dissolution, forever identifying them to family members by use of the specially developed long-nose. The lysosomic self-destruction upon death had inspired the development of the deathstone in the first place. No Tuingas went anywhere without a deathstone tucked into his stomach pouch behind the traditional sash…. The deathstone served not only as physical remains for family members, but a lingering memorial with impressions of the personality and death experience of the individual.

  To discover one thus, in the process of being rendered odorless, was sacrilege. Khundarr stiffened with his outrage. He quickly removed the stone from its bath, folding it into a heavily spell-inscribed leather wrapping that immediately muffled its emissions.

  And then he realized someone was watching him. His long-nose, almost overwhelmed by the scent of the liquid, twitched reflexively toward the stairs. Something there gave a squeak of fear and shrank more tightly into the shadows.

  A human. Possibly one of the humans who had done this abhorrent thing to a Tuingas deathstone. Khundarr growled deeply, knowing no single human was a match for a fully mature Tuingas, and no human could outwit a Tuingas long-nose no matter how he…no, this was a she…clung to darkness and crannies.

  But he knew the girl would not be alone. Something in this dwelling had killed the young one; something in here might be strong enough to kill him, too. And then there would be yet another stone—another raw stone—loose in this world that was not prepared to deal with the ones it already had.

  He tucked the temporarily protected stone into his own stomach pouch, growled a final invective toward the cowering creature near the stairs, and made his exit.

  Chapter Four

  Sleep was what Angel got…but not the quiet slumber he’d hoped for. He plunged instantly into dreams, dark and heavy and full of fury. Wesley stood before him, book in hand, lecturing on the finer points of translating ancient demon languages. Angel ripped the book from him and then ripped the book in half—and then reached for Wesley.

  No. That’s not right.

  Lorne warbled away on the stage of Caritas. “You like me, you really like me,” he said, full of emotion at the applause. Suddenly, badly rigged buckets of blood tipped over from above, showering Lorne in sticky redness. Lorne shouted, “Do the Dance of Joy!” and tipped his head back to lick his lips in glee—until Angel bounded onto the stage, shouting, “Mine! That’s mine !” and reached for Lorne—

  That’s really not right….

  Cordelia—

  Not Cordelia. Leave her alone!

  Cordelia, dressed in an absurdly skimpy costume, carrying an armful of industry magazines and wearing an exaggerated pout. “They don’t like me, none of them like me—” And then her eyes rolled back and she fell with a shriek, flinging magazines everywhere, shouting, “Vision! Vision! Vision!” until he couldn’t stand it anymore, all that guilt and resentment of guilt and the drama, and Angel reached for Cordelia—

  And his eyes flew open in the darkness of his bedroom. He didn’t bolt upright in bed. He just lay there, the tremble of his body made all the more obvious by the stillness of his heart and lungs. He stared into the darkness at the dim definition of the ceiling, and thought, Not again.

  Not again with the dreams, lurking in his nights and dragging at him during the day. Alienating him from his friends, turning his life into a living nightmare…

  And then he did sit up, resting his elbows on the sheets that covered his cross-legged knees, and realizing suddenly no, not again. This was not Darla, enticing him with a drugged mix of fantasy and reality. This wasn’t about luring him or manipulating him…

  They were simply nightmares. Outpourings of anger, channeled through sleep. Anger, he suddenly realized, that didn’t come from within. Some outside influence pounded at him, drawing on his own life, his own experience, to express itself.

  But it was still anger he couldn’t afford. Anger that could turn wrong, uncontrolled and leaving him with yet more regrets to overcome. He ground the heels of his hands against his eyes and said through gritted teeth, “Whoever you are, this isn’t going to work.” It wouldn’t. He’d figure out who was doing this, he’d find them, and he’d put that anger to good use.

  “Kittens,” he murmured. “Sesame Street. Hula-Hoops. Kids’ handprints in cement.” But not those little Precious Moments statuettes, which always gave him an irresistible urge to smash things. “No, no, no…more kittens. And puppies.” Yeah, the kind with all the wrinkles.

  Better already.

  But one thing was for sure: The others couldn’t know. Couldn’t even guess. If they even suspected there were dreams attached to this evening’s mood…

  For all he knew, they’d stake him just to get it over with.

  Not really. Surely that was just an indulgent bit of self-pity creeping in.

  Except he knew he’d already pushed them to the limit…and beyond. “Big Bird!” he said with much determination.

  Not until much later did it occur to him that he hadn’t come out of the nightmares on his own. In this hotel with its broken doors and habitually unpredictable visitors, something had woken him from that
unnaturally deep sleep…and then slunk silently away.

  “Okay, so this is strange,” Cordelia said to no one in particular, standing at the hotel’s front doors. One was as Gunn had left it, but the other hung open, cardboard half-ripped from the broken glass, which still jabbed toward the center of the door in jagged shards. A thoroughly slashed bungee cord hung over the handle…and on the floor…and on the stair rail…and she thought she saw a piece out in the lobby. Nasty business, cutting a bungee cord under tension.

  She took a step into the hotel. “Hello?”

  No answer. But she was expecting that. Gunn never got here this early. Fred was no doubt here somewhere, but not predictable about showing up. Even Wes rarely appeared this early, unless they had a hot and heavy case under way—in which case he usually simply hadn’t gone home. In fact, if she’d gotten an answer…then she’d start to worry. Still, better safe than demon fodder. She took another cautious step. “Hello? Anyone here? Any unwanted visitors from other dimensions, master vampires out to rule the world, mayors with a snake fetish?”

  Just silence.

  “Well, good then. Because I’m really not in the mood for it. In fact, I’m never in the mood—oh.” Sometime during her peer around the lobby, Angel had come padding down the stairs. Way too early for Angel. So early, in fact, that he’d even forgotten to get dressed and now stood bare-chested, looking at her in a vaguely startled way. Just in case he should get fully the idea that her openmouthed stare was anything more than utter surprise at seeing him emerge before late afternoon, she said flatly, “Well, hubba-hubba.”

  He didn’t appear to notice. He looked around the lobby, from courtyard doors to weapons case to the counter to her, and it didn’t seem to her like he was all there. He said, “I thought I heard something.”

  “Right. That would have been me. Just taking morning head-count. Not meaning that literally, of course, though around here you never—”