Impressions (7 page)

Gunn gave a feral grin. He jumped the Miquot, wrapped himself around the demon—who had wrapped himself around Wesley. All three of them crashed to the ground. With a fierce tug, Gunn freed one of the Miquot’s arm-knives and plunged it into the demon. A couple of times, just for good measure…

As Wesley struggled free, the demon gave a grunt and collapsed.

Slowly, Gunn and Wesley climbed to their feet, checking themselves for serious injury even as they eyed the Miquot. The muscled, trained, excessively strong, perfectly intelligent Miquot who had, in essence, just stupided itself to death.

Gunn gave a little shake of his head; Wesley did the same. Together, they said, “This just isn’t right.”

And it wasn’t.

Angel walked the boy to the sewer exit closest to his home and headed back for the Hyperion. Cordelia didn’t emerge from hiding, leaving Angel free to worry about the toll of the visions on Cordelia and to dwell on his annoyance at having gotten nowhere with the hunt for his fake self—not to mention resisting the ever-present pressure of grim emotion.

Finally Wes and Gunn staggered in, the worse for wear. Slumping onto a roundchair, they eyed him. Compared with them, he was enviably intact.

“Saved a kid,” Angel told them, all modesty.

“Saved the joggers,” Gunn replied. “Where’s Cordy?”

“Sleeping off the last vision, I think,” Angel said. He sat in a neighboring roundchair and rubbed his hands over his face, unaccountably weary. Or maybe entirely with reason, given the unceasing battle against the feelings from within and without. Against Angelus.

Wesley frowned. His gray tattersall shirt was torn and spattered—L.L. Bean could probably expect a new order soon—and his usually starched posture looked more than a little wrinkled. At first glance, Gunn looked in better shape, but at second, it became evident the bounce was quite gone from his step and somehow he’d lost a shoe. Still obviously thinking about both boy and joggers, Wesley said, “So many in such a short time…it hardly ever happens.”

“It’s happening,” Angel said flatly.

Gunn rested his head against the back of the roundchair. “At this rate we might as well just split up and patrol the streets tomorrow. Might save her some headaches if we’re already on the spot.”

Considering how close he’d been to the boy, Angel thought not. But he said nothing, having come to understand one thing about his formerly fellow man…people liked to take action. In fact, they liked to take it so much that sometimes they made up action to take.

From the second floor came Cordelia’s anguished cry. They stiffened, exchanging glances, immediately recognizing the impact of another vision.

Wesley said, “Here we go again.”

•  •  •

“I don’t
know,
” Cordelia sobbed, and at that moment the anger within Angel was entirely his own, fury at The Powers That Be who would allow such a burden to fall on her. Awkwardly, he nonetheless sat on the edge of the bed and put his arm around her. That she let him do it—that she actually leaned into the touch—did not strike him as a good sign.

From the grim tightness of Wesley’s features, he was thinking much the same. Gunn paced at the doorway as though guarding it, his expression smoldering.

Monsters and demons might be easier to fight.

“It’s okay, Cordy,” Angel said, though he thought it wasn’t. “Just tell us what you can.”

“There’s just too
much—
” She snatched a giant handful of tissues and sniffed loudly into them. “The Slith and the Miquot—”

They exchanged glances over her head.

“Cordelia,” Wesley said gently, when no one else did, “we took care of them.”

“Evidently not enough!” she snapped at him, a flash of temper that didn’t last. “I’m sorry, it’s just that these…these…”

“We know,” Angel said. But they didn’t. Not really.

“You don’t remember anything else?” Gunn kept his spot by the door, easing just a little closer.

“I
wish,
” she said miserably. “Miquot, definitely. And…people dying. I mean they must be. All that blood…” She curled away from Angel and pulled the pillow over her head.

Wesley caught Angel’s eye, jerked his head toward the door. Feeling utterly conspicuous in conspiracy, Angel followed him out of the room. Fred slipped by them to take Angel’s place on the edge of the bed, murmuring comforting words in a voice too soft to be heard.

“I don’t remember ever seeing her like this,” Wesley said, pitching his voice low. “There was that time she was hospitalized, but heaven forbid this should be another such episode—”

“I don’t think it is,” Angel said quickly, perhaps a little too quickly.

“That the time I was watching her for you?” Gunn said, and shook his head when Angel gave the slightest of nods. “I saw plenty of that. This isn’t it. This is just…lots of things to have visions about.”

“Except there’s not enough detail there to
do
anything about whatever she’s seen,” Wesley said with some frustration.

Gunn gave a little laugh. “Look at us, Wesley. We couldn’t do anything about it even if we
could
. I mean, I’m not saying I couldn’t rise to the occasion—”

“Certainly not,” Wesley agreed.

“—but we’re all done in. And face it, if this keeps up, we’re going to reach the point where we have to decide between saving a few people and figuring out what’s going on.”

“As for tonight…,” Wesley said thoughtfully, looking into the room.

Cordelia still hid under the pillow while Fred crooned some sort of lullaby; Angel doubted the others could hear it. He said, “There’s an after-hours clinic not far from here. I’m taking her. They’ll give her something strong.”

“With any luck, strong enough to put her out for the night. And then tomorrow…”

“Let’s just hope it doesn’t start all over again,” Gunn said.

Angel thought about getting Cordelia home after the clinic, and the reception they were likely to get from a certain overprotective ghost. “Someone better tell Phantom Dennis,” he said, not bothering to hide his unease at the thought of a Dennis tantrum. He returned to the room to scoop Cordelia off the bed, pillow and all.

“Gunn can do that,” Wesley said. “I’ll drive you to the clinic.”

“Me?” Gunn said. “Sad day when I find myself explaining things to dead people.”

“
One
of you tell him,” Angel said. “Or you’re both going into her apartment ahead of me.”

Fred made a
tsking
noise. “Phone,” she said, trailing Angel out into the hall.

“He doesn’t—,” Gunn started, ready to dismiss her—and then suddenly hesitating, understanding. “Bet he listens to her answering machine!” He and Wesley exchanged a look, then went for the stairs and the lobby phone.

Fred gave Angel one of her unexpectedly wise looks and said, “Unless, of course, she’s got voice mail. Which I was going to add, but…”

“I’ll send them in first, anyway,” Angel said, and carried Cordelia down the hall.

The priests gathered not in the warrior’s shrine, but along a rare stretch of nearly abandoned beach. They sat on a blanket watching the sun set, watching the waves roll in and spill themselves out on the sand, and feeling the pulsing power of the missing warrior’s stone.

Khundarr said, “I’ve confirmed it. None of us can reach the stone or he who possesses it at his temporary dwelling. But the man never leaves the stone behind when he leaves that hotel. We have but to wait for him to emerge from his dwelling. Kaalesh is there now; shortly I’ll join him.”

The elder priest said, “I understood him to be protected outside the hotel as well.”

Khundarr shrugged—for a Tuingas demon, more of a shoulder drop than a lift. “This is true. But it is still a more vulnerable situation. We’ll assess the circumstances as necessary. We’ll try to not harm anyone.”

A fellow under-priest snorted indelicately through his long-nose and said, “To my mind, this human’s behavior indicates he knows he has something that we want back. He does not act like an innocent.”

“True,” Khundarr said. “But the one who protects him may not have an understanding of the situation.”

“Then he is a fool,” said the elder. “How can he ignore what happens all around him? Even the
Slith
are affected. What happened at the produce market is only a hint of the disasters to come.”

“It wasn’t a
disaster,
” someone observed, keeping a modest posture.

“It could have been!” the elder snapped. His intensely wrinkled skin had plumped somewhat in this fresh sea air, and some of his vigor seemed to have returned along with it. “I still haven’t received a satisfactory report on just why it wasn’t.”

“With respect,” Khundarr said. “There are so many of us in the human world, and so few of us with any real experience. Much of our effort is spent in remaining unnoticed. The rest is focused on reacquiring the stone. We are simply grateful that the Slith left the market before anyone was hurt. That he was goaded into such behavior should be a warning to us all…we
must
retrieve the warrior’s stone.”

“On that we are agreed,” the elder said grudgingly. As if he had a choice. The demon-stone feedback loop was already fast spiraling to a point of overload…and once it reached that point, not only would L.A.’s demons go insane, the stone itself would become unstable. Soon enough, if any Tuingas, priest or not, so much as touched it…

Violent implosion.

The elderpriest brushed sand off his foot and said, “We owe you much for recovering the young one’s raw deathstone with no incident. Not only is it in preparation for its shrine, but you left no clues for those who…” and here his face tightened in extreme distaste, for he’d seen the condition of the stone when Khundarr returned it.

Khundarr said soothingly, “I doubt those who had the stone understood the significance of the cleansing treatment they gave it.” On the other nose, he also doubted that he’d left no clues for the people in that huge old hotel. The one had seen him, albeit in the darkness. And the hotel as a whole reeked of supernatural activity. The occupants might not have immediately understood the nature of the very private death rituals of a very private demon clan, but they were more equipped than most to figure it out. Not only that, but the young Tuingas wouldn’t have died there in the first place had the hotel not had some connection to the warrior’s stone.

It was a connection Khundarr intended to figure out.

T
he next evening, three demon hunters stood outside Baskin-Robbins, manfully pretending it wasn’t just a little bit late in the season for after-dark ice-cream cones. Not that Angel would ever have ice cream under the beating sun again, but then he wasn’t sure he’d ever had it that way in the first place. He pondered his memories, trying to identify the first ice cream. All he could remember was the ice cream he’d had with Buffy, that brief day he’d had in the sunlight. The one no one else would ever remember. “What kind did you get?” he asked Gunn, uncertain of the garish colors, and needing something to take his mind off the increasing throb of emotion in the night.

“Some Shrek thing,” Gunn said, as if it hadn’t been his choice at all. Nice try.

As often happened, Wesley’s thoughts were off somewhere else entirely. “Cordelia said she thought the joggers and the Terminal Market thing were connected,” he said, taking a quick lick around the edge of his ice-cream cone. His glasses sat a little askew on his nose, and his cheekbone was taking on a fine purple edge—both courtesy of an earlier minor demon encounter. But things had been quiet since then. “I think she’s right.”

Cordelia herself had spent the day in a haze, still groggy and so far blessedly free of visions; Wesley had checked the meds the clinic had given her the night before and suspected that their long half-life allowed them to interfere with any visions that might be lurking. Angel hoped they lasted a good long time.

“Connected
how?
” Gunn said. “Other than the fact that we’re the good guys and we’re kicking demon butt?”

“But it’s not the kind of demon butt we’d ordinarily find ourselves kicking,” Wesley said, adding a little feeble smile of acknowledgment to the two young women leaving the store as they each gave the trio an odd look. “Didn’t mean to say that so loudly…”

“I don’t think they heard you,” Angel said. “I think they were looking at the ice cream all over your chin.”

Wesley fumbled for a napkin. “You might have said—”

Gunn said flatly, “Demon butt is demon butt.”

Repairs to his appearance complete, Wesley said, “Not necessarily. You know as well as I that many of these demon clans are highly intermixed with human blood. Some of them even pass for human.”

Angel thought of Doyle, winced at a loss that still felt sharp. “Yes,” he said. “Some of them do.”

“And some of them are of little danger, anyway. Little more danger than your average human, that is.”

“Your point being?” Gunn, still patently unconvinced, balled up his napkin and tossed it into a trash receptacle with absent pinpoint accuracy.

“
That’s
who we’ve been fighting these past few days! The kind of demons we ordinarily wouldn’t encounter.”

A fleeting echo of his own earlier thoughts passed through Angel’s mind…how the Slith demon might be feeling the same thing that he himself struggled with…how the normally mild creature would be less equipped to deal with such intensities. He didn’t want to say it out loud, not if the result was the kind of distrustful looks he’d endured from his friends since they’d marginally accepted him back into the gang. More than marginal, now, but he had the feeling it wouldn’t take much to change that.

Except one never knew what tidbit of information would prove to be the key.
This
tidbit, maybe. Resigned to discussing it—
revealing
it—Angel opened his mouth—

“I don’t buy it,” Gunn said, gesturing with his Shrek cone. “What about the Miquot? Damned thing grows its own knives from its arms, Wes. Don’t tell me it’s the shy wallflower type.”

“No…,” Wesley said slowly, and Gunn raised an eyebrow, one that meant
see?
Undeterred, Wesley said, “But its behavior was still entirely out of character.”

“Unless those joggers were a lot more than they seemed,” Angel agreed.
Another time.
He’d find another time to tell the others about the dreams. About how he’d had a hard time coming back from vamp-state the day before.

Maybe.

Or maybe he wouldn’t have to. Maybe they’d sort this thing out without a
true confessions
scene.

Wesley shook his head, oblivious to Angel’s inner dialogue. “A background check revealed nothing.”

They both looked at him in surprise. He shrugged slightly. “I had time today. I was being thorough.”

“You were being anal-retentive,” Gunn said, but his voice had taken on a more thoughtful tone.

A trio of girls on skates zipped by, giggling as if by mutual accord. The ice-cream slurping manly men paused the conversation to watch.

“We ought to get back to the streets,” Gunn said, still watching.

“I’d like to point out that we
are
on the street,” Wesley said, also watching. Fumbling without looking, he threw his ice-cream-smeared paper napkin away.

“Good thing Cordelia’s not here,” Angel said, with less watching than the others, and more imagining of Cordelia’s disdain. More distraction by…whatever-it-was.

“What?” Gunn snorted. “Like she doesn’t do her share of ogling? She just uses her magazines.”

“What is it about that?” Angel asked, thinking not of Cordelia at all—but of the false Angel. “Does she really admire those people, that life?”

Wesley turned to look at him with some surprise. “Not as much as she thinks she does, I imagine. Naturally that lifestyle has a certain allure to it…but when push comes to shove, she’s got a good head on her shoulders.”

“Yeah,” Gunn said. “She knows what’s important.”

Angel said, “What?”

As one, they turned looks of suspicion on him.

“Hey,” he said. “It’s just a question. A fair question. What you admire in people…
who
you admire.”

“Ah,” Wesley said. “Having trouble with what she said about that fellow who’s imitating you?”

“Don’t go looking for any deep meaning,” Angel said, which they all knew meant
yes
. “Just answer the question. Who do
you
admire?”

They looked at him a moment. Then Gunn said, “Lots of people. Like people from my neighborhood who work to make it better. Annie, for one. She makes some bad choices—like that whole Wolfram and Hart fund-raiser thing—but she has heart. She walks her talk.”

Angel raised an eyebrow at Wesley, who said, “My turn, is it? All right then. Barney Clark.”

Gunn said, “Who?”

“The first man to have an artificial heart,” Wesley said. “He knew it wouldn’t save him. But he was going to die, anyway, so he did it for all the people who would be helped by it, not for himself.”

Angel considered them for a moment, while as if by unspoken agreement they left the Baskin-Robbins storefront and headed back to the dark corner where they’d stashed their weapons. Angel shook his head. “This fake me…it’s just not right. He’s either got the wrong guy, or he’s imitating me for all the wrong reasons.”

“So?” Gunn said easily. “You’ll find him and you’ll stop him. The end.”

More understanding, Wesley said quietly, “This young man may know nothing of your history. He may simply admire what he sees today.”

“Who I was and who I am…those aren’t two separate things,” Angel said.

“I know that,” Wesley said, still quiet, still understanding. “But he may not.”

Angel glanced at Gunn. “I guess I’ll find him and I’ll stop him. Then he’ll know.”

Behind a garbage bin, beside an alley squatter, they collected their weapons. Not things to carry on the street…not when the street was still full of light and people. They tipped the alley squatter for watching the weapons—well, mainly for not rushing out to sell them—and headed toward downtown. “Maybe we should split up,” Wesley suggested, even as his phone rang.

He answered it, listened for a moment, and then moved the phone away from his mouth to murmur an aside to Gunn and Angel. “It’s Cordelia,” he said. “She’s had another—I
am
listening, Cordelia. You’re sure it was MacArthur Park—?
Near
the park. The post office?”

He muttered a few soothing words Angel could have heard if he’d tried; already they were headed back for the GTX. When he finally tucked his phone away, he shook his head. “This is taking quite a toll on her,” he said. “Whatever’s inspiring this rash of visions, we’d better figure it out fast.”

“What’re the goods on this one?” Gunn asked, casually hopping over the side of the convertible and into the backseat.

“She says it’s the guy with the bowling ball bag—and another of our unidentified demons. Or rather, that it
will
be. I’m not sure how much time we have.”

“We’ll get there,” Angel said grimly enough to draw a look from Wesley—but only until he accelerated away from the curb, leaving Gunn to whoop in a sarcastic-sounding tone and Wesley to clutch the door frame as he sank back into the seat. Down South Alvarado they went, until they hit Seventh and took a sharp turn, the outside wheels definitely light on the ground. A quick couple of blocks and they rolled into the empty parking lot near the post office, parking slantways across three spaces.

“Officer Friendly wouldn’t approve,” Gunn said sternly, jumping out of the car.

“Officer Friendly seems to be missing this party,” Angel said, barely paying attention as he went into hunting mode—listening with the full scope of his hearing, fully attuned to the noises of the night. The ones that belonged, he ignored…and the ones that didn’t…

…Like that harsh if distant scuff of shoe leather against asphalt…

“This way,” he said, voice low, already moving. Heading between two close-set buildings, spilling out onto Bonnie Brae…he hesitated, heard a muffled word, and lit into full run, curving back into the next alley down and feeling himself go fang-face in the process. Not caring. Barging full speed between the two creatures scuffling in the alley and turning back on them with no plan at all—and not caring. Behind him—far behind him—Wesley shouted something. Something temperate, no doubt, something wise and restrained.

Not caring.

Just for once to feel again the unrestricted swell of strength and freedom and the power that was his. Uncontrolled…magnificent fury. Two beings were on the ground before him, each struggling to regain his feet. One a human, carrying a heavy leather bag…it should have meant something to him. The other not human, waving an extra appendage around as it attempted to regain its balance—and that should have meant something to him too.

It didn’t.

He knew only that he wanted to kill them both…and that he could.
But…

Heeding some tiny voice of sanity, he turned on the creature. Fellow demon. The thing roared something at him, met him in mid-charge; for a moment, they grappled like football players.

The creature’s neck was thick and stumpy…well-muscled.

Angel broke it.

The human was nowhere to be seen. Angel took a step toward the back of the alley, casting his gaze along the roof tops. A scent on the breeze…familiar blood. He thought he saw a glimpse of dark, spiky hair, just visible as someone peered over the roof; he heard a definite swish of leather. A familiar noise to someone who so often wore a leather duster himself.

“Angel!”

That was Wesley…coming to a stop in the alley behind him. Annoyed, and about to demand an explanation.

Anger swelled—

No.
Wesley was his friend. Gunn…Gunn didn’t want to be his friend, but he was a colleague. Angel closed his eyes, fought to find his center—the eye of calm in his personal hurricane. That calm which tucked his demon aspects safely away once again, so he could turn and face Wesley and Gunn without triggering wary suspicion.

“What
happened?
” Wesley said, breathless from his futile attempt to keep up.

“Angel hogged all the fun, that’s what happened,” Gunn said, coming to a stop on the other side of Angel, looking up to see whatever it was that had held Angel’s attention.

Wesley scanned the alley, found nothing, returned his frowning gaze to Angel. “What was that it said…er, roared?”

Angel shrugged. “Nothing in any language I speak,” he said. “Does it matter?”

“One never knows.” Wesley glanced at Gunn, his frown turning to more of a puzzled expression as he sniffed the air. “Do you smell…it seems familiar…”

“Oh yeah,” Angel said. “Watch where you step.”

Gunn glanced down, jumping aside. “Hold on, isn’t this—”

“The same substance I cleaned off the hotel floor just a few days ago,” Wesley said dryly. “It would seem that whatever they are, they’re still after the faux Angel’s client—whoever
he
is. I expect he’s around here somewhere. Or
was
.”

“Faux Angel,” Gunn snorted. “I like that.”

Angel eased down the alley, scouring old asphalt and tufty weeds and broken glass for any small piece of something that might actually mean something. Faux Angel.
He
didn’t like it at all. And he had to squelch annoyance at what he knew was coming next from Wesley, reminding himself once again that the feeling wasn’t all coming from within.

It couldn’t be. He couldn’t handle it if this was all
him
—

“Was it necessary to kill it?” Wesley said. “It might have led us to our impersonator.”

“
My
impersonator,” Angel said. “It was a demon, Wesley. It was attacking someone. I didn’t stop to ask why—I just stopped it. I can’t help it they’re so damn fragile.”

“I rather doubt that they are,” Wesley said, packing a lot of meaning behind it:
You were out of control.
“And under the circumstances, I think it’s more important than ever that we try to identify its language, and what it might have said. Especially since”—and he cast Angel another look in the darkness—“we had no chance to get another look at it.”

Gunn stared off back down the alley. “How about we just take a look at that one?”

Hardly more than a dark lump in the night that blended against the deep shadows of the building, something moved.

“It’s over near the remains of the first one,” Wesley murmured—although when he took a step, the dark lump moved sharply, alert and wary.