by Nancy Holder
The guy shrugged.
“I don’t want to go clubbing anymore.” He threw an arm around her, leered, pawed a little. “I want to party right here.”
He made it clear what kind of party he was talking about. Angel kept his distance, but he stayed light on the balls of his feet. He’d known for at least two hours what was eventually going to go down. Here it was, and he was ready.
The girl wasn’t pleased by her date’s mauling. “Hey, back off.”
“‘Hey,’” the guy flung back at her, “shut up and die.”
And just as Angel had expected him to, the guy growled and morphed into a hideous, yellow-eyed, fang-toothed vampire. It grabbed the girl as its buddies morphed and grabbed her friend.
The women were too freaked even to scream as Angel stumbled toward them, apparently snockered.
“’Scusey, ’scusey, anybody seen my car? It’s big and shiny.” He looked around stupidly. “Why does it keep doing this to me?”
The vampire with the cash kept to the shadows as it warned Angel, “Piss off, pal.”
Angel stumbled up to the guy. He looked up at the vampire and registered drunken shock at its face. Frowning, Angel dug in his coat pocket and pulled out some dental floss.
“No,” he assured the vamp very earnestly, “I want you to have it.”
The vampire shoved the girl to the side. She hit her head against the parking lot wall.
Fang guy went for Angel, who decided it was time to drop the drunk act; he whipped his elbow up under its chin, knocking him clean over a car as the second of the three vamps charged. Angel got in a good spin kick, just before number three clocked him.
Angel and the third one traded vicious blows. The fight was brutal, savage, and over as Angel sent the vampire crashing into a pile of garbage, splintering some boxes in the fall.
The girl held her bleeding head as she and her girlfriend watched the carnage.
The second vampire got to its feet and charged. Vampire see, vampire do: Number three was no more original than his fangmates.
Angel stood, waiting calmly and efficiently as they rushed him from either side. He held his hands down behind his back and loosened his secret weapons.
Two sharp wooden stakes, attached to wooden spring devices on his wrists, ratcheted into his hands. He shot his arms out to either side, nailing both his adversaries at the same time.
Also simultaneously the two exploded in shrieking fireworks of dust.
Angel de-ratcheted his stakes. He picked up the sound of footsteps behind him and swung around as the last remaining vampire reared up with a metal trash can and smashed Angel in the face with it. It was not so much the pain as the pressure — that was what he told himself anyway — but he had a feeling he was going to be scraping metal off his teeth for at least a week.
Angel hit the ground, hard, his back to the two girls.
Now he was pissed off.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” he said to the trash-can vampire.
He went vampfaced as he grabbed his attacker. The other guy obviously had not realized Angel was one of his own — with slight modifications. Even now it was clear that he was confused.
Angel took advantage. He wailed on it, taking everything out on it; giving it holy hell, beating it to a bloody pulp before he flung it headfirst into the windshield of a fine European automobile. It knocked the monster out and set off the car alarm.
For a moment the only sound was the squeal of the alarm. Then the girl ran up behind Angel.
“Oh, my god, you saved our lives,” she said, gasping and shuddering.
Angel kept his back to the girls — to the one who had spoken, and to her friend, who looked like Buffy.
“Go home,” he said gruffly.
But the girl was not to be deterred. She dashed after him as her shock began to set back in.
“They were . . . oh, god . . . thank you —”
She grabbed his arm and pulled him around.
He still wore his true face.
His monster face.
A trickle of blood from her head wound edged down her neck. Angel’s vampire senses honed in on it, compelled him, pushed, taunted.
“Get away from me.” She would not recognize it as an agonized plea.
She started violently; quickly she backed away with her friend in tow.
Grimly Angel strode away as the girls clambered into their car. Without breaking stride, he grabbed a broken stake from the trash and dusted the semi-conscious vampire sprawled on the hood of the Mercedes.
He morphed back. Now he was just another guy walking down the nightstreets of Los Angeles.
Walking into shadow.
Remembering way too much . . . about how he got there, on that long and winding road. . . .
THE FALL
Galway, Ireland, 1753
Angelus was not in a good humor.
In fact, he was in the worst of humors.
His village, the Irish village of Galway, had nothing to recommend itself, sure and not for one of the gentry such as himself, one Master Angelus, eldest son of the family, and bored beyond withstanding.
He stomped the streets in a lather, never minding who knew. Though the streets were crowded, it was with people of no consequence: shoemakers and gossips, old women who had the temerity to smoke their long pipes on the streets. Barefoot children — so many everywhere — watching the basketmaker pushing his sally rods into the loam to start a fresh weave for an oyster basket.
A surfeit of monotony; an excess of ordinariness. Angelus was certain that the larger Irish cities — or even better, the English ones — held wonders denied folk of commoner towns and villages.
Never mind that his heart told him to run away. And forbear, all ye Saints, that he should dare to steal even one moment from his studies to sketch the face of a lovely peasant wench. His father was sure to be up in arms again, nattering on about the tuition money and where was the money for the cart he was to have procured?
It was moot now that Taffy Maclise had sworn on the honor of his betrothed that his horse could not lose, due to the fact that he had fed the creature a marvelous new concoction to lend it the speed of Mercury himself.
Cheating, some may call it. A sure thing, Taffy had insisted. But sure, and not sure enough: The nag had come in dead last. And then died, not to put too fine a point on it.
“And this night he’ll discover his own sweetheart, Brigid O’Donnel, in bed with another man,” Angelus muttered as he trudged down by the quay.
Then he smiled to himself.
And I’ll be the man to tup dear Brigid, he thought. Then he dismissed the thought as beneath him. She were a lady, and not the common sort he had taken to visiting. Even he had a few scruples left.
Besides, she was dark-headed, and he so did like the fairer ladies. Like Bess, his favorite, down at Mistress Burton’s Society House. It was a place no decent young gentleman would find himself . . . or rather, allow himself to be found.
Had he a piece of silver, he would spend it there this very night. He needed a bit of cheer — a pint in his drinking mug, a wench on his knee . . . and then even Galway could be bearable.
He was quayside now. The stink of fish rose strong and unforgettable. Fishing nets and masts reminded him of spiderwebs and spider’s legs, wrapping him up to feed off him later — once he finished school.
That was a doom if ever there was one.
“Angelus, me boyo!”
It was Sandy Burns, coming up from the fishing boats. He was Angelus’s favorite friend in all the world. The young man was natty-dressed in the very latest and already surveying the fishing fleet he would some day inherit from his uncle.
Angelus smiled and gave him a wave, slowing so that Sandy could catch up.
“It’s a blessing that I found you,” Sandy told him, slightly out of breath. “Your father’s got a letter from old Nicholl.” That being Paddy Nicholl, the schoolmaster. “And he’s out looking for you with a horse-wh
ip in his fist.”
Angelus sighed. “Of that I’ve no doubt. The meaning of which is, I cannot go home tonight.” He smiled at his friend. “Have you any money, Sandy? We can go and dine at Mistress Burton’s.”
Sandy laughed. “Me thoughts exactly, Angelus! I’ve a bit of money, but not a lot. Let’s game it up, see what we can win. And then you’ll have your Bess.”
“Done, and done,” Angelus said, laughing. “I’ve a yen for faro. I play that game like a wizard, I do.”
“Sure, and that’s true,” Sandy agreed. “We’ll have enough money for all the girls at Mistress Burton’s.”
“Just give me Bess,” Angelus said.
“A romantic, at your age,” Sandy chided.
The two friends went off.
And by dark they were fortune’s fools. Drink and bad wagers had devoured Sandy’s small purse. Bess was pouting and eager, but Angelus had not a penny in his pocket.
At that, Mistress Burton’s doorman, Old Tim, had thrown the two youths out, grumbling about dead-beats.
That was when Angelus caught the notion to steal his father’s table silver. Sandy went along with it, and they were off to do the deed.
But then the whiskey caught up with Sandy, and he lay in the street as drunk as a field hand on payday.
So Angelus bade him good night and wobbled on down the road himself.
That was when he saw her.
She was a lady, obviously of means, dressed in the height of fashion. He could almost hear the rustle of her silks and satins.
The jingle of coins in her purse.
The lilt of her voice as she sighed.
She headed alone into a dark alley. A gentleman he was: Concerned only for her safety, of course, he followed after. He was weaving slightly, but surely she would take no mind. He was young, and young men drink of an evening.
She stood in moonlight, and she was beautiful. A fair-headed woman in a ball gown, her lovely figure amply displayed.
His heart swelled and he approached, and she kept her ground, waiting for him.
He asked her what a lady of such station was doing unaccompanied in such a place.
She was coy, speaking of loneliness. Challenging him with words and glances to be bold.
He took up that gauntlet, aye, most eagerly.
And then she promised to show him the world, if only he would be brave. He was fair crazed with lust and the passion she promised.
She moved to him and touched his chest. His heart was pounding. She told him to close his eyes.
He did it.
In that moment he left Galway forever. He left the world behind.
Her teeth found his neck and tore it open, and she drank of him. He was frozen, locked in pain; unable to move, to cry out, to resist in any way.
As when she drew her nail across her own chest and held his face to her breast. Made him drink.
At first he was like to retch. But the taste . . . there was something in her blood; a magick, a power; she was a fairy, he decided, a changeling, a queen of the beyond . . . His young man’s heart pounded; his young man’s body thrummed with the thrill and the fear and the danger. He knew himself to be sore in danger of something bitter and demonic. It were a mortal danger; if he did not leave off this drinking of her, he would die more than once: His soul would die.
Deep inside himself, he knew this. He knew it and kept drinking.
And knew something else: That at one point as she had drunk of him, she would have let him go. He felt her grip relax, just slightly. Felt the sharp teeth raise a few breadths from his vein. It was his last chance. He knew it clearer than anything old Paddy Nicholl had ever schooled him in.
But his answer to the imperilment of his soul was this: He held her more tightly, urging her on. Perhaps later he would tell himself it was because she was so fair and lovely; or because her skin was like alabaster; or that her perfume had intoxicated him. That she had enchanted him to it.
Allowing her to defile him so was an unholy thing, but it was something more, something beyond schoolmasters and whores and getting drunk and playing whist and faro. It was past his experience, which made him all the hungrier for it to go on and on, until his soul fled to heaven . . . or, if his father were to be believed, straight to the everlasting fires of Hell.
His da was a big one for standing up for yourself. If you permitted bodily harm upon your person, you so much as did it yourself. Better to die of this a suicide than to grow old and doddering, mired in excruciating ordinariness.
So now he gulped down her blood, drawing it in hungrily as a statement that this was his choice. Though he couldn’t stop his drinking, he told himself that he wouldn’t stop. That it was his decision.
But the truth he would need one day was this: He couldn’t stop.
Her name was Darla, and she changed him into a vampire. She was his sire.
In his new world of shadow she became his constant companion, his mistress, his tempting, dark paramour. They ran together for centuries, hunting and playing, and she taught him the fierce, savage joy of what they were. The world of a thousand nights lay at their feet, and they were twin comets, soaring across fields, moors, and white cliffs, burning everything they touched.
What a universe! What a marvel! It was a glorious existence. It was more than he, a poorly-schooled lad from Galway, could ever have dreamed of, and there was nothing he wouldn’t do for Darla in order to repay her generosity.
All she asked of him was his company, which he was glad to give.
His life became sheer ecstasy.
Until it went so very wrong.
ACT ONE
“One hell of a city, man. Buckets of fun if you’re a nasty creature of some kind. A little hard on the humans. People get very lost; they get very dead and worse. Everyone’s got their demons.”
— Doyle
Darla, my sire.
I killed her to save Buffy.
The ultimate sin for a vampire to commit. Yet I didn’t hesitate.
Angel had been thinking about Darla for a couple nights. He found it within himself to mourn her. He knew what it was like to be changed; and as he had reminded himself before, she, too, had known a vampire’s fatal kiss and been transformed by it. The vampires who walked the night were hybrids of the Old Ones — the demons who had ruled the world before the coming of humanity — and of humankind itself. Darla had once been a lovely blond-haired girl.
Someone like Buffy.
No. Nobody was like Buffy.
In Los Angeles the streets of legitimate businesses rolled up early. Despite gossip in the tabloids, even the clubs catering to the young set were pretty much deserted by midnight. Actors had lines to learn, and they had to report for makeup and hair with the sunrise. Not surprisingly, the rhythm of the city revolved around “the talent.”
West Coast big-money players — the ones who ultimately supplied the talent with paychecks — had to stay current with financial markets all over the world — the Nikkei in Japan, the Bourse in Paris, and the New York Stock Exchange, to name but a few. So they were up at the crack of dawn — up at all hours — making trades and gathering valuable information. Like serious, working entertainment stars, they were early to bed, early to rise, and as a result, wealthy.
The late hours belonged to those who would never, ever hear a wake-up call: druggies, runaways, plain old bums. So did the strip joints, the dives, and the crack houses.
Angel walked past the hollow faces, keeping to himself like everybody else. He turned up a smaller street, which was a mix of old residential and small commercial buildings. Rumor had it that Nathaniel West, author of The Day of the Locust, had once lived around here. Angel didn’t know if that was true, but he’d read the novel. It was a harsh and unrelenting book about Hollywood and the grotesque lives of the neverwases who couldn’t accept that the magic simply wasn’t going to rub off on them.
He entered an old building in a row of old buildings. There were old offices on the ground
floor, apartments above. There was nothing inspiring or noteworthy about it.
He unlocked a door and walked inside. The office came with his apartment, but he had no need for it. He had no business, no storefront. Nevertheless, he had possession of an outer and an inner office space. Naturally, the place was forlorn and uncared-for. There was a beat-up desk, some chairs, and a couple of musty filing cabinets shoved into corners.
He had no idea what the previous tenant had used the office for; he had heard rumors that there had been some kind of boiler-room operation, a scam to persuade old people to buy aluminum siding for their houses or some nonsense. At any rate, it came cheap.
Angel shoved the deadbolt into place and made sure the door was locked. He crossed through the room to the back corner and entered an old elevator.
Although the other apartments were located on the higher floors, he didn’t push Up. Angel lived in the basement, farther away from the sun. It seemed that no matter where he lived, he was destined to spend a good portion of his time underground. Rather fitting, in a way. These days he felt more than dead, anyway.
He knew for a fact that many of the dead despaired. Others raged against the light.
Few were real, true zombies, mindlessly walking the tombways, stumbling around with no sense of direction.
Like him.
The elevator door opened, revealing a few more memories for Angel of Sunnydale. Some of his effects could be found in the clean and eclectically elegant space: a few of his own sketches among the tapestries and artworks. In a drawer a clutch of photographs of Buffy and her friends were turned face-down, but he knew them by heart.
A flower Buffy had once given him sat on the stack of pictures. It was faded, the petals like ash.
A bookcase held a number of arcane books such as Buffy’s Watcher, Giles, used to thumb through for hours on end, trying to keep the Slayer one step ahead of her supernatural adversaries. Angel had a couple of easy chairs, for someone whose life wasn’t easy.
Weapons.
He had lots of those.
He slipped off his coat and tossed it on a chair. With the semiconscious movements of one who has done something many, many times, he unfastened the two ratchet-stake devices strapped to his fore-arms and dropped them on a table. Other stakes, knives, and a fight ax cluttered the surface.
