Redemption

by Mel Odom

  “They went to her place last night,” Angel

  said, “and they killed the security guard on

  duty there.”

  The man’s eyes never lost their conviction. “No. My brothers would never do that.”

  “They did.”

  The prisoner’s voice thickened. “No. We are sworn. Sworn to protect lives. We destroy demons; we are not life-takers like you. Our missions are sanctioned by our deity, made clear by the training we are provided, made holy by our prayers.”

  “You drove a truck through the wall of a diner.”

  “There are things in this world and in others that a mortal and even immortal mind cannot know,” the man responded.

  Angel saw the conviction in the madman’s gaze. He believes what he’s saying.

  “She’s your death come walking,” the man promised hoarsely, trying to hold Angel’s gaze even as the trustee slapped a pair of cuffs on him, locking his hands behind his back. “You can’t trust her.”

  Angel™

  Angel: City Of

  Angel: Not Forgotten

  Angel: Redemption

  Available from POCKET PULSE

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Historian’s Note: This story takes place during the first season.

  An Original Publication of POCKET BOOKS

  POCKET PULSE, published by

  Pocket Books, a division of Simon & Schuster Inc.

  1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

  ™ and © 2000 by Twentieth Century Fox Film

  Corporation. All rights reserved.

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Pocket Books, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

  ISBN: 0-7434-3281-9

  First Pocket Pulse printing June 2000

  POCKET PULSE and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster Inc.

  To Lisa Clancy, for the friendship and

  professionalism, and for believing.

  You make this work fun and exciting.

  Acknowledgments

  To my son, Shiloh, who simply wanted to see his name in an Angel book because he thinks it’s a good show. (He wants to learn the David Do-Wop Dance!)

  To Dr. Gary Wade, friend and optometrist, who keeps me working in spite of the endurance marathons I put my eyes through.

  To Drs. Donna and Brian Johnson, who take care of the whole family.

  And to Coach Eddie Gossman, for building memories for the eleven-to-twelve-year-old Tar Heels football, basketball, and baseball teams.

  PROLOGUE

  Goose bumps suddenly covered the back of Whitney Tyler’s neck. It was a feeling she’d gotten before, one she recognized from other times when she’d been spied on by a half-dozen stalkers and thousands of fans. The cool air blowing from the air-conditioning vents inside the Mitsubishi 3000 GT suddenly felt positively glacial.

  Cars, trucks, and vans on either side of her sports car jockeyed for position on the L.A. freeway. Whitney wondered if the uneasy feeling had been caused by one of the nearby drivers suddenly recognizing her as Honor Blaze, her television series alter ego.

  She had a tendency to draw attention, she knew. She stood five feet ten inches tall in her stocking feet and had red-gold hair that spilled past her shoulders. She wore the Honor Blaze look: black leather pants, platform sandals, and a dark magenta knit top that showed off her figure. The black duster that pulled the look all together lay in the passenger seat.

  Whitney put on her left turn signal, checked the traffic, and flowed into the next lane. Taillights flared ruby flames in front of her without warning, and she had to step hard on the brakes to avoid a fender-bender. Breathing rapidly, she glanced in the rearview mirror and watched as the SUV behind her shrilled to a matching pace less than a foot away.

  The driver laid on the horn angrily, and the sound filled the car.

  “What’s that?” Gunnar Schend demanded at the other end of the cell phone she held. He was the producer of the Honor Blaze series.

  “I cut a guy off changing lanes. He was honking to show me the new Uzi he got for Christmas.”

  “Hint: not laughing. Ergo: not funny.”

  Whitney checked the traffic around her, peering into the dark car interiors sporadically illuminated by dashboard lights and the cars following too close. When she glanced into the rearview mirror, she saw a big wrecker truck suddenly cut in front of the SUV that had dropped back behind her. The huge hook at the back of the wrecker swung violently from side to side as it closed on her.

  Whitney spotted a break in the traffic on her right. She put her foot down hard on the accelerator, and the fuel-injected engine pushed her back into the seat.

  Even as she pulled into the other lane, she saw the wrecker change lanes behind her, having to fit in behind an older full-sized sedan. The hook at the back swung wildly.

  “Whitney?” Schend called.

  “Someone’s following me.” Whitney kept both hands locked on the steering wheel.

  Without warning, the wrecker surged past the sedan, pulled in front of it, and rammed the Mitsubishi’s rear.

  The sports car briefly skidded out of control, crossing halfway into the lane to the left. Whitney pulled hard on the wheel, narrowly avoiding colliding with an RV decked out in orange running lights and an illuminated picture of Elvis across the back.

  “Whitney!” Schend called.

  “He rammed the car!” She glanced in the rearview mirror and saw the wrecker gaining speed again. Her taillights reflected from the mud-splattered chrome bumper.

  She cursed, something she seldom did, and put her foot down on the accelerator as she steered to the right and pulled onto the shoulder. She laid on the horn frantically, trying to breathe even though it felt as if her lungs were squeezing shut.

  The wrecker followed her, roaring up again and slamming against her. The Mitsubishi rolled awkwardly and slewed across the shoulder, butting up against a pickup and caroming off. Whitney struggled to keep control. The sports car slammed against the guardrail and threw up a cloud of sparks against the passenger window as metal ground on metal.

  She turned onto the next exit ramp, not even knowing for sure where she was. The sports car wobbled as it slewed around.

  The wrecker remained in her rearview mirror, rocking on two wheels as it made the turn. One of the headlights had broken from the impacts, giving the vehicle a cyclopean appearance.

  Only popping static came over the cell phone. Whitney didn’t know if Schend had disconnected or the phone had been damaged. She put her foot on the accelerator again, streaking for the fluorescent oasis of the truck stop and diner at the end of the off-ramp.

  Whitney ignored the stop sign posted at the end of the off-ramp. She skidded onto the highway, drawing a blast of compressed indignation and anger from a passing eighteen-wheeler that just managed to change lanes and miss her.

  Lights flooded the Mitsubishi’s interior without warning. Whitney glanced up just before the wrecker smashed into the side of the car. The seat belt restraint tightened between her breasts as the wrecker pushed the sports car into the oncoming lane.

  Whitney cut the wheel hard left and floored the accelerator. The car ripped away from the wrecker, and she steered toward the truck stop again. She watched in frozen horror as the wrecker overtook her, coming up rapidly on the side. The smashed grille hung loose, dragging along the concrete and spewing sparks.

  Whitney held on to the steering wheel tightly. In the darkness gathered in the
wrecker’s cab, only the driver’s silhouette was visible. The man seemed huge, deep chested with a large head.

  As soon as the wrecker pulled abreast of the sports car, still fifty yards or more from the diner, the driver yanked fiercely on the wheel and slammed into Whitney. Her car lost traction and slid across the concrete till it hit the curbing protecting the fueling area from the diner’s parking lot. The wheels on her car’s passenger side caught against the curbing, stopping her. But the momentum flipped the car on its side.

  Belted into her seat, Whitney watched as the view through her cracked windshield revolved. She glanced through the rear window and saw the wrecker coming around in a wide loop, setting up to take another run at her. She clawed at the seat-belt release and fell against the top of her car. Desperately she slithered across the cramped interior and through the broken passenger window.

  She stumbled toward the diner. Several men lined the huge plate-glass windows in front of her, staring in disbelief as the wrecker bore down on the overturned car.

  Whitney was through the diner’s front door by the time the crunch! of the impact overtook her. She didn’t slow, certain the wrecker wouldn’t stop.

  In the next heartbeat the diner’s front exploded in flying glass and broken wood shrapnel as the wrecker smashed the crushed Mitsubishi through ahead of it. The car and wrecker came halfway into the diner, ripping up the tiled floor, flattening tables and chairs, and knocking people from in front of it like tenpins.

  A chair slid across the floor and tangled with Whitney’s feet, knocking her to the ground. She banged her chin hard enough to make her arms and legs go rubbery. She rolled over and watched the wrecker door screech open.

  The driver dropped to the debris-strewn floor. He stood over six feet and looked almost half as wide. Handmade black clothes lent him a regal air. His unlined face looked young, but the hate in his volcanic blue eyes was old. His blond hair hung to his shoulders.

  He carried a wooden stake in his right hand.

  Whitney struggled to get up, forced her way to her feet in creaking inches. Just as she started to put one foot in front of the other, the big man seized her by one shoulder and flattened her against the wall near the pay phone. He placed all his weight against her.

  He drew the wooden stake back, preparing to drive it through her heart.

  Whitney couldn’t defend herself, couldn’t even scream. She lifted her hands, knowing he could hammer the stake through them like they weren’t even there.

  “It’s time to go,” he said. “Evil won’t be tolerated. I will show you the Light.”

  A young trucker lunged from the whirling dust and black smoke now filling the diner. He grabbed the man in black’s right wrist and succeeded in deflecting the blow to the wall beside Whitney’s face. The stake sank inches into the wall, and the impact knocked the pay phone loose.

  Shrugging almost effortlessly, the man in black backhanded the young trucker hard enough to lift him from his feet. He reached for the stake again, holding Whitney without strain as she tried to kick free and pull his hand from her shoulder.

  A leather-clad biker stepped up behind the man in black. The biker swung a long, steel tire tool like Mark McGuire swinging for the fences, hitting the man in black behind the knee.

  Bone broke with a dulled thump. The man in black collapsed, still yanking at the stake embedded in the wall. His grip on Whitney loosened only marginally.

  The biker rammed the tire tool up under the man in black’s chin, pressing hard against his throat to keep him in place. “Not another move, Clyde.” He glanced at the CHP officer just getting to his feet with his pistol in hand. “You gonna take care of this, or do I gotta gift wrap it for you, too?”

  “Make no mistake, son,” the officer said, pointing his weapon at the man in black, “I’ll shoot you dead if I have to.”

  Reluctantly the man in black rolled over.

  The officer looked at the biker and held up the handcuffs. “Know how to use these?”

  The biker grinned. “Used to play with my daddy’s all the time.”

  “Make ’em tight.” The officer threw the handcuffs over, and the biker cinched them onto the man in black’s wrists. Keeping his weapon aimed, the officer lifted the radio mike from his shirt and quickly called the situation in. When he was finished, he looked Whitney over carefully. “Why’d he come at you like that?”

  “He thinks I’m a vampire,” Whitney croaked. “But I’m not. I just play one on TV.”

  CHAPTER ONE

  “Man, this is so lame,” Doyle said.

  Drawn from the dark thoughts that often claimed so much of his attention, Angel glanced over at his companions. They were at a booth in Winkle’s, a sports pub only a few blocks from the office.

  The bar was wedged between a pawnshop and a Chinese laundry that ran a gambling book in the back. Most of the bar’s clientele used Winkle’s as a waystation, a place to spend part of their occasional winnings or part with some of the money they’d gotten from items hocked at the pawnshop on the way to the laundry to pay off their latest debts.

  The standard in Winkle’s tended toward self-service. The few hostesses used their wait positions to advertise and barter other skills that couldn’t be found in the Classifieds. It was seedy and dark, the smoke-stained windows hardly letting any of the light in from the street. Where other taverns sold atmosphere, Winkle’s sold pauses between desperation and panic attacks.

  Dark haired and lovely, Cordelia Chase sat to Angel’s right on the inside of the tavern booth on the business section of the newspaper because she’d refused to sit on the aged and scarred vinyl without some kind of protection.

  She wore designer jeans and a dark blue jacket over a white crop-top that showed off the bronze tan and belly. She was in chic mode, waiting to get noticed by any producers slumming in L.A.’s dives. A copy of Variety lay open before her like an altar.

  “It’s not lame,” Cordelia said irritably. “Sitting in a sleazy bar waiting for vampires to show up is kind of — well, kind of —”

  “Actually, it does beat sitting at home in a crummy little apartment watching the wallpaper peel.” Alan Francis Doyle sipped on his beer, then noticed the warning scowl Cordelia gave him. He put a hand over his heart. “It was my own crummy little apartment I was speaking of there, Cordelia. Not yours.”

  Cordelia didn’t let up on the scowl.

  Realizing he’d committed yet another faux pas, Doyle hurried on, almost choking as he swallowed and tried to speak at the same time. “I don’t mean to say that your apartment is crummy. Avantgarde, now there’s a term I would use.” He tried to look earnest. Blessed with Irish charm and boyish good looks despite the mean streets Doyle’s life had taken him through, the earnest look was an easy one for him to pull off.

  Of course, Angel mused, if the recipient of that look knows it’s only one of several Doyle can pull off, it kind of loses its zing.

  Cordelia smiled, a little. “Do you even really know what avant garde means?”

  “Of course I do,” Doyle returned defensively.

  “Avant garde is French. You know, one of the romance languages.”

  Doyle nodded enthusiastically. “Exactly. Just like Gaelic.”

  “Gaelic isn’t a romance language.”

  “Then,” Doyle said, grinning, “might I suggest you’ve never enjoyed the true pleasures of the language.”

  Cordelia counted languages off on her fingers. “French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, and Russian; those are the five romance languages.”

  “Russian isn’t a romance language.” Doyle’s black hair looked as if he’d raked his fingers through it to straighten it a couple hours ago and made his sallow complexion stand out even more. His green eyes shone in the darkness gathered in the bar. He wore dark slacks and a checked green shirt with a rumpled collar. At the moment his half-Brachen demon heritage didn’t show at all. “The only thing the Russians have ever been romantic about is vodka.”

&nbs
p; “Kind of like the Irish have been romantic about Scotch,” Cordelia quipped.

  “Now, there’s a mistake you should never make again,” Doyle said. “A true Irishman doesn’t drink Scotch. He drinks a good Bushmills or Jameson. See, the Scottish dry their malts over an open peat fire, which gives it that smoky taste that hangs in the back of the throat that you just can’t get rid of. The Irish, being sophisticated and naturally more intelligent, dry their malts in closed kilns, making for that smooth, natural flavor that’s so magical.”

  Cordelia rolled her eyes.

  “Irish monks in the sixth century took themselves off on a little trip to the Middle East thinking they were going to learn how to distill perfumes,” Doyle said. “Instead, they came back with the recipe for good Irish sipping whiskey. They called it Uisce Beatha, the Water of Life.”

  “Guys,” Angel said quietly, interrupting the sometimes seemingly endless argument that went on between the two of them. They were his partners in the investigation agency he currently operated, and his friends. But there were days — well, mostly nights — when even he was hard-pressed to put up with them.

  Cordelia and Doyle glanced at him. “What?” they said together.

  “We’re supposed to be keeping a low profile here,” Angel explained patiently.

  Cordelia looked around. “Actress though I may be, even I couldn’t go this low.”

  Back in her Sunnydale days, Angel knew, Cordelia Chase’s family had lived in a moneyed cocoon. She’d never known want until her father had lost the family wealth to the IRS. Once the social background was gone, Cordy had migrated to L.A., hoping to find her future in Hollywood. Working at the investigation agency was generally the only thing keeping the wolf from her door these days.

  “You know,” Angel said quietly, “I really could handle this alone.” Besides being tall and broad shouldered, he was a vampire with more than two hundred and fifty years on the clock. There wasn’t much he hadn’t seen and had to deal with, and tonight’s planned excursion wasn’t that threatening. Dressed in a black turtleneck and slacks, wearing a black trenchcoat, he seemed like one of the shadows in Winkle’s come to life.