by Various
“Tell you what,” Angel said. “You summon them from the convertible. We’re leaving now.”
He dragged the protesting prince down the stairs.
“Okay, wasn’t someone supposed to meet me here and tell me who’s who in this crowd and all like that?” Gunn demanded of Mr. Mbong as he and Cordelia were escorted on a red carpet into the exquisitely appointed house.
“Your protocol advisor has been detained, alas,” the man announced, “but here, Highness, is one very familiar and dear to you.” He looked at Gunn as if to say, Get it?
With a flourish, the man gestured to a tall, chocolate-skinned woman in a short red camisole and sheer black harem pants. She sashayed toward them as if her hips were made of ball bearings.
Danger, danger, Will Robinson, Cordelia thought.
The woman did the forehead-on-the-floor thing until Gunn said, “Rise.”
“You Majestee,” she cooed. Very French.
“Oui,” Gunn replied.
“Akhmed, alas, ’e ees sick. ’E ’as a mad cow disease.” She got up from her cleavage-displaying position on the floor and slithered up to standing position, all the better for Gunn’s eyes to pop out as she stood up very straight. “Ah will serve in his place tonight as your protocol aide.”
“Not liking this,” Cordelia muttered through her teeth.
“Send your concubine away,” the woman suggested, making pouty-face at Gunn by pushing out her lower lip. She smiled at Cordelia. “There is plenty to eat. You look ’ungry.”
Angry, or hungry? Either way, back on Pylea I could be a very mad cow princess and I could get what I wanted. And I am not going to let some escapee from Rugrats in Paris maneuver me away from Gunn.
“She’s good here,” Gunn told the Frenchwoman.
Harem pants launched into rapid-fire French.
When she came to the end of whatever she was saying, Cordelia cleared her throat softly.
“Oui,” Gunn said hopefully.
“C’est bon!” the woman chirruped. She clapped her hands and said to Gunn, “S’il vous plaît.”
Gunn followed as she guided them to a long table laden with shellfish—lobster, crab legs, shrimp the size of Cordelia’s fist. Cordy’s mouth watered. The woman picked up a plate and began filling it, pausing at each dish to inquire of His Royal Highness if he cared for any…or so it appeared to Cordelia. Whom no one was feeding and everyone was ignoring.
Then a man in white robes and a fez appeared next to the table, laying a scimitar on a silver platter and smiling brilliantly at Gunn as if for his approval.
On the pointy end of the weapon, there was an eyeball.
The guests applauded politely, with a few “ooh’s” and “aah’s” thrown in…and a few slightly green faces that probably mirrored Cordelia’s.
“Au jus?” the woman inquired.
“I’m going to be sick,” Cordelia whispered.
Mr. Mbong murmured to Gunn, “Prince Govinda is very fond of goat eyeball.”
“Ah.” Gunn couldn’t stop staring at the eyeball.
“Hey,” Cordelia said, “On Pylea, I was gonna have to comshuck.”
“Well, I’m afraid I’m gonna have to upchuck.” He eyed the eyeball. “Comshuck guy turned out to be a totally good-looking guy you wanted to comshuck. No good can come of this eyeball.”
“Ah,” said a voice. Gunn, Cordelia, and Mr. Mbong turned to see the French ambassador looking at Gunn looking at the eyeball.
“He’s happy for you,” Cordelia whispered. “That you get an eyeball to eat.”
Gunn fidgeted with his many bangle bracelets. “Can’t I be too full?”
“Then it would have to be something big, like a whale eyeball…ew,” Cordelia muttered.
“They’re awfully excited about this,” Gunn said slowly. Then he turned to Mr. Mbong and whispered, “How come the prince doesn’t have a food taster?”
The man looked abashed as he whispered back, “Alas, he did. It was the man who was murdered earlier this evening.”
Nice of you to mention that.
Also, very convenient.
“Well, I ain’t eatin’ nothing that hasn’t been tested,” Gunn said.
Mr. Mbong’s eyebrows raised and lowered several times. “But you will cause an international incident if you do not eat this delicacy. It has been specially prepared for you.”
Gunn crossed his arms. The French ambassador drew back, astonished. “How many usually come in a serving?” Gunn asked. “I mean, is it like sushi, where you get a certain number of eyeballs?”
“Oh, Majestee, you are so cautious,” said the hussy in the harem pants.
Cordelia whispered to Gunn, “Make her eat it.”
“My beauty, I give the honor of the first eyeball to you,” Gunn said to the other woman, just as another servant in a white robe and fez handed him a flute of what looked to be champagne. Gunn hoisted the glass and said, “Here’s looking at you.”
He swigged down the champagne.
The woman was so moved by the prince’s generosity that tears welled in her eyes. She said, “Oh, Majestee, ah do not deserve this honaire.”
With her dainty, manicured hand, she plucked the eyeball off the end of the scimitar and popped it into her mouth. She bit down.
She keeled over.
She hit the floor.
Panic ensued as the ambassador called for his private physician, who ordered some servants to carry the stricken woman—who looks pretty darn dead to me—to the ambassador’s quarters so he could attend to her. There was something in the way the ambassador said it, in French—a phony kind of mock-innocent lilt that screamed alarms in Cordelia’s mind.
Gunn must have sensed it, too. He grabbed the scimitar off the table, brandishing it at the ambassador and yelled, “That eyeball was an evil eyeball! It was poisoned!”
Everyone in the room froze and stared at Gunn. The ambassador shouted at him in French.
“He says ‘how dare you,’” Cordelia translated. “Also…‘attack him!’”
Then, in a swirl of morphing, dripping, melting faces, many of the party guests transformed into extremely muscular green-skinned demons with pointy ears and heads that were bald except for a topknot of green hair that cascaded down their backs. Their teeth and fingernails were sharp and scimitar-shaped, and they all rushed at Gunn, Cordy, Mr. Mbong, and the bodyguards. The ambassador hung back with the humans, who began to race from the room.
“They are the forces of Duke Narthala!” Mr. Mbong cried. “The Kaf mountain jinn!”
Then Prince Govinda’s bodyguards morphed into yellow-skinned demons with huge purple mouths, and Mr. Mbong changed too.
Gunn had no time to register surprise. “How do I kill them?” he yelled, as he slammed his fist into the face of the demon who had served him the eyeball.
“The same as humans!” Mr. Mbong cried.
Cordelia picked up an ice sculpture off the table and whacked another demon. Then she grabbed a chafing dish and hurled it at the third attacker.
Gunn got down to business, body-slamming two Kaf demons out of his way and handily decapitating a third.
The now-demonic Mr. Mbong scurried under the buffet table, tangled his legs in the white cloth, and pulled all the food onto the floor with him. Sauces and crab legs went flying…and several more goat’s eyeballs rolled between Cordelia’s feet.
“Ew, ew, ew!” Cordelia yelled, trying not to step on them.
From beneath the table, Mr. Mbong stuck out his head and announced, “I am translating from our native demonic tongue for you. The ambassador had the eyeball poisoned. He is trying to overthrow the regime!” He paused, listening, and added, “Oh, Prince Govinda, how could you?”
“How could he what?” Cordelia asked, as she kneed another oncoming demon. The assailant doubled up and fell to his knees.
“Prince Govinda stole the Lamp of the Genie from his father and brought it here,” Mr. Mbong told them. “The French ambassador and Duke Narthala
have stolen it in turn, from the hotel!”
“Christmas bonus!” Cordelia shouted. Then she plucked a serving knife from the mess on the floor, winced, and cut off her dress at the thighs so she would be able to fight better.
“Oh, this is capital! Capital!” Prince Govinda cried as Angel floored it.
They were going up the 10, swerving in and out of the traffic, gaining on the biker demons with each passing mile. The demons rode like, well, demons, as they edged out innocent bystanding vehicles, rode the shoulder, and caused crash after crash as they fled.
“This is a hunt!” the prince added. “I am a superb hunter. I have downed many elephants.”
“They’re endangered,” Angel bit off. There. He recognized the demon who had held the lamp above his head. It was a good bet that he still had possession of it.
Angel zeroed in on him, dogging him, and the demon looked back fearfully over his shoulder.
I’m right, Angel thought. He has it.
“Faster! Faster!” Prince Govinda shouted, beating his hands on the dashboard.
Angel clamped his jaw shut so he wouldn’t waste precious time responding to the moron…
…until the man flipped open his glove box and asked brightly, “Do you have a gun? A shotgun, perhaps?”
“Shut that. And shut up,” Angel growled. He was on the verge of morphing.
“What did you say to me?”
And in that moment, it was the prince who did the morphing, into a yellow-skinned demon with purple eyes, lips, and porcine nostrils.
Angel blinked. “You…you’re not human,” he said.
“Yes, I am a demon. We are all demons in Bodisahtva. Did you not realize this?”
Angel said nothing. He had returned his attention to Lamp Guy, who was shrieking down the freeway as fast as his Harley could take him.
“We’re not making any headway here,” Cordelia said, just as Gunn decapitated another demon. “Oops, wrong, sorry.”
With the help of Prince Govinda’s bodyguards, they had somehow managed to cut a swath from the hors d’oeuvre table to somewhere near the main entrance. But Gunn was getting very tired, and Cordy was about to collapse.
Mr. Mbong was in the other room under the table, cowering in terror, which was just as well because he was so scared he had forgotten how to speak English.
Everyone was fighting, and Gunn figured the only reason they’d made it this far was because of all the magick Wesley had thrown his way.
Then there was a roaring and a grinding, and Gunn realized it was a car. From past adventures with Wesley, he prayed it was English driving the limo to their rescue. He gestured to Cordelia, shouting, “Come on!”
Tires squealed; a horn blared “shave and a haircut,” and the door crashed open.
Wesley it was.
Gunn had no idea how many bodyguards they still had left—a few had fallen valiantly—but the loyal yellow demons held their ground, giving Gunn, Wesley, and Cordy a chance to get away.
Wesley squealed the hell out of there.
About that time, the limo phone rang.
Cordelia picked it up. “Angel?” she asked breathlessly.
“It is I, Govinda!” cried the voice on the other end. “We are running the Kaf to the ground.”
“You stole a lamp!” Cordelia cried.
“That is very true,” Govinda told her, “but Angel and I will retrieve it shortly!”
“The French ambassador tried to poison you,” Cordelia said. “With a bad eyeball.”
“Ah, such treachery,” the prince said. “Well, I must go. I have battles to win. The hotel is a disaster,” he added breezily. “Dead bodies everywhere. Good-bye!”
He hung up. Cordelia looked at Gunn. “They’re going to get the lamp,” she said.
“I say we go back to the hotel,” Gunn suggested. “If Angel needs us, he’ll call there.”
Wesley nodded. “A sound plan.”
“Soundest one so far,” Gunn grumbled.
Angel and Govinda chased the bikers all the way to the Santa Monica Pier, which was decorated for a California Christmas. The boardwalk rides were going strong and a quartet dressed in Victorian costumes was singing “Jingle Bells.” There were lots of human beings strolling along, eating bags of popcorn and cotton candy, and having no idea what was going on until one brilliant soul cried out, “Someone’s shooting a movie!”
Such was the culture of Los Angeles that everyone politely gave the demon bikers and Angel a wide berth, a few primping in case they ended up as extras in a scene. That made it a lot easier to corner the bikers, who did not seem to want to sail off the pier on their bikes and land in the Pacific Ocean. One by one, the bikes ground to a halt at the very end of the pylons, and the enemy demons looked unhappy and frightened.
“Kaf die in water,” Prince Govinda told Angel. “As do my kind.”
Angel pulled the car to a halt, leaped out, and shouted at the prince, “Go around to the left. We’ll attack on two flanks.”
“Excellent, excellent,” the prince burbled. He began to sneak with theatrical stealth, lifting his knees high, then carefully placing his huge yellow feet down on the ground. Angel shook his head but said nothing.
They could have reached out and touched a number of the Kaf, who stood still and clicked their teeth like those wacky windup toys. But the Kaf who had stolen the lamp had ripped it from one of the saddlebags on his hog and was holding it high in the air.
Angel began to lose patience, and advanced.
“One step closer and I rub it!” he yelled.
“Not good, not good,” Govinda called to Angel. “We had better back off.”
Then, taking advantage of Angel’s moment to consider that, the prince launched himself at the demon with the lamp, throwing him to the ground. The others could only look on as their leader easily tossed the prince off himself, got to his knees, glared at both the Crown Prince of Bodisahtva and at Angel, and rubbed the lamp.
Angel braced himself.
A huge burst of energy shot from the lamp, like a firestorm wind, blowing and surging through the crowds and the concession stands. The waves at the end of the pier rose and crashed, sending droplets everywhere.
Smoke billowed from the lamp—huge, roiling clouds of it, dark gray and smelling of sulfur and patchouli.
An enormous face spread across the night sky, obliterating the moon and the star field, casting a pall over the glittering pier. It was demonic, with a huge mouth pulled into a rictus, narrow slanted eyes, and its ears and nose elongated to the point of parody.
The face glared down at the demons and people on the boardwalk. The Kaf looked completely stunned. Evidently whoever had told them to steal the lamp had provided sketchy operating instructions, if any. Govinda stood with his legs planted apart and his hands on his hips. Angel just waited, bracing himself for the destruction of Los Angeles.
The immense face said something in a language Angel did not know. Its voice rang and vibrated, and Angel spared his last thought for Cordy, Gunn, Fred, and Wesley, and hoped that they would be far enough away to survive whatever this thing was about to do.
For a moment there was silence. Then the prince threw back his head and began to laugh. The Kaf were baffled.
“Oh, this is rich!” the prince cried. “My father is a wily old bastard!”
“What’s going on?” Angel demanded.
The prince was wiping tears of laughter from his eyes. “He knew I would try to steal it.”
“How do you know?” Angel said.
“The face.” The prince raised a hand and gestured at it. “The lamp is a fake. The face is a joke. It basically said, as you would so quaintly put it, ‘Tag, you’re it.’”
Angel blinked at him.
Then he rushed the bikers. The one with the lamp went over the edge of the pier first. The second one followed within seconds.
By the time Angel had dispatched the fourth, the others were riding away on their motorcycles.
&nbs
p; Angel watched them go. In a tone of contemptuous disgust, he said to the prince, “Let’s go.”
“No!” Govinda protested. “The night is young! Let us go after them!”
“I’m going home,” Angel said.
He got into the convertible. The prince caught up with him, leaped in with a flourish, and said, “Let us go, then!”
Meanwhile, back at the hotel…
…Gunn put the finishing touches on the prince’s outfit, placing the oversized, elevator-looking turban on Govinda’s head.
It’s like decorating a Christmas tree, he thought, as he stood back to survey the prince in all his ostentatious glory.
The prince had commanded that the survivors of his delegation clean up the hotel, which they had done with amazing speed. It seemed that both species of demon evaporated like foam when they came into contact with water. Disposing of the bodies was the easiest of the operation, which included boarding some windows and the front door, and a lot of scrubbing.
Now his father had sent in his top security forces to “extract” his son and bring him home.
“I do not want to go,” the prince said for perhaps the two-dozenth time. He and all his lackeys had resumed their human shapes.
“All good things must end,” ventured Fred, who had returned from Caritas.
“Ah.” The prince beamed at her. “In my country, you would be a queen.”
“Hello? Me, too,” Cordelia grumbled. “In fact, already been a queen. Okay, a princess. But they didn’t have a queen. Princess was as high as they went.”
Wesley and Angel regarded the prince with less than Christmas spirit.
“You neglected to give us valuable information. You nearly cost us our lives,” Wesley said. He had been dressing the prince down and the prince had taken it remarkably well. He was still giddy from his and Angel’s adventure.
“However, you are still alive.” The prince preened and said to Fred, “You should have seen my prowess as I overcame the enemy. They were begging for mercy.”
Angel rolled his eyes but kept his silence.
“Wow,” Fred said, clearly impressed. “That must have been exciting.” She wrinkled her nose. “But, you know, a lot of your men, well, they died tonight.”
