by Various
“Take her away, Brother Thomas!” he said quickly. “Bernadette runs fast, for a donkey.”
The other monk inclined his head. “God bless you, Brother,” he said. “You will be made to suffer for this kindness, if Brother Joseph prevails.”
“God will prevail,” the young monk said, with a brief smile. He glanced over his shoulder as the monks and warriors spotted them and began to rush toward them. “Hurry.”
Quickly Brother Thomas turned to Elizabeth. He put his hands around her waist and lifted her onto the donkey. “Such was the flight of Our Lord’s Mother into Egypt,” he said to her. He turned to Angel. “I don’t know who you are, demon…”
“Angel,” Elizabeth said.
Then Brother Thomas got onto the donkey with the Anchoress, and the donkey started up at a decent clip.
Then a few of their adversaries came forward to do battle with Angel. But he could see that their hearts weren’t in it; they were terrified about what had happened. The devil was winning this hand, and they didn’t want to lose.
Gradually they lost the rhythm of the battle, giving Angel a chance to beat a fast retreat into the sarsen circle. They seemed even more afraid of Stonehenge than of him, he realized with some satisfaction.
Then Cordelia darted out from behind the largest of the stones. She still had her sword, and it was covered with blood.
Of the Druid guy there was no sign.
He said, “How’d you get out of there?”
She shook her head. “I honestly don’t know, Angel. A miracle?”
They chanted.
“Wait!” Angel heard him shout. “Wait for me!”
But it was too late.
The portal disgorged them back in Los Angeles.
Cordelia’s weapon fell to the ground.
Her cell phone connected them to Gunn, who said, “We’re at the hospital. She…she didn’t make it.”
“Oh, my God,” Cordelia breathed. To Angel she said, “She died.” Then she blurted, “That means the portal’s closed. That guy is stuck back there.” She set her jaw. “Good.”
She listened for another moment, then reported, “They gave Wesley something and he’s already feeling better. They think it was some kind of contaminated water or something. He said there was some water in his cell and he drank it.”
Angel nodded grimly.
“We’ll meet back at the hotel,” she told Gunn. “We’ll grab a cab.”
“Copy that.”
Cordelia disconnected. They looked at each other.
She sank into his arms and began to cry.
He held her.
“It’s over,” he said.
“The darkest hour of magicks?” she asked.
He waited a beat and then he said, “That, too.” He nodded at the blood-soaked stones and grass. “We need to put some distance between us and this place before we call a cab.”
“I’m so tired,” she said.
He picked her up in his arms and began to walk. After a few moments, Cordelia drowsed against his shoulder.
The longest night of the year, a night of bonfires and magicks, was nearly over, too.
2 A.M.
Bummed Out
by Doranna Durgin
Brrrr. Cordelia pulled her borrowed coat tightly around herself—and then thought better of it. Borrowed, much used, seen-better-days…okay really nasty coat.
Angel leaned closer to her, dressed similarly in a torn wool shirt jacket and dingy red watch cap, his fingers breaking out of every seam of his knit gloves. “Think of it as an acting job, Cordelia.”
“For which I should win some sort of award,” Cordy said in instant rejoinder, unable to suppress a nose-wrinkling wince. Here they were in the smog-dark night hanging around skid row, watching the streets around the Union Rescue Mission while trying to avoid the notice of the cops from the LAPD Central Division one block away. Only days before Christmas—and were they at the Hyperion Hotel drinking the eggnog left over from earlier that night? No. Were they admiring her spoils from the holiday shopping coup of the day? No. They were dressed as homeless people, skulking around on this cold, cold night. Who says it doesn’t get cold in Los Angeles? It had to be below fifty out. No one here looked warm enough—well, except for Angel, who was pretty much a one-temperature-fits-all kind of guy.
Cordelia resisted another urge to burrow more deeply inside the filthy coat—thank goodness she had on her own warm sweater underneath—and blocked the sight of her surroundings with tightly closed eyes, comforting herself with the quick recitation of beauty tips. Shiny hair: Mash an avocado with one tablespoon of olive oil and a teaspoon of baking powder. Mix, apply, soak, rinse.
“Look alive, Cordy,” Angel said with another nudge.
She opened her eyes to give him a queenly frown. “I could say the same to you.”
“Touch-y,” he said, recoiling a little more than necessary, that startled puppy-dog look in his eyes. She hated that. At least when he went all broody, she knew it was usually safe to ignore him.
“Touchy?” she repeated, and struck a thoughtful expression. “What can we do this holiday party night besides some casual time travel? Oh, I know—put Cordelia in smelly rags and send her out in the cold to wait for bad things to happen.” She gestured at Fifth Street, the small gated park behind them, and the looming mission a block away—at the clusters of genuinely homeless people, some wearing tinsel in a feeble nod to the season, some curled up in a misery that knew no season. “You expected me to be a in good mood? Whose bright idea was this, anyway?”
She hadn’t ever really known. Thinking back on it, she only knew it hadn’t been hers. Thinking back on it…
Cordelia Chase sashayed into the classiness of the Hyperion Hotel lobby.
Okay, ageing classiness.
Okay, once some one had somehow thought this place was classy, but Cordy herself couldn’t see it. On the other hand, she was here now, and that gave the place a certain amount of class right there, didn’t it? Especially since she had just scored at a once-in-a-lifetime holiday sale at the makeup counter of Bloomingdale’s and even now carried the bag high, a trophy waiting to be noticed.
Odd. They’d all been here when she left…
Her shopping trophy lowered slowly to her side. “Guys?” she said. “Hello?”
No guys. And no Fred, either.
“I get more reaction than this from Phantom Dennis,” Cordy told the lobby, and matter-of-factly deposited the bag behind what had once been the check-in counter. As she shrugged off her festively red sweater-jacket, she finally heard a raised voice from the Hyperion’s inner courtyard. An unfamiliar raised voice. She slid the sweater back up over her shoulders and pushed through the courtyard doors.
The gang was here, all right, gathered beside the worn fountain in the late afternoon light. Fred, still a bit spooked; Gunn, looking pretty much like he could handle anything, as usual; Wesley, looking very serious, as usual; and Angel, looking distracted and pretty much on the edge of a good brood. As usual.
The clients…now they weren’t usual. Angel Investigations had helped soccer moms, demons, and just about everything in between. But they’d never had clients like these, who looked to be the union reps for the L.A. homeless. And not just the homeless, but the really homeless. Not I’m living out of my car for a few months but my home is the streets and I left my sanity somewhere else on the way to getting here homeless. Union Rescue Mission regulars.
Not so long ago, she wasn’t so far from being among them. Broke, living in a dingy little apartment…Angel’s arrival had changed all that.
“Cordelia,” Wesley said, in that half admonishing, half questioning way he had.
“In or out, that’s what my mother always used to say,” Cordy said inanely, letting the door close behind her and inwardly wincing at her own too-chipper voice.
Wesley said, “Yes…well, right.” Not helping at all, and she made a face at him for it. He stood by the fountain with his arms cr
ossed and his hands tucked under them, wearing his attentive face. The others stood loosely grouped beside him, except for one man who sat at the fountain. He looked long-term tired, and his green-yellow bruises were clearly from a beating. At first glance Cordy judged him to be fifty; at second she realized he wasn’t much older than Angel. Or than the age at which Angel was pretty much stuck. He held a much-battered Angel Investigations business card between thumb and forefinger, flexing it slightly in a nervous gesture.
“You’re just in time,” Gunn said. Angel didn’t say anything, just did that slight lift of an eyebrow that more or less meant and here we all are.“These gentlemen—”
“And lady,” prompted the shortest of the figures in a cracked voice, hidden beneath about twenty layers of clothing and two watch caps. Also wary and bruised.
“And lady,” Wes said without missing a beat.
Gunn didn’t miss a beat either. “Clients,” he said. “These clients have a pretty serious problem.”
Cordy thought that was understating the case considerably, but she put her own attentive face on even as her thoughts drifted back to Christmas shopping and the nice sweater she’d seen that she thought would suit Angel. Gray enough to fit his image, not too expensive because let’s face it, he does tend to show up with rents and tears and bullet holes in his clothes more often than the average person—
“—so we’re going to join them near San Julian Park tonight,” Wes said in a that’s that voice, which let her know she’d missed a lot. “Blend in, so to speak. I’m almost certain we’ve got mimic demons at work, and we need to flush them out.”
“Excuse me?” Cordelia blurted. She searched her memory of the past few moments and came up with a vague notion of atypical incidents among the homeless, most of whom usually watched out for each other. Startling clashes of violence and temper, and most recently, a killing. They feared something among them—
She tried to erase her totally-taken-by-surprise face, but too late. They’d all turned to look at her—even the clients, who until now had simply been nodding at Wes’s Cliff’s Notes version of their story. Angel nudged Gunn with a subtle elbow and nodded at Cordy. “Shopping,” he said, as if that explained it all.
“It’s the holidays. I’m only doing my duty,” Cordy said, inserting what she thought was just the right amount of haughtiness. “Um, can I, uh”—she nodded at the lobby doors—“talk to you guys?”
They just looked at her. Widening her eyes for emphasis, she repeated the gesture. “Now?” she added.
With a defeated obedience she knew to be perfectly false, they trooped into the lobby. She lowered her voice to a stage whisper even though the small gathering by the fountain didn’t seem interested in eavesdropping. “Did I have a vision about helping these guys and someone forgot to tell me? Because, you know…the visions? If there was a real problem, don’t you think I’d know about it?”
“It’s the longest night of the year,” Angel said. “Maybe the Powers That Be are saving you.” He gave her a deadpan look. “For the really good stuff.”
“Yeah, like that ever stopped them before,” she shot back with much sarcasm. “What about those missing carolers? Weren’t we going to look into that tonight? Maybe sing a few seasonally appropriate songs while we’re at it?”
“This is helping the helpless,” Gunn said. Behind him, Fred sat on one of the circular lobby couches, curling up in that way she had of being very small and barely noticeable. “Isn’t that what we do?”
“Well, yeah,” she admitted. “But, we won’t be around to help the helpless very long if we don’t have a way to pay the holiday bills!”
Angel gave her a startled look. “What holiday bills?” he asked, apparently going unheard by the others.
Wes all but spoke over him, his voice dangerously close to patronizing. “Cordelia,” he started.
“Cordelia nothing,” she said. “You know I’m right. We have got to get some paying customers.” She winced a little inside; she knew better. But she was also the one handling the bills right now, and the very thought put more panic than thought into her words. “Look at them!” She gestured expansively and then snatched her arm back, realizing it would be just as revealing as words to the members of the small group outside, some of whom were now trying to peer through the glass doors. And then she sighed because she did look at them, and she knew they needed help. Faltering a little, she finished making her point anyway. “They’re bums. Do you really think they came here expecting to pay us for our time?”
Gunn frowned at her, looking much taller than she’d prefer he did unless he was agreeing with her at the time. “I’m not so sure that’s P.C., Cordy.”
“Whatever, then. Homeless. Indigent. Housing-challenged.”
“Mumpers,” Angel said, inserting his words perfectly into the fleeting instant of silence between them all—and begetting more silence.
“Mumpers,” Cordelia said flatly.
Angel looked at them all as if surprised to see he was suddenly the center of attention. “Mumpers. Beggars.” He got that faraway look on his face, the mixture of memory and regret and, sometimes, guilt. “They’d come out on solstice night, pretending to be upper class, telling stories about the hard luck they’d fallen on. Begging. I can remember my mother…” There his voice trailed off, and he shook his head. “Anyway. They were always out on the one night when everyone else knew to stay at home.”
“Where it was safe,” Wesley said, and gave him a pointed look. “I imagine memories of your childhood aren’t your most recent memories of mumpers, are they?”
Angel returned Wesley’s look with one of his own, an even expression. “No,” he said. “They aren’t.”
“Ah, so that’s it,” Cordelia said. “You fanged a couple of mummers—”
“Mumpers,” he said.
“—and now you want to make up for it by helping these people?”
“No,” Angel said, and shook his head quietly. “I want to help them because it’s the right thing to do.”
“It’s the right thing, Cordy,” Gunn agreed, though he was not often one to jump in on Angel’s side.
“I know.” Cordelia sighed expansively. “Maybe I’ll get a retro-vision or something. Now just what is it we’re going to do?”
It had seemed almost reasonable at the time. But at the time, Cordelia hadn’t thought about the cold or the stiff, stained clothing or the awkwardness of knowing the skid row residents would be able to take one look at her and know she didn’t belong here.
She only hoped the mimic demons couldn’t do the same.
And the mimic demons! What was that about? Demons who mimicked their prey, hanging around, sucking all the good vibes out of people like dopers getting a high, and leaving only the anger and hate and meanness, with predictable results. Arguments and fights and finally killings. As if the homeless community didn’t have enough problems already!
“Facial,” she muttered comfortingly to herself, leaning back against the tall wrought-iron bars surrounding San Julian Park. They couldn’t even go inside the mission where it was warm—the place had security guards, access cards, and plenty of watchful eyes along with its rows and rows of bunks and the Mommy and Me room. The mimic demons kept their trouble outside where it was harder to spot just who was doing what to who. Not only that, they were so good at it that Wesley hadn’t been able to provide even a vague description of their natural form.
Wesley came up beside her, trading places with Angel; Angel took his turn at slow patrolling, walking the street while trying to look staggery but looking as usual as though he were a black cat gliding through the night. Cordelia closed her eyes again. “Four tablespoons of plain yogurt, two tablespoons of grated orange peel. Mix and massage into skin…”
“Or you could simply suspend a ball of wax between your eyes,” Wesley said.
“Oh, please,” she said. “What kind of beauty tip is that?”
“An ancient Mayan one,” he said, sounding
cheerful to be pontificating even though his nose and ears were red with cold and the scarf he had wrapped around his neck looked genuinely crusty. “They considered it a great beauty to be subtly cross-eyed.”
She merely gave him a look and changed the subject. “I still don’t get how we’re supposed to spot these mimic demons. I mean, since they’re so good at mimicking and all.”
“We probably won’t spot them,” Wes said in a matter-of-fact way. Then, as Cordelia frowned at him, he added, “That is, we won’t spot them by how they look, but by what they do. Or don’t do. Once trouble breaks out, we look for the ones who aren’t involved.”
“Ah,” said Cordelia. She fussed at the over-long sleeve of her coat, found something icky, and rubbed the sleeve against an iron bar of the park fence. “You mean they’ll stand off to the side looking blissfully buzzed?”
“Exactly.”
“I can’t wait,” she muttered. She pushed off from the fence and said, “I’m too cold to just stand here. I’m going to walk with Angel for a while.”
“You do that,” Wesley told her. “I’m sure he’ll appreciate the company.” She gave him a skeptical look, not sure if he was being clueless or sarcastic. As usual, he seemed immune. “See if you can spot Gunn while you’re at it.”
She’d seen Gunn not five minutes earlier, swathed in totally uncool clothes, so she wasn’t worried. She merely waved an acknowledgment at Wesley as she headed down the cracked sidewalk.
She easily caught up to Angel. He’d stopped at the corner and was just standing there, his head slightly cocked, looking ever so much like a vampire about to pounce.
“That’s not helpless,” she told him, “that’s hulking.”
He didn’t answer right away. Ah. Brooding, then. Then his expression turned puzzled and he said, “What?” as if she’d been speaking a foreign language.
“We’re supposed to be helpless,” she said, shoving her knit hat back from where it had fallen over her forehead. Not her own knit hat because would she ever own such a thing? But Wesley’s, because she drew the line when it came to what she put on her hair. “You don’t look helpless. You look hulking and strong and…possibly hungry?”
