by Various
He gave her a startled look.
“Okay, then, not hungry. But hunting.”
“Maybe hunting,” he allowed, and his expression grew closed again, his face full of shadowed angles in the streetlights.
“Oh, I get it,” Cordelia said. She crouched by the corner of the building, trying to look less like herself and more like a homeless person seeking a quiet spot to be cold. “Thinking about the mumpers again?”
Angel crouched beside her, close enough to share warmth—if he’d had any to share. He didn’t answer; he didn’t look at her. Even the dingy red watch cap didn’t tone down the casual intensity of his presence.
She nodded in understanding. “Got a lot of them, did you?”
He looked right at her, catching her eye in a penetrating gaze, as if saying this is what you want?“It was the longest night of the year, Cordelia. Everyone else was inside. Year after year, they’d make their rounds, dressing their parts, out walking the muddy roads. They knew the risks, but—”
“But they were hungry. Or cold.”
“Or sometimes it was just what they did best,” he said quietly, but his voice held no judgment. At least, not for the mumpers. “Mostly they didn’t even have someone to miss them.”
“You seem to miss them,” she observed.
“Not exactly.” He shifted uncomfortably, and she knew it wasn’t because he was tired of crouching there. “I…regret them.”
She couldn’t help a short laugh. She’d never had much sympathy for the evil of Angelus, not after all the trouble he’d caused them. Not even when he who had been Angelus now had his soul back and had also paid for what had been done. “And you think helping these people is going to make up for those others?”
He looked at his past through shadowed eyes. “They dressed for the role,” he said. “The men put on the aprons and stories of respectable tradesmen fallen ill. The women played widows or faithful wives whose husbands were ill unto death. As if they’d have better luck if they pretended to be like the people they were begging from.” Oh, he was far away, all right. She didn’t think he was remembering the mumpers’ role-playing or their luck. She thought he remembered their necks. But then he suddenly turned to look at her, back in the present, his voice completely normal. “I suppose for some of them the stories were even true.”
Cordelia quit thinking about Angel and thought of herself again, of her own family’s fall from grace. Of how fast it had happened, and how easily. How true. She said nothing. She thought instead about those things she often depended on to make her life seem right again. A black tea bag soaked in cold water and placed on each eye for ten minutes will reduce puffy eyes.
She felt better immediately.
Angel, too, was quiet for a moment. Then he said, “There’s no making up for those others, Cordy. You know that.”
“Yeah,” she said. “I do. It’s just every once in a while it seems worth saying.”
They fell silent as Cordy considered the warm mission lobby, and by extension the towering edifice of the San Pedro entrance and the huge cross impressed right into the front of the building. She didn’t think she had much chance of talking Angel into relocating their little sting operation. She considered withdrawing her arms inside the oversize coat altogether, where they could luxuriate in the warmth of her thick sweater without feeling…crawly, and just happened to glance down toward Main Street in time to see a lurching figure heading right at them. She said, “Angel…”
He said, “I see him,” and stood up. Good thing, too, because Lurching Man was definitely heading straight for them, and everything but the darkness fled before the stench he brought with him.
“Okay,” Cordelia said under her breath. “Someone was bound to be drunk.”
“Tha’s my spot,” Lurching Man pronounced thickly.
“Okay,” Cordy said again, brightly this time. “We were just keeping it warm for you. Weren’t we, Angel?”
“Something like that,” Angel said, helping her up, and Cordelia was glad to see that in spite of his general broodiness, he wasn’t looking for trouble.
She gave her wrist a quick glance—although her watch was wisely absent—and gave a wild guess at the time. “Oh, look, almost two-thirty. Time to go!”
“My spot!” said Lurching Man, and true to established form, lurched right into Cordy.
“Hey!” she yelped. And “Ew!” and “Get off!” as they performed a strange tussling dance-fight in which Lurching Man’s greatest weapon seemed to be his breath.
“This could have gone better,” Angel muttered. He neatly spun the man, barely tapped him on the chin, and then lowered him gently to the ground to lean against the building.
“Ew!” Cordy said, brushing her arms off until she realized that the coat could hardly have been any worse than before. She glared down at Lurching Man, peripherally aware of someone else’s approach. “I guess you’ve got your spot, all right.” Then she glanced at Angel, uncertain. “Do you suppose the mimic demons…?”
He gave his head a short shake. “Just drunk, I’d say.”
She didn’t think he sounded entirely sure.
The figure approaching them stopped under the nearest streetlight so they could see it was one of the men who’d brought them here, the young one with the bruises—one of the first victims of the changing mood on the street. Now his sweatshirt hood was up and tied tightly closed, covering what had been totally skanky hair, and he kept his hands jammed in the pockets of what Cordy had first taken to be a vest but now saw was the sleeveless remains of a regular coat. “Thanks,” he said, looking sadly at the man on the ground. “He was doing so well until these last few days. I don’t know which hit him harder—the holidays or these mimic demons you say are the problem around here.”
“You sound like you don’t believe us,” Cordy said, more than a tad defensively. Here they were risking their butts and wearing bad clothes—
But the man gave a short laugh. “Naw,” he said. “It’s just that there’s so many demons around here, it’s hard to keep track.” He nodded at Lurching Man, who’d started gently snoring. “His is drink.” When he looked back at Angel he said, “You’ve gotta do something. Half of us are just barely holding on as it is.”
“We are doing something,” Angel said, but not without understanding. He nudged Lurching Man’s leg out of the way so no one would step on him in the darkness, and they started a slow walk back toward the park.
Cordelia put herself on the other side of Angel from their new companion. She said, “What’s your demon?”
“Cordelia,” Angel said, sounding exasperated.
“Don’t tell me you’re not wondering,” Cordelia said, tossing back hair she’d momentarily forgotten was trapped under the knit hat.
“It’s no secret,” the man said. “Gotta gambling problem. Can’t lick it. Most of us have problems we can’t lick. Some of us are still trying; some of us aren’t. But we don’t have any hope to spare, and these…creatures…are taking it.”
Cordelia thought of day after day sitting inside her grungy pocket-size apartment, waiting for the phone to ring. Always just enough success with the smallest of bit parts to keep her hoping. But even now she could feel all those times that she’d pondered giving up. Felt them strongly. The homeless man gave her a perceptive look in the pool of light from the street lamp they passed and for that moment she felt more like it was a spotlight, illuminating all her innermost feelings. She kept her face desperately casual, but the remembered despair swelled into something so strong that she suddenly could barely walk, barely put one foot in front of the other…
“Cordelia?” Angel said, frowning at her. “What—?”
A more familiar feeling struck her. Her legs went all rubbery; she felt her eyes roll back, and the world disappeared. In its place came a tumult of flashing images and shooting pain—men fighting, blood everywhere, a pile of bodies with their arms and legs flung about like so many pick-up sticks, a strobing series of m
ovement behind foliage-bars-foliage, the towering cross on the front of the mission—
“—not fair!” she cried, finding herself in Angel’s arms, leaning back against him while he supported her entire weight. “We’re here, so lay off already!” The vision fled, leaving her momentarily blind to anything but the fierce pain in her head. But it faded quickly. Astonishingly quickly. She blinked and took a cautious look at the bête noire world of garish streetlights and concrete and the metal bars of the park just half a block away. “Oh,” she said, finding her feet again. “That’s not so bad. Why is that not so bad?”
Angel waited until he was sure she had her balance and then carefully stepped back. “The Powers That Be are giving you a break.”
Their companion looked at them both askance. “What are you talking about? What was that? Does she have fits or something?”
“Only when someone expects me to make the coffee,” she told him. To Angel she said, “I saw bodies. Lots of them. They all looked”—she glanced at the man—“well, like him. Like us. It was right here. I think that’s why it wasn’t so bad. The vision, I mean. What I saw was bad enough. In the park…but aren’t those park gates locked?”
“Every night,” said the man. Nameless Man. He jammed his hands in the pocket of his hack-job vest and scowled for no apparent reason.
“Well, there’s someone in there. Some thing.” She gave the park a narrow-eyed stare and then looked at Angel. “Just how up-close and personal do these mimic demons have to be to do their thing? I mean, wouldn’t it be safest for them to hole up in the one place no one else can get to?”
“They clear that place out before they lock it up,” said Nameless Man. He still stared at her, as if he could be all casual about the presence of the supernatural until he saw it himself. In her.
On the other hand, she supposed it was pretty dramatic to see a vision smacking her around. Always nice to know she could still command attention—even if the thought brought her no actual comfort, and instead seemed to recall the despair she’d felt at her general lack of success in that area. If there was one thing an actress needed to be able to do…She scowled, dragging her thoughts back to where they’d started. Responding to Nameless Man, who she suddenly wanted to slap. She clenched her hands into fists at her side. “Mimic demons,” she said, glancing at Angel to see that he was one thought ahead of her, his complete attention on the park, his demeanor no more broody than usual. She could fight it, she realized. As long as she kept telling herself they weren’t really her feelings, she would fight it. Too bad the general homeless population had no idea what lay behing the troubles—only those few who had come to the hotel. She sighed and turned back to Angel. “Wes didn’t have much to say about them. Do we know these things can’t mimic”—foliage-bars-foliage—“bushes? Or a nice fence post? And did you happen to notice how these past moments have so thoroughly lost their uplifting charm?”
“Yes,” said Nameless Man through gritted teeth.
Angel said nothing, but his already long strides grew longer and Cordelia found herself skipping to keep up, which for some reason annoyed her tremendously. She was on the verge of reaching out to grab his arm, in spite of the folly of such a thing, when a tremendous ruckus broke out just past the park gates. People materialized as if from nowhere—homeless, not-homeless, Cordelia had no idea—converging on the same spot as though drawn by the initial, single shout of protest from—
Wesley? Was that Wesley, desperately trying to crawl out from under the heap of humanity?
Angel made it there in a heartbeat—albeit not his own—and began flinging people away from the pile. They made a seething crazy quilt of colors, and the craziest thing about it was the way they flung themselves right back into the mess. Beside Cordelia, Nameless Man gave a wordless growl and launched himself at the fray—except Cordelia grabbed him and spun him around, not with her strength, but by using his own momentum against him.
Uh-oh. Mistake. For his eye held a crazed gleam in the unnatural streetlamp light. His fist drew back, and Cordelia suddenly realized that for all the demons she’d bashed, all the vamps she’d dusted, she didn’t want to face this human. She gave a shriek of protest and steeled herself to land the pointed kick she had ready, but something plucked Nameless Man away and tossed him up against the park fence.
“Gunn!” she said in relief. And then, “Where have you been!”
“You think this is the only little disagreement breaking out on the street?” Gunn grunted, blocking another man as he staggered back at them and then shoving him away from the seething pile—even as two more flung themselves into the fight.
Despair flared within her. “We can’t keep up with this!” she said, even as she tripped another would-be combatant charging to the scene. “And Wesley’s in there!” Despair switched to renewed annoyance, and in that moment she just knew that Wesley had done or said something stupid, something blithely offensive. She wanted to hurl herself on the top of the pile and fight her way through to pummel him herself….
She gave an abrupt shake of her head. “Whoa,” she said. “That really sucked. We’ve got to put a stop to this.”
“No argument from me,” Gunn said. “I’m beginning to feel a little too itchy for comfort, and I don’t mean in that personal way.”
Angel staggered back from the growing melee, blood trickling from a dozen little injuries. He said to Gunn, “A little help here?”
Gunn gave a short shake of his head. “Losing battle, Angel. No way we’re gonna break them all up.”
“We’ve got to find the mimics,” Cordelia said rather desperately, unable to see any sign of Wesley, although several of the combatants had collapsed, too injured to stand and yet still fighting. “I saw bodies…” She jabbed a pointing finger at the park. “There. My vision—”
Angel didn’t wait to hear any more. He yanked the still-dazed Nameless Man aside from the gate and kicked at it, not once, but twice. Just as Cordelia winced at his failure, he went all fang-face in ire and really bashed it a good one. The gate lock gave way; the gate crashed open with a force it was never built to endure and then swung crookedly, the top hinge broken. Cordelia glanced at Gunn, and together they rushed into the block-size area. Then they stopped short, almost immediately defeated by shadows and nooks and crannies…and demons that could mimic anything close to their own size.
But Angel didn’t hesitate. He grabbed up the wooden bench nearest the entrance and smashed it to the ground, tossing one of the planks to Gunn and another to Cordelia. She was so startled she fumbled it, glancing anxiously at the growing number of injured people just outside the park…and at the endless supply of people replacing them. If Wesley was smart he was curled up into a little ball at the bottom of it all.
He was smart, sometimes. She just hoped this was one of those times. But she doubted it. She doubted she could do anything to help this mess, this horrible, horrible mess.
Stop it, Cordelia Chase. No mimic demon was going to mess with her happy vibes!
Angel’s face was back to normal, his expression back to grim. “We’ll never find them by eye,” he said. “Just start hitting things. Everything—the trees, the benches, the pavilion pillars—”
Gunn nodded, hefting his plank. “I like it,” he said. “It’s a good plan.” He raised his voice, aiming it toward the center of the small park. “And I really feel like hitting things.”
“What in this picture doesn’t belong?” Angel said, menace in his voice. He smashed the plank against a second bench, and then against the base of a street lamp within the park. “Oops, city property. Belongs. How about—”
“This,” said Gunn with satisfaction, eyeing a bush outside the small bank of wintering plantings across the cement walkway from the small pavilion. He took a couple of practice swings with the plank, shouting over his shoulder to be heard above the noise of the fight. “Dibs!”
And Cordelia, who’d simply been standing there with her plank in her hands, watching A
ngel’s bench-bashing and blinking at the explosive power behind each blow, happened to glance at the park entrance and discovered they’d finally drawn the attention of the brawling street denizens, and not in a good way. She threw herself against the gate to close it.
It wouldn’t, naturally. Not all the way—just enough to give her hope. But there was nothing left to latch it, and now that it was closed, the people outside it sounded suddenly all the more determined to come in. They shouted a jumble of demands and threats at her.
“Guys,” she said, her voice just a tad higher than normal. She jammed her plank against the gate to create a makeshift latch and then put her back to it, digging her nonexistent worn-sneaker heels against the walkway. “Five-inch spikes,” she moaned as someone punched her shoulder; someone else plucked the hat off her head. “That’s what I need right now. A little traction—”
But the rubber soles of the sneakers gripped just fine. If only the old canvas hadn’t started to rip…
“Angel!” she called desperately. Behind her the crowd shoved and shouted and—ew, was that spit?
“Demon-hunting,” he said by way of an answer, and she looked over just in time to see the bush between Angel and Gunn unfold itself into a squat lumpy demon.
“Mr. Potato Head?” she said in astonishment, gasping as she lost a few inches of ground. “We’ve been hunting Mr. Potato Head?”
“Mr. Mashed Potato Head,” Gunn growled. The potato-shaped demon squeaked in dismay.
“Crinkled-sliced chips,” Angel suggested, eliciting another squeak. He leaned over to meet the creature’s marbled gray eyes, looming close over an otherwise seemingly featureless face. “Leave these people alone, and you get to live. Any questions?”
Behind Cordy, the gate shuddered. “I don’t think you’re getting through—but they are! Do something!” Her sneakers scrabbled against the walkway, losing another inch in the seams. Another minute and she’d come out of them entirely, and then the little park would be swarming with frenzied crazy people, the potato would get away, and they’d be right back where they started—assuming they didn’t get too broken in the process.
