The Longest Night Vol. 1

by Various

  Wesley nodded. “Cordelia’s correct. We have a…challenging existence, to say the least. But we have each other and we can make our own good memories, day by day.”

  Angel took in Wesley’s words, then grinned. From where he sat, he was the only one who could see a glimpse of the outside world through one of the curtains that hadn’t quite closed. None of the others had noticed. “That’s right on the mark,” he said cheerfully, and the rest of them looked at him in surprise. He rose and strode toward the window, motioning for them to follow. “Let’s start now,” he told them, “with a memory of our snow demon’s last hurrah for the City of Angels.”

  He pulled the curtain carefully aside, and they all gasped at the scene outside.

  Snow.

  Not much, not nearly enough to bring back the fear of what they’d encountered in the laundry room. Still, there it was, like glistening silver in the early morning air.

  “Yeah,” Angel said as they crowded around the window with him. The scene outside reminded him of that snowfall in Sunnydale with Buffy, the real one rather than the false scenario with which the winter beast had tried to conquer him. He found himself giving Cordelia and Wesley a hug, and they, in turn, clung tight to Gunn and Fred. “Sometimes the best times are in the present. It’s time to make our own future memories and leave the bad ones behind.”

  And like his wisdom, the snow outside was already melting into nothing but memories.

  4 A.M.

  Yoke of the Soul

  by Doranna Durgin

  On this Winter holiday, let us stop and recall

  That this season is holy to one and to all.

  In truth, Angel was glad to be alone. Of all the nights, this Solstice night generally dragged out long and weary, in a season Angel already found to be wearying. Hanukkah, Kwanza, Christmas, Ramadan, even good old Yule…vampires not welcome, soul not withstanding.

  Sometimes it was a good thing simply to get away from it all and enjoy the silence. No tinned carols on loudspeakers, no cards, no blue and white or red and green. Just the dark of deepest night and nothing bringing out the memories of his own early holidays…when he’d had holidays. Before he’d turned from his father’s son into the scoundrel Darla had embraced.

  Funny how he couldn’t stop thinking about those memories anyway. About the spices and scents that had filled their household, the visitors, the laughter…the belonging.

  He closed his eyes, took what would have been a deep breath had his lungs actually been functioning. You’re here to work. To save people.

  And to do that he had to find them.

  Angel opened his eyes to the darkened garment district. Warehouses, warehouses, and more warehouses, each assigned to a general area much like a department store interior. “Accessories,” Cordelia had said, emerging from a vision looking a little more than dazed, offering their first real clue to an ongoing case. And then, “No, women’s wear. No…”

  “Gotta narrow it down a little, Cordy,” Gunn had said, at the time thinking he’d be part of this little expedition. Two more carolers were missing. There was trickle-down word of others, gone missing on their way to and from late night parties. And now Cordelia’s vision made it plain that whatever peril they’d encountered, tonight was the last chance to save the singers.

  She gave him an exasperated look. “You think I don’t know that? I’m just about running on empty here, Gunn.” She released a huge post-vision sigh, lifting her hands so they could pull her to her feet. Automatic procedure after so many visions. Rock ’em sock ’em visions, she sometimes said, especially when she ended up on the floor. The floor of the Hyperion Hotel, this time. They lifted her, steadied her, and gave her a chance to push her hair back from her face. She said, “Just head down Los Angeles Street and don’t go south of Pico. I’m almost certain this is about the missing carolers.” She gave Angel a particularly dark look. “And we’re running out of time.”

  And so here he was. Looking down the length of Los Angeles Street, weighing whether to head right for accessories or left into the blocks set aside for women’s wear, pretending the memories hadn’t gotten to him. That hunting missing carolers on a Solstice night took the place of joining in the singing himself.

  “I don’t get it,” Fred said, holding out her paper cup for a refill of leftover eggnog. Paper plates held convenience store cookies. Limp if sparkly decorations hung over the computer monitor, the lobby desk, and the stairway, along with snowflakes cut out of construction paper. Hastily applied holiday cheer in a hotel that was finally warm. Wesley had given the effort a wall-eyed but wisely silent reaction, and Gunn hadn’t appeared to notice. And Fred…

  Lost in thought. Not getting something.

  “Nothing unusual about that,” Cordelia responded, popping the spout on the eggnog carton and obliging with the refill. “What exactly don’t you get this time?”

  “Angel.”

  Cordelia gave a little laugh. “None of us gets Angel. At least, not usually. Wouldn’t worry about that one.”

  Fred gave her eggnog a thoughtful stare. “But he seems so sad. And he just wanted to go out on his own.”

  “He’s a loner,” Cordelia said. “That’s what loners do.”

  “I don’t think he wants to be a loner,” Fred said into the eggnog. She cradled it with two hands, as though it might escape…or it needed comforting. With Fred it was hard to tell.

  Since Cordelia wasn’t sure if Fred was still in the conversation or if she’d started one on her own, she didn’t say anything. But Gunn, with his big manly mug of eggnog—no puny little Dixie cups for him—said, “Hey, look at us. Hanging around an abandoned hotel lobby in the middle of the night, Christmas only a few days away, and a rip-roaring private office party in progress. Who would want to miss this?”

  Cordelia shot him a scowl. “I did what I could. My credit cards are maxed out as it is, and it doesn’t look like the office is going to be paying me back for this one, does it?”

  “At least we had carolers,” Wesley said, dutifully injecting cheer.

  “Yeah, client carolers,” Gunn said.

  “Yes, well…there is that.” Wes gave his Dixie cup a wistful look. “Not that I’m ordinarily one to go for the drink, but it does seem like we might have at least lightly spiked the eggnog.”

  “Uh-huh,” Cordelia said. “And then you’ll cover my back the next time we go out tonight? There will be a next time, you know. I mean, look at our Solstice track record.”

  “I just wonder,” Fred said, briefly lifting her gaze to glance at them. “If he ought to be out there alone, I mean.”

  “He’s just taking a look around.” Gunn remained singularly nonchalant. Not worried. A little too obviously not worried. “He’s supposed to call if he finds anything—but those directions you gave him weren’t all that good. No big surprise if nothing happens.”

  “Hey, you try keeping all these visions straight,” Cordelia said, struggling to keep the bitter note from her voice. Who needs spiked eggnog when you have a nice mix of headache meds making the world all surreal? More surreal than it usually is around here, anyway.

  “Never mind,” Wesley said in his quite firm way. “We can use the opportunity to identify what Cordelia saw. Or try to. It would help if the carolers had been able to add to the description.”

  The first caroler had gone missing days before, and the group claimed to have lost several members since then. Always someone who didn’t show up at the night’s starting point, or never made it home afterward. They hadn’t even realized it at first—they were a decent-size group, and it was natural for a couple of them to be absent at any given time. But as they’d rallied for Solstice night, the situation had become evident; they’d come to Angel Investigations to report it. And finally Cordelia’s vision had given them a place to start.

  Cordelia gave a hefty sigh, and suddenly realized the others were looking at her, frowning and quirking eyebrows and doing all the things that said they were wondering if
the visions had finally gotten to her. Ew. As if. At least…

  Not yet.

  “They could have at least sung one song before hitting the streets,” she said peevishly, though it hadn’t been what she was thinking at all.

  She’d been thinking how determined the carolers were. How this was their special season, and they weren’t to be deterred from celebrating it despite their worry. Determined people.

  Like some other people she knew. A certain vampire among them.

  Angel eased down the empty street. No sign of life, nothing to fit Cordelia’s vision of people dragged limply to their doom. A sheet of paper fluttered across the asphalt like an obliging urban tumbleweed. He watched it with the frustration of knowing that someone somewhere—right here somewhere—was in trouble, and he hadn’t yet done anything to change that.

  Someone. Somewhere.“Don’t you remember any details about the warehouse at all?” he’d asked Cordelia, trying to wring any bit of actual detail from the vision.

  “What’s to be specific?” she’d said to him, and gulped the water Wesley had brought, reaching for it with a trembling hand they’d all pretended not to notice. “Warehouse blahblahblah, dank basement blahblahblah, bad lighting blahblahblah…the usual.”

  “Right,” he murmured to himself, easing toward Twelfth Street through shadows within shadows.

  A scuff of sound caught his attention and made him hesitate. Another, and he was sure. Someone moved out between the two giant garment warehouses to his right and now walked the shadows with him. A young woman. Ahead of him…unaware of him. With the soft speed no human could emulate, he closed the gap—and by then he knew there were others ahead of his quarry, those whom she followed. She herself was not used to the shadows, to judge by the careless spill of her uncovered bright blond hair. And not someone used to the chase—her blood was high in her veins, her heart pumping hard. She was young, and scared.

  But she didn’t waver. And he thought whatever she followed with such fear and persistence must be worth following indeed.

  Accessories and women’s wear. Specific enough after all.

  Together they moved down the street, heading straight toward St. Joseph’s Church. Surely not the church…

  No. The young woman hesitated, then turned the other way at the corner. By then he’d come up nearly on her heels; he’d gotten a glimpse of something ahead of her that had vaguely human proportions, but definitely wasn’t human. When she hesitated at the steps down into a warehouse private entrance, he was close enough to throw his arm across the doorway to block her—and then to clamp a hand across her mouth when she reacted with a startled cry. He said, “I don’t think you want to do that.”

  She scowled, and although she had both hands free and could have shoved him away she only gave him a pointed look until he removed his hand from her mouth on his own, remarkably composed for a teenager only just accosted in the darkness. “Don’t want to do what?” she said, sounding accusing. “Make noise, or—”

  “—go into that building.”

  She crossed her arms, a defiant gesture that would have been more convincing had it not also looked like she was hugging herself. “I think that’s exactly why I’m here. Why are you here?”

  He gave the slightest of shrugs. “It’s my job.”

  She gave a little nod, shifting impatiently. “Not nearly as good as my reasons.”

  “If you’re following what I think you’re following, you don’t have a reason good enough to go in there.”

  “That thing just dragged my sister in there. And I think it took my uncle last week.” She gave him a good hearty dare of a glare, one that said top that.

  He couldn’t. He realized, then, who she was. “You’re one of the carolers.”

  She gave him a look of a different sort. He wasn’t quite sure what it meant until she said, “And you’re one of the people who are supposed to be helping us.”

  “We are helping you,” he said, trying not to sound defensive.

  “Uh-huh,” she said, entirely unconvinced; like him, she kept her voice low, though she shifted again, eyeing the open spot between Angel and the wall like a target. “That’s why you barely listened to us earlier, and practically left the hotel before we did.”

  Something came up, he wanted to say. But didn’t, because how crass would that be—the implication of something more important than your family.

  Over time, he had finally learned that nothing was more important than your family, even if it was made-family and not born-family. Because perhaps you’d used your born-family up.

  Or even killed them.

  He looked at her a moment, and finally he said, “I’m here.” He reached for the inside pocket of his black leather duster, his fingers closing around his cell phone. “The rest of us will be here as soon as—”

  “Oh, right,” she said, cutting him off. “And I’ll bet you think I’m going to wait. Some thing just dragged my sister into this place and you think I’m going to wait while whatever happens to her—happens.” She pushed past him.

  He hesitated, his hand still on the phone. “You really don’t want to go in there—”

  “We all waited for you this evening, and then we went out to sing,” she said bitterly, tucking sleek hair behind her ear. “That’s when my sister was taken. I caught a glimpse of them…I followed. And I’m not waiting any longer, not when she needs help. You want to come with me, then come on.” And she went.

  Choices. Grab her and give away their presence to every demon ear within hearing distance when she protested, or go with her, scope out the situation, and pull back long enough to call the gang.

  He went.

  “Not that one,” Cordelia murmured, leaning her head back against the circular back of the hotel lobby’s conversation seating as she nixed the illustration of Wesley’s latest demon suspect. She’d switched to water when the eggnog turned heavy in her stomach, and now she took a sip of her Evian.

  “Look at this one,” Fred said from beside her, tracing her finger over the thick page of an old book she held balanced in her cross-legged lap. She paused at the woodcut illustration of the demon, momentarily distracted by its crater-pocked skin, but returned to the text. Wesley leaned over her shoulder, scanning quickly over the page, wincing slightly at the illustration. Then his eyes fell upon the text.

  “This is a good one,” he said, appropriating the book after a slight pause that passed for asking permission. He held it out before Cordelia, who straightened to take a closer look at the creature.

  Much like her sketch, it appeared almost human. There was all that hair? fuzz? fuzzy moss? where it shouldn’t have been, and the skin had that bluish color and cratered texture, but the proportions were basically human. Well, human if you’d been taking steroids and working out at the gym twice a day for months. Not even Ah-nold could have measured up to the biceps depicted in the woodcut illustration. Or the—

  “Wishful thinking,” Wesley murmured, hastily retrieving the book.

  Fred seemed oblivious. “It’s them, then. Those Drannoth demons. And according to that text, we don’t have much time.”

  After a brief but silent struggle over who would take the lead, Angel preceded the young woman down predictably dark stairs with a predictably abandoned look to them. Upon first moving back to L.A. he had wondered why there was such an underground warren of abandoned warehouse rooms and tunnels, but no longer. No one in the warehouses would admit it, but they all knew better than to venture into those lower levels. He tried to decide if the thick musty smell was normal eau de warehouse or peculiar to the demons living here.

  “Nola,” the young woman said quietly, treading close on his heels as they reached the bottom of the stairs. A high narrow hall led out before them, not looking to turn bright and cheery any time soon.

  “What?”

  “My sister’s name. And my uncle’s is Owen. You didn’t ask.”

  He crouched over patchy concrete to eye something that g
listened in the oblique light of the single dim, wire-enclosed bulb up ahead of them. At least someone had left the lights on. “And what’s yours?”

  A pause. “Kath. What’ve you found?”

  After some thoughtful consideration, he said, “An icky spot.”

  She crouched beside him, careful not to block the light. “Is that good?”

  Gurgly laughter came from directly above them. “Not for you!”

  Angel sprang aside, putting his back to the wall, finding the dim shape clinging in the high corner, ready to fight. But the dim shape made a loud hissing noise and the air turned thick with silently falling mist. Even as Angel reached for Kath to grab her hand and haul her right back up the stairs, the mist sank into his skin, stole his strength, and bore him down to the hard concrete. Kath landed beside him.

  The laughter echoed bizarrely in his ears and faded with his consciousness.

  “What do you mean, we don’t have much time?” Gunn said, putting his mug down on the lobby’s check-in counter and giving Fred a wary look, apparently unaware that eggnog licked at the corners of his mouth, stark against his dark skin.

  Fred gave him a crooked little smile and pointed to her own mouth; Gunn hastily scrubbed his lips. Wesley paced through the lobby, book in hand, paying no attention to the byplay. “The Drannoth demons renew their clan not through reproduction among themselves, but by kidnapping others and putting them through a sort of…” he hesitated, looked at Cordelia, and chose his words with care. “I suppose you might call it a conversion process. One that occurs on Solstice night.”

  “According to that book, anyone’s fair game,” Fred said. “Except for most of the other demons. Vampires and such.”

  “Angel should be okay, then,” Cordelia said, letting out a big breath of relief she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. She glanced at her watch. Wee hours of the morning, longest night of the year. Daylight wasn’t far off now…daylight and a very long appointment with her bed. Phantom Dennis would probably even have it turned down for her, with those nice clean sheets she’d put on only yesterday afternoon. A lifetime ago.