Impressions

by Doranna Durgin

  “We’re going to do that now, anyway,” Gunn said.

  “Then I made the right choice, didn’t I?” Angel told him. “I saved myself actual days of it.”

  “He’s right, you know,” Cordelia said, so suddenly it sent Faux Angel scooting a couple more inches away in alarm. “I mean, I’m the last person to say so and I’ll be the first person to walk away if I think you’re going to pull more of that I’m going to save you by being awful to you crap, but…in this situation? Nothing you would have done would have been right.” She gave him a thoughtful look, nodding quietly to herself. “Yep. You’re just going to have to get used to being wrong.”

  They all looked at one another for a long moment while Angel thought of his years as a vampire and all he’d done and how it never let go of him. He said, “Used to that, too.”

  No one did much to acknowledge that, but no one argued it either. Gunn said, “What’s it add up to, then? Lutkin has something the Tuingas want. And it has something to do with the bad vibes that’re whipping these demons up into a frenzy.”

  “That’s all you know?” Wesley asked the faux Angel.

  David shrugged. “I know he’s going out again tonight—late. He wants me along. I get the feeling he pretty much expects trouble…he told me to get extra help.”

  “So you came here?” Gunn asked, rather incredulously.

  David shrugged, unabashed.

  “Who knows, maybe he’ll come here himself,” Cordelia said. “He’s been here twice already. And he doesn’t seem to mind playing us off each other.”

  “He’s been playing us from the start, and I’ve had enough,” the faux Angel said, scowling. But after a moment’s thought, he gave a decisive shake of his head. “I don’t think he’ll be back. He’s still counting on me, but I think he’s figured out that you might not exactly consider him the good guy.”

  “With good reason,” Wesley said. “But it certainly makes it difficult to pick his brains.”

  Cordelia winced. “I’m not sure that’s a phrase you should use around here.”

  “Feeling a little literal?” Wesley asked. And then, “Never mind. Let’s give Lorne a call. If our false Angel here can’t tell us any more, perhaps the details we have will jog something in Lorne’s memory. Other than that, it’s back to the books.”

  Cordelia left the roundchair and slipped back behind the front counter to pick up the phone. “Auto-dialing is such a wonderful thing, don’t you think? Too bad we don’t have it. Hi,” she said into the phone. “Need to talk to Lorne. He’s in a what?” she said. And, “Oh. Well, if he wakes up, ask him to call.”

  “How’s that?” Wesley asked as she hung up.

  “He’s in a coma,” she said, picking up a pen and fiddling with it. “Or something. Too much emotional input, although I guess they disconnected the karaoke machine. Hard to tell. Whatever’s tending bar…doesn’t really sound like it has a mouth.”

  “Then all we know is that Lutkin has something he probably shouldn’t, he’s going somewhere tonight, and he expects trouble,” Angel said, startling them all somewhat. Too rational, perhaps. “We can stake out the hotel.”

  David said uncertainly, “If he spots you…,” and then shook his head. More assertively, he said, “Let me call you, when I find out where we’re going. I know it’s going to be late in the evening.”

  “Uh-huh,” Gunn said. “So we’re supposed to trust you now, is that it?”

  David looked at each of them, and found Gunn’s sentiment echoed in Wesley’s raised eyebrow, and in Cordelia’s crossed arms and tightened lips. Angel merely stared back at him, reflecting nothing. The faux Angel stood up and patted his pockets and eventually pulled out a business card—one that looked just like their own, with a different phone number. “Here,” he said. “That’s my cell. Call me. That’s even better—I won’t have to sneak away, I’ll just take a call from another client like normal. Call me every half hour, call me every fifteen minutes, I don’t care.”

  “Every fifteen minutes might be a little excessive,” Wesley said dryly, taking the card. “But you can count on hearing from us.”

  “Good,” David said. “Look, I…I’m in over my head here. I’m not gonna let you down on this, because I think you’re my only hope of getting through it without more trouble than there’s already been.”

  “Keep it in mind,” Gunn said.

  The faux Angel nodded, and looked at the back of the hotel with the obvious intent to make his exit.

  “Use the front doors, will you?” Angel asked. “Or what’s left of them. You won’t burst into flame…be thankful for it.”

  David hesitated, then did as asked. When he was well and truly gone, Angel said flatly, “Watch Lutkin?”

  Gunn was already in motion. “I’m on it,” he said. “I’ll let you know when they make their move.”

  “Remember,” Angel said. “Things with the demons…get worse at night.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Gunn was more than on it. He put the kids on it. He parked his truck north of the Alvarado Palms—just too far north to see the hotel itself, close enough to make it only a few moments’ walk away—and called Sinthea on his cell. “I’ve got a job for you. A hotel I need watched.”

  Without missing a beat, she said, “This sounds more like Gunn plays his homies into free scut work than a neighborhood”—and here she did hesitate, clearly not entirely certain she wouldn’t be overheard as she lowered her voice and finished—“demon watch.”

  “You want in on what drove those Slith to attack us the other night?” he asked.

  Another hesitation, this time with a different feel to it. “Yeah?” she said eventually. “This have anything to do with those old folks who were killed? That didn’t feel right. And Rosalba’s abuela was at that gym.”

  “Same deal,” he told her. “We’re tracking the guy who’s behind it.” Or at least the guy who seemed to be behind it. He wasn’t sure how much stock he wanted to put in either the word or the conclusions of the strange man so eager to claim Angel’s name. “We’ve got word he’s leaving the Alvarado Palms this evening and he’ll have…well, this thing we need to get back from him.”

  “Not telling, huh,” she said, sounding distant again.

  Gunn waited for an approaching ambulance to speed past in a Doppler effect of changing siren noise, and said, “It’s not a trust thing. It’s a we’re still figuring it out thing. It comes down to this: We need to know when he leaves that hotel, and he knows what all of our people look like. I’ll be here the whole time, just not where he can see me.”

  “Or you can see him,” she said.

  “That’s how it goes, yeah.”

  “How’s that friend of yours?” she said. “The one who saved you?”

  Not a casual inquiry. He said, “He’ll be all right.” Unless this damned stone thing, whatever it’s doing, gets to him along with the rest of the demons around here. Definitely a possibility.

  “I guess we owe him,” she said.

  I guess if things had been just a little different, you might be on his tail. But out loud, Gunn said, “Are you in, then? Are your people in?”

  That got to her, as he’d meant it to. Giving respect to her own authority among the kids. She said, “You want us to watch the hotel.”

  “Split it up into short shifts,” he said, staring down a street tough who seemed to think Gunn shouldn’t be parked in that spot, talking on his phone. They exchanged nothing more than glare through window glass, but this one was a poser and moved on. Gunn didn’t let it put so much as a hitch in his conversation. “Shouldn’t be past midnight,” he said. “Evening is the word I hear, so you’ve got some time to pull them together. And like I said, I’ll be right here.”

  “All right,” she said. “Gotta make some calls.”

  “Good.” Gunn was about to pull the phone from his ear when it occurred to him to say, “Hey—you see any big ugly things with no necks and what looks like elephant trunks s
ticking out of its throats, you guys stay far away from them. They want what we want, and they want it worse.”

  She paused; he could hear her soft laugh. “Kinda gives new meaning to the phrase ‘ear, nose, and throat man,’ doesn’t it?”

  He smiled in spite of himself, but it didn’t last long. “I’m not kidding. These guys don’t seem to go out of their way to hurt people, so if you keep your distance, you should be all right. You get full of yourself and try to prove anything, and your people will end up someone else’s people—you get me?”

  “Sure,” she said lightly. “See you there, Gunn.”

  Too lightly, he thought. Unlike the faux Angel, these kids didn’t want to take their cues from anyone.

  Not even the one who’d gotten them into this…and knew how to keep them safe.

  Cordelia gave Angel some time alone and then went hunting him. An unpleasant alarm gave her that just-ate-way-too-much Ben & Jerry’s feeling in the pit of her stomach when she found his suite empty, but a glance at the angle of light on the papered-over windows of the suite revealed that late afternoon had arrived, and that meant he had a heavily shaded nook in the courtyard if he chose to take it. If he’d wanted, he could have walked right behind her to get there and she wouldn’t have known it…and probably had.

  So she went back downstairs and through the lobby with its weird color scheme of old green walls and dark red flooring with a wavy pattern that must have been a leftover art nouveau impulse on the part of the original owners. Through the huge window of Wes’s office, she spotted the demon-draped man napping with his head on the desk while Wes approached it with a book in hand and a look of great determination on his face. Not something she thought she needed to be in on. Or, more to the point, wanted to be in on.

  She found Angel sitting on a white painted iron patio chair in the deep shade of the small boxy courtyard, staring at the fountain—not turned on today, which made it a pretty boring view—and in full brood mode.

  “Look,” she said, massaging an aching temple, “if anyone’s brooding, it should be me. I’m the one who’s had visions set to full speed ahead for days now. And if David What’shisface is right, it’s only going to get worse—at least until we do something about his client. To think, we had him right under our noses—twice!—and didn’t do anything about it.”

  “We didn’t know,” Angel said, but his words were rote.

  “You’re out here thinking about that David guy,” Cordelia said in wise assessment. “You’re thinking how messed up he is to be admiring and imitating the vampire who was once the scourge of Europe. Well, let me just get it out of the way for you: You’re right. He’s messed up.”

  “Hey,” he said, stung into looking at her.

  “Oh, don’t get me wrong,” she said. “It’s not because he picked you to imitate. You’ve got to keep in mind the way people are, Angel. You know…mortal and all that. Short-lived. Focused on the moment. At the moment, you’re not the horrible, soulless creature who tortured women and killed children and—”

  “Got the picture,” he said, turning a glance of warning on her.

  “Okay, right, you were there,” she said quickly, squelching a slightly nervous laugh. “Anyway, the point is…here and now? You’re on the other side. You’re right in the thick of it. You know, do-gooding, rescuing people, being all heroic and everything. The thing is, this David guy isn’t paying attention to that stuff. He doesn’t know about your past, and he doesn’t care about what you’re really about…. He’s on a power trip.”

  “He’s what?” Angel said, startled enough to be truly responsive.

  “Power trip,” she said. “He doesn’t care about helping people. He cares about some fake power rush that comes along with the reputation of someone who battles demons and happens to help people along the way. He cares about the money, and he cares about the influence he thinks it gives him.”

  After a moment, Angel said, “We care about the money.”

  “True,” she said bluntly, which was really one of her best traits. Plain-speaking. “But not for the sake of having it.” At least, not anymore, although this poor-little-once-rich girl still has some serious shopping envy attacks. “Just because in order to do what we really want—stop bad guys, follow visions to help the helpless, yada yada yada—we’ve got to have a certain amount of it to work with.”

  “Are you homing in on any sort of point here?”

  “Be nice. I’ve got a compact, and I can reflect all sorts of sunlight right onto your flammable body,” she told him, glad to see he was paying enough attention to wince. “The point is, this guy’s got his head screwed on crooked and he’s imitating you for all the wrong reasons. You’re wasting your time sitting out here brooding over how you’re not good enough to be a role model. David’s not really interested in the good parts, anyway.”

  “Oh,” Angel said, looking surprised and thoughtful.

  And then, just as Cordelia was mentally patting herself on the back with both hands, he added, “That’s not what I was doing, though.”

  “You weren’t?”

  He shook his head. “No,” he said, and looked back out onto the sunlight that splashed against the courtyard’s far walls. The shadows had crept up ever since Cordelia’s arrival. “The…emanations. Whatever they are—”

  “The thing that’s driving all the demons around here mad, you mean,” she said.

  “Unless there are other emanations around here that I don’t know about yet, yes. Those.” He looked up to meet her gaze solidly; it rocked her slightly, as it often did. “They’re getting worse. Much worse. I just thought that if I came out here, if I looked at the sunlight…if I got close to it—”

  “You thought it would help,” she said flatly, hiding the instant resurgence of that feeling in the pit of her stomach.

  “I hoped,” he said, but his voice was bleak enough to let her know how badly he’d needed that help, and how short the courtyard sunlight had fallen in providing it.

  “Oh,” she said, unable to hide her dread this time.

  After a moment, in an entirely different tone, he said, “But just so we’re straight—that guy doesn’t really look like me in that outfit of his, does he? I mean, the hair’s gotta be all wrong. And my pants—”

  “Oh,” she said, all quick reassurance and relief at once. This was the Angel she knew, so entirely clueless about his effect on people and his appearance. “No, no, your ankles hardly ever show at all, and when they do you’ve usually got that sockless Sonny Crockett thing going, so it’s fine. Really.”

  He settled back into the chair, muttering, “Good.”

  She left him like that, feeling lighter and even happy to know that he seemed to have moved on from the whole I am not worthy obsession, at least as his major downer focus of the day. She even felt cheerful at the prospect of tackling Wesley’s odd new resource book again, seeing as he was plenty busy with the demon-draped man.

  All the same, she’d heard what Angel had said. Tonight would be a bad one for the demons of L.A., for the people who fought them…and for Angel.

  Khundarr felt the strength of the stone build…he felt the beginning wobble of its instability. As it sent out waves of emotion to the demon population, so it received them in kind…new impressions, increasing its powerful effect on those in the city as it drove them toward disaster. Los Angeles had withstood riots and earthquakes and raging rainy season floods and mud slides, and proudly thought it could withstand just about anything.

  Those in the city had no idea.

  As darkness fell, Khundarr left his underpass hideout and headed north on Alvarado to the hotel where the stone’s false keeper kept it hidden. The protections laid on the place might not let Khundarr enter, but sooner or later the man would again leave the dwelling, giving Khundarr another chance at him.

  If only the humans from the other hotel had the wisdom to understand they were protecting the wrong thing. They were protecting the thief, and not their own c
ity. Or perhaps not a thief exactly—given that the young Tuingas had created the unfortunate circumstances under which the deathstone had entered this world—but certainly a man who knew what he had…and knew he shouldn’t have it. If only that motley group of humans hadn’t been so good at protecting those whom they chose, rightly or wrongly, to protect…. Khundarr never would have predicted the death of the youngster—never mind Kaalesh—killed by the vampire.

  They were not entirely without wit; twice they had chosen not to pursue him when he’d made it obvious he was in retreat. He considered himself lucky that the vampire had only wounded him, given that the once-man was as bombarded by the deathstone emanations as the rest of the city’s demon populace. And he had the feeling the humans understood he was making efforts to communicate….

  But their response could not help but be too little, too late. They didn’t have the resources to fully understand their own predicament, or Khundarr’s obligations. If they managed, somehow, to be of help to him, he could be nothing but grateful. But if they got in the way again…innocents or no, he could not hold back.

  • • •

  Gunn lurked in an alley away from the hotel and down by the corner of Twelfth Place, loitering with practiced ease…although he wished he could at least watch the kids as they watched the hotel. His cell phone rang every forty minutes or so as darkness fell around him, and the kids coming off watch made a point of stopping by to let him see how casually effective they were being.

  Tyree and Sinthea had assigned short shifts to everyone who wanted one—and once they learned they were helping to solve the granny murders, everyone did—but they themselves hung around conspicuously in the background, holding on to their authority and drifting by Gunn every now and then so he’d be sure to know it.

  He thought they were far too new to this gig to be so assured…. They didn’t yet know what they didn’t know.

  They came around the corner again, sharing some comment that gave them both pleased, cocky expressions. Sinthea was hardly dressed in a way to remain inconspicuous, with her slender waist exposed by a knit crop-top, and her jeans hanging way down on her hips, ultra-low. Tyree’s jeans were almost as low, on lean hips that held them up through friction or magic or double-sided tape. Gunn had once experimented with the big and baggy and low look. That same week he’d caught an episode of Cops on television and had seen how quickly those pants slipped right off when it came to a real scuffle. Floundering around with his pants at his ankles didn’t seem to be the best strategy to staying alive as he kept the streets safe, so he’d given them away the next day.