They smelled good.
They smelled really good.
That’s not who you are.
Human. Carrying a soul that already dragged too much guilt around with it, a soul that didn’t even need to know how hard it was for this body to keep itself from leaping on the unsuspecting couple—supper and dessert rolled into one.
“Good evening,” Angel said in a low voice, only through long practice able to keep his words clear around protruding teeth. And if the man thought to give Angel a strange look, he was distracted quickly enough by his date’s obsession with the auction receipt, and had no apparent clue that the warring factions within this stranger had in fact been warring over his fate.
That in itself was some small victory, and as they moved on, Angel allowed himself to relax, not entirely sure if he’d won that round or if he’d just—fortunately—run out of time. A new spasm of wholly exterior anger beat against him…the deathstone in the throes of overload.
They were all running out of time.
Cordelia led the trio as they disembarked from the tram a short distance from the brightly lit and thickly occupied enclave in front of the koala house; by unspoken consent they said nothing of Angel at all, and successfully ignored the little frown on the driver’s face. The woman flipped her ponytail back, frowned again at the single scrawled signature Wesley had left her, and shrugged. She eased the tram toward the mouth of Koala Corner, leaving them to follow.
They didn’t, of course. They headed back down the pathway, not at all certain where they were going—or how to get there from here. “Gosh,” Cordelia said, sardonic as she contemplated an implacable row of trees between them and where she thought Angel had been looking right before he bailed off the bus. “How silly of us. We should have stopped to get a touristy little map on the way in.”
“I suggest we head for Treetops Terrace,” Wesley said. “It’s a focal point of the zoo, and is a likely spot for the exchange. Furthermore, it’s high ground. Even if it’s not the right place, it’s a good spot for reconnaissance.”
“Sure,” said Cordelia. “If only I’d brought my weekend warrior night-vision goggles.”
“If only we still had Angel with us,” Gunn said, more than a hint of accusation in his voice.
“Hey, if we’re lucky, we’ll find the right spot and he’ll have already taken care of everything,” Cordelia said, trying hard to look on the positive side.
“The state of mind he must be in, I don’t think we want him taking care of anything,” Wesley told her.
“The state of mind he’s in, I’d rather have him here beside us than sneaking up behind us,” Gunn added immediately. “Or do I have to remind you—”
“No,” Cordelia said sharply. “You don’t. Now can we get moving? The only thing worse than sneaking through a dark zoo when you know there are demons lurking all around is hanging around in a dark zoo looking defenseless and yummy.” Not that they were defenseless. But she didn’t want to have to deal with convincing some deathstone-driven demon that they weren’t worth the trouble. After all, how does a deathstone-driven demon measure such things? Quite certainly not on the same scale that Cordelia would use.
A rustle off the side drew all their attention at once; they froze, waiting to see if the unknown creature would pass or come in for a closer look. After a moment it moved on, and Cordelia let out a gusty sigh.
“I hope my kids listened,” Gunn muttered.
“What?” asked Wesley.
“Nothing,” Gunn told him. “Let’s get this over with.”
A night-shift zoo attendant moved briskly toward the aviary, looking around himself with his shoulders shrugged up—as though the back of his neck prickled…or he knew he was being watched.
Angel watched him. At least three demons also watched him. Run-of-the-mill demon-human mutts who probably ordinarily spent their evenings playing poker or racing rats. To the left, the pull of the stone…to the right, the defenseless keeper and the chance to give in to the intense and constant itch of emotion.
Act. Attack. Do it in fury.
The demons gave in to the itch—and with an inner leap of dissolved restraint, Angel followed. Faster than the demons, more practiced…he got there first. The keeper squeaked in fear at the sudden company, ducking away from Angel.
Angel didn’t look at him. He didn’t turn to the keeper, he didn’t so much as glance at the keeper, and he definitely kept his face in shadow. “Get in the aviary cage,” he said, facing the startled demon mutts. “Get in there and stay in there. If you come out, you’ll die.” And who knows. It might even be me who kills you.
An Angelus thought if there ever was one. I can be angry and still human, he told that part of himself, a vicious inner dialogue.
He took it out on the demons. They weren’t tough demons; they came in with teeth showing, and fists flailing as though to pummel him to submission; one of them had javelina-like tusks that might even do some damage. Angel succumbed to temptation, let loose his iron control, and launched himself at them.
He took them down in a savage combination of moves—breaking what he could have merely bruised, killing where he could have incapacitated. Not killing all of them…two looked at their injuries with a kind of shocked revelation—broken nose gushing blood, broken arm jutting bone—and then down at the dead tusk-face as revelation turned to realization. As though suddenly they understood where they were and what they’d been up to and what kind of trouble they were in. And Angel, the back of his hand barely stinging from the dying slash of a tusk, laughed at them.
And then he chased them. Arms open wide, embracing the night and the violence and the death he could cause…
Angeluuusss.
A glad whisper in his thoughts. A recognition of self, only moments from freedom…
The demons threw themselves over a wall and into the packed dirt pit below. Tires dotted the ground, along with a large squashed plastic barrel.
Elephant enclosure. Angel stopped, hesitated; considered. One of the demons seemed to have injured its leg. Not much of a chase any longer. And then behind him…
The deathstone pulsed his own fierce intensity at him, recapturing him like a siren song of destruction. He turned his back on the elephant enclosure and took his bearings.
A cluster of small hexagonal buildings stood front and left; his night vision was plenty good enough to read the REPTILE HOUSE sign. Almost directly in front of him stood an open area with picnic facilities. ZOO MEADOW. Up the hill to the right, beyond a crescent of palms, stood a fanciful building with a subdued glow of minimal night lighting.
There.
The stone was up there.
Khundarr tightened the flap of his long-nose tightly enough to make it ache. Faugh, what a place this was! No matter that it was clean and tidy and manicured…there was no mistaking the overlapping scent of so many different animals residing in this one facility.
But there was also no mistaking the presence of the warrior’s deathstone. The stone’s emissions oscillated and wobbled, more strongly pitched than Khundarr had ever detected in his days as a priest. Strong enough for his new team of under-priests to locate it and emerge from their pocket dimension not far from where Khundarr waited.
As a team, they entered the zoo, not terribly concerned with the bars and rules of human facilities, nor concerned about the consequences. They would be lucky to live out this night and, if by some chance they did, escape back to the pocket dimension was the least of their worries.
For the night was full of demons. Demons from deep nooks and crannies of their clandestine lives, drawn out by the irresistible call of a stone so full of impressions that it spiraled toward destruction. It taunted them, inflicting its emanations on them, luring them back to the source….
Khundarr had seen the results. Mild demons, dying in streets they never otherwise dared to visit. Fierce demons, tearing one another apart. And the humans, who never stood a chance either way, entirely unprepared for t
he attack of those creatures they rarely saw and never acknowledged. Come morning, the chaos would hardly abate, and then the humans would see an entirely new world, revealed in bright daylight. Only those wretches who hid in the darkest corners of their homes would be able to deny the existence of the demon element…and that would mean the start of an entirely different kind of war—and an end to the uneasy, covert coexistence of the elder ones and the humans who had displaced them.
Not to mention the astonishing numbers of both humans and demons who would die before the deathstone finally imploded with the weight of its own impressions.
Unless Khundarr and his team regained possession of the deathstone. Here. Now. At this place where two foolish humans seemed to think that the distasteful smell of carefully collected animals could throw the Tuingas from the trail of the deathstone, a thing they perceived through an entirely different sense altogether. Where those humans thought they could barter the power of a warrior’s deathstone without consequence.
Khundarr intended to create consequence.
“No wonder they picked the zoo,” Gunn said, even as Cordelia caught a musky whiff of some creature or another. Or maybe just a combination of all of them. “Even with the way they clean this place, the smell—”
“Should prove confusing to any scent-oriented creature like the Tuingas,” Wesley agreed. “But ultimately, I doubt it’ll be enough. Angel seems to know where the stone is—”
“And he’s not the only one,” Cordelia interrupted, moving a few quick inches closer to the two of them as something rustled in the landscaped brush behind her. Not a big something, since that particular brush wasn’t even up to her knees. But something nonetheless. “Where’s this Treetops place you were talking about—oh.” For they’d found the paved path again, and it curved immediately uphill and to the left, where on the high ground, a fanciful building that looked like two hexagons crammed together gently glowed with soft night lighting around what looked like giant aquariums set into the walls. The roof rose up at a steep hut-like angle, and Cordelia wasn’t sure if they were walking into a scene from The Little Mermaid or Tarzan’s condo.
Or maybe just some dirty little sale of stolen goods…a deathstone for cash.
The buyer stood off to the side, barely limned by the soft blue light of the aquarium walls. He’d either been at the auction or dressed for it as a matter of course; his suit looked Italian and most definitely hand-tailored by someone with enough skill to disguise—almost—the long-bodied and short-legged build of the man, not to mention his mild paunch.
Lutkin’s taste in clothing had not changed a whit—not for the occasion and not out of mercy for the rest of them. And in his hand…the bowling bag. At his back stood David Arnnette, glancing into the darkness with an increasing nervousness.
A nearby growl startled Cordelia. More startling yet, it was a familiar kind of growl, and how often did you get to say that? She found…
Angel.
He’d been in a fight already, had a scuff of blood on his face from a wound that had already healed—or might not have been his in the first place. And his face itself…tense, and shadowed from within. Not quite fang-face, but looking on the verge…tormented and yet in some way eager, a scary combination. She wasn’t even sure—
“Angel?” Wesley asked quietly.
“It’s me,” Angel said, short and with just a hint of dark humor. “Trust me. If Angelus was in control, I wouldn’t just be watching.”
“Trust you, no,” Gunn said. “But the logic works.”
“There it is,” Wesley said, his attention on the exchange before them. The buyer extended a briefcase; Arnnette fielded it and gave the contents a token look before setting the case by Lutkin’s side with a quick, nervous movement that suggested he wanted nothing to do with the money or the situation. He glanced around, peering through the darkness as though he wished he indeed had a vampire’s night vision, all the more conspicuous in his effort to look casual.
Looking for us, Cordelia realized. Hoping for us. Finally realizing he was in over his head. Though in this case she wasn’t sure if “better late than never” applied, because maybe—for Arnnette, for the Tuingas, for all the people hurt by enraged demons, for Angel—maybe late was simply too late.
Khundarr hovered at the edge of the odd building, with eyes for nothing but the undignified bag that held the warrior’s deathstone. Or not quite so; he was not so careless that he didn’t note the presence of those from the hotel, although neither the man with the deathstone nor the buyer seemed to know of them. Khundarr’s team of priests ranged around the area, circling the exchange and ready for action. Ready to grab the deathstone no matter what it took—for while they had no wish to kill humans, things had gone too far. They would recover the deathstone tonight no matter the cost.
The black human looked around, wary, as though he somehow detected the priests; he murmured something to the other two humans. If Khundarr’s team were properly alert, they would note the exchange. If not, they were likely to pay. These humans knew how to fight. But the vampire was the biggest problem, and not only because of his strength and speed.
Because he, too, felt the influence of the deathstone.
The buyer, ignorant and too eager to hold his new acquisition to heed the obvious signs that all was not well, gestured impatiently for the ugly bag. The man in possession of it picked up the bag, his expression sly and twisted, like a man who knew he was being paid to divest himself of trouble. He held it out—
The vampire stepped out of the shadows, said something short and low and commanding. Demanding the bag! Khundarr thought with horror. He wished these people no ill; he knew they were trying to help in their fumbling, ignorant way, but—
No matter the cost.
Things happened suddenly then. The vampire hesitated, his assurance suddenly rocked by the few steps he’d taken toward the stone; the stone surged in response, sucking in emotion, spewing it back out again, a distorted cyclonic funnel of what had once been the fine, crisp impressions of a warrior’s death. The emanations bludgeoned the vampire, a shock wave of emotions that slammed into every demon within the confines of this zoo. A low moan rose around the building, a myriad of demons pushed to insanity, voicing their pain in chirps and snarls and growls and ululations that no human ear was meant to hear.
The buyer grabbed the stone and leaped for escape.
The Tuingas leaped to stop him.
The rest of the demons just plain leaped.
Chapter Fifteen
Angel staggered under the onslaught of the stone. Vaguely aware that his friends battled for their lives, he could do nothing to help. He fell to his knees, losing even the control to stay on his feet as Angelus within him surged to meet the anger and hatred and insanity beating against him from without.
Let go. Embrace it.
Cordelia cried out from behind him—surprise or pain, he couldn’t tell, and couldn’t do so much as look to see.
Give up.
“I won’t,” he said to that self inside himself, speaking through clenched teeth…hanging on.
But he couldn’t break free either.
A shriek of fear penetrated the cacophony, and then a shriek of death. An instant later, one of the Tuingas flung the body of the buyer onto the terrace, a limp bundle of bones. Even in death the man clutched the bowling bag handles—but the bag ripped open, and the exposed stone skidded free. From his other hand, a knife pinwheeled toward Angel across the ground.
A misshapen lump of a demon with several sets of arms appeared and launched itself at the Tuingas; they fell and rolled down the hill, crashing through the carefully tended landscaping. Demons loomed everywhere; Wesley shouted a warning to Gunn, and Angel—the only still figure in the middle of a barbarous melee—struggled to respond. To help.
“Angel!” Cordelia cried, eluding a trio of demons who were doing their best to devour one another. She took shelter up against a palm, immediately striking up the strategy of
don’t-notice-me. But Angel didn’t even seem to hear her cry for backup. He just swayed there, on his knees, his face twisted with his conflict and the offending stone only a few feet away.
She wanted to smash it into little bits, but didn’t think it would be that easy. She still wanted to try—but there was the small matter of getting there. Wesley and Gunn fought with grim determination, unable to do anything but slash and duck, evading one lethal attack just in time to face another. They double-teamed a Miquot, keeping it too busy to grab its own homegrown knives with the short, curving jambiyas Cordelia had flung them. She still had the satchel, and the satchel still had weapons, but…
She didn’t even know where to start.
They needed Angel.
Join them, whispered a maniac voice within him. But it referred to the demons, not to his friends. Angel closed his eyes and said, more loudly than before, “I won’t.”
And though he trembled with the effort, he still couldn’t break free—couldn’t find the strength to shut out the emanations that drew Angelus so close to the surface, and could barely find the strength to keep that evil riff of laughter from rippling out of the body Angelus called home.
When two whirling, catfighting demons slammed into him, it sent him sprawling. His concentration shattered, but with the stone only inches from his face, even Angelus lay stunned. A moment later, Lutkin’s headless body toppled over Angel’s back, and an unfamiliar voice cried a warning:
“Watch out!”
The faux Angel?
Lutkin’s body lifted from Angel’s legs, smashed into the side of the building, and sprawled at a grotesque angle along both ground and wall. Rough hands of a berserker demon grabbed him next, lifted him, prepared to throw him—
A strange, determined scream filled the air, and Angel, dangling, recognized it as a battle cry from a throat that had never before sounded any such thing. Dropped, he thudded back to the ground, those same inches away from the stunning emanations of the stone. An instant later, David Arnnette smashed into the side of the building and slid down to rest on top of Lutkin…a sacrifice.
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