Impressions

by Doranna Durgin

  As long as he kept Angelus under wraps.

  Belatedly, she said, “Of course we appreciate you, Lorne.”

  “See?” Angel said, with the kind of so there tone in his voice as if they’d all jumped up and showered acclaim on Lorne.

  “No kidding,” Lorne said flatly. “Then why is it every time I’m cleaning up a mess, your little gang is always around?” He gestured broadly at the club, into which desperate demons had crammed themselves as though it were some sort of bomb shelter. In a way, Cordelia supposed it was. Those who wanted to be safe were; those who wanted to keep themselves from acting under the influence of the deathstone did.

  But exceeding the code capacity so outrageously had left its mark.

  “Whose little gang?” Gunn asked. Cordelia knew he had his own little gang going now—well, not gang gang, but that bunch of kids he’d been talking about since the night before, how they’d done this and that and of course had watched the hotel and, most of all, had finally realized the wisdom of doing things his way. Cordelia had finally adopted a polite nodding strategy for these moments, but only after blunt discouragement had failed to work.

  “Yes,” Wesley said, looking up from the stage equipment, where he’d no doubt been wishing Fred had felt more prepared to venture out and apply her considerable brainpower to the malfunctioning bits. “I wondered that myself.”

  Lorne hesitated long enough to tell Cordelia he’d meant Angel’s little gang, but he apparently recalled it wouldn’t go over so well anymore, so when he responded, it was to say firmly, “This little gang. And don’t change the subject. You know I’m right.” He leaned down to pull a chair to its feet only to discover that it rocked significantly from one diagonal pair of legs to the other. He shoved it up against the table leg to steady it, and moved on to the next one.

  “Hey,” Angel said, turning on the ladder in such a precarious manner that it made Cordelia want to run over and steady the bottom rungs. “This one wasn’t ours. We didn’t do it…we fixed it.”

  Lorne snorted, unappeased. “But the misguided young man who let things get so messy was imitating you.”

  Cordelia winced—and she thought the ladder really would tip this time. It might have, if Angel hadn’t abandoned his perch by the expedient method of simply jumping to the floor, taking that first step like it was nothing and landing with only the slightest of crouches. The look on his face was entirely wounded, and she found herself wondering when in his evolution—because she wasn’t sure one could call it a life—he’d begun to care so much what his friends thought.

  Since when had he had friends? The question came unbidden to her mind. After all, he’d been no prize before Darla sired him into Angelus; he’d said as much himself. And Angelus…evil like that had no friends, just enemies-to-be. But she looked at his face again and knew that he did care, and found herself saying rather suddenly, “No, he wasn’t—imitating Angel, I mean. He had it all wrong.”

  “Except for that bit at the end,” Wesley said unexpectedly.

  “You mean the part where he got himself killed,” Angel said flatly.

  “That was his own doing,” Wesley said. “His own decisions and his own behavior put him in that spot. One might consider him lucky for having the chance to make that one heroic gesture before he died. Somewhere along the way, you seem to have made quite an impression on him.”

  They turned to him, universally aghast.

  Wesley winced. “Let’s just pretend I didn’t say that.”

  “Let’s,” Lorne said in his driest possible tone.

  But Cordelia thought Wesley had it right.

  • • •

  The Tuingas elderpriest walked slowly toward the shrine, crunching on a soothing stick of rolled and dried latex tree bark. An expensive import from the anchor dimension, but well worth it for its contemplation-inducing nature.

  Beside him walked an under-priest, silent and a little cowed. The elderpriest might have tried to counsel his underling out of the mood had he not felt the priest had plenty to be cowed about. The only survivor of the recent great unpleasantness had witnessed the results of a deathstone gone wild, and watched his fellow team of priests succumb to crazed demons. He’d watched the senior team leader sacrifice himself, throwing his own body over the deathstone to create the contact that destroyed them both…unstable deathstone and living Tuingas flesh.

  But the young under-priest himself had brought back the results of that heroic act: Khundarr’s deathstone, complete with the impressions of his last moment…the determination, the certainty, even the peacefulness success had brought him. In a rare and subtle echo, impressions from the warrior’s stone—the initial impressions, undistorted and cherished—made themselves known.

  Together, the priests entered the shrine that held Khundarr’s stone. Marble-faced, simply appointed, a quietly stark chamber meant to pull a visitor’s focus to the pedestal in the middle. It had once held the warrior’s stone; now Khundarr’s stone sat upon it, offering visitors the carefully protected and prepared memories of both heroes.

  Off to the side, in one of the many wall niches, the first secondary stone resided. Much smaller, from a less imposing individual. The young Tuingas whose untimely doublesneeze had set the entire crisis in motion. Rather than revile the young one and his stone, they had chosen to acknowledge his honor and bravery, and his attempts to set things right.

  Before they went any closer, the elderpriest removed from his sash pocket an object newly incorporated into the ritual of shrine visits: a squeezably soft bottle. “Here,” he said to the under-priest, speaking for the first time since they’d embarked on this visit. “Partake deeply.”

  Reverently, the under-priest accepted the bottle, holding it in both hands before him as he prepared his long-nose, admiring the bright red and white label.

  NASAL SPRAY. JUMBO SIZE.

  Chapter Seventeen

  With Caritas mostly back in good order, and Lorne looking almost alert again and not the least bit chagrined at having ducked out of the worst of the trouble, Angel took the leisurely underground route back to the Hyperion and let the others cram themselves into the cab of Gunn’s truck. Not that it was daylight—it wasn’t—or that he couldn’t have fit into the truck if he’d really wanted to. He simply found himself ready for some time alone.

  After all, it hadn’t been even a day since he’d been in the grips of a desperate struggle with himself. And he’d won—again—but it had been close enough to make him wonder if he always would win. The darkness within him seemed indefatigable…and the fight an unending one.

  And he still didn’t get it. David Arnnette and his misguided admiration and emulation, an emulation that had resulted in his own death. Something in Angel wanted to feel guilty about that, but mostly he thought Cordelia had the right of it…Arnnette had focused on the wrong things, had wanted the wrong things…and he’d paid for it.

  As for Angel, he was already living his life the best he could. It was a life built on bad decisions and desperate moments, and he was lucky to have the chance to try to turn that around.

  When he ambled into the Hyperion lobby, he found Cordelia and Fred engaged in a microwave popcorn–tossing competition, with Wesley and Gunn as their somewhat sheepish targets. Both men snapped their mouths closed as they noticed Angel; unperturbed, Cordelia and Fred switched to tossing popcorn at each other.

  “I have this idea,” Fred said, as a kernel bounced off her cheek. “A funnel thing, with a coating of just the right ionic balance to attract buttered popcorn. I’m just not sure…it seems like maybe the time is better spent on this other idea I have—”

  “I kinda think a funnel thing with an ionic coating might take the fun right out of it,” Cordelia said, tossing a kernel straight up in the air and stumbling backward, still stiff and awkward from all the close calls of the night before, to catch it in her open mouth. Which she did, but not until she’d bumped into Angel.

  He steadied her, stole a piece of
her popcorn, and aimed it at Fred. Fred caught it with undiluted glee, and Angel found himself smiling as he eased past Cordelia to the refrigerator behind the counter. Just a little snack…

  “We figure it was one of their priests, all right,” Wesley said, as if they’d all been talking business right along. No doubt he was entirely unaware of the little greasy blots of popcorn butter all over the front of his shirt. “It was certainly the same fellow you wounded the other night.”

  Angel leaned on the counter, picking up the new demon guide from which Cordelia had eventually gleaned the final crucial clues. By now it automatically opened to the section on Tuingas, with its obscure references to a pocket dimension tribe and the priests who oversaw the deathstones. “Probably he’s a martyr among his people.”

  “Or a hero,” Wesley agreed. “Too bad we weren’t of much help. Not until the end, anyway, when we at least gave the other demons something to attack besides the Tuingas.”

  “Yeah,” Gunn agreed, wiping his hands futilely across the stains on his own blocky, long-sleeved T-shirt. “But you gotta admit, those guys had stone—”

  “Let it go, Gunn,” Cordelia said, quick and hard, and aiming a meaningful look at him to boot.

  “No way,” said Gunn, not in the least deterred. “There are way too many good puns and double-entendres left.”

  “Use my office,” Wesley suggested. “Go in there, close the door, and just blurt them all out at once.”

  “It would be safer that way,” Cordelia agreed. Beside her, Fred smiled the quiet but genuine smile she’d started to show them between the moments of obvious crisis that were standard operating procedure around the hotel.

  Angel flexed his arm, thinking that it was a good smile, and thinking with any luck they’d avoid plunging into any new moments of obvious crisis for at least a day or two.

  “Is it all right?” Fred asked, and Angel looked at her in confusion, still stuck in his thoughts. “Your arm, I mean,” she added. “I couldn’t believe it when Cordelia told me—”

  “It’s fine,” Angel said hastily. His need to take such desperate means to keep his hold on Angelus wasn’t something he wanted to dwell on. Self-consciously, he put the arm down on the front counter, setting his snack down in front of it. No, wait, that wasn’t any better, putting the blood right out there to remind them of the vampire thing which would only remind them of the Angelus thing… Quickly, he moved it to the side.

  But no one really seemed to notice any of it. They were pretty much suddenly lost in their own thoughts, their own experiences of the night before. Cordelia still limped, and Wesley had obvious bruises beneath the popcorn grease. A bandage peeped out from beneath Gunn’s sleeve, and a cut had scabbed over his brow. They were all more than just a little bit lucky that the demons had in fact been so enraged that their capacity for thought—not to mention a canny fight—had deserted them entirely.

  Angel had simply been lucky. Lucky to have found something that worked, lucky to realize it when the clues came his way.

  As usual, Cordelia read him the best. “Not everyone would have had the—”

  “Stones,” Gunn supplied, unrepentant.

  “—courage to do what you did,” she said, taking no apparent notice of the interruption.

  He knew where she was going with this one. “He chose the wrong role model.”

  “You’ve got that all figured out now?” she asked, one arched eyebrow suggesting that she didn’t think so.

  “Yeah,” he said. “I think I do.”

  “So tell us,” Wesley said. “You’ve been around a while. You’ve got more examples than most to choose from. So who…?”

  “My role models?” Angel asked, eyeing the popcorn smears and bruises and cuts and stiffness-hampered movement as they all shifted a little closer, waiting for the answer to this one. But for once they’d asked him an easy one. “That would be you guys,” he told them, earning another of those smiles from Fred, this one of approval, and leaving them speechless as he headed for the stairs, for the quiet refuge of his rooms and what he hoped would be a deeply dreamless sleep. Because for now, he’d chased all the demons away; the only ones leaving impressions on him were the people he wanted there.

  For now.

  Doranna’s Back Story

  After obtaining a degree in wildlife illustration and environmental education, Doranna spent a number of years deep in the Appalachian Mountains, riding the trails and writing sci-fi and fantasy books, eleven of which have hit the shelves. She’s moved on to live in the Northern Arizona Mountains, where she still rides and writes, focusing on classical dressage with her Lipizzan. There’s a mountain looming outside her office window, a pack of dogs running around the house, and a laptop sitting on her desk—and that’s just the way she likes it.

  You can contact her at:

  dmd@doranna.net

  or

  P.O. Box 31123

  Flagstaff, AZ 86003-1123

  (SASE, please)

  or visit www.doranna.net.