ANGEL ™: avatar

by John Passarella

  “What happened? Was it the cult?” Elliot asked.

  Yunk’sh staggered before catching his balance, then nodded. “They appeared as I finished the sacrifice. One of their sorcerers spoke the binding words.”

  Elliot dropped down on the bed, fearing the worst, his headache completely forgotten. Yunk’sh had said that if he was bound by the cult, their first order of business would be to kill Elliot. Had Yunk’sh arrived in his bedroom to carry out that assignment? “What does that mean for you—for us?”

  “For now it means nothing,” Yunk’sh said. “I resisted his touch.”

  “That’s good. I mean, hell, that’s great!”

  “Hardly,” the demon replied. “They have their sorcerer and their magick ready. They know the ritual. All that remains is the binding touch and I will be their servant.”

  “But you were expecting them,” Elliot said. “And you outmaneuvered them.”

  “I had hoped their knowledge and preparation would be incomplete, that even if they found me, they would not know how to contain my power. A foolish assumption, I now realize. They are indeed dangerous.”

  “Only two more sacrifices and you won’t have to take any crap from anybody.” And neither will I, Elliot thought.

  A musical knock on the door: shave and a haircut. Elliot rolled his eyes. It could only be Shirley. “Wait here,” he told Yunk’sh. “If I don’t answer the door she’ll think I had an accident and call the paramedics.”

  As he rushed out the bedroom door, his foot connected with his high school yearbook and it skidded across the floor, rebounding off the doorframe. He picked it up, and it fell open to the page he’d book-marked with clippings from the school newspaper. Centered on the lefthand page was a picture of blond Julie McGraw, head cheerleader, with her arms above her head forming a big V for victory. Under her picture she’d written, “Have a great summer!” with a little smiley face under it. It had taken every ounce of his courage to approach her, to ask her to sign his yearbook, and she hadn’t even included his name in the bland message. He wondered, not for the first time, if she had even known his name. After four years of high school, had he simply remained a faceless, nameless geek to her? That would all change after he was through helping Yunk’sh. When he was rich and powerful the Julie McGraws and Trudy Ryans of the world would all take notice of Elliot Grundy.

  Rapid knocking intruded on his thoughts. With a sigh, he shelved the yearbook, closed the bedroom door behind him, and called, “I’m coming.”

  So that he would be prepared to hide his deformities when he answered the door, he’d tossed an athletic bandage and a roomy bathrobe on a nearby chair. In about twenty seconds, he was able to wrap hand, wrist, and forearm nearly up to his elbow. Then he slipped into the robe to hide the rest of his arm. With a sigh to calm himself, he flipped the dead bolt, unhooked the chain, and opened the door. “Hi, Shirley.”

  Looking ready for a country-western concert in a checked flannel shirt and denim overalls, Shirley bobbed her head at him. “Hey, Elliot!”

  As cheerful as ever, Elliot thought, but at least she didn’t come empty-handed.

  She held a large covered green Tupperware container. “I couldn’t help but notice you’ve been living off fast food lately.”

  Elliot glanced over at his small kitchen and all the empty fast-food bags and wrappers there. “Guess you don’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to figure that one out.”

  She chuckled. “Thought you might appreciate a home-cooked meal. I was on my way up with this when I heard something crash. Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine. I was . . . hanging a picture in the bedroom and I dropped it.”

  “Oh, my God! Your hand! What happened?”

  “Nothing. I was trying to make my own home-cooked meal and got a little too close to the boiling water.”

  “Oh, my!” Before he could offer a protest, she slipped by him and walked toward the kitchen with her container. She set it on the small table, then turned back to him with a concerned frown. “Let me have a look.”

  “No! Really, it’s okay. The doctor already treated it. It’s gonna be fine. No scarring, nothing.”

  “But, Elliot, athletic bandages are for muscle strains, not burns.”

  “I did this. Extra padding over the bandages. That’s all. In case I bump into something.” And I need to move this along, Elliot thought, with a nervous glance at his closed bedroom door. Be patient, Yunk’sh. I’ll give her the boot. I promise.

  “Okay. Well, for tonight at least, you’re safe from further kitchen mishaps. I brought enough lasagna for two. Thought we could have a friendly dinner together, you know, talk about things down at the store.”

  “Hey, that sounds . . . geat. It’s just that I had a little bit of a dizzy spell hanging that picture. I think I should get some rest, maybe wait till later to eat.”

  Shirley’s ever-present smile crumbled a little bit around the edges. “Oh.”

  “Don’t worry. The food won’t go to waste. I’ll reheat it in the microwave.”

  “If it’s not too late, give me a call. I’ll come up and keep you company.”

  “Don’t wait up, though,” Elliot said quickly. “Could be real late.”

  “Right,” she agreed with a nod. A little of the sparkle had gone out of her eyes. She clasped her hands together, a nervous gesture, as if she wasn’t quite sure what to do with them.

  Elliot walked her to the door and held it open.

  “Oh,” Shirley said as she backed into the hallway, “if you cover the lasagna with plastic wrap, be careful pulling it off. Steam burns are nasty.”

  “Sure. Thanks again for the grub.”

  “No problem. Well . . . I guess that’s everything,” Shirley said. “See ya.”

  Elliot shut the door, flipped the dead bolt, put the chain on, and sighed. Eating lasagna would have been fine. Sitting across the table from a babbling Shirley was more than he could stomach. Why can’t she be more like Julie McGraw? he wondered. Would it kill her to wear a dress once in a while? To put on some makeup and do something with that hair? But comparing Shirley to Julie gave him an idea. Once he had his power and a fortune, he could afford to have someone track down Julie and find out if she was still available. She’ll be mighty impressed at the new and improved Elliot Grundy.

  He tossed the robe on the chair and unwound the athletic bandage from his arm. Elliot scratched the back of his neck, his fingers trailing down across rough, scaly skin. “Well, this is new.” Little bumps, forming evenly spaced ridges from his hairline down to the middle of his spine. “Oh, hell,” he whispered, shaking his head. He’d have to start wearing high-collared shirts or turtlenecks. “Damn! What next?”

  From the bedroom, he heard Yunk’sh call his name.

  As he rubbed the ridges along his spine, Elliot thought with new resolve, Maybe it’s time to find out exactly how Yunk’sh is gonna make my dreams come true.

  Cordelia opened the door to Angel’s office carrying an oversized leather-bound tome with brittle yellow pages that were all too willing to abandon the security of the old binding. “I found something,” she said, excited. Then she flashed a disapproving frown. “Would it kill them to put an index in the back of these things? It would save us all a lot of time.”

  “I bet they wish they’d thought of that,” Doyle teased.

  “And the smell gives ‘musty’ a bad name,” she added for good measure.

  “What have you found?” Angel asked.

  Cordelia laid the old volume of demon lore down on his desk, opened to a smudged page near the back, which showed a small lopsided woodcut image similar to the sketch Angel had made from Doyle’s vision. “Without that picture, it probably would have taken me a week to find this small entry.”

  Angel and Doyle leaned over the desk to get a look, but Angel was looking at the text right side up. “Not much information. Just speculation. It says the Vishrak demons’ re-spawning cycles are tied to the moment of their initial spawning.
”

  Doyle stepped around the desk and glanced ahead. “Believed to be based on planetary alignment. But how? Could be anything. Days of the week. Phases of the moon.”

  Angel read from the text, “ ‘The greater the number of sacrifices in the ritual cycle, the more powerful the Vishrak demon will become in its second-spawned form.’ ”

  “Nine sacrifices so far for this one,” Doyle reminded them.

  “Nine seems like a lot,” Cordelia commented. “Which can’t be good.”

  Angel shook his head.

  The telephone rang, startling them. Cordelia picked it up, gave her regular greeting, then mouthed “Kate” and gave the handset to Angel.

  Doyle and Cordelia only heard his side of the conversation, but that was ominous enough: “Where? Two of them? Both women? In a cloak? I don’t suppose any of the drivers caught the plate number on the truck? Okay, I’m on my way.” He hung up the phone and said, “Better make that ten victims.”

  “You mentioned two on the phone,” Cordelia reminded him.

  “Only one was skinned. The other was thrown against a brick wall hard enough to break most of her bones. My guess is she interrupted the sacrifice intentionally. She was wearing a hooded black cloak.”

  “Standard cult issue,” Doyle commented.

  “Don’t leave the compound without it,” Cordelia added.

  “Go through the case folders again,” Angel instructed them. “See if you can find a pattern to this cycle. If we know the cycle, maybe we can figure out who the next victim will be.”

  “What if ten completes the cycle?” Cordelia asked. “What if that’s all the demon needs?”

  “If what we’ve heard about twice-spawned demons is true, pray that it’s not.”

  Doyle raised his eyebrows and nodded. “Amen to that.”

  The remaining cult members had gathered in the burned-out Trinity United Methodist Church again, minus Gary and Samuel. Fearing the wrath of the Omni and Vincent, Gary had been all too willing to drive Samuel to the hospital to have his crushed nose examined. Even with the failure, the group was excited by the proof of their faith. It was the first time any of them had been in the presence of a Vishrak demon—or any demon, for that matter. Vincent and the Omni, however, could only lament the agonizing failure after being so close.

  The Omni said, “There is another way to bind Yunk’sh.”

  “Speak it,” Vincent said, eager to make amends for his group’s bungling of the first attempt to bind the demon.

  “As with binding the Vishrak demon during the sacrificial absorption, this method too must be accomplished before the second spawning is complete. According to our ancient teachings, we may yet beguile a binding.”

  “Beguile?”

  The Omni nodded. “When the ritual sacrifices are complete, after the demon attains his second body, his true demonic form—not the feeble borrowed essence we have witnessed this night—he must yet walk one day and one night within that form before it is truly his. This is called the settling time.”

  “What must we do?” Vincent asked.

  “We must locate the demon’s last true demonic form, what we call his remnant corpse. Since the demon was improperly slain and thus never banished from our realm, the corpse still has influence over the demon’s psyche. During the settling time, if we possess the remnant corpse we may be able to beguile a binding.”

  “How will we find this remnant corpse?”

  “I have placed a name to the demon and touched the flesh he has touched. I have seen his borrowed form—his physical manifestation—within our binding circle. If fate favors us, the contact we have made so far will be sufficient to locate the remnant corpse. Choose three of your number to travel to San Francisco.”

  “Why San Francisco?”

  “The Omni Council had reports ninety-five years ago of a Vishrak demon operating in San Francisco. Then silence. At that time, they could only hope the demon had been improperly slain and not banished.”

  “And you believe that remnant corpse was the first demonic body of Yunk’sh?” Vincent asked.

  The Omni nodded. “This is what our lore tells us,” the Omni explained. “As the moon holds sway over the tides, so too do the outer planets determine when improperly slain Vishrak demons may reemerge. We believe that the detached psyche of an improperly slain Vishrak demon must wait until the celestial alignments approximate those of the demon’s initial spawning, that the demon is therefore ruled by a particular planet.”

  “But how can we know when the demon was first spawned? And how the planets were aligned at that moment?”

  “The Omni Council tracks the planets as they move from one astrological sign to the next. We watch for a year or more for signs that a demon’s psyche has reawakened, marking the commencement of a ritual cycle. Because the demon’s psyche may take over a year to awaken, a demon spawned with Jupiter as his ruling planet has little chance of re-spawning, as Jupiter moves through all twelve constellations in a dozen years. Before a Jupiter-ruled demon psyche is fully aware, Jupiter has already fled the demon’s spawning constellation and the psyche remains impotent.”

  “Then how—” Willem asked.

  The Omni ignored his interruption. “Neptune, however, takes one hundred and sixty-five years to complete its circuit of the heavens, spending over thirteen years within each constellation. More than enough time for a Neptune-ruled Vishrak demon’s psyche to awaken, enlist the aid of a human servant, and begin its re-spawning cycle.”

  “Is Yunk’sh Neptune-ruled, then?” Vincent inquired.

  “In 1998, Neptune entered Aquarius,” the Omni said. “A year has passed, and Yunk’sh’s psyche, now awakened, hurries to complete his cycle to awaken once more in a demonic body more powerful than his first.”

  “So Yunk’sh was initially spawned when Neptune was in Aquarius?”

  “That is our belief,” the Omni said. “As we believe that the Vishrak demon who raged in San Francisco almost a century ago was improperly slain and that his remnant corpse, assuming it has survived, awaits us there even now.”

  From Willem 94, “If that demon was Yunk’sh, why wouldn’t he reemerge in San Francisco instead of Los Angeles?”

  Vincent frowned at Willem’s impertinence, but the Omni took the question in stride. “A demon’s detached psyche may drift in relation to our physical plane. Reemergence may occur within a severalhundred-mile radius of the demon’s near-death.

  “I must now prepare for the Divining of the Remnant Corpse ritual. Afterward, Vincent, I will create a tool that your chosen three will carry to San Francisco to help them locate the remnant corpse. Time is critical. They must hurry back with the remnant corpse before Yunk’sh’s cycle is complete. Best if they leave tonight and return here by late tomorrow.

  “Gentlemen, we must not be found wanting now. Our time is at hand!”

  With his deformed left arm resting on the back of his desk chair, Elliot picked at the rough skin and ridges that had begun to protrude from his neck and spine. He was stalling, trying to think of a diplomatic way to ask the demon for proof that he could make good on his promises, that he could make Elliot the next megabillionaire techno-god. So far, all he had to show for his pact with the demon was a case of elephant hide and some fused fingers.

  The demon stood near the foot of the bed, his human features slipping back into the anonymous pod-person mode that somehow made the average mannequin appear animated.

  Finally, in frustration, Elliot asked, “Can’t you drop in on these cult bozos when they’re least expecting it and do a number on them?”

  “Just as he uses magic to locate my physical manifestations, the sorcerer can mask their presence from me, at least for as long as I am stuck in this inbetween state. This is why we must accelerate our schedule and complete my ritual before they complete theirs.”

  “We’re already moving very fast,” Elliot said. “I’ve lined up ten victims for you in about three weeks.”

  “Once b
egun, the ritual must be completed within one lunar cycle.”

  “Why the moon?”

  “Cycles within cycles,” Yunk’sh said. “My kind are only spawned during the night within the day, under the dark eye of the moon.”

  “A full solar eclipse?”

  Yunk’sh nodded. “If my ritual is not finished in one lunar cycle, I must wait through another cycle of my ruling planet to begin again. Almost two centuries.”

  “And I’ll be worm food by then.”

  “Precisely,” Yunk’sh said. “I hope that is sufficient motivation.”

  Elliot saw his opportunity. “Speaking of motivation, I’ve set up a lot of people for you to consume.”

  “You feel no remorse?”

  “Look, nobody ever cut me a break,” Elliot said, letting anger creep into his voice. “Life ain’t fair. Believe me, I learned that lesson the hard way. You gotta take what you can get, any way you can get it.”

  “Then what is your concern?”

  “It’s just that I . . . I was kinda wondering how you’ll be able to make me king of the technology mountain, you know, when your cycle’s complete.”

  “You doubt my word?” Yunk’sh asked, enraged. “Or merely my power?” The demon’s booming voice rattled the walls.

  “Not doubt,” Elliot added hastily. “I’m just curious . . . and excited about getting what’s coming to me, you know, and seeing what shape it will take.”

  “Observe,” the demon said, pointing a spatulate hand at Elliot’s computer screen.

  Elliot watched as the screen filled with what looked like object-oriented programming code. He knew enough about programming to know what it looked like, if not how to code it himself. In a moment, the code began to scroll up his screen so fast it blurred before his eyes, thousands, maybe millions of lines of it. “What are you— What is it doing?”