ANGEL ™: avatar

by John Passarella

  “One dance,” Ashley said, turning his face back to her. “I’m not such a bad dancer myself.”

  “I really don’t . . .” Angel’s voice trailed off. Cordelia was no longer at the bar

  Angel tried to move around Ashley, but she stepped in front of him again. “Listen, if you don’t care to dance, let’s go outside?”

  Angel looked across the dance floor, saw Cordelia hurrying through the rows of tables. The blonde woman was holding her hand, leading her out of the dance club. “I have to leave now,” Angel said.

  “We could go back to my place,” Ashley offered, talking quickly. “I have a magnificent view of—”

  Angel slipped by her before she could elaborate on the view. By the time he reached the tables, he saw Doyle jump out of his seat, knocking over his chair in the process. “Doyle!” Angel called, but Doyle was too far away to hear him over the loud music.

  When they stepped outside the club, Doyle squeezed on Cordelia’s hand so hard she yelped. “Doyle! You’re hurting me.”

  “Sorry, but we gotta hurry.”

  He steered her through the small crowd and led her around the side of the building. “Where?”

  “After Angel.”

  Someone behind her shouted, “Cordelia!” And that someone had Doyle’s voice.

  She stopped in her tracks, forcing Doyle to stop or drag her.

  “That was Doyle—I mean, that was you!”

  He circled around behind her, blocking her view. “It’s a trick. C’mon!” He gave her a little shove and she stumbled.

  “Stop it!” Cordelia examined Doyle’s face and saw something in his eyes, something feral. “What’s gotten into you?” Over his shoulder she saw a figure running toward them. It was Doyle. But she was staring right at Doyle. “Wait a minute . . . You’re not really Doyle, are you?” But she wasn’t about to wait for an answer. She tried to run around him, but he caught her around the waist and dragged her behind the building, then shoved her against the wall.

  Dazed, she managed to remain standing only by leaning against the wall. Doyle transformed in front of her, becoming the man whose image had been transmitted to her computer. “I knew it! You’re that Vish—Vishrak demon guy.”

  “Call me Richard.”

  Doyle hurtled around the corner, off-balance and unprepared for the demon’s forearm, which caught him across the throat and dropped him to the ground in what amounted to a clothesline tackle. As Doyle choked and gasped for air, the demon transformed again, his fingers extending into whipping, segmented tentacles, tapered down to hollow points. His mouth opened and sprouted a tongue almost as long as the fingers. “I’ve subdued my glamour,” the demon told her, his deep voice distorted by the serpentine tongue. “You no longer see that which you desire, only what I want you to see. And I want you afraid. Now—open wide!”

  “Wait! You can’t kill me.”

  “Why not?”

  “It was a trap. I’m not your sign. I mean, I’m not the sign you need. We knew about you, so I pretended that was my sign to trap you.”

  “Thanks for warning me,” the demon said. “And you’re right. I cannot absorb you.”

  “Because that would ruin your cycle . . . thingy.”

  “But, for interfering where you do not belong, I will kill you.”

  Doyle rolled onto his hands and knees and attempted to rise, one hand pressed to his throat. His voice came out a croak. “Leave her alone!”

  Cordelia tried to stall. “If you suck out my insides, you’ll have to start over. Right?”

  The demon hissed, “There are many other ways to kill a human.”

  Cordelia’s voice was very small. “Other ways?”

  The demon nodded. His tongue retracted to human dimensions, but the finger-tentacles remained. The demon wrapped them around her throat and began to squeeze. “Strangulation has its charms.”

  “Don’t.” Cordelia tried to shake her head, but the tentacles only became tighter. She was starting to see spots.

  “Choking you will not compromise my ritual,” the demon explained. “It will, however, give me great personal satisfaction.”

  “Doyle,” Cordelia croaked. Her hands pried at the demon’s wrists, but to no avail. If he had been human, she might have tried latching on to a little finger and pulling it back until it broke, but the finger-tentacles were wrapped completely around her throat and she couldn’t get a grip on them.

  Darkness enveloped her.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Angel rushed out of the Cloud Nine dance club and peered up and down La Cienega, looking for any sign of Doyle or Cordelia and the blond woman. No one on the other side of the street. No sign to the north or south. Only one other place left—behind the dance club.

  As soon as he entered the side street, he heard voices, one of them Cordelia’s. He followed the sound, running hard. If the demon was there he wouldn’t have much time to save Cordelia. He pulled up short and saw a man pinning Cordelia against the wall, his hands around her neck. Not hands, tentacles!

  Nearby, Doyle was staggering to his feet, looking as if he’d already lost the first round.

  “Let her go!” Angel shouted.

  The demon’s head whipped around to face Angel, but he continued to throttle Cordelia. Angel leaped toward them, clenching his fists and clubbing the back of the demon’s neck. The demon grunted but refused to release Cordelia. Although he had enough strength to snap her neck, the demon had decided to inflict a slower, more frightful death by strangulation. Even so, time was running out.

  From a sheath inside his boot, Angel pulled a gleaming twelve-inch blade—the knife he’d brought to decapitate the demon. No time like the present, Angel thought. He held it in a two-handed grip and raised it high.

  Immediately, the Vishrak demon uncurled its tentacled hands from Cordelia’s throat and backed away. She gasped and sagged to her knees, one hand reaching out to the ground to stop herself from falling flat on her face. Doyle crouched beside her to offer his support.

  “You must be the one called Angel,” the demon said in a deep voice.

  Angel took a couple of steps forward, knife held high above his right shoulder. When he saw an opening, he intended to behead the demon with one stroke. “You have me at a disadvantage.”

  The demon took a step back. His hand tentacles retracted with a wet, squishy sound to resemble human fingers again. “There is power in names and I will not give mine away.”

  Angel shrugged. “Oh, well. I suppose it doesn’t matter if we haven’t been properly introduced, since I have to kill you anyway.” He lunged forward, but the demon was just as quick, blocking Angel’s wrists with his forearm. Surprise at the sheer force of the blow flashed in the demon’s eyes. With his right arm, the demon shoved Angel back. Planting his left foot, Angel unleashed a snap-kick aimed at the demon’s right kneecap. The demon leaped back, just out of reach. They circled each other, waiting for an opening.

  “The cult knows my name,” the demon reasoned. “Therefore, you are not with them.”

  “Never was much of a follower.”

  “Then why involve yourself?”

  “It’s a dirty job, but somebody’s got to do it.”

  “Altruism is an outmoded concept. Besides, you are not human.”

  “Guilty as charged,” Angel said.

  “So why defend humans?”

  Angel feinted a low kick with his left foot, then swept the blade across the demon’s stomach. The razor edge of steel sliced through clothes—or the appearance of clothes—and into the flesh, but the flesh did not bleed. And the cut hadn’t gone deep enough to hinder the demon. Angel twisted into a backhanded blow with the knife, arcing higher, aiming for the demon’s throat. His wrists slammed into the demon’s forearms so hard his hands went numb. A knee drove painfully into his rib cage; then the demon chopped down on his wrists and the knife dropped from nerveless fingers.

  The demon stepped forward to press his advantage. Angel flicked his wrist
and felt a wooden stake dart forward into his hand. His foe wasn’t a vampire, but in demonic combat, a well-placed stake was never a bad idea. Angel used the demon’s own momentum against him, driving the stake up into the demon’s gut, just below the ribs. He gave it a powerful twist, although he doubted the demon had a heart or any vital organs in this pseudo-human body.

  As the demon staggered back, Angel scooped up the blade and held it in both hands for a vicious downward stroke. The demon ripped the stake out of its body and looked up abruptly, as a white panel truck jumped a curb and weaved toward them. “We’ll have to continue this another time, Angel,” the demon said. He turned and bolted down the street.

  Doyle pressed Cordelia back against the wall. Angel dived to his right, rolling out of the way of the careening truck as it bore down on the demon. “Are you both okay?” Angel shouted to Cordelia and Doyle.

  Cordelia nodded, one hand pressed to her throat.

  Doyle said, “We’ll live.”

  Angel ran behind the truck, faster than any human. Since the truck was not actually attempting to run the demon down but merely to catch up to him, Angel was able to gain on both. The license plate of the truck had been intentionally caked with dirt or mud to prevent identification, though Angel had no doubt about who was driving the truck.

  Moving abreast of the truck, Angel glimpsed the demon, whose footfalls were now silent. With a ripple like a heat mirage, the demon flickered out of existence. The driver of the truck pounded the horn in frustration. Angel leaped onto the driver’s-side step, catching the frame of the side-view mirror with his left hand. He spun the knife in his right hand and slammed the butt against the window, shattering the glass.

  Wide-eyed with sudden fright, the driver cursed in fear. He floored the accelerator and swerved the truck toward the back of the nearest building, intending to scrape Angel off at fifty miles per hour. Deciding not to test the limits of his vampiric healing, Angel released his grip on the mirror a second before it struck and shattered against the stone wall in a squeal of tortured metal, a shower of sparks and a rain of glass.

  Angel tucked in his head and rolled several times before his momentum played out. Bits and pieces of metal and plastic bounced off his clothes and arms. He climbed to his feet in time to see the truck careen around a corner and slip out of sight.

  First the demon had escaped, and now he had to contend with the cult. Back to square one.

  With his human right hand, Elliot scratched the pointed ridges rising from the curve of his spine. The itching was confined to the boundary between his human skin and the new gray leathery hide. Occasionally he could peel off long strips of his human skin, as if it had been toasted by a bad sunburn.

  He squeezed his eyes shut as sudden pressure swelled inside his head. Here’s . . .Yunk’sh, he thought, and would have laughed at his joke if his head wasn’t throbbing in excruciating pain. The air in the bedroom swirled into a ghostly viscosity, and seconds later, Yunk’sh was solid again, still in his Richard form, but not exactly basking in the afterglow of absorption.

  Yunk’sh looked as if he wanted to hit someone, looked, in fact, as if he already had and wanted to repeat the experience. “It was a trap,” the demon roared. “They tried to kill me.”

  “Damn! It was too good to be true.” Elliot sighed. “She was a cult plant?”

  “No, the cult came later. This . . . Codelia was working for another individual, an extraordinary individual called Angel, who possesses superhuman strength and agility. I decided to take his measure in this form. And let’s just say it is fortunate for us that he is not with the cult, although he wished to destroy me, not bind me.”

  “How could he destroy you?”

  Yunk’sh stared at Elliot long enough to make him uncomfortable. “While I am in this physical form, I can be bound by ritual or destroyed by decapitation. Yet decapitation is a half measure. He would then need to burn this body before I could dematerialize. Yet the shock of decapitation might be enough to prevent me from dematerializing fast enough.”

  Elliot sat in his computer chair. “Even though this Angel guy has figured out how I find your sacrifices, he won’t help the cult.”

  “It matters not. I must find another victim. Tonight.”

  “But I couldn’t possibly find another—”

  “Not your way,” the demon said. “I will hunt out there, on the streets, all night if necessary. I will not fail this close to re-spawning! I only returned to prepare you for your ordeal.”

  “Ordeal?”

  “Simply this. I will need to materialize and dematerialize several times in quick succession. While this will weaken me, you will be sickened.”

  “More headaches?”

  The demon nodded. “And you may become physically ill. Also, your deformities may accelerate.”

  “I wish you had warned me about the deformities before I signed on.”

  “If I had, would you have declined my offer?”

  Elliot heaved a long sigh. It’s not like I could renege now, and besides, it’s almost over. “Since it’s only temporary, I guess not.”

  The demon laughed, the rumbling sound of approaching storm clouds. “Good, Elliot. Because one way or another, we are in this to the end.”

  “As my mother used to say, ‘If life gives you lemons, make lemonade.’ ”

  When the demon vanished in a swirl of air, the pressure behind Elliot’s eyes eased, but the reprieve would be short-lived. With a minute or two to get settled, he rounded up the Advil, a two-liter bottle of Coke, and the party-size bag of cheese curls before returning to his bedroom. Finally, he placed an empty bucket beside the bed.

  Early in the morning the streets were fairly deserted, which meant fewer potential victims but also fewer witnesses and complications. Yunk’sh appeared first in Santa Monica, close enough to the pier to find pedestrians but far enough away to avoid lingering crowds. Immediately he altered his appearance, making himself short with a slender build to seem harmless, and giving himself long, dark hair, pale blue eyes, pierced ears, and a goatee to appear a bit exotic. A large crystal pendant, a silver shirt, a black jacket embroidered with silver stars and moons, and matching pants completed his new persona. First he would try a subtle, if deceptive, approach. Granted, his costume was anything but subtle, but he couldn’t absorb the life essence of a corpse, so he needed to determine the astrological signs of humans who were still alive. He stopped a young couple walking hand in hand and told them he was a young psychic practicing his gift and would pay twenty dollars if he could correctly guess their birth sign.

  The man, who had short-cropped red hair, laughed. “Should be the other way around. If you’re right, we pay you.”

  “Your incentive to help me hone my powers.” This way, if he guessed correctly and they wanted the money, they’d have to prove their birthday. “I know it’s late, but I find my psychic abilities are stronger after midnight.” He smiled. “Guess I’m attuned to the witching hour.”

  The woman chuckled and with it, her nervousness eased.

  The couple exchanged a look. Yunk’sh imagined they were thinking, What could be the harm? If only they knew. Finally, as if it would matter, the woman asked, “What’s your name?”

  “Sergio,” Yunk’sh said.

  “Okay, Sergio, I’ll play,” the woman said. “My name’s Sylvia, by the way, in case that helps. Fire away.”

  Yunk’sh named the same sign he would have had by now if Cordelia hadn’t been part of a trap. He could tell immediately that Sylvia was the wrong sign, even before she shook her head. Yunk’sh turned to the man, “Then surely it is your sign I am sensing.”

  “Sorry, pal. Guess you keep your money tonight.”

  Yunk’sh failed again with another couple in the same area, then found concealment in the shadows and winked out, to reappear in Culver City. He saw another pedestrian, followed by a man in a car stopped at a red light. Although he needed to find a victim for his cycle, he could not stay in any on
e location too long. When he switched locales, he had to reappear far enough from his last location to thwart the cult, on the chance that they were still out searching for him. Next he tried Hollywood, hoping to encounter some restless tourists. On his third try he lucked out, stopping a man in a green-and-white rugby shirt, faded jeans, and gray snakeskin boots as he exited a parking garage.

  “You are good, my little mystical buddy,” the tall, barrel-chested man proclaimed with an easy grin when Yunk’sh correctly guessed his sign. “This is my lucky day. You nailed it.”

  “Understand,” Yunk’sh said carefully, “before I give you the money, I need to see proof.”

  The big man looked him over, assessing the threat the diminutive Sergio represented. After a moment the man decided he had nothing to fear and twenty dollars to gain. He opened his wallet and removed a laminated Oregon driver’s license, which he flashed for inspection. “Read it and weep.”

  Excitement flared in Yunk’sh as he scanned the card to be sure the man wasn’t attempting a deception. “You are J. Christopher Van Trump?”

  “That I am, Mysterio. But you can call me Chris.”

  “And this really is your birth date, Chris?”

  Chris chuckled. “So the state of Oregon tells me. Now pay up.”

  In a flash, Yunk’sh grabbed the collar of the rugby shirt and shoved Chris back several steps, slamming him into the concrete support of the parking garage hard enough to stun but not kill. Chris had already had a few drinks, so the impact was enough to take away the rest of his legs. Falling hard on his rump, he glanced around, dazed, not sure what had just happened. Yunk’sh grabbed a fistful of hair and pulled the bigger man’s head back.

  Yunk’sh extended his tongue and forced it down the man’s throat; then he extended his fingers and pierced his victim’s shoulders and neck. Chris thrashed, his feet drumming a tattoo on the sidewalk, but he could neither cough nor gag and soon there wasn’t enough of him left to do much of anything.