by Nancy Holder
Anyway, he also knew that Cordelia was plenty brave— he had seen her act with unconscious courage that surprised everyone who knew her—but that it wasn’t really part of how she saw herself. Cordelia believed herself to be a coward who would rather hide from confrontation than face her fears.
But that was a flaw in her self-image, not a fact of who she was. She had proven herself to be one of the bravest people Angel had ever known in his long and strange life. When he had asked her to come along, she had done so without a moment’s hesitation, only asking once they were in the car what they were setting out to do. He’d explained that they were going to hunt down Vishnikoff.
“Why do we want Vishnikoff?” she had wanted to know.
“He’s up to something bad,” Angel replied. “I don’t know what. But he’s somehow a link between the Mafiya and those crooked cops I told you about, and whatever it is he’s working on is enough to terrify L.A.’s finest.”
Cordelia chuckled insincerely. “You’re being sarcastic, right? Quote marks around the ‘L.A.’s finest’ part?”
“That’s right. But dirty or not, those guys are cops— and probably killers. If they’re scared of Vishnikoff, then he must be pretty scary.”
“They’re scared of you, ” Cordelia pointed out.
“That’s what I mean.”
Now they walked the streets of this neighborhood, and she had a look of some concern on her face. “Maybe I’m missing something,” she said, “but how are we supposed to find clues out here? Aren’t they, like, in the den with the candlestick? Shouldn’t we have a magnifying glass and a really funny-looking hat?”
“There are two ways to look for clues, Cordelia,” Angel informed her. He understood her concern, intellectually. But he found walking night streets as natural as most people did breathing. He had spent the centuries on them, in one city after another, from continent to continent. “You ask people questions, and then when you get their answers, that gives you more questions to ask of the next people, until you find someone who knows something.”
“Sounds boring,” Cordelia said.
“Generally. But it’s how most police work is done.”
“You said there were two.”
“Right. The other way is to stir up trouble in the bad guy’s backyard. Eventually, he’ll find you.”
Cordelia looked at the tall, dark buildings around them. An empty cab cruised slowly down the street, passing them and turning at the corner. “And this is Vishnikoff’s backyard?”
“We don’t know yet where his backyard is,” Angel said. “So this is mix-and-match. We’ll stir up trouble until we find the people we can ask questions of.”
“How very scientific,” Cordelia observed. “You know, I could be in the safety of my own apartment right now.”
“Doing research in some of Wesley’s dusty old books.”
“Point taken. Where are those pesky Russian gangsters, anyway? Let me at ’em.”
They reached a corner, made a right turn. “They’re around,” Angel said. “They just haven’t wanted to be seen yet.” Then he stopped short and touched Cordelia’s arm, pointing to a shadowed doorway up ahead. He thought he’d seen some kind of movement there.
“Hang back a little,” he whispered.
Cordelia nodded, but her idea of hanging back seemed to mean hovering six inches from Angel’s back. He thought she’d be safe enough there, so he left her alone and approached the darkened doorway. It led into an office building, but the offices were closed and the doors presumably locked, so whoever or whatever he had seen going in would probably still be there. Unless, of course, they had a key.
He hoped for Russian gangsters, someone who might be able to supply an address for this Vishnikoff, whoever he was. But when he stepped into the entryway, he saw two frightened girls, younger than Cordelia, huddled together against the glass doors. One of them was tiny and black, with a build like a figure skater or a gymnast. The other was blond and a head taller, but also thin as a rail.
“Sorry,” he said. “Thought you were someone else.”
“Jean?” Cordelia asked from behind him. “Nicole?”
“We didn’t do nothing,” the blond one said. Her voice was piercing; Angel figured anyone working late in any of the buildings on the block could hear her protestations.
“Yeah, so just leave us be,” the black girl added.
“No problem,” Angel said. He looked at Cordelia. “You know these girls?”
“No,” the loud blonde insisted. “Nobody knows us.”
“They’re friends of Kayley Moser,” Cordelia said. “They’re some of the library girls I told you about. You know, the vampy wannabes.”
The girls remained huddled in the corner of the doorway. Cordelia approached them. “Don’t you remember me, Nicole?” she asked. “Jean? I’m Cordelia Chase? I bought you food, and saved you from the vampires.”
“We never seen you before,” Nicole stated flatly.
“That’s right,” Jean agreed. “Don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“This is them,” Cordelia told Angel. “I’m not wrong.”
Angel led her away from the girls. “They’re scared of something,” Angel said. “Terrified. I don’t think they’ll admit to knowing anyone.”
“But . . . but I was good to them.”
“Maybe they’re just not used to that,” Angel suggested. “Let’s leave them alone. They don’t want our help.”
“Are you sure?”
“He’s right,” Nicole bellowed. “Can’t anybody see us anyway. Just go on and leave us alone.”
“What, they think they’re invisible?” Cordelia asked.
“They might as well be,” Angel said, “as far as the rest of the world is concerned. It’s probably safer for them that way.”
Cordelia gave in, and Angel continued down the sidewalk in the same direction they had been going. Still no Russians, he thought. Which is probably just as well, since those girls back there look like prime victim material.
When he was almost to the next corner, he noticed that Cordelia was no longer beside him. He turned, and saw her leaning against a building, holding her head in her hands. Clearly in pain. He hurried back to her. Her face had gone alabaster white and a line of perspiration had broken out along her hairline.
“Vision . . .” she managed. “Head splitting open . . .”
He held her for a moment, until the pain subsided. “Better now?”
“Better,” she breathed. “I may not chop my head off, after all. This time.”
“What’d you see?” he asked her.
“Not much to go on,” she said. “A boy. Teens, maybe twenty. Thick blond hair. Nice build. I’d date him.”
“Cordelia, what’s his problem? How do we find him?”
“No idea, and ditto. All I got was the picture of him, and his name. Mischa.”
“That’s a Russian name,” Angel said.
“So it is.” Cordelia nodded. “Oh. Okay. Russians. Got it.”
Sunnydale
Back to HQ: Gunn got introduced; the mangled branch got discussed; and Giles’s response was a measured “Hmmm.” Buffy and Riley wanted to head back out to see if the monsters they’d fought were an isolated bunch, or if tonight was a particularly bad night for them.
“Just because we chased a bunch of those ghoulies back into their hole doesn’t mean there aren’t others around,” Buffy said.
“Or vampires,” Riley reminded her.
“I’d almost forgotten about them,” Buffy admitted. “Doesn’t seem like we’ve heard much from them lately.”
“I don’t think they get along with those interdimensional thingies,” Spike said. “I know they give me the heebie-jeebies.”
“Well, that’s a plus,” Buffy said. “We’ll have a look around and see what’s out there.”
“You do that,” Spike said. “I’ve got to get back out and . . . fight, fight, fight.”
“Okay,” Anya volu
nteered. “We can do that, too.”
“Ann, we just fought half a million monsters,” Xander complained.
“There weren’t more than forty or fifty,” Anya countered. “And Buffy and Riley fought most of them. You probably didn’t kill more than half a dozen.”
“Still . . .” Xander pouted.
“Yeah, and I helped, didn’t I?” Spike said. “I held up my end of the deal.”
“Yes. And Mr. Gunn, too.” Anya smiled at the new guy. “Okay, Xander, you don’t have to come. I’m going, though. And I’m sure Giles will.”
Giles had been rubbing his eyes, his glasses held loosely in his left hand. “Hmm? Oh, certainly. I mean . . . yes, I can do that.”
“It’s settled, then,” Anya said. “Are you coming, or not, Xander?”
Xander gave in. “I guess so.”
Buffy and Riley left before the conversation could turn back into an argument.
Gunn said softly, “I’m in,” and trailed after the duo.
As expected, Sunnydale seemed quiet, almost somnolent—the way it was on good nights, before the sudden influx of monsters from who-knew-where. There were nights that Buffy spent dusting one vamp after another, and there were nights when her patrol was nothing more than a good brisk walk through a sleeping town. This night seemed like the latter. The kind of night, she remembered, when she and Angel had just walked and talked all night long—okay, the occasional pause for kissing, but then back to the walking and talking. In a way, those already seemed like long ago days, when she’d been much younger and more innocent.
Just the difference between high school and college? she wondered. Or something more?
“So this is the famous Sunnydale,” Gunn said. “Doesn’t seem so bad.”
“Looks can be deceiving,” Riley replied.
“You got that right.” Gunn was doing a good job of surveillance, and Buffy was glad he was along.
Passing through town, they spotted Willy’s Place, and from the number of cars and motorcycles parked in front, it looked like it was doing a banner business. Riley looked at Buffy, who shrugged. “Worth stopping in, I guess,” she said.
He agreed, so the three made their way through the cars and into the front door.
There were a couple of clutches of demons drowning their sorrows at tables, imbibing whatever kind of brew Willy concocted for them. Random solo drinkers, maybe human and maybe not, stood at the bar. But at one table sat eight Hispanic-looking guys, tense, shoulders hunched, some talking, some sitting in silence with glum expressions. Their clothes were a mix of denim, plaid, and white cotton. Empty bottles filled their table. A couple of the men had tattoos on their muscular arms that said “L.C.”
Buffy nodded toward them, and whispered to Riley and Gunn, “Latin Cobras.”
“Wonder what brings them here.”
“Not a celebration,” Buffy observed.
Willy had spotted Buffy and pals coming in. He rolled his eyes and ran a hand through his dark hair, the very picture of exasperation. Buffy set her sights on him and made a beeline for the bar.
“My favorite Slayer,” he said ruefully.
“Save it, Willy. What’s up with the Cobras? They look like they just came from a funeral.”
“Only they don’t know yet whose funeral it was,” Willy said.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Riley asked.
Willy glanced nervously at the Cobras, then bent over the bar and spoke in hushed tones. “War,” he said. “The Russian gangs and the Mexican gangs in L.A. have gone to war. So far, it’s mostly confined to L.A., but the Cobras have associations there, a treaty with a gang called the Echo Park Band. They might have to go over to L.A. to help out—or the Russians might come here. Either way, blood’s gonna spill.”
Buffy frowned. She’d left Angel back in L.A. to deal with things there—well, Angel and Willow, to keep working with Doña Pilar.
I’d better check in on them ASAP.
It was only then that the other aspect of what Willy had said sunk in. A gang war in Sunnydale, on top of the bizarre demonic incursion already taking place, could be catastrophic. Her influence over the town was mostly limited to dealing with supernatural assault, but she didn’t want to see its streets overrun with ordinary human violence, either.
“Do me a favor and don’t hassle ’em,” Willy continued. “They’re on edge. You start tryin’ to rough ’em up, bullets are gonna fly, and you know that’s bad for business.”
“I won’t touch them,” Buffy promised. “But what do you think—are the Russians really going to come to Sunnydale?”
“I’m going home,” Gunn said suddenly.
“Home?” Buffy asked. “You barely got here.”
“I know,” Gunn said. He didn’t look happy about his decision. “And I need to bring Marcus home, for Jacquee. For myself. But my people, they live on the streets, you know? There’s a gang war in the making, people are going to get hurt. My crew, they’ll be in the target zone. Anything happened to them while I was out here in the burbs, I’d never forgive myself.”
Riley nodded at him. “We’ll keep in touch. If we find something out about the portals, we’ll call immediately.”
Riley held out his hand. Gunn took it.
“Not if,” Gunn said. “When.”
They locked gazes, two soldiers.
“Right.”
Gunn turned on his heel.
“Welcome to Sunnydale,” Del DeSola said, “and the home that oil built.” He held his arms open expansively as his guests filed into his den. A butler had met Teodor Nokivov and seven soldiers at the door of the palatial home and invited them inside, where two armed men had frisked them. Nokivov told his troops to give up their weapons. He assured them that they would be safe inside DeSola’s house.
“Thank you, Mr. DeSola,” Teodor Nokivov said as he shook his host’s hand. “It’s a pleasure to be here.”
“Getting out of the city is always a pleasure,” DeSola responded. This was how he liked to receive guests— when they were expected and came in properly escorted—not after first killing his guard detail, the way Cheryce had done. He was still waiting to hear from her, see what kind of progress she was making for the cash advance he had given her.
“I rarely do,” Nokivov said. “First Moscow, now Los Angeles. Apparently I’m not comfortable away from large cities.”
“I hope you’ll be comfortable here,” DeSola said. He ushered Nokivov to a chair. Before he sat, Nokivov excused the soldiers, except for one, a big man with a deeply lined face and long hair pulled into a tight ponytail, whom he introduced as Karol Stokovich. Stokovich took a seat behind Nokivov, who sank into a rich leather recliner. DeSola sat across from him on a leather sofa. Before him was a modern glass coffee table with a clear drink on it. DeSola rattled the ice cubes in his glass.
“A drink?” he asked. “Vodka?”
“Nothing for me, thank you,” Nokivov replied. Stokovich didn’t answer and it was clear that he didn’t really count. This was a meeting between DeSola and Nokivov, with Stokovich here only to watch his boss’s back.
Nokivov studied DeSola as he drank from the crystal tumbler. Wealthy people look different from the rest of humanity, and DeSola was clearly wealthy. In his sixties, he was powerfully built, as if he spent a lot of time in the gym with a personal trainer. His handsome face had probably been lifted once, Nokivov thought, and his hair had been darkened to hide the gray. Only the weariness and wisdom of his sad brown eyes belied his age. He wore a two-thousand-dollar suit by Perry Ellis, cut a little youthfully for his actual age but appropriately for the age he pretended to, and boots that Nokivov recognized as Prada.
Smacking his lips, DeSola set the glass back down on the coffee table. “We have something in common, you and I,” he said.
“We do indeed.”
“The Latin Cobras and the Echo Park Band, among others, have taken something valuable from both of us. They cost me an oil field, and now they are harassin
g my warehouses.”
“And they cost me my son,” Nokivov said.
“My understanding is that this is not the case,” DeSola told him. “I have it on good authority that your son was not killed by my countrymen at all, but by four police officers—the ones who arrested the suspect who was later released by the district attorney.”
Nokivov was stunned by this revelation. “Are you sure about this?”
“My sources are good,” DeSola said. “I have interests in several communities. This is the word I get. I would not say this just because I also am from Mexico—if anything, the assault on my interests by my own people has soured me on those criminals even more.”
Nokivov sat in silence for a moment. He looked at Stokovich, who shrugged almost imperceptibly.
Stokovich knew as well as he did that those four police officers were on his own payroll; though the checks had the name Vishnikoff on them, it all ultimately came from the same source. Nokivov was the chief “fund raiser” for the effort in southern California—he ran the rackets that brought in the money. He had to be kept at a remove from the dispensation of it. But if this was the case, if the police officers were at fault, then a lot of blood had been spilled for nothing.
In the past week, a state of all-out war had broken out between the Russian and Mexican crime interests. In Culver City, a safe house operated by his people had been compromised and a dawn attack, with automatic weapons and hand grenades, had cost the lives of nine valued soldiers. In Hermosa Beach, the Russians had retaliated against a Mexican restaurant known as a hangout of some of the upper-echelon Mexican leaders, burning the place to the ground on a busy Friday night. In both Russian and Mexican neighborhoods, drive-by shootings had become commonplace.
“If what you say is true,” Nokivov said, “then I have much to answer for. I have declared war, in the name of my son, against people who had nothing to do with his death.”