Sanctuary

by Jeff Mariotte

  But with that position and those powers came a certain responsibility, and right now her responsibility was to the missing Fred, and standing here looking at an almost completely bare room, eyes glazing over at the complicated equations, wasn’t going to help her locate their friend. She left the room and went downstairs to the hotel’s office, anxious to get busy, to start making progress. Every minute Fred was missing, she might be in danger, and Cordelia didn’t want anything to happen to her.

  The other part of Angel’s instructions made more sense to her. She booted up her computer and pulled up a rolling chair. Angel’s version of how the night’s events had progressed made sense to her: the explosion to lure everyone outside, the fire to keep them there, the drive-by to distract everyone while somebody grabbed Fred. Looking for a motive to snatch Fred seemed counterproductive—she’d been in a different dimension for five years, so it wasn’t like there were lots of people, or demons, who even knew she existed. But the M.O., the multiple layers of distraction, might bear fruit. It was a complex scheme, but it had to have been hatched and executed on a tight schedule—hardly anyone outside of their immediate circle, and Lorne, had known they’d be at Caritas that night. Since she couldn’t imagine that any of them had turned traitor, that meant someone must have been watching the club, waiting for the right opportunity, and then had put the plan into motion. And it had come off without a hitch. The most reasonable conclusion had to be that whoever had done this had pulled similar operations before. Cordelia would look through her demon databases to see if she could find any similar plots; if that failed, she’d then follow a back door that Willow had once helped her find into L.A.P.D. records, to see if she could identify any human criminals who had employed such a scheme. Finally, she’d look into demons who had the ability to materialize transdimensional gateways or to transport others telekinetically, because somebody had somehow snatched Fred right out from under their noses. It seemed like if they’d just carried her away physically, someone would have noticed.

  In which case we’d better have Dr. Freud himself on hand when we get her back, because another unexpected portal jaunt would definitely throw Fred into the deep end of the pool without her water wings.

  Cordy tapped her fingernails on the desktop waiting for the system to be ready. She was itching to get started. The sooner we can figure out who might have taken her, she thought, the sooner Angel can go to wherever her kidnappers might hang out and start pummeling demon booty to get her back.

  • • •

  Angel kicked in the door to the back room of Slater’s Meats, a butcher shop off Appian Way in Santa Monica. There are quieter ways of entering, but none that make the right kind of statement. When the door flew back, jamb splintering under the pressure, the five demons sitting around a table playing cards leaped to their feet, two of them pulling guns.

  No problem, Angel thought. Stakes, maybe a problem. Guns, not at all. He was in a hurry for results, and he wouldn’t allow the inconvenience of a bullet wound or three to slow him down. Fred had been missing for thirty minutes at this point, and that was half an hour too long.

  “Angel!” one of the demons shouted, pointing his gun with a shaking hand. Angel took two steps into the room and kicked again, upending the table. Cards fluttered into the air like backward snowflakes. The demon fired, but the table flew up into his arm, and his bullet thudded harmlessly into the ceiling. Another demon tried to slip around Angel and out the open door, but the vampire didn’t want anyone leaving just yet. He snaked an arm around the demon’s midsection and caught him, hurling him back into the room and knocking down two of the others at the same time. Continuing his advance, Angel grabbed the other gun and wrenched it from its wielder’s claws, then used it as a club to smack the fifth demon in the forehead. That one went down, bloodied, scalp torn open.

  Angel dropped the gun to the floor, put his hands on his hips, and waited. In a moment, the room was quiet, five pairs of eyes on him. He waited for another couple of beats. Finally, someone spoke—the one who had fired on him, a short but stocky creature with shocking pink skin and a semi-human face, but with jowls that drooped lower than any basset hound’s.

  “We’re just playing a friendly game of cards, Angel.” The demon’s voice quavered with an odd mixture of terror and belligerence. “Sorry we didn’t invite you or nothing, but you don’t gotta make such a big production of it.”

  “That’s not why I’m here,” Angel said simply. He glanced at the walls, covered with posters showcasing different cuts of meat, a pinup calendar of female demons, from a supplier to the butcher shop, and the state of California’s required employment and OSHA regulation materials. A couple of file cabinets stood against one wall, and there was an old wooden teacher’s desk with a computer on it, screen saver showing winged toasters flying around outer space.

  “Why, then?”

  “Fred.”

  “Who’s that?” another one asked. This one’s coloration reminded Angel of the aurora borealis—shimmering, constantly shifting patterns of light and dark working their way across his flesh at all times. The effect was disconcerting, and the demon played it up by wearing only an open vest and a pair of khaki shorts. “Fred Flintstone? Fred Astaire?”

  “Burkle.”

  The demons all found their feet, but they looked at the vampire with blank expressions. “Don’t know who you mean, Angel.”

  “She’s a friend of mine,” Angel said. “Part of my team, and under my protection. Someone grabbed her tonight, outside Caritas. I want to know who and I want to know now.”

  “We’ve been here all night, man,” one of them protested. The demon’s lips didn’t move when he talked, because the words issued from a secondary mouth, inside the gaping maw of his external one. “We don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “You’re also tapped in,” Angel countered. “There’s not much that happens out on the streets that you guys don’t know about.” Which was why he had interrupted this little gathering—these five represented something like a hundred demons of various families, and their frequent gatherings were something resembling a United Nations of Southern California demon groups. They worked to keep the peace and facilitate communication—a necessary effort, given the difficulties of survival in a world dominated by a different, and often hostile, species. Sometimes when Angel thought about them he likened them to the infamous “Five Families” that controlled New York’s criminal underground for so long, but while there were similarities, there were also crucial differences. Some of the demons lived outside the laws of city, state, and nation, but others were every bit as obedient and law-abiding as most humans were. “Now, tell me what you know, and do it fast,” he continued, an edge of menace in his tone. “I wouldn’t want to have to hurt anybody.”

  “Okay,” the short, pink one acknowledged. “We might have heard something about a little trouble at Caritas tonight. Something about a fire and a drive-by. We’re still tryin’ to get the lowdown—it wasn’t none of us, or ours, I can tell you that. You know we don’t like to stir up trouble, man. It’s hard enough out there without that.”

  “It’s going to get a lot harder if I don’t get Fred back, unhurt and in a hurry,” Angel warned. “If anything happens to her, I’m on the warpath. So do whatever you can to get her back to me. Tonight.”

  “We’ll put out the word, Angel. We find anything out, we’ll take care of it, don’t worry.”

  “I’ll be worried until I know she’s okay,” Angel replied sharply. “You should be too.” He turned and headed back out into the alley from which he’d come.

  Behind him, he heard one of the demons grumble, “Who’s gonna pay for that door?”

  Wesley and Gunn had agreed to track down human informants, to see if what had happened to Fred had to do with crime on that level instead of on the demonic one. It seemed unlikely, but Angel was determined to shake down the demon world. And until they had some kind of information—even though the best guess wa
s that demons, not humans, had kidnapped Fred—they could afford to leave nothing to chance. Wesley was the acknowledged leader of Angel Investigations, but he knew that in a situation like this, once Angel had made his mind up, there was no changing it. So he let Angel go off by himself while he and Gunn approached things their own way.

  Which led to them finding themselves in a rough neighborhood of downtown Los Angeles. This time of night it was mostly quiet, but music and the muffled chatter of TV sets could still be heard from some windows, and every few minutes a car or truck rushed up the street. The sidewalks seemed deserted, though, which Wesley pointed out. “I don’t see him,” he said. In the stillness of night, he kept his voice low, and his British accent softened it even more. “Are you sure this is the right place?”

  “This is the place,” Gunn confirmed, sounding very sure of himself. “He’s here. Just can’t see him yet.”

  “He’s human, though, right?” Wesley asked, afraid he’d misunderstood. “Not an invisible demon or spirit or anything?”

  “He’s human. He’s just good at not being seen unless he wants to be.”

  “And you’re sure that he’ll know something about Fred’s disappearance?”

  Gunn glanced at Wesley, tossing him a quick smile. “You know what they say. Nothing’s sure in this world except death, taxes, and Angel broodin’ over some woman or other. But if there’s anything to know, he’ll know.”

  “Yes, well, in the present case there’s plenty to brood about. Fred is fragile, still. The thought of her being terrorized like this is just…” He searched for a word. “Appalling. It’s beyond the pale.”

  “Got that right, English.”

  Poor Fred, Wesley thought. She’s already been through so much. It’s just not fair for her to be victimized in this way. The young woman had barely survived her experience in Pylea—and being sucked, unprepared, through a dimensional portal into an alien land would, in itself, be enough to drive most humans stark raving mad. Winifred Burkle, physics student and library employee, would have had no way to know there was such a dimension as Pylea, or, beyond the purely theoretical, that there were other dimensions at all, much less strange beings that lived in them, enslaving humans and referring to them as cattle. It was no wonder that her behavior now was a bit off the beam, as it were.

  And still, he thought, she’s already become such an important presence in our day-to-day life. Her natural good humor, grace, and charm have always shown through. And when she smiles, it’s like a beacon on a dark night. She really is quite lovely, in fact.

  Wesley looked at Gunn, whose gaze was carefully combing the block looking for Strayhairn, the informant he was convinced should be here, and Wesley wondered if the other man had noticed that about Fred yet. Her beauty had not been so apparent at first, when she’d acted almost more like a wild animal than a person, and fear had etched her face. But as she had become more comfortable around them and smiled more frequently, Wesley had come to realize that she was indeed an extraordinary beauty.

  “There,” Gunn said sharply. He pointed toward a dark doorway at the end of the block. Wesley couldn’t see anything at first, but when he stared into the shadows he noticed a faint gleam—a silvery zipper pull reflecting light from the neon beer sign in the window of a tavern across the street. “Come on,” Gunn added. He started toward the doorway, and Wesley followed half a pace behind.

  Strayhairn, if indeed that’s who it was, waited in the doorway as they approached. Finally Wesley could make out some more detail. He was a little taller than Gunn, with skin a couple of shades darker and close-cropped hair that hugged his scalp and a mustache that drooped past the corners of his mouth. He wore a zipped-up jacket and track pants, and his sneakers must have cost three hundred dollars, Wesley speculated. They looked as high-tech as a space shuttle. He leaned in the doorway, as casually as if he’d been expecting them all evening.

  “Gunn,” he drawled. His easy smile showed a gold tooth in front. “’Sup?”

  “Yo, dog,” Gunn replied, putting on friendly airs. “Been lookin’ for you.”

  “Been right here.”

  “All night?” Gunn asked. “Must get kinda lonely.”

  “Not all night, but for a while. My homies know where to find me, they got something to talk about.”

  “What are they talking about tonight?” Wesley asked anxiously.

  Strayhairn turned his head slowly to look at Wesley, as if noticing his presence for the first time. All of his movements were so languid, it almost looked to Wesley as if the man were under water. “Who’s this?” Strayhairn asked.

  “This is Wesley,” Gunn said. “He’s with me.”

  Strayhairn offered a fist, which Wesley, after a moment’s hesitation, bumped with his own. “Any friend, yo,” Strayhairn said.

  “Likewise, I’m sure. But if we could get down to business…”

  Strayhairn chuckled. “Oh, this about business?”

  Gunn pulled a few bills from a pocket and laid them across Strayhairn’s suddenly open palm. “Okay, it’s business,” Gunn said. “You know what we’re after, right?”

  “I might have an idea,” Strayhairn said. “A brother—I don’t know if you know him, Sam Rini?”

  Gunn shook his head, and Strayhairn continued. “Anyway, Sam told me he heard rumors about some girl being snatched. She one of yours?”

  “She is,” Wesley confirmed. “What else do you know about it?”

  “Rini’s a good guy, smart as the dickens. I told him to find out more, let me know what he turns up. That kind of thing is always good business, you know what I mean? It’s the information age.”

  Gunn turned to Wesley. “Strayhairn’s kind of a broker,” he explained. “He keeps his ear to the street, and he usually knows who to sell what he learns to.”

  “Sounds like a very, umm…honorable profession.”

  “I ain’t driving a Jag and drinking Cristal every night, but I do okay,” Strayhairn told them, a measure of pride creeping into his voice. He looked past them instead of at them, always keeping an eye on the street, Wesley noticed.

  “So you don’t know who took the young lady, or where she’s being kept?” he asked. There has to be more. Getting only a tiny piece of information is almost worse than none at all.

  “Told you what I know. So far, there’s just some rumors. Nobody knows anything for sure. At least, not that anyone’s talking about.”

  “Which tells you something in itself,” Gunn added. “Most times, something like this happened, everybody’d be talkin’ about it.”

  Strayhairn nodded, his whole body seeming involved, bobbing up and down. “And since they ain’t, what’s that tell you?”

  “That it’s none of the usual suspects,” Gunn said. “Not gang-related, not organized crime. Either some solo act, or something else entirely.”

  “By which you mean…,” Wesley prodded, not wanting to lose sight of their goal.

  “How much does he know?” Strayhairn asked Gunn, inclining his head toward Wesley.

  “More than just about anybody,” Gunn answered quickly.

  “Demons?” Wesley speculated.

  Strayhairn nodded again. “People don’t like to talk about ’em. So if nobody’s talking about something everybody should be talking about, that’s where I’d look.”

  “Which is what we thought from the beginning,” Wesley said with a sigh.

  “That’s right,” Gunn agreed. “But Angel wanted to cover that angle himself.”

  “You’ll let us know if you hear any more?” Wesley inquired.

  “Check in, time to time,” Strayhairn offered. “I get more, I’ll share. Long as you do too.”

  Gunn laughed softly. “I always take care of you, dog.”

  Strayhairn pocketed the bills Gunn had given him. “Always have so far, anyway. You keep it up, hear?”

  “No worries,” Gunn said. “Come on, Wes. We can’t spend all night here. We got a girl to find.”

  Chap
ter Four

  Nemchuks paired for life, Lorne knew, so when he sat down at the table with Mif’tal and his mate, he knew that this couple would beat the odds on California marriages. Once a male was mated with a female, their circulatory systems became linked together, and if they separated for any length of time, both of their bodies would go haywire. Death usually followed in three or four weeks, unless the couple was reunited in time.

  Once he had been at the table for a few minutes, though, he thought that perhaps these were ancient enemies rather than committed lovers. At least, that was the impression he got from talking to them.

  “It was a Camaro,” Mif’tal announced. “I know my seventies cars, and that was a classic Camaro.”

  “You only think you know everything, Mif’tal!” The female’s name was Urf’dil, and as was normally the case with Nemchuks, she was about six inches taller and a hundred pounds heavier than her male. “It was a Firebird—seventy-seven, in fact.”

  “You know, folks, the exact make of the car probably isn’t the biggest issue we have to contend with tonight,” Lorne suggested. They’d already been on the car for a couple of minutes—it was the first thing Mif’tal had started in on when Lorne had asked what they’d seen outside.