Sanctuary

by Jeff Mariotte

  Perfect. Bystander to prey in one easy step.

  Half-convinced, in spite of the spell, that the next sensation he felt would be Quort going Ginsu-happy on his innards, Lorne was surprised when, instead, he was touched from behind. Demons were rushing on the stage, crowding past him, putting themselves between him and Quort. He saw red skin, green scales, yellow fur, tentacles and arms, empty hands closed into fists and others clutching bottles or with claws extended.

  Half the audience must be up here, he thought, amazed at this turn of events. In his mind’s ear, which had always been more developed than his mind’s eye, anyway, he heard Gloria Gaynor launching into her signature tune. I will survive.

  And faced with the size of the crowd, Quort retreated. He moved to the back of the stage, away from Lorne, and from Virg, who was sitting up now, helped by some of the audience members. Quort wavered again, shifting, and when he was finished he’d taken his own shape, pale gray and veiny, with orange eyes in his broad, flat face. The garment had become a silken togalike thing.

  “Hold him,” Lorne ordered. “You can’t hurt him, but you can hang on to him in order to prevent violence. He’s got some explaining to do.”

  The demons who’d crowded onto the stage obeyed, clutching Quort with enough hands and claws to immobilize him. He fixed his orange-eyed stare on Lorne, who found himself repelled by the hatred that seemed to inhabit him. What have I ever done to earn this kind of animosity? he wondered.

  “You’ll get nothing from me, Host,” Quort said, pronouncing the title with all the venom he could muster.

  Virg faced Quort, fury in his eyes. “We’ll see about that,” he said. He sounded like he was still angry about Quort trying to blame him for his own crimes, and Lorne was glad it wasn’t himself on the receiving end of the Kailiff’s animosity. “You’re no Skander at all, are you?”

  Quort simply stared at him, open hostility in his eyes.

  “What is he, then?” Lorne asked.

  “It’s safe enough,” Virg said by way of an answer.

  “Get in close and take a big whiff.”

  Lorne wasn’t sure of the wisdom of that—Skanders weren’t known for their cleanliness, after all, and this one had, he remembered, poured on the Brut earlier in the evening. But since it wasn’t a Skander, then…suddenly, it dawned on him. He did as the Kailiff suggested, already certain of what he would smell when he got there.

  Cinnamon.

  “You’re a Kedigris,” he said. “Not a Skander at all.”

  Quort shifted again, and the demons clutching him had to tighten their grips to keep hold. When he was done he was taller and leaner, with lavender skin and a hammerlike head. Luminous green eyes on stalks kept watch on the crowd, and his arms had been replaced by tentacles with saucer-sized suckers. As before, his clothes changed with him, becoming loose pants and a kind of tunic.

  “Okay,” he said, his voice higher now, almost youthful. “I’m a Kedigris. What about it?”

  Lorne remembered something Virg had said earlier. “Virg, don’t you usually work for Kedigris demons?”

  “That’s right,” someone else said. “Kailiffs and Kedigris go way back.”

  “Yeah,” Virg admitted after a moment’s hesitation. “Usually. But I don’t know this one.”

  “Would you?” Lorne asked. “I mean, normally?”

  “I know a bunch of ’em, but not all. Usually, a plan like this one, snatching someone, the Kedigris would just think it up and get some Kailiffs to pull it off. But this time, taking the girl—we didn’t hear about it. I mean, any Kailiffs were approached about something like that, I’d have known. It didn’t happen. The Kedigris are on their own with this one.”

  “How can you be so sure?” Lorne asked him.

  “We know Angel’s bad news,” Virg said. “You know I got no love for that vamp. But I wouldn’t mess with him like that. Takin’ on Angel, that’s just stupid. Good way to wake up dead.”

  “You might have a point there,” Lorne agreed.

  “And the rest of the Kailiffs feel the same way?”

  “Absolutely,” Virg confirmed. “I mean, how many got better reason than me to dislike him? My brother was stupid to try his luck there. The rest of us aren’t that dumb.”

  “What about it, Quort?” Lorne asked. “Or whatever your name is. Who’s in this with you? And where’s Fred?”

  The Kedigris glared at Lorne, but kept his mouth shut. Around him, the demons holding him muttered, ready to pull him apart with their bare hands if he didn’t cooperate. Lorne saw the potential there, and hoped it wouldn’t come to that.

  “Just hang on to him for a few minutes,” he said. He’d had a flash of inspiration he wanted to share with Angel. “I have a phone call to make.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Angel steered with one hand as he fumbled with his cell phone, which had seemed to ring more tonight than in any normal month. He’d really have to thank Frank for the charger cord—and remember to keep his own in the car from now on.

  “Angel, it’s Lorne,” the Host said when Angel answered. “Listen, Fred is here.”

  “What do you mean, ‘there’?” Angel asked.

  “In the building,” Lorne clarified. “Or very close by.”

  “I’m already on my way,” Angel said, shooting across three lanes of freeway and heading for an off-ramp. Horns blared behind him.

  “Sounds like it,” Lorne observed. “Try to make it in one piece, studmuffin, okay?”

  “How do you know she’s there?” Angel asked him.

  “Because she was taken by Kedigris demons,” Lorne replied.

  “That’s what Wes thinks too.”

  “Smart guy, that Wesley.”

  “But I still am not following you,” Angel said. “Why would they keep her so close?”

  “Are you paying attention?” Lorne demanded. “Kedigris demons. Mean, evil, crooked as they come. They shape-shift. They bite. They secrete deadly poison. They probably kick small puppies for fun. But they have no teleportation abilities. No portal usage. No dimension-hopping. If it’s Kedigris we’re looking for, they had to take Fred away by hand. Or tentacle, whatever. Point is, big guy, they had what, a few seconds to spirit her away while we were all distracted by fire and flying bullets? If they’d wandered down the sidewalk with her, or put her into a car, they’d have been seen. Which means they slipped her through the nearest doorway. Not back into Caritas, since we’d have spotted that, too. They could have taken her somewhere else since then, but with the police and firefighters all over the street most of the night, they would have run a risk of being seen. I’m willing to bet they’re in one of the suites upstairs, either in this building or one of the neighboring ones.”

  “Okay, I’m almost there,” Angel said. He tucked the phone between his cheek and shoulder, needing both hands to power the car through a tight right turn at high speed. Even so, his tires squealed loudly, and the rear end fishtailed a bit as he straightened out. “I’ll see you in a minute.”

  He raised his head, letting the phone drop to the bench seat without bothering to hit the End button. He had slid into the oncoming traffic lane, and the oncoming traffic at this exact moment was a produce truck that would likely flatten his GTX if they should collide. Angel nudged the wheel, and his car swerved back into his own lane. As he shot past the truck, its driver leaned out the window and shouted a string of words that Angel didn’t catch but that could only have been obscenities. Can’t blame the guy, he thought. I am driving like an idiot.

  But sunrise was less than an hour away, and he still hadn’t found Fred. If Lorne was right, she was close by. Wesley, Gunn, and Cordelia’s new Roshon friends seemed to think so too. But if they were wrong, then he’d be wasting that much more time on yet another dead end. And there wouldn’t be time to spend on anything else. Either this paid off, or Angel made a one-way trip to Pershing Square.

  He knew it was the wrong decision to make, knew it with every fiber of his being.
He’d lived for hundreds of years, and in that time had saved uncounted lives. He had killed, too—too many years spent as a ruthless villain, roaming Earth, taking blood whenever he pleased. He was still trying to make up for that, he knew, and he’d never be able to. Every life was precious, and saving another person’s—a hundred people’s—couldn’t bring back one that had been cut short.

  No, he still had a lot of work to do, a lot of wrongs to try to make right. He wasn’t ready to leave the planet, to shuffle off his immortal coil. But it’s Fred. A true innocent, someone who had never hurt a flea. Someone whose brilliance could make incalculable contributions to the world one day, offsetting even the good that Angel might still do. And who knew how badly she’d been hurt already?

  As he pulled up and parked illegally in front of Caritas, Angel knew his mind was made up. If this didn’t pan out, he was going to the park. He would see the sun again, after all. One last time.

  Lorne must have been waiting near the door, because he came out as soon as Angel climbed out of his car. “Thank goodness you’re here, Angel,” he said, sounding a little breathless.

  Lorne pointed to Caritas. The club was downstairs from street level, in a building of eight stories. All the buildings on the block were as tall—big, for Los Angeles, but these had been built with earthquakes in mind and were fully stress-tested. They had been put here to make a point, which was that the threat of earthquakes didn’t have to mean the city couldn’t expand up when it had to, instead of always out, swallowing more and more land. The demonstration hadn’t worked—while some developers did indeed build taller buildings, the city still sprawled across the landscape like a cancer.

  “We were right there,” Lorne said, explaining himself. “When Fred was grabbed. So like I told you, whoever took her wouldn’t have been able to haul her down the street without us seeing. There are only so many hiding places inside Caritas, and I’ve checked all of those. So that leaves us with two possibilities.”

  “Which are?” Angel asked.

  “The Kedigris are working together with some other demons who do have teleportation powers,” Lorne said. He waved at the two buildings, both the same height and apparently the same age, constructed of brown stone like urban buildings everywhere. They reminded Angel of New York City buildings, or even older ones he’d seen in the capitals of Europe, Prague and Budapest and Paris. “Or they simply took her through one of the nearby doorways. Above Caritas and in the building next door, they’re all offices. Hardly anyone around overnight, and by morning, when people started coming back in, they’d be gone. Between the two, there must be sixty suites she could be in.”

  How do we narrow it down more?” Angel wanted to know. “That’s not good enough.”

  Before Lorne could answer, two vehicles roared down the street and pulled to the curb behind Angel’s GTX. The first was a dark blue Z-28 that Angel thought looked very much like the car that had opened fire on the crowd outside Caritas, hours before. Behind it was Cordelia’s black Jeep. When they stopped, Roshon demons emerged from the blue car, and Cordy, Wesley, and Gunn climbed down from the Jeep.

  “I think your answer just arrived,” Lorne said.

  Cordelia rushed to Angel and wrapped her arms around him, giving him a squeeze. Gunn clapped him on the shoulder. “Ready to kick some butt?” he asked.

  “As soon as we figure out whose, and where,” Angel replied.

  “Point the way,” Wesley said to one of the furry blue Roshon demons. They look like big Smurfs, Angel observed offhandedly.

  “Wes made a new friend,” Cordelia explained. Angel had heard it already, from Wes, but he let her talk. “He says the Kedigris demons have a lair right around here.”

  “He thinks they have Fred there?” Angel asked.

  “He didn’t know anything about the Fred situation,” she replied. “But we figured if we knocked them around a little, they’d tell us what we want to know.”

  Angel nodded and addressed the Roshon standing beside Wesley. “You and the Kedigris are enemies, right?”

  “Right,” the Roshon demon said.

  “So if you know about this lair, why haven’t you attacked it already?”

  “Lair new,” the Roshon answered. “One week, maybe two. Not important, not a mess of Kedigris. Just some.”

  “Which makes sense,” Wesley pointed out. “If this had been a major Kedigris headquarters, Lorne would certainly have known about it.”

  “I’d like to think so,” Lorne agreed, straightening his rumpled suit.

  “But if it’s brand-new, and there are only a handful of Kedigris here, it might have gone unnoticed. Long enough, at least, to put this plan into operation. They could have watched Caritas, known when we were all inside, and gone into action. From there it would have been easy enough to set the fire, bring in the shooters, and grab Fred. With the additional benefit that if we were able to trace the car, we’d blame their mortal enemies, the Roshons. Being shape-shifters, the Kedigris who did the shooting were disguised as Roshons, not realizing that we would be too busy ducking to get a clear look at them, anyway.”

  “Do you know which apartment?” Angel asked. “Or even which building?”

  “Think that one,” the Roshon said, indicating the one next to Caritas.

  Angel checked with Lorne. “Offices, right?”

  “Right. Low rent. High turnover. Nothing in the way of extras, just four walls and a window if you’re lucky.”

  “We smash Kedigris now?” the Roshon wanted to know.

  “Not just yet,” Angel said.

  “But Angel, the time…,” Wesley put in.

  “I know,” Angel assured him. He hadn’t forgotten the urgency of the situation. “But if we just invade the place, they might kill Fred. They’ve been slicing her up, just to make a point. And they might have already seen us here. We need to move fast, but smart.” He ushered everyone toward the stairwell that led down to Caritas. “We need to know more,” he said. “Where’s that Kedigris?”

  Inside the club, the customers, now less anxious to hurry away since something interesting had taken place, had bound the Kedigris with electrical cords and linens from the kitchen. His tentacles were pinned to his sides, but his eye stalks still waggled on his oddly shaped head when Angel and the others approached him.

  “I understand you’re involved in the kidnapping of my friend,” Angel said. His tone was calm and quiet. He’d save threatening for later—but not very much later.

  The Kedigris just stared at him with his four green eyes.

  “Well?” Angel demanded. “You pretty much have two choices: You can talk right now, or I can take you outside and you can die right now. I don’t have time for any more options than that.”

  “I have nothing to say to you,” the Kedigris said coldly. “You have hunted my kind for too long. You have slaughtered us without mercy. You will kill me, too, if you get the chance. If not now, then later. Maybe instead, this is the day you die.”

  “I’ve killed some Kedigris in my time,” Angel admitted.

  “Because they’re evil!” Cordelia interjected.

  “There’s that,” Angel agreed, still addressing the Kedigris. “And you seem to have a knack for getting involved in activities that threaten innocent people. I look out for innocent people, so that puts me in conflict with you.”

  “We get by, however we can,” the Kedigris said. He didn’t sound defensive or remorseful. He was just stating a fact. “People do the same. Everyone does.”

  “Some people do,” Angel said. “We call them criminals. Most people make the effort to obey the laws, to look out for others, to live in society by the rules that keep everybody safe. Those who go outside the rules, I hunt down. Just like I hunt down Kedigris who prey on others.”

  “Kedigris are the mobsters of our community,” a Brachen demon told Angel. Beneath her blue spikes she was quite attractive, he noticed. “With the help of Kailiffs, they rob, they murder, they pillage.”

 
“But Virg, there,” Lorne added, pointing to the Kailiff, “he helped us out with this one. He says this time the Kedigris were acting on their own, without involving Kailiffs.”

  “Kedigris, Roshons,” Angel said wearily. “The two groups must account for eighty percent of the demon-against-demon crimes and violence in the city.” He looked at Wesley’s Roshon pal. “Not to mention a significant proportion of demon-against-human crimes. If you guys would just cut it out and learn to live peacefully, we’d all be better off.”

  “Or we stomp Kedigris,” the Roshon said. “And be happy.”

  “We’ll stomp some Kedigris,” Angel said. “But first, I go in alone. I just need to know where I’m going.”

  “Oh…my…God…”

  Angel looked at Cordelia. She was staring at the Kedigris. Her face had gone white, and as Angel watched, her eyes closed and her brow furrowed as if she were in pain.

  “Cord?”

  “He’s the one,” she said softly. “Or one like him, anyway. A Kedigris.”

  “What one?” Angel asked her.

  She opened her eyes, blinked a couple of times, and rubbed her temples with her fingertips. “I had this vision,” she said. “Back at the hotel. It wasn’t helpful in the least, or so I thought at the time, anyway. I just saw people in trouble, all over the world. You’d be amazed at how many people’s lives just suck at any given moment. But in one vision, I saw a demon with pale purple skin. It was threatening someone, but I couldn’t see the victim, just the demon. There was something else about it, too, that I couldn’t remember until just now. This is the demon—it was a Kedigris, I’m sure of it.”

  “Threatening Fred?” Angel asked. “What’s the something else you remembered?”

  “There was a door with a letter on it,” she said. “I didn’t think it was important, at the time. It could have been any demon, anywhere. But I remember the letter now. It was the letter H.”

  “Suite H.” Angel squeezed Cordelia’s hand. “Good job, Cordy. I’m going to go get Fred.”