Impressions

by Doranna Durgin

  “No, not you. Earlier. During the night.”

  “Are you listening to yourself?” she said, dumping her purse and light sweater on one of the roundchairs. “Because I am, and let me tell you, it’s not an enlightening experience.” But then her glance fell on the plastic butter tub—economy size—that held the weird ugly stone from the demon goo. That should have held the weird ugly stone, but now only held the remains of the Nature’s Miracle in which it had been soaking.

  “Hey, the stone-thing is gone.”

  “What’s gone?” he said, and suddenly he was right beside her, and boy didn’t she hate it when he did that. His gaze landed on the slashed bungees and darkened. “I did hear something. Someone broke in here last night.”

  “Stands to follow, since the stone-thing is gone and those bungee bits are all over the place,” Cordelia said with what she thought was just the right touch of sarcasm.

  “Stone-thing,” he repeated.

  “Yes,” she said, waving a hand at the butter tub.

  “The one that Dissolvo Demon left behind that Wesley was soaking so we could even get close enough to figure ou—ow, ow, ow!”

  —crates of lettuce weird little colorful Muppet demon people laughing no people screaming no people dying blowgun blowgun blowgun—

  “Oh,” said Fred, in her most tentative voice. Probably the only voice in the world that wouldn’t shatter Cordelia’s head right at this moment. No one else say anything oh please.

  She was on the floor, of course. Or on the stairs. Something uneven. And she considered opening her eyes, but even the faintest glimmer of light sliced into her head like shards from the broken door.

  “Oh,” Fred said again. And though she was trying to sound casual, she instead sounded shaken. Why, Cordelia couldn’t imagine, since hers was the head being stirred. “I didn’t realize…that is, I’m sorry. Hardly anyone’s ever down here at this hour. But that’s probably why you’re here, isn’t it? To find privacy.”

  Privacy? That was enough to get Cordelia’s eyes open, slicing knives of light or no. She’d fallen toward the stairs all right, but she was on Angel.

  “You okay?” he asked, as if he hadn’t even noticed. Men.

  As quickly as possible, Cordelia removed herself from lap and bare skin territory and sat on genuine stair, leaning against a railing that was a weird combination of art deco and dignity. She tucked really short hair back behind her ear, finding once again that in disoriented moments like these, she still expected her hair to be long and dark. “I’m fine,” she said. “As fine as anyone would be with all this dungeon of horror stuff going on in her skull.” She took a deep breath, said, “Looked like Terminal Market. There was some little demon guy, reminded me of a Muppet. And people were laughing at him, and he just went crazy…throwing lettuce and then he had this blowgun and people were screaming….”

  “I remember Muppets,” Fred said, as if in wonder.

  “Muppets,” Angel said, sounding strangely unnerved. He got to his feet, finally seemed to realize his state of partial undress, and crossed his arms across his chest—then uncrossed them and tried it the other way. Didn’t cover any more territory that way and gave up on it.

  Impatient, Cordelia staggered to her feet and went to grope through her purse, hunting migraine killers. “Yeah, yeah. A cross between Kermit the Frog and Beaker.”

  “Beaker was my favorite,” Fred told them. She sat midway down the stairs with her arms wrapped around her knees. Not taking up very much room, as usual, her fine brown hair drawn in two low ponytails behind her ears, baby doll T-shirt and jeans hidden by an oversized open-front sweater.

  “I like the idea of a Muppetish demon. It sounds a lot better than what was sneaking around here earlier.” She shuddered, and hugged her arms tightly.

  “Here?” Angel said, an edge creeping into his voice. “Earlier as in yesterday, which of course we all know about, or earlier as in this morning, which we all ought to know about? Why didn’t you wake me?”

  “Angel,” Cordelia said, frozen in mid–pill hunt first by Fred’s revelation and then by Angel’s demanding reaction.

  “I tried to wake you!” Fred said, drawing more tightly around herself, her eyes going a little wider, a lot more alarmed. “Really I did. But then it saw me—or I think it saw me—and I was afraid to move. It seemed mad. From the way it growled, I mean.”

  Curiouser and curiouser. Cordelia pinned Angel with a look. “I guess you slept through a lot. Not usual.”

  With all the deftness of a hippo on ice, he sidestepped the unasked question, still looking at Fred. “Okay, you tried to wake me, but you were afraid. Still…you had to have seen whoever came in here.”

  “Or whatever,” Cordelia added.

  Fred squirmed slightly. “I’m not sure.”

  “This is such a great morning so far,” Angel said. “Isn’t it a great morning?”

  “Ignore him,” Cordelia told Fred, and finally found the pills she wanted. She did a quick calculation of headache intensity against need for consciousness and broke the pill in half with her hands in her purse. Hardly subtle. But it was amazing what people didn’t see when you didn’t act like whatever you were up to was any big deal.

  “It’s just that it was still kinda dark. And I was up here. Trying to wake Angel, you know. I guess I didn’t knock loud enough, but usually…you know, he hears everything. And then I was preferring to be not seen, and that kinda meant not being where it could see me…” She hesitated, and her voice took on the unaccustomed note of certainty that reared up every now and then and made Cordelia wonder if there wasn’t more to Fred than frightened and traumatized little cave girl after all. “Not Muppetish,” she said firmly. “Big. And it knew what it wanted. It went right over to the counter and then it left.”

  “Demon chases man, demon dies,” Angel muttered. “Leaves behind the ugly stone. Demon Two steals the ugly stone. Way too many things we don’t know about here.”

  “Okay,” Cordelia said, thinking more of Fred’s remarks than Angel’s mumbling. “We can work with that.” They wouldn’t get much from it, but it was more than they’d known before. “Meanwhile, let’s not forget about Terminal Market, okay? Vision Girl is not to be ignored.”

  “Call Gunn and Wesley,” Angel said, and then gave her a second glance from beneath a brow that seemed to be warring between concerned and preoccupied. “Or do you need to go lie down?”

  “I’m sure I’ll be fine,” she said, proving that she was just as good as he, in her own way, of dodging direct answers. “Just go get dressed. And hurry. We’ll solve the mystery of the missing ugly stone thing when I don’t have screaming people in my head, okay?”

  Vision Girl was not to be argued with either.

  Chapter Five

  Wesley and Gunn headed down Seventh Street in the getting-uncomfortable warmth of mid-morning. Angel himself ran the underground, ever in consideration of how bursting into flame could ruin his day. This particular day already had enough strikes against it…the dreams, the lingering sense of constant prodding by someone else’s emotions…Cordelia’s questions. She knew him best, and while he might fool the others for a while…

  He’d stay out of Cordelia’s way.

  He knew of several exits into the warehouses of the produce district; Wesley and Gunn found him lurking in the slightly arched truck drive-through of a warehouse, staring across sunlight asphalt to the neighboring warehouse. There, perched on the upper corner of a stack of metal melon crates, was the very Slith demon who had taunted him in Caritas.

  “Odd,” Wesley said, squinting out at the demon with a thoughtful frown. “The Slith don’t usually come out in daylight. They’re very shy. And they certainly don’t cause trouble or draw attention to themselves. Are we sure this is what Cordelia meant?”

  “Terminal Market, Muppetish demon,” Angel said. “What part have we got wrong so far?”

  “None, I’m sorry to say.”

  Gunn moved uneasily be
side them. “Look,” he said. “Even if this isn’t from Cordy’s vision, it’s not right. We need to do something about it before someone gets hurt.”

  “I should think the only one in real danger is the Slith demon.” Wesley let his crossbow drop. “Without a blowgun, they’re virtually harmless—unless you count bad table manners.”

  “Tell me about it,” Angel said. The slug-sprayed leather duster would be at the cleaners for days. “But Cordelia mentioned—”

  “Blowgun,” Gunn interrupted, succinct and tense, his gaze riveted on the Slith and his newly apparent weapon. “Not harmless.”

  And now someone had noticed the little demon, and drew aside a vendor in a stained apron to point and question and laugh, obviously taking the being’s presence as some sort of prank—although just as obviously, the demon didn’t like being laughed at.

  “These people live too close to Hollywood,” Angel muttered.

  “Yes, and now they’re in trouble,” Wesley said as the Slith gestured vehemently at the gathering crowd. It ripped a flyer off the crate and shredded it with quick efficiency. “I hate to see the Slith hurt—but these people are going to get killed—”

  “Killed?” Gunn snorted. “He’s making spitballs.”

  “Yes, which he’ll then rub in his armpit, where his poison-generating glands will turn the spitballs into lethal projectiles.”

  Gunn gave the Slith an assessing look, and winced. “That’s just plain nasty.”

  “I still don’t understand why—,” Wesley started, but shook his head. “I suppose it doesn’t matter. He’s out there, and we’ve got to stop him.”

  But Angel thought he might understand. He didn’t know the how or the why…but he understood. Take a vampire with a soul, one who understands darkness and anger and killing…one who constantly fights his past and the barely controlled demon within. Then take a quiet little creature who likes to suck on cinnamon-flavored slugs and go to bed early.

  Introduce an outside source of anger.

  Nothing new to Angel. But if it was affecting other demons as well…demons who had no experience with the dark extremes of their nature…

  “We could have a problem,” he muttered to himself.

  The others gave him a strange look in stereo. Wesley said, “I think we’ve established that.”

  On the crate, the Slith dropped into a sudden crouch and put the reedy blowgun to what passed for its lips. No one shrieked or ran; no one seemed to suspect there was any danger at all. Angry Slith on one side; notorious vampire on the other.

  Except—unlike the Slith—Angel still wore his do-good clothes. Tattered around the edges and no doubt a little thin right now, but…he stepped up to the edge of the shadow and flung his arms wide. “Hey!” he bellowed, startling everyone in the crowd; they looked at him with the kind of wary regard they might well have given the Slith had they been wiser. “I’ve been looking for you! Angel sent me.”

  “He never!” the demon squealed back, a second surprise for the crowd. It speaks! But it lowered the blowgun to listen.

  “They’re realizing he’s a little too articulate for a publicity puppet,” Wesley said, casually keeping his crossbow out of sight now that they’d been spotted by crowd and Slith alike. He smiled, a very British royal-smile-to-the-crowd expression, and added through his teeth, “I’m not sure if that’s good or bad…they’ll either run for cover or gather to gawk…”

  “It’s L.A.,” Gunn said, making no particular effort to acknowledge the crowd at all. “I vote on gawking.”

  Angel kept his eyes on the demon, on the blowgun that could so easily come back into play. Not the time to lose the Slith’s attention. He shouted, “You calling me a liar?”

  “What are you doing?” Wesley said, his voice low—for no particular purpose, since the rising reaction of the crowd certainly covered anything in the range of normal conversation.

  “Taking his attention away from the crowd,” Angel said, leaving of course unspoken…although he wondered if just possibly his judgment had been affected by those same subtle waves of negativity that messed with the Slith. If truly…he was just looking for a fight. “Unless you want to shove your way through all those people to get to him, by which time he’d be gone?”

  “You’re a liar!” the Slith screamed at him. “You said you were Angel!”

  “You going somewhere with this?” Gunn asked, also under his breath…but with that tone that meant he was restraining himself rather than trying to be discreet. “Because it looks like trouble to me.”

  “Trust me,” Angel said, not turning away from the sunlit gathering and the furious little demon—and not sure he could do the same were their situations reversed. By now the crowd was watching the byplay, heads swiveling back and forth in unison, currently focused on Angel as Angel told the creature, “I am Angel!”

  The Slith sputtered something inarticulate and gestured with the blowgun, finally sputtering out, “Lie! Lie! Angel is my friend! You—you—boogerhead!”

  Gunn said, “Ouch. That’s gotta hurt.”

  Touched by some of the same driving darkness that had so overwhelmed the Slith, Angel struggled to find just the right response. “Bite me!” he shouted.

  Maybe that wasn’t it.

  Or maybe it was, because the Slith lost it. He pounded the wire cabbage crates and screamed nastiness and put the blowgun to his lips—but by then the crowd was scattering, people shoving and pushing and cursing as they sensed an end to the benign moments of this terribly odd encounter.

  A sticky spitball thwapped into Angel’s jacket, stuck there a moment, and rolled down a few inches.

  “Don’t touch that!” Wesley told him, as if Angel had any intention of touching a spitball that had been rolled in demon armpit even if it hadn’t been poisoned.

  “Incoming!” Gunn cried, but Angel glanced back up to see that he didn’t mean incoming spitball. He meant incoming demon. Faster even than he’d been in Caritas, bounding forward and propelled by rage, the Slith hurtled into Angel at chest height, knocking him right off his feet.

  As he hit the ground, stunned, Wesley cried, “Sun, sun!” It made sudden sense when he felt his skin start to sizzle, right there where his pant leg pulled up in the scuffle to expose his ankle. But Wes and Gunn grabbed his jacket at the shoulders and pulled him back, opting to save him from the sun rather than the demon who pummeled ineffectively at his face.

  Angel finally managed to swat the Slith off, making a cat-like roll to his feet even as he grabbed the Slith’s rubbery scruff and held him up off the ground.

  “Now that was a girlie fight,” Gunn announced.

  Wesley preoccupied himself with a search of the asphalt around them. “Where is it?” he said. “We can’t just leave it here.” He glanced at Angel. “Do you still have it?”

  Holding the squalling demon out away from himself, Angel looked down at his jacket. There was a clear trail where the spitball had rolled down the leather—a sticky line already gathering dust. But no spitball. “Hey,” he said, giving the Slith a little shake, feeling its squalls beat against him just like the inexplicable emotions that drove it. Face it, drove them both. “I got the demon. You get the poison spitball.”

  “Angel, this is no joke. We can’t—”

  “Wesley,” Angel interrupted, his voice going hard in a reflection of that outside emotion, the angerhatekill he felt so keenly. “Do I look like I’m joking?”

  There was a moment of silence as even the Slith stopped his struggle to watch Wesley’s reaction. Angel winced inside. In the street, the crowd began to creep back in. Still curious, still not quite believing they’d actually seen any of what they’d indeed seen. He didn’t want to give them any more evidence. By now, someone probably had a vidcam.

  “No,” Wesley said after a long and considered moment, his serious features even more serious than usual, his eyes icy blue-gray and shadowed at the same time. “I don’t suppose you do.”

  “I’m taking him bac
k to Caritas before this turns into a sideshow,” Angel said. Back to the tunnels, safe in their shadows. And into Lorne’s club, where a demon might have to put up with bad singing, but could be sure no one else would do it deliberate harm. The Furies had seen to that, with their spell against demon violence within the club.

  “Too late to avoid the sideshow,” Gunn said, indicating the crowd. “But if you don’t get out of here, it’ll get worse.”

  With a glance to make sure the poison spitball was indeed not still clinging to his person, Angel left Wesley and Gunn to find it, taking along their more obvious weapons in one hand and the Slith in the other. After a few moments underground, it said sullenly, “Put me down, big bully. I’ll come.”

  “Uh-huh,” Angel said, and kept walking. The Slith erupted into a frenzy of name-calling and futile wiggling, and after a moment hung limply again. Angel pretended that his arm wasn’t starting to ache. He took the turn that would get him to the underground entrance at Caritas, carefully stepping around the occasional blotches of sunlight from open gratings. The sunburn on his ankle still stung. Eventually he asked, “You seen your friend today?”

  “Real Angel? Wouldn’t tell you.”

  Angel stopped walking and looked straight at the Slith’s moody features. Crocodile eyes, half closed in an angry squint. Broad, triangular mouth so pursed with disapproval, it seemed likely to cause cheek muscle cramps. “Has it occurred to you that your behavior at that little scene was hardly Slith-like? That it even could have gotten you killed? That maybe I even saved your life? That there’s something going on here that’s bigger than you and me and where’s Angel?”

  The Slith looked back at him. If possible, its mouth pursed even a little more.

  “Fine,” Angel said. “Has it occurred to you that I can bash you against this concrete wall with pretty much no effort at all?”

  The Slith’s gaze slanted over to the wall, back to Angel, and then to the wall again. “Haven’t seen him. He’s got a busy schedule. Real work.”