“Millions of Web sites go up every day,” Arnold explained. “You gotta register with search engines, link to other sites, get them to link to you.”
“You mean promotion, right?” Doyle asked. “As in advertising?”
“Sure, that helps. Having cool stuff helps. Like that Flash animation. Funny stuff, weird stuff. And freebies, naturally.”
“Weird stuff’s not a problem,” Cordelia said. “Can you do all that? The registering and linking and everything?”
“Well, advertising costs money, but I’m good at the other stuff,” Arnold said. “However, I’ll need at least half of my fee before I do any more work.”
“We’re good for it,” Cordelia assured him.
Arnold looked around the very-not-busy office and shook his head. “Just the same . . .”
“Fine. You want half, you’ll get half,” Cordelia said. “What’s that, one video game, right?” Arnold nodded. “Give me the name, and I’ll find the best deal on it.”
“Pricing is pretty standard.”
“I’ll be the judge of that, you little hustler. Name?”
“Ghoul Academy Three,” he said. “Or, if you can’t find that, Vampire Vixens. That’s supposed to be hot.”
Cordelia sighed. “You know, Arnold, maybe you should just take the money and spend it on dance lessons.”
“Will you be my instructor?”
“That was Ghoul Academy Three, right?” Cordelia said, jotting the title down on a slip of paper. Maybe it was too late for Arnold to get a life.
Angel stepped out of his office, nodded to Arnold.
Cordelia said, “Angel, come look at this. Arnold, play the movie again.”
Angel watched impassively through the animation. “That’s supposed to be me, right? Why am I wearing a cape?”
“It’s a coat, not a cape.”
“Looks like a cape.”
“That’s for dramatic effect,” Arnold said. “It’s supposed to look cool.”
“It’s meaningless,” Angel said.
Arnold shook his head vigorously, perhaps trying to dispel images of his payment vanishing. “Cool gets attention, so it’s not meaningless.”
“Even so . . .”
“Besides, it’s symbolic,” Arnold interrupted, scrambling for the right thing to say. “It’s you, standing there alone in the dark, through the stormy night, unafraid, undeterred.”
“Those are all good symbols,” Cordelia said. “Right?”
“I guess so,” Angel conceded. “Good work, Arnold.”
Cordelia asked, “Want to see the rest?”
“Not right now,” Angel said. “Kate believes our . . . suspect is trolling chat rooms to find his victims and—”
“Hey, is this about the murder that was on the news last night?” Arnold asked. “The serial killer? They said he’s killed several people.”
Angel frowned. “Arnold, this information is confidential. Are you about through here?”
“Yeah,” Arnold said, disheartened at the dismissal. He picked up his folder and headed for the door.
“Wait a minute, Arnold,” Angel called. “We’re paying you as a computer consultant, right?”
Arnold smiled. “Web designer, computer consultant,” he said and shrugged. “I wear many hats.”
“Tell me about chat rooms.”
“Most of the time chat rooms are filled with mindless gabbing. Bunch of simultaneous conversations. But they can be completely anonymous. You pick a name, an identity, sometimes even a screen avatar. Half the time, nobody knows who you really are.” He laughed. “I’ve heard of fifty-year-old guys pretending to be teenage girls.”
“Thanks, Arnold,” Angel said. “You’ve been a big help.”
After Arnold left, Doyle said, “You’re thinking we could stalk the stalker on-line?” Angel nodded. “But how?”
“This is Los Angeles,” Cordelia said. “People lie about their age. They lie about their looks. Why not lie about a zodiac sign?”
“So we set a trap for the demon,” Doyle said.
“It’s a good plan,” Angel said.
Doyle nodded. “Oh, definitely.”
“Who’s the bait?” Cordelia asked.
Both Doyle and Angel looked meaningfully at her, neither saying a word.
CHAPTER TWELVE
“Oh, no! Not me!”
“It makes sense,” Angel said.
“And you won’t be in any real danger,” Doyle added.
“Stop right there,” Cordelia replied, spreading her arms, palms up. “I’m not sitting around in a bar waiting for the Hoover deluxe demon!”
“You’ll meet in a public place,” Angel assured her. “Doyle and I will be there to watch over you.”
“This demon takes both guys and girls,” Cordelia said. “One of you can meet up with the lady demon version.”
“We could,” Angel conceded. “But Doyle and I make better bodyguards than you would. And the demon won’t try anything in a public place.”
“I won’t have to be alone with him?”
“Only for as long as it takes to lead him outside to us,” Angel said.
“This sounds like a bad plan,” Cordelia said. “It might sound fine on paper, but out in the real world everything could go wrong and the ingenue could end up as victim number eleven.”
“Ingenue?” Doyle asked.
“The young innocent starlet,” Cordelia explained. “And no wisecracks about my innocence.”
“Wouldn’t think of it,” Doyle said. He picked up some case folders and started to flip through them.
“We’ll watch you meet him,” Angel said, “and we’ll stay right up till the moment you leave with him. Then we’ll step outside ahead of you and wait.”
“Next you’ll say nothing could possibly go wrong.”
“No, I won’t.”
“Oh, my God,” Cordelia said and dropped into her chair. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”
“I won’t let him hurt you, Cordelia.”
She looked into Angel’s dark eyes for a moment and saw the determination there. While she couldn’t be sure of much in her life, she knew that if push came to shove, Angel would be there to shove back, to risk his life for her. She could count on him. “I know.”
Doyle looked up from an open folder. “You should be perfectly safe, Cordelia.”
“Why’s that?”
“The demon doesn’t need you for his collection.” Doyle indicated the file. “He’s already killed someone with your zodiac sign. You don’t fit into his cycle.”
“You’re saying that if he kills me, he’ll be real broken up about it?”
Doyle pretended to ignore the icy sarcasm in her tone but couldn’t help smiling. “Worse. He’d probably have to start the cycle all over again.”
“I’ll feel so much better knowing I foiled his plan,” Cordelia replied. “No. Wait a minute. I won’t feel a thing. Because I’ll be dead!” She looked at Angel and frowned. “No offense.”
“None taken,” Angel replied.
“I want hazardous-duty pay,” Cordelia said. “I’ve had my eyes on a pair of red shoes. Problem is, they’re a little out of my current price range.”
“You’d risk your life for a new pair of shoes?” Doyle asked.
“Hey! Dead guy here said I’d be safe,” Cordelia said, jerking a thumb toward Angel.
“Okay, now I’m starting to take offense.”
“Do I get hazard pay or not?”
“How about a small above-and-beyond-the-call-of-duty bonus?”
“These are really sweet shoes.”
“We’ll work something out.”
“Okay, I’m in,” Cordelia said. “Where do we start?”
“Kate’s checking the victims’ computers looking for common chat rooms, but I think that’s a dead end,” Angel told them. “Each time the demon met one of his victims in a public place, the location was different. I’m betting the demon or his human servant stalks a different cha
t room each time.”
“Lots of chat rooms out there,” Doyle commented. Shrugging off the look they gave him, he added, “Or so I’ve heard.”
“Right,” Angel said. “So we need to look for astrology themed chat rooms, especially ones local to L.A.”
“Let’s do it,” Cordelia said. She frowned. Note to self. Right after I buy those shoes, I need to have my head examined.
Willem 94 and his Taurus wagon were called into service again for the six-hour drive to San Francisco. Terrance 90 sat in the passenger seat. Clifford 98 sat in the back, but hung over the front seat with crossed arms. As senior member, Terrance 90 was in charge.
The Omni had given Terrance the slender foot-long stick he called a divining rod. But they weren’t driving to San Francisco in the middle of the night to find water. They were looking for Yunk’sh’s remnant corpse. As the Omni explained, the stick had been carved from the wood of a lightning-struck oak tree, then stained with a diluted mixture of Vishrak blood and other ingredients the Omni was forbidden to disclose. Finally, the Omni had anointed the tip of the rod with the green salve to attune the rod to Yunk’sh, or rather his remnant corpse. It was effective within a fifty-mile radius.
The Omni Council believed Yunk’sh had manifested in San Francisco days before the great earthquake of 1906. Further evidence indicated that Father Brian McGrath of St. Ann’s Church had become aware of the demon’s presence in the tenements in the South of Market District. McGrath had made every effort to destroy the demon, but was himself killed on April 18, either during the earthquake or the resultant fires. Sometime during the four-day tragedy that had destroyed much of the city, Yunk’sh’s original body was burned. Whatever the ultimate cause, Yunk’sh had been improperly slain, therefore escaping banishment. His psychic energy was left free to roam beyond the physical plane, where he could bide his time, awaiting the right celestial alignment to seek a human servant and begin his re-spawning ritual.
In the darkness of early morning, well outside the San Francisco city limits, the tip of the divining rod began to glow. “Look!” Clifford shouted.
“I’m not blind, Clifford,” Terrance replied. “But thanks to you I’m now deaf in one ear. And your surprise indicates a lack of true faith.”
“Wave it around,” Willem told Terrance.
“Keep your eyes on the road, Willem.” But Terrance did as Willem suggested. When the rod was pointed south the glow faded altogether. As it was brought forward, the greenish aura returned. “Looks like we’re in business, boys!”
The divining rod, the Omni had explained, worked like a compass with the remnant corpse serving as magnetic north. Yet before the naming ritual, the Omni would have been unable to attune the divining rod to Yunk’sh. The demon’s reemergence had given the cult the key to imprisoning him.
With the arrival of dawn, they had narrowed the apparent location of the demon’s remnant corpse to a few city blocks in the South of Market District. Willem suspected a condemned lot filled with mounds of debris, surrounded by a chain-link fence topped with barbed wire. But the magick powering the divining rod was magick of the dark, and with dawn the green glow faded. Willem parked the car a couple hundred feet from the lot.
In a voice hushed with awe, Terrance quoted the Omni, “ ‘Where the remnant corpse lies, the land will exude an aura of pure evil, so that only the most faithful among us may approach while all others cower in fear.’ ”
“Well, we’re stuck here till night,” Willem said. “Why not check into a motel, get some sleep, then round up whatever equipment we’ll need?”
“Agreed,” Terrance said.
Near midnight the three men returned. As soon as the street seemed deserted, they left the car, dressed in dark gray pullovers, canvas work gloves, black jeans, and black military-style boots. Terrance and Willem watched opposite ends of the street while Clifford used the bolt cutters to open a flap in the chain-link fence. Terrance held the divining rod and a small utility shovel. Holding a crowbar in each hand, Willem had a vague sense of dread, not because of what they might find but because of where they were. Unease wafted up and down the street like an unpleasant odor. The small hairs on the back of his neck stood at attention. No wonder foot traffic was so light. For the first time he noticed that many of the streetlights were burned out and the few that remained cast only meager illumination, as if the oppressive darkness leeched away any human attempt to dispel it.
The men slipped through the fence, Terrance in the lead, divining rod held out before him like a torch lighting the way. The green glow flared bright. “Do you feel that?” he asked, strangely excited. “Like spiders crawling all over my body.” The others nodded. As Clifford shuddered, Willem fought the urge to slap the back of his neck. First dread, now loathing. The sane reaction would be to run screaming into the night, as far from here as possible, Willem decided. But overcoming the fear is what separates the masters from the servants.
When Terrance pointed the rod downward, it flared brilliantly, bathing him in unearthly light. He yelped in pain and dropped the stick. The green light winked out, leaving blotchy retinal afterimages.
Willem squatted down on the other side of Terrance and poked at the charred and crumbling stick. “I guess X marks the spot.”
Terrance looked to each of them. “Let’s do it.”
All three men bent down and began the task of clearing away the debris, mostly crumbled stone and brick. Deeper, strips and chunks of wood were wedged in with the stone. A wheelbarrow or a hand truck would have come in handy. A flat piece of charred wood crumbled in Willem’s hands, the remains of the dedication plaque for St. Ann’s. Had Father McGrath battled Yunk’sh in his own church? One more fire in all the fires that raged through San Francisco on that fateful day? McGrath had been crushed outside under falling debris, so the truth was unknown.
Clifford hurried over to help Terrance move a split beam, but fell to one knee, gagging. Terrance hissed at him. “It’s a test of your faith! Only the unfaithful need fear this place.”
“Told you to skip that third chili dog, Clifford,” Willem said.
That was enough. Clifford spun around, staggered a few steps and vomited all over his boots and the nearby debris.
“Feel better now?” Open scorn in Terrance’s voice.
Clifford nodded unconvincingly, his face ashen.
From that point on, the work proceeded smoothly. Eventually, they cleared a hole deep enough to stand in without being seen from the street. Willem noticed a dark gap at the bottom, leading down into a protected chamber. Willem had a penlight on his key ring and offered it to Terrance. Crouching down as much as he could in the confined space, Terrance shone the light into the pit beneath them. When next he glanced at Willem, the look in his eyes was one of uncontained excitement. “Do we have anything brighter?”
“Big flashlight. In the trunk of the car,” Willem said.
Terrance unclipped the penlight from the key ring and shoved the keys into Willem’s hand. “Get it!”
Willem climbed out of the pit and felt a little better with each step he took away from the lot. With a heavy sigh, he retrieved the flashlight and returned to the pit. A rising line of bile scalded his throat. “I will not let the fear control me,” he whispered. Back at the hole, he quickly asked Terrance. “Where’s Clifford?”
“I ordered him into the pit,” Terrance said. “To reaffirm his faith.”
Clifford called up from the darkness, his voice strained with fear, higher-pitched than normal. “I . . . I think I found it. But this light is dying. I need a stronger beam. Hurry!”
“Take the flashlight down,” Terrance instructed Willem. “If he’s truly found the remnant corpse of our demon lord, he will need assistance bringing it up.”
Swallowing a protest, Willem complied, reassured by the heavy-duty flashlight beam, which cut quite a swath through the darkness. Long and lanky, Willem had no trouble, physically at least, sliding down into the pit. His feet caught on a moun
d of rubble and he eased backward into the darkness. The flashlight beam caught Clifford’s distraught face. “You’re a little green around the gills, Clifford.”
“Shut up and shine that damn thing behind me!”
Willem played the beam across the floor behind Clifford and initially mistook the body for a patch of deeper darkness. He tracked the light backward and saw the charred remains, nearly seven feet long. Arms raised above the chest, away from the body, as if warding off blows . . . or flames. Human corpses, when burned, tended to curl into the fetal position. But nothing about this burned corpse seemed natural or human. They had found the remnant corpse of Yunk’sh. If only for a moment, Willem’s awe overcame his profound unease. “Will you look at that . . .”
But Clifford was frantic. “Can’t you feel the walls closing in on us?”
“That’s impossible, Clifford. It’s just your imagination playing tricks. Besides, there aren’t any walls.”
That was not completely true. They were in the remains of some sort of room, but the floor and walls had been twisted into carnival fun-house angles. Despite his assurances, Willem noticed that the bright beam of the big flashlight had faded. He batted the case against his palm, and it flared back to life. Spooked himself now, Willem said, “Let’s do it.”
As Clifford scrambled over to the charred corpse, lifting it by its shoulders, Willem shouted, “Careful!” He scrambled up the mound of debris and extended the flashlight to Terrance. “Hold this. I need my hands free.”
Willem grabbed the feet of the demon’s corpse. They were hard and fibrous but possibly brittle. “Could be worse, Clifford. There could be rats.”
Clifford smiled just a bit at the gallows humor. “Oh, man, I hate rats more than anything.” In the darkness behind him, something squealed. “What was that?”
“Nothing.” But Willem had heard it too. Could this be a place where fears became reality? The thought alone spurred Willem along. He propped the corpse’s feet against the wall and pulled himself up through the gap. Terrance backed out of the way.
ANGEL ™: avatar Page 14