Impressions (4 page)

“Any luck…?” Angel repeated.

“Finding the two humans who came along with our dearly dissolved demon friend,” Wesley said.

Angel hesitated, then said carefully, “I found someone else who’s seen the one who…looked kinda like…,” and he stalled out, looking terribly awkward.

“You,” Cordelia filled in, blunt where he was reluctant. “And boy, doesn’t he have some nerve.
I’m
the one attached to the Powers That Be with these headaches and visions, and he thinks all he’s got to do is look like you—”

“What
is
that all about?” he asked, moving back into the desk area, suddenly more animated. “Guy dresses like me, takes on clients in my name…”

“Obviously a desperate man,” Wesley said.

Angel sent him an annoyed glance, but it was brief. “He’s even been in demon hangouts, making nice. Telling them he’s me.”

“Plenty of vampire wanna-bes out there,” Wesley said. “They generally run in different circles than the real thing, though.”

“This isn’t a vampire wanna-be,” Angel said, and gave himself a rather violent poke in the chest. “This is a
me
wanna-be.”

“Look, it’s no big deal,” Cordelia told him. “It’s an admiration thing, you know? For some reason this guy thinks you’re hot stuff and that your life is so much better than whatever pathetic excuse for a life he’s got on his own. Beats me why he chose you, but there you are.”

Ah, she’d gotten his attention. And his most wounded expression. Actually a good sign…if he were truly broody he’d just have snarled something and gone upstairs no matter her precious words of wisdom. Cordelia flipped a page of her magazine. More Harrison Ford. Getting a little older now, but she still remembered the first time she’d seen him as Han Solo.

“Hey,” Angel said, using his wounded voice to go along with the expression. “I just might have a few good qualities. I mean, maybe not once…okay, once I was pretty much a monster. I mean, for a long time I was pretty much a monster. But things have changed now, and I—”

“Harrison Ford,” Cordelia said, stabbing her finger at the magazine. “The man saves little kids. In his own helicopter! Now there’s something to admire. Money, big toys, and a real hero to boot—”

“Perhaps it was the cost of the helicopter,” Wesley suggested, very solemn…and entirely not. “This faux Angel had to go for something in his cost range. A few items of black clothing, some hair dye—”

“
Cheap
hair dye,” Cordelia added.

“This is
serious,
” Angel said. “There’s some guy going around reeling in clients with my name. With
our
name. And those clients are expecting real help. Do you think that scrawny wanna-be could have protected that man tonight? Killed that demon?”

Wesley admitted, “I’m not even sure he could have cleaned up after that demon.” When Cordelia looked at him, one eyebrow arched in just that way she’d been practicing in the mirror for her skeptical actress look, he said, “Angel has a point, Cordelia. We do have a certain reputation for getting the job done. Even now, that man—”

“And his bowling ball,” she said. “What’s up with the bowling ball, anyway? A new fetish?”

“—even now, he could be in danger,” Wesley continued, undeterred. “Until we figure out which demon came after him, we won’t know.”

“Right,” Angel said. “So we’ve got to stop this wanna-be. He’s a menace. And he’s annoying.”

“Would that be because he’s so much like you?” Cordelia asked.

Wesley said, “First we need to find his client. He’s the one in the most danger.”

“I don’t know about that,” Angel said under his breath. But his expression was almost puzzled, as if he struggled with his own reaction.

“I’ll tell you what I
do
know,” Cordelia said, grabbing her purse from the shelf behind the lobby counter. “First, I get to go home and sleep. Phantom Dennis will worry if it gets much later, and you don’t want to know what it’s like to live with a ghost on the edge.”

“No,” Wesley said, a little bemused. “I don’t suppose we do.”

“Anyway, like I said—no visions. Can’t be all that big a deal. We’ll look through these books again tomorrow.” She looked at Angel, giving him about one zillionth of a second to make objections. “That’s that, then!” she said brightly, slinging the satchel-like purse over her shoulder—not her actress-image purse, this one; this was the stake-holding, holy water–stashing version—and heading for the lobby doors. Gunn had managed to nail one of them shut, but the other was too warped and would never close. Home Depot time. Again.

Behind her, she heard Wesley say, “I’m afraid I need to get some rest as well. The books are here, if you want to keep looking.”

“I’ll be looking, all right,” Angel said darkly. “But it won’t be in books.”

As far as Cordelia could tell, he’d left through the courtyard exit before she even closed the damaged door—at least, as far as it would go—behind her.

•  •  •

Angel walked the streets, hunting trouble as much as he hunted anything—and even he knew it was probably a good thing that those streets stayed silent and dark before him, almost as if his mood had pushed everything out of the way.

Or maybe as if everyone else had found a dark corner in which to nurse their own inner grumbles.

The fake Angel…imitation as admiration? Perhaps to a point. But what this baffling faux Angel had done went beyond. It wasn’t imitation, it was assumption of identity. And if you were going to assume an identity, why take that of someone who’s trying to atone for several hundred years of heinous behavior? Who would explode into fire when exposed to the sun? Who had the choice of living off people or rats…or giving up the hot rush of life for prepackaged pig’s blood?

He not only didn’t get it, he didn’t want anything to do with it. Nor did he want anything to do with the way it stirred up his guilt of those extended years before the Powers That Be had stepped in. Before he’d met Whistler, and…

Buffy.

He didn’t want to think about those things at all, but something kept dragging his mind back to the anger that had started the whole thought cycle in the first place, and repeatedly started it all over again. So he walked the streets looking for something to distract him and he got into a minor scrap with a demon halfling that didn’t even bloody his knuckles and then another, bulldozing through the night. But the anger continued unimpeded, undistracted, and the rest of the world stepped widely around him.

Eventually he returned to the Hyperion none the wiser, wrapped a bungee cord around the handles of the hotel’s front doors as a makeshift lock, and wearily climbed the stairs to his own room as dawn broke over the city. The bungee would never stop a determined interloper, but it would slow one down. And they’d do it with enough noise to reach Angel’s more than sensitive ears.

Or so he hoped.

It was almost morning by the time he shrugged off his clothes and left them in a manly heap on the floor. Sleep was what he wanted—that thing his body hardly needed but his human mind still craved as much as anything. Deep, quieting sleep.

The Tuingas priest named Khundarr moved uneasily through the streets of the human city, his broad, flat feet slapping barefoot against the concrete with no notice of the broken glass. He was glad for the night…and at the same time wary of it. As late as it was, he didn’t walk these streets alone—but as a Tuingas priest, he was the only one immune to the deathstone emissions pulsing through the night. The only one truly sane.

Already he could feel the uneasy roil resulting from the demon warrior stone’s rising feedback loop—and he could have found his way to the raw new deathstone with his eyes covered and both noses plugged. It reeked of fear and desperation and anger, a shriller note overtop the deep emissions of the warrior’s stone. It might fade slightly during the day when a majority of the demons rested, but come the next evening the emissions would return in increasing strength.

But the new stone worried him less than the warrior’s stone in spite of its obvious presence. For he intended to have the new stone this very night, but the warrior’s stone, zealously guarded by one who both knew what he had and yet had no idea, would continue to wreak havoc on the demons here. And they in turn would wreak havoc on those innocents around them.

Sudden motion beside a building alerted him; he had his hand on his sash knife before the preternaturally quick beings appeared before him, surrounding him, circling him. They jeered at him, their fangs already dripping blood and their otherwise human features distorted by demonic forehead and eyes.

He couldn’t understand their words, but he knew they played with him. They had no use for
his
blood, after all.

“Don’t be foolish,” he told them, shifting so as to keep most of them in his sight as they danced around him, feinting with their makeshift clubs of broken wood. “This gains you nothing. Can’t you feel the power of that which drives you?”

Not understanding, they laughed all the louder. As one, they leaped on him.

A Tuingas priest is not without his resources. Khundarr tucked his vulnerable long-nose in tight and stood braced and balanced, allowing the blows to pass by or bounce off—but none of the vampires rebounded without feeling the touch of his knife. The light blows didn’t incapacitate the bullies…but the sight of all of them streaming blood while Khundarr stood untouched was enough to overcome the effects of the deathstone. The vampires exchanged a group glance and faded back into the night, not half so jeeringly as they’d come from it.

But Khundarr, although unharmed, was more affected than they could know. This tangible evidence of the deathstone’s influence shook him badly. And it hardened a resolve already strong. Whatever it took, he would recover the raw stone tonight. Whatever.

Khundarr let the raw new stone pull him toward the location of the young Tuingas’s death—a big building on a corner, with damaged doors that gave at his tug but then rebounded back into place. After a moment’s examination, he sliced through the bindings on the door handles. He didn’t expect the violent
sproing!
of the highly stretchy ropes, but once he rubbed away the sting of the part that had snapped back to hit his hand, he forgot about them and stepped into the large room beyond.

The stone called to him. He found it halfway across the room, on a waist-high surface. It was immersed in a container of liquid with an overwhelmingly cheerful scent that almost contrived to cover the crucial scent of the deathstone itself.

All deathstones had the characteristic odor of their owners’ dissolution, forever identifying them to family members by use of the specially developed long-nose. The lysosomic self-destruction upon death had inspired the development of the deathstone in the first place. No Tuingas went anywhere without a deathstone tucked into his stomach pouch behind the traditional sash…. The deathstone served not only as physical remains for family members, but a lingering memorial with impressions of the personality and death experience of the individual.

To discover one thus, in the process of being rendered odorless, was sacrilege. Khundarr stiffened with his outrage. He quickly removed the stone from its bath, folding it into a heavily spell-inscribed leather wrapping that immediately muffled its emissions.

And then he realized someone was watching him. His long-nose, almost overwhelmed by the scent of the liquid, twitched reflexively toward the stairs. Something there gave a squeak of fear and shrank more tightly into the shadows.

A human. Possibly one of the humans who had done this abhorrent thing to a Tuingas deathstone. Khundarr growled deeply, knowing no single human was a match for a fully mature Tuingas, and no human could outwit a Tuingas long-nose no matter how he…no, this was a she…clung to darkness and crannies.

But he knew the girl would not be alone. Something in this dwelling had killed the young one; something in here might be strong enough to kill him, too. And then there would be yet another stone—another
raw
stone—loose in this world that was not prepared to deal with the ones it already had.

He tucked the temporarily protected stone into his own stomach pouch, growled a final invective toward the cowering creature near the stairs, and made his exit.

S
leep was what Angel got…but not the quiet slumber he’d hoped for. He plunged instantly into dreams, dark and heavy and full of fury.
Wesley stood before him, book in hand, lecturing on the finer points of translating ancient demon languages. Angel ripped the book from him and then ripped the book in half—and then reached for Wesley.

No. That’s not right.

Lorne warbled away on the stage of Caritas. “You like me, you really like me,” he said, full of emotion at the applause. Suddenly, badly rigged buckets of blood tipped over from above, showering Lorne in sticky redness. Lorne shouted, “Do the Dance of Joy!” and tipped his head back to lick his lips in glee—until Angel bounded onto the stage, shouting, “Mine! That’s
mine
!” and reached for Lorne—

That’s
really
not right….

Cordelia—

Not Cordelia. Leave her alone!

Cordelia, dressed in an absurdly skimpy costume, carrying an armful of industry magazines and wearing an exaggerated pout. “They don’t like me,
none
of them like me—” And then her eyes rolled back and she fell with a shriek, flinging magazines everywhere, shouting,
“Vision! Vision! Vision!”
until he couldn’t stand it anymore, all that guilt and resentment of guilt and the drama, and Angel reached for Cordelia—

And his eyes flew open in the darkness of his bedroom. He didn’t bolt upright in bed. He just lay there, the tremble of his body made all the more obvious by the stillness of his heart and lungs. He stared into the darkness at the dim definition of the ceiling, and thought,
Not again
.

Not again with the dreams, lurking in his nights and dragging at him during the day. Alienating him from his friends, turning his life into a living nightmare…

And then he did sit up, resting his elbows on the sheets that covered his cross-legged knees, and realizing suddenly
no, not again
. This was not Darla, enticing him with a drugged mix of fantasy and reality. This wasn’t about luring him or manipulating him…

They were simply nightmares. Outpourings of anger, channeled through sleep. Anger, he suddenly realized, that didn’t come from within. Some outside influence pounded at him, drawing on his own life, his own experience, to express itself.

But it was still anger he couldn’t afford. Anger that could turn wrong, uncontrolled and leaving him with yet more regrets to overcome. He ground the heels of his hands against his eyes and said through gritted teeth, “Whoever you are, this isn’t going to work.” It wouldn’t. He’d figure out who was doing this, he’d find them, and he’d put that anger to good use.

“Kittens,” he murmured. “
Sesame Street
. Hula-Hoops. Kids’ handprints in cement.” But not those little Precious Moments statuettes, which always gave him an irresistible urge to smash things. “No, no, no…more kittens. And puppies.” Yeah, the kind with all the wrinkles.

Better already.

But one thing was for sure: The others couldn’t know. Couldn’t even guess. If they even suspected there were dreams attached to this evening’s mood…

For all he knew, they’d stake him just to get it over with.

Not really. Surely that was just an indulgent bit of self-pity creeping in.

Except he knew he’d already pushed them to the limit…and beyond. “Big Bird!” he said with much determination.

Not until much later did it occur to him that he hadn’t come out of the nightmares on his own. In this hotel with its broken doors and habitually unpredictable visitors, something had woken him from that unnaturally deep sleep…and then slunk silently away.

“Okay, so this is strange,” Cordelia said to no one in particular, standing at the hotel’s front doors. One was as Gunn had left it, but the other hung open, cardboard half-ripped from the broken glass, which still jabbed toward the center of the door in jagged shards. A thoroughly slashed bungee cord hung over the handle…and on the floor…and on the stair rail…and she thought she saw a piece out in the lobby. Nasty business, cutting a bungee cord under tension.

She took a step into the hotel. “Hello?”

No answer. But she was expecting that. Gunn never got here this early. Fred was no doubt here somewhere, but not predictable about showing up. Even Wes rarely appeared this early, unless they had a hot and heavy case under way—in which case he usually simply hadn’t gone home. In fact, if she’d gotten an answer…
then
she’d start to worry. Still, better safe than demon fodder. She took another cautious step. “Hello? Anyone here? Any unwanted visitors from other dimensions, master vampires out to rule the world, mayors with a snake fetish?”

Just silence.

“Well, good then. Because I’m really not in the mood for it. In fact, I’m
never
in the mood—oh.” Sometime during her peer around the lobby, Angel had come padding down the stairs.
Way
too early for Angel. So early, in fact, that he’d even forgotten to get dressed and now stood bare-chested, looking at her in a vaguely startled way. Just in case he should get fully the idea that her openmouthed stare was anything more than utter surprise at seeing him emerge before late afternoon, she said flatly, “Well, hubba-hubba.”

He didn’t appear to notice. He looked around the lobby, from courtyard doors to weapons case to the counter to her, and it didn’t seem to her like he was all there. He said, “I thought I heard something.”

“Right. That would have been me. Just taking morning head-count. Not meaning that literally, of course, though around here you never—”

“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.