Shakedown, page 7
“With that?” Angel said calmly. “I don’t think so. Snub-nose thirty-eight isn’t much good past thirty feet, and he’s at least forty feet away. I doubt you could hit him once out of a full clip.”
“I may be forty feet away but I can hear you just fine!” Doyle said nervously. “Some of us aren’t quite as lead-resistant as others, you know—”
“Give it up,” the leader hissed.
“Now, all I have to do to turn your friend’s brains into a colorful fountain is twitch,” Angel continued. “And considering that he’s between me and you, we’re going to get his brains all over both of us. Now, that doesn’t bother me because I know an excellent dry-cleaner, but maybe it’s an experience you don’t really want to go through.”
The one without a gun was looking more and more nervous. His shaved head gleamed under the streetlights. “Hey, maybe we should just go, huh?”
“You cap him, we cap you,” the big one said.
“Your friend might get away, but that ain’t gonna do you a whole lot of good, you know?”
“True,” Angel admitted. “Except for one thing.”
“Which is?”
Angel let the vampiric persona he normally kept suppressed rise to the surface.
His irises went from black to bright yellow. The ridge of bone over his eyes thickened. He grinned at them with a mouth full of teeth that had just gotten a lot longer and sharper.
“Which is the fact that bullets only annoy me. And when I’m annoyed, I rip people’s throats out. You’d be amazed what a stress-reliever it is . . .”
The gangbangers met his gaze. They all lowered their weapons.
“Shit,” the big one said. “You a vampire.” He sounded disgusted.
“Uh—well, yeah,” Angel said.
“Why didn’ you say so, homes? We got a treaty with the vamps around here. They don’ feed on Bloods, we don’ drag their pale asses out inta the sunlight. We cool.” He lowered his gun, and the others did the same.
“Right,” Angel said. He released his grip on the leader, who glared at him but stepped back.
“Watch your ass around here, though,” the big one said. “Lotta demons don’ respect our turf. Can’t be responsible if one of ’em whacks you.”
“I’ll . . . be careful,” Angel said. “Thanks.”
“No prob. Later, fangs.” They strode off down the sidewalk.
Doyle walked up to the car. “Y’know,” he said, staring after the departing Bloods, “just when I think L.A. can’t get any weirder . . .”
“Kate won’t have the breakdown on other possible victims for me until tomorrow,” Angel said. “So all we have to work with is the attack on the Serpentene woman—and this.”
“A firehouse,” Doyle said. They were parked across the street from it. “Where this woman Fisca worked. You think she was number one on the Tremblors’ shoppin’ list?”
“Maybe,” Angel said. “According to Kate, she vanished sometime between getting off work and walking to her car, which was parked in the lot right next to the hall. I thought we might have a look around.”
They got out of the car and crossed the street. The parking lot was well-lit, with spots along one brick wall marked RESERVED FOR MEMBERS OF THE FIRE DEPARTMENT.
“Not a lot of places t’hide,” Doyle observed. “Coulda been between two vehicles, I suppose.”
“Or below one,” Angel said. “These are subterranean creatures, after all . . .” He walked down to the end of the parking lot. “Look at this,” he said.
Doyle joined him. “New asphalt. Like the ground was dug up and paved over again.”
“The city repairs sinkholes all the time. If this was being worked on the night Fisca disappeared, the ground could have been exposed.”
“And one of our rocky friends coulda been just below the surface.” Doyle nodded. “Okay, but that still leaves a few questions. Like, how does the Tremblor know his victim is an actual firefighter and not someone who just parked here? For that matter, how does he know anything while he’s underground? Does he poke his head up from time to time like a gopher?”
“I don’t know,” Angel admitted. “I didn’t get that good a look at the one that attacked me. It could have had some special kind of sensory organs that weren’t obvious.”
“Let’s try and re-create the situation,” Doyle suggested. “The kidnapping, I mean, not your premature burial. Kinda put ourselves in the Quake demon’s place, try and figure out what he was thinkin’.”
“All right. Well, the Tremblor had to have been waiting for his victim, maybe for some time—”
“Okay. So he’s been waiting’ here awhile. He’s gettin’ jumpy, nervous.”
“Maybe,” Angel said. He leaned against the wall and crossed his arms.
Doyle started pacing back and forth. “He’s all charged up with earthquake energy, right? Like that whammy he used on you. He’s practically vibratin’ . He’s ready and rarin’ to go . . .”
Baasalt waited.
Waiting did not bother him. He reckoned time by a geologic clock; he was older than most countries. Waiting was only stillness, and stillness to a Tremblor was like sunshine to a lizard.
Not that it was true stillness. The filth still flowed past his knees, sloshing and gurgling its way down the tunnel; rats rustled and squeaked and gnawed at garbage; and that was just within the tunnel itself.
Outside was pandemonium.
Giant metal bugs roared around at insane speeds. Footsteps clattered on concrete. Voices yammered, dogs barked, birds shrieked. At least it was no longer the period called “day,” though that would come again soon enough.
Baasalt’s world was largely a silent one. Even the murmur of underground rivers did not reach his realm. Years sometimes passed between one audible sound and another; his people communicated directly from mind to mind.
How he missed it . . .
“And then,” Doyle said, “Fresca comes out.”
“Fisca.”
“Yeah, yeah. But what if Mr. Shake-and-Quake screws up? Could be all us surface types look the same to him; moles and worms aren’t exactly known for their great eyesight . . .”
Baasalt’s pale white sensory tuber quivered slightly. It was actually a separate organism, a kind of symbiotic fungus that would only grow in one environment: the tail slit of Tremblor warrior-priests. It was a delicate and sensitive instrument, able to detect the tinest amount of any chemical compound and convey that information to its host. To Baasalt’s sensory tuber, identical twins were about as similar as black and white.
“So it’s not even the right person,” Doyle continued. “But the Quake demon don’t know that. It probably just hears footsteps, knockin’ on its roof. It’s not too bright, so it doesn’t waste a lot of time thinkin’. It wants some action . It erupts outta the ground,” Doyle said, throwing his arms in the air. “Right in front of her, probably. She turns to run, but it’s too fast. It grabs her from behind . . .”
Angel sighed.
The one he had been seeking drew near.
He could taste her, molecule by molecule. The scent of her perfume, her clothes, her hair, all these were just distractions. It was the other, secondary essences that clung to her that told him she was one of the Four.
A complex petrochemical tang that spoke of metal birds screaming through the Void. A faint miasma of elements that underlaid that, the kind of collective stink produced by a group of Skin Dwellers trapped together for a short period of time. A subtle wrongness in her biology that indicated a confused internal clock.
More important was her lifeline, an energy signature that ran through time the way light traveled through space, and just as visible to Baasalt. Its regularity told him that she was not merely a sometimes air-traveler; it was her profession. She was connected to the Void that Screamed as surely as he was connected to the Body of the World.
He shuddered, trying not to think about it. He would have to proceed carefully with this one.
The flower growing out of the storm drain was the oddest one Sarah Clark had ever seen.
The stalk was pale white, but that was practically normal compared to the bloom. It looked like— well, like a volcano, Sarah supposed. It had a cone that was jet-black, with red edging around the top that suggested molten rock, and incredibly long, scarlet stamens that projected almost two feet into the air from the top of the cone, the ends curving in gentle arcs like lava falling back to earth after shooting out of the ground.
Actually, it looked more like a mushroom, but not any mushroom Sarah had ever seen. And mushrooms didn’t have stamens, did they? They gave off spores, not pollen.
And they didn’t smell like summer camp.
Sarah stopped dead. Her job as a flight attendant took her all over the world, and her nose had encountered many an unusual aroma: she had wandered around open-air bazaars in Morocco, strolled past cooking stalls in Hong Kong, stuck her head in spice shops in the Philippines. She loved the sense of the exotic strange smells induced.
But there was something to be said for the familiar, too, especially for those smells that called up memories. What she was smelling now was something from her twelfth year, the last year she went to summer camp. She remembered it as a haven, of a place removed from the problems of her everyday life; it was the last summer of her childhood, and she’d spent it having fun and making friends. She learned important things, not about archery or swimming or canoeing, but the things young girls always discuss: getting your first period. How to kiss a boy. Trying beer or a cigarette to see what all the fuss was about. Training bras and makeup.
And somehow, even from twenty feet away, that was what this flower smelled like. The sweet scent of pine trees, underlaid with that musty smell her cabin had. That cheap perfume Ellen Fingerhoff had spilled. The smell of warm, weathered wood and creosote that rose off the dock while she was sunbathing. The slightly marshy aroma of the lake. And wood smoke, of course . . .
She approached the flower with a half-smile on her face. As she got closer to the storm drain it was growing out of, she saw that the sewer grate was missing, leaving a dark, empty hole. Empty except for an unusual flower, swaying slightly back and forth.
Sarah put her face close to the bloom, closed her eyes and inhaled.
And fell, backward, through time.
“Come on,” an excited voice yelled. “Look at this!”
Sarah opened her eyes and straightened up. Cool-looking flower, she thought. Doesn’t have much of a smell, though .
Her best friend, Cindy Lillinett, was standing beside what looked like—a cave! It had been covered up by bushes, but Cindy had pulled them aside. “Isn’t this great?” Cindy asked her. “I bet no one’s been in here for a hundred years!”
Sarah grinned and ran over. “But it’s so close to the camp. You think maybe this is where the counselors come to make out or something?”
“Maybe,” Cindy said. “Let’s go inside.”
“You first,” Sarah said.
Cindy smiled and said, “Chicken?” then ducked into the cave.
Sarah was right behind her.
“Would you like a trampoline?” Angel asked.
“Excuse me?” Doyle said.
“To help you make those great leaps of logic.”
“And I suppose you can do better?”
“Well, let’s see. First of all, the Tremblors have already attacked a firefighter and someone who lives underground—two for two in terms of what they’re after. That suggests they know what they’re doing. Second, the one I fought waited until I stumbled upon it. That plus this attack suggests waiting is part of the Tremblor’s natural strategy. And even though the Tremblor that attacked me was fairly quick, I can’t see something made of rock having an impatient personality. . . .”
Angel began walking back toward the car. “The firehouse is staffed twenty-four hours a day, and right next door; if something erupted out of the earth and grabbed her, she’d at least have time to scream. No one heard a thing.”
“So what did happen?” Doyle asked, following him.
“I don’t know. Maybe it drugged her, hypnotized her or something. We don’t have enough information at this point to tell.”
They got into the car. “Where to?” Doyle asked.
“Fisca’s apartment. Maybe the victims are linked together in another way, one that could help us figure out who’s next.”
Baasalt led the female by the hand. She came willingly, a happy smile on her face. The spores emitted by the sensory tuber were psychoactive in a very special way—they took their victim back to his or her happiest time, a time when they were safe and trusting. Baasalt could clearly see the difference in her lifeline; her body was here, but her mind had cast itself backward. Such a state made her extremely suggestible—Baasalt didn’t even have to speak to her mind. He simply made a beckoning gesture with his hand, and her own thoughts filled in the details.
He was glad it had been easy. One never knew what would happen when dealing with the Void, or those who lived in it.
“So this is where she lived,” Doyle said.
The apartment was spacious and well-furnished; apparently L.A. firefighters made decent wages. Security was less than impressive, though— Doyle had managed to pick the lock in under a minute.
Angel glanced around. Bookshelves, framed art posters, leather couch with matching chair. A television, a stereo, a rack of CDs and videotapes. A coffee table with a few magazines on it. Nothing that jumped out and said, “I’m going to be kidnapped by underground monsters!”
“Hey, you think she’ll mind if I eat this?” Doyle said, his head in the refrigerator. “As an advance thank-you for rescuin’ her, and all.”
Angel walked into the bedroom. The double bed was unmade, heaps of clothes lying on the floor.
There was a computer on a desk against one wall; he pulled out the chair, sat down and turned on the power.
It didn’t seem to be encrypted in any way, so he had a look through her files. She was working on a novel, had a stash of Victorian erotic literature and a collection of flight simulator games. Angel found her address list and scanned through it.
The name was near the end, of course. It caught Angel’s eye as he scrolled past, and he immediately stopped and backed up.
“Doyle,” he called out. “I think I’ve found something.”
Doyle walked in, a half-eaten submarine sandwich in one hand and a beer in the other. “Yeah? What’s that?”
“A name,” Angel said. “A very familiar name.”
He pointed at the screen. It was two names, actually.
Wolfram and Hart.
CHAPTER FIVE
Wolfram and Hart was a name Angel knew well. They were an L.A. law firm, one whose clientele leaned heavily toward the demonic—in the worst sense of the word. He’d faced off against them before, and barely survived the experience. By the time Angel and Doyle were done searching the apartment, it was almost dawn; they found nothing else that seemed important. They drove back to the office, and Angel retired to his own place downstairs to get some sleep.
It was a long time coming. He tried to concentrate on the case, but his mind kept drifting back to Lisbon, back to the ruins of the church, back to Maria.
Back to what he finally imposed on her.
* * *
“Morning, Angel,” Cordelia called out as he stepped off the freight elevator. “Or afternoon, I guess. There’s coffee.”
“Coffee is good,” Angel muttered, walking into the office. He poured himself a cup. “Where’s Doyle?”
“Out getting lunch, for those of us who chew our food.”
Angel sank into an office chair, but didn’t reply.
“What, is that like a disgusting concept to you now? Putting stuff in your mouth and chomping on it until it’s all mushy and mixed together, then swallowing—euuw, suddenly I’m not hungry anymore. Thanks a lot.”
“Sorry. I didn’t sleep well.”
“Doyle says you found a connection to Wolfram and Hart. What is it with those creeps—are they trying to corner the market on evil or something?”
“Or something,” Angel agreed. “I don’t know how they’re involved yet—they were in one of the victims’ address files.”
“Oh, and that cop lady dropped by with some information. She said to give you this.” Cordelia picked up an envelope and handed it to Angel.
The front door opened and Doyle came in, a brown paper bag under one arm. “I see the big guy’s up. Cordy, I hope tandoori’s okay.”
“You can have mine. Mr. Sunshine here just spoiled my appetite.”
Doyle set the paper bag down on the desk. “What’s in the envelope?”
“Something from Kate.” Angel opened it up and took out a thick sheaf of paper. “Looks like a printout on missing persons. She’s listed all the ones in the last six months that might be Tremblor victims.”
“Not that you told her that,” Cordelia said.
“Of course not.”
“So what did you tell her?” Doyle asked, unpacking the contents of the paper bag.
“Just that it was a case I was working on,” Angel said, studying the printout.
“Pretty big favor for such a vague reason,” Doyle commented.
“She must be a very nice person,” Cordelia said.
“Just likes to help people,” Doyle agreed.
“For absolutely no reward, of course.”
“Other than a feelin’ of mutual self-respect for a fellow detective.”
“That’s just what I was going to say.”
Angel sighed and put down the printout. “Okay, okay. I promised I’d take her out for dinner.”
“As long as you don’t have her for dinner,” Cordelia said. “But you wouldn’t do that unless you turned evil, and that wouldn’t happen unless you experienced actual happiness, which is usually an aprËs -dinner kind of thing.”
