He nodded politely. Then he gestured through the windshield and said, “Brake lights on.”
“I see ’em.” His companion sighed as she didn’t slow one single mile. “It’s true what they say in this town. All the good ones are gay or married.”
He looked at her curiously.
She laughed. “Well, hell, I sure don’t think you’re gay. But there’s no temptation in your eyes, and you and I both know it wouldn’t kill you to do the nasty with me tonight. Which is as much as any lady ought to say.”
He made no answer.
She brayed like a truck driver. “The men out here are sure not cowboys. Hell, this keeps up, I’m moving back to Dallas.”
Near the pier, she screamed over to a hotel parking lot. She dropped him off and gave him a friendly wave. “You ever get in a life-threatening accident again, ask for Jessie,” she said. “I’ll take good care of you. Nobody can intubate better than me.” She wrinkled her nose. “Just ask my last two boyfriends.”
Angel smiled. “Thanks.”
“Take care. There’s a bottle of George Dickel and some Dwight Yoakum at my house, you change your mind. And Dwight, well, let’s just say he works for me. By the way, I wrote my phone number on your underwear while the doc was examining you.”
“Another time,” he said gently.
“Oh, yeah, right. By the way, I also have a shower.” She gave him a smile. “You don’t stink. You just smell like smoke.”
He was at the pier, and it was still jumping. In the distance, he saw the silhouette of a concrete building lined in neon. It said “Club Komodo.” He headed for it, then stood gazing at the sign as someone stood on the balcony below it, preparing to jump.
“Meg, no!” Angel cried.
She blinked. Frowned. She said, “Who?”
Her face changed. Over it, he saw the hideous mask he once had seen in the dusky barn, the night he and Dorrie had gone to Granny Quinn’s.
She — or it, whatever it was — stared at him and said, “Evil has a long memory, Angelus. Evil can bear grudges. It can hate. It can plot its revenge.
“But good? Good must forgive. It must forget.
“That’s why you’ll be forgotten. The evil inside you will cancel out your pathetic attempts to make amends. How can you ever hope to walk with the true angels? You’re a mass murderer. You belong with us.”
He stared, not understanding. “Are you Meg Taruma?” he asked, trying to move forward.
She shrugged. “One name’s as good as another. But no matter what you call me, I’ll be back. Because evil is eternal.
“That’s the truth of immortality.”
Then she dived off the building and landed on her back on the pavement.
In Angel’s apartment a blue figure shimmered into being. He was tall for an Indonesian. Muscular and robust, he had a square chin and a hooked nose.
He was Bang Rais, ascendant. He had dared to shed his mortal body, risking everything to gain life eternal. Did Jusef not remember that Latura would grant immortality to one person and one only? Did he think the god would turn his back on his most devoted Servant because of the desires of an impatient young man?
I have killed more people for Latura than you can imagine, Bang Rais thought. There are entire villages gone. Ethnic populations.
But more important, I have persuaded other people to kill for Latura on my behalf, by letting them think they would take my place. My son tortured dozens. He learned the secret of burning their hearts, and thought he could usurp my place.
But I kept him busy. I kept him wondering. I killed people and I moved their bodies. I planted many false clues. He looked around and headed for the kitchen. And all the while, I deflected attention from the truth.
For behold:
In his office in Club Komodo, Jusef picked up the phone and said, “Start the fires.”
All over Los Angeles, other phones were dialed, and picked up.
Gas cans were dumped over. Matches struck. One by one, fires erupted and blazed.
And the people screamed. Immigrant men and women, locked behind doors so that they wouldn’t take breaks. Children, overcome by smoke.
Sirens shrieked down the traffic corridors of Los Angeles. The city filled with smoke. The death toll rose. And rose.
And rose.
* * *
It’s time, Jusef thought. He put his guitar strap over his head and went onstage. The band was waiting.
“Meg?” he called.
When she didn’t appear, he looked at the audience, patiently waiting, and ran his fingertips over the strings.
The gamelan musicians began to run their hammers and cymbals up and down the scales. The exotic, ancient music of Indonesia filled the room.
With a flourish, Slamet walked onstage. He held against his chest a small pile of bamboo rods.
They were the original writings of the First Servant’s daughter, preserved all this time by the good fathers of the Nias church.
From them, Jusef had learned that a pustaha lakek had been written, and another would be dictated by the god through the drums of his people, the head-hunters of Nias. It would contain misinformation.
It would prevent the one who used it from achieving his immortality.
He had known all this, but he had let his father think that he, Bang Rais, had the upper hand. Jusef had caused his death on purpose. He had pretended to hunt for the Book, concocting the silly scheme about English as a Second Language because he, Jusef, remembered the book with hatred from his days in school.
He had known very well that this was Latura’s special night, when the dark powers were the most concentrated.
“Meg?” he called again.
Bang Rais, in his more evolved form, smiled at the vessel which would bring Latura into the world. From reading the Book of Latura, he had known what to look for.
It hadn’t been Meg.
And she hadn’t possessed any special blood.
He had made that all up, the better to entrap and distract his son and, if need be, his nephew.
I fooled them all, he thought. In the end, I’m the one who will be immortal.
“Celia, Angel has one can of Sprite,” Cordelia said as she walked from the refrigerator. “Do you want it?”
There was no answer.
“Celia?”
Cordelia turned around and saw him.
She dropped the can on Angel’s carpet.
He only said, “It’s too late.”
Then he disappeared, taking Celia with him.
As Angel held Meg Taruma in his arms, his cell phone rang.
“Angel, this blue guy just took Celia and I’ll bet they’re going to where the Book is,” she babbled.
“Slow down.”
“The vessel was Celia Sucharitkul,” she said. “Not Meg. Someone lied to someone else.”
“Give me the address,” he said.
She did so.
“I’m going there now,” she added.
Angel held Meg. He didn’t know precisely what she was now, or what had happened to her, but he had been connected to her. Inside, she had been sweet and frightened, vulnerable and desperately in need of help.
Then, as she began to die, he saw her lifetime unfold:
She’d been an unremarkable young woman living in an unremarkable part of Dakarta. The most exciting part of her day was spent feeding her cat, whose name she didn’t remember.
She had never been to Nias. All that was a dream. A lie.
She opened her eyes and looked up at him.
“The injections,” she said. “They made me dream an entire life.”
It had been some kind of drug to stimulate her mind. To make the false memories more real.
“But we connected,” she whispered to him.
“We did,” he answered.
But had they? Had he actually been bitten by a serpent?
That way lies madness, he told himself.
As she died, Meg began to cry.
“It was
n’t me,” she said. “I don’t know who I am. I’m going to die and I won’t ever know who I was.”
Angel held her. When she faded away, he looked into her cold, blank eyes.
He didn’t know who she was, either.
The place where the sweatshop was located was grubbier and dirtier than the rest of the garment district. It also wasn’t far from where Celia had snatched Cordelia’s purse.
Doyle followed the priest up two flights of stairs. He pushed open a door and stared in dismay and disgust at the filth and stench of a room filled with sewing machines. A teddy bear lay under one of them; under another, a small stack of children’s books. Father Wahid stopped to sort through it.
This is where they kept the little ones. Forced them to work.
The room was dark and dingy. Doyle crossed deeper into it and found a flight of stairs that only went down. Talk about a mystery house.
He took them.
What he saw made his stomach clench.
It was a terrible place. Paintings of tortures and different kinds of executions were streaked across the walls. From the ceiling hung skulls and bones. In the center, bodies which had just begun to rot.
In the middle of the room was a large stone table.
And tied to the table, little Celia.
“The vessel,” said a voice.
It was Father Wahid.
He was dressed in a black robe, and as Doyle stared, leathery wings beat overhead.
Two repulsive flying monsters with crackled green skin, each the size of a lion, flapped their wings overhead. Each carried a round object in its mouth.
As one, they released the objects, and they splatted against the filthy floor.
They were human heads.
Slamet’s, and Jusef’s.
Father Wahid threw back his head and laughed. “They thought they were so clever,” he said. “They lied and cheated so much that they couldn’t remember if they’d lied to each other. In the end, they lied to themselves.
“I am the real Servant. I’m the one who’ll become immortal.”
Doyle shrugged. “I don’t really care,” he said.
Then he lunged at the erstwhile priest with the sword.
Angel let the coroner take Meg away. Then he set about hailing a cab to get to the address Cordelia had given him.
As one pulled up, he sat for a moment. Then he said, “Rais Compound. It’s up in the hills. I’ll give you directions.”
The cabbie was attentive. They made good time.
But as Angel glanced through the window, he realized that day was close at hand.
In fact, he wasn’t sure he had enough time to get to the compound.
Doesn’t matter, he thought.
The cabbie chatted incessantly. Angel didn’t really listen. He was reviewing his life.
Because this may very well be the end of it.
What had he been promised? That he would die alone, and forgotten?
“We’re here,” the cabbie told him. “I don’t think they’ll let me through the gates.”
“That’s okay.”
Angel got out and gave the man enough money to make him go away. Then he turned to the guard, said “Hey,” and slammed his fist into the man’s jaw. The guard crumpled.
Another shouted “Stop!” and aimed a weapon directly at Angel.
Angel picked up speed and slid on his hands, like a batter stealing a base. The man, startled, shot high.
Pushing him off his feet, Angel darted past.
Gunfire pursued him as he took the temple stairs two, three, four at a time. He didn’t so much descend as fall.
There was a single torch flickering in the blackness of the temple.
The statue of Latura had grown to an enormous size, and it was batting at a thick horde of flying jin, plucking them and tossing them into its mouth.
“Granny Quinn,” Angel called out.
The statue stopped moving. It swiveled its ugly stone head toward him. Fires burned in the eyes.
“Granny Quinn,” he said again.
“That’s not my name.” The voice was loud enough to hollow out more caverns. The fires in the eyes were so hot that blisters formed on Angel’s face and arms.
“Evil’s your name,” Angel said. “Isn’t it?”
“If you like.”
The statue made a fist and slammed it down beside Angel. “And what is yours? Crown Prince of Nothing?”
“It was all for me, wasn’t it?” Angel demanded, advancing. “Like an experiment, to see which way I’d go. Because part of me is evil —”
“Very evil,” the statue said, showing huge fangs as it grinned at him.
“And part of me is good.”
It was difficult for Angel to say. So he said it again.
“Part of me is good.”
The statue laughed. “Everyone’s got darkness and light.”
“Not like me. I’m unique. That’s what makes me the perfect vessel.”
“Interesting,” the statue said.
“And that’s what you miss. Feeling interested. That much of the story of Latura is true. Death’s limited. And life — for most people — is transitory.
“Which makes it seem pointless.”
The statue lowered its face. “So say you.”
“Around me, everyone lives and dies. They make choices for lightness or darkness. I’m the only one who keeps living, and who keeps struggling.
“It’s I who am the God of Death. I’m the one who rose from the Underworld to walk among people for an eternity.”
“Such pride.” The statue mockingly shook its finger.
“You’re simply a demon. A clever, bored demon,” Angel said.
The huge stone figure inclined its head. “Golgothla is my name, vampire. And you’re right. It’s you I want. Not the Servant. Not the Vessel. Doreen. Alice. Meg. Hendrik. Wahid. Bang. You are unique.”
It shrugged. “But now that you know, the game is over. It’s no longer interesting. If I let you escape, sooner or later you’ll find a way to destroy me.”
The creature made a fist and slammed it into Angel. Then it kicked, sending the vampire flying across the cavern. Angel crashed into the rock wall and ricocheted onto his back.
He was so stunned he could see nothing but blackness. The floor shook as the demon statue came toward him. Its laughter loosened rock from the ceiling. It clattered down on Angel’s head and chest, bruising and battering him.
Moving like a slow-motion dream, Angel rolled over. After a few seconds he pressed forward on his hands and thrust backward onto his feet. He assumed a classic kickboxing defensive position, and waited for his attacker to make another move.
Then he realized what the game was: He could not die. His life had been given back to him by the Powers That Be, and it was not his to dispose of.
That was what made him interesting. He had something to lose, and his stakes were high.
So what do I do, fight until I drop? Until I die? Until it gets tired of me?
“It’s no different from oblivion for you, is it?” Angel said. “The outcome of this doesn’t really matter.”
“Of course it does. It matters if you destroy me,” it whispered in a tantalizing voice.
“To you? Doubtful,” Angel said. “You have no real self. If you die in this form, you’ll rise again in another. Evil is eternal.”
“How cynical,” said the demon. “Makes you want to give up, doesn’t it?”
“No.” Angel raised his chin. “It makes me want to live forever, too.”
Then he came at the demon, landing punches everywhere. Its flying minions harried Angel, biting his face and head, aiming for the nape of his neck.
The floor exploded and nightmare creatures gushed out like a lava river. Angel fought so many they became a blur.
“Tired yet?” he flung at the monster. “Bored yet? You don’t want to kill me, do you. Because I’m the best the good side’s got down here.”
“Enough!”
the demon shouted.
Then it burst apart into hundreds of pieces.
Each piece became a face, but each face was the same. They all shrieked with frustration.
Then those pieces exploded.
And those pieces.
And those.
Until Angel lay, exhausted, in a field of sand.
EPILOGUE
“You’re forgiven, not forgotten.”
— The Corrs
Éire Shaor was a strange and wonderful place: an authentic Irish working-class bar located smack in the middle of West Hollywood. How Doyle had found it, Angel had no idea, but he was pleasantly surprised by the half-demon’s discovery.
Reading Angel’s expression, Doyle said, “This beats a deserted library, eh?”
Doyle and Angel sat within view of the dartboard, each drinking a pint, each quietly watching the game. Angel listened to the Irish groups on the sound system: the Chieftains, the Corrs, Clannad. Harp music. A romanticized Ireland, to be sure.
Cordelia might have liked it, but she was on a date with Jason the policeman.
“Were you ever in the IRA?” Doyle asked as he picked up his glass beer mug and drank. “Sinn Fein and all that?” He gestured to the name of the bar, which translated as “Free Ireland.”
Angel looked at him curiously. “Why do you ask?”
“Remember when they wouldn’t let Gerry Adams into the States? And them with all those Irish Kennedys and such?”
“Them?”
“The Americans.” Doyle frowned. “What did you think I meant, the humans?”
Angel said nothing.
“Don’t forget, I’m half-human.”
“No way I can.”
Doyle appeared content to let that one go. They sat in silence for a while. Then Doyle said, “I get homesick, y’know.” He made little circles on the bar with the bottom of his mug. “Oh, I do okay here, but back home, it’s a bit easier to get by.”
“To pass,” Angel teased, “for human.”
“Well, then, you’re a bitter boyo.” Doyle regarded him. “You’d be as much out of place in Ireland these days as you are here. No matter where you go, you’re a stranger in a strange land.”
Angel looked at him. “It’s not a strange land.”
Doyle snorted. “Los Angeles? Go on. It’s the most bizarre place on earth.”
“Not by half,” Angel insisted.