“Hey, maybe we should hit the lifeboats,” Xander said brightly.
“No. Let’s take it on. I can hit monsters! I’m ready!” Spike said, showing the first enthusiasm any of them had seen from him tonight.
“I like knowing that we may prove to be indispensable,” Anya said, considering. “It makes me feel less . . . incapacitated.”
Riley looked at Tara. “Try Buffy and Willow again. Tell them I’m on my way. They should try to get some more leads to the gang up there.”
Tara nodded. “Okay.”
“Take care of yourself, Riley,” Anya said. “It would be distressful if you were torn into bits by this creature.”
“I’ll miss you, too,” Riley said dryly.
“Yeah. Safe journeys. Oh, and be sure to say hi to Angel for me,” Spike said pointedly. “I’m sure you’ll run into him when you catch up with the Slayer.”
Riley simply glared at him and walked out. As he left, he heard Xander say, “Spike, you really have no class, do you?”
“None at all,” the white-haired vampire replied with satisfaction.
Chapter 16
Los Angeles
CORDELIA HAD A CLOTH BAG FULL OF WOODEN STAKES strapped onto her back and one stake in each fist. Hanging against her chest was a wide, metal cross on a leather thong. As accessories went, these were far from anything she’d seen in Vogue, but she hoped they’d come in handy in case of vampiric emergency.
Wesley was, if anything, even more decked out. He held a crossbow in his right hand, nocked with a wooden bolt. More bolts were affixed to a bandolier that encircled his torso. Around his neck, a vial of holy water dangled from a velvet cord.
They waited in the tunnels underneath the library, enveloped in darkness. Each had selected a doorway on opposite sides of the main hallway that ran through the unused lower section of the library complex, and they sat, more or less silent and alert, in the shadows. Cordelia could barely make out Wesley across the hall. The girls didn’t know they were there—at least, she hoped they didn’t.
But that was by no means a sure thing.
They were here because Kayley had called, her voice charged with fear.
“It’s tonight,” she had said as soon as Cordelia picked up the phone.
“What is?” she had asked, before the meaning of Kayley’s words really sunk in. “Oh, okay. Tonight? Are you sure?”
Kayley couldn’t speak for a moment, just sniffled softly into the phone. “Okay, Kayley,” Cordelia said. “We’ll be there. Don’t worry.”
When Cordelia hung up, Wesley was looking at her, his face ashen.
“We don’t have any idea where Angel is,” the former Watcher pointed out. “I’ve just tried his phone again, a few minutes ago. What shall we do?”
“Worry,” Cordelia answered.
“No,” he said, suddenly forceful and commanding. “We’ll gird our loins and step into the breach.”
Cordelia hesitated. “I don’t think I like you in that way, Wesley,” she said. “I mean, you’re fine to do research and stuff with, and I actually do like shopping with you. But I think we should leave it at that, you know?”
He blinked a couple of times as he took in what she was saying. “No, Cordelia. What I mean is that we shall arm ourselves and defeat Kostov, without waiting for Angel.”
“Ohh,” Cordelia breathed with relief. “Why didn’t you say so?”
They had busied themselves with preparations for battle, raiding the trunk of weapons that Angel and Wesley had put together after Angel’s supply had been destroyed in the explosion that took out his office and apartment. Locked and loaded, they headed for downtown and the library building, letting themselves in through the abandoned storefront Cordelia had been shown before. This time, they were able to gain access and they found their way through the warren of tunnels underneath the library.
Cordelia knew it had taken Kayley Moser a lot of courage to make that phone call. Her friends—or, at any rate, the girls she had fallen in with in the streets of L.A., and had been living with for who knew how long—were anxiously awaiting Kostov’s arrival. The vampire had promised to turn them all into his kind. As far as Cordelia was concerned, the girls had no idea what they were getting into. They had flirted with some romantic notion of what vampires are like, without ever knowing the reality behind the romance. Cordelia had a better sense of what they were letting themselves in for, but she was an outsider and she knew they’d never accept her version of things.
So the backup plan was to dust Kostov when he arrived.
Wesley had been able, finally, to find a little information on Kostov in some of his literature, although it had taken some digging. The vampire had been sired just over eighty years ago, in the thick ancient forests of Hungary. Europe was then embroiled in a terrible war, the “war to end all wars,” it was called, somewhat optimistically.
Kostov was a soldier then, walking a patrol in the predawn hours, tromping over frozen ground. A clearing edged with bare trees, their limbs frosted in snow, marked the boundary of his patrol.
Kostov walked the perimeter of the clearing, according to the stories that had been told, his rifle in his icy hands, and had, coming across a wide, flat stump where some woodcutter had felled an ancient, massive tree in days gone by, seen sitting on the frost-rimed stump a lovely young lady wearing little more than a gossamer veil and a smile.
He had, at first, assumed that he was hallucinating. The cold had finally caught up to him, or mustard gas inhaled in some battle had affected his brain. He walked closer, expecting her to vanish with every step.
But she didn’t. In fact, she crooked her finger at him, motioning him on. As he grew nearer, she stood atop the old stump, passing her hands down her own body as if to entice him further. When he came closer still, he could smell her, sweet and flowery. No hallucination. He reached for her.
She slipped into his arms. Put her head against his shoulder, nuzzling her face against his neck.
Sank her teeth into his throat.
Kostov had returned to camp two nights later. There had been an uproar over his disappearance—no enemy troops had been sighted; the guard had simply vanished in the forest. But when he crept into the circle of snoring men and crackling fires, Kostov did not come back as a hero of battle. He came back as a vampire.
He drank deep of soldiers who had once been his friends, comrades-at-arms, and a select few he turned. By morning, the snow around the camp was spattered with scarlet. More than half of the soldiers in the camp, battlehardened professionals one and all, were dead.
Another fifteen men followed Kostov into the night and, together with the woman who they came to know as Inge, she of the scanty veils, they had formed their own small troop. The soldiers who remained, abandoned that camp as soon as the sun came up and they found the lifeless, drained husks of their fellows, and from that point on the forest belonged to Kostov and Inge.
Now he had come to California, and had befriended a teenage runaway named Pat. And Pat had invited him to meet her friends.
So Cordelia and Wesley waited. Party Poopers “R” Us, Cordelia thought.
Angel stood in a shadowed doorway, waiting.
He had located the police officers named Bo Peterson and Luis Castaneda. Peterson was a tall, beefy blond guy, young-looking, with a weightlifter’s build. His head was so big his hat looked like it barely fit over his crewcut hair. Castaneda was skinny, wiry, with dark olive skin and longish black hair. They were both in uniform. During the confusion at Headquarters, Angel had, wearing his borrowed LAPD windbreaker, accessed a dispatch computer and learned where to find them.
Since he had picked them up an hour ago, Angel had stayed with the officers, watching everything they did, which wasn’t much. Outside the station, it was a quiet night.
They cruised the streets of their turf in their squad car. Looking for trouble, Angel assumed, but not really going out of their way to find it. Finally, they had stopped on a dark street corne
r. Angel pulled his Plymouth Belvedere over and stayed in it until they got out of their car.
Then he saw why they had stopped. A tall, lanky young man had been standing nonchalantly near the corner, hands deep in the pockets of his baggy pants. He didn’t look frightened when the cops approached, just greeted them with a kind of wry smile. The cops took him by the arms and escorted him into the alley. As soon as they were out of sight, Angel jumped out of his car and took refuge in the doorway nearest the alley.
Listening.
“. . . been a slow night,” the man was saying. “That’s all I made all night.”
“Ain’t it a shame,” one of the cops replied.
“Breaks my heart,” the other one added.
“You can’t—” the young man said.
“Watch us.”
“Man, you got no right to—”
“You’re selling dope on street corners and telling us what our rights are?” The cops laughed. “Let’s have it.”
Angel risked a glance into the alley. The young man was digging into his pockets, and handing a wad of cash over to Peterson and Castaneda.
So they were dirty.
That made sense, as far as Flores’s story was concerned. So did the part about them shaking down dealers.
Probably the Russian dealer had refused to be shaken down, or tried to fight back. So they’d made an example of him, or killed him in a fight.
And then, needing a fall guy, had settled on the innocent man who’d been taking a walk nearby.
There was an additional benefit to picking on Rojelio Flores—since he had been close enough to hear the shots, they had no way of knowing what else he might have heard or seen. By making him the suspect, they guaranteed that anything he did report would be disbelieved.
Angel went back to his car.
He wanted to talk to the cops individually, not together. So he trailed along behind them until they went back to the station at the end of their shift, and then he followed Peterson back out of the station.
Peterson drove a new Chevy truck to a quiet, lower-middle-class neighborhood in the Valley. When he stopped, he parked the truck in the driveway of a small dark house. He crossed the street and went into a corner store, bought some junk food and a couple of frozen dinners. Then he crossed the street again and let himself into the small house. One light came on, then another, as he walked from room to room.
No other car in the driveway, no other lights on. Peterson was alone in there.
Only problem now was that Peterson was inside his house. Angel would have to get the cop to invite him across the threshold to get inside. That could be tricky.
Or maybe not.
He decided a guy like Peterson, a big, powerful man who was probably used to frightening others, might be susceptible to fear himself. He vamped out, picked up a flagstone from Peterson’s front walkway and pitched it through the windshield of the truck. The windshield exploded with a loud crash.
A moment later, Peterson came outside with his service weapon in his meaty fist.
Angel had stepped to the side of the door. When Peterson barreled through it, Angel kicked out with one foot, catching Peterson at the knee.
The cop folded with a sharp grunt.
Angel followed up with a second kick into the downed officer’s solar plexus.
Peterson doubled over in pain.
Angel put his vampirish face in front of Peterson’s and waited for the cop to open his eyes. When he did, Angel could see the terror there. He didn’t mind. He had no respect for Peterson anymore, knowing what he did about the man. He didn’t care if Peterson knew he was a vampire. No one would listen to anything he had to say once his crimes were exposed. Angel didn’t like to show this side of himself to humans, but when it was the most efficient way to do things, as it had been with Preston, he didn’t hesitate.
“We need to talk,” Angel said. “Out here or inside, your choice.”
“Oh, God,” Peterson wheezed.
“Outside or inside,” Angel said again.
“What are you?”
Angel bared his fangs. “Outside or—”
“In,” Peterson grunted.
They went in.
“Rojelio Flores,” Angel said, standing in Peterson’s messy living room. “Tell me about him.”
“Killed a drug dealer.” Peterson crouched on a low, brown sofa. A few minutes had passed while he caught his breath, and he was almost able to sit upright now.
He was shaking as hard as a junkie in withdrawal. He looked as if he was about to scream. But he didn’t ask Angel about his face again.
“The truth,” Angel said. “Unless you want to play punching bag again.”
Peterson looked at him with a plaintive expression. “What do you want?” he asked. “You want me to confess to something? Go to jail? You’re holding all the cards, man. I’ll tell you whatever you want to hear. But it’s coercion. It’ll never hold up.”
“I just want you to tell me the truth,” Angel repeated. “There’s no judge and jury in this room, just you and me.”
“Okay, truth. He killed a drug dealer. We arrested him.”
Angel left his seat facing the couch, headed for Peterson, balling his hands into fists as he went.
He did the vamp thing again.
Peterson burst into tears. “What! What are you? Oh, God!”
“Won’t save you, pal,” Angel said. “I bite you, you’re dead.”
“Don’t. Don’t, okay?” The man was sobbing. Angel felt no pity for him. None whatsover.
“Your choice.”
He lowered his fangs toward Peterson’s neck. He could smell the blood, feel the heartbeat. He couldn’t deny his intoxication.
Cowering, Peterson held up his hands to ward Angel off. Angel pressed his advantage, giving him no space.
“Okay, okay!” Peterson shouted. “Manley popped this guy, Nokivov. Okay? He was a scumbag, you know, Russian Mafiya, dealing. A stone killer. Manley did the world a favor by taking him out.”
He looked at Angel with tears streaming down his face. “Okay? Only, don’t kill me, man! Don’t freakin’ kill me!”
He flared into hysterics. Angel sat down and waited for a while; when it didn’t look as though Peterson was going to calm down for a while, he rummaged around until he found a half-empty bottle of Ronrico. He unscrewed the cap and handed it to the cop.
Peterson took a huge swig and wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. He took another swig and cradled the bottle against his chest.
“My A.A. sponsor’s not going to be happy about this,” he said sarcastically.
“Doug Manley,” Angel prompted.
“Yeah, that’s right.” False bravado seized Peterson. Angel figured it was the booze. “Manley and this guy, Nokivov, they got into it. Manley had caught him dealing, and wanted some of the guy’s action. Happens all the time.”
“Easier than actually arresting him?”
“Hey, don’t judge unless you’re out there on the streets every day,” Peterson flung at him.
“I’m out there,” Angel replied quietly. “Go on.”
“But the guy argued. Pulled a piece. Manley popped him.”
“And didn’t just call it a justifiable shoot?” Angel asked.
“Couple of problems with that,” Peterson explained. He took another drink. “What was he doing inside the guy’s place with no warrant, and no probable cause? And he shot him with a throw-down. I.A.D. did a ballistics check, they’d know it wasn’t Manley’s service piece fired the bullet. So how is Manley going to explain having a throw-down?”
“Could have said it was Nokivov’s.”
“Could have. But we were nervous, a little panicked. No one was supposed to get shot. Four of us inside this guy’s apartment, not knowing who saw us go in or who would see us coming out, after shots were fired.”
His face turned red. “Fischer looks out the window, sees this guy Flores tying his shoe outside the building, and bang! T
here’s our fall guy.”
Anger flashed in Angel, so strong and so deep he almost vamped out involuntarily. He thought of Carlos Flores and his mother, terrified for Rojelio. He thought of Rojelio, and the hell he was going through.
“Didn’t matter to you that Flores was innocent, has never broken a law more serious than jaywalking.”
“Everyone’s got something in their past,” Peterson argued. “No one’s pure. Maybe he never killed anybody, but that doesn’t make him Snow White.”
“That’s wishful,” Angel said. “Except cops are supposed to believe in due process, I thought. You’re out there to uphold the law, not write your own.”
“So what are you going to do?” Peterson asked him. “You can’t touch me.” He raised his chin. He was pretty drunk by then. “Nothing I just said will stand up in court. We’ll all deny it. And if you even try anything, I’ll tell them about you. Being a . . . a . . . whatever you are.”
“Vampire,” Angel said. “And you think they’ll believe that?” He regarded the dirty cop with all the contempt and hatred he could muster. “You’re going down, Peterson. All four of you.”
Chapter 17
BUFFY WAS LOST IN THE IMPENETRABLE BLACKNESS. Elfredo was somewhere behind her, clutching a gun and a flashlight, both of which she figured were useless. He had changed his mind about coming out, but had agreed to wait at the door, not to venture into the darkness. Her greatest fear was that he would shoot at something in the dark, unable to see where she was, and the bullet would strike her.
But he refused to put it away.
So she struck out on her own, away from the house and the gun.
“Where are you?” she called. “What do you want?”
There was no answer. Even to Buffy, her voice sounded muffled. She had heard once that the roar of a lion, on a clear night, could be heard for up to eight miles. But on foggy nights, sound is dampened to the point that the roar will only carry for a mile or so. Lions know when that happens, and are quieter on those nights because their efforts have so little impact.
Buffy felt as though her voice was carrying only a couple of feet. After calling out a couple of times, she gave up, feeling a little silly for even trying.