Sanctuary Page 10

  There was a click, and the connection was broken. Angel sat looking at his own cell phone—grateful that Frank had been able to give him a cord for it—as if it were some foreign item that he’d just found in his hand. Without the voice on the other end to focus his rage at, he felt a sudden hollowness. He knew that, for all his threats, he was right where he’d been the moment they’d realized Fred was missing. No clues, no ideas, no real way to track her down. He had made solving the impossible into his business, but this case was looking even more impossible than usual, and with the stakes so high, the pressure was almost paralyzing.

  Except that he couldn’t let it be. He had to stay active, stay mobile, keep checking any leads he could turn up. Only action would fix this. And only action would keep his mind off the choice that would have to be made as morning drew near. He checked the street behind him. It was empty, so he pulled out, put the car into drive, and headed down the road.

  Headed for Wolfram & Hart.

  As he drove he punched out the number of the Hyperion Hotel on the phone. After a moment, Cordy answered. He cut off her greeting with a gruff, “Cordelia, listen.”

  “What is it?” she asked, concern evident in her voice.

  “Don’t ask questions, I can’t stay on the phone long. I need you to hack into the cell phone computer, find out what phone called mine just a few minutes ago. It’s the only call I’ve had all night, and it was a long one. Find out where the phone is and don’t call me back until you know, okay?”

  “Got it,” she said, now all efficiency.

  He hung up. If the kidnapper called back with Fred on the line, he didn’t want to miss the call. And he didn’t want them to get a busy signal and think he was calling for help, or the police. Not that he’d do that. He knew the police would have no interest in helping him—or the ability to, for that matter.

  Cordelia would be a little miffed at his brusqueness, but she’d understand and get over it, he knew. She understood that he counted on her, leaned on her probably more than anybody else. No one had worked with him as long, no one knew him better. Even a past love, like Buffy, didn’t really know him anymore. She knew the Angel he had been back in Sunnydale, years before. Years, and a lifetime. He didn’t think he had changed a lot in that time, but realized that he must have. He had come to Los Angeles without a real plan, just trying to get away from Sunnydale, away from a love that could never work. It wasn’t until he had arrived in town and met Doyle that he’d learned what the new direction of his life would be. And ever since then, he knew, it had continued to change, to evolve. Cordy had been there almost since the beginning. Then he had taken on Wesley, and Gunn, and finally Lorne and Fred had joined their little family. Even though Wesley was nominally the leader of Angel Investigations now, Angel knew that he was still the guiding force, and the one ultimately responsible for them all.

  And that included Fred. I have to find her, he thought.

  His phone chirped again, and he answered it right away. “Yeah.”

  The voice was different this time, but similar in a way, with the same kind of timbre and a menacing quality Angel didn’t like. “Someone wants to talk to you. Hold on.”

  There was the sound of another phone ringing, as if the first caller was conferencing in another phone, and then, a moment later, Angel heard Fred’s voice. She sounded scared, but trying to hold herself together. “A-Angel?”

  “Fred, it’s me. Are you okay? Have they hurt you?”

  “I’m fine,” she said. “I hurt my arm a little, but I’m okay.”

  “Who has you? Where are you?”

  “Angel, I—”

  “That’s enough,” the voice said, cutting Fred off. “And Angel, I want you to understand how serious I am.”

  “I get that,” Angel started to say. But a loud, shrill scream interrupted him. Fred’s voice. “What did you do?” Angel demanded. “If you hurt her—”

  “It’s just a little cut,” the voice replied calmly. “Tiny. But I’ll keep doing it, cutting her, now and again, until morning. Just so you understand that you’d better be at that park or she’ll hurt a lot and then she’ll die. Got it? She’s okay now, just cut a little. She can stay that way, or she can be very much not okay. Your call, vampire.”

  My responsibility, Angel thought again.

  There was really no choice at all.

  “I’ll be there.”

  Chapter Eleven

  “Yeah, kiddies, your help is greatly appreciated,” Lorne said, shoving the chair he had just vacated back under the table after another useless interview. The pair of Snoalmish demons had seen nothing, heard nothing, smelled nothing, and reading them had been every bit as helpful. They weren’t sure who Fred was, and only knew Angel because they’d been present once when he’d dusted four vampires on the street in front of the Boyle Heights apartment they rented. They had been impressed with his prowess, on that occasion, and claimed they’d help if they were able, they just didn’t know anything.

  Well, I can believe that, Lorne thought, frustrated. He wasn’t entirely sure they even knew their own names.

  I’m just not getting anywhere, he thought. Maybe a Polgara is involved, but maybe not. Maybe there’s a smell of cinnamon, but wait—that just could be from somebody’s cappuccino. Maybe Roshon demons are responsible, but of course we hate Roshons and would blame them for global warming if we could get away with it.

  Lorne loved his customers, he loved music, and he appreciated that here on Earth, as opposed to Pylea, he could make a living by bringing the two together. There’s no better way to earn a buck, he believed. But tonight, he thought he could throttle the whole lot of them. Sure, they were being kept against their will, but they didn’t have to stay—if they really wanted to leave, there was no way he could stop them. They had stayed because he’d asked them to, and then they’d been argumentative, indecisive, uncertain, and uncommunicative.

  There were still interviews to be conducted, but he no longer held out much hope that they’d be any more useful than the previous ones. He was trying to pick which table to approach next when Luis, his tuxedo shirt and bow tie–clad bartender, approached him. “Boss, you got a phone call,” Luis said. He held out the cordless toward Lorne.

  “Who is it?”

  “I don’t know, but she said it’s important. Sounds kind of upset,” Luis opined.

  Worried about what that might mean, Lorne took the phone and went to a corner of the club where he could have a modicum of privacy. “This is Lorne,” he said into it.

  “Lorne, it’s Cordelia.” She sounded terrible, frantic.

  “What’s up, Princess? Take a deep breath before you answer. Maybe two of them.”

  She didn’t listen to him. Like anybody does, he thought. “It’s Angel. He just called me. Again. I mean, he called me before and now he called me back.”

  “Well, he is kinda sweet on you, you know,” Lorne offered.

  “He talked to them. The ones who have Fred.”

  Now Lorne understood the frantic part. “Tell me what he said, Sugar. Everything.”

  “He said…” Her breath caught. Lorne thought she sounded like she’d been crying, and maybe still was. “He said they offered him a deal. They’ll let Fred go if he shows up in the middle of Pershing Square, at sunrise.”

  “Let me guess. There isn’t a big umbrella or a gazebo or anything in the middle of Pershing Square.”

  “No such luck,” she said. “Just open space. He’ll be fried.”

  “But he told them to forget it, right?” Lorne asked. “I mean, he can’t do that.”

  This time he distinctly heard a sob before she answered. “He told them okay. I mean, he still wants to track them down before morning. But he agreed to the deal.”

  “Well, sure,” Lorne guessed. “To keep them off guard, right? But he doesn’t really intend to go through with it.”

  “I asked him to tell me that,” Cordelia said between sobs. “He…he wouldn’t. Or couldn’t. Oh,
Lorne—”

  “Calm down, cupcake,” he said as soothingly as he could manage. “This is Angel we’re talking about. There’s not a rabbit he hasn’t pulled out of his hat at one time or another. Maybe they were listening to him or something. I’m sure he’s got a plan in mind. He’s not the type to just hand over the world to the forces of darkness, even to save Fred.”

  “I’m not sure he sees it that way,” Cordelia argued. “I think he just sees it as saving Fred. He’d sacrifice himself for her—for any of us, I think. But he might not think of it as sacrificing the rest of the world, too.”

  “Darlin’, he’s saved the world more times than I’ve made my bed. And I’m a pretty neat housekeeper, considering the hours I work. He’s got to see the big picture.”

  “Only, Angel’s not so much the big picture kind of guy, I think. He’s more the ‘oh no, Fred’s in trouble, got to save her’ kind of guy.”

  “We’ll just have to make sure he understands,” Lorne said. “I’ll call him.”

  “He said not to,” Cordy countered. She was sounding a little calmer, and had at least stopped openly weeping. “He wants to keep the line clear. He said unless we had real information for him, to not call.”

  “Then I guess we’d better find some, right? Have you got anything yet?”

  “Not much,” she admitted. “Not enough. And Wesley and Gunn are drawing blanks too. I was hoping you’d found out more since the last time I talked to you.”

  “I wish I could say I was doing any better, but I’d be a big fat liar if I did. There are still some folks I haven’t questioned yet, though.”

  “Well, get busy,” she urged him. “What are you doing talking to me?”

  You called me, he thought. But he didn’t say it, didn’t want to set her off again. “I’m on my way,” he said. “Stay in touch, and let me know if you hear from him again. As soon as I have anything promising I’ll let you know.”

  “That’s good. Thanks, Lorne. You’re a good friend.”

  “You too, gorgeous,” he told her. “Talk to you soon.” He broke the connection and carried the phone back to Luis at the bar. “Keep this line open,” he instructed. “No calls in or out unless they’re for me.”

  “You got it, boss.”

  “And this free-drink thing has gone on long enough. Start watering a little.”

  Luis nodded, crisp efficiency in action. As Lorne turned away from him, he felt his knees wobble as a wave of anxiety washed over him. Apparently, frantic is catching, he thought.

  “So you’re a Brachen demon?” Lorne asked. Misty, the woman he sat across from, looked purely human—and quite an attractive human, at that, he’d decided. She had apparently dressed to make a statement. Her minidress was fire engine red silk that clung in places where Lorne couldn’t blame it for clinging, and gapped in others, where the physics of curvature and suspension demanded. Her dark hair was pulled up in back and held into place with two wooden rods that looked like chop-sticks. Her eyes were wide and dark and regarded him with what seemed like frank curiosity and maybe some amusement. She was not shy and she was not timid, he gathered.

  “Half,” she said. “And half human. On my mom’s side. See?” She let her demonic self come to the fore, soft blue spikes emerging from her skin until she looked like something a giant might use to brush the dog. After he nodded, she retracted them. “But I can pass,” Misty said. “And I usually do. I have a regular job, working with humans, in a bank. I’ve dated humans, although not exclusively. I live in a condo complex in Santa Monica. Nobody knows.”

  “A lot of mixed-blood Brachens blend in, right?” he asked. He knew the answer, but wanted to keep her talking.

  “Sure, I think most of us do, to some extent. Maybe not to the degree that I do, but for sure, lots of us. I don’t know about everyone, but for me, sometimes I start to feel like I’m losing touch with that part of myself. I mean, it’s easier to get along in life if people think I’m like them. But I don’t ever want to lose who I really am, what my heritage is, you know? So sometimes I come here, or some other function where I know there’ll be plenty of other demons.” She glanced down at herself, as if she’d forgotten how she dressed. “And, you know,” she added, “maybe I hook up with somebody, now and again. Nothing wrong with that, right?”

  “It makes the world go ’round, honey,” Lorne said appreciatively. He remembered the other Brachen in the club tonight. “You saw Stark sing earlier, right? The golden throat.”

  She nodded. “I know him, a little,” she said. “He’s nice, but a little dull.”

  “Believe me, I know the type,” Lorne said. “But you have an advantage too. You’re one of the demon breeds that can mate with humans—makes the chances of getting a date that much better,” Lorne continued. “Did you know a half Brachen named Francis Doyle?”

  She smiled, a languid, leisurely smile that took its time spreading across her face but finally landed in her eyes with a mischievous gleam. “Not in the hooking up sense, but I had seen him around, I guess. I knew who he was, even before…well, you know.”

  “Before he died?”

  “Before he sacrificed himself. I mean, that was just about the bravest thing I’ve ever heard of. He’s a hero to me, he really is. I think to all of us. You know, if he hadn’t done what he did, anything with human blood within the range of the Beacon would have been killed. Humans, and even demons with as little as an eighth or less of human blood in them. But Doyle stopped it. I can tell you one thing, if I ever had the chance to meet him, you know, in that way…I’d have jumped at it.”

  “From everything I’ve heard about him, I’m sure he’d have appreciated the opportunity,” Lorne told her.

  Misty smiled her slow grin again. When she does that, it makes her look like someone with a secret, Lorne thought. A good, juicy one, which is always the best kind. I think I like this woman. “I like to think I’d have made it worth his while,” she said.

  Lorne shook his head slightly, not wanting to get distracted from his mission by thoughts of how she could do that. “You know what I’m asking people about tonight, right?”

  “About Angel’s little friend, and what happened to her outside.”

  “That’s right. Did you see anything?”

  Her smile vanished, and she was all business now. “I sure did. I saw her get shoved into a dimensional portal.”

  “You did?” Lorne couldn’t contain his surprise. “Are you kidding me?”

  “Of course not. She was standing right there, not ten feet from me. We were outside, watching that fire across the street. Then someone said something about a car coming, and somebody said there were guns, and then the noise and the bullets and everything. I was so scared, I don’t mind telling you. It’s like, I know trouble kind of follows Angel around, and whenever I see him at someplace like Caritas, I worry a little. But not inside Caritas, because, you know, nothing’s ever going to happen in there.”

  “Not if I have anything to say about it,” Lorne said with a degree of pride.

  “Well, you’ve done a great job with the place. I mean, I have always felt so safe in here.”

  “That’s the idea,” he said. “But you were saying what you saw outside.”

  “Right, I’m sorry.” Misty swept at a lock of hair that had come loose and tickled her cheek. “So when the guns started going off, I hit the deck, you know? Because that’s what everybody else was doing, pretty much, and it seemed like the best plan at the time. But as I was down there on the sidewalk, I looked up to see if it was safe yet, and I just saw the edge of the portal, kind of shimmering, right? And I saw Fred disappearing into the portal, and an arm around her, an arm with a red robe on it, it looked like. But I can’t be sure about that. It seems like there was red, anyway. But then the portal just kind of blinked away, like a TV set’s picture used to when you turned the power off and it faded down to that little dot and then the dot blinked out.”

  “So you didn’t see anyone left on this si
de who had maybe pushed her in? Just the arm on the other side that was keeping her from getting away.”

  “That’s right.”

  He could barely believe what he was hearing. “And why didn’t you say anything about this before?”

  “Well, I came back in when you said to. And then you and Angel were still outside, and then you came back in and said you would be talking to everyone, and not to plan on leaving until you did. So I thought I should just wait my turn. I mean, probably lots of folks saw more than I did.”

  “You’d be astonished,” Lorne said dryly.

  “I mean,” she continued, “I hardly saw anything, did I? But the portal was right there, and everybody was outside by then. It seems like someone must have grabbed her and shoved her in. Or grabbed her and jumped in with her.”

  “That’s what it seems like,” he agreed. “But so far, you’re the first one I’ve talked to who even saw a portal. Or even so much as a port. Or an al.”

  She laughed and shook her head. That wayward lock bounced off her exceptionally lovely cheek-bone again. “I guess everyone was a little too concerned about their own necks,” she said. “I mean, I was too. But Doyle trusted Angel, right? So if there was ever anything I could do to help Angel, I would.”

  Lorne thought maybe he could follow that logic if he didn’t think about it too hard. “Was there anything else you saw? Maybe inside the club, beforehand? Anybody hanging around Fred that you saw? Or after, anybody acting strangely? Anything suspicious?”

  “Let me think about it a minute,” she replied. She took the end of the stray lock of hair into her mouth and sucked on it as she considered. “No, I guess I didn’t see anything else,” she said finally. “I might have smelled something.”

  Might have, Lorne thought with disappointment. Again with the maybes and the possibles. I need some certainties, and I need ’em fast. “What do you think you smelled?” he inquired.