Close to the Ground Read online

  “It’s right nice, isn’t it?” Currie said. He was English, not Irish, but loyal and resourceful, so Mordractus kept him around. Anyway, his unruly hair was red enough, and his cheeks rosy enough that he could almost pass for Irish. Mordractus had a general distrust of the English, and it was more common for him to kill them than hire them, if they happened to cross his path.

  They won’t be a problem for much longer, though, he thought. No one will. Forget about giving Ireland back to the Irish . . . they can just give it to me.

  But time enough for that later. For today he was just enjoying the sunshine and the beautiful girls on the streets, actresses or would-bes, he assumed. Everyone was well dressed, everyone seemed to be wealthy and footloose.

  Ireland had never been like this, in his memory. Certainly not during the years that he had spent time in the company of humans, before retreating to the privacy of his island sanctuary to commune with more powerful beings.

  A pair of shoes in a shop window caught his attention. They glowed with the sheen of fine leather, and looked as if they’d be supremely comfortable.

  “In here a moment,” Mordractus said to Currie. “I’ve a mind to try those shoes on.”

  “Right,” Currie agreed.

  They stepped into the shade of the shop. It was cool inside, air-conditioned, as Mordractus had learned most of Los Angeles seemed to be. The shop was empty except for a single salesclerk behind a broad counter, talking on a cordless telephone. Mordractus spent a few moments looking at the shoes on display, all very pricey and seemingly of high quality, and located a pair of the ones that caught his eye in the window. He picked them up and waved them at the clerk.

  “Excuse me,” Mordractus said, when the clerk gave no indication that he was finishing his call.

  The clerk — a young man, barely out of his teens, in a snug suit with very narrow legs and a four-button jacket, looked at Mordractus through yellow-tinted glasses. He gestured toward the telephone.

  “I can see that you’re on the phone, young man,” Mordractus said. “However, I’m right here in your shop, with cash in my pocket, and I’d like to try these shoes in my size.”

  The clerk gave a loud sigh. “Customer,” he said into the phone. “So anyway, on Saturday night Gus said he never wanted to see her again, and by Sunday he was knocking at her door, you know, carrying flowers and candy and going on and on. . . .”

  “Excuse me,” Mordractus said again.

  This time the clerk turned away from him, showing his back. “. . . and she opened the door, can you believe it, and welcomed him in with open arms. But then Sunday night . . .”

  Mordractus put the shoes back down.

  “Let’s go,” he said.

  As Currie opened the door, Mordractus heard the clerk call from the counter, “Have a nice day.”

  “And you, as well,” Mordractus said quietly. “It’ll be your last.”

  He stopped on the sidewalk outside the store. The late summer sun was hot after the chill inside, but he didn’t feel it. He closed his eyes, and concentrated for a moment. He muttered something unintelligible, even to Currie, who stood right beside him. As he spoke, he traced a pattern in the air with the index finger of his right hand.

  A moment later he was finished.

  Beads of sweat had appeared on his brow, and he wiped them away with a quivering hand. That had taken a lot out of him — more than he anticipated. Growing weaker, then, he thought. Must get this business wrapped up soon.

  Inside the shop the clerk droned on into the phone, barely aware of a headache that was just beginning to expand behind his eyes.

  By closing time it would blossom into a migraine.

  By midnight he’d be dead.

  Walking slowly back to the car, leaning on Currie’s arm for support, Mordractus chuckled to himself.

  Maybe he’d come back tomorrow and see if the new clerk would be willing to find his size.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Late that night Mordractus saw Angel for himself.

  His minions had staked out the vampire’s place of business. Angel Investigations. Mordractus stifled a chuckle. If this is indeed the Angelus of old, he thought, his clients had better count their rings after shaking hands on a deal.

  Mordractus sat in the back of a rented van with tinted windows. Hitch and Currie had taken it to a construction site and thrown dirt at it to make it dingy-looking enough that it would not stand out in Angel’s neighborhood. Now it was parked down the street from the doorway that Angel and his friends had been seen using on occasion.

  There was also a back door, accessed from the carport area where the vampire parked his black convertible. But there must have been another entrance as well, Hitch had explained, because sometimes he seemed to come and go without using the front door. Try as they might, they had not been able to find any other way in.

  It was well past dark now. Mordractus had been driven back to the house in the Hollywood Hills, where he’d taken a long, hard nap for several hours. Angel wouldn’t come out in the daylight, Hitch had assured him. Of course, Mordractus knew that anyway. Suicide, for a vampire to come out during the day. Especially someplace like Los Angeles. Back home one could get away with it for short periods because the fog often blocked enough of the sun’s rays. If there was ever fog in Southern California, though, Mordractus had yet to see it.

  They’d been waiting outside the office for five hours. It was somewhere past two in the morning. Mordractus was stiff from sitting in the van. What good is a vampire who won’t go outside? he wondered. Doesn’t he have to feed?

  “He’s never coming out,” Hitch said, as if reading Mordractus’s mind. Which was impossible, of course — Mordractus made a point of not hiring people with such talents.

  “Then we’ll draw him out,” Mordractus said after some deliberation. For the second time that day he shut his eyes and began to mutter an almost silent incantation, describing patterns in the air with his hands.

  After a moment of this he opened his eyes again and peered at a window facing into Angel’s office. A vague shape appeared nearby, like a puff of greenish smoke. It drifted toward the window. When it reached the window, there was a soft tapping noise that Mordractus could barely hear from inside the van. When they were over, the puff vanished.

  Mordractus sat back in his seat, exhausted from the effort.

  And after a moment a blind over the window pulled back and a face appeared inside. Someone stood looking out, a man with black hair. He looked up and down the street, as if trying to find whoever had knocked. He said something Mordractus couldn’t hear.

  But it was not Angel.

  The man started to walk away, and then the blinds fluttered again and another man came into view. A taller man, lean and powerful-looking. This one opened the window, sticking his head out. He also looked both ways.

  “It is him,” Mordractus whispered. “Angelus. Awfully long way from the Auld Sod, aren’t ye, boy?”

  Angelus, he thought. Scourge of Europe. Here in the United States, after all these years, and with a soul.

  Amazing.

  Angel stood in the window. No one on the street. A few cars parked up and down the block, but nothing unusual. Doyle had answered the strange tapping on the window, but after glancing outside and seeing nothing, he’d given up, shaking his head.

  Then something struck Angel, and he sniffed the air.

  The faintest whiff of ozone hung there, like the aftermath of lightning.

  Or magic.

  He started to step farther out when he heard a bloodcurdling scream from inside.

  He spun, shoving the door closed behind him.

  Doyle was on the floor, hands clasped to the sides of his head. He writhed in pain.

  Cordelia watched, wide-eyed. She and Doyle had been playing Hearts, just a few minutes before. She’d been stalling about heading back to her apartment, and the “one more hand” thing had gone on for a couple of hours now.

  Anoth
er vision.

  “It’s about time,” Cordelia said.

  Doyle moaned. “A little sympathy please, Cord,” he said. “You have no idea. . . .”

  “So it hurts your pointy little head,” she said. “If there’s a paycheck at the end of it, I think it’s worth it, don’t you? Come to think of it, never mind — what you think doesn’t enter into it. You’re not exactly an impartial observer here.”

  “Give him a break, Cordy,” Angel said. He watched Doyle roll back and forth on the floor. “That looks like it really hurts.”

  Cordelia sighed. “I suppose.”

  With a final groan Doyle relaxed his death grip on his own head.

  “Ohhh,” he moaned. “A bad one, that was.” He pushed himself to his knees, and Angel helped him to his feet, steadied him.

  “What was it?” he asked.

  “Girl,” Doyle said. “Very pretty, but young.”

  “Oh, and you didn’t even have to leave home to stalk her,” Cordelia said. “Lucky you.”

  “Cordy,” Angel warned.

  She mimicked pulling a zipper across her lips.

  “She’s in trouble, Angel,” Doyle went on. “Couldn’t tell what, for sure.”

  “Did you get a name, a location?”

  “She’s at a club. There was loud music, dance music. It was horrible — everything was pink, and there’s something — sugar, like, on the walls. Even the light fixtures are shaped like big sugar cubes, frosted-like.”

  “Sugar Town,” Cordelia offered. “It’s the hottest after-hours club this month. So hot I’ve even been there. By next month it’ll be completely over — does this girl know what she’s doing, going to a place on the way out? No wonder she’s in trouble.”

  “Where is it?” Angel asked her.

  “Hollywood,” Cordelia replied. “One of those side streets, just off Sunset.”

  “I’ll find it,” Angel said. He poured Doyle a cup of water from the big cooler standing against the wall. “What about the girl, Doyle. What can you tell me?”

  “Like I said, young,” Doyle said, his face ashen. He took a sip of the water, then a gulp. “Thanks. She’s sixteen, maybe, or seventeen. Red hair, piled up on her head. A grown-up’s hairstyle and makeup, but a kid’s face underneath it all. She’s wearing green, I think, a dark forest green maybe. Clear skin, blue eyes. Beautiful girl.”

  “I’ll find her,” Angel said.

  One never knew about the traffic in Los Angeles, day or night, but fortunately it was pretty light and Angel made it to Hollywood in about twenty minutes. There were lots of cars on Sunset, of course — there always were. And parking was tight. But he found Sugar Town, on a side street a couple of blocks off Sunset, up the hill. He tucked his car into an alley, illegally. He ran inside the door, threw a bill at the bouncer.

  Doyle had been right. The place was hideous. It looked like something that had been decorated in the 1960s by the person who designed Barbie’s Dream House. Angel had never seen so many shades of pink, especially all in the same place. The only relief from the pink — and “relief” was used in the loosest possible sense — were the various oranges and light purples that covered some of the Naugahyde seating areas. Fortunately, the lights weren’t bright — if they had been, he wasn’t sure he’d have been able to take it.

  But they were, as Doyle had described, shaped like sugar cubes. Angel shook his head, but the image didn’t go away.

  Amazingly, it was crowded, even after two-thirty. Cordy had been right about that — the place seemed to be enjoying some heat. People were dancing on a packed dance floor, and others sat at tables sipping drinks as colorful as the decor — nonalcoholic, this time of night. Alcohol couldn’t be served after two. Many of the glasses were decorated with umbrellas. The crowd was mostly young trendoids, wearing dark clothing that contrasted with the bright interior. Lots of goatees, lots of shaved heads, lots of thick-framed glasses. Angel didn’t see anyone who fit Doyle’s description — but then here, just inside the door, there were lots of people he couldn’t see. Taking the mental equivalent of a deep breath, he pushed his way deeper into the club.

  The thrumming techno music pounded him and the colors and lights assaulted his eyes. But through it all, he moved, looking at every face, especially if he caught a glimpse of red hair. He bumped into someone with practically every step, and said “excuse me” more times than probably in the last four months combined. He circumnavigated the whole club, twice.

  She just isn’t here, he thought. Doyle missed something. Or she was here, and I missed her.

  He turned to look for the door.

  And saw her.

  As Doyle had said, she had a thick mass of orange hair worn up on her head, and a tight dress of a shimmering, rich dark green fabric. She was on her way out the front door. Two men were gripping her arms, hard enough to hurt, to make sure she went.

  “Hey!” Angel said. He started to run for the door. But there were too many people — he had to thread his way through them, the “excuse me” bit forgotten now. He spilled someone’s drink and was called an obscene name.

  He didn’t look back. The girl was outside now, completely out of sight. If there’s a car waiting out there, Angel thought, she’s gone.

  And I will have been useless.

  While the club had seemed crowded before, now it seemed positively jammed — with every step, there was someone in Angel’s path.

  If he’d arrived and not been able to find her, he might have been able to tell himself that they’d misinterpreted Doyle’s vision somehow, that there wasn’t really a girl needing help here tonight. The fact that she was really in the club — not to mention being strong-armed toward the door by two bodybuilder types twice her size — meant that Doyle’s vision, as usual, had been accurate.

  He had to find her.

  Finally he made it through the crowd and shoved his way through the door. The street seemed oddly silent after the raucous din inside. Nothing moved, except the almost silent lights of cars whishing by on Sunset, two blocks away.

  Angel was still. Instead of rushing in the wrong direction, he centered himself, listening.

  Then he heard it. Voices. He couldn’t see the source, and they weren’t on the street. So they must have been around the corner between here and Sunset, or in an alley, or in the parking lot across the street on the corner of the next block. There was a big illuminated sign that said U-PARK $5.00 in front of it, but otherwise the lot was dark.

  “. . . don’t care if you like us or not, we have a job to do, and it don’t help when you give us the slip like that,” a man’s voice was saying.

  “We don’t like you all that much, either, you want to know the truth,” a second voice said. Also male.

  “I don’t care,” a third voice responded. This one was younger, and female. Petulant. Has to be the redhead, Angel thought. Sounds like a scared kid.

  Angel headed toward the voices, at a sprint.

  “. . . time someone taught you a lesson . . .” the first voice was saying.

  He darted into the parking lot. It was full of cars, parked in numbered slots. A tall black Jeep Cherokee stood at the back, and there was motion on the other side that he could barely see through its tinted windows. He saw a blur, and heard the smack of a hand on flesh.

  “Hey!” the girl shouted. “My dad’s gonna —”

  “You’d have us fired anyway,” one of the men scoffed.

  Angel came around the front of the Jeep.

  “And you’d deserve to be.”

  Both men whirled at the sound of his voice. “Who —?”

  One of them had stopped in mid-swing, winding up to take another shot at the girl. She was leaning against the Cherokee, blood trickling from her mouth, her cheek already reddening from the blow. Probably just a slap, Angel figured. But still, these guys were in their late twenties, and strong. She was seventeen or eighteen, from the looks of her. As Doyle had intimated, she looked like a kid playing dress-up, with s
ophisticated clothes, hair, and makeup that couldn’t disguise the youthfulness of her face or the terror in her eyes.

  “What’s going on here?” Angel asked.

  “These guys are hitting me,” the girl said quickly. “They’re supposed to be guarding me, but instead they’re beating me up.”

  “One light slap,” the first guy insisted. He was dressed in a black silk long-sleeved shirt and blue jeans, with expensive running shoes on his feet. His head was shaved close. His partner looked about the same, but his shirt was Hawaiian and multicolored, and his hair was longer, straight, and surfer-blond.

  The second one raised his hands in Angel’s direction. “No problem here, dude. We’re in charge of the girl, we’re taking her home. We’re on the job here.”

  “Please don’t leave me with them,” the girl sobbed.

  “I don’t think so, dude,” Angel said.

  “Man,” the first guy protested, “you don’t know what we’re dealin’ with, here. Chick puts us through hell, tryin’ to keep up with her. She was in a place six blocks away, said she was going to the women’s room. We’re just lucky the bouncer saw her slippin’ out the door, told us.”

  “So you caught up with her, figured you’d just knock her around a little bit,” Angel said. “The fact that she’s just a kid and you’re professional muscle doesn’t enter into the equation?”

  “Fact is, dude, it just ain’t any of your business,” the surfer hissed. “You try to make it yours, you’ll regret it.”

  Angel knew what was coming. There was a moment that this could all have blown over, without violence. That moment had passed, though, and now there was only one way this could go. He saw it in the surfer’s eyes, which had narrowed to slits, and in his stance, coiled and tense. “You could very well be right,” Angel said. “I’ve done foolish things before. Guess I’m not finished doing them.”

  At least one of them hit a teenaged girl, he remembered. That’ll make it easier.

  He let the surfer make the first move. The guy closed fast, driving multiple short, sharp punches at Angel’s midsection. Angel took them, trying to get a sense of the surfer’s strength and skill.