Angel - Shakedown Part 20

Maybe I just won't die,he thought to himself.If I eat right, exercise regularly, stay away from the sun, I'm probably good for . . . well, ever.Somehow, that didn't cheer him up.

He kept walking and reading.Rest In Peace. Died Too Young. G.o.d Called Her Home.

Peace. Young. Her home. The words seemed to mock him.

Cordelia was right. I just can't seem to pa.s.s on the angst . . . And what do we have here-the graves of small children? Boy, this is better than Christmas . . .

He continued his patrol. If he wasreallylucky, he'd be attacked by some undead creature of the night.

Unfortunately, most unholy terrors seemed to have taken the evening off. Over the next few hours, Angel spotted nothing but a few coyotes outside the fence, who looked at him with knowing yellow eyes and then disappeared into the night.

His cell phone rang. "Doyle?"

"Yeah. Harry just went to bed."

"Pretty quiet out here."

"Well, it's not exactly Mardi Gras in here, either. Although it's turnin' out to be just as expensive."

Angel smiled. "Harry taught you a few things about gin, did he?"

"It was more in the nature of a refresher course, but the fees were definitely pro level. I convinced him t'take an IOU, which I'm hopin' he'll forget about once we save his life. Wearegonna save his life, right?"

"I guarantee it," Angel said grimly.

"Say, there's somethin' I don't quite get," Doyle said. "I can understand you keepin' the whole I'm-avampireand-a-good-guything quiet; I can evenunderstand why you might want to warn him about vamps without soundin' like a lunatic. But once it seemed obvious he knew what was goin' on, you didn't give him the straight goods on the Tremblors. Why not?"

"Doyle, you and I live in a certain kind of world. We deal with vampires, with demons, with poltergeists and witchcraft. Buffy even got attacked by a killer robot, once. But just because we take those things for granted doesn't mean other people do- even people who've been exposed to them."

He leaned against the wall of a mausoleum. "Most people think vampires are a myth. Once they find out they're not, they have to adjust their worldview. That's a big thing; it shakes up their whole belief system.

Some people can't handle it, while others adapt. Harry's obviously adapted.

"But as you and I know, there's more than vampires out there. Making the leap from vampires to werewolves isn't that hard; most people kind of lump them together anyway. But it still has an impact-an aftershock, if you like.

"Now add the existence of a race of demons. Another aftershock. Add a whole slew of demon races.

Each one has a c.u.mulative effect."

"I see what you're gettin' at. Sooner or later, somebody's whole view of reality collapses."

"Exactly. Now, I don't know how many shocksHarry's had, or what kind of philosophy he's structured to justify the existence of vampires-he might not even see them as supernatural beings. But I didn't know how far I could push it. If we deliver one shock too many, his belief structure might fall apart-and the most common way of dealing with that is denial. If that happened, he'd probably refuse to talk to us.

I couldn't take the chance."

"So you fed him something semi-plausible, and let his own beliefs fill in the details. And here I thought you were just bein' your usual mysterious self."

"Me? Mysterious? Never."

"Hey, I just thought of somethin'. If bein' exposed to all this world-shakin' information destroys your sense of what's what, then how come you and I aren't locked up in a rubber room somewhere?"

"You know, I ask myself that very question every day. . . ."

Emilio Maldonado used to have questions. He would ask them of G.o.d, the same ones every day, and G.o.d never answered. G.o.d, it seemed, did not wish to talk to him.

But that no longer mattered, because he had found someone who would.

Emilio Maldonado was a geologist, and he wasgood at his job. At least he had been, until The Event.

That was how he thought of it now: The Event. Like a seismic event, but in capital letters. The disaster that had torn apart his life like a cheap jigsaw puzzle and scattered the pieces far and wide.

He could still see the pieces, but they no longer fit together. And for the longest time, the most important piece of all had been missing.

But no more.

The small apartment he lived in was on the second floor of an old motel in the Plaza district. He was close to Olvera Street, and sometimes he walked there to buy a freshchurrodusted with sugar or listen to the mariachis play for the tourists; Hector had always loved both.

Most nights though, he stayed in.

Headlights shone through the window and winked off the hundreds of tequila bottles stacked against one wall. They were balanced one on top of another, from floor to ceiling, fixed in place with glue. All of them were empty, except for a shriveled, dead worm in the bottom. Emilio had emptied them all himself.

Other than the bottles, the room was small and undistinguished. There was little in it other than the faded couch Emilio sat on and a television he no longer bothered to watch. He had better things to do with his time. Indeed, he had much time tomake up for. That was why he kept the tequila bottles, though he no longer drank; as a reminder of how much time he had wasted.

The wall of bottles had originally been intended for a different purpose. He had finished the first bottle the night of The Event, drank it himself, and when he had got to the bottom the sight of the small, dead worm seemed the cruelest joke in the world. He couldn't bear to eat it, nor could he throw it away. He had placed the empty bottle on a shelf where he could see it every night, and every night he added another. Over time, it developed from an uncontrollable habit to a morbid fascination: how many bottles of tequila would it take to completely destroy a man? It was a question he became determined to answer.

He had lived in a much bigger house then, a much nicer house. Now that house was just another puzzle piece, no longer connected to the others: his wife, his possessions, his old job. All scattered. When he lost his house, the bottles were the only thing he took with him.

It didn't matter. The one piece of the puzzle that he cared about, the one he'd lost first, had come back to him. Now the bottles symbolized not destruction, but triumph; he had beaten them. He had beaten Death itself.

He cradled Hector's picture in both hands.Hector had died from a gunshot wound, an innocent bystander caught in a drive-by shooting. He had been ten years old.

The picture was an eight-by-ten in a cheap gilt frame. Hector posed in his soccer uniform, one foot on a ball, a park in the background. He was at least fourteen.

"Hector," Emilio whispered. He rubbed the frame and concentrated.

The photo came to life, as if it were a TV screen and not glossy paper. Hector smiled at him. "h.e.l.lo, Poppy," he said. "Good to see you."

"It's good to see you, too, son," Emilio said. "Tell me about your day. . . ."

"Morning," Harry said.

Doyle sat bolt upright on the couch. "I wasn't sleepin', swear t'G.o.d . . . oh, it's you, Harry. Sorry."

Doyle yawned and stretched. "What time is it?"

"About a half-hour before dawn. I like to get an early start on the day." Harry began to make coffee.

"Your partner still outside?"

"Yeah, he prefers to go it alone. I should check in with him, though." Doyle picked up his cell phone and punched in Angel's number.

"Doyle? Everything all right?"

"Peachy. Harry's up and rarin' t'go. Looks like our friends are a no-show."

"Nothing to report out here, either. I'm coming in."

"Gotcha." Doyle disconnected.

Harry offered them breakfast, which Angel turned down and Doyle accepted.

"I notice you keep looking at your watch," Harry observed as he poured Angel a cup of coffee. "Got an early appointment?"

"Yes," Angel said. "An extremely important one." He glared at Doyle, who was finishing his third slice of toast.

"What? I don't remember-oh, right. Thatsunriseappointment." He gobbled the last piece and got up.

"I guess we better be hittin' the road."

"Actually,I'llbe going," Angel said. "Doyle will stay with you, if that's all right."

"If he doesn't mind following an old man around all day."

"Are you sure?" Doyle said. "I don't mind-but so far, these cultists have only attacked at night."

Angel took a sip of his coffee. "I don't want to take any chances."

Doyle shrugged. "Fine by me, I guess."

"I checked the grounds out pretty thoroughly last night. I don't have to be at my appointment for another-" Angel checked his watch. "- twentytwo minutes, so I'll give you a quick rundown on possible problem areas."

"Sure thing." Doyle glanced over at Harry, who was just heading into the bathroom. When the door closed, Doyle leaned over and said to Angel, "Problem areas? I thought everything underneath our feet was a problem area when it comes to these guys."

"Just trying to be thorough," Angel said. "If the Tremblors are going to attack during the day, they'll probably pick a covered area to surface in, like a mausoleum. I just want you to be aware of which ones are most likely."

Harry came out of the bathroom. "Okay, I've got some graves to dig; hope you don't mind loud machinery."

"Lead the way," Doyle said.

The backhoe was stored in a shed behind the bungalow. Harry unlocked the door, but Angel stuck his head and looked around before letting him enter. Landscaping and gardening tools hung along the wall, while a riding mower and a beat-up orange backhoe took up most of the floor s.p.a.ce. The floor itself was concrete, and seemed undisturbed; Angel even checked under the vehicles to make sure they weren't concealing tunnel entrances.

"All clear," Angel said.

Harry climbed onto the backhoe and started it up with a roar. He backed out of the shed, turned the machine around, then began trundling down theroad at a sedate pace. Angel and Doyle followed him on foot, Angel pointing out various crypts to Doyle that he thought the Tremblors might use.

Harry turned the backhoe onto the grounds. He stopped in front of a rectangular plot outlined in white plastic tape stretched between four sticks.

He geared down, then motioned Doyle over. "You mind getting rid of those markers for me?"

"Sure."

Once the markers were gone Harry got right to work, biting into the ground with the bucket and depositing scoops of earth beside the hole. Within minutes he had a trench dug six feet deep.

"-And watch the bushes beside the north wall," Angel said.

Doyle sighed. "Yeah, yeah, I got it. Don't you think you should be toddlin' off? You're about thirty seconds away from being a crispy critter."

Angel glanced at his watch. "I've still got a minute or two. As long as I can make it to the car I'll be okay."

Chunk!

The backhoe whined and sputtered. "h.e.l.l!" Harry said. He put the motor in idle, then climbed down from the seat. "d.a.m.n thing's caught on something."

Before Doyle or Angel could stop him, he'd scrambled down into the hole itself.

"No!" Angel shouted, and jumped in after him.

"What do you think you're doing, boy?" Harry asked. He was crouched beside the bucket, which was jammed into the wall of the pit. Dirt crumbled around the edges of the ma.s.sive boulder it had failed to dislodge.

"Uh-" Angel said. "I was just making sure you . . . didn't hurt yourself."

"I told you before, I can take care of myself."

Behind Harry, two rocky claws reached out from the dirt wall.

Angel had no time to think. He grabbed Harry under each arm and tossed him skyward as hard as he could, out of the grave and into the first rays of the rising sun. From the cursing Angel heard, Harry landed on Doyle.

The Tremblor emerged fully from the wall of dirt, revealing the tunnel behind it. It was the one Angel had pickaxed in the head-either that, or he'd started a trend.

"Doesn't thathurt?" Angel asked.

Not as much as this will.

Two more rocky claws shot up from beneath Angel, and four more from behind him. They grabbed him by the ankles, the shoulders and the arms.

When Harry came flying out of the pit, Doyle didn't have time to get out of the way. He tried tomake the gravedigger's landing as soft as possible, but both of them went down in a heap with the breath knocked out of them.

Doyle didn't waste time trying to get untangled. He got an arm free, fished in the pocket of his coat and pulled out one of the items he and Angel had picked up on the way over. Then, of course, he had to get the d.a.m.n thing lit.

"Angel!" he called out. "Incoming!"

When the magnesium flare dropped into the hole, Angel knew he had a chance.

All three Tremblors immediately released their grip, instinctively covering their eyes and filling Angel's mind with a soundless shout of pain. Angel knew bright light couldn't actually damage them, but it could give him the opportunity to fight back.

The spikes that snapped out of his wrist gauntlets and into his hands weren't the usual wooden stakes.

They were specialized pieces of mountaineering equipment, diamond-tipped pitons with recoilless explosive charges to drive them into even the hardest rock. Angel had ordered them from a shop that specialized in extreme sports, and he'd had them customized even further.