Chapter 16
Thu held her legs up straight in the air and studied her toes. Then with a gusty sigh, she flopped over and upright and hauled herself to her feet. "I'm leaving, too," she announced. "It's Tacky Jewelry Night on QVC." She flourished her palm at Angel and Nina in a melodramatic "halt" gesture and added loftily, "Don't bother; I'll let myself out through the kitchen."
Alone in the room now, Nina took up their quarrel again. "I just want to watch, that's all. It's the only way I'll learn."
"You don't have to learn."
"But I WANT to learn!"
"Yeah, well, I want to get a tan line. That doesn't make it a good idea." Angel ran a hand through his hair in exasperation. "Look, we can talk about this again in the morning. Right now let's just go back to our motel room."
"We can't."
"Why not?" His voice rose high with irritation.
"Because our car is still in the Roadrunner parking lot."
Angel's mouth opened, and snapped shut. He stood motionless, staring at Nina. Then with an abrupt "AUUGH!" he turned and slapped the top of a low bookcase. The surface of the case split with a loud crack. The dancing Santa perched atop it began to swing its hips back and forth, and its built-in music box sprang to life. "JINGLE BELL, JINGLE BELL, JINGLE BELL ROCK..."
They gazed at the little figure, who looked fearlessly back at them as it continued to hula. After a moment, Nina put her hand to her mouth and laughed.
"Don't be angry, Angel," she coaxed, petting him on the face. His shoulders sagged the slightest bit, almost but not quite in defeat, and he shook his head slowly.
"I'm not angry. ...I'm afraid. I don't want anything to happen to you." He remembered the sight of her tied to the dining table of a ghoulish company of gourmands; how close she came to dying.
Nina rolled the stake in her hand up and down between her palms. "I know you don't. I don't want anything to happen to me, either, but it already has. So I want to be familiar with your world - our world. None of us are what we are by choice." She reached over and turned the dancing Santa off. "How about a compromise. When I can morph by myself - ALL by myself; without anyone's help and staying in control the whole time - then you'll teach me how to hunt demons."
Angel nodded quietly. "Okay."
"You can have a tan line, you know." She was grinning at him now. "Those salons with the UV booths and the little black goggles. Or we can buy you a bottle of instant bronzer." Her hand slid down and began to explore potential line marks. "Which would you prefer, spray-on or lotion?"
Stealth had no place in Illyria's method of patrolling. She strode rapidly and imperiously, her boots stamping the ground and her head held high and aloof. Burrowed into his coat and puffing frosty breaths of air, Oz was hard-pressed to keep up with her.
When a fledgling vampire sauntered out of the cemetery gates, the Old One grabbed it by the lapels and flung it into the boughs of an evergreen tree with unrestrained pleasure, impaling it on the larger branches. It had been a boy, not much older than Jordy, and despite its fangs the look of shock on its face as it dusted made Oz wince. Illyria stepped onto the asphalt pathway and surveyed the boneyard, cocking her head from side to side. The place was silent now, perhaps settling back into sleep. A soft wind lifted the blue-brown tendrils of her hair, then laid them down again. She seemed not to feel the cold.
"We separate here," she decided. "Look for damaged graves and broken mausoleum doors."
"...Got it."
Oz knelt and gently straightened a faded wreath whose stand had sunk partway into the ground. Thin, dirty cellophane ribbon hung from its surface in tatters. When it was level and upright again, he rose and walked down the path into the field of tombstones. Illyria watched him with a puzzled expression.
Twenty minutes passed, then three-quarters of an hour. Other than the one erupted grave, a hole churned up the middle of its mound as though a boy-sized gopher had tunneled through, nothing in the cemetery appeared to be amiss. Oz lowered his crossbow. Ahead of him he spotted Illyria, squatting in the grass and obscured by shadows, motionless. His brow knit in confusion. Do Old Ones pee?
"Illyria?"
"The colony's slumber is disturbed."
Illyria's eyes were fixed on a patch of earth between her knees. Oz squinted at the dead grass and soil, but in the darkness could make out nothing. He gathered his concentration and morphed slightly, and picked up a faint smell of insects. "You mean ants?"
"Beings pass through their realm; creatures not of their kind. Those who can, rouse themselves enough to do battle, to defend the queen. But they find nothing solid to attack. This distresses them, and they cannot rest properly. They worry that when the earth is warm again, they will not have strength enough to fulfill their function."
Oz studied the ground solemnly. "Do the termites know about this?"
With one abrupt movement Illyria stood up. "The hellmouth is stirring. Were I of its ilk, I would take an interest." She marched away without a backward glance.
The hellmouth? "Whoa, wait," Oz called after her. "Stirring? Stirring how?"
"Wraiths. They want a lord to rival Anubis the jackal, one of the most powerful gods of the dead. They believe that this would make their own kingdom great in the eyes of their fellows." Her tone made it plain that Illyria was bored by the topic.
Wraiths...wraiths...restless ghosts, if I remember correctly. Oz caught up and fell in step behind her. He chose his words carefully. "I'm guessing they couldn't even hope to be as cool as Old Ones in the social order, right?"
"They are mere afterthoughts of human life, as witless as monkeys, drawn to hellmouths by lust and vanity. Even the other spirits ignore them." Illyria's own vanity was stroked by Oz's compliment, and she grew more affable. "I would find it highly amusing if they were to call up an underworld hound such as Garm or Cerberus, only to have it turn on them and devour them all."
"Yeah, that would rock, I guess. ...Well, they obviously can't touch you, 'cause you've got the whole god thing going on, but are they something that the rest of us should worry about?"
"No more than you should worry about the sea's spray, or the mist that assails your nostrils when you drink from a newly-poured glass of Mr. Pibb."
"Okay," Oz agreed, "Guess we'll let it lie, then."
It was hard to reconcile in his mind this arrogant, violent, self-centered woman - if indeed she was female - with the sweet-natured and joyous person called Fred. They were as different as night and day, even down to the way in which they carried the body they shared: the human girl all gamin limbs and coltish fidgets; the demon as rigid as if she'd been strapped to a board.
Life was weird.
Maybe I'll have that put on a T-shirt.
The shadow people danced on the walls.
Some of them had been magicians in life - true magicians, not mere illusionists who plied their tricks for pittance at Las Vegas theaters and county fairs - and these, the former dark witches and renegade alchemists, had pooled what was left of their knowledge and made a spell. The spell had settled on Jeep (whether by luck or choice the wraiths could no longer remember) and had saved him from the slow silver poisoning with its hateful paralysis, and brought him here.
"Here" was now a cleft in the cave wall. It opened onto a flat slab of rock, washed with sunlight, overlooking a brook and a wide green meadow. Within the meadow, game grazed: elk and rabbit and fat, elusive partridges. She-wolves high in their heat whined enticement from other cliffs nearby, the breeze ruffled and cooled his fur, and the brookwater sparkled in the sun.
Were Jeep to look a bit more sharply into this idyllic landscape, he might have noticed the red glow that winked here and there in the grass at the edges of the meadow, a glow that looked suspiciously like hot flowing lava peeking up through cracks in the ground, and he would have spotted thin wisps of steam rising from the anthills.
"Is it good?" the shadows whispered. "Is it as we promised?"
Jeep grinned a dog's grin, the corners of his mouth drawing up and his tongue lolling out. "That creek don't have no beer in it, does it?" he complained. "Y'all gonna show me how to do the shadder thang now?"
"Eat first. Ohhh, eat." The shadows moved over the floor in black pools.
Jeep leapt to his feet. He cleared the stone slab in one bound and went racing across the meadow, flushing out prey in all directions. Against an outcropping of rocks he cornered a large rabbit, plump and juicy. But on closer inspection of it he hesitated, then decided to go after a partridge instead; the rabbits he was accustomed to eating did not have heads whose surfaces were completely covered by eyes.
As they turned the corner onto Michael's block, Illyria suddenly spoke again. "I will NOT apologize."
Before Oz could ask what the apology was for, he heard Fred's voice coming out of the same mouth, answering back. "I know they get on your nerves, but you shouldn't have just yelled at them like that-"
"They would not stop, otherwise. Unless I were to strike them-"
"NO! No striking! And no smothering, and no taping people's mouths shut! God, I wish I'd never shown you what duct tape was-"
Spike hurried up to them out of the night, a crease of worry between his eyes. He scowled at Now-Illyria. "Wish you'd give some notice when you're about to pop out, 'Lyri. Found her clothes all over the floor an' it scared the living hell out of me."
"Angel and his concubine would not be silent. I left in order not to kill them."
"Well, why didn't you just go to wherever it is that you go when you're not here?"
"I was bored there."
"Oh. Well, bad luck, then, 'cause I want Fred back now." Spike took Illyria by her upper arm and tried to guide her into the house, but the Old One quickly pulled away.
"I am not ready to leave yet." Illyria suddenly displayed the same twisted little smile she'd worn when she slew the young vampire. It seemed to push a button in Spike.
"Stop fooling around, Blue. Bring her back," he snapped.
"You are aroused by my appearance in leather clothing. Both of you."
Oz raised his eyebrows at Spike in mild surprise, then shrugged his shoulders at Illyria. "Sorry. It's a guy thing."
"She's just playin' one of her little cat 'n mouse games. 'How Long Does It Take To Piss Off The Vampire.' Trollop." Spike turned on his heel and stalked into the house, his black duster whirling around his legs dramatically. Illyria beamed after him, clearly pleased.
In the middle of the night Elsie D woke again from a fitful sleep in her assigned guest bedroom, and finally gave up. The churning began in her abdomen, hot and uncomfortable, signalling the start of what Rita had always referred to as "gas on the stomach." Elsie hurriedly peeled a Rolaids from the tube on the bedside table and crunched it between her teeth.
When the tablet was consumed, she made her way down the stairs to the kitchen, moving slowly. She groped for the switch to the narrow undercupboard light, turned it, and filled that corner of the room with a comforting glow. At the refrigerator she found some milk and drank with shaking hands directly from the carton. The liquid was thick and soothing, and she tried to imagine it bathing her insides, coating the ulcer like a healing balm.
Lamplight was coming from the living room, too. Clutching the milk carton against her, Elsie D followed the light and found Oz sunk deep into a big lumpy sofa. His feet were propped up on the edge of the coffee table and covered in heavy suede house slippers shaped like boots and lined with something woolly. A large, stringed musical instrument lay across his lap, and he was plucking at the strings and frets experimentally.
"What kind of guitar is that?" Elsie D whispered. She eased down into the sofa beside him.
"Sitar." His voice was as quiet and soothing as the milk. "I found it in the coat closet. Mr. Singh may have left it here; they come from the Middle East. I've never played one before." He ran a thumb carefully across some of the strings, and the sitar made a dreamlike, exotic noise.
"It's nice. It sounds like a zither." Elsie D curled into a ball and drew her chilly bare feet underneath her. The ordeal of the morgue was over now. Rita would be laid to rest, and Elsie had been relieved and comforted to discover that in death the pack had reverted to its human appearance. Now, finally, there was peace.
"Here." Oz removed his house slippers and handed them to her. Before she could protest, he added, "I don't need 'em; I'm wearing socks."
They were warm from his body heat, and covered her small feet up to her ankles. The mellow sound of his voice eased through the quiet again. "They're Eskimo mukluks."
She was pretty, awfully pretty. When he bent to kiss her, he tasted milk and the funky flavor of antacid tablets. But her mouth was incredibly soft. He raised his head long enough to lay the sitar aside, then to take the milk carton from her hands and set it on the floor, and then he slid one arm across her shoulders and the other against her breasts and into her yellow hair, and kissed her thoroughly.
Author's Note: Anubis, Garm, and Cerberus are characters from Egyptian, Norse, and Greek mythology, respectively. (I didn't make 'em up.)