Shakedown Read online

Galvin laughed. “No. Unlike ordinary snakes, our demon heritage makes us nocturnal; we don’t like the sun any more than you do.”

  “Which is why you live underground.”

  “More or less. We don’t burst into flames at the touch of daylight, but we do get sluggish and sleepy. Not very good for business—and we like to spend money.”

  “I can see that.”

  “As we’ve become more human in appearance, we’ve become more human in nature. We’ve developed human tastes, especially for the finer things in life. Clothes, cars, furnishings, food and drink; we seek out the best available . . . and that’s why we want to hire you.”

  “To protect you,” Angel said. “From whom?”

  “Perhaps I should show you,” Galvin said, getting up. “Please, come with me.”

  He led Angel out of the office and down the hall. He stopped in front of a door marked 245 and knocked gently. “Maureen? It’s Galvin.”

  A pretty young redhead with a spray of freckles across her nose opened the door; Angel guessed that Cordelia would have gladly traded her left arm for the woman’s dress. “Yes, Galvin?”

  “This is Angel. He’s going to help us with our problem.”

  “Oh, yes. I saw you at the meeting.”

  “I hope I can help,” Angel said.

  “Maureen, I was wondering if we could see Suzy,” said Galvin. “If you think she’s up to it.”

  “She’s the same as before,” Maureen sighed. “Come on in.”

  She led them through a living room decorated in black and white—black leather couch and chairs, black metal coffee table, white rug and walls—and down a hall to the bedroom suite.

  The large canopy bed was empty—but then Angel heard something move in the corner. He went to investigate the bathroom, by the sunken marble bathtub.

  Actually, the noise came from within the tub. From the thing resting inside.

  It had once been a woman, or at least female. What it was now was a human-shaped puddle of flesh, like a blow-up doll half-filled with Jell-O. Only the eyes and lips, floating on the surface of the face like lost Mr. Potato-Head accessories, gave any indication the creature was a living thing. It blinked at him slowly, then tried to form words with its toothless mouth. “Hhhhh—ohhhh . . .”

  “Suzy, this is Angel,” Galvin said softly. “He’s going to protect us from what attacked you.”

  “Gggguhhh . . .”

  Angel drew back. “What happened to her?” he whispered.

  “A demon assaulted her, last week. She fought back. Even though she was no match for her attacker, I think she managed to anger it. Witnesses said it grabbed both of her wrists, and then she started to . . . shake. Violently. It passed some kind of shockwave through her, one that shattered every bone in her body. Her teeth and fingernails actually exploded.”

  “Why isn’t she—”

  “Dead? A human would be. But snakes have always been blessed with a certain . . . flexibility . It allowed her to survive.”

  “Well,” said Angel, unable to meet the eyes of the thing in the tub. “Isn’t she lucky . . .”

  “This is where the attack took place,” Galvin said. It was a large office space, irregular rows of desks scattered throughout, each with its own computer and a well-dressed Serpentene behind it. All the office workers wore telephone headsets, and every one seemed to be in the middle of an animated conversation.

  “Our sales force, working late as usual,” Galvin said. “Since we prefer to stay inside during business hours, we rely heavily on telemarketing.”

  “I thought you said you weren’t evil . . .”

  Galvin grinned but didn’t reply. He led Angel through the maze of desks to the far wall, his salespeople nodding or waving as they strolled past.

  The wall had a sheet of plywood nailed to it, and several planks over the top of that. Angel guessed it was covering up a large hole.

  “This is where it came through, last week.”

  “And what, exactly, was it?”

  “A Quake demon.”

  “Don’t think I’m familiar with that breed.”

  “I’m not surprised. They’re completely subterranean, never show their faces aboveground,” Galvin said, shaking his head. “Nasty buggers, though. Short, muscular, skin that looks like chunks of raw coal.”

  “So why are they bothering you?”

  “We’re not sure. It may be territorial, or have something to do with their religious beliefs. All that’s clear is they want us gone—and if they can’t terrorize us into moving, they’ll turn our home into ruins.”

  “And maybe the rest of L.A. with it,” Angel mused. “All right. Here’s what I’m going to do.” He pulled a business card out of his pocket and handed it to Galvin. “That’s the number of my associates. If I’m not back or you don’t hear from me in three hours, call them and let them know the situation.” Angel grabbed hold of one of the planks blocking the opening and ripped it off.

  “What are you planning?”

  Angel pulled another board free. “Oh, you know—go for a stroll, see the sights, do a little spelunking. I’m a big tunnel fan, myself . . .”

  The tunnel was bare, packed earth, just tall enough for Angel to stand without stooping. It led downward at a steep angle, and Angel had been following it for half a mile.

  “Great,” he muttered under his breath. “I’ve been hired by demon yuppies to fight the Mole Men . . .”

  The Mag-lite he was using showed him a branch in the tunnel ahead. “Decisions, decisions . . .”

  He took the one on the right and kept going. Since coming to L.A., Angel had spent a lot of time underground; the extensive tunnel system under the city was how he got around during the day. Fortunately, he had a well-developed sense of direction and rarely got lost.

  At least not in the physical sense. But being all alone in the dark, the smell of raw earth in his nose, had a way of bringing back memories. Memories of being lost in a different, much deeper way.

  Lost in bloodlust, and insanity.

  It was 1755, two years after Darla had turned him. Two years of random slaughter across the face of Europe, cutting a swath of blood-drenched decadence. It was the same year a great earthquake rocked Portugal, mocking the efforts of Angelus and his sire with a death toll of thirty thousand. They had been in Madrid, close enough to feel the edge of the shockwave, and when they heard the extent of the disaster they decided to investigate the devastation firsthand as a sort of holiday.

  They hired a barge at Aranjuez and floated down the Tagus River, the dark bulk of mountains blotting out the stars on either side of them as they drifted through the Mediterranean night. In two days they reached Lisbon, on the Atlantic coast; once the jewel of the Iberian Peninsula, it was now a vision of Hell. Flames raged unchecked for the fifth day in a row, streets choked with rubble making firefighting impossible. The downtown area, from St. Paul’s quarter to St. Roch, was gutted. The Royal Palace and the Opera House were burned-out husks. The rats had already begun to feast on the dead.

  The barge crew, hardened men all, were stunned into silence by the destruction. Angelus and Darla raised champagne glasses to toast the spectacle— then ripped out the throats of the crew to fill them.

  They’d played in the ruins like children, making up games as they went: a head popped off a crushed corpse made a fine ball to kick; a pair of disembodied arms became improvised, floppy swords. Darla had chased him through the remains of a church, shrieking with delight as she held the skirts of her dress with one hand and tried to spank him with the severed limb of a nun.

  And then they’d heard it, from beneath them. A faint cry for help.

  “What have we here?” Angelus said. “Buried treasure, mayhaps?”

  Darla giggled. “Do you think they’d want to play with us?”

  “‘Oh, I’m sure of it,” Angelus replied with a grin. “They’re already playing hide-and-seek, now, aren’t they?”

  He took off his black frock coat a
nd began clearing debris, throwing aside chunks of rubble and oaken beams it would take three normal men to move. In no time at all he had a section of floorboards exposed.

  He knelt and put his mouth close to the floor. “Compose yourselves!” he called down. “I’ve got a team of five men working like mad!” Darla laughed out loud, and he shushed her with a grin on his face.

  “Please,” came the faint reply. A woman’s voice. “. . . we’ve been trapped down here for five days, with no food or water . . .”

  “How many are you?”

  “. . .three . . .”

  “And how’d you get down there, anyway?”

  “. . . there’s a trap-door, in the west corner . . . it leads to the cellar . . .”

  “What? All this work, and you mean we’ve been doing it in the wrong place? Well, I suppose we’ll just have start all over—after lunch, of course.”

  “. . . what?”

  “Yes, a nice big meal of roast chicken and fresh baked bread and some nice cold water to wash it down—just the thing, don’t you think?”

  “. . . yes, please, just hurry . . .”

  “Oh, we won’t be long,” Angelus said with a chuckle. “An hour or two at the most.”

  Angelus stood up and dusted off his hands. “All that talking about food has me famished. Shall we go sample the local cuisine?”

  “What, you’re giving up now? All that work and no reward?”

  “Oh, they’ll keep,” Angelus said cheerfully. “It’s like having a fully stocked larder now, isn’t it? We can come back and have a nibble whenever we want . . .”

  The right-hand branch of the tunnel had angled upward again, though Angel wasn’t sure how close he was to the surface. He wondered if maybe he’d chosen the wrong path to follow.

  The attack came without warning.

  The Quake demon had molded itself into the dirt of the tunnel wall, where it was almost invisible— until one of its fists lashed out and connected with Angel’s face.

  He dropped the Mag-lite and staggered back as the demon pulled itself out of the wall. The creature’s skin was armored in rock that looked like chunks of black glass, sharp-edged crags jutting from every inch of its short, muscular body. Black stalactites hung from its heavy brow and jaw like oily icicles, and when it opened its mouth to snarl at him, Angel saw the same black spikes within.

  “Should have brought a pickax,” Angel muttered as he reached into his trenchcoat. “Guess this’ll have to do . . .”

  He drew the double-bladed battle-ax from its special sheath in one smooth motion, swinging it one-handed as the Quake demon lunged forward. He caught the thing across the chest, raising a flash of sparks as steel screeched against stone.

  It grabbed for him with a massive hand sporting black claws bigger than a grizzly’s. He evaded its clutch, got a two-handed grip on the ax and swung at the thing’s skull.

  It bounced off, the impact nearly jarring the weapon from Angel’s hands. It also knocked the demon back a step—but that was about it.

  “Right,” Angel said. “No problem.”

  It rushed at him again. He turned its own momentum against it, dropping his ax at the last second and hip-tossing it to the ground. It was like flipping a Buick; Angel thought he’d come close to breaking his own leg with the maneuver.

  But it was facedown in the dirt in front of him— and an instant later, Angel had his ax back in hand.

  He chopped down with all his strength, nailing it right between the shoulder blades as it began to get up. The impact drove it down again, but didn’t seem to do any other damage.

  He hit it again.

  And again.

  And again.

  It kept rising, slowly. On the fifth blow, he broke the head off the ax. All he’d done was to chip a few shards from his opponent’s armor.

  He leapt on the demon’s back as it made it to its feet. Maybe he could break the thing’s neck. He seized its head in both hands and wrenched it to the side as hard as he could. It was like trying to turn the steering wheel on a bus encased in cement.

  Something whacked Angel in the back of the head hard enough to make his vision blur. He stubbornly kept his grip on the demon’s head.

  The next blow caught him on the shoulder, making his left arm go numb. He spun to face his new attacker—at first, he thought it was a giant snake.

  It wasn’t. Somehow, he had failed to notice the Quake demon had a tail.

  It was about six feet long, as thick around as a telephone pole. Its tip looked very much like the business end of an oversized garden spade, if garden spades were made out of glossy black rock and doubled as killing weapons.

  The tail swung at Angel again, knocking him to his knees. A rocky claw locked around his left wrist. Another gripped his right shoulder.

  A shockwave rippled between the two points, slamming up his arm and across his chest. It felt like grabbing a high-voltage line while having a heart attack—though that was just an educated guess on Angel’s part, his two-hundred-and-forty-odd years of existence being woefully deficient in both electric and cardiac phenomena.

  And it got worse. He could feel his bones begin to hum as his muscles convulsed. In another moment his teeth would explode like firecrackers. . . .

  His right arm was still free. He reached up and grabbed the demon’s wrist, wrenching its claw loose from its grip on Angel’s shoulder. Now he had it by one wrist and it had him by the other.

  Angel put every ounce of his strength into a lunge to the side. He took the Quake demon with him— and both its rocky paws plunged into the soft earth of the tunnel.

  Angel’s body stopped shaking itself apart, and the ground began to shudder instead. Something Angel had learned over the years was that it was generally a lot harder to turn off a mystic source of energy than it was to turn it on . . . and whatever force the demon was generating probably had a much greater affinity for rock and earth than undead flesh.

  He was still congratulating himself on his ingenuity when the tunnel collapsed.

  CHAPTER TWO

  “Buried alive,” Darla said. “My, my. How perfectly awful.” “Oh, I don’t know,” Angelus said. “You know what they say: first you die, then you’re buried, then the worms come and eat your flesh. Be grateful for the order in which it occurs.”

  They had returned from their foray through the remains of Lisbon, after dining on a gang of looters that had the bad judgment to try and rob them. Darla had enjoyed the meal, but Angelus had found them a little greasy for his taste.

  And now . . . now they were in the mood for some entertainment.

  Angelus picked up a length of wood and strode over to the spot he’d cleared of rubble. He rapped sharply on the floor with it.

  “Hello, down there! Still among the living?”

  “. . . yes! Yes, please, get us out . . .”

  “Patience, my friends, patience. It’s hard work, slaving under this broiling sun.” Angelus smiled broadly at his own joke. “We’ll have that trapdoor cleared any minute now. In the meantime, why don’t you tell us a bit about yourselves?”

  “. . . I–I don’t know what you mean, sir . . .”

  “Well, are we rescuing whores or nuns? The right answer will have my men digging faster, I can tell you that.”

  Darla had to cover her mouth to suppress her laughter.

  “. . . neither, sir. We’re parishioners, who were in the church when the earth began to shake. The priest thought we would be safe here . . .”

  “And where is the good Father?”

  “. . . he . . . he wasn’t quick enough, when the roof began to fall . . .”

  “But you were, weren’t you? Bolted like a rabbit for a hole, I’d imagine; didn’t put an elbow in the dear Father’s chest in your hurry, did you?”

  “No! No, I swear . . .”

  “What’s your name, my dear?”

  “Maria . . .”

  “And your two friends? Why haven’t I heard from them?”

&n
bsp; “Francesco is hurt, he does not move or speak. Estrellita is trapped in the far corner under a fallen timber . . .”

  “And you? Are you injured?”

  “. . . I think my arm is broken . . .”

  “Well, look on the bright side—you’ve still got the other one, haven’t you?” Angelus toyed idly with the piece of wood he held. “Do you think you can do me a favor?”

  “. . . I’ll do whatever I can . . .”

  “Sing.”

  “. . . what?”

  “Sing us a song, to help the lads work. To get them movin’, like.”

  “. . . my throat is so dry . . .”

  “The louder you sing, the quicker you’ll get some water. That’s fair now, isn’t it?”

  “. . . what . . . what should I . . .”

  “D’ye have any favorites, my sweet?” Angelus asked Darla with a grin.

  “ ‘Ave Maria,’ perhaps?” Darla suggested.

  “That’s no song to work by!” Angelus declared. “Say, d’ye know any good Irish drinking songs?”

  “. . . please, I’m so thirsty . . .”

  “Perhaps a hymn is appropriate, after all. What about ‘The Old Hundredth’? Always a favorite in our church—though I have to admit, my attendance was hardly perfect. For why? The Lord our God is good, His mercy is forever sure,” Angelus sang. “His truth at all times firmly stood, and shall from age to age endure! Come on, now, raise your voice in praise!”

  “. . . Praise, praise God, from whom all blessings flow . . .”

  “Louder!”

  “Praise him all creatures here below . . .”

  Angelus extended an arm toward Darla. “Would you care to dance, m’lady?”

  She came to him. They laughed together as the faint, quavering voice drifted up from the ground beneath their feet.

  “Praise him above, ye heavenly host . . .”

  The memory of that voice echoed through Angel’s skull as his consciousness slowly returned. He could almost smell Lisbon, burning still. . . .

  Except his nose was full of dirt.