“Can you tell me where Jimmy is?” Lois asked. Angelica wasn’t likely to wait to make him the mid-evening buffet.
Did vampires have to sleep during the day? Even if that was true, the sun was already setting, and Jimmy’s time might already have run out. Lois didn’t want to contemplate the idea that Jimmy might already be cold and dead, or worse, dead and infected by whatever it was that animated vampires.
Lorne shook his head. “I heard you singing, honey, not him.”
“Then what did you see?”
“You’re going to have to make a choice soon…” Lorne turned to Clark. “I need you to sing a few bars for me.”
Clark looked embarrassed. “I can’t really sing well.”
“You don’t have to do a whole song. You’re wrapped up in this whole thing, and I need to get a better look.”
Sighing, Clark began to hum.
Lorne’s eyes widened. “Wow. You’ve come a long way.”
Clark’s eyes narrowed and Lois saw the sudden interest in them. Clark had been in the dark about his origins, and this demon might be able to answer some of the questions which had been hounding him for his entire life.
“Can you tell me why I…” Glancing at Lois he shook his head. “What about Jimmy?”
“They’re going to try to make a trade.” Lorne said. “Don’t do it.”
“What do we have that she wants?” Lois asked. It took her a moment, and then she looked at Clark. “Oh.”
Angelica didn’t just want sex with Clark. She wanted power. It was a motivation Lois was familiar with. In her profession she’d dealt with criminals and politicians on a day to day basis, and they all scrambled for more and more power.
“What would happen if she gets him,” Lois asked.
“If she could control him, the intimidation factor would give her a lot of leverage; get a lot of unaligned demons to follow her.”
If Lois was the thing demon children feared, Clark was the thing that terrified their parents.
“Even that wouldn’t be a good thing,” Lorne said. He scowled and grabbed for another fruity drink.
Apparently he warranted executive treatment. Unlike the front area, this small office was meticulously clean. A fruit basket was prepared, along with a selection of unopened bottled waters and fruit juices.
“This is exactly the sort of thing my partners normally take care of,” Lorne said. “But they’re taking a vacation before turning up for work.”
“You haven’t heard anyone else sing anything that would help me? You sent one demon out earlier…”
“His wife was having babies.” Lorne winced. “He was going to say goodbye.”
Lois was going to question this, but at the look on his face, decided that she didn’t want to know.
She’d never believed in psychics, not before she’d met Olaf, and even afterwards she hadn’t been sure.
“How do I know that you aren’t part of the whole thing with Angelica?” Lois asked suddenly.
This whole place was making her crazy. She was getting to the point where she would believe anything.
“The blood never comes off,” Lorne said. “Most demons don’t care, but things with souls do.”
Lois froze. First Olaf, and now this demon. She felt a moment of panic, and her voice froze in her throat.
Everybody would know what she had done.
The guilt was bad enough, but the shame…that would be the end. Lois had talked to enough victims of violent crimes to know that sometimes the shame was the worst part…the feeling that the people you loved were never going to be able to see you the same way again.
“You have a bright and shining soul,” Lorne said. “I don’t get to see many of those. These things that have been happening aren’t a reflection of who you are.”
Given his audience, Lois wasn’t surprised that he didn’t see many bright and shining souls. It sounded to her that even the most benign demon lived a life of oppression, always waiting for discovery, always afraid that the things that wandered the night would show up at their door.
They had no sense of safety, no security. Human law would not help them. It couldn’t protect them against things it didn’t know existed. Or at least, things it wouldn’t admit existed.
Being a demon must be like living in a war zone all the time. It wore at you, tore away your sense of self, and made you feel perpetually the victim.
It was the sort of thing that darkened the soul. Fertile ground for anger and hatred and rage, it was the kind of life that sometimes spawned evil.
All that assumed, of course that a being wasn’t born with a terrible hunger for human flesh.
Lois found that she couldn’t meet Lorne’s eye. All she could hope was that he was perceptive enough not to spill the beans in front of Clark.
“Am I a demon, or a hellthing?” Clark asked, after the silence grew too long.
“You aren’t even from this earth,” Lorne said. “You aren’t remotely like a demon.”
“Then why?”
It took Lois a moment to realize that he was asking why he’d been abandoned. Where were his parents, why hadn’t they wanted him?
It was another question they had in common, although Lois knew the answer to her question. Her mother had been in a bottle, and her father had been immersed in his work, or in his floozy of the week.
Clark had gotten the better deal.
“They loved you,” Lorne said. “And they had to do it.”
“You don’t know anything else?”
“What do I look like, Miss Cleo?” Lorne scowled. “If this was an exact science, I’d be playing the stock market.”
“So that’s it,” Lois protested. “You’re going to tell us that Jimmy is in danger, they’re going to want us to trade, and don’t do it?”
“That’s pretty much it, as far as your friend goes.” Lorne smiled. “There’s a lot I can tell you about what’s going on with you, but you aren’t going to have time.”
Lois frowned. “Why-“
Her cell phone rang. Flipping it open, Lois saw that it was Jimmy’s number.
“Lois!” Angelica’s voice was smug. “We keep missing each other.”
“I’m sorry I missed you,” Lois said. “Maybe next time I’ll aim a little better.”
“My thoughts exactly.” Lois could hear sounds in the background. “I have something of yours.”
“What do you want?” Lois asked.
“A trade.” Angelica said. “Aren’t you going to ask for proof I have your item?”
“No,” Lois said.
“I’d be happy to send you a piece or two, free of charge.” Angelica laughed, and in the background Lois could hear a muffled sobbing sound. She could also hear the sounds of dripping water. “Or I could send you the whole thing after I’m done with it.”
“No,” Lois said quickly. “That won’t be necessary.”
“I hear you’re getting into music.” The sound of a buzz saw in the background followed by a terrified scream froze Lois. “How do you like this?”
The gurgling noise was followed by wet sucking sounds.
“I get so hungry these days.”
“Why should I do anything for you, if you’ve already killed him?”
“Oh, that wasn’t your item. That was breakfast.”
A moment later, Jimmy’s voice came on the line. He sounded terrified. “Lois! They just killed this guy and they’re…”
“Where are you?” Lois asked.
“They had me blindfolded. There’s water…” Jimmy sounded almost incoherent. He’d already suffered a mild concussion and blood loss. Lois wasn’t sure how they were going to get him out of there.
If they did save him, what nightmares was he going to have?
“I know where you are,” Angelica said. “Meet me at the Kodak theater center on Hollywood and Highland in two hours. If you don’t, I’ll be having a little brunch.”
The telephone went dead.
Lois turned to the Clark and Lorne, but they both shook their head.
“Don’t go,” Lorne said. “It can only lead to badness.”
“We’ll just have to be ready for them,” Clark said. “I’m not leaving a friend of mine…or anybody else for that matter to die if I can help it.”
There wasn’t a hint of hesitation or fear in his voice. He might have thought he was invulnerable once, but it was already apparent that magic could affect him…and maybe hurt him. Yet he was planning to sacrifice himself if he had to in order to save the life of a man he hadn’t known for long.
“We’re going to have to leave right away,” Lois said. “With traffic, we’ll barely make it in time.”
“I know a shortcut.” Clark said.
Lorne sighed. “People never listen. When this is all over, why don’t you give me a call?”
He handed Lois a business card. It had a distinctive logo at the top, with Wolfram and Hart, entertainment division.
“Your name is Krevlorne?”
“You expected it to be Larry?” Lorne shrugged. “I’m a demon.”
“Is there a back way out of this place?” Clark asked.
Lorne gestured toward a door in the middle of a featureless brick wall. It was made of heavy metal and seemed to have brackets for bars to be set in place.
“It locks from the outside too.” Lorne said. “The owners wanted to be sure they could get out if the patrons weren’t happy with the service.”
Lois could easily imagine.
“You want a cruller to go?” Lorne asked. “Idiotic heroics on an empty stomach aren’t a great idea…”
Clark was already through the door, and Lois was following.
***************
“So where is this shortcut?” Lois asked. “And why aren’t we taking the rental?”
“We don’t need it.”
His arm slid around her and Lois tensed. With anyone else, she would already be pushing them away, which at her current strength might have pushed them into a wall.
“Clark?” she asked.
“Trust me.”
Lois stared up at him, and the squalor of the alley, it’s strange and unsettling smells faded away. All she could see was him and the sky above them.
Although she’d dreamed of meeting a good man, a hero, Lois had given up on the dream a long time ago. The world was a thousand shades of gray and nobody was perfect. Men were flawed. Inevitably they had disappointed her.
It was so odd meeting him here and now. At the time in her life when she was the most vulnerable he was here. He had power, but he didn’t abuse it. He was kind. He was competent and talented.
He’d lived the life she’d always dreamed of. He’d been loved and he surely had never felt the deep feelings of loneliness that had been her companions throughout her childhood.
It took Lois a moment to realize that she saw stars.
This was strange because in Los Angeles, you never saw stars. The lights of the city obscured them, leaving the sky a formless void.
She clutched at Clark as she looked down.
It was beautiful. A sea of glittering lights spread out as far as the eye could see. From here, all the petty imperfections were washed away, and all she could see was the beauty.
Was this how he saw the world?
He smiled down at her nervously, and Lois sensed that this was an important moment for them both.
Clark was sharing something precious with her, something that was precious to him. She could see in his expression that he expected her to scream, to reject this.
Lois returned his smile, and while it was initially forced, it soon grew to be natural.
Flying was like nothing she’d ever experienced.
It was better than riding a white horse, or driving a fast car, or any of the other things she’d imagined doing with a man when she was younger.
Clark could have rushed off on his own, left her stranded as he had on the first night of their investigation. Instead, he’d chosen to expose himself even further, to share this…gift.
If she’d met him on a blind date, she never would have believed that a man could be such a perfect match for her. She’d have been convinced that he was hiding something, and she would have been trying to discover his dirty little secrets.
Now, everything was different. Whenever she looked at him, all she saw was stars.
************
They’d landed some distance from the meeting place. Apparently, even in Hollywood, a flying couple was going to garner some attention.
So Clark had landed in another featureless alley, although this one seemed clean at least, and didn’t have a stink of demonic taint.
“She won’t be expecting us for a while,” Clark said. “If we can get the jump on them we can beat them.”
“She’s depending on the crowd to keep you from doing anything…heroic.”
“I can move faster than the crowd can see,” Clark said, “Although not carrying a person. A normal person anyway.”
“What about the witch?” Lois asked. That was her biggest concern. Angelica wasn’t a physical threat to Clark, but the witch could disable them both.
“I’ll just have to make sure she doesn’t get a chance to concentrate,” he said. “They’ll never know we’re coming.”
Lois had an uneasy feeling in her stomach, Lorne had seemed pretty convinced that they shouldn’t take the deal that was offered, and this seemed to be the only way to avoid that. Whatever Clark did, Lois would have to be ready to follow up, to get Jimmy to safety.
The faster Lois could get them both away, the safer Clark would be. He’d be able to escape before the witch came to her senses.
It seemed like a perfect plan.
It wasn’t until she felt a familiar feeling of paralysis stealing over her that she realized it had already failed.
