Ring.
Kate Lockley stumbled for the phone in her darkened apartment.
Ring.
“ ‘mcomin’, ‘mcomin’,” She muttered.
Ri-
She grabbed it and hit the ‘Talk’ button. “H’lo.”
“Hi, Kate! How’re you doing?”
She snapped awake. “What do you want, Angel?”
“Whoah, grouchy! Did I interrupt something? No, wait a second, look who I’m talking to. Of course I didn’t.”
“I asked you what you want,” She demanded.
“Me? I just want you to come out here and meet me in this nice, dark alley beside your building.”
“That’s real funny, Angel.”
“So that’s a no?”
“That’s right. That’s a no. And you’re still not invited in.” She hit the ‘off’ button, but the phone was only halfway back to the cradle before it rang again. She snatched it back to her ear and jammed her thumb down on the ‘talk’ button. “Listen, Angel—“
“No, *you* listen,” He snarled. It was a bestial sound. Shocked, she fell silent. He hadn’t sounded like that even when she was trying to prevent him from visiting his friends in the hospital. “And you’d better consider it a little more carefully, because I’m not the soul-whipped wuss you’re used to antagonizing.”
“Then who—“
“The reason I called you this late is because I’ve been working on your building all night. Believe me when I say that I have some experience with arson, and I know how to block exits. If you don’t come out, then all those pretty young couples and cute little babies that you live with burn. Call for back up, and they burn.”
“You’re bluffing.”
“Can you take the chance? See you in a few minutes. Oh, and when you get here, call me Angelus.”
*
Five minutes later, Kate was in the appointed alley.
She’d never liked this alley. No city dweller would have, but most of her neighbors were so accustomed to it that they didn’t even notice any more. This was a good neighborhood, and nothing had ever actually happened in that alley. There had been no muggings, no rapes. No bodies had been found in the dumpster that half-filled it, no needles or crack vials mixed with the trash that littered the ground. But Kate was a police officer, and a highly dedicated one at that. She looked at all things and all situations and assessed them in terms of the potential for a crime to be perpetrated. She looked at the alley, and the potential actually scared her. It was dark, of course, but there was more to it than that. Between the dumpster, the fire escapes, and the trash cans, there were too many places to hide.
Too many angles of attack.
She was dressed in blue jeans, a denim shirt, and a leather jacket—the closest things to armor that she owned. In one hand was a cross with its handle whittled into a stake. In the other was a squirt bottle full of holy water.
“Alright, Angel,” She called. “I’m here.”
A dark, hulking shape stepped out from behind the dumpster. It struck a match, then raised it to the cigarette he held in his lips, revealing the vampire’s familiar face. “ ‘Bout time,” he muttered around the cigarette. He removed it from his lips and blew a stream of smoke into the air. “And I told you to call me Angelus.”
“You can relive you glory days on your own time,” She retorted. “Don’t expect me to indulge you. Now what do you want?”
“I’d like a snack,” he said frankly. “I ate a hooker in Chinatown, but you know how it is—an hour later, and you’re hungry again.”
Kate felt bile rise into her mouth. She remembered her father, and all the times that she had helped this *thing*. “So you’re finally showing your true colors, are you?”
“Well, you see, it’s not actually that simple,” Angel said. “The fact is, I’d been in this relationship that had been holding me back for a long time—“
“You know what?” She snapped. “I really don’t care. I’ve heard it before, down at the precinct, and I’m sure I’ve heard it better.”
His grin didn’t falter. “Oh, now you’ve gone and hurt my feelings. I was just going to kill you, but now I think I’ll keep you for a month or two. Use you as a snack around the lair. Try out some torture techniques that I’ve just been itching to use since electricity was discovered.” His grin grew broader and more feral, and he began to stalk toward her. “Sound like fun?”
She thrust her cross out at him, and began to advance on *him*. She wasn’t one of the helpless innocents that he was used to terrorizing, god damn it. It was time for him to learn some fear. “Know what sounds like fun to me? Staking you like I should have long ago.”
Angel backed away, but he didn’t lose his grin. “Oh, dear,” he said in a high, mocking, old-lady’s voice, laying his free hand on his cheek in a ‘Well I Never’ pose. “She has a weapon. Whatever shall I do? Oh, wait.” The smile dropped from his face, and he flicked his cigarette away. “That’s right.” He pulled a nine-millimeter out of the depths of his leather jacket. “I have a weapon, too.”
Kate barely had time to gasp in shock before one bullet shattered her left knee, and the other slammed into her right shoulder. She crashed to the ground, and her cross skittered away from her strengthless grasp. She kept her grip on the holy water, but Angel was on her in an instant, and he kicked it away.
“You’re not dealing with Soul Boy this time, you arrogant little sow,” he snarled, his demonic face showing through.
“Who the hell…” She gasped. “Is Soul Boy?”
He waved the question away. “I’ll go into the details of just how stupid you are later.”
He grabbed her uninjured leg and dragged her to a manhole cover halfway down the alley. The pain was searing, and it left her too weak to try to escape when he released her to pry up the cover. Once he had done so, he crouched on the edge and peered down into the darkness. Then he reached over and spun her around, then rolled her over so that she, too, was looking down into the sewer.
“Think you can make it down there?” He asked.
“I can’t walk, you moron.”
“You know,” He said mildly, “You *need* to learn some respect. But don’t worry,” he reached over and patted her injured shoulder. She bit back a scream. “I’m just the one to teach you.”
He stood, struck another match, lit another cigarette, shook the match out, and took a long drag. “You know what?” He said.
“What?” She snarled.
“Remember how I said that I’d burn your neighbors if you didn’t come down here?”
“Yes I do, and believe me, I never would have—“
“Well, I’ve thought about it, and I don’t recall ever *promising* to let them live if you *did* come.”
With that, he picked her up by the wrist of her uninjured arm. She wasn’t a short woman, but when he stood to his full height and extended his arm, her feet couldn’t touch the ground. He turned and swung her out over the open manhole. “Wait, what are you doing? No!”
With a grin, he let her go.
There was an eruption of exquisite agony at the bottom. Bright spangles of color burst behind her eyelids, then everything went black.
*
Standing back up at the top of the ladder, Angelus looked down and grinned. Then he took another deep drag off his cigarette and flicked it into the window he had broken out of the basement of Kate’s building.
Still grinning, he leaped down into the dark tunnels below.
*
The Benton Arms apartment building exploded at 11:42 PM, April 23, 2001. Witnesses on the street described an explosion that eviscerated the lower three floors of the seven-story building. The fire was first attributed to a gas leak, but that verdict was changed to Arson—and murder—when it was discovered that the fire escape had been carefully sabotaged.
Of the building’s one hundred fifty six residents, sixty-eight made it out alive.
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