Free Impressions by Doranna Durgin

before another of them comes in here wrecking things,” Gunn observed, resting an elbow on the counter. “Especially if it’s going to do a smelly meltdown when we kill it.”
    Assuming it didn’t get one of them first. But that was a factor they all lived with, every day. They just didn’t say it out loud very often. Cordelia sighed and ran a hand through her short hair. “I think we need to find that man,” she said. “The demon was after him . Or else we should find that guy who looked like Angel. I’ll bet he knows something.”
    Angel instantly protested, “He didn’t look anything like me.”
    “We need to find him, anyway,” Gunn said.
    Cordelia felt it coming, like a mental sneeze. An incredibly painful mental—
    Joggers. Brown hair, ponytails, mother and daughter running together blood and bright yellow skin, screaming—always screaming—
    “San Vincente Boulevard,” she gasped from the floor. “That median park the joggers use. There’s this yellow guy with a weird mohawk not-hair and these knives…growing…from its arms—”
    “Miquot?” Wesley said. “Hunting joggers on the strip park is hardly up to their standards.”
    “I wouldn’t call this hunting,” Cordelia said, pressing her fingers to her temples. Oh, ow. Shouldn’t there be some rule about no more than one vision per day? She was sure there should be a rule…. “More like…savaging. And…” She frowned, trying to grasp the most elusive part of the vision, the feel of it, the things that really didn’t come through as vision at all. Someone grasped her elbows from behind and lifted her to her feet, all but carrying her to one of the roundchairs. Angel . None of the others had that casual strength. “I don’t know how…but this is related to the Terminal Market thing.”
    “To the Slith demon?” Wesley asked, incredulous.
    “Yes,” she said, more assertive as the first shrieking pain receded into pounding waves. “And by something other than the fact that neither job is going to pay. I don’t know what yet…and I wouldn’t waste any time getting to those joggers.”
    “This one’s yours,” Angel said, though—was that regret? Cordelia narrowed her eyes. Yes, he very much looked as if he’d be fine with tearing into some Miquot.
    “Yes,” Wesley said. “The broad daylight and all.”
    “Don’t worry,” Cordelia said, wincing. “The way the day is going, I’ll have something else for you soon.”
    She wished she thought she was wrong.

Chapter Six
    A ngel went back to the underground. Back to sewers and utility tunnels and areas that none of L.A.’s city planners ever envisioned…or even knew about. The perfect place to ponder dark thoughts, to let them pound home the knowledge… I’ve got to figure out what’s going on. I’ve got to stop it. But with no direct line of inquiry and with Wesley and Gunn handling the Miquot and jogger incident and Cordelia napping off her vision in a second-floor room, Angel did what the others expected. He turned back to the matter of the unidentified demon-turned-goo-in-the-lobby and the scrawny excuse for a vampire wanna-be who’d copped Angel’s wardrobe.
    It still made no sense to him. Imitation as an indication of admiration…admiration of what? A young mortal’s callow irresponsibility, a hundred-plus of unspeakable evil, and almost a hundred years of living off rats? A few recent years of playing the good guy hardly made up for any of that. And the last thing he wanted was the responsibility of knowing someone else— anyone else—was using him as a template.
    None of the denizens of the underground he spoke to seemed to think much of it one way or the other.
     
    “Amateur,” snorted the highly humanized male Angel stopped not far from the hotel. He and his date were dressed for dinner out, wearing muckers and carrying their dress shoes through the sewers. “I heard something about it. He’s just a pretender.”
     
    “Needs to be eaten,” said