Since getting topside, Tzek had spent a good hour in that gas station bathroom, grinning at his grimy reflection. He'd run his fingers -- [i]his[/i] fingers -- over his slightly smooth jaw, through short dark hair (stiff just like he remembered it), around the contours of his ears. He'd jammed his thumbs in his eyes and laughed at the bright spots and light shadows. He'd opened his mouth wide and felt every sharp tooth with his tongue; he'd swallowed and watched his throat bob in the spit-soiled mirror; he'd grasped the porcelain sink and leaned forward til his nose nearly touched the glass, and he'd watched his eyes turn black. Oh, yes, he was [i]himself[/i] again, in [i]his[/i] body, not sardined in the skull of some meth-head schizophrenic but [i]alone[/i], in control, powerful, [i]alive[/i]. He'd trembled with glee, he'd breathed through his teeth and savored the chill, the dank pungent mold-urine stench of being reborn in a filmy toilet stall. If only he could remember his name, he could pretend he were human again. Human still. One day. This was a cruel and wonderful taste of what he could have, what he [i]would[/i] have if he carried out his mission. He'd grinned wide, and the mirror cracked.

Find the girl.

For a day and a half he'd scavenged the streets, grabbed random women and pulled their hair experimentally while they screeched obscenities and called the cops. He'd got himself into a fistfight with two other guys, which ended in an ambulance siren and hands in his pockets as he sauntered off the scene. He'd devoured four stacks of pancakes and ten cups of coffee, left pocket lint for the bill and had found the cops waiting for him outside the diner. He'd let them give him a lift to the station, and [i]that's[/i] when he smelled her.

He sat on a bench in an office buzzing with uniforms, crammed against a shouting spitting half-naked homeless lunatic, having been told to wait his turn for booking. Tzek quietly dropped his cuffs, let loose the lunatic, and stayed to watch the shouting and crashing and body-slamming for a bit before he slipped out the door into the chill night rain.

He was soaked by the time he found her. It was an easy thing, when there was so much screaming going on, to approach unnoticed, and -- what was that saying? Two birds with one stone?

Tzek sloshed into the alley, his jacket dripping, eyes black. "Here kitty kitty," he hissed at the demon's back; his voice was drowned by screaming and rain but he knew he'd been heard. Just to be certain he had the old woman's attention, though, he flung an arm through the air and caused her to spontaneously slam shoulder-first into the alley wall. He flashed a fangy grin. He liked to call that [i]the Force[/i].