8

He walked into the foyer of the mansion, to find it all deathly quiet - too goddamn quiet for a school full of kids.

The t.v. flickered in the lounge, a blind eye silently repeating an image of film, but he couldn’t completely tell what it was from the hall. Logan stepped closer for a better look, with a nagging feeling it was important, but suddenly sensed he was no longer alone.

He spun on his heels, and saw that the floor had been replaced with red glass, and Yasha stood twenty feet away, wrapped in a sheet of red silk that looked like blood, and seemed to meld into the floor, like it was all part of the same thing. But the walls seemed to be receding far behind her, melting into a blinding white light that was not only painful to look at, but seemed corroded somehow, evil in an inexpressible way. Her eyes were vampire yellow, but the rest of her face was untransformed; and the serpentine dragon tattoo that had been on her back was now coiling around her neck like a living thing, its tail snaking beneath the curve of her nearly exposed left breast. “Don’t forget the other dragons,” she said, as blood began to creep down from her hairline like crimson sweat.

He jerked awake on impact, and even before he was fully conscious, tore off whatever had attacked him and threw it aside, claws springing free of their own accord.

“Ooh, the sleeper awakens. Don’t kill me, it was just a shirt,” Marc said, continuing to walk down the narrow aisle, putting on his leather jacket.

As soon as he remembered where he was - and why it felt like the “room” was tilting down - he looked to see that the reason he’d woken up was due to the shirt Marc had thrown on him. It was now draped on the far seat across the aisle from him, looking like a shed skin.” You did that on purpose,” he snapped, feeling embarrassed but not about to admit it. He quickly retracted his claws. “You know it’s not safe to wake me up like that.” He couldn’t believe he’d nodded off either. He supposed he should be grateful he didn’t dream about Mariko …. but what the hell had that thing with Yasha been about? Why did his life have to be filled with the senseless?

“Hey, I was standing far away from you when I did that,” he claimed, giving him that grin again. He probably thought it was roguish, but it was pure smart ass. “Thought you might wanna wake up for landing.”

“We reached Hong Kong already?”

Marc snorted in disbelief. “Already? I dozed through the final two parts of the Matrix trilogy, and had time to narrow down the choices of demon that Keanu Reeves must have made a deal with - or slept with - to lead such a charmed life. And I nuked myself a bowl of curry, although it could have been cardboard, and contemplated the sad state of world affairs, as I tried to figure out if there was a causal relationship between that and the poor quality of American sitcoms. Yet I still had time to contemplate my navel, and wonder if masturbating in the airplane crapper counts as joining the “mile high club“. Oh, and we touched down in Vancouver for refueling and supplies.”

Logan stared at him in disbelief. “It’s been that long?”

“Yes indeedy. You sleep hard.”

“I must.” He got up, feeling the deceleration of the plane, the shift of gravity and velocity, and as he stood and grabbed the shirt, he said, “We should be buckled up or somethin’, shouldn’t we?”

Marc just shrugged, although he did sit down near the front. “Prob’ly. But, fuck it - it’s a rich guy’s private jet. It probably has air bags or something.”

Logan grabbed the shirt and didn’t sit down more than he was lightly thrown back into his seat. He was surprised at how heavy the shirt was; it was about the weight of a doorstop, and a rather heavy one at that. “What the fuck is this, chain mail?”

“Just about. It’s part of the body armor I told you about. Some stuff I took from that lab experimenting on mutants in Europe. I have no fucking idea what it is, some kinda metallo-ceramic polymer - but it makes Kevlar look like Styrofoam. Good stuff.”

Logan held up the shirt. It looked like a plain black t-shirt, but had an odd sheen to it when the light hit it at a certain angle, like it was sharkskin, perhaps, or some kind of synthetic silk. “They made ‘em shirts?”

“They made ‘em in a lot of things. Vests, shirts, coats, a neck guard type of thing-y, even helmets draped with the stuff, but I didn’t take any of those ‘cause they looked dorky. I was hopin’ for codpieces, but never found any. I figured the shirts would make the most sense right now, as they cover the most area, and are inconspicuous. They just look like any old shirts. Maybe just a touch gay.”

He sighed, and let the shirt fall into his lap. “Look, I know you mean well -”

“Put it on,” Marc interrupted, his voice low and serious. “Do it now, or I’ll do something you’ll regret.”

He matched him, glare for glare. “No.”

Marc sat forward, never breaking eye contact with him (well, as far as he could tell with those goggles on), and rested his hands on his knees. “Okay, so I met Steve as this nightclub with the admittedly awful name Pink Flamingo - I mean, why not just call it Fudge Packers, y’know? But, I respect that’s it’s named after the John Waters film - hell, it’s Baltimore, and he’s all we got for a celebrity; he’s cool - and Steve wasn’t usually the type I like -”

“Shut up.”

“- but every now and then I’m a sucker for a guy who can really fill out his jeans; he also had a great ass. I mean, premium junk in that trunk. So, we-”

Logan quickly pulled the shirt on over his head, not bothering to take off the t-shirt he already had on. It was more of an undershirt anyways. “There! Will you shut up now?!”

Marc’s face split into a slow, triumphant grin, and he chuckled, gloating ever so slightly at his award winning blackmail. “But I was just getting to the best part, where he actually tells me the sores on his dick are the result of a rash.”

“You’re making that up.” Or at least he hoped he was.

“You’ll never know for sure, will ya?” He sat back, chuckling contentedly to himself. “You may be Mr. Persistent, but no one can out annoy me, bud.”

There was little “Give Bob a chance.”

He made a dismissive hand gesture. “He don’t count - he’s a god. How the fuck do you out annoy a god? Ask me to build a raft out of ketchup packets, why don’t you.”

Logan lifted the blind still covering his window, and looked outside.

It was not only night in Hong Kong, but overcast, so most of their approach was shrouded in misty fog. But every now and then a wisp of cloud would break away like a fragile ghost, and lights of the city would emerge from the darkness like jewels spotted in a turbulent, muddy tide pool. It was a gorgeous sight, all those neon lights like gems sparkling on their display towers, surrounded by water as black as ink yet full of boats of all kinds and descriptions. Hong Kong was really a cluster of interconnected islands - many people still lived on boats in the harbor, in fact - and the incongruity of old fashioned remnants of that society contrasted with the desperately “high tech” of the crowded mainland city was more startling than it was in Tokyo, simply because in Japan they were a bit more segregated - here, because land space was at such a premium, they were crammed in side by side. Taking a good look at the city let you know exactly where the production designer got t! he idea of a future Los Angeles for Blade Runner.

"Pretty, isn't it?" Marc said, glancing out the window closest to him.

He grunted non-committally. It was, and yet ... did it make him feel slightly nervous?

"Ever been here before?"

For some reason, Logan found the very question startling, but he was careful not to let it show. "I dunno. You?"

Marc shrugged. "Nah, this is one of the few places I haven't been. Seen it in movies, though. Think that counts?"

"Probably not." Marc started his weapons inventory, making sure the guns were fully loaded and checking the safeties, and Logan asked, "We gotta plan here?"

He looked up, seemingly surprised. "You're gonna let me be in charge? Wow." He grinned at Logan's scowl. "No real plan yet, as we don't know what kinda reception Tony's gonna get. But I think it's best that wherever he goes, we go with him. If he remains in a secured area, we can take shifts - you know, someone catches some z's while the other guy pulls babysitting detail."

"I can go for four days without sleep." Admittedly, he was punchy and hallucinating by the fourth day, but did that matter much?

Marc raised an eyebrow before shaking his head. "Naw, ain't happenin'. I know you don't like to sleep, but I'm gonna need you sharp, bro. My infrared is gonna be completely fucked in a city heavily converted to wi-fi frequencies, not to mention so much concrete generally radiates heat."

"Heat island."

"Right. So we're gonna be needing your schnozz more than ever. You got better than average eyesight, right?"

"Schnozz?" He grimaced at the word, finding it hard not to laugh. That's what you had to love about Marcus - he refused to take a life or death situation completely seriously. "And yeah, better than average sight, I guess."

"You guess? You don't know?"

He shrugged. "Never really got it tested. But if I concentrate, I can single out individual grains of dirt. Also, I can see things in great details for two miles from a relatively high vantage point."

"Okay, yeah, I'm gonna guess that's better than average." He finished checking out a silver plated Glock, then held it out towards him, butt first.

Logan shook his head. "Don't want it."

"Hey, bud, do I need to tell you that this is how it's gonna be? All that cool 'Kill Bill' shit aside, neither the Yakuza or the Triad truck much with swords or hand to hand; they use automatic weapons and bombs and shit - stuff that allows them to keep a safe distance from their target."

"I know. You shoot back - I'll go for 'em while you keep 'em busy."

"Y'know, that might work once. As soon as they realize what you're packing, they'll probably work hard to keep a greater distance."

He shrugged a single shoulder, as the plane leveled out; they were definitely on final approach now. "Which works for us, 'cause the farther away they are, the more room that gives us, and the more mistakes they make. Let's face it - against us, they don't got a chance. They're just normal Humans, after all." He added a slight smirk, so Marc knew he was kidding about that last part.

Although he smiled back, he didn't seem to be convinced. "As far as we know. Who knows, maybe one of 'em has joined the modern era and employed a mutant or two. We can't get cocky."

"Says the cocky guy."

"Hey, if you got laid as much as I do, you'd be cocky too. But that ain't the point." After a moment, he added, "D'ya think the Yakuza guys might recognize you?"

"Huh?"

"Well, it ain't like you age. And the Yakuza isn't known for being forgiving."

He just shrugged, glancing out the window again. Now all he could see were the blue landing lights of a small airport. "If they wanna bring it, they're welcome to do so. I think I have some issues I need to work out."

Marc chuckled, holstering the gun. "I hear that. It might be fun."

That was another reason why they got along so well.

****

At least Tagawa knew enough to try and cover his tracks.

A third party he knew from his business dealings sent out an armored sedan to meet them at the airport. He and Marc carefully checked out the driver - a young Chinese guy who seemed especially startled by Marc (was it the strange goggles, the muscles that seemed ready to burst out of his bulletproof shirt, or his skin color? Maybe all three - it was kind of impossible to say.) - and the car itself before giving an all clear. The three of them piled in the back, Tagawa sandwiched between them, although there was some comfort in the dark tinted glass. Logan was glad to get inside, away from the city smell; he could smell Hong Kong already - the cars, the industries, the fish and saline, the pollution waiting to happen and the most prevalent scent of all, the Humans, thousands upon millions of them in the humid night. It basically smelled like New York City, but with less pollution and more sea salt. He needed a moment to adjust, but once they were under way, he was sure he! was inured to it by now.

"So where are we headed, exactly?" Logan asked, since he didn't know.

Tagawa, who remained unfazed and calm through all of this, said, "My brother kept a secret apartment - a "safe house" if you will - and I thought perhaps that would be the best place to stay. Even my family didn't know about it, so I presume it's safe."

"How did you find out about it?"

"I found it," Marc offered. "I just followed a bouncing money trail, and an alias that seemed a bit dodgy."

"Jochiro Kawasaki," Tagawa interjected. "That was the name of my brother's imaginary friend when he was six."

"Cute." Although he was relieved it wasn't common knowledge, it still made his stomach do a minor flip flop. If Marc could follow the money trail, so could someone else. “What if some of his business associates know about it?”

Tagawa grimaced. “Let’s hope they don’t.”

“If they do, they’re gonna get a nasty surprise,” Marc noted. He crossed his arms over his chest, and seemed very casual, slumped back against the leather seat, but of course it was just his pose. His hands were within easy reach of the guns he wore under each arm, and of course he had another gun in a belt holster, and at least one strapped to his leg (and he had a knife in his boot - he prepared for everything). Although Tagawa seemed to be wearing the same tan and white shirt as before, Logan could smell that he was wearing one of the bulletproof shirts too, underneath his white button down dress shirt.

It wasn’t long before they got caught in the gnarly mess of downtown Hong Kong traffic - its roads were as clogged as New York City’s, and for the very same reason - not a hell of a lot of room. The buildings, all skyscrapers more massive and modern than the next, seemed crammed in like stakes in the bottom of a hunter’s pit, and he felt instantly hemmed in. This wasn’t good - the traffic was standing still when it wasn’t creeping, and anyone could hit this car from the street. And the sidewalks were crowded; it was like Time’s Square on a Wednesday night. ”Maybe I should get out,” Logan offered. “I can watch the crowd-”

Tagawa’s cell phone trilled - he had the ring programmed to sound like a speeded up version of the X-Files theme (cute) - but he simply held his jacket open, and Marc plucked it out of the inside pocket deftly, as if they’d done this before. They probably had - he had no idea how long Marc had been employed by Tagawa. And Marc said, with a phony Southern accent, “What y’all want?”

Logan shook his head, and continued scanning the crowd through the dark windows. This city looked kind of familiar, didn’t it?

He vaguely heard a tinny female voice on the phone say, in English, “If that’s you, Drury, we’re ready at the drop point, but hurry your fool ass up.”

“Patience, missy,” he replied, then broke the connection and slipped it back in Tagawa’s pocket. “Okay, we’re good to go.” Marc reached into his own leather jacket, and pulled out what looked like a walkie talkie. “Hover, this is Scorpion. What’s your ten?”

The communicator crackled, before a male voice responded with what Logan assumed was a code phrase. “My ten is actually thirteen and three- eights.”

“You do the oddest things to my security,” Tagawa commented dryly, smirking at Marc.

Marcus just gave him that famous grin of his, and said into the comm, “We’re almost up on target area. How is it?”

“All clear. Falcon wants to get this done ASAP; the Chinese authorities are cracking down hard on unauthorized flights.”

“Got it. Be there momentarily.” He pocketed the walkie talkie as the car seemed to move up about six feet before coming to idle in the heavy traffic.

“Am I gonna be let in on what’s goin’ on?” Logan wondered, a little annoyed that Marc hadn’t fully briefed him about this.

“It’s just the old bait an’ switch,” Marc told him, craning his head as if trying to see what street they were on. “Well, we’re close enough. Feel lucky?”

He had said that to Tagawa, who nodded. “I trust all of you with my life.  Obviously.”

Marc pointed towards Logan’s side window. “See that alley opening, between the skyscraper and the tea shop?”

“Yeah.”

“We’re gonna get out and hustle Tony through it.  Hover is covering the area, so we should have a clear shot straight through to the private parking strip.”

“And waiting there is...?”

“Our real transportation to the site. Only a fucking loon would travel by car now.”

Logan guessed what it was, and decided not to point out they could simply be shot down by surface to air missiles. Marc wasn’t an idiot. “And we can trust these people, Hover and Falcon and whoever the fuck else is in on this?”

Tagawa smiled serenely. “If they wish to earn their money, they keep me safe.”

And money was a damn good motivator.  But what if the Triad or the Yakuza were blackmailing them, or had offered them more money?  It was all a gamble.  Still, Tony had survived among these underworld types long enough, and besides, he'd made sure everyone thought he was coming in tomorrow, not tonight - another version of the bait and switch.  Logan imagined Tagawa was the king of the gamblers, winning so many times it had long since ceased being funny. “You know this is risky.”  That was for Marc, not Tony.

Marcus nodded, taking a cursory glance out his window. “Yeah, but it’s a good bet they don’t know we’re in the city yet, and I don’t think they’ve all memorized Tony’s face yet, either.”

“All we old men look alike,” Tagawa joked, but Logan was unnerved to realize he was glancing at him with a sly smile. Was he implying something?

Marcus was now looking at him, one eyebrow raising in curiosity as he realized he had missed something, but was too focused on the job to ask what right now. “We ready, bud?”

Logan took a deep breath, mentally preparing himself to take the city stink he was sure to be swamped with as soon as he opened the door. “Yeah.”

“Flanking protocol,” he added, rapping a brief tattoo on the bulletproof glass partition separating them from the driver.  The car remained idling as Marc popped open the door on his side and got out, right in the street, causing several annoyed and startled honks.  Logan opened his door and slid out, letting the thousands of scents wash over him without overwhelming him, and wasn’t too surprised that Tagawa got out right behind him.  Several pedestrians gave them looks, ranging from puzzled to blandly curious to ticked off by the rude foreigners, but Logan got no sense of a threat; nothing struck him instantly as off. The night was intensely humid - another New York similarity - but actually somewhat cool, an odd and uncomfortable combination.

Marc joined him, and walking with Tagawa between them they moved briskly to the alley, which was narrow but strangely clean, possibly because it had been freshly hosed down by a shopkeeper. The lot ahead of them was dark, lit only by ambient light shed from the surrounding skyscrapers and their mirrored windows, and Logan figured it was to hide the helicopter as long as possible.  He smelled the woman before he saw her. “Finally,” she said, scowling at them.  She was a Japanese woman of average height, dressed in some kind of gray flight suit, with a dark blue shirt beneath. Her shoulder length black hair was held back in a severe ponytail, and slapped against her shoulder as she turned to give Marcus an evil look. “Come on, let’s go, I can’t have this bird here for long.”  She took a transparency out of her pocket, unrolled it, and slapped it on the side of the helicopter.  It was a caduceus, a winged staff with two twining snakes around it - an international symbol for medi! cine.  They were going disguised as a medi-vac?  Cute, but how long could they last if they were challenged?

“We’re here, Yukio - isn’t that what matters?” Marc replied jovially.

She gave him an evil look before disappearing around the chopper, and getting in on the pilot’s side. The rotors started to spin as they neared, and by the time Marc opened the back door and he and Tagawa slid inside, the rotors were at half lift off speed. The doors and windows looked armored, which would be good if they were shot at, but not if someone had a missile or a rocket propelled grenade launcher laying around the clubhouse.  Still, wasn’t worth worrying about until it looked like it might happen.

Once they had taken off, Marcus told him, “We’re going to the Chen-Lai building, which has been shut down for a week due to - supposedly - “health violations”.  We land on their helipad, take the exec elevator down, and get in another armored car to take us to our final destination.”

“This is rather elaborate, isn’t it?”

Marc shrugged. Once again, Tagawa was sitting between them, as if it would help. “I dare someone to
tail us.”

Okay, he had a point there.

Once they were airborne and leveled out, Tagawa decided an introduction was in order.  He leaned forward, and shouted, “Yukio, this is Logan, Marcus’s business associate.  Logan, this is Yukio Sakibara, my transportation chief from the Tokyo office.”

She turned her head towards him, the slightest acknowledgment possible.  She wore the headphone radio/mike all helicopter pilots wore, as well as night vision goggles that hummed low, and gave off a slightly greenish light at the edges. That made sense - she could avoid any incoming object simply by
seeing it and engaging in evasive maneuvers.  But the cold front coming off her suggested she didn’t like Marcus, and since she assumed him to be his friend, she didn’t like him any better.

A cell phone trilled in the tiny cabin, and while he glanced at Tagawa, both Tony and Marcus glanced at him.  Since it wasn’t playing The X-Files theme, he belatedly realized it was his own. “Oh, shit,” he exclaimed, finding the phone in his pocket.  He’d forgotten he even had the phone.  He pulled it out, and snapped, “What?”

There was a long, startled pause before a voice asked, “Have I called at a bad time?”

Angel. Somehow that was the last voice he expected to hear on the line.  It was weird when his separate worlds collided like this. “I dunno - what’s this about?”

“I can call back -”

“Just spit it out.”

Angel sighed, and for the first time he realized the vampire sounded … well, down.  Maybe even kind of depressed. “I got some results on those pills of Yasha's that you gave me.  I thought you might want to hear what we found.”

“Yeah, of course.”

“Sorry it took awhile, things have been … “ He paused momentarily. “You don’t know where Bob is, do you?”

“No.” That wasn’t good. “Why d’ya ask?  'Need him?”

He let out a slight, humorless scoff. “No, not anymore.  It’s just … things have been majorly fucked up lately.  More than usual.”

“I know the feeling.”

“Are you on a helicopter?  I hear rotors.”

Since the cell phone connection wasn’t the best, Logan attributed that to vampire hearing. “Yeah. Marcus’s taking me on an aerial tour of Hong Kong.” Marcus peered past Tony, and gave him a curious look, mouthing, ‘Who is it?’ He mouthed back ‘Angel’, and left it at that, looking out the window to avoid Tagawa’s confused look.  The city skidded away below them, looking like a field of jeweled daggers.

“Really?  Should I go? Are you being shot at or something?”

If Marc knew he was constantly equated with violence, he’d probably find it hilarious. “Nah, it’s cool.
For now.  So, whaddya got for me?”

“Well, the lab’s … kind of in disarray right now, so I can only give you partial results.  But it seems the bottles you brought in are full of mystical poisons.”

“What does that mean exactly?”

“Well, it means they kill mystical things, or cast mystical ailments on any unfortunates who take them.  We did identify one specifically, Nuskulium, a toxin fatal to Sclerran demons.”

“Never heard of ‘em.”

“I’d kind of hope not.” He heard Angel opening a refrigerator, and realized he was calling him from wherever he lived. What time was it in Los Angeles?  “They’re infiltrators; extremely nasty.”

“Infiltrators?”

“They basically enter a human body and alter its genetic code.  The person starts physically changing into a Sclerran host - Sclerran hosts don’t exists in this dimension, but the Sclerrans do; it seems they can survive in sewers if they can’t find a host - and the person basically because the slave of the Sclerran parasite.  By the time a person has been altered, there’s no way to kill the inner Sclerran without killing them too.”

“But this Nuskulium, whatever, would take ‘em out?”

“If an infected person took them, yes.”

“You guys are immune to ‘em, right?”

Angel paused. “You guys? What do you mean “you guys”?  I tho- oh, wait.  There’s someone else there, right?  A civilian?”

“You got it.”

“Ahh, okay.” He paused, and he heard something thunk on a countertop.  Bottle of beer?  Blood? “Yes, vampires are immune. One demon cannot infect another; it’s usually like putting two male Siamese fighting fish in the same bowl.”

“Fight to the death.”

“Yeah. And while Sclerran’s are bad … nothing fights like a pissed off vampire. Trust me, I know. What’s theirs is theirs, and they don’t give it up easily, especially to some pissant interloper.” He took a drink of something, then sighed again. “Yasha was a vampire.  She smelled like one, and she didn’t have scales. Sclerrans are covered with scales, but armored ones, kind of like armadillos.”

“So why do you think she had them?”

“I couldn’t begin to guess. They’re not exactly a common form of demon either.”

“Could it effect something else?”

“Still looking into that, but it’s unlikely. The only other thing we have an I.D. on is Boitatan, a version of a witch’s brew in capsule form; it basically enslaves a person or demon to the being who gave it to them until the spell wears off.  It’s hard to say how long that might be, but I think the average is about seventy two hours.”

“And then what?”

“Uh, with this stuff?  The victim burns up, from the inside out.  See, the spell itself needs lots of energy, and in a bit of ironic nastiness, it extracts it all from the victim -”

“So, then why have this?” He interrupted impatiently.  He could no longer see the cityscape running below them like a river - his mind was too busy making connections that were tenuous at best.  But very worrisome.

“Well, I’ve been thinking about that.” Angel then paused dramatically, and Logan wondered if he was being an asshole, or just trying to figure out the best way to say something terrible. “Don’t take this the wrong way, Logan, but … uh … are you sure she was out of the killing game?  I mean, if her curse only prevented her from taking pleasure in killing … that doesn’t mean she would necessarily give it up, does it? It just means it wouldn't give her any joy.  I know what she told you, but -”

Angel went on, but Logan no longer heard him.  He remembered exactly how he met Yasha, and how violently opposed she was to Fujimori, to the point where she would save a mysterious gaijin like him, even though he, too, was after the life/death sword.  She'd really wanted to wipe Fujimori off the map.....Fujimori, the demon gangster, who was swallowing up all the Yakuza territory because they couldn’t fight the threat he represented.  Fujimori and Yasha both seemed to loathe each other, but he'd never heard the whole story behind that, had he?  There must have been much more history there to feed such consumptive hatred - but he never knew it.

And of course Yasha still killed - hadn’t she killed some of the faux Vantha cult when she joined Angel and the Sisters in looking for him after he’d been kidnapped?  She'd been very good at killing, just like him, and she'd been especially good with her blades.

He felt a cold, ominous twinge in his stomach as he suddenly wondered just who, exactly, Yasha may have been working for....and why she'd really wanted him.