3

Logan wondered just how much influence Bob was having on him as he made breakfast.

It wasn’t like he didn’t cook; he did, but usually only when he was living by himself in a cabin in the woods, far from places where he could actually grab something already made for him.  He was just restless today, still tired from lack of sleep, and yet fully awake from that dream/nightmare/whatever the hell.  He was more sure than ever that it was a warning, but did it have to be so damn vague?  Fire in the sky; big ass comet.  Maybe if he was an astronomer, he could figure that out.

He started throwing a whole bunch of stuff in a sauté pan on the stove, not completely sure what he was making. An omelet? A weird one with lots of vegetables and herbs, and he was always amazed by what appeared in Bob’s fridge. He would swear that stuff appeared in it randomly at varying intervals; you could close the door on a shelf with nothing but bok choy and a can of beer on it, and then you’d open it later and find a six pack, a leftover pizza, and an ice cream cake that had on it, inexplicably, "Happy Birthday Miroslav". But it made a perverse kind of sense - if he had a magic jukebox, why not a magic fridge?

Helga came out as he was sprinkling red pepper infused oil in the pan. “Why do you use a knife to cut stuff?” Hel asked. “You got claws.”

He glared at her. “Now that’s just gross.”

“Why? They go back in you, and your immune system kills off all germs and stuff. They’re probably cleaner than everything else.” She reached around him and stole a slice of pepperoncini from the pan.

He did not relent in his glare. “Did you just hear yourself? That’s disgusting. I kill things with my claws.”

She just shrugged, and her tail slapped him on the butt. “Yeah, well, I do lots of thing with my tail. Doesn’t bother me.”

He simply raised an eyebrow at that, not sure if she was joking or not. It could be really hard to tell with her - she’d been with Bob too long, and had mastered the art of deadpan.

Over breakfast, he told her about his weird dream thing, and asked if Bob ever had premonitions. She shrugged half-heartedly. “He never told me if he did. But he kinda knows everything anyway, right? Perhaps that’s just an alternate form of premonition.”

Logan really didn’t know how that worked, or if it worked that way, but he’d have to wait around if he wanted to talk to Bob about it, and he didn’t feel he had the time. She told him about the fire demons that she thought were taking advantage of the fire season, as there were oddly patterned fires springing up around the fringes of the city that looked like arson, but unlike any arson anyone had ever seen. She wasn’t sure which fire demons might be responsible - there were apparently many - but she was worried what might happen if these idiots were working for a fire god who wanted Bren burnt to a crisp. She was going to get Giles on trying to narrow down who these flaming idiots were. It was possible his “vision” and the fire demons were connected, but neither of them really knew.

It was then that his stomach knotted up, fiercely enough that he had to put his fork down. “Could it be Camaxtli? Didn’t he have a whole thing with fire?” Of course he said Camaxtli, but he meant Jean, and she knew it.

“I don’t see why Camaxtli would give a shit about this,” she assured him. “He’d be exposing himself for no gain whatsoever. I doubt it’s him.”

Doubt - that wasn’t a no or a yes. That was a qualified “maybe”.  Aw, fuck.

He had his long overdue shower and borrowed some of Bob's clothes, although apparently he had a magic closet as well, because he actually found things in his size. It must have been nice being able to warp reality like that, in a way so subtle and pervasive that things just altered to accommodate you. He wouldn't know.

They then headed over to Angel's, Hel calling in to the bar to make sure Lia had a handle on everything. (Lia actually talked to her without hanging up - but then again, Hel was technically her boss.)

By the time they got in, the second shift was mostly there. Marc and Matt were debating with Xander who actually served the best coffee in the area, and a tired looking Giles was staring at the three of them like they were completely insane. He seemed to perk up when they came in. "Oh good, sanity," he said dryly.

"Tea's better," Logan said, knowing that's what Giles wanted to hear.

Marc, Matt, and Xander all groaned in disbelief, Marc shaking his head, while Xander said, "Well of course you're gonna side with the British guy. You're from Canada - Britain Junior."

"I thought we were America's gay cousin," he replied sharply, throwing a previous Xander comment right back at him.

"Hey," Marc snapped, looking at Xander. "What's wrong with being the gay cousin?"

Xander briefly flashed Logan a hateful look, mainly because he really didn't want Marc being mad at him. Was he more scared of Marc than he was of him? Maybe, but to be fair, Marc could paralyze him any time he wanted - Logan could just beat his ass. A beating was preferable to being totally aware of everything but being unable to move or talk. "Nothing ... unless you're the Charles Nelson Reilly kinda gay cousin. Then it's annoying."

"Who's Charles Nelson Reilly?" Matt wondered.

Xander gave him an exaggerated look of shock. "Oh. My. God. How young are you?"

Somehow the three of them had managed to get along, and now made up their own comedy troupe, with Matt unfortunately always playing the role of the straight man (no pun intended). They were unconsciously mimicking each other's wardrobe as well, although Marc still remained the nattiest of the bunch. They were all wearing jeans, but Marc was wearing a black shirt of some material that looked as slick as oil (was it silk?) and looked too hip for the room. Matt wore a pale yellow muscle t-shirt with the phrase "I'm Not Gay - But My Boyfriend Is" across the chest (why did Logan have the feeling Marc bought that for him?), and Xander wore a worn brown t-shirt featuring the Tootsie Pop owl on it. To be completely fair, none of them looked like god killers.

"You know, all in all, I'd rather have a margarita," Hel said, sitting on the edge of Bren's empty desk. She wore cargo shorts and a torn Porcupine Tree t-shirt ... and yet, she actually did look like a god killer. Maybe it was the green skin, or the fact that she was wearing a K-Bar in one of the loops of the cargo shorts.

"My kinda girl," Marc said, flashing her a bright white smile.

"I've looked up Letum," Giles said primly, trying to turn everyone's attention back to the job at hand. He still looked like a librarian in a white button down shirt and tweed pants, but at least he'd acknowledged the weather by leaving his collar unbuttoned. "Mythologically, he's not classified as a god but as a hell beast."

"The difference being ..?" Marc prompted.

Giles did something he really loathed to do: he shrugged. "Rather large, actually, but since mythology is an incomplete record at best, it's possible he really is a minor god, only he was misidentified."

"That probably honked him off," Xander said, stifling a yawn. "I mean, you go through god school, you cram until four in the morning and miss the virgin sacrifices, and yet they put you in the remedial hell beast class for all time. I'd be pissed off too."

Giles rubbed his eyes. "It's too early in the morning for you, Xander."

"So there's nothing on his powers, what he can do, his cult?" Logan asked.

Giles shook his head. "No. We just have to assume we've seen the last of them."

Helga shrugged with her hands. "Well then, let's move on. Surely we have enough gods to contend with."

"Surely we do," Giles agreed.

"Quit calling me Shirley," Xander exclaimed, and grinned like a smart ass.

Yes, they'd all seen Airplane, but they all refused to acknowledge him.

"Speaking of which, we got some fire demons that need I.D.-ing," she told Giles, and the two of them got in a huddle to talk it over.

Logan slumped on the free end of the couch, next to Matt.  Matt looked at him askance for a moment, his eyes as blue as the Pacific (which was ironic really, considering his powers), and said, "You look tired."

He sighed, too weary and troubled for sarcasm. “I am tired.”

Marc leaned forward, looking over Matt at him. “See bud, I told ya rooming with Hel was a bad idea.”

“It wasn’t her. I don’t think I’m gonna sleep properly ‘til this is all over.”

There was a knock on the door, and before anyone could respond, the door opened. Logan already knew it was Rags, as he could smell the celery scent of his blood. “Ehya,” he said, and looked hung over, his dirty blond hair mussed, and dark circles heavy beneath his yellow crystal eyes. Now technically Rags was supposed to be sober, since he ended up in the hospital with alcohol poisoning last time, but he was an addict and it wasn’t that easy to give something up, even if it did nearly kill you. “Got sumfing to report.”

Thrak squelched in behind him - Rags helpfully held the door open for him - and Matt stiffened and pulled up his legs, as if he was about to climb up the couch. “What the hell ..?”

Marc patted his back reassuringly. “That’s Thrak. Don’t worry, he’s on our side.  I think.”

“He’s slime!”

Thrak gargled at that, and Rags translated. “’e said e’d appreciate it if you didn’ say it like it was a bad fing.”

“What’s up?” Helga asked, getting things back on topic once more.

“Early this mornin’, while Thrak was takin’ a fare ’ome, ‘e saw a bright flash of light somewhere in the ‘ollywood ‘ills. But ‘e didn’t ‘ear any noise, and you’d think you would if it was an explosion. ‘e drove around, tryin’ to see if there was a film set up somewhere out there, but there wasn’t. An’ no one can break down a film set that fast.”

“A flash of light?” Xander asked, and he eyed the waist high pile of clear gelatin skeptically. “I hate to be a buzz kill here, but so fucking what?”

Thrak gargled again, sounding like a clogged toilet, and the whole plump pillar of his body vibrated slightly, like a Jello salad on a fault line. Was that how he talked - by moving his body around? Because he had no obvious mouth, or face, or any other recognizable body part. It also occurred to Logan that if he opened up his power just a little, pulled just a bit from the reservoir that Bob had left him, he could understand everything Thrak was saying. But he didn’t want to, mainly because it struck him as wrong that he could understand a language that he was physically incapable of speaking. It seemed like cheating. “’e says ‘e knows a supernatural light when ‘e sees ‘em,” Rags translated, sounding a bit pissed off on Thrak’s behalf.

“A supernatural light?” Giles repeated, looking and sounding intrigued. “Such as a dimensional rift opening up?”

Thrak gargled, and Rags said, “Yeah.” Presumably these two things were related.

Logan wondered if what he saw in his dream could somehow be interpreted that way. Dimensional rift?  Maybe.  It did look like the sky was peeling up from the burn site, the world opening up. Yeah, maybe.

“Can he show us where this was?” Giles asked. “We might be able to determine what happened.”

Thrak gargled for a bit, and Rags said, “’e can show you approximately where it was, but not exactly.”

“Good enough. We only need to be in the area to figure it out.”

“How are we gonna figure it out?” Marc wondered.

There was silence as an answer, and Logan glanced up to see Giles pointing at him.  Oh, yeah.  Fuck.

Xander gave him a skeptical look. “You can smell dimensional rifts?  C’mon man - ”

“No,” he interrupted testily. “Bob opens dimensional rifts like they’re doors to other rooms. His energy will know when one’s around.”

“Oh.”

“What does it mean if a dimensional rift was opened?” Matt wondered. “What do we do then?”

That was a very good question. Luckily, Helga had an answer. “It means we’re dealing with a major player. We might be able to figure out who before we have to face them, giving us an advantage.”

“We haven’t been dealing with major players?” Matt replied, sounding and looking baffled.

“We’ve been dealing with avatars and chosens,” Giles informed him kindly, in his school librarian voice. “None over that has dared a face to face confrontation.”

“They’re shit scared of the ‘oly Sifters,” Rags noted.

“So we’re dealing with a god who’s either crazy or suicidal?” Marc asked. “Gee, that sounds like fun.”

“We’ve done it before, we can do it again,” Logan said, but without much enthusiasm. You’d think by now, gods would have a better mental health plan.

****

You could hear the muttering from two sewer tunnels away.

It was a strangely elliptical demonic language, the voices responding both gravelly and smooth, and both apparently coming from the same being in spite of the shift in octaves. Angel didn’t know the language, didn’t recognize it, and in the end, didn’t much care. He knew this demon was giving off a feeling of far too much power for its compact, squatty frame - it was an assassin.

It appeared to be a Maski demon, five and a half feet tall with a broad chest and thick, powerful legs, its skin a leathery, mottled brownish-grey, like leaf mold or fungus. It had no hair, and its ovoid head seemed a bit too large for its body, its scalp and forehead all of one gleaming piece, its eyes as big as six pack rings and almost entirely pupil, its lack of nose made up for by a mouth that seemed to extend from one side of its head to the other. It gave the demon a friendly, almost toad like appearance, which was quickly dispelled when it opened its too wide mouth and revealed three different rows of needle thin yellow fangs.

They ate people. Now Humans were the preferred prey, but honestly they weren’t that picky; as long as the flesh was warm, they’d take it. They were the gourmands of the demon world. Their skin glistened with an oozy slime which contained a paralyzing neurotoxin, which they used to overpower their prey and consume them alive. Not a pleasant death, but whenever you ended up being digested while still living, it was never a good death.

The Maski was wearing a big Matrix like black trench coat over khaki Dockers and a loud blue and red Hawaiian print shirt. If it could have found a pair of sunglasses to fit its head, it would have looked like any random tourist on Sunset Boulevard. As it sloshed through the ankle deep sludgy water, muttering to itself, Angel detected the faintest yellow glow in its otherwise grey eyes.

He was tired, but he’d gotten a couple of hours sleep. Vampires really didn’t need as much sleep as normal Humans, but you did grow accustomed to it, and if your blood consumption was down, you needed the rest more. To try and pep himself up, he’d had three glasses of pig’s blood before he left the apartment. He really didn’t know if it helped, but he liked to think that it had. If Logan could stand getting by on a few hours sleep every two days, he could as well.

“Froggy -”

“- going -”

“ - courting?” The Weird Sisters asked, coming up behind the Maski.

It paused and turned, Angel catching the briefest glimpse of its terrifying scowl. “What do you parasites want?”

The Sisters were oddly dressed as usual, in big Doc Martens and burgundy leggings, with red t-shirts depicting the Russian flag, and waist length silver metallic coats. They’d had their hair cut into shoulder length bobs that made them look exactly sixteen, precisely the age they were when they died. For some reason known only to them, they were wearing gold glitter lipstick. “We -”

“- want -”

“- to rub -”

“- your head -”

“- for luck.” They explained, with their creepy, empty smiles.

They were totally off script, but then again, Angel knew he couldn’t count on Belinda and Beatrice to be on script. They could do nothing but be strange - they just enjoyed it too much.

Just from his posture alone, Angel knew the Maski was thoroughly baffled. “What? Are you fucking nuts?”

“Yes,” they agreed in unison, still smiling.

He shook his head and turned his back on them with a dismissive wave. “Leave me the fuck alone. I’m busy.”

“Going -”

“- after -”

“- the Gorgons’ -”

“- Chosen? Not -”

“- smart.”

His big eyes narrowed evilly, and he turned back around, the glow in them more pronounced as he hissed, “How do you know that?”

“We’re -”

“- the -”

“- good guys,” they said, and were unable to keep a straight face.

Even the Maski assumed they were having fun at his expense. “If you want to kill him first, I don’t care. Just leave me alone.”

The Maski turned around and started walking away from them again, showing them his back for a second time. That was a huge mistake, but he had to learn that the hard way. Before the Maski knew what was happening, the Sisters had each grabbed an arm from behind, careful to avoid the demon’s exposed skin, and placed a foot on his back, yanking backwards just as he realized that they had grabbed him. His arms came off with a sickening wet noise, and he stumbled forward, blood as brown as sewer runoff spewing from the ragged stumps of his shoulder. His mouth opened and closed like a fish that had just been landed, his eyes wide and shocky. “What the fuck ..?!” he roared, spinning around to face them.

The Sisters held up his arms like they were bowling trophies. “We -”

“- didn’t -”

“- like your -”

“- attitude.”

“You bitches are dead,” he snarled, lowering his head and stepping forward menacingly, which was difficult for a guy with both his arms off. His eyes were glowing powerfully enough that it lit up the sewer tunnel like fluorescents. The Sisters continued to grin at him, unimpressed and unafraid. Perhaps because Angel was sneaking up on the Maski, who hadn’t noticed him skulking in the shadows.

The Maski started to turn at the last second, as it must have heard the sword slicing through the air, but it didn’t complete the turn before the sword sliced into him, cleaving his oversized head in two and not stopping until it imbedded itself in a bone in his sternum. The rot stench of its blood and internal organs were overwhelming and slightly nauseating.

“Did you really have to rip off his arms?” Angel asked them. The Maski’s body was still standing, even though he was now bisected and the two different sides of him were slowly pulling away under the influence of gravity, but it was very dead. It was an ordinary sword, nothing special, but Rags had blessed it, so now it was sacred and highly dangerous to anything demonic. That included him, so he had to be especially careful in handling it.

“You -”

“- said -”

“- to distract -”

“- him,” they replied cheerfully, tossing the arms aside. They landed with a splash in the muck.

Angel frowned at them, which only made their smiles broader. He made a mental note to be more specific in his instructions next time, but he had a nagging feeling it wasn’t going to matter at all.