It was a brutally hot and bright day already, the pitiless light washing out the landscape into several related hues of brown and orange, with an occasional strip of chalky red and sprig of green to try and break up the monotony. It was like driving into a half finished, rejected Georgia O'Keefe painting.

Travis kept up a cheery, non-stop monologue, but he became background noise to Logan, the annoying, empty chatter of a myna bird. He'd ended up borrowing a pair of Marc's sunglasses, because he got tired of squinting, and he could feel his eyeballs shriveling in their sockets from the heat.

Santo Marco was more an idea than an actual place - enclaves of houses and buildings huddled together protectively, trying to make their own shade in this furnace of a land. The houses of the oil workers were split levels that could have been at home anywhere in the States, while the locals seemed to have what amounted to fancy shacks, but luckily they lived in their own partitioned areas so a class war couldn't erupt.

There was a "downtown" - a strip mall equivalent containing shops and an astonishingly clean looking bar, and a small "plaza" containing a water fountain made of tiers, four discs of grey marble not so much spewing water as dribbling it right now. Marc whispered to him sarcastically, "Shouldn't that be a fountain of oil?" It would make a hell of a lot more sense, and it was probably a more plentiful resource than clean water around these parts.

But beyond these were desolate wastes and rolling hills, some of rock and some yellow green from the wild grasses, and the nothingness spread out towards a dust clogged horizon filled with nothing but oil derricks. They grew closer at a snail's pace, like these were in fact mountains hewn from metal as opposed to stone. He could feel the drills pounding through the ground from here.

It was about mile two when they drove past what looked like a cluster of clapboard shacks and houses so scoured by sand they were little better than huts themselves. It looked like a long abandoned housing project, surrounded completely by a high wire fence, topped with razor wire. There were bright yellow and black "Danger:Keep Out!" signs plastered all over it, in three different languages. The gate was shut by rusty chains and padlocks, and it gave off an air of abandonment that was eerie.

No, that wasn't what was chilling. It was something else, something he couldn't put his finger on - a pervasive evil rising from the place like a subtle stench. And Travis was giving it a wide berth, taking a road on a slight incline that made it look as if the whole discarded town was falling away beneath them. "What is that place?" He shouted to Travis, pointing down at the ghost town. Logan found it almost impossible to pull his eyes away from it. Even from here, he could see what must have been toys laying in the middle of rutted paths, as if suddenly dropped by careless children, but now so coated with dust they were barely distinguishable from the lumps of desiccated plants and cairns of dried animal bones, still roughly in the shape of the things they had once been.

"Oh, that's just where we have the transformers and other electrical equipment," Travis shouted back. "Dangerous shit like that."

But he was lying - well, not about the dangerous shit. But about everything else.

Logan stared at the abandoned housing project as it receded behind them, and he could feel the pull and repulsion at the very same time. He wanted to go to it; he wanted to run far away from it.

As he looked back at Travis, he saw that there was suddenly someone in the passenger seat: Jean, looking over the seat at him, and smiling slyly. It was obvious that Travis didn't see her, or Marcus ( he hadn't pulled his guns, had he ). He stared at her, and wondered if that lost city was where she dwelled.

Marc nudged him, and when Logan glanced at him, he jerked his head back in the direction of the ghost town, wordlessly asking if they should check that out later. Logan nodded, and looked back towards the front seat.

Jean was gone. He wondered if they had just decided to do what she ( it ) wanted them to do.

***

Every time Travis introduced them to fellow employees - almost all rugged men of one variety or another, muscled to some degree - there was a sort of vacuousness to them that made Logan start humming the Sex Pistol's "Pretty Vacant" ( "We're pretty, pretty vacant, and we don't care.."). If Bob were here, he'd probably have been singing it. They seemed content in their emptiness, and he almost envied them.

They had a rough, grueling job in one of the more inhospitable landscapes he had seen for some time. But even those men who had angry red sunburns on the back of their necks seemed strangely sedate; there, and yet not quite. They gave no sign of being possessed - and could so many men be possessed at once? - so he assumed they were all stoned on petrochemical fumes, or the company gave one hell of a perks package for a job well done.

But on the off chance drugs were involved, he and Marcus were careful not to eat or drink anything offered at the commissary.

Once they escaped Travis and got outside the ring of white quonset huts that made up the company area outside the oil wells, Marcus said, "Are you getting a creep factor here?"

"Deafcon one creep factor," he assured him.

"Do you think they know of the demony goodness around here?"

He could only shrug as they looked out at the washed out blue sky looming over the toasted orange and brown landscape between the metal latticework of the derricks. "This is all fucked up. Pick up anyone in infrared who might be a demon or a mutant?"

He shook his head. "Nope. Smell one?"

"Nope." He didn't bother to say he had seen the Jean demon again; no point. He was being fucked with, led on, and he didn't know why. He knew in good faith he should warn Marcus, but of what? Warn him they were singling him out? Maybe Marcus was right - maybe they were racists demons.

"Think we should go back to that town you saw?" Marcus said, just as his cell phone rang.

He reached into the front pocket of his safari shirt and pulled out his phone, glancing around warily for any eavesdroppers before flipping it open and saying, "Yeah?'

Logan could easily hear the familiar voice on the other end of the line. "Hello? Is this Marcus?"

"Yep. Hold on." Marc tossed him the phone without warning, but Logan caught it easily. "What you got, Wes?" He wondered.

He didn't seem too perturbed by the sudden shift in people on the line. "Bad news. You need to leave now, and I'm serious - set the macho bullshit aside."

"It's not bullshit," he snapped, before he realized what he was saying. "Would you leave, Wesley?"

"Absolutely. And come back as soon as I had the right people to beat this thing back."

"What is this thing?"

"I'm still working on pinpointing it, but I'll need some more information from you to do that. What I have now indicates there's some kind of mystical sinkhole in the area."

"Mystical sinkhole? What does that mean? Like a ... a rip in the dimension?" To escape the look Marc was giving him, Logan rubbed his dry eyes.

"It's not quite as straightforward as that. It may eventually become a rift, though; I can't really rule that out. I can tell you that I have discovered that demons have been fleeing the area in droves for the past several weeks. But since there were never that many demons in the area to begin with - only certain types enjoy civil wars - it never registered on our radar."

"But isn't demons runnin' off a good thing?" He asked, and for some reason he looked off towards the road. And there was Jean standing there, arms crossed over her chest, head cocked at a curious angle. She was in the black leather uniform he last saw her in, but she had unzipped the jacket, so it now exposed the red shirt she was wearing beneath. Somehow he didn't think Jean had ever worn a tank top like that, nonetheless one that exposed that much cleavage. She smiled at him, and her lips were the color of arterial blood.

"Sometimes. But sometimes they're like rats on a ship."

"Harbingers."

"Quite. And while I'm looking into the possibilities now, my best guess is something is creating this sinkhole, and is trying to use it to come through into this world."

"Something bad."

"Obviously."

Marcus was standing off to one side, looking around and trying to listen to the conversation. Jean continued to stare at him and smile, as if she heard every single thing, even from her distance. Of course, Logan had no problem believing that. "She said this was a gateway."

"She? Oh, the dead woman?" Wesley grunted darkly. "Well, I guess that confirms my theory then. It also means you can forget what I said about leaving - you can't anymore."

"Why not?" He really didn't like the dismissive tone of his voice.

"Because it has seen you; it knows of you. If it wants you to stay, you're staying, and since
it's already shown itself to you, it wants you to stay. Although I must admit I can't fathom why. No offense."

"None taken." The Jean thing mouthed something at him. It looked like she said "Who says it's about you?" but he preferred looking at the ground rather than her. He was so angry he could feel a vein in his left temple throbbing, but he couldn't lose it now; he had to stay on topic and figure this damn thing out. "Could this thing be affecting everyone in the area? We just met some of the oil workers, and there is something majorly fucked up about them."

"Such as what?"

"I can't really explain it. They seem Stepford Wife - ish, happy and hollow. Going through the motions."

Wesley paused briefly as he considered that, and this time Logan heard a strange noise in the background, like an ... espresso machine? What the fuck - was he calling him from a coffee shop? "Do they smell dead? Does Marcus read them as cold?"

Logan started slightly, and found Jean smiling at him in a way that suggested she was trying not to laugh. "Are you sayin' they're zombies?"

"No fuckin' way," Marcus gasped, although more in general shock than actual denial. Jean's laughing eyes looked more red than brown.

"I'm just asking," Wes replied, as if he had just asked him if the weather was nice there. Maybe that's why the few Watchers he'd met were all British - they had perfected being blasé about the most extraordinarily fucked up things.

"They smelled like men - living men - and registered as normal to Marc."

"Damn right," Marcus agreed.

"If it can alter perceptions, it's possible these men are living in a truly alternate state - or it is manipulating both your mutations, so you can't see the truth right in front of you."

Logan was going to deny it, but suddenly the smell of Jean hit his nostrils, and he realized Wes was right. This thing had made him smell Jean, feel her touch - bastard. It could manipulate his senses, the one thing he counted on not to betray him, and if it could screw with him, it could screw with Marc. Shit. "Is there any way to counteract that?"

Wesley paused for too long before he said, "I'll research it, see what I can find." A polite way of saying no, Logan surmised. "Has Marcus seen anything unusual? Beyond the spotlight last night."

"No." Logan almost told him how he was "attacked" last night, but didn't.

"Are you still seeing the dead woman?"

As if she heard him ask, Jean waved politely at them. "She's right here."

Marcus looked around, and asked quietly,"Where?"

Logan pointed down the road, as Wesley did a Mr. Obvious thing over the phone. "That's not good."

"No fucking kidding," he snapped, as Marc started down the road, presumably to get a better look. Where the fuck was Bob when he needed him? And that's when it occurred to him. "Is it targeting me 'cause it knows I've associated with the Drai'shajan?"

Jean moved to the left, to be seen beyond Marc, and gave him a thumbs up gesture, grinning like she was proud of him. Wes, for his part, was quite for what seemed to be a very long time. Long enough for someone's espresso to be made, anyways. "The Drai'shajan?" He repeated, like he'd said he was a personal friend of Winston Churchill. "You're saying you know them?"

"Yeah, so do you - Bob. You didn't know?"

Again, the long pause. Marcus was now looking at him, making a "Where is she?" gesture with his hands. Jean was standing right beside him, looking at them both with a bemused expression. He though about making a gesture for Marc to hit out to his left, to see if he could make contact, but that was stupid - he could never hit a figment of his imagination. If that's what she was ... but he saw Mariko like that, thanks to Sygratha, but it was actually her - her personality, the intangibles that made her who she was, even though he couldn't consciously remember those thing: Sygratha dragged them out of his mind anyways. But this very much wasn't Jean; this was something using her form to get to him. It had the physical aspects down, but not the intangibles, not the personality. He wondered if that was some kind of clue.

"Bob is - " Wesley began in utter disbelief, then scoffed at himself. "Good lord, that's so illogical ... and yet, it explains everything about him. Why didn't I see that before? We could have gone to him for help. Not that I trust him, mind you - "

"What does that mean anyways? Drai'shajan?" Logan gestured for Marc to come back as he wondered why Bob had never told them what he was. But then again, he'd never exactly come out and admitted it to him either.

"It depends on the dialect. The most common usage translates it out to "The Fallen", but in a more obscure argot it can mean "Trickster". In either case, it's a myth that many demons use to scare each other."

"Are you serious?" Bob being referred to as a trickster didn't seem that surprising.

"The Drai'shajan is supposedly the "lost" Higher Being, one of the Powers That Be. It - he - was supposedly kicked out of the Higher Realms for some infraction or another, and was condemned to Earth in a demon form. Somehow - how depends on the story - he regained some of his powers, but remained in demon disguise. He is perceived as a thorn in the side of gods and demons alike, simply because his motivations remain murky, and he has never chosen a clear side. The only sure thing is the appearance of the Drai'shajan will ruin your plans - whatever you're doing, the Drai'shajan guarantees it's over."

That certainly did sound like Bob - the ultimate buzzkill. But usually in a good way. Marcus said, "I'm gonna get us a jeep." Logan nodded, and saw that Jean had followed Marc back here. She remained out of arm's reach, but he could smell her quite clearly over the scent of the oil wells, and he almost couldn't hear anything over the roaring of the blood in his ears. He turned his back on her and looked down at the landscape, trying to find that lost city.

"I can't believe he was under our nose all this time - " Wes went on, talking to himself.

"If we can find the place where this mystical sinkhole is located, can we close it up?" Logan asked, interrupting him.

"That's the only place where you can close it up. The problem is we have to know who or what is behind this to know how to close it properly. Otherwise we could just make it worse."

"That's possible?"

That made him pause. "Well, in theory it's possible."

Jean stepped into his line of vision. "This is only the tip of the iceberg," she said, in a strangely kind way.

He glared at her and gave her the finger, which only made her grace him with a sad, almost patronizing smile. "Marc and I are gonna check out what we think is the hot spot. If you want, I can keep the line open and give you a runnin' commentary."

Wesley sighed heavily. "Fine, but I really don't think you should go. You can't trust a single thing you see, hear, smell ... especially if you're being targeted. It wants something from you, or it wants you to do something for it."

Jean stepped aside as Marcus drove up in the jeep, the tires kicking up gritty clouds of orange dust. "What could it want me to do?" He asked, glancing up at her. She gave him a hard smile that didn't reach her eyes.

Wesley paused for what seemed a suspicious length of time. "What you do best, Logan."

He closed his eyes, feeling like a fool. Yes, of course, what other good was he? He killed things; he killed a lot of things. He opened his eyes to see Marcus looking at him expectantly from the driver's seat, and Jean lounging in the back, seemingly waiting for him as well. "It doesn't have to be this way," she told him. "We can trade. What they want for what you want. Not all demons are duplicitous."

He wished he could ask what she thought he wanted, but not with Wes on the line, and Marc gesturing to him impatiently. But she must have read his mind, because she said, "Her. She's not really dead, Logan - you can have her back; we can make that happen."

"Are you still there?" Wes asked.

"What's the deal?" Jean continued.

Marc said, "Hey, you catatonic all the sudden?"

"The deal is this: take her place. Reality cannot become too unbalanced. So if you want her, you step into the void where she is supposed to be. Do you think you can do that?" Her gaze was truly curious, as if she couldn't begin to guess his answer.

Logan mentally reminded himself demons lied; it was what they were best at. And yet ... what if they could bring her back? What if they had that power?

What if they could do what Bob wasn't here to do?

"I'm here," he told Wesley, as he easily vaulted into the passenger seat of the jeep.

Most likely it was lying; Logan knew that. But if there was any chance at all he could get Jean back, didn't he have to try? She never should have died, not like that.

His life for hers? He didn't even have to think twice about it. If he could trust them, he would make that deal in a heartbeat.