Not everywhere, though - just over among the Wesley scrum. The vampires seemed stiff, as if they just engaged in a mass game of “freeze tag”, and Wes crawled out from a small pile of them, bloodied and bruised, but otherwise okay. His bottom lip was split, he had blood trickling from his nose, and a long, horizontal cut along the side of his neck that was too deep to be a scratch ... holy shit, did one of them try and bite him? Weirdly enough, the vampires Angel were fighting hadn’t slowed down one iota.

Scott started to pick off various vampires going after Angel, while Wesley retrieved his gun and shot a couple, coming over to join him. “What the hell did you do?” He wondered, not sure what he expected Wesley to say.

Not what he actually said. “Stasis grenade.”

“What?”

“It encases the victims in a spell of null time. It only lasts for ten minutes, though, so we have to hurry.” Wesley pulled another grenade looking thing out of his pocket, pulled the pin, and said something in Latin before lobbing it into the crowd of vampires attacking Angel. He then told him to, “Get behind me,” and nearly yanked Scott’s arm out of its socket pulling him aside.

Scott did as he asked, but then said, “What about Ang-”

That sound again, an explosion that wasn’t quite one, a muffled noise that felt unnatural, but in a way he could never explain, not even to himself. The majority of the vampires going after Angel froze, including Clarice in mid-lunge, but Angel shoot his head, as if trying to clean the mud out of his ears. "Thanks," he said, wiping blood from his own split lip.

"How-" Scott began, but Wesley didn't let him finish.

"The grenades are Wolfram and Hart property; they don't affect those protected by one of their counter spells."

"Ah. Make sense." No, actually it didn't, but any talk of magic made Scott's head want to implode. He thought David Blaine was full of shit, and yet they kept wanting him to believe this. He could, but only if he wasn't forced to think about it.

Angel seemed to look for something on the ground before picking up a slender tree branch. He snapped it in half, then drove the pointy end of it straight through Clarice's back. She didn't explode; she didn't even move. But then again, "stasis bubble" - she probably would when time resumed.

"That's cheating," Spike pointed out.

Angel just shrugged. "I don't care. Come on, let's go."

"I'll keep an eye on 'em," Rags said, gesturing to all the frozen vampires. It was like some weird, rejected display in Madam Trousseau’s Wax Museum, set in a muddy back lot. "Ya know, in case they wake up."

Angel scowled at him, aware it was just Rags getting out of a fight, but Wesley had other plans. "Give us three minutes," the Englishman told the Cockney demon. "Then go back and get him." "Him" had to have been Logan - who else could it have been? Somehow, he didn't think Lorne was coming along for this ride. "But don't ... be careful. He's not quite himself."

Rags nodded like he understood, but Scott wasn't sure he did. "Gotcha. I don't ... I can stay back, can't I?"

"Feel free," Wes said, almost dismissively. Rags had never been in this part of the fight, at least not in his mental concept of the scenario.

“What do you mean by not himself?” Scott asked, not expecting an honest answer. (They never said anything straightforward - how on Earth did Logan ever trust them?) “What’s going on?”

Wesley’s lips thinned, blood still dripping from his nose and oozing down his chin. “He’s all right, I promise you.”

“That’s not what I asked. Look, what are you “unleashing” exactly?” Wesley looked surprised. “Yeah, I heard that much. And I know he used to be some kind of assassin, a mutant killer, Weapon X. Is that what you’re doing?”

“Dear me no. Even if we could bring back that personality aspect, we wouldn’t dare.”

Angel snorted in knowing humor. “Yeah, I’ve been impaled enough for one lifetime.”

Okay, how much back story was he missing here?

They started slogging through the mud towards the mall, which now glowed from within due to an intense ruby light. The Sisters joined them, meaning the Asian girl was either frozen or unconscious - either way was good, as Scott had a feeling she wasn't going to sign up for a rematch with the Sisters. Who would?

Spike climbed painfully to his feet, still favoring his arm, which actually looked slightly discolored. He could imagine, and it was probably lucky he wasn't Human. Scott was certain no Human could bear the pain of a completely shattered arm. (And since Matt grabbed him, his bone couldn't be broken - it had to have been smashed into little tiny pieces. How long would it take that to heal?)

The closer they got to the broken wall of the mall, the more there was a ... feeling, for lack of a better term. It was something that made his skin feel almost unbearably clammy, cold sweat suddenly oozing from his pores, and a wave of nausea washed over him, nearly doubling him over, but he managed to swallow back the bile. He was not the only one who felt it.

"What the fuck was that?" Spike exclaimed, looking more pasty than usual.

No one answered, but Wesley started intoning something under his breath, in a language he couldn't identify. He had also pulled out another gun.

They had just stepped in through the hole in the wall when the Sisters said, with something akin to awe, "He's-"

"-beating-"

"-the machine."

Which made no sense, unless they meant it in some figurative way. Which they must have, because there wasn't anything mechanical in sight.

Scott wasn't sure he could process this scene.

In the center of what might have been a former showroom, there were ten bodies arranged in a loose circle, over some kind of red glowing pattern. In the center of it all was someone who was presumably Diego - a tall, arrogantly handsome man with long black hair and a wardrobe to match. He was surrounded by the same blood red aura that was lighting the circle, and it glowed in his eyes, and most vibrantly in a pendant around his neck. The pendant looked like a skeletal claw gripping a faceted crystal that now looked like nothing so much as a ruby.

Diego didn't look at them, didn't acknowledge them in any way, but still spoke to them. Only then did Scott realize he was hovering a few inches off the ground. "They told me the words," he said, and his voice seemed to echo itself, as if two men were trying to speak at once, and just kept missing each other.

The intention was to spread out, surround him, but they stayed clotted together by instinct. Scott felt a sudden coldness in his bowels, and knew what the vampires had told them out there was true - they were too late.

"The words?" Wesley repeated, trying very hard to sound unfazed. He was doing pretty good, really - he could work that stoic, British "stiff upper lip" thing - but Scott still didn't buy it.

"The words, the secret ceremonies gods don't want you to know," Diego said, in that strange, echoing voice of his. "The words that bring them back, the words that control them ... the words that allow you to possess them."

"The Heralds," Angel gasped, as if that explained everything. Maybe it did.

Diego finally looked at them, and it felt like a physical punch. His eyes not only glowed red, but bled it - blood poured down his cheeks like tears, although he smiled, revealing a piranha’s mouth full of thin, sharp, jagged teeth, not like a single vampire's mouth, but a dozen crammed into one. "Break the right one, and you find a prize inside."

He had no idea what was going on exactly - was Diego becoming Mahr or something? - but Scott knew this was somehow worse than their worse case scenario, and did what was instinctive for him: he fired a blast at Diego. Full intensity, wide beam.

It bounced off Diego like he had Xia's forcefield, and came straight back towards him.

Somebody crashed into him, and they hit the floor just as his beam sizzled over their heads and went outside, taking a bit more of the wall with it. He half expected it to carom off the time frozen vampires, but it apparently did not.

Angel - the guy who tackled him - whispered harshly in his ear, “Please don’t do that again.”

Scott nodded in agreement, and after Angel got up, he hopped up to his feet and wanted to thank him … but stopped as soon as he saw his face. In fact, he took a step back.

Angel’s face was crinkled up in that odd vampire way, his eyes yellow and his teeth … well, a dentist would have been thrilled to have him walk through the door. He’d almost forgot he was a vampire - it was odd to see.

Odd to see, quadruple. Spike and the Sisters had their vampire faces on as well, and Scott wondered if it had anything to do with the feeling that his skin was roiling and trying to peel itself off his body. Everything in him told him to run, and yet, he was oddly paralyzed with … not fear exactly. But something quite like it.

“We are so screwed,” Angle said, yellow eyes riveted on Diego. Diego’s face was shifting, but not in a vampire way. It looked like the bones of his face were … moving beneath his skin, uncoiling like snakes, writhing and twisting in ways that were completely impossible. His skin ripped like paper, but he never even seemed to notice as the bones grew and altered shape, becoming something like a muzzle, his skull moving as if boiling. It was hideously disgusting, but he couldn’t force himself to look away.

“You don’t even know the half of it,” Spike said, and pulled something out of his pocket, which he tossed on the cement floor. A black stone? Was that supposed to mean something?

But Wesley was smiling.

No, smirking, but it looked like he was about to start laughing. Just by the look in his eye, Scott was momentarily afraid the guy’s mind had just snapped.

Diego, without looking, seemed to notice anyways. “What is so amusing, Human?”

To his surprise, Wesley answered. “I thought it was overkill. It’s always a thrill to realize you made the right call.”

What? What was that supposed to mean?

It was then he heard a very faint whoomp outside, and realized Rags had either left, or come back. How much time had passed? It seemed like just a second; it seemed like an eternity.

“Uh-”

“-oh,” the Sisters volleyed.

“You’re in-”

“-trouble now.” The funny thing was, they looked slightly less sinister in their vampire faces. Maybe because it gave some life to their expression, and their eye color matched.

“Back,” Wes suddenly ordered. “Everyone get back!”

Diego flicked his hand, and they were all thrown against the remaining wall, and held there - it was like that girl’s force field (hey-was that it? She projected force fields?), times twenty. Scott couldn’t breathe, and could feel his bones creaking under the pressure. “What is this?” Diego demanded in his odd, echoing voice, glaring at them as his face continued to boil beneath his ripping skin.

If anyone could answer, no one did before Logan walked in.  Except, almost instantly, Scott understood it wasn’t exactly Logan.

The first clue was the shift of his posture. Logan didn’t walk like a normal person - his shoulders were always slouched, his head always down; not in a staring at the floor way, but in a “I’m trying to listen to the conversation in the next room” way.  His paranoia was obvious, and even though his slumped shoulders might lead you to think that he was relaxed or even depressed (well, yes, depressed he could buy), Logan was far too hostile and paranoid to ever relax.  His posture was an odd form of deception, and he never turned his senses off, assuming he even could.  He kept his nose almost literally towards the ground, so he could smell shifts no one else could, and his head was lowered to better hear what was going on around and behind him.  He might have balked at the comparison, but Logan carried himself like a guard dog, hunting for an intruder.

This … whatever it was wearing Logan’s skin … carried itself with ramrod straight posture, rigid shoulders, a gait that suggested more impatience than discomfort, and none of Logan’s strangely casual threat of violence.  And when he glanced there way, there was a different kind of arrogance in his face - and his eyes were glowing a violent, Bob blue.  The energy made veins stand out in his face like thick blue worms beneath the surface of his skin.

Logan - Bob? - didn’t seem to recognize them.  He glanced at Diego, eyes burning like alien stars, and said flatly, in a voice not quite his own,  “You don’t belong here.”

Not Logan, but not Bob either.  Bob was too enamored of his “good old Aussie boy” guise to ever drop it for long.  He then had the most bizarre thought:  it was the god energy.  The stuff Bob had left behind, only … what?  Pushed to the front? Given sentience?

(Unleashed.)

Diego attempted to snarl with his boiling face, but his lip tore, and a new gout
of blood spilled down his face. “What the hell are you, hybrid?  An Avatar?  Whatever - be gone!” He gestured violently with his hand towards Logan -

- and absolutely nothing happened.

Logan started walking slowly towards Diego.  “You think you can harm us, lesser?”

Diego’s hold on them fell away, and they all sagged forward, gasping for breath, even the vampires.  After he got his breath back, Wesley started casting a spell, throwing a handful of something on the floor.  Smelled a little like mothballs, or maybe bleach, but Scott doubted that was it.

Logan - whatever was in Logan now, the god power - went on talking, stepping heedlessly in the blood that slicked the floor.

“You were banished;  you exist at our sufferance.”

“Our?” Spike said, and Scott was relieved to understand that he wasn’t the only one feeling like he was missing the subtitles. “How many things has he got in ‘im?”

“It’s uh … I think it’s speaking for the whole group,” Angel ventured uncertainly, as Wesley continued chanting and sprinkled something else around them.  It looked like salt.

“The whole group?” Scott repeated in disbelief. “He’s harboring an ad hoc committee?”

“The-”

“-Powers-”

“-are not-”

“-one thing-”

“-the Powers are-”

“-all.  Like us-”

“-they are a collective-”

“-one is many; many-”

“-is one.”

Oh sure - that was a clear as mud.  What a time to get metaphysical.

Diego dropped to the floor, and even though he landed easily on his feet, Scott was under the impression he didn’t do it voluntarily.  His face distorted like he was in some kind of weird wind tunnel, his skin split like something was trying to cut its way out of him, but Diego’s voice betrayed no hint of pain. “You can’t -”

“We can. We will.” Logan replied, and then started to speak gibberish.  It didn’t even sound like syllables; it didn’t sound like something a Human could make.  And Scott noted, belatedly, his head was starting to hurt.

Diego looked horrified somewhere beneath his moving bones and bleeding skin, and Wesley scooped blood from the open wound on his own neck and threw it down on the ground.  The salt sizzled, like fat on a grill, and Wesley made a loud, unintelligible comment.  Suddenly there was a noise like a reverse “pop”, and silence descended like a lead blanket.  The pressure seemed to lift from his mind.

“What did you do?” He asked, rubbing his forehead.  The thing that looked like Logan was still talking, but he couldn’t hear anything.  Diego’s face wasn’t boiling as much, but he appeared to be screaming, and trying to cover his elongating ears with his hands.

“I’ve thrown up a protective sound barrier around us, but it won’t hold for long, certainly not if one of them turns their power against us.”

“What’s he doing to him exactly?” Spike wondered, as Diego dropped to his knees, screaming in silence.  The blood coming out of his eyes was now as thick and dark as oil.  “Reciting the lyrics of Copacabana?”

“Diego was right: there are invocations for the gods.  But there are also words that destroy.  They‘re not meant for mortal ears.”

“Like I said, Copacabana.”

“Where is Logan?” Scott demanded.

Spike scoffed, and pointed at him. “You blind under that barrette?  He’s right there.”

“Wesley knows what I mean.”

“I assure you, Scott, he’s there.”

Diego’s eyeballs appeared to explode in their sockets.  His skin was no longer boiling, but melting off his face, sliding free of red muscle and white bone.  Claws sprung from Logan’s right fist, and he couldn’t tell if they were reflecting a blue glow, or if the energy was edging the blades.

One swipe and Diego’s mangled head separated from his neck, and he exploded into dust before he hit the floor, leaving a lingering red glow.  Logan brought the heel of his boot down hard on the pendant Diego had been wearing, shattering it, and the red fog seemed to dissipate, bleeding into the grooves of the floor.  The glow then died completely, and they were all stuck in a dark room reeking of blood, full of dead bodies … illuminated only by the neon blue glow of Logan’s inhuman eyes.

He suddenly focused on them, and jerked his head.  The sound barrier must have disappeared, because Scott’s ears popped, as if the air pressure had suddenly altered. “Demons,” the Logan thing growled.  It had not retracted the claws; there was a possibility it didn’t know how. “You were involved in this … violation.”

“Wes,” Angel said, almost sounding like he was pleading.

Wesley’s only reply was to say, “Girls?”

The Sisters volleyed back and forth a couple of nonsense syllables, guttural and hard, and Logan stopped dead.  The blue light seemed to disappear inside his rapidly surfacing pupils, and then the moment his eyes were normal again, they rolled back up into his head.  He sagged like a severed marionette, and collapsed to the floor in a messy heap.

Scott grabbed the front of Wes’s bloodstained shirt with one hand, drawing him face to face with him, and put his hand on the side of his visor.  If he fired now, Wesley would be very lucky to not have his skull fractured, and he was pretty sure he knew it. “Tell me what the hell you did to Logan,” he growled, more angry than he ever thought he would be on Logan’s behalf. “Or you wake up next year.”

“Scott,” Angel said, in a low, steady voice.  He was back in Human face, which was only a moderate improvement.  Now that he had seen him as a vampire, he didn’t think he’d ever not envision him that way. “I know you’re upset, but-”

“Shut up.  I’m asking him.” He shook Wesley slightly. “I might have expected something like this from them, but you’re Human.”

“Hey, we’re Human too,” Angel protested.  “Well … kinda.  And maybe not the Sisters.”

“We-”

“-like-”

“-to think-”

“-not.” They agreed cheerfully.

Wesley grabbed his wrist, but didn’t try and break free. “Logan isn’t hurt.  He agreed to this; I did nothing without his permission.”

“How convenient I can’t ask him.”

“You will be able to, soon.  He shouldn’t be unconscious for long.”

He didn’t trust him anymore.  How could he?  “What did you do to him?  And don’t try and bullshit me.”

Wesley’s jaw went rigid, and he looked offended.  Good.  “Since we had no idea what Diego’s ultimate plan was, I suggested to Logan that we “free” the power Bob had left in his mind, as I was sure Bob would have been able to defeat Mahr,
a more parasitic god.”

More parasitic?  Was he saying Bob was parasitic?  “Free it?  How?  Was it even constrained if Logan knew it was there?”

“Bob made sure the power remained in the back of his mind, accessible to Logan, but not able to do anything on its own.”

“You talk like it’s intelligent.”

“In a way, it is.  Bob isn’t really a physical being, despite the body he wears - he is energy; coherent, focused energy.  Bob literally left a piece of himself in Logan.”

Okay, if that was true, that was deeply creepy. “Why?”

Wesley shrugged. “If I knew why Bob did anything, I’d be a wealthy man.  Bob
put in … let’s call them blocks, for lack of a better term, so the energy wasn’t absorbed by Logan’s mind;  it remained, in a way, separate.  I pulled Gunn out of court, and asked him to make an appeal to the Senior Partners.  They couldn’t remove the blocks, but they could … interfere with them.  The Sisters were given the counter spell, the code that would cease the interference.  Bob’s power is back in its compartment, but the shift was so abrupt it might take Logan a few minutes to recover from the shock.”

And it would have killed anyone else - he didn’t need to say that for Scott to get it. “Who the hell are the Senior Partners?”

“Pan dimensional beings that had no interest in Mahr coming back either.  It would have been bad for business.”

Was he serious?  That sounded so completely absurd it probably was true.  “So
why didn’t they stop this?”

“They did, by hindering the blocks in Logan’s mind.”

That logic was so circular it threatened to give him a headache.  Or maybe it was just the nauseating smell of blood.  (And he'd killed Matt - right in front of him... he killed Matt.) “Were they possessing him?”

“God, no, of course not.” He looked so horrified at the thought that Scott decided he was probably telling the truth.  But it still didn’t make sense.

“But he didn’t act like Bob.”

“He wouldn’t.  Bob may have given a part of himself, but it wasn’t his personality.” (“Such as it is,” Angel muttered.) “What he left Logan was raw, unfettered power. That’s what came forth - the power without the filter, unfettered.”

“The-”

“-Powers-”

“-regulate Bob-”

“-and he-”

“-regulates himself. He-”

“-used to believe-”

“-he was Human.  Then-”

“-he believed he was -”

“-demon.  He is still constrained-”

“-by his own beliefs.”

Scott sincerely wished they would shut up.  They never made any sense, and their broken speaker way of talking was just annoying.

“God energy without a proper conduit is a frightening thing,” Wesley told him. “ Energy is just that - energy, neither good nor bad.  That all depends on the way it’s applied, and who is wielding it.”

“Then why the hell did he leave it with Logan?  He’s a killer, for Christ’s sake.” He didn’t let Wesley go more than shove him away in disgust.  He figured Angel might try and attack him, but he didn’t care anymore.  He felt sick and angry, and just wanted to get out of here, go back to the mansion, and forget about these “people” and hopefully never see them again.

(If that’s what god power did … what really happened to Jean?  Had Jean become like that?  Is that why she'd killed all those people down in Mexico...?)

“How can you say that?” Angel said, startling him.  It took Scott a moment to realize he was talking about what he'd just said, about Logan being a killer, not picking up his thoughts. “I thought Logan was a friend of yours.”

“Friend is a strong word.”

Angel’s eyes narrowed, and he had the uncomfortable feeling he was being sized up and mentally dismissed by a sub-Human. “Yeah, it must be, if you think he’s a killer.”

“Logan doesn’t deny it.” He crouched down, and felt Logan’s neck, searching for a pulse.  There was one, relatively strong, but the beat was way out of rhythm. But then again, he had an unusual heart rhythm, especially when his healing factor was kicking in - Jean had told him that once.

(Was Jean like this now?  Complete emotionless power?  Free floating rage?  Was that what Logan meant when he said she wasn’t Jean anymore?)

“When I was Angelus, I was an unconscionable killer;  as Angel, I’m not.”

“Yeah, he kills but he whines about it later,” Spike added sarcastically.

Angel ignored him. “Wolverine was a killer; Logan is not.  If you can’t get that straight, then do him a favor, and get the fuck out of his life.  I’m sure he’s got enough problems without judgmental little pricks like you in it.”

Scott gaped up at him, unable to believe the hypocritical shit a vampire (a vampire!) had just thrown at him.  Spike laughed, and said, “Ooh, kitty has claws.
I always knew you had a sweet spot for wolf men.”

Angel scowled and turned away, heading back out through the hole in the wall. “How dare you talk to me like that,” Scott snapped.  But all of them had turned away, save for the Sisters, who simply grinned at him like they were starving wolves, and he was raw steak.  He wished they would turn away, which is probably why they wouldn’t.

He heard Angel say, “Send him home, Rags, then come back for us.”

“’Ome?  Or Vermont, where I picked ‘em up?”

“Vermont.  I’m sure Scott wants to get his plane back.”

“Hey!” He stood up and stomped over to the hole, wondering if he should just start shooting.  They'd kept him in the dark about most of this, and he was sure they'd done the same thing to Logan.  They'd used him, and yet were accusing him of being the prick?  Wow - how fucked up were these people? (Or whatever they were.) “If you think I’m going anywhere without Logan, you’re in-”

But he met Rags on his way out, and before he knew what was going on, the crystal-eyed demon had grabbed his arm, and said the words that caused reality to shift beneath their feet.  When it settled - along with his stomach - they were back in the Vermont woods, the sky a rosy hue of approaching dusk. “Logan’ll be along as soon as they say ‘e’s okay for transit,” Rags said, letting him go and taking a step back.

“Wait a second,” Scott said, even as his equilibrium continued to reel.  He thought, for a moment, he could still smell blood. “You bring him here right now.  Can’t you see they’re using him?”

Rags blinked rapidly, as if he couldn’t understand him.  “Mate, they ain’t th’ enemy.  I’m not sure who is exactly, but I know the good guys when I see ‘em. What’s this about anyways?  It ain’t really about ‘im ... izziit?”

Staring in angry disbelief at Rags - no, he was no rocket scientist, but something in him still believed a priest would be dedicated to some higher good (proving he was ignoring the newspaper lately, he thought ruefully) - Scott knew he was partially right, but he wasn’t ready to admit it.  With a disgusted scowl, he said, “Tell them if Logan isn’t back by the time I get back to the mansion, Wolfram and Hart is going to be crawling with angry X-Men, and I don’t think that’s something either of us want. Got it?”

Rags shrugged his rounded shoulders, indifferent or disbelieving. “I’ll tell ‘em.”

“Fine. Go already.” He turned and headed for the jet, miraculously still where
they left it (maybe Wesley put a spell around it - or Diego and company had slaughtered the whole town), so angry he was sure he wasn’t thinking straight. What the hell was he going to tell the Professor?  He'd screwed up, and Logan -possessed or unprossessed - was in the hands of supposed friends who were anything but?  What now?

“I don’t think you actually meant what you said,” Rags said suddenly, startling him. “I mean, yer upset an’ it came out wrong.  I do that a lot, ‘specially after a dozen drinks. But ya gotta … it’s important … ah fuck, life is fucked up.  Sometimes it’s nobody’s fault, it just is. You gotta make yer peace with it any way ya can, or it eats you up.  Ya don’t wanna end up like me or Logan, do ya?”

Scott pondered that, puzzled, but as he turned around to ask him what the hell he meant by that, Rags had teleported concussively out of here.

How fucked up was life when a drunken demon almost made more sense than anyone else?