Ruby scowled at him, swirling wine inside her snifter. “It’s none of your business where I was - I’m MI-5 on top of being A Watcher. Ex-Watcher. But I wasn’t in Hyde Park, and I resent the implication.”

He studied her, finding it a little difficult to parse all the smells in this odiferous place. But then he noticed that undercurrent feral smell, the smell of the wolf she gave off even in her unaltered state, mingled with the cloying scent of the incense. And it occurred to him like a smack in the back of the head. God, he was an idiot sometimes. (Well, most of the time, but he wasn’t about to point that out.) “Protection circle. Holy shit, that spell’s to prevent you from changing, isn’t it?”

Her frosty blue eyes narrowed even further, almost disappearing into her angular face. “What?”

“Look, darlin’, I don’t care; I don’t even care if it was you runnin’ around the park last night. All I care about is finding this thing and stopping it before it kills more kids.”

Her posture stiffened, her jaw growing taut. “Kids? There were kids killed in the park last night?”

“No, no, this is a separate thing.” And even though he wanted information from her, he decided to extend a little trust to her - even though it was far from warranted - and told her what Hashim had told him, and from what he gathered from scanning the news reports. After he finished telling her what little he knew, he added, “This is why I came to you, Ruby. You have the knowledge and experience with big bad evil forces that I don’t. I can fight demons - I’ve fought and killed a hell of a lot - but I don’t have the encyclopedic knowledge that I need. You’re a Watcher - were a Watcher - and I bet you do.”

Her look continued to be wary and scathing, skirting the edge of contemptuous. “I’ve no doubt of your ability to kill, Wolverine” - the emphasis on his code name was dripping with acid and malice - “But using evil things to fight even more evil things isn’t generally a sound idea.”

Okay, that hurt, but he didn’t let it show on his face. He didn’t want her to know she had drawn blood with that comment. “I am not evil. Didn’t you read those files you pulled for me on the Chimera case? Maybe they didn’t spell it out for you, but I was brainwashed. I wasn’t working for the Organization under my own conscious volition.”

She made a noise of doubt, a sort of muffled “harrumph”. “As if it’s as easy to brainwash people as popular fiction would have you believe.”

“It is when telepaths fuck your brain over to the point where you don’t even know who you are, and leave your brain the consistency of mush.”

Her look remained dubious. “It’s not that easy to be an assassin - a good assassin - either. It’s not something your garden variety psychopath can do. You have to be patient, you have to be emotionally distant if not completely dead; you have to see your prey as inhuman, and you have to be inhuman yourself. You have to be a special breed to kill without a conscience. Are you claiming you’re the lone exception to the rule?”

“No. But if I was so fuckin’ evil, why haven’t I gone on a killing spree? Why are you still alive?”

Her smile was small and bitter. “I’m a werewolf. Give it your best shot.”

“Werewolves can’t live without a head,” he shot back. “Look, I don’t care if you think I am some sort of cold blooded bagman - I’m looking to shut this thing down. Are you with me or not?”

She shifted in her arm chair, folding her legs beneath her, not bothering to hide her general resentment. “I can’t believe you’re aligned with the Powers, I really can’t.”

“Who said I’m aligned with the Powers?”

“The champion list is open, and for some reason, you’re the odds on favorite. Due to Bob, I suppose. Once touched, always touched.”

He threw up his hands is frustration. “Is there a newsletter on this shit I’m missin’?”

“Probably.”

“I’m not the Powers’ champion or bitch or whatever the fuck, okay? That’s Angel’s shit, not mine, whether he’s in this dimension or not. Can we stick to the point - help me. Yes or no?”

She glared at him for almost a full minute before sighing and rolling her eyes. “I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to keep an eye on you.”

“Great. Do you have a date, or do you want to come to Hyde Park with me?”

He was so accustomed to her distain now he hardly noticed she was giving him an evil look. He was inured to the fact that she would always give him a dirty look. She thought he was a stone cold mutie assassin, no matter the extenuating circumstances; he was a killer, and she would never let him forget it. “I’ll need to get dressed, and dig out the amulet of Mharaka, so you might want to have a seat. But touch anything and I will break your fingers.”

“Yer welcome to try,” he drawled, trying not to smirk at the fact that she didn’t know about his adamantium. But she must have, right? Maybe they just thought his claws were metal, and nothing else; biomechanical knives alone, not a laced skeleton. “Amulet of Mharaka? Does that give you some special powers or somethin‘?”

“No. It just keeps me from … changing.”

He raised an eyebrow at that, feeling just a bit superior. Yeah, he’d guessed right.

“To answer your previous question … yes, a werewolf can change without a full moon, under a couple of very specific circumstances. If they’ve learned a special meditation ritual that allows them to keep the change from happening on full moons, they must keep emotionally calm and neutral at all times, or strong emotions will trigger the change, day or night, full moon or not. It has a ninety nine point nine failure rate, and it’s rather rigorous, so not a lot of lycanthropes know about it or bother. Two, the presence of a great evil can draw the demon side out, as can some very specific curses, but for those to work you need to know your victim is a werewolf, and you need to have some of their blood. Blood magic is the most powerful.”

“So, in all these cases, we’re dealing with a limited possibility.”

“Yes. And the scales tip in favor of a great evil; it’s the most plausible explanation.”

“Is that why the protection spell, the amulet? Are you feeling the pull?”

She left without saying anything, radiating distaste. But as he was starting to watch the silent movie of the television, disaster footage of a part of the world he could identify on sight, even though he had no memory of ever being there, he heard her coming out again. She hadn’t changed clothes at all, she just ducked out to toss him a gun, which he caught without any trouble. But it wasn’t a normal gun; it was a bit bigger and a bit lighter, and didn’t smell of gunpowder - it smelled of ketamine. “Drug gun?” It sounded like a question, but it wasn’t really.

“In case the amulet doesn’t work,” she said, disappearing into the back bedroom.

High doses of ketamine would put a werewolf down? Well, you learned something new every day.

4

He only realized how much he thought of the Professor like a father when he was mad at him.

And the Professor was pretty damn well pissed off when he returned to the mansion with Rogue and Saddiq. They were fine, he was just angry that he would put them in danger, and rightfully so; Scott felt it wasn’t his shining moment either. It was an asshole Logan thing to do, not like him at all.

The kids were quick to jump to his defense, Rogue arguing that she wanted to go, and she was pretty much old enough to do as she pleased, and they weren’t her parents (the petulant teen argument; not the strongest), while Saddiq simply told him he’d have gone after them whether he had permission or not (the scary “I was trained as a killing machine, remember?” argument, that was much more frightening than Rogue’s, and served to remind him that he had to do whatever it took to keep Logan from being a role model to him). The kids were grounded and assigned extra studies, which Rogue loathed openly, but Saddiq took it all stoically, as he took all things. And people said he never loosened up? Had they met this kid? He was seventeen going on fifty.

The Professor couldn’t punish Scott like he punished the kids, but they had a couple of heated arguments, where Scott really didn’t know what he was arguing for. He found himself in the hideous position of defending a point that Logan had made: doing nothing would not make the Organization leave them alone, nor make them go away. They did have to do something. Was that it? Maybe not, but the Sisters and Helga had at least scared the living shit out of them, and maybe that was worth a little breathing room. Xavier insisted there was a better way, so Scott asked him for clarification. What? What hadn’t they done to discourage those goddamn people? It gave him the chance to remind him that it was Magneto who saved his ass from some early version of it, and as soon as he brought it up he felt horrible. Why had he said that? Why was he rubbing salt in the Professor’s wounds?

Xavier saved him. He knew that, he respected that, he would take a bullet for him; there was no doubt in Scott’s mind about any of that. But since coming back he hadn’t felt right; he felt like he was going to jump out of his skin half the time. Not out of fear, but out of rage.

He was angry. He had never been this angry in his entire life, and he hated it. He felt like he was going to lose control eventually, fly off the handle, and he didn’t want to. He spent more time tearing out engines and rebuilding them, sparring alone in the gym, trying to pick up the slack in the physical self-defense class since Logan wasn’t around to teach it. (He eventually gave it up to Saddiq, whose fighting knowledge was just as encyclopedic as Logan’s, and better actually, because Saddiq was more into legitimate martial arts styles as opposed to Logan’s weird jumble of street fighting, kickboxing, ultimate fighting, and a haphazard collection of various martial arts and knife fighting styles. He had to admit it was effective, and probably was better for improvising, but it had no obvious discipline, and damn if these kids didn’t need some. Logan did too, come to think of it.)

But the worst part, the very worst, was the dreams.

Or nightmares, or cries for help, or whatever they were, perhaps a slapdash mix of a little of everything, like Logan’s fighting style. Jean was hurting, she needed help, and he knew Bob was somehow responsible for this, if not the inquisitor in charge of the whole thing. His first suspicion that these were indeed cries for help was the simple fact that he couldn’t find Bob at all.

The internet was a wonderful place sometimes, with the good almost outweighing the bad. For instance, he might be in New York, but he could look up the addresses and telephone numbers of places in Los Angeles and Sydney in a second … if the places existed. But he could find no listing for a Way Station bar in Los Angeles, nor a listing for a single person surnamed Oberon in the Sydney area. He could understand Bob’s unfortunate family wanting to keep their numbers unlisted, but all of them? Even Bob, who didn’t seem to give a shit about anything? It was suspicious.

Xavier was sure he had a phone number around somewhere for the bar - he couldn’t remember if Bob had left it, Logan had, or maybe he had written it down for future reference - but when he asked why he wanted it, Scott lied and said he wanted to make sure Helga was okay, since she got a bit injured at Mirror Lake. It was a lie, of course, and he hated himself for it, but for some reason he didn’t want to tell him the truth. Was it because Jean was his, she was asking for his help, and he didn’t want to let her down? Because he didn’t want Xavier to talk him out if it? Because … well, he didn’t know. He didn’t know anything except he had to find a way to do this alone. But how did you attack a man of god like powers, a man who could in fact be a genuine god? (He still found it hard to believe. That, and after they kicked you out, or whatever they did to him, weren’t you automatically demoted?) If Jean somehow now found herself defenseless against him, what hope did he have?!

But that’s where Logan actually said something once that made a lot of sense. It was to the kids, in one of the few self-defense classes he ever taught: ‘Everything has a weakness. Everything. You may have to work to find it, but it’s there. Nothing’s perfectly invulnerable.’ And neither was Bob. He’d been laid low before, hadn’t he? Almost killed. Being semi-divine hadn’t been enough to spare him. Now it was his turn to find an Achilles heel in the supposedly unbeatable.

Xavier did find the bar’s number, and he called it, actually getting Helga. According to her, Bob was still off in another dimension, and she had no idea what he was up to, except it was ‘Some kinda god shit.” Wasn’t that in line what Bob said in his first nightmare? “This is god business …”

It was coincidence. It was chance and he was reading too much into it. He told himself that, and tried to believe it, but he found himself unable to do it. And the dreams were getting worse, more desperate; he often woke up with a pounding head ache.

Well, it was either the dreams or the cold. He seemed to have come down with a mild but irritating bug, one that wasn’t too debilitating but never quite went away. It was so bad he actually took some cold medicine, even though he generally eschewed medicine unless it was absolutely necessary. And he was glad when he did, because it gave him dreamless sleep. But then again, he worried that Jean was trying to contact him and he was out of reach, so he didn’t do it often.

He wanted to chew out Logan and tell him to go and get that asshole - did he know what Bob was doing to Jean? - but Logan was in London, and he wasn’t sure he could trust him, what with his connection to Bob. So where did that leave him?

He had to do something. It would drive him crazy not to do something.

Because he had been ill, Xavier was going a bit lighter on him, so when he left for the afternoon he didn’t question him about it. Scott couldn’t believe where he was going, but it was the only place he knew where he might be able to get some help about the “Bob” problem.

Gaia’s Arcane was still where he’d found it last time - he’d been hoping it had moved or blown up or something - and still looked like a New Age shop gone to seed, wind chimes and strands of crystals barely visible behind grimy front windows. It was still ludicrously dark inside the small storefront, and the thick smell of sandalwood and rosemary made him sneeze. “Can I help you?” A woman’s high, bright voice inquired.

Behind the counter was a statuesque, well built young woman, with shoulder length black hair and a beautiful face, made eerie only by the fact that the pupils of her eyes were as white as the rest of her eyes, defined only by a thin ring of black on its outer edge. Eyes like Forajo’s, and it made him pause for a second. “Are you … are you Forajo’s daughter?”

Her painted red lips twisted in a disappointed grimace, and she said, in a startlingly deeper and sexually neutral voice, “God, are all you humans so idiotic? I am Forajo; I got tired of being Gandalf. So what do you want this time? Is Bob looking for something again?”

That threw him for a moment. Last time he’d seen Forajo, he seemed to be an unbelievably old man with wrinkled skin, long white hair, and gnarled fingers (all eight of them), and the contrast was jarring. But he’d already figured out Forajo was a gender neutral demon, neither male or female, so he/she/it could probably decide to appear as whatever gender they saw fit. Still, from Gandalf knock off to Katie Holmes? Little freaky. “Umm, yeah. He needs two things, actually. Can you find a god with a power signature similar to his, even if he was off world?”

Forajo’s eyes widened in surprise, and the look he gave him suggested she would need an air sickness bag soon. “Gods no, I don’t think so. There’s too many dimensions, and too many gods. I don’t have that kind of power.”

He sighed, wondering if this was all for nothing. “Okay, then maybe you can help me with the second one. I need something that will weaken or depower a god, not even permanently - just for a few minutes would do. We’re after an evil one.” He added that last bit in hopes that Forajo wouldn’t put it together that he was after Bob.

His/her look remained dubious, but at least she didn’t look queasy at the thought. “That usually depends on the type of god. Know what kind it is?”

Scott shook his head, deciding the “stupid Human” opinion of Forajo (hadn’t he - she - said that before, the first time he was here?) could work for him. “He said I couldn’t pronounce the name.”

Forajo smirked, a tacit “I knew it - stupid Humans“. “Figures. Well … maybe I can help you there. You got cash?”

He nodded. He remembered to bring it this time.

“Okay then, Human - we’ve got a deal. Let me see what I can pull out of my bag of tricks.”

He hoped it was good, and he hoped this was all worth it. Because even if everything did go perfectly, he would be surprised if he lived through it.

*****

By the time they reached the park, it seemed rather quiet for an early evening, but he knew why when a slight breeze sent the hairs on the back of his neck standing on end. “That ain’t good,” he commented.

Ruby had changed into jeans and a dark red sweatshirt that looked newer, presumably nicer, but it made the amulet of Mharaka look all that more odd. It was a large ornate disc, slightly larger than a silver dollar, with a pattern like a mandala etched into copper, a series of continuous loops and swirls that would have been meditative to scratch into sand. On the flip side of it was a single gemstone embedded in the metal; it looked like it might have been some kind of opal, or perhaps crystal, but he’d never seen anything quite like it before so he couldn’t say. If Ruby knew what it was, she wasn’t telling.

She grunted, barely an acknowledgement. “Something doesn’t feel right,” she agreed, looking around. In the dark, Hyde Park looked far more exotic and interesting - and dangerous - than it did in daylight, which was when it was pretty yet strangely respectable; in other words, quintessentially British. Not that that was bad; after Central Park, it was nice to be in a park that looked as peaceful as it actually was. Central Park was as pretty as the next park, but anybody who wandered in after dark or before dawn - or even in certain sectors in daylight - knew how fucking dangerous it could actually be.

He sniffed the air, and noticed there were several elusive scents, ones that were strange but unidentifiable, and too transient for him to get a bead on. But judging from the general direction of the wind, he made an educated guess. “That way,” he said, pointing towards a dark stand of tall trees.

“That looks ominous,” she noted, as they started walking towards it. She didn’t look around, but after a moment, she whispered, “We have a tail.”

“I know. I saw him when we came in. I figure it’s one of Hashim’s men.”

“Hashim?” She looked at him sharply. “You don’t mean the vampire mobster, do you?”

“Yeah. He’s the vamp that told me about this shit.”

She stopped dead, and he had to backtrack a couple steps to meet her eye to eye. “You’re working for that bastard?”

“No, I’m not working for him. We kinda worked together on this thing, and we’ve gotta truce goin’ on, but we’re hardly friends. He’s just scared of this thing, whatever it is, and when vampires get frightened, I worry.”

“Worked on this thing together?” She repeated, with obvious disdain.

“Killed an evil god, Kali. Here in fact. Well, in this park, not this exact spot …”

“Kali? You’re joking.”

“No. It was a huge deal. In fact, I’m kind of surprised you don’t know about it.”

“How could you …” she was building up to a big snit, but she paused suddenly, her eyes widening in understanding. “Bloody hell, where did you kill Kali?”

“Uh, by the Serpentine Lido-”

“Show me.”

She seemed insistent about this, and after taking a moment to orient himself, he led the way there. It took him a moment to find it, but the ground was still kind of scorched in some spots, and he thought he could smell lingering traces of inhuman blood in the dirt. The water was a ribbon of silver in the moonlight, a dark mirror that only showed light in reflection, a ghost road to nowhere. He looked down at the ground, eyes adjusting to the scant illumination, and searched for his own blood. Grass had grown in the spot, so it was gone, but he found some black smears that smelled slightly sour, and he assumed it was Kali’s blood. “I think it was about here. Does the exact spot matter?”

She looked down, and from the way she squinted, she didn’t see as well in the dark. She then looked at the trees around them, the empty bench near by, the glimmering river. “A god like that could leave a residual energy trace. Know your physics? Energy isn’t destroyed -”

“- it’s transformed, I know. You’re saying it’s around here still? It’s not coherent.”

“No. It’s probably dispersed … but Kali was powerful, and powerfully evil. Those things leave stains, psychic scars on the landscape. How the hell did you ever kill her?”

“Well, god intervention, really. And the Vilkacis, and a horde of vampires.”

“A murder.”

“Huh?”

“It’s a murder of vampires, like a murder of crows. It only seemed appropriate.”

“Yeah, I guess it does.” He scratched his head, and asked, “Is this the reason for this shit? Kali‘s posthumous revenge?”

She continued to look around, and he joined her, but he had no idea what he was supposed to be looking for. Something strange, he assumed, but he didn’t see anything unusual. Finally, she admitted, “No, I don’t think it’s the reason … precisely. But this energy could have attracted something, or several somethings, that wish to utilize it or exploit it.”

“To what end? I was led to believe that if a god was snuffed in a certain way, that was it. No do overs.”

From the new evil look he received, she didn’t care for the way he put it. “Yes, but the energy remains, and if she was killed on Earth, that energy is here. Or was. I’m not getting that feeling I had when we first entered the park.”

“The creepy feeling? No, neither am I.”

“So it’s mobile.” She rubbed the back of her neck, and pursed her lips in thought, her expression sour. Logan could still feel the eyes of Hashim’s man on him, and it was starting to drive him crazy. Couldn’t he stare at Ruby for a while? But then he heard the muffled snap of twigs in the woods, the crunch of dried leaves under foot, and realized something was coming - something that didn’t smell undead, but … demonic. And there were a hell of a lot more than one.

Ruby might have been in her Human form, but her hearing must have been above Human average, because her head snapped around violently towards the towering shadows of the trees. “Are you expecting company?”

“No. You?”

The things must have known they had been sussed, so now they were making themselves known. Eyes glowed in the darkness of the forest, yellow and red like something from a child’s nightmare, low enough to suggest it was something on all fours, but a big something on all fours - about grizzly sized was his rough estimate. Shadows clung to them like oil, making them indistinguishable, but he caught their fetid scent, and knew it well. They couldn’t be lucky enough to have them be werewolves; he wished they were.

“Can you change at will?” he asked, balling his hands into fists at his sides. Again, he was waiting to pop his claws, but they were itching to get out right now. Impending violence made his skin prickle, sweat bead on his forehead.

“No.”

“Then rip off the amulet and hope for the best, ‘cause these things are your worst nightmare.”

With a bloodthirsty howl of excitement, the demons burst from beneath the trees, barreling towards them like they were the last snacks on earth.