The thing didn't look up as he approached, just kept sniffing around the undamaged park cars on the side of the street, and he wondered if the woman had been exaggerating when she called it a "people eater". Oh, it was ugly all right - it had a long, tapered muzzle, with two tusks as long as surface-to-air missiles, but thicker, and two yellow eyes that were so small they looked like they were receding into what passed for its face - but so far it seemed more interested in eating metal than eating people. (Unless, of course, it was eating the cars in hopes of finding a chewy, meaty center.)

Still, he kept on a parallel course to it, taking a brief visual survey of its thick, stocky body, which continued to have an odd, almost opalescent sheen to it. The scales overlapped, almost like fish scales as opposed to reptilian ones, and he found himself wondering if the key to taking a chunk out of its hide with a normal implement was sliding something between and beneath the scales. Not that that would be easy, not with the sheer amount of them, or their unique layering pattern.

It had some wide flanks, from which a thin and utterly useless tail dangled and sometimes twitched, as if swatting away flies, but even the flies seemed too scared to get near it.  It smelled a bit like a tire fire in a lavender field, which should have been a fly heyday, but on the other hand, even he wanted to get a gas mask and put some distance between them.  Say a mile, upwind.

He decided he could just carve a chunk out of its rear leg, and it would never miss it. Hell, it had iron skin, right?  It might not even feel it. Still, he felt weird going up and doing it, especially since what Meldane told him seemed to indicate that - no matter how much it looked like a warthog - it could talk.  "Umm, hey," Logan said, now feeling even more like a jackass. "Can we talk for a minute?"

It continued to ignore him, sniffing among the cars, its big, moist black pad of a nose quivering.

“C'mon, I know you can. Just 'cause I ain't a wizard or your boss or whatever is no need to be rude."

“Would you just get on with it?" Meldane interjected from his safe vantage point down the street.

Logan made a rude hand gesture at him, retracting the middle claw briefly for the full effect. "Look, Golgoth, you talk to me or Frenchie down there wants me to carve a chunk out of your ass."

The demon pig continued to forage among the cars, finally biting the fender off a Peugeot and munching nosily, sounding for all the world like a car crusher.  Well, that's what it was at the moment...

Logan sighed. "Fine. Shit, I hate hurting animals." He backed up several steps, braced himself, and then ran at the Golgoth, bringing back his right claw for a surgical swipe at its rear right leg.

He made contact, the flesh so thick and hard it was putting up some good resistance to his claws - although it wasn't preventing him from cutting into him - and there was a noise like a cougar in a blender being put out at stadium amplifier volume.  It seemed he'd finally gotten the Golgoth's attention.

And it kicked out sideways, a move it didn't know it could make, and the iron-hard hoof hit him square in the chest, with enough force that it would have easily caved  in his sternum had it not been made of metal as well.  Logan went flying, straight across the street and right through an antique shop's plate glass front window.

He heard the glass not so much break as shatter - this part of town wasn't bad enough to warrant the use of bulletproof glass - and he came down hard near the front counter, shattering several lamps, a roll top desk, and what looked like a Victorian era chamber pot chair in the course of his very bumpy landing.

His head bounced off the floor, and to say he felt dazed and cut up was a slight understatement.  A bruise the size of a shield was forming on his chest, even as his healing factor was working hard to negate it.  He watched his vision swim, black dots jumping in and out of reality, and blood seemed to well up in his throat before mysteriously disappearing again. He had cuts on his body stinging like tiny bees, but that was almost pleasant compared to the rest of his pain.  He was laying on something hard and lumpy, and he seriously hoped it wasn't his own leg, bent up beneath him at some mysterious and unbelievably painful angle.

There was noise, some debris shifting and cursing, boots crunching on broken glass, and a dark shape appeared over him, eventually becoming Meldane. "Will you quit goofing off and get me my sample?"

Logan stared up at him, wondering if he should just kill him now. One swipe and it was all over; he could be out of here and on his way to Srina's, and the demon pig could eat all of Mayfair as far as he was concerned. Why did he always get these shitty demon pig jobs?

He held up his right claw, and said, "Here's your fucking sample, yer highness.  Now leave me the fuck alone - I want to be comatose in peace."

There were strips of iron flesh hanging from the tips, and the blood, which was the reddish-blue-black of a rotting plum, had run down his arm, but it was slightly viscous, more like Elmer’s glue than oil.  Meldane examined it with his nose wrinkled, like it smelled bad (and it didn’t, not really; it smelled basically like rust and raw bacon, and Logan had been expecting far worse), then said imperiously, “You call this a sample?”

“Come closer and ask me that again.”

Meldane sighed wearily, put upon and martyred far before his time. “Oh, all right, I’ll try and make do with this.” He pulled something out of his pocket - it looked like a paint scraper, or the top half of a spatula - and ran it down Logan's arm, scraping a wide swath of the blood off his forearm, using the flat edge to pull away the strips of skin. He made a mildly disgusted face, as if this was beyond sick, and scraped it all off on the counter. As an afterthought, he added, “Oh, and you might want to get out there.”

Logan remained on the floor, content (if  not exactly happy) to stare up at the ceiling. “Why the hell should I do that?”

“Because you pissed it off, and it might go after innocent bystanders. But maybe you don’t care.”

Bastard. “You’re no Wesley,” he said, and while he knew it was meant as an insult, he also knew that Meldane probably wouldn’t get it.

He didn’t. “Pardon?”

“Just work your magic, Siegfreid,” he grumbled, starting to painfully pull himself up to his feet. It turned out he was laying on the remains of the desk.  That was one painful frame. “I’ll go distract Babe.”  He pulled a large splinter out of his back, and realized he did miss Wes, who would have handled things with a lot more aplomb, and never would have let him go in alone, nor leave this thing alone with actual people nearby. But Meldane was just a magician, right?  This wasn’t his job; this wasn’t what he felt he should do. He wouldn’t even be here if some vampires hadn’t dug up some ugly dirt on him. Honor was probably just another mundane word to him. “So, tell me.  Does this thing really eat people?”

“It certainly could. It’s a scavenger; it’ll eat anything. But it has a special taste for metal.”

“Oh joy. So why ain’t it talking?  Is it a snob?”

“It can only talk to the person its bound to. You’re just annoying the pig - trust me.”

“I figured that out when it kicked me.” Figuring he was as healed as he was going to get, he headed out the shattered front window to find the Golgoth several meters farther down the street, leaving broken asphalt and ruined cars in its wake. It wasn’t rampaging through the city, which was a bonus, but its whip-like tail was slapping against its own flanks in obvious irritation. “Hey,” he shouted. “Hey piggy!  Don’t make me do that “soo-ey” shit!”

Even the intensity of its tail flicking didn’t increase. It was just ignoring him now, a fly too small to bother with. But it really wasn’t a good idea for it to go any further.  This was a small side street, full of quaint shops for the upscale tourists; it was heading toward a worse part of London, a place where too many people were crammed into too small a space.  In other words, spam in a can to a beast that would nosh on anything, including an occasional Human.  He really did have to get its attention, and now.

There was a Toyota crumpled up in the middle of the street like a beer can, its back bumper warped and sticking up like the tines of a fork. He went over and used his claws to cut away what little was keeping it attached to the car, then hefted it over his shoulder and stomped after the demon pig. As soon as he felt he was close enough, but still with enough room for a good running start, he shouted, “I’m talking to you, Porky!” He threw the bumper like a spear, as hard as he could.

It didn’t penetrate its metal haunch, just slammed up against it and seemed to accordion before falling to the street. But the gesture definitely got its attention. It turned around with a noise like a buzz-saw cutting through steel plate, a screech that shattered car windows and made him wince, the pressure almost too much to bear. “Yeah, ugly, c’mon, we have some things to settle,” he said, starting to back up down the street. Of course, if the thing started to charge him, he’d be totally screwed, as he couldn’t run fast enough to get away from something with that long of a stride, but right now it wasn’t.  It ambled toward him, snorting and otherwise sounding pissed, but didn’t bother to run; it just stalked deliberately toward him, head lowered, and Logan was hit by a sense of déjà vu.  He walked like that sometimes, didn’t he?

He continued backing down the street, pointless as it was, still taunting the thing. “Did ya know I have a crunchy metal center? I could give ya your yearly mineral allowance, better than a BMW. So what’re you waitin’out for? Chicken, pig?”

Perhaps he’d gone too far with the barnyard names, as the Golgoth suddenly did something extraordinary: it pounced. It must have jumped thirty feet in the air, and then came straight down, headed for him. “Oh shit,” he cursed, tucking into a roll that carried him straight under the beast as it landed hard, spider webbing monster cracks through the pavement and making the ground tremble like the aftershock of a major quake. Underneath the demon pig, he looked up at its belly, and noticed something between its hindquarters he hadn’t noticed before. Well, now he knew for sure it was a male.

It must have known he'd rolled underneath to escape, as he heard what could only be an aggravated snort, so he jumped up and buried a claw in its soft underbelly, hanging on for dear life as it squealed in pain and spun around fast. He dug in his second claw and planted his feet flat against its belly, hanging on like a leech. If it couldn’t find him, it couldn’t squish him.

But he’d forgotten about the fact that it was half-humanoid.

It sat back on its haunches, and suddenly he found himself looking up at its face as it glared down at him, stuck on its belly like a mountain climber. He gave it a sickly half smile, wondering if this thing had a sense of humor. “Heh. You know, we don’t have to fight -”

It swatted him off like a fly.

All Logan felt was the impact, a dull, hard one that seemed as though he’d just been hit with a wrecking ball. He must have lost consciousness briefly, because he had only the vaguest memory of flying through the air, and had no memory at all of landing.  He woke up in a world of hurt, on top of a crumpled car, the make now totally obscured since it had been demolished. He was just laying in a small pile of twisted metal and broken glass, with a giant demon warthog glaring down at him, its hot drool splattering the ground beside him, and he wondered how the hell he had reached such a low point in his life.  He was a homeless drifter who made his money by beating the shit out of rednecks for the enjoyment of other rednecks for several years; sometimes he ate soup straight out of the can, didn‘t wash what few clothes he had for a week or two. How could he have possibly fallen lower than that?

And yet, here he was, about to be eaten by the Devil’s swine.  It wasn’t irony so much as it seemed to be a big, neon “Fuck you” from the bowels of life itself.

He’d just decided that once it got lower he could kick it in the throat - what he would do beyond that he had no idea - when suddenly it stopped snarling down at him and dipped its head, sitting back on its haunches. He stared at it in general disbelief, not entirely sure he wasn’t unconscious and dreaming about this. “What is this shit?” he wondered, the words sounding distressingly mushy.

The demon, to his shock, answered him. “What do you require, master?”  Now he knew he was dreaming.

It took him a moment to understand it was in fact speaking words, as  it sounded like a toilet backing up, all burbling and bubbling. “Did … did you just call me master?”

“Yes, master.”

“Stop it; that’s creepy.”

“Yes, m - yes.”

Logan got up to his knees, took a couple of deep breaths (damn, his chest hurt), and was bracing himself for actually attempting to stand when he heard the shifting of glass coming from the antique store. “So he’s bound to us now?”

Meldane let out a tsk of disgust. “Not us - you.”

“I thought you were bindin’ it to you.”

“I was, but I guess I got some of your blood when I got the sample.” He was glaring at him like it was his fault.

Logan stumbled to his feet, almost instantly falling over again, but managed to shoot him a dirty look. “Then you should’ve gotten the sample yourself.”

Meldane crossed his arms over his chest, giving him a sour, lemon-sucking look. “You’re going to have to ask it the questions; it won’t respond to me.”

He glanced at the hell pig, which still had its head bowed as if in genuflection, and Logan asked, “Who brought you here?”

“I know not his name.”

“Can you lead us to him?”

“Yes.”

“Then do. But wait a second.”

“Why are we waiting a second?” Meldane asked.

Logan leaned over, putting his hands on his knees, and tried to catch his breath. “I wanna make sure I’m not gonna barf up my kidneys. Then we can go.”

Could he have just one day when he wasn’t thrown around like a demon chew toy?  Was it too much to ask?

Still, he mostly recovered on the way as they got moving, the demon pig walking down the street like he honestly belonged there. The look people gave him upon seeing him was damn funny, and yet still rather British, as - since it wasn’t lumbering into buildings or eating cars - no one screamed and ran away. Mainly they just stared, startled but unwilling to freak out in public. Some looked around as if searching for hidden cameras, like this was a massive prank for a reality show, or maybe a movie.

The pig led them into a rather derelict neighbor near the waterfront, and Meldane grabbed his arm, stopping him as the pig kept on going ahead. “What?” Logan snapped, yanking his arm free from his grip.

“Don’t you feel that?”

“Feel what?” But now that Meldane mentioned it, he opened up his senses, ignoring how bruised and warm he felt, and did get an odd sense of … what?  It was just a feeling of pressure and static electricity, something that prickled his skin and made his hair stand on end.  He could smell nothing but saline and various polluted effluents from the riverfront, with sewage and dead fish just adding  a hint of something that smelled a hell of a lot worse than the pig. “We got some bad mojo here?”

“That’s one way to put it. Why don’t we hang back until it looks all clear?” Although he made it sound like a suggestion, Meldane was already backing up toward the corner of a nearby building.

Logan scowled at him, but followed him reluctantly. “Think it’s a trap?”

“Could be. We don’t want him to think there’s anything suspicious going on.”

“’Cause he’s that much stronger than you?”

Meldane gave him a wounded look. “I wouldn’t say that …”

“No, I did.”

Meldane gave him a look that could have peeled paint, and muttered under his breath, in French, “Suck my balls, you asshole.”

Logan raised an eyebrow at that, replying, also in French, “If you’re going to curse a guy out, at least do it in his native language, dickhead.”

He looked briefly horrified, and almost - but not quite - blushed in shame, which may have earned him some points. “You speak French.”

“I’m Canadian.  Even if you don’t bother to learn it, you pick up a lot reading the French directions on oatmeal packets.”

“Canadian?  I thought you were American.”

It was his turn to give him the paint peeling look. “Why do people always say that?”

“Because you’re muscle; you hit things. That’s considered more Yank than Canuck.”

Nothing like a good old stereotype, although he supposed he had a point.

They both waited behind the corner of a brick building that seemed to be some sort of warehouse, and watched as the pig approached a run down but still clearly used apartment complex. It didn’t matter that the façade was obviously crumbling, the paint that remained the ugly gray of decayed organs, or that it looked like it was tilted just ever so slightly to the left - London was getting to be like New York City in that places to live were at a premium, especially affordable places to live, so even hovels that were one falling brick away from total condemnation were rented out to the rafters, with a waiting list long enough to act as a runner on the rickety staircase.

The pig got to within about thirty meters of the place when, suddenly, light seemed to flare around it, a golden halo like a solar flare, and then it disappeared entirely, with nary an oink. Meldane flattened himself against the wall, and Logan guessed, “That wasn’t supposed to happen, was it?”

“No.  Whoever was controlling it must have discovered that it was no longer bound to him, and sent him back to where he came. Shit.”

“At least we know he’s in there somewhere.”

Meldane gave him that evil look again. “And how does that fucking help us?  Do you know how many people are probably in that building right now?  What are we supposed to do?  Go door to door, asking ‘Excuse me, are you an evil sorcerer?’”

“It has the element of surprise.” When Meldane continued to glare a hole right through him, he shook his head. “You have no sense of humor at all, do you?”

“This is no time for jokes.”

“There's always time for jokes. It’s better than cryin’.” Logan started walking down the narrow, piss reeking alley, parsing out the scents of rat shit, various discarded garbage, and methamphetamine residue (yeah, this was a classy neighborhood), when he stopped cold, aware he was picking up a sharp, fresh scent.

Fear.

The alley ended in a piece of chain link fence, but it was torn down the middle, with a large chunk taken out of the side, although it looked like it dead-ended shortly afterwards in a concrete wall that was part of an old loading dock area.  As he approached it warily, he stuck his head through the gap in the fence and looked both ways, to see if it went off to the side, maybe towards a connecting alley.

A pipe came swinging down towards his face.

They were fast, but he was faster, and besides, he’d been waiting for something like this.  He caught the pipe before it could connect, and wrenched it out of his would-be attacker’s hands as he pushed through the gap in the fence. “How friendly is that?” he asked, as the woman backed up, away from him. Scratch that - not a woman, a girl.

She was maybe all of sixteen, five-four, hundred and thirty five pounds, not so much overweight as having a stocky build, solid as opposed to frail. She looked Pakistani in origin, with an olive complexion, naturally wavy black hair (that was, by virtue of exposure to the high humidity dockside, a bit frizzy), and large black eyes that gave her the expression of a startled doe.  She was wearing dirt stained jeans, battered Nikes, a dark blue Muse t-shirt, and a worn brown leather jacket that looked about a size and a half too big for her. “Stay back,” she said, reaching into her coat pocket and pulling out a utility knife.

Her fear was bright and acrid as vinegar, and the problem here was obvious. He tossed the pipe away and held up his hands to show he was unarmed (okay, a lie, but one everyone believed if they hadn’t seen the claws), and didn’t make any moves toward her, sudden or otherwise. No, she couldn’t hurt him long with a utility knife, even if she went straight for the jugular, but she could inadvertently hurt herself. Utility knives were very sharp, and you could slice most of a finger off without ever really feeling it. “I’m not gonna hurt you. My name’s Logan; what’s yours?”

She swallowed hard, her look still suspicious, and she jumped slightly when Meldane looked through the fence and snapped, “What the hell is this?  Hitting on the crack whores?”

“I am not a crack whore!” The girl replied sharply, all angry, wounded dignity.  Her accent was more Midlands, maybe Yorkshire, than London. “Who the fuck are you?”

“Would you believe he’s Meldane the Magnificent?” Logan told her.

Meldane’s dark eyes narrowed to slits. “You had to give her my actual name? Well, at least I can cast a spell to make her forget.”

“Spell?” She repeated, looking between them warily. “Are you friends of Glenn?”

That was such a curious thing to say, Logan wondered why she was scared before they'd even ducked into the alley.  Her scent was permeated with fear, like she hadn’t showered in a while and had been marinating in her own terror. His guess would've been the sight of the hell swine, but no, she’d been afraid long before he’d shown up. Something bad was going on down here, and he would have bet his left nut she knew something about it.

“Glenn?” Logan repeated. “He have something to do with that big pig thing?” Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Meldane’s eyes widen in sudden curiosity.  He understood what he was trying to get at here.

She shrugged a single shoulder, trying to feign nonchalance while at the same time holding the utility knife on both of them. That was a difficult task. “If you know him, why are you asking?”

“‘Cause we don’t know him,” Logan told her, lowering his hands to his sides. She aimed the utility knife at him for that, but he didn’t care. “But we are after him.”

She remained tense, guarded, and he could see the dark circles under her eyes, the slightly ashen undertone to her tan skin. She was exhausted, riding the ragged edge of complete and utter collapse; adrenaline was probably the only thing keeping her functioning (and couldn’t he sympathize with that). “After him? What do you mean?”

“I mean we want to kick his fucking ass,” he admitted, as he thought that was what she wanted to hear. The fact that it was the truth was almost secondary. “Do you know why he’s killing so many damn people? What’s the point?”

He saw doubt flit through her eyes, relief warring with fear that she was being played. It was unclear which won out. “I don’t … I don’t know why he’s doing what he’s doing.  Who are you guys?  Are you … did you used to be Watchers?”

Meldane chuckled. “They’re dead, honey.”

“Not all of them,” Logan replied, and she looked at him with a strange kind of hope.  Did she think he meant he was one of them?  He suddenly wondered if he could fake it. “We don’t want to hurt you. What we want to do is stop this man before he kills any more people. Will you help us?”

He then wondered if a girl this wired and this freaked out could be much help at all.  But sometimes frantic help was better than no help at all.