6

What a weird, weird place Los Angeles was.

Scott couldn’t find the Way Station listed anywhere, but right there, front and center in the L.A. phone book, was the number and address for the Church of the Stone Temple, the place where Rags was head priest and chief bottle washer. Now why would a church devoted to the worship of Gorgons be completely out in the open while a bar wouldn’t be?  Strange.

The “church” was even stranger still. It was in West Hollywood, and apparently set up inside an old record store, and in the front picture window that might have once displayed U2’s latest album there was instead a small diorama made of stone, or at least Styrofoam made to look like stone. There was something like a granite miniature of Stonehenge with the scattered ruin of something like the Roman coliseum, with fake ivy and assorted vines crawling over the Styrofoam rubble like nature was already claiming it for its own. There was also a small pillar in the center, with carvings depicting three snake haired women holding swords, and atop the pillar was one of those garden gazing balls that seemed to be the twenty first century equivalent of garden gnomes.

The glass front door had “The Church Of The Stone Temple” painted on it in small green script, along with a blessing in tiny white script in the lower right corner: ‘May the Holy Sisters bless all who pass through here’.

Scott wanted to dismiss this all as New Age hokum, and already felt the scoff forming in his throat, even though he knew the Sisters existed in some form, and not only that, they had probably saved his life once. But it was really hard to feel indebted to them somehow. Gorgons, real?  Gorgons as gods?  He found himself thinking of that awful film he saw once as a kid - what was it called? Clash of The Titans? There Medusa was a stop-motion animation hag, with hair made of angry snakes. The Gorgons didn’t even have snake hair, although it did seem to move strangely and of its own accord; they were also, from what little he could remember, breathtakingly beautiful, as long as they didn’t open their eyes.

Inside, the record shop walls had been covered with marble patterned wallpaper, and the lights were low, so it was like entering a cave, with many stone altars and burning candles, and just a few benches for sitting down. The air was rife with incense, but a mild kind that wasn't cloying, and almost appealing. At the back of the store - the front of the church - was a life sized statue of a tall, shapely woman wearing the kind of loose, long robe that women of ancient Rome were generally depicted as wearing. A sash around her waist emphasized her hips, and there was a single shoulder strap holding the robe up, so you could see the top of her right breast, but just enough to be tantalizing. Her face was beautiful, very delicately featured, her hair thick and falling to her shoulders like a lion’s mane, and she held a sword over her head in a gesture somewhere between a movie studio’s logo and an executioner about to deliver a killing blow.  But the strangest thing was her eyes.

They were carved in all right, but her eyes were covered with a thick swath of color, a bright jade strip that obscured them from lower lids to the spot where her eyebrows would be if the artist had added them, with a thin line of black at the top and bottom edges.  He remembered the Gorgons he supposedly caught a glimpse of each had a band of color covering their eyes, but only when closed.  Did that mean something? Was it cosmetic, like he initially assumed, or was it actually some kind of odd coloring, like a strange birthmark?  An actual physical effect of their power? Something to help contain their powers, like his visor kept him from obliterating everything he looked at? Was that some kind of mystical visor equivalent? Wow - just considering it made him feel weird.  That, and the fact that he found a marble statue physically attractive.

Of course, things just got worse from there.

Someone came out from the back - he didn't know there was a back - and commented on Medusa being a real hottie, and the voice was distressingly familiar. His stomach burned with a sudden shock of anxiety as it was followed up with, "Holy shit - Mr. Summers?"

It was Brendan.

But, while it was mildly embarrassing to see him, it was also good to see him. He looked well, and seemed to have grown two inches since he had seen him last (ah, the wonders of being a teenager).

Scott suggested they go down to the coffee shop on the corner, mainly so he never had to admit the Medusa statue was indeed a "hottie". (How long had it been since he'd been with Jean? Oh no, that was not an avenue to think about right now ...)

At the coffee shop, Brendan caught him up on his life. He was sharing an apartment with a struggling actor/half demon named Alejandro who could pass for Human, whose claim to fame was a non-speaking role in a big film, where he was billed in the credits as "Skateboard punk". Apparently, this was a big deal - or at least Brendan was impressed.

Brendan himself still wasn't sure what he wanted to do with his life, but at Alejandro's request recently went to an open casting audition for a "Real World" type series where they were looking for a young mutant to move in with the "regular" cast. Brendan didn't think he'd get it because his mutation wasn't really "visual enough" (in his words the "teal spiky thing" - of course that was actually his demon side, but he didn't mention that, because, quote: "People know there's mutants out there; no one knows about the demons."), but did like the idea of free rent, and said he'd gotten a glimpse of the house in Santa Monica, and it was really cool. He also thought it would be a move for mutant tolerance, to show they're just like anyone else, but Scott was a bit dubious about that. Reality shows enjoyed the "freak of the week" mentality just like any talk show, only they had a tendency to stretch that week out to a season.  He hated to see anyone, especially Brendan, exploited like that.

Apparently everyone at the Stone Temple was "really cool", and he'd made some good friends. Rags was a nice guy when you could understand him, and when he wasn't drunk, which he was on pretty much any given evening. He was a nice drunk, but Brendan was worried about his obvious alcoholism, which made Scott have to suppress a smile.

What a good kid. And Brendan was, very much so, in spite of his rough upbringing. God, the kid, by all rights, should have been a jaded monster, and if he was who could have blamed him? Drug addicted mother, currently incarcerated, raised in foster homes where he was abused, a street kid who probably had done his share of awful things to get by, and yet there was very little cynicism about him. He was even looking after the hot tempered and immature Matt when he and Storm initially picked them up at Grand Central Station - and Matt when on to prove that he couldn't survive a minute without Brendan. That was still a terrible thing to think about, and the uncomfortable, unspoken thing that neither of them mentioned, but knew was there anyways, like an invisible guest at the table.

He had such high hopes for Brendan. He was a natural leader, and a natural survivor, whose first instinct was to protect the weakest of his group, simply because he knew he was strong. And he was strong, and brave, and he had the ability to think on his feet; his actual mutant ability, eidetic memory, probably helped immeasurably there. But Scott knew now that maybe he'd help frighten him off, simply because he fast tracked him so soon, so clearly made him an X-Man candidate before Brendan felt he was ready for it.

The weird thing was, he felt a kind of connection with Brendan, maybe because they had both spent time in foster homes. Of course, he wasn't abused - some of the places weren't great, but he was never burned with iron or sexually exploited - and didn't spend as long in them as Brendan had, but it was still a kind of bond that people who hadn't been through it wouldn't understand.

Still, could he and Brendan be more different? Brendan was still bisexual, half-demon, and attracted to Logan, all of which seemed rather baffling to him, and he knew Brendan probably thought he was way too tightly wound. Maybe he was. But he liked this kid, and he could see greatness for him ... but not out here, not living with glorified extras and working as a waiter in a restaurant in Glendale.

He wanted to ask him to come back to the school, but he knew he couldn't push it. If he needed time to think, fine, but he hoped he didn't take much longer.

Scott told him what hotel he was staying at (he did get a room, as that was part of his overall plan with Bob) so he could drop by and give him a letter for Rogue; apparently they had been corresponding pretty regularly, which was good - connection to the school - although what wasn't good was the fact that Rogue had expressed some interest in moving out to L.A., a wish she hadn't shared with anyone else. And even though he hadn't said it, Brendan gave him a weak smile over his latte, and said, "I haven't given up completely, Mr. Summers. I just ... I need more time, y'know?"

To come back to the school. Scott thought he was humoring him by saying that, giving him a smidgen of hope, which was just further proof of how nice a kid he was.

Brendan asked him why he was in Los Angeles, and that left him in a terrible position. He told him he was hoping to see Bob about something, which was true at least, but he had no idea where to look for him. Of course, Brendan knew where the Way Station was, and offered to take him there, which gave Scott a savage attack of sudden guilt. He didn't want to use Brendan for this, or any kid. If Brendan found out, he'd never trust him again. But then Brendan said: "It's a good thing you ran into me. You'd never get in on your own."

"What? Why?"

"It's shielded from regular Humans. You would walk past it and never see it." He shrugged. "I guess a lot of demon bars are that way. We like our privacy."

Was that why it wasn't in the phone book? The Stone Temple was a church, open to all, but the Way Station was more picky about its clientele? He didn't think Bob was picky about anything.

As soon as they were done with their lattes, Brendan took him to the Way Station.

It wasn't in the bad part of town; it was in the obliterated part of town. The part that got massively torn up and burned out by the '90's L.A. riots and never rebuilt in any way, shape, or form; it was like it existed to serve as a warning for others, and a living reminder that even normal Humans couldn't get along with each other, that the stupidest, most inconsequential things could divide them. And if something as marginal as race could almost destroy a city, what hope did you have when the differences were much more extreme?

The building Brendan led him to was a crumbling, derelict brick structure with boarded up windows and obvious char marks, seemingly held together by ‘This Property Is Condemned’ signs. It had to be a joke. “There’s no way this is the Way Station,” he protested.

But Brendan just grinned, and said, “See what I mean by normal people being unable to find it?”

He grabbed his arm as he pulled him right up to it, and Scott felt something … unusual. It was like a mild, unseen pressure, as if the smog had solidified to a gelatin like consistency, and suddenly the building before them was intact. But no less a seedy bar, with the thud of a bass line bizarrely audible, as if the music had started that very second.

What the hell was this? There was no way it was a hologram.

Brendan shoved open the heavy wooden door, and they were instantly assailed by a cloud of cigarette smoke, and the aggressive rhymes of Public Enemy. It was a dark bar, as disreputable as anything in a Raymond Chandler novel, but populated by demons instead of men in fedoras and sexy dames. In fact, many of the demons were of such an inhuman stripe they could give a person nightmares for years. For example, he saw a demon sitting at the near table, blue as sky, with claw like fingers and absolutely no eyes to speak of (or at least not on his face), but a mouth twice as large as any Human’s, with double the number of saw like teeth.

And all these things turned to look at them as they came in, but most looked away again, uninterested, save for a few that stared at him hungrily. Brendan was here enough that they recognized him? That was a bit disturbing.

Behind the bar was a very large Samoan man - or at least a demon that resembled a large Samoan man - and Brendan gave him a familiar nod as he said, “Hey Lau - Helga in?”

The man, who was cleaning a beer mug with what looked like a chamois, simply nodded and then jerked his head off to the left, where it looked like there was a small hall and a series of back rooms. Brendan told him, “Wait here. I’ll just be a sec.” Without waiting for an acknowledgement of any sort, he went off that way, and Scott found himself alone at the bar.

“Get you something?” The man Brendan called Lau asked.

He shook his head, not trusting a drink in a demon bar, and the big guy just shrugged and wandered away.

“Those Ferragamo?” Someone said, and it took Scott a moment to connect it to the demon at the end of the bar, one with a rather impressive rack of antlers.

“What?”

“Ferragamo?” The demon tapped the area just beside his eye, apparently indicating his visor. “La Perla? Maui Jim?”

This made no sense at all to Scott, but he guessed he was asking him what brand of sunglasses they were. Rather than tell him they weren’t sunglasses, he simply said, “Xavier.”

The demon with the antler shook his head, and it looked like he might fall off his barstool; he was that top heavy, and that intoxicated. “Never heard of ‘em. French?”

Before Scott was forced to continue this conversation, Helga appeared, and said, “You might as well get over here, Summers.” She patted Brendan on the shoulder, and said, “He’s got his serious face on, so you might wanna get outta here.”

Brendan sighed. “I guess so. You make sure he gets home okay?”

“Yeah, no problem. Now get home and none of this Batman shit, hear me?”

Brendan grimaced, but nodded reluctantly. “Yeah, yeah.” He paused on his way past him, and said, “It was good seeing you again, Mister Summers. See you tomorrow?”

“Of course. Take care of yourself.” He held out his hand to shake it, but Brendan hugged him, which startled him momentarily, but he hugged him in return, giving him an encouraging pat on the back. It was weird, as he wasn’t a “huggy” type of person, but it all fell back to that continuous thought, that Brendan was a good kid, and he did miss him at the school. It was unlikely a single hug would convince him to come back, but it was a nice gesture.

As soon as Brendan pulled away and left the bar, Scott looked at Helga curiously. “Batman shit? What did you mean by that?”

She waited until he was closer to the back table she had apparently selected as their meeting place before replying. “You taught him well at that mutant school of yours, Boy Scout. He still plays hero in his free time, mainly defending various people against big bad demons. Angel’s gone and Logan’s not here, so he decided to take it upon himself to fill the gap.”

“What? Are you serious? How in the hell can you let him do that? He’s just -”

“I don’t let him do anything,” she snapped back testily. “I ain’t his mom. He’s a stubborn teenager who feels a little less helpless beating the shit out of vampires, ones kind of like the one that killed his ex-boyfriend. Who am I to deny him that simple pleasure?” She straddled a chair at the table, sitting back and staring at him with frosty green eyes. “Welcome to the jungle, baby.”

Scott roughly pulled out a chair across from her and sat down, scowling in displeasure. Public Enemy had given way to Tori Amos, which was a little better, at least in the throbbing, headache inducing noise department. But then it occurred to him what she had said - she had said Angel was gone, and yet specified Logan wasn’t here. They didn’t mean the same thing. “Angel’s gone? As in dead?”

Helga studied him curiously for a moment, tail flicking behind her like a student waving for attention. “Logan didn’t tell you? Huh. Well, I guess he wouldn’t, would he? Angel kinda took an unexpected vacation in another dimension, and a couple of days ago, the Sisters told me they no longer got any sense of him. Which means …” She drew a finger across her throat in a slitting gesture.

He sat back, honestly stunned. He didn’t know him that well, and he instinctively didn’t like him because he was a friend of Logan’s as well as a vampire, but he still felt a small twinge in his gut that another person he knew, however peripherally, was dead Everyone seemed to be dying around him. As vampires went, he didn’t seem that bad at all, especially when compared to the likes of the Sisters. “How’s Wesley taking it?” He asked.

From the look on her face, he had surprised her. She shook her head and rubbed her forehead. “Holy shit, he told you nothing, did he?”

“What? Did Wesley go with him? Is he … is he dead too?”

She sighed and nodded in confirmation. Now he really felt sick. Wesley was at least Human, and had impressed the Professor enough with his defense of the mansion to offer him a slot in the X-Men. Xavier had never offered a slot to a non-mutant before or since. “Holy shit. When did this … when did this all happen? Why didn’t Logan tell us?”

“He probably didn’t think any of you would care. They were his friends, not yours.”

“That isn’t true. Well, okay, maybe in Angel’s case, but not Wesley’s.” Did he really need another reason to resent Logan at this point? He was almost tired of doing it; it seemed to take up too much time and energy. “He could have at least told us.”

“Take that up with him. But before you completely lose your nut, keep in mind he’s recently lost his girlfriend and his daughter. He ain’t in the greatest emotional state right now.”

“Is he ever?” But even as he said that, he knew it wasn’t completely fair. She was right in the fact that a lot of people had died on Logan recently, more than had died around him, but he just figured Logan was used to death. He dished it out, he wallowed in it, he lived with it as his only true companion. He seemed like he didn’t really care if someone died or not. Or did he? Logan usually went into seclusion when something like this happened, like an injured animal holing up in a dark cave until it heals. How did you judge someone’s level of grief when they weren’t even there?

“I doubt this is what you came here to talk about,” Helga finally prompted, impatiently changing the subject.

Did she care about death at all? She seemed to kill quite a few people at Mirror Lake. Whether she had needed to or not - how much of it was “self-defense” - was debatable. But she was a demon, and maybe that gave her an excuse. It was difficult to shift from his shocked state to an emotionally neutral one, but he’d had many years of training. He could shunt his emotions aside when they weren’t helping him, such as now. “I need to see Bob.”

“Well, don’t we all?” she replied coolly, her tail picking up a beer glass from a neighboring table and bringing it to her. The man was clearly passed out, snoring faintly face down on the table, and he’d never miss it. “But why the hell do you need to see Bob? I thought you hated his guts.”

“I don’t hate him,” he lied. “I don’t … care for him much, but that’s not hate.”

She glared at him like she didn’t quite believe him, and she probably didn’t, but it wasn’t vital that she did. Still, he couldn’t ignore her completely, as you underestimated her at your peril, as Mirror Lake had proved. Maybe this wasn’t exactly a perfect film noir bar, but she was definitely a femme fatale. “Uh huh. So why do you wanna see him?”

His best bet was to stick to the truth as much as possible, as they expected that of him anyways. “I’ve … I think Jean’s been contacting me. She’s trying to tell me something, but I’m not sure what.”

“So why not talk to Xavier about this? Why Bob?”

“How could I talk to the Professor about this? He can’t help me. She’s trying to tell me something, but she’s not telling me directly, and I don’t understand what I‘m getting. Bob understands this god crap, doesn’t he?”

She narrowed her eyes, studying him intently as she gulped down the beer she had stolen. He couldn’t read her expression very well, as when it wasn’t neutral or sly, it was ticked off. After a moment, she set the empty glass down with a thunk, and said, “Look, if you’re looking for a quick fix, you’ll need to go elsewhere. Bob’s off in another dimension, and time runs different in each one. He may think he’s been gone for an hour, but here that could be a year and a half. I have no idea when he’s coming back.”

He nodded, a little disappointed by the answer but not terribly surprised. He pulled out the business card he picked up from the hotel, and quickly scribbled his room number on it. It wasn’t a fancy place, but he was certainly paying for it like it was. (Oh well, that’s what credit cards were for, right?) “I should be here for a couple of days. If he drops back in, tell him to come by, okay?”

He slid it across the table and she picked it up, looking at it for longer than seemed necessary before nodding reluctantly. “Yeah, I’ll let him know. Couldn’t afford a better hotel?”

“At least it doesn’t rent by the hour.” He stood up, finished here and already getting a mild headache from the cigarette smoke and loud music. Tori Amos had given way to a rather raucous number from Faith No More, which seemed like a perfect band for Bob. Just the name alone fit.

“You might want to grab your kid and take him home with you,” Helga said, making him pause.

“My kid? Do you mean Brendan?”

“Yeah, I do.” She sighed wearily, shoving the hotel card in the back pocket of her jeans. “The kid’s been lucky so far, but it can’t last. He’s good, I’ll give him that, and thanks to his ability to remember every damn thing he’s ever seen, he can replicate Jet Li moves after seeing them once, but it’s just a matter of time before it becomes irrelevant. He’s been getting into scraps with younger and newer vamps, but he’s just half Brachen - while he’s stronger than a Human, he’s just average for a demon, and the older the vamp, the tougher and smarter they are. Eventually some century old bugger will meet him in a back alley and rip his heart out of his chest. He’d better than you’d expect, really, I’ve seen him in action, but he’s no Slayer, and he doesn’t have the long time fighting skills or preternatural healing abilities of either Angel or Logan. I was thinking of having Bob give him a push so he’d get the fuck out of here before I had to scrape him off the sidewalk ! as road kill. Just take him back with you when you go, okay?”

It was a chilling thought. He always thought Brendan was smarter than that … but then again, she had pointed out everything relevant: he was a teenager, one with a grudge against vampires, one who knew he was stronger than average, and one who never sat back and let other people take care of a problem. He would fight until he was dead, if only because he was so damn pigheaded. “I’ll do my best.”

And he would, because it seemed like more than enough people had died recently, and he didn’t want Brendan, who had so much promise, to be just another casualty.

7

Her name was Asha Rahman, and this was all her fault.

Okay, no, it wasn’t, but she had let some super-secret Watcher book fall into Glenn’s hand, which was apparently the catalyst for this mess. Meldane wanted to retreat until they figured out what exactly was going on, and he thought that was a good idea, but only because he wanted to know exactly what they were facing. It was hard to have a battle strategy when you had no idea who your opponent was. Also, the only thing Meldane seemed “magnificent” at was annoying the shit out of him. They needed a better spellcaster, and they needed it now.

The only thing to do to Asha was get her out of here, and since there really was no other place to take her, they went back to Ruby’s. the sun was up, so presumably she was as well, in a humanoid form, but Logan had no guarantees she wouldn’t kill him on sight. So while he knocked on the door and called out her name, he quickly stepped behind Meldane and Asha as she opened the door.

She seemed shocked upon seeing them, and quickly hid something behind her back. Logan thought he heard it clunk heavily behind the door, and he suddenly wondered if she kept a hatchet in the house.

Although still clearly pissed off, and wearing only a purple silk robe that probably cost more than everyone else’s wardrobe combined, she let them in, and Logan went off to make Asha some tea, because she needed relax before she snapped, and he needed to get away from Ruby’s fiery death stare.

Asha at least seemed duly impressed that Ruby used to be a Watcher, and that alone seemed to relax her. Just from what she was able to tell her, Ruby deduced it certainly wasn’t the demon Haggoth they were dealing with, the ones the kids were clearly trying to raise. According to Ruby, Haggoth was a hedonistic demon, very much into avarice and gluttony, a favorite of corporate CEO’s, robber barons, and the terminally repressed everywhere. In spite of what the kids read, Haggoth really didn’t give the ones it used “eternal youth” - it kept them alive for a long time, usually, but youth wasn’t a part of the actual package, just a lure to bring the suckers in. Haggoth wasn’t big into the killing, but only because there usually wasn’t any money in it, or enough money to make it worthwhile. At its core, it was an amazingly lazy demon. A bit of a shame, actually, because according to Ruby, it was really easy to send packing.

So that left open the question of what the hell had taken over Glenn. The problem was, without more details, there was about a hundred possibilities. The fact that it seemed to rapidly age its victims narrowed things down a bit, but Ruby knew of none offhand with that ability that also possessed Humans, so she had to go hit her own collection of books. Perhaps wisely, she went off to her bedroom to look at them there, away from prying teenage eyes.

Meldane was pacing, occasionally stopping to look out the window, and he so clearly didn’t want to be here Logan was on the verge of throwing him out, preferably through the wall. Asha had relaxed a little, and thanked him for the tea, but she looked remarkably weary. He was pretty sure they were on a pass out countdown right now.

After sipping her orange pekoe and having a good look around Ruby’s cozy yet subtly eerie front room, she asked, “Why is there blood on that couch?”

That even made Meldane turn around and look. Logan grimaced sheepishly, and admitted, “That’s my fault. I recovered here from a fight last night -” he pulled up a bit of his torn shirt, to show her the bloodstains “- and I bled on it a bit. I haven’t exactly had time to go home and change.”

Asha looked him up and down cautiously, then asked, “Is that why she looks like she wants to have at you with a chainsaw?”

Exhausted or not, she was still amazingly perceptive.

As if on cue, he heard a door slam shut, and Ruby emerged from her bedroom, now wearing jeans and a very old, tattered Smiths t-shirt (She was a Smiths fan? He’d never have guessed), and carrying a very old, leather bound book that she was still reading as she entered the room. “Okay - if I’m right, we’re in bigger trouble than I initially thought.”

Great. Now he bet his weekend was shot to hell.