It wasn't too hard to find the place - it was a fairly posh two story home, with a bungalow style roof and a heated backyard pool, as well as what seemed to be round the clock security service. Bob wasn't the least bit surprised, though, as one of the terrible truisms of life was you would never go broke trafficking in Human misery. It was a market with an endless need, and there was no shortage of supplies.

Who knew being with a god could be so depressing?

Logan, almost against his better judgment, decided to let Bob handle it, mainly because he remembered what he did to the guy behind Eden Biotechnics. There was revenge and then there was justice, and the two weren't always the same thing.

Bob just walked right through the front gates, disabling the security system with a thought. The guards came for them, but Bob told them both they really had to pee now, and they ran off to do just that before they pissed themselves. Huge, nasty pit bulls ran for them, but Bob told them to be nice, and suddenly they were, wagging their tails with such naive enthusiasm it looked like their hind ends were about to go airborne. The dogs kindly led them to the front of the house, and Bob just walked in the door, the locks that were on it suddenly not functional.

That was one thing for it, though: breaking and entering with Bob was terribly easy.

The Matador was in what must have been his living room, or maybe his theater room, if such a thing existed: an action movie featuring Bruce Willis and a ton of explosions was playing on the plasma screen t.v. bolted against the far wall, the explosions magnified by the surround sound speakers in each corner of the room. And yet the Matador wasn't paying attention to it; he was shouting into the phone, furious about what he saw as an attack by some of his south of the border rivals. Logan wished he was surprised that the Matador was Hispanic himself, but he wasn't - greed and exploitation knew no race.

As soon as he saw the stranger in his house, he went wide eyed and grabbed for the gun he wore, but Bob simply said, "Hang up," and he obeyed, as mindlessly and instantly as the dogs.

Logan wanted to gut him; he wanted to chop him into little pieces and let his attack dogs have the rest, but Bob was working the justice angle. He muted the television, and after a moment, turned to the Matador, who was frozen where he stood, and said, "I think the first one was the best, you know, if only for Alan Rickman chewing the scenery like his career depended on it. Now, Matty - I guess I should call you Jorge, huh? - here's what you're gonna do. From this moment on you're turning over a new leaf. You know now what you're doing is wrong and you feel horrible about it, so horrible you can never forgive yourself. You're going to shut down all your sweatshops and free the workers; you're going to give all your money and possessions away; and then you're going to go to the FBI branch office in L.A. and give yourself up. But it's not only you you're giving up - you're going to give up everyone you know in this business, even peripherally. You're going to give up the me! asliest thug in your employ to the major businesses that took advantage of your cheap slave labor. You are going to turn states evidence on every goddamn person you've ever met in this biz. Am I clear?"

The Matador nodded dumbly, a puppet on a string. There were now tears welling in his eyes, but Logan wasn't sure why.

"You're going to be proud of being a snitch, because what you've done with your life is horrendous. You want to atone, and how you feel better about yourself is by getting as many people to join you in prison as possible. Now go get your financial records - the real ones - and get to work."

The Matador had a thousand yard stare, and he turned and stiffly walked out of the room, heading upstairs by the sound of it. It also sounded like he burst into tears on the way.

"The way you fuck with people," Logan said, with a mix of admiration and outright fear.

"I know. It's a shame, inn't?" Bob replied breezily, grabbing an apple from a bowl of fruit on the sideboard as they walked out of the house.

"They're gonna kill him."

Bob shrugged. "Eventually, yeah, but before that he's going to explode a major part of the alien exploitation ring, and incriminate the corporations who feed off it. But you know what the best part of it will be?"

Logan sensed this was a trick question, so he simply asked, "What?"

"You ain't the one doing the killin'," he replied, biting into the apple on their way down the lit cobblestone walk.

Yeah, he knew it was a trick question.

18

It was almost a relief to wake up and not sense Bob in him. It wasn't that he wasn't grateful Bob saved their hash, but he liked being in control of himself once more.

It was bizarre to wake up in Bob's bed though, the one in the warehouse apartment he usually shared with Hel. Of course he knew why he was here - he couldn't see going back to Faith's with Bob in control of him. She was just too freaked out by it, and he didn't blame her. Hel wasn't here, which made him curious, but he figured that maybe Bob had subtly pushed her not to come back here tonight, because he knew what an awkward situation that might make.

Unlike Faith, Helga wasn't freaked out by their arrangement, and she was pretty much happy to fuck either of them. Probably both at the same time; Stansins were all about the group sex thing.

He took a long shower, happy to wash the blood from last night off of him, and dug through Bob's clothes until he could find something he could wear. (He wasn’t going to wear crocodile print leather pants; that was never gonna happen.) He found a pair of jeans that weren't outlandish in any way, but the shirts were more difficult. Oh, he had a ton of t-shirts, but they all had the weird sayings on them that made them so defiantly Bob's. (He was never wearing a t-shirt that said "Sausage Victim"; that too was never gonna happen.) Eventually he settled on a t-shirt that was a reproduction of a beer label, although it was for a beer he'd never heard of : Cockshutt's Old Peculiar. Clearly a British beer, but was it even real? It was possible Bob made it up 'cause he liked the name. (And he would too.)

It was while he was digging through the fridge, making breakfast, that he realized that Bob was in fact totally gone. He sensed none of the energy in the back of his mind, none of that terrible blue light that at once burned and froze, the stuff that made telepathic brains melt on contact. Did that mean he was back in a physical form? Hurray if so. Bob had done him a lot of favors, he couldn't deny that, but it was good to be alone in his body once more.

He called Faith, who wasn't surprised he didn't come back last night - apparently Bob had told her they might be gone all night "cleaning up". "Have you seen the news yet?" she asked.

He hadn't, but she caught him up. The Matador had made the front page of the paper, and the morning news had the Feds involved in an orgy of arrests, while a couple of big corporations had their lawyers (Faith thought she recognized one or two from Wolfram and Hart) and P.R. people making statements in advance of arrest warrants against their CEO's. It was just panic and chaos in the white collar world as well as the smuggling underworld, and Faith found it hard to stop laughing. She'd been trying to call Xander, see if he was aware of what was going on, but he wasn't answering his phone.

She didn't know, did she? Xander got his eye back, and he was probably still working through the shock of it. But, on the bright side, when he did hear this, it would probably make him happy. The Matador wasn't dead (yet), but he was finished, so maybe Berto's death wasn't in vain.

He was just about done fussing with his omelet (it was Bob’s fridge - he had to take advantage of all the alternately weird and fancy food he had in there) when there was a knock at the door. He would have thought it was Bob, except Bob wouldn’t knock - this was his place, after all. Up close to the door, he realized the smell beyond the door was familiar, but surprising.

He opened the door, saying, “Kid, what’re you doing here?”

Brendan stared at him bleary eyed, both his lack of sharp focus and the dark half moons under his eyes attesting to the fact that he hadn’t gotten any sleep yet, or at least not near enough. “Kier came over and told me everything you told him to tell me. Or Bob did. Can I come in?”

He opened the door wide and walked back to Bob’s kitchen, since he didn’t want his breakfast to burn. He and Bob had paid a visit to pretty boy Kier (and he was very pretty - Logan and Bob had to give him that) before going to the Matador’s place. Bob made Kier tell him the total truth of his involvement with Bren, and both of them got something they didn’t expect. Bob instructed him to admit the truth to Bren as soon as he saw him.

Bren came in and shut the door, taking a seat at Bob’s small kitchen table. “Wow, smells good. Don’t suppose I can scam some, huh?”

“No,” he said, grumpy that he now had to put his omelet on a plate because the kid was here. He slid it out of the pan onto a big ceramic plate decorated inexplicably with the painting of a big rooster (Bob and his cock jokes), and grabbed a fork from the drawer by the sink. He grabbed a second and tossed it over his shoulder at the kid, not bothering to see if he caught it (he must have, as he didn’t hear it hit the table or the floor).

He sat down in the opposite chair, across from Bren, and set the plate down in front of himself so Bren would have to reach to pick at it. The kitchen was small enough that he was able to reach the fridge from his chair, pulling out a beer, a bottle of brown ale with a name that suggested a microbrewery.

Bren watched him with a raised eyebrow. “I gotta ask - why do you drink beer all the time? You can’t feel the alcohol, right? So what’s the point. Beer doesn’t taste that good.”

“Depends on the beer,” he pointed out, twisting the cap off and taking a swig. Yeah, this beer tasted pretty good, in spite of its name (Devil’s Head Wicked Ale - again, surely Bob being funny). But as he set it down, he admitted, “It overwhelms my taste buds, so I don’t hafta taste the air.”

“What?”

He picked up his fork and dug into his omelet, glad the feta hadn’t melted too much. “Ya think I just smell stuff and that’s it? Your taste is related to your sense of smell. I drink beer so I don’t hafta keep tastin’ stuff, just like I smoke cigars to block out smells.” He cut into the mishmash of eggs and vegetables, and didn’t bother to mention that there was also a certain comfort factor to it all, that sometimes a cigar just felt like a good thing to have, giving him something to do with himself, while he never gave up hope that one day he’d find a beer he could feel, one that would just numb all the pain and make it go away for a little while. He knew it would never happen, but because he was apparently a stubborn bastard, he never stopped trying.

“Oh, wow. I never thought of it that way,” Bren admitted, sounding a little embarrassed. “Scott just said you were a wannabe alcoholic.”

That made him snort - it sounded just like the Boy Scout. The funny thing was, it was surprisingly accurate (not that he’d ever admit it). Also, he made a damn good omelet, if he didn’t say so himself, although the ingredients made it a hard thing to fuck up. Bob had the best stuff - even the feta was a real good, smooth kind that tasted rich, not vaguely of vomit (well, some feta did taste that way to him). “So what’s botherin’ you about Kier?”

He actually knew, he just had some questions about other things. Kier was a schemer, but not in the way that Bren had assumed. His motives weren’t sinister - they were selfish. Bren had reached over and cut off a hunk of the eggs with his fork, but he stared at Logan in disbelief. “What’s bothering me? You’re seriously asking that? My boyfriend’s a starfucker; what isn’t bothersome about that?”

“That ain’t all of it, kiddo.” And it wasn’t, although that was the most succinct explanation. Kier was a restless, bored vampire who wanted to set himself apart from the pack, and was frustrated by the fact that he could no longer pursue his acting career (the vamp snuff films just didn’t require acting of any sort). So what he decided to do was make a major name for himself amongst his fellow vampires, and he decided the way to do that was to get into Angel’s inner circle. He didn’t want to kill him or spy on him, as Bren had assumed - he wanted to catch a little of his glory. He wanted to become just as notorious as Angel was among his fellow vamps; he wanted to become “famous”. Vampires in charge of massacres or big schemes were a dime a dozen, but vamps who made their livelihood killing other vamps … now that was a specialty field.

Bren was a way into Angel’s circle. But Kier admitted he liked Bren, that he was smarter and more interesting than any vampire he’d been with, and he was cute (he also added he was a “pretty good fuck”, but Logan wasn’t about to tell the kid that, although it‘d probably be an ego boost). He still wanted to get “on the team” though, make a name for himself.

“It’s the most important part, though. I’m a means to an end.”

“He likes you. No one can lie to Bob, certainly not a run-of-the-mill bloodsucker.”

Bren shrugged uncomfortably, chewing his forkful of eggs. He grimaced in a speculative way, and said, “Hey, this is pretty good. I didn’t know you could cook.”

“I gotta take care of myself somehow, don’t I? Look, if Kier gives you any kind of … amusement, you might as well keep ‘im. Hell, tell Angel; he just might bring him aboard. It might be nice to have a vampire agent that isn’t as unstable as the Sisters. And the kid ain’t a bad fighter, vain wannabe actor or not.”

Bren stole another bite, but looked at him warily. “But he’s a fame hungry asshole. He’s using me to get to Angel.”

“Yeah, and you can use him back. I don’t think Kier would expect anything less, actually; he knows the game.”

“You’d trust him?”

“Not totally. But you can trust him as long as his selfish motives co-exist happily with your own. When they start to diverge, though, when his own fame will be increased by betrayal …” he didn’t finish the sentence, because he felt he didn’t have to.

The kid got it, but he frowned a little, not liking it. “Cut the loss. Doesn’t that seem a little … I dunno … cold blooded?”

Logan shrugged a shoulder, basically conceding the point. “It’s Hollywood. Just hope it never comes to that.”

He let the kid chew on that as well as his segment of omelet for a moment, letting the silence stretch out a bit, filled only with the ticking of a clock hanging on the wall beside the fridge. (It was one of those “bird clocks” that had a different one sing on the hour, but Logan had never seen an Australian version of the clock before. Did Bob just make that up, or did they actually make those somewhere?) Figuring that enough time had passed, Logan finally asked, “So why didn’t you tell anyone your mother died?”

Bren sat up, and shoved back a little, the chair scraping against the linoleum. “What?”

“Bob saw it in your mind. He wanted to talk to you about it, but I told him I’d rather.”

He groaned and sat forward, resting his head in his hands. “Goddamn it. What’s there to talk about if you already know -”

“Why do you blame yourself, kid? She committed suicide on the other side of the country.”

“Yeah, thanks for that fucking news flash,” he snapped, his shoulders hunching as if he was preparing to leap across the table. But he remembered who he was talking to, and didn’t. “I don’t wanna talk about this right now. I can’t handle it.”

“Bullshit. You think yer a monster ‘cause you don’t feel that bad about your Mom topping herself, but I’ve actually got a fucking news flash for you: why should you mourn her?

That made Bren look up at him in slightly appalled confusion. “What?”

This was why Logan felt he was best suited to this conversation over Bob. Not only did he know the kid better, but he was used to him sounding ruthless. “A common biology doesn’t mean as much as people seem to think it should. Every time I hear these “family values” politicians spoutin’ off, I wanna smash their heads in. I know what family can do to each other, I know of the horrible things parents can do their children, and even visa versa - although that’s a bit rarer. But a blood tie means shit, even though some people think it should mean everything. Sometimes people just can’t connect. It might be no one’s fault, but it happens a lot. And a long time ago your mother had a choice. I ain’t sayin’ it was easy, or that I don’t sympathize, but she had to choose the most important thing in her life, you or the drugs, and we both know it wasn’t you. You probably got your mourning done a long time ago, so why do you need to do it again?”

The kid sniffed, and wiped away nascent tears in his eyes, looking down at the table. “I don’t know if that’s supposed to make me feel better or worse.”

“Feel however you wanna feel, and don’t let anyone tell you how you should.”

He grunted in forced humor, and looked at him, appearing far too weary for his age. “So all you old guys are fonts of wisdom, huh?”

“Font my ass,” he snapped. “Call me old again, and I’ll stab you with my fork.”

The kid got a slightly giddy grin on his face, and Logan knew he was in for something, but that was okay - if the kid was sharp enough to snark, he was gonna be okay. “Ooh, that sounds like a double entendre to me.”

The kid shoved his chair back quickly as Logan feigned a strike with his fork, and shook his head, scowling in disapproval. But it was kind of hard not to laugh. With a name like fork, the double entendres were just built in.

****

He went back to Alberta, although why he couldn’t say. But he figured with the police looking for someone who looked liked him in B.C., whoever was looking for him in Alberta would wander over there as well. He eventually meandered over to Manitoba, a place that made Alberta generally look “exciting”, and since suicide didn’t look like a viable option, he had no idea what he was going to do with himself. Eventually he got hungry, and he had been without beer long enough to want to tear his hair out in big clumps.

He wandered into a seedy looking bar in Moosejaw, only to find the owner - a heavy set woman with an eagle tattoo on her neck - was looking for a bartender. A tough one, which was actually the main qualification (as for knowledge of drinks, that was not a prerequisite; no one ordered fancy drinks around here, and most of the clientele were lucky to have enough teeth to talk without whistling), so he got the job. He supposed he took it as punishment - he was going to stay in one place as long as he could, and just deal with it. If they caught up to him, they caught up to him.

But no one did, This was the kind of bar where no one told tales out of school anyhow, even if a cop came in here threatening to gun everyone down if they didn’t admit all the crimes they’d witnessed. No one squealed, because everyone was guilty.

He lasted about a month and a half - two months, give or take a weekend or two - before he couldn’t stand staying in Moosejaw anymore. The bar gig was no trouble at all; it was insanely easy. At first they tested him because he didn’t seem that tough, but as soon as they found out how tough he actually was - and he brooked no nonsense at all - the customers treated him with something very close to reverence, They didn’t want to get on his bad side; he never had to repeat himself. (And he’d never broken out the claws either - he knew as soon as he did that, it was over.) It should have been good, it should have been the gateway that he needed, the passage to something like a “normal” life, but he couldn’t do it. Something in him wasn’t ready, but also, something in him told him he wasn’t good enough, and he didn’t deserve to feel “safe”; he had done too much to ever deserve anything like a normal life.

So one morning he told the owner, Oona, that he had to go back to the Yukon due to a death in his family. She made appropriate sympathetic noises, although she was also clearly pissed off that she’d have to replace him. He drove off, not sure what the fuck he was doing or where he was going. As it was, a sudden flood stuck him in a rural, mountainous part of Alberta for a week longer than he intended, and he realized he couldn’t stand being alone with himself. What did you do about that?

He couldn’t get drunk, not easily, and he already knew that drugs were for other people, people who didn’t have immune systems so freakishly attenuated that they rejected even a complex narcotic. Women were nice, but they had a tendency to ask too many questions, and he was afraid again that he might develop attachments that would make him want to stay in one place, and that wasn’t something he was going to allow to happen. He knew he was dangerous, and he couldn’t be trusted near anyone. He was built to hurt things, and it was all he was good for - he’d be a fool to forget it.

He ended up in the Yukon eventually, drinking in a bar in a sprawling truck stop complex, the kind that was actually a small city compacted to the size of an airplane hangar. In one sense it was dangerous, because people were constantly coming and going, but on the other hand it was safe, because it was the rare man who gained enough attention to be remembered amongst the crowd. He was sitting at the bar, nursing a beer and attempting to watch the news over the general din, but he was down the way from a big guy as bald as a pool cue, his scalp red from sunburn, bragging to his boneheaded friends that he could beat any ass in the joint, and the only people who’d get in the cage with him anymore were newbies, outsiders who’d never heard of him before. Cage?

That must have been the thing around the back. Because he was tired of hearing the guy, he wandered off and found it. It was barely a proper “cage”, just an enclosure mainly made of chicken wire, with a few scattered benches for “spectators”. He could smell lingering traces of blood, body odor, sweat and pain. Fun. Bunch of stupid redneck motherfuckers beating the shit out of each other for the amusement of other stupid redneck motherfuckers. It used to be an occasional “entertainment” out in the territories, and now it was becoming a full time, lucrative business.

By the time he got back, baldy was holding court with his “amusing” anecdotes full of racial slurs, and Logan gulped down his beer and was on the verge of storming out in disgust when he realized something: he belonged here. Didn’t he? He was a lowlife scumbag too. He thought he’d served some kind of penance in Moosejaw? It wasn’t even close, and it was nowhere near enough. He wasn’t sure it would ever be enough. In fact, he was probably worse than everyone here. Why did he think he was better? He was the lowest of the low.

It was fight time, and the bald redneck went back with his adoring crowd of fellow rednecks. A guy with a cowboy hat started trolling the crowd, looking for someone who would fight the champion, and Logan swallowed what little pride he had - how did he have any at all? - and said, “I’ll kick his ass,”

Penance or not, it didn’t mean he couldn’t have a little fun.

****

He was tempted to leave Bob’s place a mess, but he had helped him, so the least he could do was pile the dishes in the sink. He wasn’t about to wash ‘em, mind you - Bob was a fucking god. He could wish the plates clean, or however his powers actually worked.

The kid left in a slightly better mood, although it was clear he didn’t know what he was going to do about Kier. Logan didn’t blame him - what did you do in a situation like that? A relationship built on lies was never going to work, but who said Brendan even needed a relationship? He could just have a little fun, and then kick the starfucker to the curb. Kier was an actor, so it shouldn’t surprise him.

The view out Bob’s kitchen window - in this place - was especially bleak. It was a lovely view of the rest of the industrial district, building after building in corrugated metal and reinforced concrete, with roofs of tar paper and pebbles and others with even less sophistication. He knew he should be hearing the constant loud clatter of warehouses being loaded and unloaded, but Bob’s mystic tweaking had insulated this place, kept the sound out. It was nice but eerie somehow, quiet as the grave, and he watched water trail down the outside of the window like tears as it started to rain.

He had a sense of déjà vu. Faint at first, but as he stared at the water trails snaking their way down the pane, the sense became much stronger. Why would it? It was such a vague thing, he’d probably seen it a million times before, in a million variations -

- Logan snapped back out of the sudden, vivid memory only to gape at his own reflection in the glass. “Holy fuck,” he gasped, rubbing his suddenly aching temple.

Did that actually happen? Did he rejoin the Organization … as a sleeper agent? Did that mean that government fuck hadn’t told him the whole truth of his involvement with them?

Son of a bitch. Whose ass should he kick first?

The End .....