“What the fuck is your problem, gringo?” one of the men asked. He aimed a nine millimeter down at him from the top of the stairs, holding it sideways in the way that was the fashion now for those who thought it was cool. It was idiotic, of course, and Logan wondered if he should mention it.

“I have a message for Matador. Tell him Wolverine is going to take him down … if you live.”

Some of them chuckled, and the guy with the gun just smirked. “You’re very scary. Too bad you don’t have a gun.” He fired his weapon, and several of his pals also fired their weapons.

His best guess was nearly ten rounds were fired, but even from this range, only two hit (morons). One hit him in the gut, passing through him, nicking his intestines (he figured - it hit something that caused pain followed by savage, healing factor burning) before exiting out the back, and the other hit him in the forehead, just over his left eye.

It was a hard hit, but the round was probably nine millimeter, not enough to knock him out. Still, it did make his head jerk back, and it felt like he’d been hit with something heavy - not an anvil, but hardly a pillow. Something smack in between that.

He went with the momentum and fell, landing hard on his back on the poured concrete floor. Even though he was down and playing dead, some of them shot him a couple of more times, proving they were total ball-less wonders. (or he’d freaked them out; perhaps a bit of both), and out of the couple shots that hit him, they were generally in the extremities, passing through with a slight burning sensation or bouncing off his bones. He didn’t react, but his body jerked at the impacts.

He heard them come down the stairs, steps heavy and slow, some still laughing, others commenting amongst themselves on the stupid gringo. “Gotta be fucking nuts,” the lead guy (call him Mongo) commented to the others. “Who the fuck takes us on alone and unarmed? “

“Maybe he thought we belonged to some fucking Italian Mafiosos or somethin’,” one guy speculated.

Some of them gathered around him, but others walked off to see the damage he’d done. He guessed by footsteps and scent (there was that stinky aftershave! Son of a bitch, that guy was here!) that he was dealing with nine men. Four standing around him (Mongo included), and five off triaging the damage. “Jesus Christ!” one of the triage team said. “How could one man do this so fast?”

“Where are his tools?” Another man asked, on the other side of the basement.

“Huh?” Mongo replied.

“His tools. To take out this wall and the cages, he needed a maul or a cutting tool. You see any?”

The burning was over; he was fully healed, with only a taste of blood in the back of his throat, a ringing in his ears, and an acrid tang of cordite and bad aftershave filling his nostrils. Now it was time to move. He opened his eyes and shot out his hand, popping his claws and driving them clear through Mongo’s lower leg, shattering his kneecap. “You mean these?” he said, as Mongo let out a breathless kind of scream that was more a squeak of pain, and Logan did a sweep kick that took two other goons legs right out from under them.

As they were falling on their asses, Logan withdrew his claws from Mongo’s leg and rolled away as the other near by men opened fire, then jumped up to his feet, both set of claws out now, and slashed at the men with guns. He got their weapons, and sometimes their hands and arms, although nothing was completely severed; he just wanted to make a serious impression at this point. If they chose to press the issue, then dismemberment would enter the scene.

Others in the basement shot at him, but it was a small enclosed space and they were shooting out of panic, so they ended up shooting each other, a situation so tragically pathetic it was laughable. One thug got shot in the face before Logan could shred the gun he was aiming at him.

The basement stank of fear as much as cordite as he took the rest of them down, retracting his claws only long enough to punch them, to shatter their noses and knock them senseless to the floor. He wanted to put the fear of him into them, he wanted them reporting hysterically incorrect details (the dead couldn’t do that) and most were so reliant on the weapons that had never failed them before (guns), they didn’t even try and fight him with anything else. Not that they had time to do so; it was such a surprisingly fast fight, it seemed like an exaggeration to call it one. A couple of slashes, punches, and kicks,, and he had everyone down and bleeding, or down and unconscious (except for the guy who got the friendly fire in the face - if his brains on the wall were any indication, he was down and dead). They just weren’t used to men who got shot in the head getting up and causing trouble. He’d taken a couple more bullets, but nowhere major.

Mongo was laying on the floor, clutching his bleeding leg and trying not to scream, but he was able to pull a second gun as Logan came around again, trying to sift through the scents of blood and gunpowder and fear to find the guy with the hideous aftershave. As he swiped the gun out of his hand, shredding it and taking off part of one of his fingers, he realized the stench was coming from Mongo. Perfect.

He planted a firm kick in his chest, breaking a couple of Mongo’s ribs and sending him crashing onto his back as Logan heard rapid thudding upstairs - people abandoning the bar, as they didn’t want to get caught in a firefight, and others probably going for reinforcements. He couldn’t assume he had a lot of time here.

Logan crouched down, planting a knee on Mongo’s chest, right on his ribcage for maximum pain, and retracted all but one claw, which he made sure Mongo saw before he drove it straight through his left ear, nailing his head to the floor. He squeaked, trying very hard to swallow the scream, his eyes wide and watering.

“Am I scary enough now?” he growled down into his face, twisting the claw in his ear ever so slightly. “Now understand you’re gonna lose an ear. Whether you lose a lung, your other ear, your dick, a kidney, and your other kneecap is totally up to you. I know you went to Alberto Soto’s house over the weekend. What I want to know is why, why was he killed, and where his body is right now. You lie to me, I will know, and you will lose more body parts. I’ll leave you a limbless, emasculated stump if I have to, but I ain‘t gonna kill ya, because I want you to live with it. I want you to have a long, fucking miserable and useless life.”

He snarled through the pain, ignoring the tears streaming down his face, and muttered, “Fuck you.” He punctuated that by spitting up at him, hitting the tip of his chin with his bloody spittle.

Logan ripped his claw through his ear, severing the lobe. Mongo bit the inside of his own cheek to prevent a scream, especially when Logan stabbed the claw through what was left of his ear, and put a bit more weight on his chest, pressing his knee down harder on his broken rib. His breathing became labored, the rib was probably poking into one of his lungs now, and that’s what he wanted. When people couldn’t breathe, and got the sense that maybe they were never going to be able to breathe again, it was hard not to panic; it was damn near impossible, because your body made you. The body got desperate, every cell in it screaming at you to get oxygen when you couldn’t. It set off a little rat in your brain, a raw, gnawing hysteria that could drive you crazy. And Logan felt he knew that since he could still remember the pain of being drowned.

“You’re a freak,” he wheezed, righteous anger starting to fade in the growing panic for air. “A fuckin’ freak.”

“Uh huh. Who else would call themselves Wolverine?” He ripped another piece off his ear and drove a claw in the little bit that was now left. Mongo held firmly onto the wrist of that hand, but wasn’t strong enough to force him away, certainly not now. Maybe before the fight, before he lost so much blood and got so severely beaten down. “You have five seconds to start talking,” he told him coldly, showing him his other hand and popping the claws right in front of his eyes before resting the tips on his forehead, just above his eyes. He reeked of fear now, his pupils shrunk to pinprinks, and he was panting for breath, his skin flushing red beneath his natural tan. “Or I start performin’ plastic surgery. I’m gonna make you as ugly on the outside as you are on the inside. Talk.”

“Soto was nothing!” he spat indignantly, as if he couldn’t understand why anyone would give a damn.

“Five … four …” he dug the tips of his claws into his flesh, just enough to make blood trickle into his eyes.

Logan kind of hoped he didn’t talk. Mongo hadn’t hurt enough yet.

****

Xander had been around long enough to know when someone wasn’t telling him something. And the scary guy with the bad hair obviously was holding back something about Berto, something he either suspected or discovered, but he didn’t know how to make him tell him without setting him off.

If he was high strung he could deal with it; Anya had given him lots of experience with the high strung individual. But Logan was just plain weird. He simmered; he sat back quietly glowering, a radiator of potential destruction, and he could just suddenly go off, with little warning. He was neither high strung or low key, he was somewhere in the middle - a potential catastrophe waiting to happen. In other words, a time bomb; he was the Human equivalent of a grenade. Whenever he was quiet, it just meant he was ticking. He hadn’t gone off yet, but you could be damn sure he would eventually.

Faith picked some real winners, didn’t she?

He knew he wasn’t supposed to follow him here, but he did, because he had to know. He stayed far back, though, and didn’t enter the bar, for a couple of reasons. 1) Logan’s plan was so suicidal and idiotic there was no way it could be his real plan. 2) If it was his real plan, he was a suicidal crazy person, and he didn’t want to be in the vicinity of Logan when he either got his wish, or went off completely. Also, he didn’t know how good his “super-smelling” thing was, so he parked around the corner and walked around, long after he must have went inside. (A week ago, the whole idea of “super-smelling” would have been laughable, right up there with the superheroic ability to remove lint from socks with the power of your mind. But now that he’d seen it in person - if Logan was being totally honest and not just making shit up- super-smelling was deeply creepy.)

Shortly after he arrived on the corner, the gunshots started.

He wasn’t sure they were gunshots, not at first. They were highly muffled, faint “pops”, like someone setting off fireworks beneath the street, but he knew that wasn’t it. His stomach knotted up, and he was grateful when they stopped. He still hated guns; yes, he had one, but that’s only because the fear eventually got to him, the one that told him some day he’d encounter a demon that didn’t give a damn about stakes or holy water, After everything he’d been through, he didn’t want to get taken down by a random demon encounter - it wasn’t going to happen. He wasn’t going down that way. (Willow had told him he was getting morbid in his old age. But after everything they’d both been through, didn’t they deserve to be a bit morbid?)

When Logan told him his plan - reluctantly - and Xander was more or less convinced he was semi-serious, he exclaimed that someone would shoot him. Logan snorted and replied, “They’re all gonna shoot me,” as casually as if he had actually said “They’re all gonna hug me” or “They’re all gonna want my autograph” - as if it meant nothing, as if it wasn’t serious. Yeah, okay, he had some kind of vampire level healing ability, he got that, but being shot still had to hurt. He was a crazy person.

Xander pretended to look around, as if for an address, so no one thought he was just loitering for no reason, and after a minute or two of silence, the popping noises started again, much worse than before. Now people started coming out of the bar, which was a small, slightly seedy building at the end of the block. The amount of shots made him take a couple of steps forward, although he stopped considering some of the evil looks the guys were giving the only white guy in sight. The shooting went on for twice as long as before, with at least three times the amount of shots. Was Logan getting killed as he listened? Would Faith blame him if he got her boyfriend killed?

He pulled out his cell phone, ready to call nine-one-one, when the shots stopped, with a suddenness that seemed eerie. Was that it? Were they done? Was Logan a big wet smear on a basement wall, or had he gotten a gun and turned those guys into piles of ground chuck? He felt vaguely ill, his hand sweating beneath the phone, and he realized he wasn’t sure he wanted to know. All he wanted to do was find Berto, make sure he was okay. Why had it turned into … this?

The quiet lingered, stretched, and Xander imagined the bar was all but empty, so he edged closer. It was a relatively quite block, full of small businesses that would only be called “boutiques” by the most facetious real estate agent. The bodega on the opposite street seemed to be doing the most business, but it was a sad shack covered with peeling yellow ads and thick, shiny bars over the papered windows. Something about it seemed to suggest anything you bought in there would need to be dusted off first. People stared at him occasionally, eyes hooded or hostile, but there was something about the way they glared that suggested they’d say they’d never seen him before if he suddenly disappeared, just like they didn’t seem to hear the gunshots, and didn’t notice the mass exodus from the bar. It was like the way people dealt with demons in Sunnydale, although none of these people were demons (to the best of his knowledge), which made it somehow worse.

Time stretched like taffy, and he couldn’t take it anymore. He started towards the bar, but stopped when a man came flying through the bar doors and hit a parked car so hard it actually rocked on its tires, the sound of something cracking following the man’s slump to the pavement. (He hoped it was glass and not, say, his skull.) Logan walked out of the bar then, head down and shoulders up, glowering a warning at everything in the known universe, and when he saw him he stopped and scowled. “Goddamn it, I told you to stay away,” he grumbled, his voice like gravel. “If they see me with you, you’re dead.”

Xander opened his mouth to say something, but found himself unable to settle on a syllable. Logan had blood on his face, on his hands and arms, and both his grey tank top and worn jeans were torn by bullet holes and stained with even more blood. He didn’t count, but he must have taken close to a dozen bullets. How the fuck was he walking? “You’ve been shot,” he finally said stupidly, starting to dial his cell phone with his thumb.

Logan’s glare was unrelenting. “Yeah, I got shot, but I’m better now. Healing factor, remember? Christ.” As he walked past, he grabbed his upper arm hard and pulled him along the sidewalk.

Xander yanked his arm free but followed, finally aware he wasn’t actively bleeding (even though he stank of blood), and there were no holes in his flesh, even though there were holes in his clothes. Son of a bitch. “Where’re you parked?” Logan grated.

“Next block,” he replied, wondering if he should be worried about this development. Better than vampire healing then; the turbo charged version. No wonder he didn’t care if they shot him.

Once they were in his car, Logan said, “ I should probably check in with Angel. Why don’t you drop me off there?”

Xander started the car, but looked at him in disbelief. “That’s it? Oh no. We’re not going anywhere until you tell me what you found out. Where’s Berto?”

Logan sighed heavily, impatiently, and looked out the passenger side window. “Better get outta here before the reinforcements arrive.”

He had a point, so he did start driving, but he wasn’t about to give this up just yet. “What happened to Berto? Do you even know?”

After a moment of quiet, one where Logan seemed to do nothing but wipe blood off his face and inadvertently smear more on due to the blood on his hands, he muttered, “He’s gone. I’m sorry.”

His stomach clenched again, felt unsettled, and he wondered belatedly if he should have had that McGriddle for breakfast. “What d’ya mean he’s gone?”

“He’s dead. He was taken out and killed on Friday night, buried in a fresh grave in a potter’s field north of Resida. I figure the guy was telling the truth ‘cause I didn’t smell any lies, and besides, he wasn’t in any shape to make up a lie with that kinda depth.”

Xander felt numb, which was probably better than horking up the contents of his stomach all over the front seat of his own car. “Potter’s field?”

“It’s a place where they bury the poor and the unidentified; a graveyard for the forgotten. A perfect place to dump a body, ‘cause bodies are supposed to be there. Who’d look?”

He felt sick again. Damn, the numbness was good while it lasted. “Did … why? Why did they do it?”

Logan shrugged. “Guy didn’t know. He said the Matador was pissed off at ‘im, Berto was an annoyance, and he just wanted him gone. He’s a soldier - he doesn’t ask why, he just follows orders. The Matador himself’s gonna hafta tell me why.”

Xander heard the words, let them slide across his mind, but he barely grasped them. He wanted him dead because he was annoying? That was insane. If everybody killed someone because they were annoying, there’d be no one left on the planet. “Where’s the Matador?”

“Didn’t ask. Don’t care. He’ll find me soon enough.”

Xander felt a flare of anger at that - what the fuck did he mean he didn’t care?! - but he started sifting through what Logan had said, and realized something. “What do you mean the guy wasn’t in any shape to make up a lie?”

Logan stared at the side of his face, so intensely that Xander was almost afraid to look at him straight on. “You think all this blood is mine?”

He swallowed back bile, although he wasn’t sure if it was a continued reaction to the news of Berto’s murder, or to what Logan had just said. He was a former bad guy, right?

Come to think of it, maybe it didn’t matter in this case. Maybe a bad guy was just what the Matador deserved.

6

Why did he come to the office? As soon as that thing happened in the sewer, he should have gone right back home. But Angel had the sense that if he went home, he might go mad.

It came upon him so suddenly that he didn’t realize what he was doing until he had the rat in his hands. The ache in his stomach had faded, but it seemed to become something not unlike a fever, a warmth that spread throughout his body, making him feel almost alive again. It was faintly pleasurable, actually, kind of nice.

But then he realized he was totally gripped by the hunger.

Before he left, he’d had an entire pint of pig’s blood. It tasted vaguely disgusting, being cold and not at all what he actually craved, but he thought it’d helped. But his hunger was demanding fresh, hot blood, and the more he tried to suppress it, ignore it, the more it sunk its claws into his brain. It was almost like it had been the first time he’d risen as a vampire; the need for blood was a screaming desire that didn’t allow for any other thought. A reflex as powerful as the need for a Human to breathe, and just as impossible to ignore.

Traversing the sewer tunnel, a rat ran in front him, and before he knew what he was doing he’d pounced on it, grabbing it up in his hands, and sinking his fangs into its small squirming body. He drained the rat in three slurps, and discarded the corpse quickly, tossing it aside before he had a chance to look at its face.

The hot blood running down his throat had felt good, far more satisfying than the pig’s blood, but it still wasn’t what he craved. He wanted the Human stuff, he knew it, just as he knew he wasn’t going to indulge it.

But the urge, the need, the blinding, almost delirious ache, didn’t stop. It was getting worse, and he didn’t understand what was wrong with him. He wasn’t losing his soul, he knew he still had it - as cloudy as his thinking was becoming - but it still felt like the vampire in him was becoming ascendant. And yet, as much as he could separate Angelus from himself, he thought he was confused too.

None of this was right. The need, the pain, the heat; everything was too bright, too sharp, too loud. If he could get sick, he’d think he was, but he couldn’t be. Poison? It’d have to be a damn weird poison. But maybe Giles could figure this out.

He found himself draining a second rat before he reached the building. It helped no more than the first.

As soon as he climbed up into the building, he realized that he could hear the heartbeats of every single person in the place. The song of blood coursing through all their veins was like a background noise, and it was disturbing enough to make him stagger. Yes, he could hear those things normally, but only if he wanted to; he generally had to concentrate pretty hard. But now it was just there, loud and clear, blocking out the rattle and hum of the ubiquitous air conditioners. Just glancing towards a window where sunlight bled around the edges made his eyes water; it was like rubbing broken glass into his eyes. It always hurt, but never quite that much.

He paused in the hallway before the door of Angel Investigations, aware that there were three people inside: Giles, Naomi, and Brendan. All with strong heartbeats and fresh blood roaring through -

No! No, he had to stop. He had to get a grip on himself! Goddamn it, what was wrong with him? He wasn’t a novice vampire; he’d had long experience controlling and suppressing his hunger. Why was it so much stronger than him?

He couldn’t go in there. He had to go in there; he needed help.

He decided to go in fast, barricade himself in his office until he was sure he could deal with this. Of course he didn’t know if that was ever going to happen, but at least there was a back way out if he absolutely couldn’t take it anymore.

He made it to his office, but he had to lean against his door after he closed it, He heard Naomi make a sarcastic remark, and for some reason it really ticked him off. He thought he should go out there and rip her throat out just to -

Fuck! What the hell was he thinking?

He sat behind his desk, every movement one of sheer will, and put his head on his desk, so he didn’t have to look at anything with a clarity that was almost painful. Only then did he realize he was trembling. Because he was fighting himself? Because he needed blood so bad he thought he was going to die if he didn’t get some right now?

There was a light knock on the door that sounded as loud as cannon fire, making him jolt upright, and before he could tell them to piss off, the door opened and Brendan came in, holding a cup of a noxious smelling fluid. “Figured you could use this,” he said, closing the door behind him. It was probably gentle, but sounded like a rifle shot.

He put the mug of noxious fluid - coffee, surely, but it smelled horrible; it felt like acid was burning through his sinuses - on his desk, giving him a professional smile that didn’t hide the fact that the boy was studying him. “You okay, Angel?”

Angel stared at him, at his ruby red eyes incongruously set in a Human face, and he wondered why the only one in the office with the blood he couldn’t drink had to come in here. He could smell the Human undertone to the hot plasma pulsing under his thin skin, but it was tainted by demon blood; worse yet, a demon whose blood was sour and unpleasant. He could drink it if he absolutely had to, but he didn’t want to, not immediately. Only as the very last resort. “I need you to send Giles in here,” he finally said, doing his best to keep his voice level.

Angel thought he could see the demon face just beneath the mask of Brendan’s Human flesh, and he wondered if something in him was reacting to whatever was happening to him, or if this was just part of his ability to see things more sharply and clearly now. Brendan’s brow furrowed in concern, and he was looking at him with such scrutiny that Angel had to fight down the urge to backhand him across the room. “You … don’t look good. What’s wrong?”

He had to swallow a snarl. The boy with his Human tainted Brachen scent was annoying him. “I don’t know. That’s why I need to speak to Giles.” Did he smell the faint trace of another vampire on him? He thought he did. Was Brendan freelancing as a demon hunter on his off hours? Maybe; it wouldn’t surprise him. He had that whole revenge thing stuck in his craw.

He supposed he should worry about that, be concerned, give him an angry lecture, but why? He was an X-Man long before he got here; he’d been trained to fight. He was hardly even twenty years old, but he could take care of himself better than Doyle could. He was a street kid, a survivor, and one who fought because he felt he should put his talents to better use. Noble shit like that, the kind of stuff that threatened to turn his stomach at the moment.

He was a handsome, slender boy who looked like he’d be a three second fight. But that was deceptive; his X-Men training and Brachen toughness would push the fight into minutes. Oh, he’d kill him, but it would be more of a fight than he would normally credit it. Of everyone in the office at the moment, he would be the problem. Naomi he could get if he took her completely by surprise (no sense in warning her and letting her electrocute him); Giles would try and fight, but he’d be stunned - he was starting to trust him again, the idiot - and experienced Watcher or not, he was getting older and his reflexes showed it. Brendan was young, quick, sharp, and not completely Human. The edge was his.

“Should I send everyone else home?” Brendan asked, and Angel was almost startled. Was he reading his mind?

No - he was just looking at him in a way that suggested rising alarm. He thought something was so wrong with him that they should shut down for the day. Oh, he was so caring, so concerned for others; how fucking sweet. A weakness that would get him killed, sooner rather than later. “No, I’ll be okay,” he lied, swallowing back everything he really wanted to say. “Just send in Giles, okay? And don’t tell Naomi, all right? I don’t want …” To give her fair warning was probably the wrong thing to say.

But caring little Brendan just nodded in understanding, not needing him to finish the sentence. “Yeah, sure. Can I, uh, bring you something?”

Yes, he thought. A person with completely Human blood, you half-caste freak. “No, I’m good, thanks,” he grated, trying hard not to grit his teeth.

Brendan nodded, but his look was as suspicious as it was caring. The boy couldn’t mind his own fucking business, could he? He left the room with obvious reluctance, and Angel picked up a pen that almost instantly snapped in half under the pressure of his fingers. Was he getting stronger, or was the hunger driving his strength to its very limits? Either way, it was good. It made things simpler.

After a moment, Giles came in, the concerned look from Brendan’s face now pasted on his. He was wearing his contacts today, so he had no glasses to nervously fiddle with, but Angel knew him well enough to know he would have pushed them up to the bridge of his nose if he had them on now. “Brendan said you needed to see me.”

Angel nodded, waiting for him to close the door before he said anything. “Yeah, I was wondering if you could research resurrections for me, specifically as it relates to the Master.”

The look of surprise on his face was priceless; it almost made him laugh. “The Master? The only ritual I know of involves his bones, and you know as well as I do they don’t exist anymore. Why do you bring this up?”

“Because he’s coming back, I know he is. Here, I have something to show you.” He stood up and walked around his desk, and Giles, overwhelmed by curiosity, approached him fearlessly. The stupid bugger.

Angel held out his arm and started to push up his sleeve. “I had a nightmare this morning, and woke up to find this on my arm.” He actually had no idea where he was going with this. Not that it mattered really.

Giles looked at his arm curiously, searching for something that wasn’t there, allowing Angel to blindside him with a punch to the side of the face. Giles went down hard, slamming onto the top of his desk, unconscious before he hit. With his newly enhanced strength, he’d probably broken something. Poor guy; if he ever woke up, that would hurt.

But he wasn’t going to wake up. He needed blood, and Giles, bless his misguided little heart, was a full Human. Surely he’d understand. Sometimes you just did what you had to do.