2

Sadly, even a death god had his limits.

Once a god was dispersed, even he couldn’t bring them back. A god could insure that dead was actually dead. But what of a god who committed suicide?

It was rare, but it had happened on a few occasions. The one that most interested Osiris was an Aztec god lost to time, by the name of Xiuhcoatl. Represented by a fire snake, it was the god of drought and scorched earth, not the most pleasant fellow; all he could honestly do was kill, and in slow, torturous ways. You’d think that would be enough to make him happy, but no.

After Camaxtli was forced to abandon the Human realm, Xihucoatl (mentally dubbed Zooy, so he didn’t have to contemplate so many jarring syllables), his chosen successor, despaired of losing his only hope for greater power, and one of the few friends he had, so he went off to oblivion.

But self-immolation was not the same as true dispersal, and Osiris was convinced he could resurrect him. And more.

See, what was lost to time - but not his archives - was the fact that Camaxtli knew he was in danger of getting run out on a rail, so he hedged his bet. In the case of death, his power would jump to Zooy, and ironically, they would both be doubly powerful. A win-win situation. But it was yet another rare thing: god as avatar. It could be done, but usually wasn’t, simply because most gods were power hungry, back stabbing ingrates, who would arrange for the death of their “friend” so they could take their power. That wasn’t a problem with Zooy, as he was less powerful than Camaxtli, and also, to use current Human terminology, whipped. He was so slavishly devoted to Camaxtli you’d think he loved him - if gods were honestly capable of such a low concept. Of course, Zooy was so unstable, it was possible he did.

But when a god made a fellow god an avatar, it was different. They connected at a quantum level, at a level far beyond the physical, dipping into realms unknown by any other beings. Death wasn’t powerful enough to break those bonds. Which was why he started to wonder what would happen to the current Camaxtli avatar if the former one was resurrected - with his tight connection to Camaxtli far beyond the physical, the other physical, limited avatar would be in some deep shit. So of course he had to bring him back, a complete nutter or not.

Beneath the archives was a basement made of the dead. Skeletons and the composted remains of their flesh stacked like bricks and mortar, the very tools of his trade, the slaves of his creation, demon, human, and things that once existed or never really had a chance to exist because he put a stop to them before they could. It was a place that might depress or even horrify others, but he was the god of the dead; to him this was beauty, and the purest representation of his power. He could resurrect and reanimate every god damned thing in here if he so desired; it wouldn’t even be hard. Life and death were simply opposite sides of the same coin, and to control one was to control it all.

In the center of the basement was a cyclone of energy, blue-black and yet prismatic, it swirled and coruscated around an invisible axis, contained only by the circle or fresh remains on the floor, the remnants of a demi-god he took out especially for this occasion. Even from a distance, Osiris could feel the almost tidal pull, the intense tug of the god energies being drawn together and reformed. It wouldn’t be long now.

Oh, was that bitch going to be in for a surprise. No one Human ever threatened him and lived to gloat about it.

3

He had warned her they would go fast, so why was she screaming in his ear now?

Logan pulled over to the shoulder as soon as he shed enough speed and knew where the hell he was going, and Srina, who still had her fingernails dug into waist, smacked him hard on the shoulder. “Ow! Hey!”

“Are you fucking kidding me?!” She snapped. “Are we breaking a land speed record on this thing?!”

“No. Did you hear a sonic boom? Can you get your nails out of my gut now?”

She did with a sigh, resting her forehead heavily on his shoulder. “This is insane. Do we have to go this fast?”

“Hafta? No. But I wanted to get there ahead of the others, do some personal reconnaissance.”

“Which the others don’t know about?”

“No.”

“Exactly how far ahead of them do we need to be?”

He shrugged, looking around and trying to determine where they were. If his guess was they had just hit or were about to hit Illinois, which was pretty damn good. “Not really sure, but just taking a guess at how long it’ll take for them to get out of New York traffic … if I keep going, we’ll have maybe eight hours, nine.”

“Really?” She thought about that a moment, then asked, “How much time will we have if you get this thing up to insane speeds now?”

“I dunno … nine, ten? Why?”

“We have time to get a beer, catch a nap?”

He looked back at her as best he could. “Is that really what you want to do?”

She made a show of thinking about it, then buried his head in the side of his neck, very gently nipping his skin with her teeth. "What do you think?"

"I think I'd better start the bike."

"I think you'd better," she agreed, wrapping her arms tightly around his waist. At least this time, she didn't dig her nails into him.

****

They stopped near the North Dakota/Minnesota border, as there was something so depressing about the idea of being in North Dakota that he wanted to put it off as much as possible.

They got a cheap motel room, but not so cheap it rented by the hour, as those were inevitably nasty. Although there was some grand idea about getting a beer across the street and maybe calling for a pizza, ultimately all they did was fall into bed, having a belated, personal reunion.

At least they had the time to kill - Logan was pretty sure that, 'Vette or not, Marc and the others were far behind. No turbo drive on his coupe.

Still, as they laid in bed and watched slats of sunlight stripe the off white acoustic tiles on the ceiling, he glanced at his watch, and tried to guess a time with a significant margin for error. "We probably oughta get going in an hour."

"An hour?" Srina said, settling her head on his chest. She liked to do that, and sometimes he wondered if she was listening to make sure his heart was still beating. An odd thought, but there you go. "I think I need more sleep than that."

"Hour and a half?"

"Boy, you're generous."

"I'm nervous, actually. Marc might find a way to get here faster. Or Scott."

"That anal kid?" Well, Srina was older than Scott, so he supposed she could call him a kid. "How would he? Does he have a road map tattooed on his eyelids?"

"Well, I wouldn't put it past him. But no, I figured he'd want to speed things up just 'cause Marc will drive him batshit." He idly stroked her soft magenta hair, which was a bit shaggier than it had been last time he was in London. It hadn't been that long ago, had it?

"They don't get along?"

"Hell no. Scott thinks Marc's amoral and trigger happy, and Marc lives to annoy the shit out of anyone who doesn't like him."

"Like you?" She looked up at him with a small, sardonic smile.

"Ha. Even worse, actually. I think Marc gets off on making the repressed deeply uncomfortable."

"And yet you sent them on a road trip together."

"Hey, whatever doesn't kill Scott will only make him stronger."

She traced circles on his chest, a secret language of symbols he couldn't begin to decode. "So what is the game plan?"

"Technically? Infiltration initially, then we fire with all barrels. But it's easier to do damage to a fortress when you start the siege inside. If we started from the outside in, they might have the ability to hold, even against Scott blasting them and Marc giving them all his RPGs."

"RPGs?"

"Rocket propelled grenades."

Now her look was more penetrating and serious. "That's a joke, right?"

"No. He has lots of military hardware, much of it technically illegal for civilian ordinance. But that doesn't stop him."

She sighed, her breath warm against his skin. "You have the weirdest friends."

"Does that include you?"

She slapped him lightly on the stomach, and he chuckled at his own joke. Oh, he was sure he'd pay for it, but it was worth it. After a moment, she said, "That's where I come in, isn't it? Getting you inside undetected."

"Only some of us. The rest of us are going in in more traditional camouflage."

"Gonna wear fake shrubbery?"

"Uniforms. That's why I want to do a little advance recon, see if I can catch a glimpse of the guys in their suits."

"Ah." She sounded unconvinced. "How do you know they wear uniforms outside of their base or whatever? Wouldn't that draw unnecessary attention to themselves?"

“If there was anyone around to look, yeah. But we have to assume these guys pass themselves off as military to bring in their equipment. Nobody might talk about it, but some people have gotta know they’re there.”

“They have to get supplies.”

“Exactly.”

“Are they military?”

“In a way, yes.”

“And in a way no?”

“Right. These guys are everything and nothing, which is why they’re so hard to nail down.”

She continued tracing symbols down his torso, letting the silence drag out, and he sensed her discomfort. “How many people are going to get hurt?”

“I have no idea. But I’ll try and take the brunt.”

She propped herself up and looked down at him, her features sharpening as her face took on a stern countenance. “The hell you will.”

“You know I can take it. I always heal.”

“Maybe, but I don’t want ever want to see you impaled through the throat and nailed to a wall again, okay?”

He nodded, since shrugging would probably send the wrong message. “Not exactly somethin' I wanna repeat, either.”

She scrutinized him closely for a full thirty seconds, doubt of his veracity clear in her eyes, but then she decided to drop it, or at least fight about it later, as she laid back down, partially draping herself on him. Her skin felt nice, she smelled nice; he just suspected he liked not being alone, and being with a woman he felt comfortable with. And he did feel comfortable with her, because she technically knew more about his past - and the old “him” - than he did. That’s why he knew he’d be stupid to continue walking away from her. “I know you’re going to try something anyway,” she grumbled, twirling some of his chest hair around her finger and tacitly threatening to pull it out. Now that would hurt.

“I could use your help with somethin’, Sri.”

“Of course you could, that’s why I’m here.”

“No, I mean not related to this. I was wondering what you’d think if … well, if after this is all over, I move to London.” She gave him that skeptical look again, but before she could say anything, he quickly pressed on. “I was tryin’ to decide what I wanted to do, and I realized there was nothing stopping me from combining them.”

“Combining what?”

“Well, Angel’s packed it in, and I thought about going to L.A. to cover for him, but I don’t like L.A that much. Then I thought I’d really rather be with you, and then it occurred to me there are a lot of demons in London too. Hell, a vampire gangster owes me. And he and his people haven’t been able to find a hint of Spider, and if the vamp mobsters can’t find you, some serious shit has happened to you. I should try and find out what happened to him, if nothing else.”

“Spider?”

“Mutant guy, British, limited control over gravity. He was fucked over by these assholes too, and I’m not sure he ever really recovered from it.” Even Marc said the last time he spoke to him he seemed depressed and irritable, and since Hashim and his people hadn’t heard a damn thing about any gravity defying mutant with large, compound style eyes, the possibility that Spider had gone ahead and committed suicide loomed larger. He’d never been able to handle the shambles of his life after the Organization was through with him, and Logan wondered sometimes if Bob shouldn’t have let him remember everything. Maybe Spider would have been better off in the dark - and maybe he should count his blessings that he couldn’t remember much. “The last anyone heard from him, he went back to London, but it’s going on months now, and he wasn’t in the best state of mind when he was last seen.”

“Could they have gotten to him?”

He knew she meant the Organization. “I doubt it. I think they’d have used him by now if they had him in control, and believe me, it’d be easy to tell if Spider struck somewhere.” He didn’t tell her that the Organization had made him a raging psychopath, as that might bring on Chimera flashbacks she didn’t need. Still, the atmosphere was getting too glum, and he didn‘t want to dishearten her before things got started. “Besides, it does give me another excuse to settle in London for a while.”

“Another?”

“You’re the first.”

She raised an eyebrow at that, and tried very hard to fight back a smile. “You’ve already gotten in my pants. No need to keep trying.”

“Of course I do, ‘cause I want to keep getting in ‘em.” He grinned at his own joke, and admitted, “I’d get my own place, y’know, I’m not askin’ to move in -”

“Why not?”

“’Cause we’re both more accustomed to living alone, and I doubt you’d want any demons with a grudge against me knowing where you live. But that doesn’t mean I couldn’t stay over for a few days, or you couldn’t …”

She suddenly looked concerned and ever so slightly befuddled. “Are you saying you’re planning to move to London to become a demon hunter?”

“Basically, yeah. Somebody’s gotta do it.”

She tapped her fingers on his sternum. “What have I said about your life being fucked up?”

“Look, I know, but I really don’t think it could get any less fucked up. The law of averages doesn’t support it.”

“You couldn’t try?”

“I have tried. It always ends up coming back to bite me on the ass, or worse yet, the people around me. Every time I hide, the ending is always the same: somebody dies or gets hurt. I’m done with that. I have to do something different; I have to try and get control over my life. For so long I‘ve been controlled by other people and circumstances … I can‘t do that anymore. I‘m tired of it.”

“Oh, I understand, and it’s admirable really. But … demon hunting?”

“What the hell else am I good for? Interior decorating?”

At least she had the decency to pretend to think about it. Still, by her sly smile, he knew a joke was incoming. “I think you’d make a damn impressive gigolo.”

“Now there’s a career option I hadn’t considered. And I do like the idea of getting me some dowager tail.”

She laughed, and so did he, figuring he had made the right decision. It felt right, and since so little in his life actually did, it seemed like a promising sign.

****

By the time they found Harmon, North Dakota, it was nearing sunset, the sky a pale blue gray slowly giving way to charcoal, and Logan was glad they’d gone fast enough that most of the scenery was a brownish blur, as there wasn’t actually any scenery around here. Oh, there were hills and plateaus, but it was clear that North Dakota was definitely a prairie state, and he hated prairie states. They reminded him of the flatlands of Alberta, the endless prairies there, and he hated those too. Maybe it was the fact that you could see for seemingly miles in any direction and had no place to hide, or the fact that with few objects to train the eye on, you could actually lose direction quite easily, and get so insanely fucking bored that you didn’t care if you got back on track or not.

As for Harmon, it didn’t seem worthy of the name “town”. As far as he could tell, it consisted of a cluster of trailer parks, a couple of ranch style houses with barns and barren fields, a bar, a supermarket, a small clot of fast food places and smaller shops, a giant feed lot, three gas stations, and the Quik-Mart. Why did anyone live here? He’d have run away screaming long ago - like maybe five minutes after birth.

And the so called Killdeer Mountains weren’t actually mountains at all but buttes, two of them with clefts spotted with the green heads of trees and aggressive flat tops, that seemed to loom over the town and the rest of the flat, dry expanse, but only because they were something for the eye to settle on after unrelenting bland sameness. He estimated the only he had a good view of was only about seven hundred feet high. He wanted to find someone and point out that in Canada that was a speed bump, but they already lived In North Dakota - wasn’t that bad enough?

The Quik-Mart looked like a Circle K with a bad paint job, and the asphalt of the parking lot bore a spider web of cracks from the heat of the day, some of which still lingered, rising off the pavement with the odor of baked cement and melted rubber. There was a single car in the lot, an ‘02 Toyota Corolla with minor front end damage, so they had beat Marcus here, probably by a wide margin, even though they’d slept in a bit longer than they should have.

They went inside the fluorescent lit convenience store, which smelled of over brewed coffee and microwave burritos, and the clerk behind the counter, a middle aged bald guy in an unattractive brown and mustard smock, looked at them with instant suspicion. Logan assumed they didn’t get many strangers around these parts, but he wondered if the undue hatred was due to his weird hair (that wasn’t his fault!), the fact that Srina was Indian, or Indian with magenta hair. Either way, he felt justified in giving the man a withering glance.

He went to refrigerated cases at the back of the store to get a beer, and since he told Srina they’d be on recon for about an hour (that was how long he figured she’d be able to live with the boredom; after that, he figured she’d snap), she went to get some food, which put her in the candy aisle. They were close enough that he could hear her bitch. “This is complete and utter pants! Do you Americans have none of the good chocolate bars? I mean, Tootsie Roll - what the fuck is that?”

He didn’t bother to mute his sigh. “Do you want a beer?”

“Do they have John Smith’s?”

That was the name of a British beer that had never, to his knowledge, made it to the States. “Do they have Maltesers?”

“No, so … oh.”

“How about a Red Bull?”

“Booze?”

“Caffeine.”

“Fair enough.”

He went down to the other end of the cold case and got her a Red Bull, and heard the electronic chimes above the door sound as a new customer waked in. He looked up at one of the curved anti-theft mirrors near the front of the store, and quickly noted that whoever was coming in was wearing camouflage. He quickly returned to the candy aisle, and, tucking the cans under his arm, grabbed Srina’s hand. “We need to go invisible now,” he hissed.

She gave him an annoyed look. “What, no please?” But her eyes turned black, and he knew she’d done it anyways. “What’s going on?”

“Let’s see.” He started walking towards the front, taking her with him, and she followed with more curiosity than reluctance.

“Hey Greg, how goes it?” The clerk asked, with forced amiability.

‘Oh, same ol’ same old,” the man replied. He was a kid in his twenties, with a buzz cut so aggressive you could see where his scalp had been sunburned beneath his stubbly, fine blond hair. Although he was wearing generic camouflage military fatigues, he was wearing a black vest that looked like body armor, which was a strange thing to wear on the outside of your uniform jacket. The clothes seemed to slouch on his lanky frame, like they couldn’t find any that fit him, or he had recently lost a lot of weight. His chiseled, lean face was still spotted with acne, and Logan estimated his age around twenty three or so. Far too young for a dangerous gig like this - he wouldn’t last long. Saddiq could kick his ass without raising a sweat. There was a telltale bulge under his left armpit, indicating he was armed, and Logan could smell the gun oil somewhere beneath his too heavy aftershave (since when did soldiers wear Paco Raban?) and a whiff of body odor, suggesting his deodorant! was losing a battle against the North Dakota heat. “Three packs of Marlboros, and a can of Skoal vanilla,” the kid said, pulling a stick of beef jerky out of the canister beside the cash register and sticking it in his mouth like a cigarette. Since he didn’t smell of smoke, none of the tobacco could possibly be for him. Smokers smelled like it, no matter how well they showered or laundered their clothes, or how many days thy had been without a smoke; it just oozed through their pores, like it did with hardcore drinkers.

Glancing out the window, he saw an all terrain jeep with a camouflage paint job parked right outside the door. It was a terrific bit of luck, as rather than trying to follow Marc’s directions, they could just follow this kid’s jeep back to the base.

While the clerk put the smokes on the counter, he looked over Greg’s shoulder and then glanced up at the curved mirrors, clearly looking for them. As Greg pulled out his wallet and put money on the counter, he finally noticed. “Something wrong?”

“I dunno. There were a coupla real weirdoes in here, but I can’t see ‘em now.”

“Weirdoes?”

“Yeah, I think they were bikers or punks or some shit like that. The guy looked like he’d just rolled off the back of a prison truck, and his girl looked like some kind of Chicana with the ugliest fucking hair color I’ve ever seen.”

Srina gave him the British salute, the middle and forefingers raised in what would be seen, in America, as a peace symbol, but when delivered with such emphasis by a Brit meant “up your bunghole”. Too bad he couldn’t see it.

Greg looked around, looking straight through them before turning back to the clerk. “Is that the only way they were weird?” It was just the way he said it that confirmed Logan’s suspicions: young or not, he was with the mutant hunters brigade.

It was the clerk’s turn to look puzzled. “What d’ya mean?”

Greg shrugged and tried to play it nonchalant, which he really wasn’t very good at. Some things should be left to professionals. “Just, y’know, they do anything kinda strange? Out of the ordinary?” There was a rack of tabloids on the opposite side of the counter, book ending the endless rack of gum and breath mints, and Greg pointed at the headline of the Weekly World News - that fine, upstanding newspaper - which had as its headline: “Mutants Building Orbital Death Star Platform Above Florida”. (It pushed the “Bat Boy - Son Of God?” story to the side, which must have disappointed Bat Boy.)

The clerk glanced at it as he started bagging up all of Greg’s smokes. “Muties? Oh, come on, don’t they all exist in big cities? New York, California, places like that.”

Logan had no idea California was a city.

Greg stuck his wallet in his back pants pocket, and as soon as he moved his hand away, Srina leaned in and plucked it out, so gently and deftly that he never noticed. She flipped it open, and his i.d. gave his name as Greg Amundson (his age - 23. Damn he was good … ), and in spite of his obvious youth, he already had a Visa and an American Express gold card, along with a debit card. There was another card stuck in his wallet among his cash (about fifty dollars). It was a plain white card with a metallic strip and a bar code on it, and absolutely nothing else. It took him a moment to realize what it was: a key card. And since he wasn’t staying at a hotel, it could only be a card for one thing. He leaned over and gave her a small, quiet kiss on the cheek.

“Well, you’d be surprised; they can pop up anywhere, sometimes literally. If, uh, if you see them again, or anybody else kinda strange, why don’t you give us a call at the base? We can check ‘em out.” Who knew the military had the absolute authority to question anybody who “looked funny”? That wasn’t at all autocratic.

“Uh, okay. But you’re not listed in the book, you know …”

“Right.” He picked up the pen that say besides the cash register, and scribbled down a phone number on the back of his own receipt. “Call this and tell ‘em I gave you the number. We’ll check ‘em out.”

The clerk took the number with a nod, but looked slightly alarmed. “So, er, muties are a big problem, even here?”

“No, but it’s better to be safe than sorry. The freaks will take over if we’re not careful.”

Logan was expecting a Hitler salute and a sharp click of the heels, but Greg disappointed him by leaving that out. The clerk seemed appeased, and said, “I’ll let you know if I see them again.”

“Great. Take care.” Greg took his small paper bag full of tobacco and started heading out, and they followed close behind him. Greg pushed open the door, and Logan quickly grabbed it, so he and Srina could follow him out without getting slammed in it. Greg didn’t notice the door being open longer than it should have been, and neither did the clerk, who was still craning his neck, looking for them in the aisles. That comment about Srina’s hair being ugly had pretty much guaranteed they weren’t going to pay him squat- she’d never let him.

“Let’s nail this gobshite,” Srina whispered in his ear. They stayed on the concrete walkway ringing the front of the store, while Greg got into his jeep, tossing the bag in the passenger seat.

“Later. Let’s find the rat’s nest first, and then we’ll bitch slap this fucker so hard his grandfather will get bruises.”

“But we could take his uniform.”

“One isn’t enough, and I don’t know if it’s standard. Wearing the vest on the outside seems odd.”

He started the jeep, which coughed and sputtered before catching, spitting carbon out of the tailpipe. The thing was about a hundred miles away from breaking down. “So we follow him? Don’t you think he’ll notice us, considering how this is the ass end of nowhere, and we’re the only living souls about?”

“I have the scent of his exhaust. We don’t have to follow closely at all.”

They watched him pull out of the lot and take off own the road, headed towards the Killdeers, just like he expected. Srina kept them phased out as they walked towards his bike. “Hey, can you make the bike disappear?”

She had to consider that a moment, brow furrowing. “Maybe … but you know they’ll hear us.”

“Yeah, but people have a tendency to believe their eyes over their ears.” Not always - and certainly not if they were blind - but that was usually how it played out.

Now he hoped Marc would hurry up. He had no idea how long it would take for Greg to realize his key card was missing, and how soon after that the base would invalidate the security code.

If he was right, this could be the big break they'd been too cynical to hope for.