He knew it was risky considering all that had happened before in here, but he had bribed her with the promise of a beach house in the dimension of her choice. That wouldn’t be difficult to arrange - but would workaholic Lia ever use it? That’s what he wanted to know.

So, the Way Station was closed to the public today and empty, save for them - a rare occurrence that still chilled the blood of the businessman in him. But he had the jukebox on to keep him company, along with the still surly Lia, as he waited for his “informants” to appear.

He glanced at his watch, and knew they weren’t really late; time was hard to compare in alternate realms. He sat at the bar, tapping his fingers on the side of his beer can, and started singing along with the song currently playing on the jukebox. “All those years you never knew, all the things that I could do. I kept them in a hidden place, so I could rub them in your face. Somebody says … I made you. ” Suddenly he wondered what Logan was up to. Probably still off sulking somewhere, but he hoped he got in contact with him soon. He needed to know if Cammy had gotten in touch with him again - and what he may have done to him.

“I’ll hold your grace, like a broken vase. You’ve been replaced -”

“Er, Bob?” Lia interrupted. “Is that for you?”

He hardly needed to look where she was pointing, because then he heard the “plop”, and saw, in the corner of the room just behind him, a huge clot of snakes fall from the ceiling. There were dozens of them, ranging in size from a couple inches to several meters long, red and green and brown and black, and they tangled together in a huge, impossible knot as even more fell from a gap in reality that opened up somewhere between the ceiling and the air.

They flowed together into a single mass, eventually forming into a humanoid form, a stocky man made of multicolored scales, his slit pupiled eyes the silver of moonlight upon water. “Hey Bob,” Degei said, walking over towards him even though the snakes hadn’t completely finished forming his arms. They swirled around, making it look like his brightly scaled skin was boiling.

“Hey Deg,” he said cheerfully, gesturing to the empty bar stool. “Have a seat. Lia, this is Degei, the Fijian serpent god of the afterlife. This is Lia, my grand-daughter.”

Although she raised her eyebrows, Lia had seen and experienced too much to be surprised by a god made entirely of snakes. “Hello.”

“My pleasure dear,” Degei said politely, not so much sitting on a stool as slithering upon it.

“Fiji? A nice place to god.”

“Oh, I suppose, but I wasn’t there for long. I feel naked without all my babies around me.”

“Babies? You mean snakes?”

He nodded, as coral snakes shifted at his neck, making it slightly thicker. “I don’t know how people survive in a single body.”

“It can be limiting,” Bob agreed. “So, rum?”

Degei smiled, revealing a keratinous layer he had in place of teeth. “If you have some, yes.”

Lia poured him a glass of the good stuff, glad to have something to do besides try and count all of Deg’s snakes.

“There have been some interesting rumblings in the Higher Realms,” Degei said, as Lia put the glass of dark rum before him. He gave her a nod of thanks before his hand - made up mostly of garter snakes - swarmed around the crystal highball glass. “Most of it centered around you, Bob. It seems you haven’t been making many friends.”

Bob sensed the rift behind him before he heard a voice, with the mildest tinge of an Irish accent, say, “That’s what he’s best at - pissing people off.”

“Gran!” Lia said, awarding them all one of her rare, beaming smiles.

Bob turned on his stool, and gave her a familiar smile. “Thanks for coming by, Tary.”

Taryn rolled her bright orange eyes at him, but gave Lia a warm smile. “Still propping up his lazy arse?”

“Don’t I always?” Lia replied, unable to keep from grinning.

Taryn De Cliodhna was not a god but a demi-god, semi-mortal daughter of the Celtic goddess Cliodhna (her namesake), proving he was not the only Higher who had “extra-curricular” activities. Taryn was also his fourth wife (or fifth, if you counted that whole Bastet thing), but their divorce was mostly amicable; Tary just couldn’t bear this realm anymore, and wanted to live elsewhere, and Bob knew long distance relationships never worked, especially over dimensions. She now lived in the realm now as Mag Mell, known in myths as a paradise for the dead - Celtic heaven, in other words.

“How are things in the Mag?” He asked, as she reached over the bar and hugged Lia, nearly pulling her over it. Well, demi-god or not, she was still stronger than Lia, who was just a fourth at best.

Tary gave Lia a kiss on the cheek and then let her go, as a stunned Degei asked, “You’re her grandmother?”

Tary nodded as she took a stool between the two of them. “Indeed I am. Don’t you see the family resemblance?” They did look somewhat alike: Lia had her honey brown hair, although Taryn’s was curly and Lia’s was straight, and the fine bone structure of their face was remarkably similar, from the high cheekbones to the gently pointed chins. Lia had his eyes, though, and her mother’s long, lean body.

But it wasn’t appearance that Degei was talking about. “You look like you’re the same age.”

Tary flipped her long hair behind her, and said, “Perks of being a demi-god.”

“Jack Daniels?” Lia asked, but she was already reaching for the bottle.

“You know it,” Tary agreed, then finally answered Bob’s question. “The Mag is as fine as it always is. The skirmishes do not touch us.”

Bob could see, from the way his face seem to pucker, that Degei had a billion questions, but now wasn’t the time for it. Besides, he’d probably have his snakes discover everything before the end of the day. “So what’s the dirt, Deg?” He asked, both to distract him and to get this show on the road.

Degei seemed to focus, the snakes of his torso briefly rearranging themselves as one snuck away. “Camaxtli had some supporters, and even though Eris dispersed him, they blame you for it.”

Bob nodded. He had expected as much. “Any big power players?”

“Compared to you? No.”

“Yet,” Tary interjected. “You know damn well how vindictive gods can be. And none of ‘em have the balls to take on Eris.”

He shrugged, aware that was true, but it was surprising how little he cared. “It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve been marked for a big old deity wedgie. I can deal.”

Tary raised an eyebrow at him, giving him a look that clearly said “All you men are idiots”. It was a look she had perfected during their marriage. “You like takin’ advantage of your extraordinary luck, don’t cha?”

“What good is it if it doesn’t work for me?” He flashed her a grin that made her orange eyes narrow. He knew it was best to get back on topic before Tary decided to join the opposition. “I was wonderin’ if either of you had heard anything about Cammy himself since Eris dispersed him. Like, I know his realm collapsed, but have there been other realms near to this one that should have collapsed but haven’t yet?”

Tary took a sip of her whiskey before she answered. “Not that I’ve heard of.”

“Nor I,” Degei agreed. He had nearly finished off his rum, but had never picked up the glass. The snakes were doing the drinking for him. “But there is an … imbalance.”

Bingo. “Where?” Bob asked, trying to conceal his impatience.

The baby snakes making up his lips twitched, giving him a grimace that was otherwise impossible. “That’s been harder to pinpoint. It seems to be in the location of Kumiho’s old realm, but I have no snakes there, so I cannot say for sure.”

“Kumiho’s realm?” That was a real shock, especially since that one didn’t intersect closely with this plane of existence.

He could feel Tary’s intense orange eyes scrutinizing him. “What’s this about, Bob? Are you implyin’ that Eris didn’t kill Camaxtli?”

“No, I’m sure she dispersed most of him. But I think some of his energy escaped.”

“How?” She wondered, not disbelieving him, just curious.

“Camaxtli had an avatar, is that what you’re saying?” Degei replied, getting it.

“I believe he did. A native to this plane, but she’s no longer here. She has been communicating with my avatar, though, so she has to be close.”

“Since when do you have an avatar?” Taryn gave him a small kick in the leg. Well, he had always disliked the idea of avatars, so he probably deserved that.

“It’s a long story, but I didn’t do it. It sorta happened by accident.”

“How does one get an avatar by accident?” Degei asked.

How did he explain this without sounding completely insane? “Arakis had a sorcerer pawn doing some of her bidding, and when I tried to stop him, he tried a switcher spell on me and the Human who ended up becoming my avatar. As you can tell, we both survived.”

Taryn tapped her glass with a green fingernail, making a small, musical sound. “Since when can a Human contain you? Is he of the Blood?”

“He’s a mutant,” Lia interjected. “A stubborn, hairy, mean spirited little mutant who put a hole in my wall.”

“I patched that up,” Bob pointed out, not for the first time.

“Is this supposed avatar of Camaxtli’s a mutant too?” Degei asked.

He nodded. “Yeah. The unrequited love of my avatar, in fact.”

Tary winced. “That sounds like that sheep buggerin’ gobshite.”

Bob couldn’t help but smirk. Cammy did have more enemies than friends, but that was typical with war gods.

“Camaxtli’s blocking your efforts to trace him?” Degei wondered.

He nodded. “The avatar he picked was a telepath and a telekinetic before her conversion; he may have found a way to make those powers work for him.”

“Shit,” Taryn sighed. “Hon, I think you may be in over your head here. You couldn’t even take Cammy when he was just himself.”

“I could take him,” he argued. “If I was smart. I just never got the chance to prove it.”

“What do you think Cammy is gonna do?” Taryn asked, concern creeping into her voice.

He wished he could tell her something comforting, something even vaguely reassuring, but he had nothing. He was forced to shrug, and admit, “I don’t know. What Cammy has always done, I suppose.”

The ensuing silence - even the jukebox gave it up - was somber and depressing. Because what did Cammy ever do besides kill everything in his way? And what was in his way if he decided to make some hostile move on the Earth plane?

Only one thing: Bob.

18

Logan figured he’d been on the floor for about eight minutes before she noticed.

She just came in the door and started talking, assuming he was in the back. He heard her speaking, but most of the words escaped him at the start. It didn’t help that she stormed immediately into the kitchen. He heard her banging cupboards, opening the refrigerator, angrily making herself a drink - hard day at work.

“ - Chihiro says one more condescending thing to me I swear to god I’m gonna kick him in the balls so hard his grandchildren will feel it,” Mariko continued to rant, but then she fell silent. “Logan?” She asked. “You are here, aren’t you? Or am I complaining to myself?”

“ ‘m here,” he mumbled. His mouth sounded full of rocks, even to himself. “Kinda still recovering.”

“Recovering?” She came out of the kitchen, and tried to trace the direction from which the sound had come from, and he knew she had found him when she gasped. “Oh my god - Logan!” She slammed her drink down on the nearest table and came over to him, kneeling beside him. Logan had actually collapsed in the entryway, but had managed to drag himself over in front of the fireplace. Someone - probably Akira, judging by the residual scent - had made a fire, and the warmth was nice after being in the snow. It also helped to conceal the general burn of healing.

Mariko appeared in his line of sight, her eyes wide in her pale face, her hair hanging down and tickling his cheeks. “Oh my god, Logan, what happened?”

He had to take a deep breath before he could speak, and he felt so feverish inside his own aching skin, he knew he might regret using his strength to speak. “Got ambushed on the road outta Hokkaido. A guy who thought he was kamikaze rammed the car, and then a secondary unit opened fire with enough rounds to make the Marines blush. Killed my entire first team, and half the back up.”

She looked even more stricken than before. “Ryan?”

“I got him out, he‘s fine,” he assured her. He moved his hand, found her arm blindly, and she quickly grasped his hand, interlacing her fingers with his. “He screams like a girl.”

She smiled weakly, and said, “I know, I remember.” She gently touched his face, and asked, “What happened to your eye?”

Since he could see out of his eye, he was able to tell her confidently, “It healed.” Although the fact that she mentioned it made him think that the skin beneath his eye hadn’t fully healed yet. There was so much to do, nothing was getting done in a sensible order.

He could see tears starting to form in her eyes. “How badly were you hurt?”

The room beyond her had faded to flickering shadows, and weariness started to press down on him like increased gravity. Conscious too long. “Broke my arm, a few ribs, got a concussion in the initial crash. Shot a few times, lost count. Lung punctured, got some internal injuries and some burns when I blew up the car. But they’re healing.”

He had never seen a horrified expression so close up before in his life. “Oh … god. Shit. I should call an ambulance.”

“I don’t need one.”

“Fuck you, you “don’t need one“!” She snapped, tears starting to spill down her face. “You’re laying in your own blood!”

“Lotsa injuries, all at once,” he tried to explain, feeling his grasp of words start to fail him. “Overwhelmed my system. But I’m getting okay, I just need time.”

“Oh god,” she gasped, resting her head on his chest. He wondered if she found the unbloodied spot. “You can’t keep doing this to yourself, Logan.”

“’s my job.” He could feel his consciousness slipping away like so much sand between his fingers. In a way, it was catch up; during the ambush, he fought so hard to stay conscious he used up whatever grace period he had with his body. It was completely sapped now, and he had been fading into and out of consciousness ever since he got Ryan and the rest of his team to safety. He was actually amazed he was able to hold out as long as he did, but both adrenaline and pain had their benefits.

“Getting killed in place of my asshole brother is not your job,” she said, as much a statement as a plea. He felt her tears run down his skin, and he pulled his hand out of hers so he could stroke her hair.

“Won’t happen,” he mumbled. Color was draining out of the world, and he felt like he was floating inside his skin.

“You can’t promise that,” she said, her voice breaking with anguish. She raised her head and looked at him, wiping the tears from her eyes with the back of her hand. “If you keep getting hurt like this, it - ”

“I will always come back to you,” He interrupted. He had to - he could feel himself slipping away. “No matter what, I will come back to you.”

He meant it too. She was often his only motivation to hold on; certainly ditzy, incompetent Ryan wasn’t.

She looked down at him, studying his face, and only the splash of her tears on his cheeks kept him conscious. Her face seemed almost translucent, like she was becoming the ghost, not him. “I’m gonna hold you to that.”

He nodded, and felt himself going under, slipping beneath the warmth of healing and exhaustion.

As it had before she came home, he seemed to be in a constantly fluctuating state of semi-consciousness. He seemed to periodically wake up with no memory of ever being asleep. He heard her moving around, running water, but in the next second she was kneeling beside him, her silky black hair tied back in a ponytail, changed into one of his t-shirts and her sweat shorts. She dabbed his face with a wet warm cloth, wiping off the blood, and said, “You know, it’s a good thing no one ever questions why we have so much bloody laundry.”

“I’m a bleeder,” he muttered.

“Don’t you even try and make me laugh now, you bastard,” she said - what she always said when he tried to lighten up the impossibly depressing. And she always said it in such a way that meant if he ever did stop, she really would kill him.

He only realized she had peeled his tattered clothes off when she made a horrified noise, and said, “You still have glass in you.”

“It’ll fall out.” Must have been from the car. That’s what had happened to his eye - he got a rather large piece of it, that stuck in his cornea and sliced his lower eyelid in two. (A high speed collision could instantly render a car a blender full of flying glass.) Ryan just about pissed himself when Logan pulled out the glass shard and threw it aside, shoving him out of the car at the same time, even though he could just see in the one eye. His sight came back fairly quickly (lucky for both of them).

But Mariko went ahead and removed the glass fragments that she could, and even though she was exceedingly careful, she sucked in a sharp breath every time she touched one, apparently afraid she was hurting him. He told her he was beyond pain right now, but she either didn't believe him or didn't find that comforting (or both).

At one point, she said, "Oh Christ, I see a bullet. Should I ... should I go get some tweezers or something? How do I get it out?"

"It'll fall out,"he assured her. "The healing process will force it out. But when it does, you might want to get it away from the fire." He was pretty sure the round was harmless now, but better safe than sorry.

He continued floating in and out of consciousness, although he was aware of her still, and the warm wet cloth she used to clean off the blood. He was also aware that, at some point, his left arm stopped feeling like it was on fire; the bone had finally knitted itself back together again, hopefully in the right shape. Broken bones were a complete bitch.

"You know, I'm too accustomed to cleaning up blood," she said, with a sort of humorous despondency. It wasn't just a comment on him, but on her whole bloody life as the daughter of a major crime family. After all, she had seen her mother murdered and her farther gruesomely disfigured, and that wasn't even counting the relatives and personal bodyguards that had been hurt or killed around her. He hated to be responsible for even a little bit more, even though they both knew he wasn't even close to dying.

She put a pillow under his head, but he had no idea when, or how long it had been there before he noticed. He did feel the blanket fall over him, as well as her sliding under it, carefully snuggling up beside him. "I can hardly drag you to the bedroom, can I?" She said, by way of explanation. "You couldn't have done me a favor by passing out closer to the tatami?"

He was burning with healing, but not as much as before; he was almost back to normal (well, normal for him). He slid his arm beneath her, and turned his head, burying his face in her hair. It smelled clean, with a few scent traces of snow lingering in the strands. On her, it smelled beautiful, like perfume. "I love you." It scared him sometimes how much he did. He knew, in a way, that he shouldn't, not like this - if he failed, if anything ever happened to her, he would die. And that didn't feel like a histrionic declaration either; it just seemed like an inevitable fact. She was the better side of him; without her, there'd be nothing much left of him worth having.

"You'd better, you stupid son of a bitch," she replied, trying to swallow her sorrow, burying her face in his neck.

Logan almost slept, but not quite; he seemed to continue riding the waxing and waning tides of his own consciousness as he slept in brief respites between them - power napping. Often he did nothing but listen to her breathe, and, beyond them, hear the snow hitting the roof and melting, dripping down the eaves, as the dying fire crackled and sputtered. Sometimes a snowflake would make it down the flue more or less intact, and he could hear it sizzle in the heat. It was times like these when he realized that - for all the agony it caused, for all the unwelcome burdens of a life that seemed to stretch out ahead of him into an empty eternity - his mutant abilities could be a gift. Rarely, but sometimes. He knew a world that no other Human could ever know.

He woke up to feel her kissing his neck, her hand moving over his abdomen as if in search of any still lingering wounds. As she kissed the underside of his chin, he smiled, and said, "You really know how to wake a guy up, don't you?"

He slipped his hands beneath her shirt, enjoying the normal warmth of her skin as she covered his mouth with hers, but it was that kiss that was wrong. It was familiar, but not in the right way, and it confused the hell out of him. Also, her skin seemed to be getting even warmer.

He pushed her back, and found himself looking into dark eyes alive with fire …

Logan jolted awake, and for a moment, thought, “I’m in a coffin.” But then his eyes adjusted to the dark, and he realized he was simply in the back of a van that smelled like a coffin.

“Oh, good, have you sobered up yet?” Yasha asked.

He sat up, and found her looking back at him from over the front seat. He was slightly light headed, but otherwise okay. “Yeah, I think so. Where the fuck are we?”

“A van,” she replied flippantly. She then threw something at him that hit him in the head, because he was still very disoriented. He looked down at it, to see a pumpkin orange t-shirt resting in his lap. “At this rate, we’re gonna have to rob a warehouse in the garment district. You change your clothes more than Cher, don’t you?”

“Maybe if I wasn’t savin’ your ass, I wouldn’t get drenched in blood all the time,” he snapped, grabbing the shirt. Bringing it closer to his nose, he caught the scent that the Berserker blood was blocking. “Ugh. This smells like Ressik.”

“Well, shirts don’t grow on trees, certainly not for steroided out muties like you.”

“Steroided out?” He repeated angrily. “Do I look like I have no testicles? Guys who chug steroids are fucking idiots.” He peeled off the blood stained shirt he had on - and peeled was the correct term, as Berserker blood apparently turned rubbery when it dried (no wonder it smelled like burning tires) - and threw it in the corner farthest away from him. With great reluctance, he pulled the orange shirt on, and found it was actually a little loose on him; must have been one of the big ass Ressiks.

“Fine, so that’s another mutant ability of yours, is it? Big muscles?”

“It’s my metal,” he said, and it fell out of his mouth before he realized what he was saying. “It’s added weight to my frame, my muscles had to adapt to it, otherwise I’d be tearing them every time I raised my arm.”

She stared at him over the seat, and her eyes were chatoyant in the dim light, like a cat’s. “Your metal? It’s not just in your arms, is it?”

She didn’t know? Well, how the hell would she know? “No; my entire skeleton’s coated in adamantium.” And for some reason, remembering what it felt like to have a broken arm, to feel it healing itself up, was almost nostalgic.

She let out a low whistle. “No wonder it was so difficult to drag you into the back. I thought I was goin’ all wimpy over here.”

“That’s another possibility.” He sniffed the shirt, and grimaced. “Does Ressik ever come out?” It smelled like rotting leaves, which was not a bad scent in itself, but seemed wrong on a living being.

“Oh, stop bitching. I snapped his neck; there’s no blood on that one.”

“Gee thanks.” He dry washed his face, hoping he wasn’t just spreading more blood around, and felt a muscle only now start to loosen somewhere in the vicinity of his gut. Jean had interrupted his memory of Mariko, didn’t she? Or was he dreaming? He’d been pumped full of some kind of drug - it could have been a hallucination. It most likely was. (Why didn’t it feel that way?) Silently, he was furious with her - how dare she. He had so little of Mariko, so few memories, and she barged in and destroyed it. Why?! “What’s our next move?” He asked, trying to distract himself from his own rage. “Do we even have one?”

“We do,” Yasha said confidently. “I found a card on a couple of the Ressiks that should be a good starting point. It’s a club on the far side of the Shinjuku district, that technically Fujimori hasn’t reached yet.”

“Technically? Meaning he has, but he’s hiding behind a front, right?”

“Good guess. Truth be told, I’m not completely sure if it’s a Fuji front or not, but now’s the time to find out. Only thing is … can you act?”

“Act?” Maybe he was still in a drug caused hallucination. “Do ya mean like lie? I ain’t a politician, but I can hold my own.”

“Good. Just follow my lead, and we’ll be fine.”

He really didn’t like the sound of that, and he didn’t know why. “What kind of club is this, anyways?”

She briefly ducked behind the seat, and when she sat up, she was pulling on a short wig, colored the same light brown that was currently fashionable among the young girls of Tokyo. “Come now, that would be telling. Don’t you like surprises, Logan?”

He glared at her. “Most of the “surprises” I get end with people attacking me.”

She gave him a wide, toothy grin that just verged on predatory. “Great; you’re all set.”

Now he knew for sure that he was going to regret this.