Logan was tensed and ready for one of those heavy shocks, like that psychic lightning bolt that seemed to sizzle through him whenever Bob used his touch telepathy, so when nothing happened, it was almost a let down.

He thought it was him, so he grabbed Bob’s hand tighter and focused on blue, all that blue energy hiding in the crevices of his brain … and still nothing. He might as well be holding a doll’s hand. Or a corpse.

He opened his eyes with a frustrated sigh, and Helga said, “Nothing?”

“Nothing. I’m not feeling a single bit of power from him.”

“Well, Keelin said the mark held it in; maybe it does that even with contact.”

“Shit. We’re gonna have to hunt this bitch down, aren’t we?”

“Yeah.”

“And fight a god? By ourselves?”

“That’s where the plan falls apart,” she admitted. He turned to her as she grimaced at the floor, torn between anger and sorrow. “Ya know, I don’t know how I’m going to use Bob’s connections. Gods routinely ignore us …”

He took her in his arms because it looked like she needed it, and she sagged against him, as if so tired she might collapse. “We’ll make ‘em pay attention to us. We’re good at that.”

“Yeah,” she agreed, although she sounded uncertain.

“C’mon, I’ll get you home.”

She nodded, but didn’t pull away, and he didn’t make her. Man, when things went wrong, they went wrong all the way, didn’t they?

He couldn’t wait to find out what new shit was sure to hit them.

9

Xavier knew Rogue was waiting outside when he came out of the hospital, but he was still a little disappointed to find her there.

Piotr was upset enough. He had asked him several times, after they arrived on the scene, why anybody would do such a thing, and why Saddiq hadn’t called for help. But Xavier knew.

When they returned to the mansion, just ahead of the ambulance, Saddiq had lost a lot of blood - far too much - and was in and out of consciousness. But Xavier caught a flash of his emotions during a brief period of consciousness, and Saddiq felt pleased, almost triumphant. He did just what he was he was supposed to do, what he was made to do - he defended the castle, he fought back an invader, he won. That’s what mattered the most to him.

It didn’t matter what they had tried to teach Saddiq since he’d been here; it was a problem with all the Rajan kids, but especially him, since he was the oldest of them. He was not taught anything but the fact that his use as a tool - as a weapon - was all he could achieve in life, and it was the greatest achievement possible. It seems the Rajan patriarchy had figured out what Stryker and his Organization (thankfully) could not: if you want a mutant weapon, you don’t brainwash them, you don’t enhance their construction - you make them from birth, and groom them from there. If they know no other life, they have no idea escape is even an option. And no matter how hard they had worked with him, they had still not overcome his lifetime of programming.

(Then again, that was true of Logan too, wasn’t it?)

And even though that was discouraging, a part of him - a very small, miniscule part - was glad he had not lost his instinct; he was glad that Saddiq had intercepted this man before he could cause more damage or, god forbid, kill any of the children. The only problem was Saddiq might have just gotten himself killed in the process, and how was that a positive outcome?

Rogue stared at them hollow eyed, her clothes still smeared with blood, twisting her gloved hands anxiously. She had insisted on coming, as she was apparently the first to find Scott and Saddiq, but he requested she stay in the car, especially since none of them would be allowed in the emergency room anyways. Once she realized how bloody she was, she agreed. “How is he - they? Are they ..?”

“Scott will be fine,” he assured her, and that was the good news. It seemed that, in spite of the puncture wound in the back of his neck, he wasn’t stabbed - he was electrocuted. Not a lethal charge, but sent directly into the spinal column. Even when he regained consciousness, it might be an hour before he regained full use of his limbs. Whatever new kind of weapon that was, it was far more effective and devastating than a standard “paralyzer” could ever be.

“What about Saddiq?” She asked, looking up at Piotr behind him, aware that he would be the first to “crack”, as it were.

“They’re attempting to stabilize him now,” he told her, trying to sound more upbeat than he actually felt. The medical team was working from a deficit - they had to reach into the stab wounds and try and seal the damage from that limited vantage point, as they had no instruments that could cut his skin; they all broke, scalpels snapping like icicles. They didn’t have adamantium, like his assailant obviously did.

Just the way Rogue stared at him, he knew she had guessed that Saddiq was all but a lost cause. Although her eyes were starting to well with tears, they took on a defiant, angry look. “We have to get that bastard, the guy who did this, if he is still alive.”

“We will find this man,” he insisted, still not sure if it was a lie or not. They did need to find him before he could do any more damage to them or any other mutant. But if they did find him, what then?

She didn’t seem that convinced. She took off her bloody gloves, letting them hit the asphalt with a wet thwack, and ran her hands through her hair, trying to hide the fact that she was wiping the tears out of her eyes. “What was that stuff in his blood?” She asked, turning away.

Xavier could not initially believe the amount of blood in the front corridor; it looked like a slaughterhouse. It pooled on the floor, dripped from the walls, spattered broken furniture and made a trail leading down the front drive. It must have been a brutal battle, for all of its brevity, and the man must have been extraordinary if he could take such a beating from Saddiq and still be able to run away. In fact, from the limited evidence available, it was Saddiq who had dished out most of the punishment, although the intruder still managed to land possibly fatal blows.

And it was the intruder’s blood that especially repulsed and horrified. It looked just like normal human blood … except things moved and sparkled in it, photons caught in aimless loops of Brownian motion, not quite visible with the naked eye save for when they gave out minute electrical discharges, microscopic lightning bolts. If he was some adamantium enhanced mutant, like Wolverine, he wasn’t a type anyone had ever seen before. Maybe it was part of a new adamantium bonding process, proving the concept hadn’t quite died with Alkali Lake like it should have. “It’s still being tested. We should know soon enough.”

When Piotr started moving his chair across the parking lot, Rogue stepped in their path, making him stop. She had managed to get the crying under control, but tears still sparkled in her eyes, and her jaw was rigid with anger. “We have to find Logan.”

“Rogue -”

“He can find him. He can take care of him.”

What a chilling choice of phrase. “As we can.”

“Not the same way.”

“Rogue -”

“He attacked us in our own home!” She insisted angrily. “He ki .. He tried to kill Saddiq! He had an adamantium knife, right? He’s probably one of those Organization assholes -”

“Rogue, trust me. We will handle this.” She obviously didn’t know that the intruder had done something to Cerebro; they would have a difficult time finding Logan as it was. He’d already tried to call his cell phone number - to warn him - but it wasn’t working.

Not that he was eager to. It was clear that was why he came to the mansion, to sabotage Cerebro and harm Logan - actually attempt to kill him? Xavier wondered how adamantium conducted electricity, and if an electrical current applied directly to the spinal column would affect Logan the same way it affected Scott, or possibly worse. Or maybe the man would let Logan simply have everything he had, electricity wise.

The thing was, before Saddiq was put into the ambulance, the boy had stared at him in a meaningful way; even half-conscious, it was almost angry. That confused Xavier until he opened his mind, just a bit, enough to see that Saddiq wanted him to read his mind.

And then Xavier saw everything. The fight from Saddiq’s viewpoint, heard what little he’d been able to get from the intruder, who was clearly terrified of him; an intruder who did not have an adamantium knife, but a hand that could shift shape and densities. A hand that glimmered like his eyes, and like the motes that swarmed in his blood.

He had seen his face; he had seen his fear. He knew this man, and would be able to identify him anywhere. He also knew that Saddiq had cut an artery, had delivered a blow that should have been fatal, in one way or another - either he would bleed to death, or Logan would track him down by scent and kill him. That was not something Xavier wanted, as it seemed to fall right into their plans … whatever they ultimately were. Nor, if Saddiq survived, did he want him to live with the fact that he was a killer, no matter if the cause was “just” or not.

The morning sun was beating down on them like a punishment, it would be a miserably hot New York day, and the smell of blood lingered like horrific memory. Xavier knew Rogue was becoming almost belligerent with her anger, seething, and would probably try something stupid if she wasn’t stopped. But he would stop her by any means necessary, if he absolutely had to.

Because the only one who was going to be doing something stupid around here was him.

10

In retrospect, it was as funny as hell that he was paranoid.

Hel was absolutely right - it was a god. They wouldn’t lurk behind closed doors, wouldn’t jump out at you from a dark alley; they didn’t have to. They could pop in anywhere, eradicate every trace of your existence, and disappear before you even realized you were dead. It was a power level above and beyond anything they could muster. Bob may have made them both used to these displays of extreme power, but it was really something nothing mortal was supposed to be accustomed to; no one was supposed to be blasé about the ripping apart of dimensional fabric.

They returned to Bob’s loft apartment above the warehouse/garage in the industrial district, not bothered by gods or monsters. He wasn’t expecting too much monster trouble, though, as the sun was finally up, a bloated orb turned a rusty orange by thin layer of pollution that hovered over the Los Angeles basin like a bad reputation, and from his somewhat limited experience, the beasties actually did prefer the dark. His guess was they were taking advantage of their superior senses, aware Humans didn’t see too well in the dark. Well, some Humans. Some Humans didn’t even need to see to be aware of the threat.

Once they arrived, he took off what was left of his jacket, and was startled when something fell out of his pocket. It looked like some kind of mechanical debris, and fears that somehow he’d been bugged gave way to the realization that his cell phone had been busted down to its constituent parts. Probably happened when the snake thing flung him through the fence. The funny thing was, the gun he’d stolen from the Triad guy back in Hong Kong was still in one piece, and in perfect working condition.

Helga was tired, and far more disillusioned than she had let on previously. She told him to help himself to any of Bob’s clothes, and told him where the towels were when he went to quickly wash the blood and demon goop off of him. He knew things were bad when she didn’t even attempt to join him in the shower.

When he came out, towel wrapped around his waist, to see what he find in Bob’s chest of drawers (absolutely no “Sausage Victim” t-shirts; he could go without a shirt if that’s all he had), he found Helga laying on top of the bed, fully clothed, back towards him, tail lolling limply over the side of the mattress. She’d pulled the heavy blue velvet curtains over the window, so almost no light was bleeding into the small bedroom, which was so cool from air conditioning that goosebumps broke out all over his skin. Even though he actually shivered, he didn’t worry about it - he’d be fine in a minute. “You okay?” He asked, aware it was a deeply stupid question.

“Yes and no. Can you come over here? I don’t feel like being alone at the moment.”

Not an overt sexual overture, and since Helga was far from subtle about such things - after all, he could still remember her actually tackling him before they had sex for the first time - he figured it wasn’t about that. He laid down next to her on the bed, turning over to face her back and wrap his arms around her waist, but not before moving her tail so he didn’t squish it. She pressed back against him, and brought his arm higher up, until it was almost rest across her throat. “Warm, clean Human skin,” she said quietly, “That’s a nice smell.”

“Not always.”

“Yeah, well, it can be.” She was quiet for a moment, and her tail slithered against his legs, trying to find a more comfortable position. “What if you’re all that’s left of him?”

“What?” He almost pointed out Bob had actual family - children, grandchildren, great grandchildren, and on and on, ad infinitum - and he wasn’t one of them. But she didn’t mean blood of his blood, harborer of some scattered, random genes: she meant keeper of his power, the energy he had and the energy he actually was. As an energy being trapped in a finite, physical form, his power was him; it wasn’t just something he had, sans intelligence or personality - it was as much an actual part of him has a leg or an arm, a heart or frontal lobe. Logan knew, as much as he didn’t like to think about it, that he wasn’t just harboring a bit of Bob’s power in his head, but an actual piece of Bob himself. A rather dark piece, if you could believe what he’d heard about what the Senior Partners had unleashed. (The same Senior Partners that might have killed Angel, Spike, and gods knew who else to a hell dimension or killed them for fighting against them? The same ones that killed Wesley! ? Wow, he really didn’t feel good about that right now. Although, he and Helga had taken a detour to see what had become of the Wolfram and Hart building, preparing to storm that goddamn viper pit and ask what the fuck happened to Angel. They were stopped short by what they saw - rubble. A big, huge pile of debris and broken glass, being surrounded by police with safety tape. They didn’t know what happened, although someone said a gas main had exploded near the base of the structure, a heretofore unknown leak, and the whole building collapsed in on itself. So, dead or in some Hell or who knew what, maybe Angel could be content knowing he’d won one battle here - maybe the big evils were still around, but at least he’d blown their house down.)

“You could be it, you know. In fact, that’s why we probably have to get you into hiding or something. We -”

“Hiding? Fuck you!”

“If they kill you -”

“I wish ‘em a hell of a lotta luck. Hel, even if they do kill me, and then kill Bob, Bob doesn’t die, right? He just goes back to his native dimension, whatever that is, and can come back here for round two.”

“Except she can kill gods.”

“But she’d kill me like a normal person.”

She turned her head slightly on the pillow, trying to look back at him over her shoulder. “Yeah. What are you getting at?”

“The bit of Bob energy in me. I die, it goes back to its home dimension. Could Bob … well, grow isn’t the right word, but you know what I mean … could he come back from that? Heal up, like me?”

She turned back towards the window, eyes narrowed in thought. He felt her tail softly brush against her ankle as the tip of her tail twitched slightly, and it was almost a full minute before she said, “I don’t really know. I know Bob is supposedly from a powerful “family” of gods …”

“So it’s possible, isn’t it? Kaliratra or whatever the hell her name is is pretty much fucked. There’s no way for her to really win.”

“But Logan, you’d have to die for that happen.”

He shrugged a single shoulder, burying his face in her neck. Her skin smelled pretty good too. “Que sera sera. If it happens, at least maybe there’s some good that’ll come out of it. And besides, maybe Bob’ll be so grateful he’ll resurrect me - you can’t discount anything with him, can you?”

She let out an impatient sigh. “I don’t want you to die, Logan! Not him, not you. There’s been enough death.”

He didn’t know what to say to that; she was right, of course. So he didn’t say anything, just held her tight as she snuggled back into him like a warm blanket. Her tail curled around his calf possessively, like an affectionate snake. “You know, I always told Bob I’d marry him if only we could include you.”

“Excuse me?”

“A group marriage - you, me, him. Common among my people, although usually in not so small a group. I think the minimum there is usually four.”

Helga seemed to think up new ways to flabbergast him. “Uh … not that I’m not flattered Hel, but y’know that’s not legal. Well, except maybe in Utah.”

“Not in most Human laws, but among demon laws, you bet it’s legal. Otherwise, they’d have to arrest all Stansins, and other demon clans that believe in plural marriages.”

“But … wouldn’t that mean I was also married to Bob?”

“Technically. But I wouldn’t worry about him making late night booty calls.” She looked back and flashed him a shit eating grin, her teeth almost shockingly white in contrast to her pale green lips.

“Ha. I’m sorry, hon, but I ain’t signin’ up to become one of his future ex-wives, thank you.”

“Spoilsport.” She moved one of his arm, wrapping it around her torso, just beneath her breasts. Not that he was going to complain. They had to talk about Bob like he was just in the next room, or simply away on a business trip, because talking about him as dying or dead any longer was simply too hard to do.

“Can I get dressed now?” He wondered.

“Not yet. Just stay here a minute, okay? I can’t shake the feeling that something worse is going to happen, and I want you where I can see you. Or at least feel you.”

He sighed, sounding more put upon than he felt. “The things I do for you. I hope you appreciate it.”

She scoffed, and settled back into his warmth, her skin soft and smooth against his. He just held her, listening for her breathing and heart rate to slow, deepen, give off signs of sleep. He could leave her, but after everything that had happened tonight, he didn’t really feel like doing that. He breathed in the scent of her skin, felt her heartbeat against his own chest, and suddenly realized he was tired too. Maybe it was the lingering traces of anodyne, or maybe it was adrenaline crash after the big snake fight, but he could feel himself start to drift away. And he didn’t stop it, he just let it happen. Maybe now, with everything that was happening, it was time to just grab the small pleasures where you could.

Because tomorrow, you might not be alive to enjoy them.

11

The infusion of Camaxtli’s power brought a lot of things with it that she hadn’t anticipated. For one thing, she could sometimes see the future.

Oh, it wasn’t as cut and dried as it should have been. Since there were so many dimensions she could access now, Jean could see multiple futures that were correct somewhere, but not always in the dimension she could consider her native one. Sometimes it was easy to tell it was a “foreign” one; sometimes not. And these future “glimpses” - really just peeks, like a gap in the wall between the worlds had suddenly opened up - never lasted long, and often had narrative threads she couldn’t hope to follow. Since she’d found no way to control them, she had learned to ignore them.

But she knew instinctively she could not afford to ignore this one.

She wasn’t sure if it was actually her native dimension or not. There appeared to be an ocean, but it was now roiling, white with a heavy layer of foam, and the sun was like a baleful bloodshot eye in the sky, engorged crimson that was bleeding out red into the gray sky. She was on a beach, but it was not completely her - her/not her, something swathed in energy like semi-transparent fire, as if her aura was in flames. Her eyes burned as well, peephole glimpses of a supernova.

There were dead - there were lots of dead - but she couldn’t see any of them very clearly. She was hurt, though. Even through the fiery feel of her energy, she could feel something like a stabbing pain in her side, a spreading darkness in her peripheral vision, and she knew it was because of her opponent, the last one standing, the one who should have been long dead.

Logan.

But it wasn’t Logan, now was it? His eyes burned with blue fire, so great it bled small tendrils of it into the surrounding air, and veins pulsed beneath his skin like worms, full of that noxious, inhuman power. Where he had been cut across the chest and face, his blood was red, but blue light gleamed on his exposed claws, a ghostly visual echo of the physical. She had knocked him down to one knee, but he got to his feet again, as he always did. “Stay down!” She commanded, with a voice that seemed like thunder, even to her ears. “Don’t make me do this!”

“Don’t make me!” Logan shouted back, but it wasn’t quite his voice. Maybe somewhere in there was a part of him, but really it was just a Logan shell; the body was Logan’s, but the drive was all Bob. A hybrid being, split twenty-eighty, if that. “You should’ve gone when you had the chance, Jeannie!”

Just the sound of his threats infuriated her. Did he not know what she was? She had the powers of the universe at her fingertips, not an avatar but an actual god. And he … he was just an outcast, a refugee, hiding within the skin of a man she … well, a man who used to be her friend. When he was still alive; when she was still -

- (alive) -

- weak. And did Bob, the jumped up idiot, forget she had the power of blood? Power given to her by blood, and power over blood. “You should have left him alone!” She shouted, as she made his blood boil.

Logan’s skin burst from the internal heat, and he made some strangled noise as he collapsed to the sand, blood oozing and steaming as it emerged from his split and broken skin, his blue aura fading. Perhaps she felt a twinge of regret for killing what was left of Logan so horribly, but she wasn’t about to let him - let Bob - stand in her way. This was her place; she had to cleanse the world. It was the only way forward, the only way to right all the deep and tragic wrongs. She could make the world a better place by simply making it over again - in fact, it was the only way to correct something so horribly flawed.

She had turned her attention to the seas, to the saltwater blood of this planet, and was focused on sending them out, casting them far and wide to do her bidding, to scour the world, when a savage, hideous pain burned through her, a lightning bolt made physical … and lethal. She could feel the burning to the very pit of her soul, her power.

She opened her exterior eyes, gasping for a breath she thought she no longer needed, and found herself face to face with the Logan thing. His eyes had exploded from the internal heat, but that was irrelevant; blue energy had filled the holes, and she suddenly wondered if she had made a grave tactical error, getting rid of some of Bob’s physical restraints. Logan still oozed blood from skin cracked like desert sand, but … it was healing. As she watched it was knitting itself back together, but not even Logan could have recovered from such complete and total devastation. “That’s not possible,” she said, almost to herself, as she felt herself draining away. Although it felt like it was into some new abyss that had opened up beneath her feet, she knew her power was being siphoned into him; somehow, he was sucking her dry.

Logan/Bob grimaced, a pained, evil smile. “I picked him for a reason,” he said, an inhuman accent creeping into the vestiges of Logan’s voice. “You can teach old dogs new tricks. Even gods.” Then he tore her apart, casting all the essence of what she was, had been, and would have been, to the still, hot air of a doomed planet.

And Jean opened her eyes to the present.