2

He got back to sleep, but he never got back to that dream about Faith. Maybe that’s why he woke up feeling so crabby. A shower didn’t improve his mood, perhaps because he only had four minutes of hot water and the water reeked of chlorine, but he got dressed and headed out into another miserably humid L.A. morning.

Lau was behind the bar at the Way Station, which was good, as he never tried to engage anyone in small talk. Rags was sitting at the end of the bar, though, having his first Long Island iced tea of the day. He waved him over, but Kier was sitting at a back table, and Logan went to him. He did have a laptop, which made him feel really low tech.

The kid looked like he hadn’t gotten much sleep either, although the only sign of that was simply that he didn’t look as polished as he usually did. His hair was genuinely messy as opposed to artfully so, and he seemed even more pale than usual. He had a glass of goat’s blood in front of him, but it appeared untouched.

Lau brought him a beer he didn’t order (but didn’t need to) as he watched the disc. It was just as Kier had said, an amateur home video of a nasty slaughter, and a vampire who looked like he could have been a member of a heavy metal band. But as the camera slued around to show victims getting their throats torn out, he saw some symbols glistening on the leather walls, a moist stain against the black. “How do you pause this?” he asked Kier, and the kid tapped a couple of keys on the keyboard. He had him go back, freeze the frame, and zoom in. He wasn’t able to lighten up the image, so Logan had to stare at the symbols for a very long time in an effort to make them out.

“What the hell is that?” Kier asked, squinting at it.

“Cyrillic.”

“Umm, what?”

“Russian. I can’t … it’s hard to make it all out, but I’m pretty sure it says “ascendant”.”

“Ascendant? What the fuck does that mean? I mean, besides higher or whatever.”

Logan shrugged, shaking his head. “Got me. But it must mean something to someone.” He wondered if they should show this to Angel, who might know, or Giles. Kier didn’t want to, though, because he was sure as soon as Bren heard he’d want to get involved in helping him out.

Logan scowled at him. “You really don’t want him in this. Why?”

“Because he means something to me. They’ve already taken my sister; he’d be next.”

“You’re not holdin’ out on me, are you?”

He looked genuinely bewildered by the question. “Huh?”

Logan shook his head and found his cell phone. Of all the times for Bob to be gone. Supposedly he was off doing something for one of his ex-wives, but it was off in another dimension, which begged the question how many wives did he have in how many dimensions? And did he really want to know? Seemed they’d all be better off if they never knew the actual answer to that question.

Logan called Giles, and asked him if he knew why the word ascendant - in Cyrillic - might mean something to a bunch of people killing vampires. He explained the strange massacre and the even stranger message, along with the fact that they left the bodies for the cops to find, but he never mentioned that this had all been intended for Kier. Giles admitted that sounded odd, even for vampires (an odd lot by nature), and while it didn’t ring any bells for him, he said he’d look into it and get back to him. That was all he could ask for.

Rags came over to their table and sat down, cradling drink number two, or possibly three. “S’what’s up? Anyfing interestin’?”

Logan and Kier exchanged a look, and then Logan said, “Just vamp shit. But I might be in need of a teleport.”

Rags shrugged, taking a big swallow of his drink. His yellow crystal eyes looked slightly cloudy. “I got no plans today. Where to?”

“Toronto.”

Rags shrugged again. “S’fine. I could use some Canadian beer anyways.”

Well, who couldn’t? But Logan realized that he supposed he’d just committed himself to going up there and checking this out. Still, why the hell not? Killing vamps was always easy, and he had nothing better to do right now. And he wouldn’t admit it, but that whole “ascendant” thing bugged him, although he had no idea why it had gotten under his skin.

The use of Cyrillic? Or was it just that he knew any message written in blood was no fucking good at all?

****

Kier knew he didn’t know Logan all that well. He knew him mostly from what Bren had said about him, and some stuff Angel had mentioned. The only thing he knew from actual experience was the guy was a fucking death machine on legs - which was good, because he had a feeling he needed that right now.

Why hadn’t he noticed that stuff on the wall? The funny thing was he’d watched the damn movie maybe a dozen times, scanning the faces of the victims (that they bothered to show), looking for Kayla or anyone he might have recognized. But that was pointless; he didn’t know any of them. He felt he should too, but he didn't.

His life back in Canada hadn't been wild or even very interesting. He lived in Vancouver, not Toronto (although he would travel for a gig), and had pursued the frustrating life of the actor. He managed to get steady work in bit parts - that CBC film, X-Files (okay, that was more of an extra part), DaVinci's Inquest, Degrassi Junior High, a stupid sitcom whose name he could no longer remember (but it was probably on his CV), a background part in a Kids In The Hall shoot, a movie or two that went straight to DVD - but it was disappointing in its general hopelessness. Did he know he'd never actually make it big? Of course he did. He went by the name Kieran David instead of his real name figuring it'd help him get more parts (because an agent told him his real last name sounded “too ethnic”) , but it didn't seem to make any difference at all. He did a stage gig once, playing a small role in an avant garde play that ran in Vancouver for four months, and frankly the repetitiven! ess of it all bored him to tears. He could say his lines in his sleep, and pretty much did.

But he had no plan B. Since he lucked into that part in that CBC t.v. movie when he was fifteen (they changed the title three times, but he was pretty sure they ended up with "No Place Like Home"), he never went to college, just devoted his life to his "craft". Yes, he was attractive, and he had a natural kind of magnetism that seemed to draw people to him, make them like him - but was that enough? He wasn't a bad actor, but Olivier he was not.

Although it seemed ironic that he would die and be resurrected in a snuff film, it was probably actually appropriate. He'd reached the pinnacle of his "art form" long ago, and was now waiting for the next stage of his life.

Which couldn't have had anything to do with his sister or this thing in Toronto. Could it? He didn't think so, but he kept wracking his brain, trying to think back to when he was in Toronto and doing a shoot for something or other - was that club ever used? Did it look kind of familiar? He'd had a very small part in this routine American action film that shot in Toronto (he was the son of the lead's best friend in the film, which guaranteed he'd always be in trouble and quite possibly die as the film went on), and he remembered it had this kind of Goth nightclub set that was actually a location shoot. Was the massacre site the location used?

The interior didn't look the same, but that didn't mean anything. Film companies could "dress" a site, make it look different than it actually was, and there was also the fact that a club could change ownership and general clientele base. He wouldn't know for sure unless he could actually see it, especially the men's room. (The American lead, the second rate action star? Supposedly he was straight, but as Kier had learned there, no he wasn't. He was all over him as soon as they could sneak away, and he blew him in that damn bathroom, which was at least fairly clean. Whenever he saw minor tabloid reports on his many divorces and liaisons with models, Kier wondered if the reporters actually knew he preferred to blow teenage boys. Well, some of those models were so thin and so flat they could kind of pass for surrogate boys ...)

Okay, he was mentally losing the plot. Could this have something to do with when he was Human? Could this be tied in to something he once did back in Canada? He'd been scouring is brain and really didn't think so.

But ...

He just wasn't sure. No, he'd had no enemies that he'd known of, but he had some obvious moments of self-centeredness, where he was only concerned about his "career", and wouldn't have noticed if someone hated him so much they wanted to kill him, even if they followed him with a meat cleaver.

But now that Cyrillic stuff threw him off completely. What the hell was that about? He spoke English and a bit of French, but that was it. He didn't even know anyone who spoke or read Russian (except that one continuity guy, but he only knew him for as long as his role lasted). Well, okay - Logan seemed to know Russian, so he guessed now he knew someone who did. (How many languages did he know anyways? Bren said he knew every damn one, but that struck him as exaggeration. Now he wasn't so sure. He certainly hadn't exaggerated about his body, which you definitely could have eaten dinner off of.)

What did this all mean? Was Kayla already dead? He had a feeling she probably was ... but what if she wasn't? He had to try and save her, right? He couldn't live with the guilt if he did nothing and they killed her, and there was a moment of opportunity when he could have saved her.

But that made him wonder some more. Logan was right - why did he care? Vampires weren't supposed to care about anything; he wasn't even supposed to care about Bren. So what happened? Why was he different?

Why was he less selfish as a vampire than he was as a Human?

Kier felt that if he knew he might be half way to understanding all of this. But he had no idea why he thought that; it was probably unrelated to all of this shit.

They finished their drinks (well, no - he had no interest in goat's blood; he was too accustomed to the warm Human stuff from the bite club) and Logan figured they could get going. He didn't seem to realize that Kier wanted to come along, but of course he did, and they had a brief argument about that. Logan knew he could get away and no one would think twice about it, but him disappearing? Kier said he'd told Bren he was thinking of going up to Vancouver to check on his family, so he had that base covered. (Even if Bren decided to check up on him, he'd think he was in Vancouver, nearly half the country away from Toronto.) Logan clearly didn't like it, but he left him no choice. This was his sister, damn it, and he had to help, even if he was only confined to nighttime help. Logan reluctantly relented.

Logan proved he was the right one for this job because Rags pointed out that since it was day time in Toronto, and Kier was a vampire, they had to figure out a good indoor spot in which to teleport. Kier wasn’t sure he knew a good spot - mostly what he knew were film and t.v. sets, with the occasional gay bar - but Logan knew lots of good spots, to the point where he had to narrow it down. While he Googled for the address of the club where the massacre occurred (he wanted to get close), Kier listened with trepidation to the jukebox. It was empathic, right, or something like that? Or was it only that way when Bob was around? He kind of hoped so on the latter, because it was playing a strangely creepy song with the opening line “You’re not human, you’re a miracle, a preacher with an animal face …” and the later line “ … will you hurt me now and make a million” while Logan took a final glimpse at the massacre film. It gave him an odd feeling, but he didn’t know! why. He had no idea what any of that could mean, if it had any meaning at all. (Much like “ascendant”.)

Logan decided on a place and thought about it, as Rags instructed, and once he finished his drink, they all stood up around the table and Rags grabbed Logan’s arm, while Logan grabbed his. If it wasn’t for the table in the way, he’d have feared a group hug was in the offing. But then Rags said something in a language he didn’t recognize, and reality was ripped out from under their feet.

They were thrown down rather unceremoniously somewhere else, somewhere where there was no music and the air was less humid and much cooler, and Kier felt his head spin and his gorge threaten to rise, which was really disturbing since he was pretty sure being undead meant his vomiting days were over. He staggered away from Logan’s grip and leaned against some dark and hard, struggling to hold back the urge to blow chunks. “It always sucks the first time,” Logan said. “You get used to it.”

Really? He didn’t see how.

His eyes adjusted to the gloom, and he realized he was leaning against stacked up cartons of booze. They were apparently in the basement of a bar, which Logan knew of because he used to cage fight down here, although the cage was currently disassembled. Oh yes, more of Logan’s wonderfully squalid past. The not quite dead performer side of him couldn’t think that it would make a hell of a movie.

They all went upstairs, into the heart of the bar itself (Rags paused to put on sunglasses to hide his crystal eyes), and it was just as squalid as Logan’s recent past: as dark as pitch, the few windows tinted (or was that just dirt?) and shaded so much that it was hard to tell it was daylight outside. It smelled of sawdust, stale beer, and misery, and the all sports network chattered on in the background, ignored by most of the career drinkers already here. They took a table in the back and ordered beers, but Kier wasn’t worry about daylight. Even if someone threw the door open and an entire marching band came in, there was no way in hell any sunlight would reach him; it was as dark as the bottom of the fucking ocean in here. Leave it Logan to somehow know about a vampire’s paradise.

Logan didn’t stay, though; he said he’d be back and just left, getting a funny look from the bartender, a tall, bald black guy with a scalp wrinkled like an ugli fruit, and a ghostly pale scar just beneath his left eye. “When did you guys come in?” he asked them, once Logan had gone.

Rags shrugged. “Coupla minutes ago. Didn’cha notice?”

He was actually impressed how coolly Rags and Logan took this weirdness. Maybe in another decade or so, he’d get there too.

****

It was drizzling in Toronto, the sky the color of steel wool, the temperature unusually cool and seemingly cold when compared to the unnaturally hot weather of California. But Logan preferred it; he felt he could actually breathe, and the smell was a bit better - although not by much. It was heavy with exhaust but not so much smog, and the cold, misty rain made things smell a bit cleaner than they actually were. And since this was abutting the industrial district, that was a good thing.

The club was a couple of blocks south, although it wasn’t really a club; it was a converted warehouse, which distinguished itself by having crime scene tape wrapped around its entrance point. Logan could smell the blood from the end of the block, though, and could have followed it in like a visible, physical string.

There was a back entrance, also taped, but Logan just ripped off the tape and went in, forcing the door since it was locked from the inside. It was pitch black, a deeper black than the bar, and reeked of blood, shit, death, fear. He felt briefly for a light switch, then figured fuck it, he didn’t need it; he could see well enough. Some of the windows hadn’t been covered over completely, and a little light bled in, just enough for him to make out the dimensions of the place. It was a series of interconnected rooms in a rectangular layout, following along the basic plan of the warehouse it used to be, and while he started following the death reek - which got stronger and stronger the deeper he went inside the building - he froze and listened hard.

His nose was too clogged with death and blood for him to smell much of anything else, but he heard a light scuff on the floor deep inside the building, a rustle of clothes.

Someone else was in here.