Urp didn’t show. The Weirds attempted to call him, but he didn’t answer his cell phone. They decided to try and go after him, starting with the dairy farms first. It was that nugget of information that made Logan decide now was a good time to leave.

As it was, it was almost dawn, and he felt tired anyways (although that could have been psychosomatic), so he left them to it. The Sisters said they’d come get him if something panned out, which sounded more like a threat than it honestly should have.

He and Yasha found a cheap motel several blocks away that oddly enough offered special "day rates", but when he met the manager he knew why: while he looked Human, he smelled demonic, and Logan figured he catered to a specific niche market - demons who needed to get out of the sun. A good gig if you could get it.

The room was small and not terribly attractive, but the curtains were so thick they could have been made of kevlar - they blocked out every smidgen of potential daylight. "They should have called this place the Vampire Arms," Yasha quipped, also noting the location of a blood bank right across the street. The vamp version of take out?

They were both tired, but not that tired, as it turned out. Not that he was complaining. Besides, sleeping never really worked out for him (much like Thrackazog and singing).

But he had to fall asleep eventually.

At first he didn't know he was asleep. When he felt the hands moving up his body, the lips brushing his stomach, he thought it was just Yasha, displaying her vampire lust and stamina. But her hands were cold - these were not.

He opened his eyes to a bright room, sunlight flooding into a white room, and then he smelled her, a millisecond before she moved up, propping herself up on her elbows so she could look down directly into his face.

Jean.

Her auburn hair created a veil between him and the rest of the room, and her eyes were almost more brown than red (almost). Her smile was sensual and sleepy. "You know, I always did wonder what it would be like with you," she said. "I usually went for the reserved guys, you know? So even if I did touch their minds, I wouldn't be overwhelmed."

He raised an eyebrow at that, sliding his hands around her naked waist. "I'm overwhelming?"

Her smile became sardonic. "You know you are. You're the glowering volcano at the back of the room."

"I didn't know volcanoes could glower."

"You know what I mean."

"Maybe." He was aware, on one level, that this was just more manipulation, Camaxtli exploiting his desire for her. And yet ... most of him just didn't care. "Do you think you can take me?" Only belatedly did he realize he meant that in a couple different ways, and in one way was specifically addressing Camaxtli.

"I'd like to find out," she said, and he wondered which of them was talking. But then she kissed him, passionately, languorously, and he forgot all about it.

He ran his hands up the smooth line of her back, through her luxurious soft hair, and maybe she was warm as if feverish. Who cared?

Her body fit his perfectly, meshing as if they were made to be together, and she rolled over, pulling him on top of her, never breaking their kiss. Her body wrapped around him like a snare, her skin as soft as velvet.

If her filling his senses wasn't enough, he could sense her in his mind now, her sensations and his twining together, so much so that he started to lose his sense of self. He didn't care. Who could care when it felt so good?

But as the river of her flowed through his mind like molten lava (who here was really the volcano?), he had a sudden ... memory? Thought? What was it?

It the feeling of her feverish heat that must have triggered the sudden memory of Elena. She was standing in the field of snow, wearing his shirt (the one she died in), the truck behind her - the way he saw her the last time, before she blew her own brains out, painting the pristine white with the contents of skull. But she wasn't holding her gun this time, and her eyes were not glazed with illness; they were clear and bright with the fierce intelligence they must have held before the company made her ill and condemned her to a miserable death. "Don't let this happen," she insisted, and it threw him. What? He didn't remember that - what the hell was that?

The confusion made him realize that Jean was going deep into his mind - the sensory overload of the pleasure was a distraction.

He had no time to react; Camaxtli knew it at the same time he did. He broke away from the kiss, just in time for Jean to ram her fist straight through his heart.

His adamantium ribs splintered like bone, and he could feel them burst out his back, along with her fist and the majority of his ventricles. The pain was excruciating, and he knew he should be dead - not conscious, not feeling this - but this was a dream, it wasn’t real. No matter how it felt, it wasn’t real.

It just felt like it.

She was a god now, so of course she could break him; she could have killed him with simply a word. But she didn’t … because where was the fun in that?

Jean’s eyes were now flames, her face twisted into a rictus sneer full of so much hate and malice it looked inhuman. That was Camaxtl’s true face - it looked vaguely like Jean, but he was just wearing her skin. “Stupid little Human - you’re nothing. Let Bob know it’s too late - there’s nothing he can do. And I can take you too, any time I want.”

He woke up with a jolt, as if spit out, his heart hammering in his intact ribcage. Yasha hardly stirred, already accustomed to his violent awakenings, leaving him to stare up at the stucco ceiling and try and ride out the wave of nausea coursing through his body.

The air conditioner hummed like a leaf blower in the parking lot, and there was a glow bleeding from the edges of the curtain, suggesting daylight outside (but none had leaked in the room as of yet). Goosebumps prickled across his skin, but only partially due to the cold air coming from the rattling machine hidden behind the industrial drapes.

All was lost, wasn’t it? All of it. All of her.

He was not getting back to sleep, he knew it, so he went to take a shower. Maybe he could go back to the Way Station, and wait for either Bob or the Weirds to appear, whichever happened first. Or not - he really didn’t care. Maybe he should go see a movie, see what was playing down in Chinatown - anything so he didn’t have to think.

But he couldn’t stop thinking.

He turned the shower on full blast, filling the cramped and slightly mildewed with a blast of steamy, heavily chlorinated air.

He couldn’t stop thinking, and he desperately wished he would. It left him so enervated standing up seemed like a chore. He slid down the urine yellow tiles and sat down on the bottom of the heavy porcelain bathtub, letting the scalding water pummel him like hail.

If - when - Camaxtli came back to this plane, he wouldn’t let Jean survive in any way, would he? She was just an instrument to get back here, and then she was gone. And he couldn’t even warn her, as Camaxtli wouldn’t let him. So how to save Jean?

Kill Camaxtli. But how did they do that without hurting Jean?

They didn’t - end of story. Unless Bob pulled a rabbit out of his hat, she was doomed.

There had to be a weakness, and the weakness was, Horatio, in the flesh - Camaxtli was “dead” on the higher planes. Jean had been his escape hatch, his emergency life raft. An avatar who was quite literally the vessel of a god. But until the god fortified the installation - until he scoured out the last vestiges of the Human - it had a flaw; a fatal flaw.

If Jean came back to Earth, he would have to kill her as quickly as possible, before Camaxtli totally wiped her out.

Kill her to save her - god, how horrible irony could be.

Logan dug the heels of his hands into his eyes, making him see red and black, and didn’t even try to follow that thought - he didn’t want to know. He never wanted to know.

The water pouring down his face, his chest, between his thighs, was starting to turn tepid. Either the hotel had a small water heater, or he’d been in here longer than he thought. Probably the latter - time flew when you were in agony.

He understood why Elena had popped up in his head, a memory that wasn’t a memory - another surprise from Bob; mental circuit breakers to keep Camaxtli from getting too deep in his head. Since the “flavor” of Bob was probably lousy all over his mind, it had probably been child’s play burying “memories” that were really little bits of Bob, tripwires if Camaxtli crossed some invisible line - and Logan didn’t know of it, so neither did Jean (and, by extension, Camaxtli). And his mind was so fucked, how would Camaxtli know a false memory from a real one?

But why had Bob chosen Elena as a “model”? Because of the emotions that she’d engender, the shock like a blast of cold water to the face? Or was it deeper, more subtle than that?

He had decided he could have loved Elena, but really only after she was dead. And why? Because she was one of the rare ones - the rare people who did what they had to do, no matter how ugly. He hoped she hadn’t done what she did, he hoped their could have been another way … but was there? No, not at all; she’d done the only thing she could do. When push came to shove, she shoved - and how unique was that? She was probably his “soul mate“, normal Human or not, scientist or not, because he could - had, would - shove back himself.

Could Scott do it? If confronted by evil hiding in the form of Jean, and Logan told him to blast it so hard he pulped her organs, broke every bone in her body, would he? No, of course not - look how he fell apart when Cressida was killed, and he didn’t even like her, nor did he order her to her death. She was another one that shoved back, but then again, probably all Organization candidates were.

No matter his physical age, Scott really was just a kid - the big bad world remained something of a mystery to him. He thought he knew what he needed to do, thought he was tactically efficient, and surely he was as good as book learning could leave you, but he hadn’t grasped the hard reality that sometimes you had to do things that repulsed you; sometimes you had to make an awful decision, get your hands dirty, and learn to live with it. It wasn’t just “taking one for the team”, it was sometimes taking someone else for the team.

And in a world as vicious and fucked over as this one could be, sometimes that meant killing the thing you loved.

Scott wasn’t mentally or physically ready for it. Even if his hand was forced, it would destroy him afterwards. Logan knew what he was - he was a killer. That’s what he was made to be, right? And even before the Organization got a hold of him, pumped him full of molten metal, he was a stone cold killer - as the remains of the Yashida and Takabe crime families could attest, if they all weren’t extremely dead.

It was why his current “soul mate” was a vampire. No matter what Bob said, what Xavier said, he was born and constructed for one thing: the kill. It was what he was good at; it was his soul talent.

It would break him - he wasn’t a complete monster (exactly … yet). But it would probably turn out like the last time he had a major shock to his system, after the whole “weapon x” shit blew up: he’d be crazy for a few months, but, as Marc had pointed out, he healed even from his mind being broken. So he’d have (another) psychotic break, go live in the wilderness for a while, and slowly recover his sanity, increments at a time. Maybe, if he was lucky, he’d never remember what he’d done - all this time would be wiped clean from his memory like chalk from a blackboard. He would never remember Xavier or Bob, or Elena or Yasha or Jean.

He would never remember killing the thing he loved.

Logan opened his eyes to the now cold water, letting the hard drops of water pelt his naked eyes. At least that way, he could blame the tears on the chlorine.

13

He left a note for Yasha, then left the hotel. It was a hot L.A. afternoon, redolent of smog heavy with exhaust, and he didn’t feel ready to face the Way Station yet, so he wandered off to Chinatown and ducked into a theater - maybe being forced to mentally translate Mandarin would get his mind off things.

But after twenty minutes of sitting through yet another ultra-violent gangster film, he was even more irritated than before; it wasn’t helping. The only thing that would help was getting very drunk, which he couldn’t do. His stomach grumbled like he was hungry, but he couldn’t imagine eating. Maybe a beer would shut it up.

He wandered to the Way Station, hoping for a fight but knowing better than to count on it, and when he got there, he saw a bartender on duty he’d never seen before - a sort of snaky looking humanoid with a vague resemblance to a Star Trek alien (Cardassians?), although her hair was a violent violet, clashing with her high intensity yellow eyes that seemed to glow in the dimness. She smelled a little like fruit leather.

And even though he didn’t know her, she knew him. She drew him a beer, and introduced herself as Ytoj - he had no idea how she pronounced it, never the less spelled it. Was that on her driver’s license? Ytoj told him the Sisters had no leads on Urp, but would get in touch as soon as they did. Logan thanked her, took his beer to a back table, and decided to see if, by shot gunning many beers, he could get a momentary buzz.

Ytoj was game, setting him up with many beers and watching him knock then down with a sort of scientific curiosity, but it seemed to be all for naught. So after fifteen, he decided to just sit back and enjoy the peace while he could, as the demon crowd always got lively later on. And that wasn’t even counting the Sisters.

As soon as he got the drift Ytoj might be flirting with him, he folded his arms on the table and dropped his head down, hoping she’d think he finally passed out. In a way, the darkness was nice. He briefly wondered if he should call New York and tell Xavier that Jean had to die.

He’d been like that for about three songs when he sensed … something. It was hard to say what, just a general tingling, a sense of power being used. He raised his head, just in time to see a familiar figure come in the door.

Ytoj seemed to bristle, her ropy, scaled neck almost puffing out in her hostility. “How the fuck did you get through the barricade, Human?”

Wesley held up something that looked like a necklace he picked up at Liberace’s estate sale. “The amulet of Ab-Szecia,” he said matter-of-factly, as if she should have known that. “Don’t worry, I’m not here to cause trouble - I’m from Wolfram and Hart.”

A horned demon near the door moved several stools away from Wes.

“I thought you weren’t here to cause trouble,” Ytoj spat, and Logan thought he saw a nimbus of energy forming around her hands. She had powers? What kind?

“I assure you, I only came to see my friend, then I will take my leave. There’s no need to throw a bolt at me.”

A bolt? Lightning bolt? Energy bolt? What kind of power did Ytoj’s breed have exactly? He didn’t know demons could sling energy too … but why the hell not? “Ya mean me?” Logan asked.

Wes looked over at him, and did his best to suppress a sigh of relief. “Yes, in fact I do.”

Logan caught Ytoj’s bright eyes, and told her, “It’s cool.”

She looked between them suspiciously, but after a moment, reluctantly nodded. Maybe knowing the Sisters was as good as knowing Bob.

Wes pulled out the chair across from him and sat down, rolling his eyes slightly at the response of Ytoj and putting the amulet down in the center of the table, and the slime demon at the bar who abruptly left, as if Wesley was somehow contagious. “This is a fun place,” he said sarcastically.

Logan shrugged. “How’d you get through exactly? Does that thing make you see glamours or something?”

“No, it allows the wearer to pass through them. Although still I almost didn’t - it was like pushing through wet concrete. It makes me wonder how you got in here.”

“I know the owner,” he offered, aware that was both obvious and lame. “What d’ya got for me?

Wesley’s gaze was long and suspicious - he wasn’t going to let him get away with this. Damn it. “What is your relationship with Bob, exactly?”

He stared at him in disbelief. “I’ve been bangin’ him - what do you think?”

Wes sat back, scowling at his defiance. “We have mystics as part of the security detail at Wolfram and Hart. Last night, they reported three unauthorized vampires in the lobby - Lady Blood and the Sisters - and a “being touched by a powerful force”.”

The Englishman stared at him, and he stared back, folding his arms across his chest. “Coulda been Spike,” he charged, knowing that wasn’t even a possibility.

Wes’s scowl deepened to the point where it looked like the lower half of his face might fall off. “What exactly has Bob done to you?”

“He hasn’t done anything. It’s just that …” Should he tell him? Did it make any difference? “Look, I’m his avatar, okay?”

Wesley’s eyes widened to the point where he thought his contacts would fall out onto the table. “What? No -”

“It’s not a big deal,” he said, irritated at his obvious horror. “It was an accident anyways.”

“How is making you an avatar accidental?” Wes was more than horrified - he was starting to get angry, as if he’d hunt Bob down and start wailing on his ass.

Logan hated to be in this position - not just defending Bob, but explaining the absurd. “Look, it’s a long story, involving a sorcerer working with a demon god and a body switching spell … or something like that. Look, it’s weird and it sounds even worse when you try and explain it, but it wasn’t him who did it.”

Wes’s arched eyebrow said “Oh really?” louder than any words. “So you’ve been involved in lots of questionable exploits with Bob?”

There was a sort of humoring patronization in his attitude that he really didn’t like. “As I said, I’ve been bangin’ him.”

He scoffed at the defiance, slapping a manila folder on the table between them. “Logan, this is serious.”

“What the fuck is so serious about this?” He snapped, feeling an explosive surge of rage building inside of him. He was trying to steel himself to the fact that he was going to have to kill Jean, and this asshole wanted to chew over old news that meant nothing.

Wesley’s look was evenly split between disbelief and anger. “Bob is the Drai’shajan, yes? That means he’s a god, a fallen angel like Lucifer -”

“Lucifer wasn’t that,” he said, before he could stop himself. Well, he’d gone this far, so now to explain it. “He was some kind of messengers for the powers that went nuts. He aligned himself with the Old Ones for … well hell, I can’t remember what. Wasn’t good.”

“Couldn’t be.” Wes seemed torn between doubt and belief. “So what happened?”

“Bob sent the Old Ones to a hell dimension, and killed Lucifer.” Just saying it, it seemed silly beyond belief. But no point in getting embarrassed about it now. “It happened in that alternate dimension, where I decapitated Spike. Uh, the other Spike. However that works.”

“You were actually there, when all this happened?”

“What I said, isn’t it?” Well, no, technically he hadn’t, but it was implied. “Anyways, he wasn’t a devil or angel or anything - just one seriously fucked up guy with a knack for picking bad company.” That sounded scarily like him, but he decided not to dwell on it. He wondered if he knew what Bob had told him - that the Bible was put together by Belials, and just a big con - but it would be more common knowledge if the Watchers knew it, right? So he decided to just leave that out. “You don’t believe everything you read, do ya?”

“Hardly, but -” Wesley glanced around before leaning forward, dropping his voice to a whisper. “Let me tell you something all Watchers learn early on: gods have no place here. A god on earth can only be trouble.”

“Why’s that?” He wasn’t surprised, just curious.

“Because this plane isn’t made for them. Some have tried to make a go of it here, but they always fail. This plane … in its way, it’s two dimensional to them. They could never be happy here on its own - their usual urge is to alter it into something more to their liking. And what they like is not something Humans would like, assuming they could live through it. They are different beings, with a different agenda, and more power than any of us could possibly imagine. They’re dangerous, even if they don’t mean to be. They are giants, and we are insects, at least by basic comparison. Even when they don‘t mean to hurt us - as rare as that is - they usually do.”

He wondered where he was going with all of this. Gods were dangerous? Yeah, well, he figured that one out long before Jean drove her fist through his sternum. “Plannin’ to kill Bob, Wes?”

He gave him a remarkably dirty look, confirming he had hardened up a bit since Logan had seen him last. “Don’t be stupid. It’s just that once you’re his -”

“I am not his,” he protested. “Look, okay, most gods suck mud, but Bob’s one of the good guys. Believe it or not. Mostly.”

“Would you like to qualify that a bit more?”

“Fuck you.”

“I’m just trying to warn you, Logan. Once pulled into his orbit, you are indelibly marked. You are a potential magnet for his followers and foes alike.”

He scoffed in dark humor. Talk about a warning coming way too late. But he simply said, “I know, I got that. Was that what you came here to talk about?”

The look in Wes’s eyes suggested he was not through with this topic, but he sighed and decided to relent, if only just this once. Maybe the fact that the jukebox was now blasting Tool was a factor. “Not completely, no.” He opened the manila folder, and said, “It seems the Vantha are -”

“A death cult, yeah,” Logan interrupted. “The Weirds told me last night.”

“Did they? Did they tell you that officially, the group stopped existing in 1997?” Wes handed over a sheet of paper that smelled of fax machine toner, and he saw a paper written in Italian, and a translated version of the text stapled to the back. He didn’t bother with the translated version. Wesley continued, “It disbanded after the arrest of the leader, Michael Vanson, in Naples.”

“For murder?” Logan guessed.

“Tax evasion.”

“Isn’t that what they got Capone for?”

Wesley shrugged, and pretty much ignored that. “As you can see, all the group’s property was confiscated and sold by the government to make up for the lost revenue. The followers, as far as can be determined, simply broke up and drifted off. If they reformed at all, they did it so sub rosa it showed up on no one’s radar. You said you encountered them in Tokyo? What were they doing there?”

“Muscling in on Yakuza territory,” He said, giving him back the sheet. “They’d set themselves up as gangsters, which is why Yasha and I didn’t guess the cult angle.”

“Yasha?”

“Lady Blood. It’s what she calls herself.”

Wesley’s blue eyes went back to the wide and startled look. “You know that can’t possibly be her real name.”

“I know, but my name ain’t Wolverine either. What do I care what people call themselves?”

He nodded, accepting that with equanimity. “Who was in this gang? As far as you could tell.”

“Demons - the only Humans I met seemed like rent-a-cop types. They were mainly Ressiks and Belials and Berserkers.”

“Not them again.”

“Yeah, them again. I never did thank Angel for tellin’ me you kill them by hitting the back of the neck. I oughta.”

“Okay, this is making less and less sense. The majority of the old Vantha cult were Human, and they weren’t violent, simply morose.”

“According to the Weirds, the followers had the wrong end of the stick.”

It seemed to take Wes a minute to get his drift. “Oh, you mean about worshipping Vanth as a death dealer? Yes. Vanth is one of the nicer death gods; she was often called upon by people with loved ones suffering slow deaths. She can’t stand to see anything suffer.”

“The demon answer to Kervorkian?”

Wes grimaced humorously, and admitted, “Well, that’s stretching it, but you could look at it that way, I suppose.” He removed another sheet from the folder, and passed it over. “This is her. Did you see anything with her image on it?”

This piece of paper had what looked like the etching of a gargoyle on it; a gargoyle with a serpent’s face and the talons of an eagle, a squat body like a muscular toad, and huge wings, spread like a bat’s … with an eyeball on the tip of each wing. “Wow, she’s butt ugly, isn’t she?” He exclaimed, wondering if any god was actually pretty. Bob didn’t really count, as the body he wore was just a shell - the real Bob was just nebulous energy. A pretty blue energy, though.

Wesley rolled his shoulders, a half-hearted shrug that seemed to say “I’ve seen worse”. “Death gods aren’t known for their beauty.”

“Yeah, but they’re usually not known for their compassion, are they?” He was just guessing there, but it felt right. “Believe me, if I’d seen anything this ugly, I’d have remembered it. But what sense does this make? Followers of a relatively nice messenger of death being completely violent shitheads?”

Wesley sat back, frowning, just as puzzled as he was. “It doesn’t make any sense at all. If they were worshipping Osiris, I could see it - he’s an extremely unpleasant death god. But Vanth … “ he trailed off, lost in thought, staring at a nothing point over Logan’s shoulder.

“Could they be … mistaken?” Logan offered, aware that didn’t make a lot of sense. “Could something have shown up, said, “Hey, I’m Vanth, worship me”, and made them go for it?”

“No. All they’d have to do is flip open a book and see that they’d been had.” He fell silent for a moment, thinking, until a light seemed to dawn in his eyes. “Unless they took the name to be deliberately misleading. Some gods have taboos about their names being spoken aloud. Perhaps they worship another god, but can’t actually say who.”

Logan was briefly confused - what kinda god can’t say his own fucking name? - but he was following his thought. “So they chose the benign name of Vanth, but all the time are malignant.”

“Exactly.”

“But how long will that fool anyone?”

“I wouldn’t think it was intended to fool.”

“It’s just a blind.”

“Yes - meant not only to be confusing to their enemies, but to besmirch a decent death god’s name.”

“You figure if she found out, she’d be pissed.”

“I’d imagine so.”

“Is there some way we can tell her?” Logan wondered.

Wes cocked his head to the side, thinking (and possibly trying to block out White Zombie), and then his eyes glittered with malice as a smile crept slowly across his face. “It’s worth a shot, isn’t it?” He snatched up the gaudy pink and gold pendant from the table, and shoved the file over towards him before getting up. “I’ll go back to Wolfram and Hart, talk to the soothsayers about getting in touch with Vanth. In the meantime, I suggest you lay low, stay out of sight. This could be some black magic cult, and without Bob to protect you directly, you could be attacked from almost any angle.” He then paused, and asked, “Would you like to come back to Wolfram and Hart with me? We have sorcerers on staff who could probably protect you from any incursions.”

He shook his head. “Thanks, but I ain’t got a great association with that building. ‘Sides, I gotta touch base with the Sisters. But maybe I’ll drop by later.”

“I promise you won’t be greeted by armed guards this time.”

He just shrugged, mock casual. “Doesn’t matter to me. Feels like home.”

Wes smiled faintly, and said, “I’ll call you as soon as I find out whether we can make contact or not.”

“Sure. Careful walkin’ the street with a big jewel like that.”

That made the Englishman give him a grin that was ironic as it was evil. “Oh, I’d like to see someone try and take it from me. That ought to be fun.” He then sobered up with frightening rapidity. “You know where we are, and you know that Bob …” He didn’t finish that sentence, and Logan figured he must have guessed it was best not to. “Take care.”

He just nodded, and to the great relief of everyone else in the bar, Wesley left. Logan knew this information about the Vantha should have been disturbing, but it wasn’t. Not in comparison to what he was steeling himself to do.

Maybe everything paled in comparison to the death of a loved one, even if it was your own potential death you were looking at. And perhaps especially if you were planning their murder in the first place.

Logan hoped Wes did get in contact with Vanth - he was suffering too. Just not in the usual way of her victims. Still, he’d take whatever release he could get.