14

The owner of the “Vampire Arms” had obviously thought of everything, as they were right next to a handy sewer access, leading all over L.A. from beneath the pavement. That’s how Yasha came to join him at the Way Station, less than hour after Wes had left, even though the sun hadn’t set yet.

He gave her the file and told her what he and Wes had discussed. She nodded and agreed with their basic supposition, and also agreed that perhaps he should take temporary shelter at Wolfram and Hart. As she gathered up the faxes and print outs, placing them neatly inside the folder, she asked a question he’d been waiting for. “Why did you leave without me?” She said. “You could have at least woken me up and told me you were going out.”

“I didn’t wanna disturb you.” A partial truth - he just wasn’t up to speaking to anyone before he left.

She stared at him, and he knew she was seeing right through him. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” he lied. “Just couldn’t sleep.” At least that part was true.

Her dark eyes narrowed, brows lowering, and he knew she wasn’t completely buying it. “You can trust me, you know.”

“I know. I just … you know how it is with me and nightmares. I just needed to get out for a while, clear my head. I didn’t want any company. Besides, it was on the sunny side out there.”

She accepted that with a nod, but as she laced her hands around her cup of heated blood (goat - which brought up frightening memories of Urp), she said, “You remind me of me sometimes - full of secrets.”

He knew that wasn’t a compliment or a complaint, just a statement, but it still seemed curiously close to the bone.

He knew Yasha could kill Jean, no problem, but Camaxtli would never let a vampire get that close. Too bad; it would take some of the guilt off if he could farm it out to someone else. But that was no fair to Yasha, and he knew it.

Here Wes had tried to warn him that being with a god was dangerous. Didn’t he realize just being with him was dangerous as well? Sometimes people just ended up where they were supposed to be.

It wasn’t long before the Sisters joined them as well, before sundown, smelling only faintly of the sewer. They had gotten sidetracked in their search for Urp by picking up “mucho bad mojo” in Glendale. That turned out to be an “amateur” black magician and a vortex demon “goofing off”. Supposedly they “handled it”, but no one asked how, as who wanted to know and possibly be an accessory after the fact?

They had assigned Lissha - the Frenik, it seemed - to try and find Urp, and were waiting to hear back from her. Well, the lingering sun wouldn’t harm a Frenik. So that meant they had to play a waiting game, which was always fun with the Sisters.

Yasha filled them in on everything, and the idea of him taking shelter at Wolfram and Hart made them smile in that creepy way of theirs. “Wouldn’t -”

“-that-”

“-be funny,” they agreed.

“But Angel -”

“-will take good-”

“-care of you.”

He scowled at them, sure this was them displaying a sense of humor. It was hardly welcome right now. “So what’s the deal? Do you hate him or what?” Well, Yasha hated the guy who turned her, but he supposed that wasn’t always the norm.

“Angel?”

“No-”

“-why would-”

“-we hate-”

“-him? He made-”

“-us what we-”

“-are today.”

See, that was a very good reason to hate him. But the Sisters were so perverse, it would have to be the exact opposite.

After a while, their cell phone rang ( there was no way in hell their ring tone was “Sex Type Thing”, was it? That’s kind of what it sounded like … ), and while one answered, the other leaned in, so they appeared to be connected at the ear. “Yes?” One said.

Logan could hear the burr of conversation, but didn’t pay that much attention. Their half of the conversation told him enough. “Where -”

“-is-”

“-he?” A pause, then, “Yes-”

“-please.”

They held out the phone so they were looking at it, and Logan only belatedly realized it was one of those complicated digital phones with photo capability. From the play of light on their bizarrely innocent looking faces, an image was indeed loading up.

Their expression never changed, but they did say a slightly disappointed, “Oh-”

“-dear.”

“What’s happened?” Yasha asked warily.

The Sisters turned the phone towards them, so they could see for themselves. It wasn‘t a big image, but clear enough - the head of an extremely warty looking demon with its head stuck on a scarecrow‘s body, ichor yellow blood staining the front of the burlap bag shirt like mustard, flies and wasps blocking much of it, making it look like a grotesque surrealistic image, the orange sky in the background as pretty as a painting. “These people have a thing for decapitation, don’t they?” Yasha noted.

“It-”

“-sends-”

“-a strong-”

“-message.”

“So does a retraining order,” Logan interjected. “But they haven’t hit us with one of those, have they?” He sighed, and scrubbed a hand through his hair. “So should we check out Napa Valley?”

“That-”

“-would-”

“-be logical,” the Weirds agreed.

“Right. I gotta hit then head, and then we can hit the sewers,” he said, getting up. There was an irony there, but he had no desire to pursue it.

The men’s room of the Way Station was always oddly clean, which never failed to surprise him. Maybe Bob had put a spell on this place, saving it from drunks and demons who oozed excessively.

He had been alone in the room, but when he was zipping up, he heard a strange noise behind him. It almost wasn’t a noise, more a sense of pressure - like a brief bubble of null space had been popped - and he turned around in time to see that someone was now in the stall parallel the urinal he had been using. A teleported? Rags?

But he barely had time to think about it, as he heard them say something before the door swung open -

- and Logan found himself rooted to the spot. He couldn’t move, couldn’t speak, could barely breathe as the stall door swung aside, and a scaly demon with bright, slit pupiled eyes the color of pond scum, came out. “Hello, avatar,” it said, in a raspy voice that sounded almost painful. “Do you know what a hard man you are to find? I hope you’re worth it.”

He couldn’t do anything. He struggled to move, to break the invisible bonds holding him fast, but he was perfectly helpless - and lizard boy knew it. His eyes glittered with unholy glee as he said something in that incomprehensible tongue, and that bubble of negative space seemed to open up around them again.

So the Vantha had found him. He wondered if he’d find out who they really worshipped before they killed him.

15

Yasha was studying her glass of goat blood, wondering why it tasted so damn bad (maybe a little vodka would help), and what Logan was hiding from her.

There was something even more haunted behind his eyes than usual, something that made his jaw look tense enough to snap. He also smelled faintly of anger and fear, and a special scent she categorized as self-loathing. If he did have a nightmare like he claimed, it wasn’t like his usual ones.

But one of the things she liked about him was he didn’t talk a lot. After a hundred years of hearing men talk about themselves, it was nice she’d finally met one who’d rather just brood and sulk by himself. Of course, that had a special annoyance all its own, but at least it was different. She’d sworn off men for ten years for a damn good reason.

Having the Weirds here didn’t help. They more than lived up to their name - could there have been creepier little girls? They gave identical, odd eyed twins a bad name. Or a good name, if you were inclined that way.

“Logan-”

“-is-”

“-troubled,” they volunteered.

She looked between them, perfectly deadpan. “He’s always troubled.”

“More-”

“-than-”

“-usual.”

Maybe it was pique, but she wasn’t ready to admit that she had been thinking the same thing. “How can you tell?”

They gave her those unnerving stereo grins that never came anywhere near their unusually bright and hollow eyes. They were like silver dollars on a corpse, substituting for real eyes in their unfortunate absence. “You-”

“-know-”

“-what consumes-”

“-him. You-”

“-tell us.”

She scowl at them, intensely disliking their mocking patronization. They knew damn well what bothered him; they were just playing a game. In fact, they might have known more about Logan than she did. She had a feeling there was more to he told her - the “experimentation”, the people that cut him open - but of course he wasn’t saying. The man of one thousand secrets - and if her guess was right, most of them were painful.

It was then she felt the strangest shiver down the back of her neck. What the hell was that?

The Sisters looked at each other, in such a way that they looked briefly sentient. “Uh-”

“-oh.”

“You know what that was?” A stupid question, because these freaky little bitches seemed to know everything that they shouldn’t.

“Black-”

“-magic-”

“-big usage.”

They all looked at each other for a split second, and then, as if on cue, they all exclaimed, “Logan!”

They burst up out of their chairs at the same time, but it was Yasha who made it to the men’s room door first and slammed it open so hard she almost busted it.

It was empty. Gleaming porcelain urinals and strangely unmarked green tiles greeted them, as did metal stall doors painted the unfortunate color of old blood. In fact, it was so clean, it could have been a woman’s bathroom. How did Bob keep it so sparkly with men and demons around? She’d never heard of enchanted toilets, but why the hell not?

But there was a whiff of something in the air, something she never expected to smell in a men’s bathroom. “Is that … burned mandrake root?” Odd air freshener choice.

The Sisters nodded in agreement. “He-”

“-was-”

“-teleported out.”

“No shit. Where?” But that question simply hung in the air. Shit! All because of him and his weak bladder, they got him. She looked sharply over her shoulder, and asked, “Can you trace a teleport?”

They seemed puzzled she would even ask. “No.”

Napa Valley was huge. Even if they limited things to the general area that Urp was searching, it would take them a long time to track these people down. And that was assuming they took Logan there - after the head on the stick message, she was willing to bet they had shifted the point of operation. They had only one chance here - someone who could trace teleportation spells. “Call his friend,” she demanded of them.

The way they both cocked their heads at her, they looked like a pair of humanoid lovebirds. “Which-”

“-one?”

“The Wolfram and Hart people, Wesley,” she explained, exasperated. “Their a big cesspool of evil; surely they can trace a teleportation spell.”

“It’s-”

“-worth-”

“-a shot,” they agreed, as one of them pulled the cell phone out of the other one’s pocket. She shook her head and looked away, back inside the men’s room. Weirdoes.

She knew Angel didn’t like her, and she didn’t much care from him. Did mousse boy really think he was such hot shit? She didn’t care how old he was, or how bad Angelus supposedly had been - she had taken on the entirety of the Templars! She could killed his pale, ensouled ass from one end of his lobby to the other. In fact, the cocky ones were usually the easiest to take, simply because they thought they were so good they fucked up big time.

But he was Logan’s friend - somehow, in some way. And she wouldn’t kick his ass unless he started something. Hopefully he was smart enough not to do that, but she supposed they were all going to find out.

Because she doubted Wesley would be coming alone.

***

It was like fighting against a black tide of heavy water.

He kept going for consciousness, and kept being pulled down by an undertow. At best he heard fragments here and there, language in another time, filtered down through a rip in space. Random words that made no sense, and his mind was too foggy to put them together. It was a dark, cold limbo trying to press him down.

What did he know? He knew something was keeping him from full consciousness, something was keeping him from opening his eyes and feeling his body as anything but a prison of insensate meat. He didn’t know magic could do that. But why the hell not?

Fighting against it was pointless. It was an implacable, solid wall of darkness, and he didn’t have the ability to fight against it. It was like sliding against a glass wall that, for some reason, his claws couldn’t penetrate.

He wondered what they were going to do with him. If they were planning to cut off his head, he wished them luck - cutting through adamantium neck bones was going to be a trick.

But he bet the attempt would hurt like a bitch.

16

The very fact that there was a knock on the door at all raised alarm bells in his mind.

Sizic knew handling a guy like that could bring on some serious repercussions … but would trouble actually bother to knock?

“Pizza delivery,” the clueless guy called from beyond the door, and Sizic let out a sigh of relief, mixed with frustration.

“Mrgret, did you order a pizza?” How idiotic - ordering a pizza at the super-secret hideout. He was like the stupid villain in every single spy movie. Just because he was a constantly hungry glutton demon was no fucking excuse.

As long as this thing worked out, he’d get all the pizza - and Humans - he could eat. Couldn’t he just wait a couple of hours?

Sizic’s hand was on the door knob when Mrgret, his mouth sounding full of food (typical) called out, “I didn’t order a pizza.”

The door opened hard, smashing into Sizic’s face with the force of a battering ram, and he thought he heard wood cracking … or at least he hoped it was wood. “I can’t believe anyone falls for that,” said the big man, looming in the now open doorway. “Maybe I should have said candy gram.”

The sky beyond the man’s shoulder was a deep, corrosion blue - not quite night, but the sun was definitely gone for the evening. Which explained why this guy looked Human, but definitely didn’t smell that way. Sizic got back to his feet shakily, wiping blood from his now broken nose, and snapped, “What the fuck do you want, vampire?” What kind of idiot was he to pick this place to do a home invasion? There weren’t even any Humans here.

“What do I want?” He repeated, as if it was the stupidest question he ever heard. “Logan. Where is he?”

There were voices behind him, and a weird Human came in, chanting something in … Latvian? He shouldered past the big vampire, and that was when Sizic noticed they were both wearing similar pendants around their necks. They were age tarnished skeleton keys, quite literally - the head of the keys were shaped like skulls.

The Human stepped around him, and finished speaking, folding up the piece of paper he had been reading from and sticking it in his pocket. “There. If she doesn’t respond to that, there’s nothing else we can do.” For some reason, he was British. Watcher? No, couldn’t be - not working with a vampire. Besides, weren’t most of the British ones dead?

Sizic looked between them. “Who the fuck are you people? Scientologists?”

The vampire looked at him, stern and unamused. “I’ve already said - we’re Logan’s friends. And if you want to save yourself further misery, you’d better cough him up. Now.”

“Who the fuck is Logan?” He demanded, wondering where the hell his back up was. Surely those assholes watching t.v. in the back had heard all of this.

The vampire crossed his arms over his chest, and glared at him like he just interrupted a virgin kill. “I’m from Wolfram and Hart, jackass - we know what you did.”

Wolfram and Hart? The very name was confusing. Weren’t they evil? What interest could they have in an avatar? Unless they wanted him for themselves. Oh shit. “We didn’t know we were stepping on your territory,” he said apologetically, then kicked out, hitting the vampire square in the knee and sending him falling on his ass.

As he spun to snap the neck of the Human, something slammed into his face, sending him stumbling back into the wall, spitting out broken teeth. Sizic looked to see the Human was suddenly holding a metal, telescoping baton in his right hand - where the fuck had he pulled that from? Talk about dirty fucking pool. He must have been a Watcher or something. Poncy bastards.

A picture had fallen and broken on the floor by his feet, and a quick glance revealed it was a wooden picture frame. Cool beans. He could give a fuck about the Human, no matter his “training” or the weapons he carried - the vampire was the threat, and needed to be taken out immediately. He used his heel to crush the remainder of the frame, and grabbed a nice stake sized piece, as the vampire sprung up to his feet, snarling, in full, ugly vamp face. “You shouldn’t have done that.”

“Yes he should have,” a voice said, to his immediate left. Sizic turned his head so fast he almost snapped his own neck. It was a pale, scrawny British man with peroxide blond hair and a long black coat, whom he had never seen before in his life. But he was grinning at him like an old friend. “C’mon, do it again. I love seeing him get his ass kicked.”

Sizic looked between this odd triptych, wondering if someone had slipped him some acid. “Who the fuck are you people?” Did this make any sense?

The guy beside him scoffed. “God - as dumb as a doorstop. You from Sunnydale, by any chance?”

Sizic spun on his heels, fist first, and caught the blond guy right in the face … except he didn’t. His fist went straight through him, and slammed into the wall full force. He screamed as his knuckles snapped like plywood against the drywall, which he managed to punch most of the way through. Fuck - a ghost. Why didn’t he smell like a ghost? And who the hell brought a ghost anywhere anyways?

The ghost quickly stepped away, but continued to point and snicker. “Yeah, you gotta be from Sunnyhell. Unless you’re a special needs demon or something.”

There were suddenly screams and dull thuds - the sounds of a quick and brutal fight - coming from the back rooms, and that explained why his back up just wasn’t materializing. As he looked towards the noises, rubbing his aching hand, he wondered what happened to the easy gig.

Oh, there’d better be hazard pay for this.

***

As if having his legs taken out from under him by Renat demon wasn’t bad enough, of course Spike had to pop in just then. Angel sometimes wondered if he wasn’t cursed with anything so much as the world’s worst luck.

At least the Renat was pretty much out as a viable threat. He was large for the type; about six five and two hundred pounds of muscle beneath skin as gray and gnarled as tree bark, and eyes as bloated and black as storm clouds. Blood the color of mud was trickling from his nose and distended jaw, courtesy of meeting the door and Wesley’s baton rather violently. His blood and frustration smelled like burned hair, and it was suck a noxious scent it almost blocked out the smell of Logan’s blood on him.

Why hadn’t Wesley forced him to come back with him? Not that he blamed him - Logan was such a pigheaded bastard. If you wanted to drag him somewhere you didn’t want him to go, you needed a wrecking ball, two tons of heavy duty chains, and a reinforced tank - and that still might not be enough. Would it have killed him to be reasonable for once?

Actually, it may have killed him not being reasonable, but he wasn’t going to count on that until he found a body. He was too stubborn to die anyways.

Where the fuck was Bob? He should have been around to protect him. But he couldn’t use any of the company resources to find him. As it turned out, Bob was the sole occupant of the “Untouchable” list: no one from the company was supposed to approach him ever, or even get within one block of the Way Station under the penalty of mind wiping. Even when he asked the spell casters to use a simple location spell to track him down, they refused, on the grounds he could trace the spell back to them. No amount of threatening persuaded them in the least, as the bottom line was they were more afraid of Bob than him. Well, if he was a god he supposed he could see their point, but why hadn’t the bastard ever mentioned it to them? They could have used his help several times.

Angel had to honest with himself, though - would he have really gone to Bob? He still didn’t trust him, and frankly being a god just made the trust issue worse. How could you ever trust a being with that much power? Also, Bob was a irredeemable smart ass.

“I can smell his blood on you,” Angel snarled. “Start talking, or I start ripping out chunks.”

“Fuck you,” the Renat replied, spitting muddy blood on the floor. It looked like the upper half of his body was starting to curl around his injured hand. Angel was sorry Spike couldn’t have felt that punch; not only would it have broken his nose, but it may have knocked him out (if they were lucky).

Spike scoffed, but glancing at him, he saw Spike was pointing at him. “What’s with the librarian pimp wear jewelry? Or is this some kinda lame ass Cali fad?”

He didn’t even need to look down to know what he was pointing at. “It’s a symbol of Vanth; it identifies us as friends.” Spike was mercifully gone while the sorcerers figured out a way to “maybe” contact Vanth (there were no sure things with gods - which his brief association with Bob should have taught him), and gave them the enchanted “keys” to wear, on the off chance they were successful in summoning her. Vanth’s symbols were snakes, torches, and keys, but even Wesley didn’t know why.

The Renat glanced up guiltily, aware for the first time they knew of his fake faith.

“Who the fuck is Vanth?” Spike asked, shaking his head dismissively.

A Ressik suddenly fled into the front room, uninjured but reeking of someone else’s blood, stinking of anger and fear. Since Spike’s back was the first opponent he saw, he dove right toward him in a spine shattering tackle.

But, again, just like the Renat, he plunged violently through Spike, and met the hardwood floor with a sickening crunch.

Spike turned, unaware he’d been the focus of violence until it was all over, and looked down at his groaning opponent. “Wanker,” he scoffed, miming a kick to his head. “What the fuck is this place? A rehab for demons who’ve had their brains sucked out their ears? When I was evil, I had clothing smarter than you sorry sacks of shit.” He walked away, shaking his head in disgust. “Pathetic.”

But the Ressik popped back up, growling in shame turned to rage, his yellow, grapefruit sized glowing with anger. “You, vampire, you’ll be the first to die. We -” He sucked in a hard breath, making a squeaking noise at the end, and black blood bubbled out his mouth as he weakly tried to reach his back. He wavered for a moment, then collapsed to the floor, dead before he met it again.

Lady Blood - Yasha, according to Wes - strode into the room purposefully, her black leather suit making her look bizarrely (and even more oddly, attractively) like the undead Chinese version of Emma Peel. In the Ressik’s cream colored (now blackening) shirt, it was difficult to see where her tiny copper throwing knife - hardly bigger than one of those elementary school pink block erasers - was sticking out from between his fifth and sixth vertebrae. She gave them all a cursory glance - so cool he almost felt the breeze off of it - as she reported neutrally, “The place back there reeks of his blood, but there isn’t a piece of him to be found.” With a single swift and delicate move, she plucked the knife out of the Ressik’s back and spun on the Renat, plunging the knife right into the wall beside his head.

Or so they thought.

But then the mud started trickling down the wall, and he started breathing in a funny way, giving it a syllable - han, han - and he was starting to stink of panic and pain. She had driven the knife through his ear, nailing it to the wall … and she still had the palm of her hand pressing down on it. She got right into his face, sinister casual, and said, “Where’s the basement?”

The Renat gaped fish mouthed for a moment, and when he finally could speak, it was with that mystery syllable peppering his speech. “We - han - don’t have - han - a base-han-ment.”

“Yes you do,” she insisted coolly. “All you wannabe evil fucks have basements. Now tell me where it is, or I take your ear.” She was putting delicate pressure on the knife, letting it dig in deeper, in slow and steady increments. Even Spike had to wince; that had to hurt.

It must have, or maybe the Renat just didn’t like the predatory rage in her eyes (a specialty of vampires), because he broke with astonishing swiftness. “Han-under the - han - stereo sys-han-tem there’s a -han- trap door - han.”

“Good.” She yanked the knife out with more violence than was necessary, and he crumpled to the wall, instantly cupping his bloody, shredded ear. “If you’re lying, I’m coming back to start on your testicles.”

All the men in the room winced at that, but she stormed off so quickly she didn’t notice. She was playing the concerned friend - girlfriend, whatever - quite well, but Angel didn’t know if he dare trust it. She was still a vampire, and still clearly very vicious and dangerous. But it was easy to see what Logan saw in her, especially in that black leather outfit.

“Wow, she’s an intense bitch, ain’t she?” Spike noted. After a pause, he added, “I think I’m in love.”

“Where is he?” Angel demanded of the mewling Renat. He must have been very attached to that ear. “What have you done with him?”

He gasped, and spat out a dirty clot of blood before speaking. He lost the extra syllable. “It’s too late, bloodsucker. It’s begun.”

“What’s begun?”

He scoffed very weakly, spattering the floor with more of his blood. Was that a weak spot on Renat physiology? It suddenly occurred to Angel that Yasha might have been pressing the knife into a vital nerve cluster. “Something far beyond you. When he returns, you’ll be the first to die. The old life will be scoured away.”

“What?”

“What the fuck’s he on about?” Spike asked, sounding annoyed.

“Shut up!” He snapped, trying to figure this out in his head. This was the Vantha, right? So the return couldn’t be referring to Logan … could it? No, that made no sense. But what the hell was all that wanting to hunt him down and kill him? Angel could have smacked himself in the head when he suddenly realized, “Your intention never was to kill him, was it? This is some kind of trap. You wanted him to look for you.” Someone had played the reverse psychology angle on Logan, aware that his first instinct was not to run from a threat, but attack it face on.

The Renat snickered, and grinned at him coldly, its erose gray teeth now brown with blood. “Got no fucking reason to tell you anything, vamp. Just sit tight. You’ll find out soon enough.”

He glared at him, wondering if ripping the rest of his fucking earlobe off would make him talkative, but then he saw the shadows clustering around the open door between the front room and the back, and realized he didn’t have to do a damn thing. He’d talk. He’d talk or be more sorry than any living thing on this planet. “Fine. We’re done here. Girls, he’s all yours.”

The Renat turned his head slowly, and seemed to freeze as he laid eyes on Belinda and Beatrice - more commonly known as the Weird Sisters - sauntering into the room, blissfully empty and malevolent smiles on their faces. “Oh-”

“-boy,” they said, leering at the Renat.

He must have heard of them, and must have realized he was now in some seriously deep shit; the reek of his fear had just spiked tenfold. “Y-you can’t leave me to them,” he said, voice cracking slightly in panic.

Angel made a show of turning his back on him, morphing out of game face. “Can, will, have,” he replied. “Wes, let’s go.”

Wesley, playing along, started moving towards the door. Spike must have panicked at the sight of the Sisters himself, because suddenly he was standing outside, well beyond the Sisters’ notice or reach. “You mean that’s it? I thought you wanted to save chops, although I have no idea why. He owe you money?”

Angel glanced back in time to see the Sisters had each taken one of the Renat’s arms, and before he could react in any meaningful way, they spun underneath them, as if dancing - and dislocated his arms cleanly from their shoulders with a sickening pop, like firecrackers going off in the empty parlor.

He made a wheezing, high pitched noise of pain, dropping to his knees, as the Sisters kept hold of his arms. Then they each planted one boot on the side of his face, and said to each other, “Make-”

“-a-”

“-wish.”

“Holy fuck,” Spike gasped. “They’re gonna rip his arms off. Can I just watch? I‘ll join you at the car.”

That was it for the Renat - he was done with resisting. Apparently he was quite attached to his limbs as well. “He’s not here!” He screamed. “We only collected him, took some of his blood as temporary payment! They took him after that - we don’t have him anymore!”

“Who took him?” he demanded, turning back towards him. He held up his hand to stay the Sisters, but he had no guarantee it would - the Sisters were inherently unpredictable and uncontrollable. It was why he knew, in the back of his mind, he should kill them, but he never quite figured out how one went about doing that. Angelus had done many evil things, but the Sisters were probably one of the most evil - and they were evil, in theory, even greater than him. But he had to admit, when they were all working on the same side, they made terrific weapons of persuasion. “Why?”

“They need his blood,” the Renat gasped. The Sisters hadn’t let go of him, but they hadn’t ripped his arms off yet. That must have been a plus for him. “His blood is special.”

Angel knew that personally, but he still wasn’t following any of this. The Vantha - whoever they were - coveted Logan’s healing factor? That made no sense - they were demons. They generally had one of their own. “Who needs it?”

The Renat gulped air, and wheezed, “I can’t … I can’t say …”

“Belinda, take the left,” he said. “Beatrice, wait.”

“No!” The demon squeaked, the smell of his terror almost revolting now. “They-”

He never got a chance to finish. Angel felt the air seem to shrink in on itself before it tore apart with a scream more felt than heard, and a bright white light flooded the room, blinding them all. There was the sound of flapping leathery wings, the air churned up by them as brisk as a gale, and a smell like heat and feathers, dry snake scales and fur, filled the room.

Oh, wonderful. Vanth had just graced them all with her illustrious, fatal presence. What fabulous timing.