He looked around, up and down the block, but right now he and Giles were the only souls in sight. He didn’t smell anyone else either, or sense anyone watching. “Er, um … now?”

“I’m trying to narrow down the coordinates of a rather large mystical source. It’s a cloaking spell of some sort, I gather, but a locator spell didn’t work. Whatever this spell is, it’s powerful enough to repel any others.”

“It’s on this block?”

“Yes. I can’t seem to pinpoint it, though.”

He hoped he was wrong, but he took a guess. “It might be the place I just came out of, Bob’s bar, the Way Station. He put a glamour on it to keep Humans out, and hide it from non-demon eyes. “ He pointed back in its direction, and Giles followed his finger with his eyes.

After a moment, he scowled. “Bugger. I was sure it would be the hiding place of the Erebus Stone.”

“The what?”

Giles turned off the PDA with a series of brisk, sharply impatient motions, and didn’t answer him more than he muttered to himself. “Bloody information brokers. I should know better than to trust them.” He pocketed the device, and finally looked at him once more. “I believe someone is trying to use the Erebus Stone, which will effectively end life on this planet as we know it. I believe it’s here, that it came into port at Santa Monica sometime within the last few days. Since transporting it would be troublesome, I doubt it’s left the area.”

“Okay, hold on,” he said, feeling even more confused than before. “I think we need to go somewhere and compare stories. Wanna drink?”

Giles gave him a horrified look. “At this time of the morning?”

So they ended up in a Starbucks two and a half blocks over, comparing notes. (So much for his shower, and any possible Helga love.) Just because he was apparently in a mood to be difficult, he ordered a double espresso. Logan ordered a tea, just to match him in general contrariness.

According to Giles, a mudslide following a volcanic eruption in a little nowhere town in Mexico unearthed an “unusual object” that the locals avoided, which included not only the people but animals and insects. A former Watcher in Central America went to have a look at the thing, and was able to suggest that it just might be the fabled “Erebus Stone” before he was brutally murdered, and the object taken. The Erebus Stone was some kind of mythical device, buried inside what appeared to be solid rock, but actually wasn’t; after a needlessly long story, it boiled down to a powerful sorceress encasing it in in this special material to keep anyone from finding it ever. Where the Erebus “splinter” originally came from was unknown, but it was known to be a kind of dimensional skeleton key: used correctly, you could open all sorts of doorways between worlds. And therein laid the problem with the thing, the caveat “used correctly”. It was difficult to use correctly, and trying to ! access it in a half assed manner (not the term he used, but obviously what he meant) could cause all sorts of problems, one of the main ones being “dimensional bleed”. Giles was more concerned about people falling into these “dimensional sinkholes” than anything that might come out of them, although he added that that would really depend on what dimension the thing came from. But if someone didn’t stop trying to mess with the damn thing, the condition could become permanent; the dimensional barriers could totally break down, meaning anything and everything could exist at once. “And you don’t want every hell dimension existing here at the same time,” he said, finishing his lecture. “The cleaning bills alone will be enormous.”

Logan raised an eyebrow. “You made a joke?”

“I do do that from time to time,” he replied, almost defensively. “Besides, I think I have jet lag.”

That made him scratch his head. This day just got weirder, and there was no end in sight, was there? “Okay. First of all, how do you know it came in through Santa Monica? Second of all, what do you plan to do with it when you find it? Third, who might be trying to use it, why, and do you think it’s the reason for all this weird shit?”

Giles took a deep drink of his coffee and seemed to let it settle before he answered. “Trusted contact; send it far, far away; I don’t know; perhaps to take advantage of the chaos; and quite probably.”

It took him a moment to realize he had answered every single one of his questions in sequence. “You really do have jet lag.”

“I told you.” He took another drink of his coffee, and grimaced. He then started looking around, presumably for some sugar or cream or something, but their window table was bare of everything but a napkin dispenser. He got up and checked out the nearest empty tables, as Logan glanced outside, and wondered how he got himself in this kind of shit. He could be back at the mansion, teaching kids hand to hand combat, and maybe fighting some evil mutant menace, but no, he had to be in L.A. trying to stop a mystical “splinter” from destroying reality. Actually, come to think of it, they both sounded like piss poor life choices. Maybe he should go back to homeless wandering for a while - life was so simple then.

“You said you thought the thing was here because it’s difficult to transport,” he finally told Giles, who seemed to find the cream container he was looking for. But by the way he paused and looked down at the table, he’d found something else as well. “But they moved it up from Mexico all right.”

Giles grabbed what he was looking at - a copy of the Los Angeles Times - and sat back down heavily. “The energies it gives off, it’s a magnet for all sorts of bad things, that’s why I assumed someone would try and hide it with a powerful cloaking spell.” He stared at the newspaper, posture stiffening, and said almost breathlessly, “Oh no. Someone’s feeding it.”

That seemed like a non-sequitur, but with Giles there was no way to be certain. He was like an absentminded professor, who just happened to be a demon expert who could cast some kick ass spells. “What? What are you talking about?”

“To try and free the splinter is a ritual that requires lots of blood, and I think the bloodletting’s started.” He folded the paper to the story he was referring to and handed it to him. The headline blared “Movie Theater Massacre”, and he scanned the story underneath. It seemed that some guy went nutso at a theater in central L.A. last night and killed the audience for a current gross out rom com, also getting a fellow employee or two before he was shot dead by police. According to a surviving projectionist, he was shouting something about them all being “demons”, and while the guy had a clean record, there was speculation he’d suffered a “psychotic break”, as he’d been on antidepressants that were now known to have some unusually unhelpful side effects. “The guy’s dead,” Logan pointed out. “He can’t be our splinter guy.”

“He wouldn’t be,” Giles agreed. “Considering the sheer amount of blood necessary for the ritual, whoever has the stone will have to manipulate “agents”, get other people to do his or her dirty work. Otherwise they’d be exposing themselves before they have the splinter freed, which would attract an undue amount of unwanted attention.”

Well, he knew this shit - he supposed he have to trust him. “But what if the guy just saw an actual theater full of demons and freaked out?”

“Well, that is a possibility, but there’s a way for you to find that out.”

He glared at him across the table. “Me?”

Giles gave him the smallest of cold smiles. “You can tell a demon from a Human by smell alone, can’t you?”

Oh damn it. People were always catching him on technicalities.

6

This time, he decided the setting was a tropical beach, with white sand like crushed bones, water as blue and clear as sapphires, palm trees with full, healthy fronds providing much needed shade. Bob lounged beneath one of the trees, the little gecko friend he created perched patiently on his left cheek, clinging to his skin with little sucker feet.

The Powers hadn’t taken on a form. They were simply all around him, above him, the hot blue sky like aquamarine fire. They were a blend of voices, male, female, and undetermined, sounding like a crowd speaking in unison. Not that any of them were actually speaking, mind you. “So why am I being spanked this time? “ he wondered. He actually couldn’t guess, mainly because there was so much to choose from.

“You are abusing your powers,” they claimed, as stern as emotionally vacant gods could be. “You are reflecting poorly on us.”

“Since when do you care about your image?”

There was no reply, just a very long pause pregnant with threat, and Bob let the sound of a gentle surf lapping against the shore fill it in. He hated when they “called” him, and he hated shedding his form and “walking” into this pocket dimension even more. All they ever did was curse him out for some transgression, and he could never get a straight answer out of them. Did he ask to be born among them? No he didn’t, nor did he ask to be exiled here in a demon form. If they were unhappy with him, they only had themselves to blame.

After letting the silence drag on for time immeasurable, he finally guessed, “I guess Eris chewed you a new one, huh?”

“We have looked the other way for too long,” the voices proclaimed - Bob took that as a “Yes”. “You are proving to be a … liability. Camaxtli should have been taken care of long ago.”

“I don’t have all my powers, do I? It seems someone cut me off from them. Gee, I wonder who that could be?”

Sarcasm was wasted on the Powers. Humorless sods. “You do not deserve even the meager powers you have. Until you are worthy of them, you do not deserve to have them.”

Bob sat up, startling the gecko. That sounded too much like a threat for his tastes. “What? Hey, you didn’t give me my fuckin’ powers back, I had to find them on my own. You can’t take them -”

“Can, and have. Do your duty, or suffer as they do,” the voices proclaimed, and Bob felt himself ripped out of the pocket dimension.

It was a pain more psychic than physical, an ice dagger digging deep into his metaphysical brain, and he hit the carpet of his hallway hard, tasting blood. His whole body felt like it had just been flattened by a steamroller. “Fuck,” he groaned into the floor, waiting for the pain to subside. Being violently re-corporealized was never pleasant, just as being suddenly de-corporealized was just like a bullet train through the heart of a nuclear reactor while wearing tinfoil underpants.

As he laid on the carpet, trying to catch his breath and get used to having a body again, he wondered if the Powers had done something to Jean. Maybe they’d done nothing; maybe they were just pissed off that he couldn’t do anything more than he’d already done. Or maybe they’d cleaned up his mess by killing her. He’d like to think they couldn’t be that cruel - she didn’t ask for god powers, she just got stuck with them - but they could be. He knew them, he was of them for Ammit’s sake, and the truly immortal and omnipotent didn’t let such trivial things as compassion and sentimentality get in the way. This is why he sucked at being one of them. That, and he just hated to follow orders.

When he felt strong enough, and somewhat familiar with his own body, he pushed himself up to his knees, and tried to will some clothes back on, as the air conditioner was set too high and it was bloody cold.

And that’s when he realized how cruel the Powers truly were.

It didn’t work. He couldn’t access his own power, couldn’t find it in his own mind, feel it in his own skin. He was meat through and through, a purely corporeal being, a very old Belial demon and nothing more. “You fucking bastards,” he shouted. “Not again!”

But if they were listening, they were probably having a laugh at his expense - well, in a manner of speaking. They never actually laughed in their endless existence.

He wondered if they really were going to give him his powers back, or if he’d have to start from scratch, and get them back by himself all over again.

7

Somehow, working together, they actually covered a lot of ground.

On his way to the Grand Royal Cinema, Logan stopped in at Argenis’s shop, and discovered he did have some kind of “freezing” spell, which sounded complicated as hell, but he figured he could palm it off on Giles; it’d probably make perfect sense to him.

The movie theater was closed down and cordoned off with crime scene tape, and sawhorses placed about one hundred feet in front of it to keep the press at bay, but Logan snuck around the back, and used a claw to jimmy open a fire exit door and slip inside.

Although forensic teams had clearly been all over the place, they were going to have a hell of a time getting out the lingering stench of blood. It had seeped into the carpet, into the upholstery, into the very walls itself. Beneath its meaty, metallic stench, there was a bitter taste of cordite and fear, still vivid even half a day beyond the event.

All Human. There wasn’t a single tinge of demon in any of the smells he was picking up, and it made his stomach knot, turn cold. He knew it was silly prejudice - not all demons were bad - but he supposed he could’ve taken this easier if there were some actual demons among the victims, or if the shooter himself was possessed or something. But from the scents he was parsing, there had been no demons in here at all recently, not that he could discern beneath the very Human reek of blood.

The cold solidity in his belly started to transmogrify into anger, so he left before he started tearing up the joint even more.

Brendan was up and around by the afternoon, and caught up with him before he could rendezvous with Giles. Bren had been talking to various Stone Temple worshippers, and rumors in the “demon underground” had it that Brezakaran was back. That made Logan look at him curiously. “Who the hell is Brezakaran?”

“See, I don’t know,” the kid admitted, sipping his Slurpee. They’d stopped at a 7-11 on the way because Brendan hadn’t had breakfast, and Logan decided he needed something to get rid of the scent of blood that seemed to have lodged in his nose. He bought a cheap cigar that stunk to high heaven and tasted horrible, like old shoe leather, but that was okay - after two inhales, the reek of blood had been replaced. He stubbed it out on the wall of the store and tossed it in a trash can. “Supposedly he’s some big bad demon mobster - he used to run the demon mob around here, but he got himself killed.”

That made Logan pause. “He’s dead?”

“He was. He came back a month or so ago. Apparently it’s not a big deal, demons die and come back all the time.” The kid actually said it with a straight face, like it was common small talk. “Anyways, he was this big, powerful guy, everybody’s afraid of him, and they figure he’s back ‘cause there’s now a kinda power vacuum in the demon mob. But the thing is, Brezakaran is apparently acting really weird. No one’s actually seen him, no one knows where he actually is, and he’s recruiting a whole bunch of bad ass soldiers and guards through something called “Octavian matches”. Which is seen as weird, ‘cause a guy like him doesn’t need an army - he’s already got one.” He shrugged. “It’s just real weird. I thought it might be important.”

“Maybe.” He caused that power vacuum, didn’t he? Shit. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. There were several curious things about that story, not the least of which was the fact that he came back from the dead, and no one thought it odd, but they thought that the fact that he was recruiting an army was seen as beyond the pale. Demons really did have a different set of social rules.

Although the smell and taste of the blood had gone away, the coldness in his stomach remained, and he could clearly recall, in spite of the pitch blackness in the theater, the dark splotches on the red velvet seats, not perforated by holes so much as destroyed by them. Those people had been sitting ducks, they had no chance, and the fact that the shooter was probably operating under some mystically induced illusion didn’t make him feel any sympathy for him. If he’d been there, he’d have cut the fucking guy’s arm off - if he’d been lucky. “Kid, I don’t know if you should be involved in this,” he admitted, as they worked their way towards the Park, where he was supposed to meet Giles. “This is end of the world shit, and while I’m hardly an expert at it, I do know it gets pretty ugly.”

Brendan gave him a deeply disappointed look. “Don’t be like everyone else, Logan.”

“I’m not, I’m sayin’ -”

“I feel useful here, like I never have at the mansion,” he insisted, sounding almost heartbroken. “I’ve done some real good here. And more than that, I feel like I belong. L.A. is a freak haven, and I’m almost normal here. It’s a nice change of pace.”

He supposed he could understand. He never felt like he actually belonged anywhere, and he supposed if he ever did find that mythical place, he’d never want to leave either, even if he did have to fight Armageddon in it. Logan gave him a companionable slap on the back, and said, “Fine. But you gotta promise me yer not gonna die. Promise?”

He smirked, his ruby eyes glittering with something close to affection. “Okay, I promise. But you can’t die either.”

“I never do. For long.”

By the time they hit the park, it felt like it was in the high nineties, and Logan was carrying his coat over his shoulder, glad he already threw his over shirt away after going to the theater and coming away with the blood smell in the flannel. Still, even in no more than his tank top, he felt too hot, and he was sure there were still spots of demon blood on it. They found Giles sitting under a bench in the shade of a large oak, looking rather miserable from the heat himself.

Once the introductions were out of the way - Giles and Brendan had never met before, and Giles seemed intrigued that Bren was both a mutant and a brachen demon - they compared notes. Giles actually knew the spell that Argenis had told him about, saying it was rather “pedestrian”, but should do for a while. He had all the ingredients for it back at his hotel. He had no idea who Brezakaran was, but he knew what the Octavian matches were. Apparently they were demon cage fights, only fights to death, usually in front of high paying and betting Human audiences. But the fights for a place on Brezakaran’s payroll weren’t being held in front of Humans.

Giles agreed with him that Brezakaran was looking like a ripe suspect for having the erebus Stone. After all, a high powered demon mobster would have the money and the ability to acquire the stone, and might try and use it for his own purposes, damn the consequences. He could also use the Octavian matches to acquire more blood to “feed” the stone, as well as soldiers to help him protect it. It was a win-win situation for him.

Brendan called his “contact” who gave him this information - Thrak (his job as a demon specific cab driver apparently gave him access to a great deal of inside info) - and asked if he could find out when and where the next Octavian match would be taking place. All Logan could hear was a lot of phlegmy gargling, but Bren told him he said that he’d do his best to find out. Wow, the kid had been here a while; he’d learn to talk Thrak.

In spite of the intense daylight, Logan had a feeling Angel would be up and stewing in his hotel room, and Giles was inclined to agree with him. So they headed over to the Sea Crest, which looked less elegant and slightly more seedy in the harsh light of day. They were correct: Angel answered the door about ten seconds after he knocked. He seemed surprised to see Giles, and it took him aback for a moment, but then he said, in his usual deadpan, “Giles.”

Giles replied, in his style of deadpan, “Angel.”

And that was it, the extent of the emotional reunion between these two guys. Logan had no idea how these guys had known each other, or how long they had known each other, but he knew there was some history here. Where Wesley had fit into it was another thing he simply didn’t know, and it didn’t seem right to ask.

Angel’s room was small and dark (of course the curtains were drawn tightly shut), and he appeared cleaned up and relatively okay, if not well rested. The bed was still made, with just the slightest wrinkling on the coverlet suggested he’d ever tried to get any sleep.

They all sat down where they could, although Angel remained standing, and they started to fill him in. When they got to Brezakaran, his eyes widened and he sat up straighter, looking shocked. “You know who he is?” Giles guessed.

Angel looked between the three of them, like they were all ever so slightly mad. “Know him? I killed him.”

Oh, terrific. Brendan, sitting on the edge of the bed, groaned and hung his head in his hands. “There goes that plan,” he muttered.

Angel looked even more confused than before. “What plan?”

Giles sighed, rubbing his eyes. “Brezakaran has been having Octavian matches to fill out his own personal army. We were hoping to get you inside.”

Angel shook his head. “I wouldn’t want to do that again anyways, even if it was for Brezakaran.”

“Again?” Logan wondered. He’d done the Octavian thing before?

Brendan’s cell phone went off, but instead of a normal ring, it played the theme of the British t.v. show Red Dwarf. Did he want to know? No, but at least Brendan had pretty good taste in television shows.

Even from across the room, where he was perched on the edge of a small table, he could hear the snotty growling hacks of Thrak. Brendan nodded and gave monosyllabic replies before hanging up. “Well, there’s a match on tonight, in a closed down nightclub on pier seventeen. I suppose I could go in -”

“No,” he, Giles, and Angel all exclaimed in unison. Brendan scowled at being overruled so quickly and thoroughly.

“We could stake it out,” Angel offered. “He probably won’t be there, but maybe we can nail one of his lieutenants.”

Giles grimaced, not quite shaking his head, but clearly not happy with that idea. “There’s too many things that could go wrong. Maybe we could just follow one, see where he leads us.”

“Which could be a wild goose chase,” Brendan pointed out. “What we need is someone on the inside. If you’re not gonna let me go, then maybe we oughta find someone who can go in.”

Angel gave him a rather critical glance. “Who are we going to find on short notice willing to go into a life and death brawl with a bunch of ambitious demons? Someone we can trust, and someone who can convince Brezakaran that he’s a fighter he can’t do without?”

Suddenly, Angel looked across the room at him, and Brendan and Giles followed suit. Logan felt like a spotlight had been put upon him. “What?” he snapped, although he instantly realized what they were all tacitly saying.

Logan sighed, supposing he should be flattered. “Yeah, okay. Let me get a shower first, and change my clothes. Then I’ll go.”