Doyle exclaimed “Shit!” and hit the floor, while the impact of the bullets threw Logan back until he stumbled into the kitchen counter. Since dropping to the floor seemed like a good idea, he did, and crawled across the floor towards the shattered window. He felt the pain of the bullets quite clearly - he was sure at least one of his lungs had been punctured - but Marc had been right about Bob “supercharging” his powers, and clearly that was still in effect, as he barely registered the pain before a frantic warmth spread over him like a sudden fever. By the time he got to the remains of the window, he’d heard the car drive off with a fantastic screech of tires on pavement, but he still managed to catch a glimpse of the rear of a black Explorer. Damn it - how did it follow them after ditching them? Did they know where Xander lived?

“Holy goddamn shit,” Doyle said, warily looking over the couch. “Was that the Triad?”

“I don’t think so. They’d have gotten closer and made sure the job was done right. Besides, they know bullets won’t keep me down for long - or they should know that anyway. Maybe if their boss was an idiot, they wouldn’t.” He considered going after them, but figured those assholes had too big of a lead on him already.

“What do you mean bullets won’t keep you down for long?” Doyle now stood up, figuring the danger had passed, and when he looked at him he did a slight double take. He supposed it was due to the bullet holes now in his shirt, although there was precious little blood considering he took a half dozen bullets. His healing factor was really raring to go today. “What - what the hell are you doing up? You’ve been shot!”

He shrugged. “Ain’t the first time.”

Doyle’s startled look became a suspicious glare. “And you’re not a demon?”

Logan scowled. “No. Just a freak.” Although it was probably easier to go out the door, he climbed out the shattered window frame and walked out towards the street, wondering if he could find some clues as to the mystery shooters. Now there were people glancing out at the street, probably looking for a corpse or a film crew - or both (it was L.A. after all). All Logan found was bullet casings and fresh tire tracks on the road (they really lost their tire tread hauling ass out of here), but he also found a recently discarded cigarette butt, which he sniffed. He smelled the tobacco, sure, but he also smelled a hint of something else. It was a faint, dry scent, almost … reptilian.

Okay, how did this make sense? Why were demons after him? Only belatedly did he add the “this time”.

3

Giles knew he was sleeping, but that this wasn’t exactly a dream.

When you first became a Watcher, you were warned that there were demons that could use alternate methods of communications, ones not open to normal Humans. Now demons on this plane were usually restricted in power usage to some degree, but ones on other planes were wildly powerful, and sometimes in ways there was no defense against. You did the best you could to protect yourself, although you were always warned never to contact those demons, and if you ever did, well, expect the worst. Expect it to haunt you when you least expected it.

So while he wasn’t too surprised to see Hantu Kubor invading his sleeping mind, he didn’t like it. He’d contacted one of the Hantu Kubor when he was searching for a way to destroy the Erebus Sliver, and while he was inside a protection circle, the problem was it could only protect you so much. He was somewhere dark, and he could hear the click of its claws on the floor as the Hantu Kubor scuttled towards him on its six arms/legs like a humanoid spider, its thirty eyes on thin stalks arranged around its head like a living crown. The eyes themselves glowed like a fire in the distance. “You did a stupid thing, Watcher,” it said in its rattling, grave voice. “You opened a door.”

“You saw, or you know?” The Hantu Kubor - a group organism, none with individual names - were the janitors of the underworld, or perhaps the correct term was vultures. They ate the refuse of other worlds, and most of that refuse was some form of carrion. In spite of their low position on the demonic totem pole, they knew everything there was to know; they were so ignored by other demons that they were free to come and go at will, free to listen, free to watch. They simply didn’t rate as entities, and even if you did get pissy and kill one, it was too late - as a group entity, what one saw they all saw; what one heard they all heard. They were a master intelligence network, but dangerous to use, simply because as soon as one knew you, all knew you. That seemed harmless, but it wasn’t - no demon that was virtually omniscient and immortal could ever be considered harmless.

“All the same,” it growled. “You didn’t shut it soon enough.”

“Nothing came out, besides the soul we were after.” But even as he said it, he knew he couldn’t be one hundred percent sure about that.

The clicking of its claws was almost lost in its chuckle, which sounded remarkably similar. “Just because you can’t see it doesn’t mean it’s not there.”

Giles felt a coldness in his bowels that was never ever a good sign. “What? Something came out with Doyle? What kind of thing?”

It continued growling low in its throat, a sound like a rough engine idling in the distance. “You made a mistake. You let it out.”

Giles woke up in bed, his comforter knotted around him like a rope keeping him tied to the mattress. His heart was pounding double time inside his chest, thudding against his rib cage until it felt like it was making his entire chest resonate like a struck bell. It could have simply been the Hantu Kubor taunting him - they weren’t above such things. But he couldn’t count on that.

He knew opening the doorway, no matter how briefly, was dangerous. If something happened as a result, he only had himself to blame.

****

A truly troubling thing, one that said oodles (that word again) about Doyle’s familiarity with the demon dark side, was his knowledge of hit squads.

There weren’t too many of them that he knew about - well, five years ago - but narrowing things down to Freniks and Ressiks, the reptilian demons, seemingly helped a bit. Doyle made some calls - many of which were to disconnected numbers - but finally got a hit. So to speak.

Wolfram and Hart had a Ressik/Frenik extermination squad, but Logan was disinclined to think it was them for the simple fact that the evil bastard lawyers already knew that regular bullets would do bupkis to him; they’d send a squad with explosive rounds, adamantium bullets, something with real hurting power. According to Doyle’s contact, Charlie Tripod (he didn’t want to know), there were your random Ressik/Frenic mercenaries, but he only knew of one entire unit of them not working for the evil bastard lawyers, and that was a group known as the Vrenick Brothers. They generally hired themselves out to films (!), but occasionally during slow periods they did do a bit of freelance mercenary work, although they weren’t all that cheap, and they were rather showy, but not all that good. (Which sounded like the shooters to a tee.) Charlie wasn’t sure how to get a hold of them, but heard they were represented by a demon agent known as Gold.

“I know that name,” he admitted, searching his memory for it.

Doyle shrugged. “Well, yeah. It’s L.A. - there’s a lot of Golds. And Greens and Weintraubs and Steins of various kinds … not to be racist, but there ya go.”

“Oh shit - Legolas.”

Doyle stared at him warily, like he was afraid he was having a psychotic break. “What?”

“This fucking … what did Giles call it - Ahtabi demon? Somethin’ like that. It’s gold skinned and skinny, with elf ears and a real Hollywood attitude. Lives in Los Feliz.”

“Ritzy.” He paused. “Is it still?”

“Yeah, guess so. I couldn’t afford to live there.” Logan scowled to himself, and grunted in annoyance. “Guess I gotta go pay him a visit.”

“You may wanna change your clothes man. You might get the cops called on ya.”

A glance down confirmed enough blood and bullet holes to get him at least a double take - and in a wealthy place like Los Feliz, almost a guarantee of being surrounded by a swat team within two minutes. He was forced to dig through Xander’s wardrobe until he found a shirt that fit him - a t-shirt thankfully, but one advertising a Mexican restaurant that translated into “Fried Donkey Balls”. It must have been a gag shirt; Xander probably had it for that very reason. He made a mental note to kick his ass about this if they ever got Xander back in his body again.

He put in a call to Thrak against his better judgment, but Los Feliz was a ways away, and he figured he might need a quick getaway. Thrak screeched up to the curb in his bright chartreuse cab in what seemed to be record time, and Logan was a bit surprised that Thrak hadn’t pulled up on the lawn itself. The guy - thing - was a fucking maniac.

When he headed out the door, Doyle followed him, so he stopped and turned around fast enough that Doyle was forced to back up. “Where the hell are you goin’?”

“With you.”

“The fuck you are. First of all, you gotta stay here in case Bob finds out something.”

“He said it would probably take a while,” Doyle argued.

“And what about that busted window, huh? When guys come in to steal Xander’s stuff, you gonna buy him new stuff?”

That got him. He looked back in with a heavy sigh, running his hand through his hair. “They were shootin’ at you, not me. This should be your job.”

“But it’s not. So nail a board over there or something. I’ll be back soon.”

He heard Doyle throw a mild curse his way as he left, but Logan honestly didn’t care. It was bad enough he was visiting an agent - a demon agent on top of that - while wearing some other guy’s “fried donkey balls” t-shirt. If he had to haul around a guy who was leasing another guy’s body, it would just be too much.

Getting in the cab was something of an act of bravery all by itself, especially since Thrak had a new orange scented air freshener that knocked his head back like a punch. He cranked the window down and stuck his head out it, breathing through his mouth so the L.A. smog didn’t deliver the final one-two punch that would leave him unconscious, and told Thrak where he wanted to go. He (?) peeled out like their ass was on fire and the cops were on their tail, and while Logan clung to the back seat for dear life, he briefly considered asking Thrak if he was a he, she, or an other, and if Rags was more than just a drinking buddy … but then he realized he actually didn’t care Also, he was surely better off not knowing the answers to any of these things.

Although Thrak was easily the world’s scariest driver - in more ways than one - there was something he had going for him: he could get everywhere faster. He didn’t wait in traffic, he didn’t obey speed limits, or marked roads, or anything else that most drivers adhered to; Thrak seemed to have no concerns about the state of his vehicle, himself, or his passengers. This was another one of those times that Logan was glad he had a healing factor.

Somehow Thrak got him to Gold’s place without getting in a major accident (although it was possible he’d caused several in his wake), and Gold’s place was a modern yet slightly rococo style mansion on palatial, well manicured grounds, behind large wrought iron gates that wouldn’t have looked out of place at an elaborate cemetery. Logan left the taxi and walked up to the front gate, buzzing the house only to see what response that would get. He could cut through the security fence with no problem at all, but he just wanted to see if the Vrenick Brothers would come out or not. Gold didn’t strike him as a bad guy - a Hollywood phony, sure, but not exceedingly evil - but then again, he had overseen death matches and worked for a super evil guy with great ease, like this was just another gig. He had the morality of a rabid mongoose; this guy was capable of anything.

After a moment, a female voice replied, “Si?”

Oh, right, Carlotta, his “help”, the one who was a great cook. If shit was going to go down, he wanted her out of the way. Just ‘cause she worked for a sleazeball didn’t make her any less of a civilian; hell, she thought he was a Human with deformed ears. In Spanish, he replied, “Carlotta, it’s Logan. I was here once, as a guest of Mr. Gold’s?”

There was a long pause. “Oh, yes, yes, the one with the sideburns.”

Well, it was either that or “the guy with the hair“ or “the guy with the claws“; he was always described in the exact same ways. “Yeah. He told me I could drop by any time I needed to talk to him, and right now I do. Is he in?”

There was another pause as she thought about it, but it was briefer this time. Did she suspect it was bullshit? Probably. But she liked him - he complimented her on her cooking, and was comfortable speaking her language with her. That had seemed to endear him to her when he was here. “Yes, he’s by the pool. I’ll let him know you’re here.” With that, there was an electronic buzz, and the gate unlatched with an audible click.

He signaled to Thrak to wait for him, but he had no idea if Thrak noticed - he was jiggling along with a U2 song on the radio, like the bass notes were vibrating him like a Jello mold in an earthquake, and he had a horrible feeling that Thrak was about to start singing in a minute. Wasn’t that lethal, or at least potentially so? In that case, he hoped Gold sent some guards out here. Death by horrible singing seemed like a really funny way for thugs to go out.

If the Vrenicks were here, it was news to Carlotta - which was probably always the case, because she never seemed to notice any of the demon activities that Gold got up to. All she knew was he was a slightly strange looking man who treated her kindly and paid her well; if he said certain parts of the house were off limits, and didn’t answer certain questions, why would she care? Gold had made it worth her while not to be curious. So he sniffed the air as he walked around the side of the mansion, heading for the backyard pool, but all he was smelling was recently applied fertilizer, wisps of herbicide and car exhaust, a hint of smog from the hills and the spray of a cat (Gold had a cat? Or was it a trespasser?), and the closer he got to the pool the more the chlorine stung his nasal passages, to the point of making his eyes water. But no Ressiks or Freniks; not out here, not outside, not unless they doused themselves in fertilizer or chlorine.

It seemed to take him forever to walk around the house - there should have been a law about how much square footage a person was allowed, especially demon agents - but finally he saw the silver shimmer of sunlight off water, and heard Gold, apparently talking on his ubiquitous cell phone. “- eighty four. Look, I know she’s a darling, but she couldn’t attract flies if she was road kill. We need hip, we need now, we need someone without a ‘tude and a coke habit and obvious anorexia. Think you can fill that order? Uh huh, that’s what I thought. Call me when you get back from Mauritius.” Logan heard the snap of his phone as he shut it, and then he exclaimed, “Man of my dreams! Where have you been? You know I had people looking for you, and it was like you dropped off the face of the planet.”

Gold was still willowy, long and almost eerily thin, his skin hue an oddly delicate gold. He was lolling in a lounge chair beside the pool, wearing only jade green Speedos that contrasted with his skin nicely, designer black sunglasses hiding his eyes and ironically highlighting his elfin, pointed ears. His hair was a bit longer this time, and in the direct sunlight it glittered like white gold spun into straw. How could Carlotta think this guy was Human? Oh well, maybe anyone was willing to believe anything as long as the checks were big enough.

Logan stopped where he was, keeping the Olympic length, Italian tiled swimming pool between him and the sylph like demon. “What d’ya mean you had people lookin’ for me?”

Gold clicked his tongue impatiently. “I told you, I could get you a three picture deal at Fox with two phone calls. Hollywood needs a new action hero, and you darling are it. I have seen you in action, and let me tell you, the insurance companies will plotz when they discover you could do your own stunts and never get hurt … permanently. I’m sorry I didn’t tape your pit performance, ‘cause I know very well I could have launched a bidding war for you on that alone.”

He glowered at him. More of this movie shit. “I already told you, I ain’t interested. And, hey, Brezekarian, or whatever the fuck he called himself, remember him? I believe you had something to do with a near apocalyptic event.”

“Oh, that,” Gold said dismissively, waving his hand like he was trying to slap away a fly. “Honey, that was nothing personal. In this business, if you want to survive, you back a winner. And you’re the winner in that scenario, aren’t you? Mea culpa, lesson learned, I can get you a cut of the gross and a piece of the back end.”

Logan shook his head in disbelief. Unbelievable. “You’re Satan, aren’t you?”

Although that question was sarcastic, Gold chuckled nervously. “Sense of humor. Good! That’ll serve you well. I got this script last week, Tarantino’s developing it, Sam Jackson’s already on board, and it has a role that was written for you. I know where Quentin’s drinking tonight, so why don’t we go and I’ll introduce you to him; I know he’ll just love you. Tell him about your ultimate fighting experiences - might want to skip the whole demon thing, I don’t know if he’s in on it or what - and for the coup de gras, show him your claws. I know for a fact he will go completely batshit over those - hell, he’ll probably try and get his own set. You’ll be a lock for sure.”

“Are you even listening to me?”

“Sam Jackson might be there.”

He ground his teeth together, wondering where Gold’s bodyguards were. Wouldn’t it have been smart to have some around? He knew what he could do, he’d seen him fight and slaughter killer demons by the dozens … so where was his protection? Was it this slick huckster bullshit? It didn’t work on him before, so why was Gold relying on it to save his ass now? Gold was a lot of things - a fucking laundry list of things - but he was not an idiot.

(Samuel L. Jackson might be there? Well, he seemed like he might be a good guy to hang out with. He was great in Pulp Fiction …)

Logan shook his head again, banishing that thought train from his head. God, L.A. just poisoned you, didn’t it? “Why did you send the Vrenicks after me? You know you can’t kill me with plain bullets. Are you telling me the hit was just some lame ass stunt to get me to come here so you could try and con me into signing with you? Jesus fucking Christ, I’m gonna -”

“Whoa, cut, cut,” he said, sitting up waving his hands as if in surrender. He used his hands a lot when he talked; how very agent of him. “Sent the Vrenicks after you? Do you mean the Vrenick Brothers? I did no such thing. Why would I do something like that? Hell, if I thought the Vrenicks could have found you I’d have had them kidnap you and bring you here. Why shoot you?”

He seemed honestly perplexed and startled by the accusation, but he could have been lying; he didn’t know this breed of demon well enough to judge. But then again, kidnapping was more of Gold’s style - the first time he came here, he was brought via mystical teleportation kidnapping. “You know where the Vrenicks are now?”

Gold snorted derisively. “Sitting on their fat, scaly asses. I haven’t gotten them work in months. Apparently savagely beating a P.A. gets around the studios, you know?”

If they were freelancing, which months without work might lead them to do, Gold was actually - and possibly for the first and only time in his life - innocent.

Yet he didn’t trust it - he couldn’t. Even if Gold had no part in this, the fact that the Vrenicks were clients of his could be no coincidence.

Somebody knew; somebody did this on purpose.

Now the only question was who and why, and what the point of this fucking thing was.

****

Giles still wasn’t used to Southern Californian weather. And it was funny, because he was hardly new to this State. He’d lived so long in Sunnydale that going back to milder, grayer English weather had been a surprise at first. He had had to reacclimatize to what had been the very thing he was most accustomed to. It was a terrible perversity that he assumed was some kind of penance he had to pay. Now he was back in the pit of sunny hell, and he wondered why he’d come back.

But he did have some friends here, ones that helped him find this bungalow on a quiet suburban enclave that looked like it was far from L.A., what with its tree lined streets and neat, fairly sizable patches of ground for each quaint home, but was in fact just a couple of miles from the downtown area. Story had it this used to be a studio back lot that was sold once the studio went bankrupt, but Giles honestly didn’t know and didn’t care. It was much nicer than living in the concrete, demon infested jungle of the city.

He absently jingled his car keys as he pondered where to go first. Well, he had to go to the Way Station - he had to ask Bob if he sensed something else coming through. You’d think he’d have mentioned it, but maybe not; he was sadly perverse. Then he could go from there. If something dangerous got out they’d have to identify it and trap it, with the only problem being they would be relying on Bob for help. Oh, why couldn’t gods just be nice, agreeable sorts? It’d make things so much easier.

He was so lost in his thoughts he was startled by a neatly groomed young man in khaki pants and a black t-shirt, who had walked into his driveway and now stood beside his car. “Are you Rupert Giles?” he wondered. His face was young and well scrubbed, but was there something wrong with him?

Giles stared at him a moment, taking a step back, and realized what the problem was: his eyes. They were simply dead, as hard and flat as river rocks. “Who wants to know?”

He heard a noise behind him, a soft scuff, but he didn’t even have time to turn around as an arm suddenly crushed his throat, and a sudden, sharp pain stabbed through his back. He lost consciousness before he could see if his assailant was a demon or not.