4

Giles put his steaming mug of tea down on the side table with the smallest of sighs. "Angelus helping the Watchers? Politics do make strange bedfellows, don't they?"

They were in Giles's small bungalow, neat but with a minor riot of books on wall shelves and in bookcases threatening to become a full explosion of texts. With so many odd objects and books, it was hard to call it cozy, but at least it was apparent someone interesting lived here. The scent of slowly decaying parchment made Logan sneeze when he first came in.

"He only wanted to get free of Ombre Noire," Angel said, with a chagrinned grimace. "He was kind of counting on mutually assured destruction."

"Which is a best case scenario most of the time," Logan remarked wearily. It was such a cynical thing to say he wasn't surprised at the looks that earned him.

Giles was sitting in a very English looking overstuffed armchair, looking tired and yet still remarkably awake for the hour. Angel was standing and occasionally pacing, but whenever he or Giles gave him a dirty look, he stopped. He was currently by one of the bookshelves. Logan was collapsed on a ratty sofa that was actually fairly comfortable, and went along with the rest of Giles's "old mysterious bookshop" decor. It was Angel who got things back on track. "Is it possible Reignet is still alive?"

Giles shrugged, making him scowl as if in pain. "Normally I'd say no, but his death was never confirmed, and he was a powerful old warlock. It's possible he survived and went underground to rebuild his coven."

"I thought black magic ate away at the practitioner," Logan said. And couldn't believe that he'd ever said such a thing seriously, but that's how strange his life was now.

Giles nodded, and seemed mildly impressed that he had been paying attention. "It does, but the thing about Ombre Noire is they usually sacrificed others to feed their magic. In fact, they came to the notice of the Watchers when they sacrificed an entire village in the Ukraine. That fed their magic for a year."

"And Reignet had a demon sponsor," Angel added. "I never found out who, but Reignet used to communicate with it via an old mirror."

"Which doesn't tell us a lot," Giles continued. "Mirrors are a popular form of communication between demons and others."

"A demon should be nothing. We're talking about a demon god, aren't we?"

Giles nodded faintly. "Or demi-god. Something with great power."

"Yeah well, right now I got great power. Point me towards him and I'll get this done."

Angel and Giles shared a look before Angel said, "I'm not sure it's that simple, Logan."

"I know hired guns," Logan replied. "The Kalivrana ain't gonna finish the job if the guy who's paying for it is gone. There's nothing in it for him."

"That's not the problem," Giles interjected, putting on a calm, slightly lecturing voice. "The problem is twofold. You haven't learned to control all the power Bob has given you, and Bob hasn't given you everything anyway. You could be beaten or hurt, which is not worth it."

He wasn't sure if he was being insulted or not, but decided to set that aside for now. "Could Bob do it then?"

This got another weary sigh from Giles. "The demon could be stronger than him, but still I'd say yes, he'd find a way to do it. He's proven himself to be a better demon god killer than I'd ever would have credited him for."

"Not just demon gods," Logan pointed out.

Giles frowned in a strangely thoughtful way, like that was an avenue he really didn't want to go down. "Quite. Even when he's overpowered, he seems to find a way to get the job done. I'm not sure if that resourcefulness is the Belial demon in him or the Australian in him. It can be difficult to tell those two apart at times."

"How do we kill a Kalivrana?" Logan asked, figuring having a plan B was good.

Giles's shoulders slumped, like the weight of the question was too heavy to bear. "Unknown. There's no record of one ever being killed, ever, under any circumstances."

"They're truly immortal?"

"Perhaps. There haven't been many recorded encounters with them to be certain of anything, and while they seem to loathe vampires, they have no great love of Humans either. They're not the warm and chatty type."

"Can we track it down with a locator spell?" But even as Logan asked that, he felt he knew the answer, if only because Giles hadn't done it already.

"Only if it's in a humanoid form. For some reason, it's impossible to pinpoint in its bird forms."

"And let me guess - that's its preferred form of travel?"

Giles simply nodded wearily. It was fun how things went from bad to worse so quickly.

Tracking down Reignet proved to be just as impossible. According to Sagawa, even Wolfram and Hart didn't know where he was - if he was even in the city - and Giles could do no better. Reignet had almost unlimited power, and a cloaking spell was nothing. He said he might be able to extrapolate his position by using a spell that revealed hot spots of black magic, but the problem was Wolfram and Hart was an absolute sinkhole of it, rendering almost all of Los Angeles a big black hole. If he was in the city, it would be easy to hide from such a thing, and if he was outside it, it would take a lot of Giles's energy to try and find him. Even then, Reignet might have a way to protect himself from such a scan.

Back to square one. Giles had already called everyone and told them not to come in to the office tomorrow, as he and Angel were of the opinion that anyone showing up there might be a potential hostage for the Kalivrana. This made Logan want to do it, but Angel told him not to even think about it. (Well, he was anyway.) He was kind of sorry that Marc had taken Sid and Matt and moved on to another job, as it might have been fun seeing if an enchanted bullet could kill a Kalivrana.

Their plan now was basic. Giles was going to do a bit more research, talk to some of his friends on the Watchers Council, see what he could dig up on Reignet that might help them, and Angel was to stay with him at Bob's place for now, because Bob's place was cloaked with some weird sort of glamour that rendered it invisible to everyone who didn't already know it was there. (It must have been nice to totally bend reality like that.) For now, that was the extent of their plans.

Logan didn't like this. He'd hid enough in his life and he was pretty sick of it. But then again, it wasn't his life at stake - it was Angel's. And while he may have been a bone deep evil bastard, he could hardly begrudge Reignet wanting to kill Angel, as he’d sought revenge on those who killed his family too. He was good at revenge; it took up more than half his life.

It was clear he had only one recourse. They needed to even up this fight, fight magic with magic and cunning with cunning. When they got home to the safe haven of Bob's place, Logan helped seal up the bedroom (so no stray sunlight would get in), and then retreated to the living room to put a call in to Mordred. The French bastard had his answering machine on, so he left a message, not sure he'd ever get back to him. The sun was starting to come up by then, fingers of light stabbing through the window and slowly crawling across the garish carpet, so he knew Angel wouldn't be disturbing him any time soon.

He laid down on the couch, throwing his arm over his eyes to block out the light, and started to meditate.

Clearing the mind was always the hardest part. Shutting down external stimuli was difficult, but shutting down internal stimuli was nearly impossible. Still, he focused on the greater darkness, the shadow world within him, where everything was night and all was quiet. It was the place in his mind where he would go when a telepath would barge in uninvited and he wanted to hide from them as long as he could. Not his “happy place” but his safe place. He hadn’t been here in a while.

Normally he’d be at his cabin in the woods in Alberta, somewhere in the mountains, but that would have been stimuli. So instead he was in nothing; he was floating in a sensory deprivation tank of his own design. When he felt himself sinking down, he started calling out Bob’s name, focusing on the blue strain of energy that hovered just below the darkness.

He imagined Bob’s Sydney home and appeared there, walking through the empty living room, but he wasn’t sure he was actually there. There was no response, and he had no sense of a presence. Son of a bitch, was he avoiding him? What a time to do it.

He stormed through all the mental landscapes he could think of, looking for him, but he was coming up empty. It was like he was deliberately hiding. That bastard! He knew when he needed him most, and did it on purpose.

After wasting an unknown amount of time wandering empty mindscapes, he came back to himself and sighed, wondering what his next move was.

“You could have just imagined my cell phone ringing,” Bob said.

Logan tried not to jolt, but he wanted to. He removed his arm from his eyes to find Bob grinning down at him like he found this hysterical. He probably did.

Bob looked fairly tan, his hair a pale brown with sun lightened blond highlights and long enough to be almost shoulder length. He wore his usual leather pants and a t-shirt that said “Allow Me To Explain Through Interpretive Dance” in yellow letters across the chest. Logan glowered at him, but that just made his smile wider. “Are you back now?”

“I’m not a hologram. Although that’d be pretty cool.”

“Are you actually here, or is this still a mindscape?”

“I can pinch ya or hit ya, if you think’ll convince ya.” Bob went over to his fridge, opened the door, and reached in. He grabbed two absurdly big cans of beer and tossed him one as he used his hip to shut the door. “I’m willing to go so far as a tender kiss on the forehead.”

“Okay, yeah, you’re here.” Logan said, sitting up and opening his beer. How long had he been out? The sunlight seemed to be a bit farther along now. “I take it the war is finally over.”

“For now, sure. It’s amazing - piss off one god, and suddenly you gotta whole buncha ‘em demanding an apology. Where’s their sense of humor?”

“I thought you said most gods didn’t have a sense of humor.”

He shrugged as he took a swig of his beer. “They don’t, but god, I’m so blatantly kidding a chimp would get it. I mean, do I look all that serious to you?”

Logan stared at him with one eyebrow raised. “You think I don’t know a set up when I hear it?”

“Would it kill ya to play along?”

“Yes.”

Bob scowled at him, but in a mocking way. “Spoilsport. Aren’t you a grumpy puss today?”

“Are you hepped up on goofballs?”

That made him laugh. “Can’t a man just be happy to be back in his home dimension?”

Logan put his beer can down on the coffee table, which was shaped to look like a miniature surfboard (and quite possibly was one), and began ticking facts off on his fingers. “This isn’t your home dimension. You’re not a man, you’re a Belial demon. You’re not really a Belial, though, you’re a rogue Power. What have I forgotten?”

He considered that a moment. “Nothin’ mate. That seems to encapsulate it all nicely.”

Logan sagged back against the sofa with a sigh. “So how much do you know?”

“About what’s goin’ on here? All of it. You don’t need Mordred, you know. I know a witch that’ll help us out. She should be enough for our big bad warlock.”

Logan had a sinking feeling he knew who he meant. “I’d rather go with Mordred. He was less of a pain in the ass.”

“Hey! This is my great granddaughter you’re talking about! I’ve made people believe they were Scientologists for less.”

He shook his head, refusing to even smirk at Bob’s joke. Assuming it was a joke. “Can you handle this Reignet, no matter how powerful he is?”

Bob shrugged a single shoulder, but didn’t seem overly concerned. “I don’t care if he’s hooked himself to Sy’s wagon, he shouldn’t be a problem.”

“Sy?”

“Osiris. But I doubt it’s him, as he really hates Humans and he knows I’ll kick his ass if he tries something like that again.”

“Again?”

“It’s a long story, mate.”

“They’re all long stories.”

Bob chuckled before finishing his beer and crumpling the can into a small aluminum ball. “True, but I figured you’d be more interested in getting this party started.”

Maybe he’d taken his damn sweet time in showing up, but Logan had to give him credit - at least he showed up ready for a fight. “What d’ya got in mind?”

“We need to find out where this Reignet is holed up. You know even better than I do you don’t wait for the bad guy to come to you, you go to them, uninvited, with a bunch of drunken friends in tow. Metaphorically drunk, in this case. Anyhoo, I’d normally do a panty raid at Wolfram and Hart’s, but you already shook down Sagawa and you know they’re as stymied as the rest of us … which is actually kind of a clue.”

“How so?”

“Hiding from Giles is one thing; hiding from the whole Dark Arts Department of Wolfram and Hart? No offense to old Rupert there, but he’s one guy. The Dark Arters are at least two dozen strong and mostly inhuman. If he’s hiding from them, he’s got mucho power. Or he’s hiding in a dimensional pocket.”

Logan took another swallow of his beer, not sure he liked where the drift of Bob’s logic was going. “I thought only gods and very violent, noisy rituals could open up dimensional riffs.”

“Generally yeah, and they’re not usually that easy to travel through. For me, sure, I could run through a dozen dimensions without breaking my stride - in fact, I have - but I’m on a different level, and besides that, I’m really an energy being. If I absolutely had to, I could shed this mortal coil and pick it up again after it’s been to the cleaners. In fact, I’ve done that too, except for the cleaners part. But Humans are physical flesh and blood things that, save for special circumstances, would get ripped to shreds trying to run back and forth between dimensions. Literally; the strain of crossing a barrier in a purely physical form flenses the flesh from the bones. It’s not pretty.”

“I’ve done it.”

Bob rolled his insanely deep, bright blue eyes. “Yes, but you’re a special case. Not only are you my avatar, but you can be carved up like a Christmas turkey and still be conscious and alive enough to criticize the carving technique. People not like you can’t do it. Which tells us what Reignet is getting out of the deal with his demon lord.”

Logan had to think about that for a moment. He had to get used to conversations with Bob again, where half of the time it was his usual bullshit, and the other half was genuinely useful information. “Indestructibility?”

“Close. Immortality.”

Aw shit. “Does that mean we can’t kill him?”

Bob grimaced, dipping his head side to side in an odd kind of shrug. “Yes and no. For the moment we probably couldn’t kill him, but he’s only immortal because of his deal with the demon lord. Deals are breakable; deals expire. We scotch the deal, and he’s as mortal as anyone else.”

“But we gotta break the deal first.”

Bob nodded. “That’s my job, mate.”

Now Logan knew he was in deep shit. “What’s my job?”

“You have to go and find a Lhassat demon named Ergold.”

Logan waited for a punch line, but after thirty seconds it became obvious that none was forthcoming. “Why would I do that?”

“’Cause Lhassats are sensitive to dimensional variations that even I can’t pick up. You know I can see dimensional thinness, but a bubble would appear as normal to me. Not to a Lhassat; they’ll know the difference.”

“But why this guy named Ergold?”

‘’Cause he owes me a favor, and he’s shit scared of me. But that’s the problem in finding him. He’s hiding.”

Logan groaned and rubbed his eyes. “Why don’t you find him then?”

“If he knows I’m looking for him, he’ll probably flee to Utah. And as a matter of principal I don’t go to Utah - it just creeps me out. Also, I gotta go get Ammy.”

He shook his head in disbelief. How did he know that Bob would return, and yet he’d still get the shitty job? “Where do I start looking for this guy?”

“My guess? Hit the demon bars that aren’t the Way Station. He’s a drinker. And you being you, I’m sure everybody’ll be eager to talk to you and get you the fuck out the door.”

That was true enough. But somehow he had a feeling that none of this was going to be as easy as Bob was implying.