9

It occurred to Angel that maybe he should get into some shade, since no one was sure if sunlight was going to come streaming if the black shell broke or not, but that would have required him navigating the very fluid, unstable reality around them outside of Bren’s protective shadow, and that itself was just another can of worms. In other words, he was fucked no matter how they went about it. That’d teach him to be noble.

The reality spasms seemed to be slowing, although the cracking across the sky hadn’t done much else, and Bren was getting visibly nervous. “Is this a result or not?”

Then Logan heard the song coming from the Way Station and its previously quiet jukebox, and knew it was over. “Bob did it. Reignet is powerless, he just doesn’t know it yet.”

“How do you know?” Bren asked.

“The song.” Angel and Bren listened, and as he assumed they heard Soul Asylum’s “Somebody To Shove”, Logan explained, “It’s one of Bob’s theme songs. Be glad he didn’t pick the Mr. Bungle one.”

“He has a theme song?’ Angel repeated. “More than one?”

Logan nodded wearily. “He has picked out a couple for me too. The one I really don’t get is “Rhinosaur”.”

“The Soundgarden song?” Bren asked, although there was probably only one song in the entire history of time with that name. He thought about it for a moment, grimacing in thought. “Yeah, that’s a puzzler.”

Ammy must have realized that, as she hit the warlock with another spell like green fire, and Willow followed suit, although the flames shooting from her hands were more red. They clashed against the sides of Reignet’s reality bubble, and it seemed to flicker like it had lost power before completely dying. He looked pretty surprised by that.

“Mate, you had to attack on my street? Bad form,” Bob said, appearing at the corner of the street behind Reignet. He was now wearing a t-shirt that said ‘My Other Ride Is Your Mom‘. Talk about bad form …

Reignet gave him an evil look, and asked, “Who the hell are you?”

“I the hell am Bob, although your kind might know me better as the Drai’shajan.” Reignet went both still and shockingly pale - yes, he knew what that meant. “Oh, and I have nothing to do with that,” Bob added, pointing up at the cracking black shell of the sky. “I don’t have that kind of power. Kid, you call the Gorgons?”

It took Bren a moment to realize he was addressing him. “Um, yeah. Shouldn’t I have?”

“No, hey, great move. You must have asked nicely. Which also means, Jean-Claude, you really don’t want to be here when they finish breaking that down. Can you guess what they’re gonna do to you? The Sisters don’t have a broad palette, but that one thing they do, they do really well.”

Reignet conjured up a spell and threw it at Bob, but Bob just waived his hand dismissively, and the spell, whatever it was, never seemed to reach him. “Oh please. Don’t you get it yet? Balor decided you’re not worth the trouble. You’ve been fired, mate. Welcome to the wonderful world of unemployment.”

Reignet’s eyebrows drooped severely, a lifetime’s worth of creases appearing on his forehead. “That - that isn’t possible.”

“So he’s finally at our mercy?” Willow asked evilly, giving him a savage grin that would have made a lesser man shit his pants.

“Oh good,” Rogue said, cracking her knuckles.

“I don’t know,” Ammy said. “What do you think, grand?”

“Well, it’d be funny to leave him for the Gorgons,” Bob admitted, rubbing his chin in a parody of deep thought. “I’ve always wanted a stone statue of a prick out in front of the bar.” He looked around, and looked towards them. “Angel, do you want him?”

“Angel?” Reignet repeated.

Bob had obviously seen through Willow’s glamour, in a way that only he could. Willow said something and waived her hands and made it drop, so he actually looked like himself again. Reignet looked like he was going to hit him with a spell, but Bob said, “Don’t even think it.”

Angel shook his head. “I want nothing to do with him. I’m sorry about what happened to your family, but how many people have you killed in your lifetime, Reignet? As many as me, more? Black magic is deadly, it kills, and you brought them in to kill right along with you. What was the point?”

Reignet gave him a hateful glare that probably would have killed, had Bob allowed it. “You don’t speak to me that way, monster!”

“He’s an addict,” Giles said, appearing outside the bar. “Black magic poisons you, and at a certain point, you become lost. You serve the magic rather than have it serve you. He’s a husk, a shell of a man. He probably doesn’t even know why he’s hunting you anymore.”

“Yes I do! He’s a butcher who doesn’t deserve to walk the face of the earth!”

“He’s atoning,” Bob said. “What have you done?” He made a show of looking around. “Trying to destroy a city? Crackin’ hell, mate, that ain’t no way to start.”

Reignet glared at him, trembling with rage, hands balling into fists at his side. He took a step towards Bob, but Ammy raised her hands in a defensive manner, and said, “Don’t you dare, dickface.” She looked to Bob, and added, “I can toast ‘im.”

“No. You kill him with magic, and you’re as bad as he is.”

Logan sighed, and said, “I’ll do it.” What was a bit more blood on his hands? It didn’t matter much anymore.

Bob held up his hand. “None of us have to do a damn thing. And you know why, don’t you, Jean-Claude?”

Reignet’s look still could have blistered paint, but Logan was catching a distinct scent of fear. “Were you a servant of hell, was that it?”

Bob ignored the question. Logan figured the jukebox now playing Pansy Division’s “Musclehead” was all the response Reignet was going to get about that. “You cheated a lot of people out of their lives, Jean, but their burned out souls can’t get revenge, can they? Some dead just don’t have a voice. But you used your power to screw with a universal power, and I don’t think it much likes that. You do know what I’m talking about, don’t you?”

Reignet looked both wary and confused, apparently not sure, but Bren quietly said, “Ooh. Can Bob do that?”

“Do what?” Logan asked.

But Angel simply snorted, and said, “He’s Bob. He can do anything he wants.”

Bob was staring at Reignet in such a cold way that it was almost as palpable as a cool breeze, and Reignet actually took a step back. It was the first smart thing he’d done all day, but it was too late. “You can feel it, can’t you Jean? It’s been looking for you for a long time, and now it’s found you.”

Reignet was shaking his head. “I have no idea what you’re tal -” he cut his own sentence short with a pained groan, and Logan noticed Reignet’s arm. At first he thought it was shrinking, but then he realized it was simply his skin growing taut, becoming thin and leathery as the muscles and tendons in his arm began to contract and atrophy, and Reignet finally looked at it, saw what was going on, and screamed.

The universal constant that Reignet had fooled was time. And now it was catching up with him.

Bob gave him an evil grin. “I hope you like filing, ‘cause Balor has a lot for you to do. But you’d be surprised how fast a millennium can go. Oh, wait, I meant slow. Sorry.”

He dropped to his knees as his skin continued to pull tight against his wasting frame, becoming dried and wrinkled, until he looked like an Egyptian mummy dressed in funereal clothes, his white hair turning steel grey and shedding from his scalp like he’d been bathed in radiation. Finally he fell over, his bones clattering loose from his decayed clothes, his desiccated skin turning to dust and blowing away across the asphalt.

“Did you do that?” Rogue asked.

Bob straightened up and shook his head. “Time did that. It’s been waitin’ for him for a long time. No pun intended.” Logan noticed his t-shirt had changed from the insult to a “Flight of the Conchords” one, and the jukebox was now playing The Pretenders’ “Time The Avenger”. Cute.

There was a louder cracking noise, like a glacier had just broken in half down the street, and the blackness started to fall away from the sky, revealing the odd glow of a Los Angeles night, a sort of sepia toned darkness that was a night sky polluted by light and smog. Bob looked up at the sky, even though there was nothing to see, and shouted, “Thanks girls, but the dude’s already dead. He pissed off a lot of people. He was a real wanker.”

There was silence, and everyone, including Bren, looked around, but there was no sign of the Sisters or a response. Finally, after waiting for several seconds, Bren asked, “Are they cool with that?”

Bob shrugged. “We’re not dead, so I’m gonna say yeah.”

Rogue raised her eyebrows. Her eyes were still faintly red. “Was that an actual possibility?”

“A very minor one,” Bob replied, measuring out a centimeter with his thumb and forefinger. “Of course, Bren was never in danger, but the rest of us … well …”

“Nice to know,” Angel snapped sarcastically. He gazed down at the remains of Reignet for a moment, then kicked the pile of cloth, sending a bone that was once part of his arm rolling across the street. “I almost feel bad for him. I did something horrible to his family.”

“And how many horrible things had he done to other people’s families?” Giles countered. “He slaughtered entire villages to power himself. There were no heroes or victims here, Angel, just victims.”

There was the distant but rapidly approaching sound of a motor, and a motorcycle careened around the corner, going a bit too fast, but then again, how was he to know there’d be people standing in the middle of the road? But Kier at least had vampire reflexes, and was able to steer the bike onto the currently empty sidewalk before bringing the bike to a halt. “Jesus people, don’t you know no one walks in L.A.?”

Bren let out a sigh or relief and crossed the street to meet him. “Where the hell did you get the bike?”

“Oh, I dusted the owner, and I figured why the hell leave it? I mean, it was just gonna get stolen or towed.”

“So you figured you’d steal it,” Angel replied, although in a wry manner.

“It’d be a shame to let a Harley go to waste,” Kier said, grinning at him. He hopped off the bike, and he and Bren embraced like they just collapsed into each other. The kid must have been worried about Kier, but why he had no idea. Yeah, Kier was a young vampire, but he still had an edge over most of the newbies.

“Aww,” Rogue commented, retrieving her gloves from her pocket and pulling them back on. “You guys are so cute. It makes me depressed.”

“Just broke up?” Willow guessed.

“A little while ago, but yeah. And it ain’t exactly easy for me to date, since …” she held up her gloved hands, and let that fill in the blanks for her. It must have, since Willow nodded.

“Yeah, I could see where not being able to touch anyone could be a problem.”

“But hey, it was a big help today,” Bob pointed out, with one of his patented shit eating grins. The fact that he hadn’t taken away her power yet meant he pretty much didn’t want to. But that didn’t mean he wouldn’t if she asked, it just meant he was stalling. She scowled at him like she knew that.

Bob shifted his gaze to him. “So mate, wanna help me hunt down a Kalivrana?”

Logan sighed, running a hand through his hair. “Do I have a choice?”

“Sure ya do. I just thought you might be dyin’ for some action.”

He knew him too well. It was really a pisser.

****

He and Bob headed back for Angel’s office, with Bob advising him to “keep his nose open” (ha) for a strange smell that was kind of crow like, but kind of not. That could have been more vague and unhelpful, but that would have been hard.

It did give him a chance to ask if time was looking for him. Bob assured him that time knew exactly where he was - he was aging, just very slowly. It should have been comforting, but somehow it wasn’t.

Much like that strange smell. Logan picked it up within a block of Angel Investigations. Sure, it was hard to parse out amongst the various L.A. smells of smog and exhaust, but it was there - a scent of crows with a taint of something that could have been smoke, and could have been vinyl, and wasn’t quite either. He looked up and saw large crows lining the roofs of buildings up and down the street, nearly blending into the darkness.

Bob had changed his scent, so he’d smell more “dead” to the Kalivrana and hopefully attract him. It didn’t happen immediately, but as soon as he turned onto the main street, he saw a huge cloud of birds converging in the center of the road, eventually coalescing into a dark humanoid shape. “What are you supposed to be?” a rough voice asked. It almost sounded like a chorus of crows morphed into a voice.

Logan paused and crossed his arms over his chest. “Consider me a friend, for the moment. The guy who hired you is dead - the contract is null and void. Leave the city now, before I hafta kill you.”

He made a noise that could have been a laugh, or maybe he was coughing something up - it was really hard to tell. “You’ll do that, sure. Are you alive or dead? You don’t smell right.”

“I was changed to have more of a dead scent to get your attention. I’m Human.”

“Then you couldn’t understand, can you? I got my money, but I’m really doing this for fun. L.A. has a great assortment of vampires, every single one a treat. This is a hell of a lot better than Mumbai.”

“There are vampires all over the fucking place. Want variety? Try New York or London. You’re no longer welcome here.”

It laughed, a noise of a beak tapping on a tin can. He showed a mouthful of teeth that could have been made of granite. “How do you plan to stop me, Human? Sue?”

Logan let his arms fall loose and popped his claws. “I have other ways of disarming you.”

That pecking/chuckling noise got worse, and his eyes gleamed like oil. “Is that all? Pathetic. What are you gonna do, pick my teeth for me?”

Bob suddenly appeared behind him, clearing his throat. “Hello Thom. Do you like existing?”

The Kalivrana stopped laughing, and its plumage seemed to stiffen. “Oh shit. You.”

“Yep. This is my territory. Are you going now, or does my friend here cut you up for chum?”

His cloak fluttered around him like a giant pair of wings. “Christ, Kama, I thought you were still in Australia …”

“I’m in a lot of different places. And you know, I haven’t seen Ganesha for a while. Shall we pay him a visit?”

His wings fluttered again. “I’m going.” And with that, he exploded into dozens of different ink black birds and flew off into the night.

Logan looked back at Bob suspiciously. “You knew it?”

“There’s a couple different Kalivranas running around this dimension. I didn’t know it was him ‘til I saw him.”

He didn’t know if he bought that, but he didn’t see why Bob would have sat on that knowledge. “Wait a sec. He called you Kama, and you threatened him with Ganesha. Does that mean the Kali in his name is significant?”

Bob grinned slyly. “Good on ya, mate! Yeah, it’s significant. Kali made ‘em.”

“Made them to kill vampires? Why?”

Bob shrugged. “Honestly? Probably shits and giggles. Kali was like that.”

Logan was getting the impression that most of the gods were like that, but he kept that observation to himself.

*****

When Logan got back to Bob’s place, he was so exhausted he decided to just sack out now and move to a cheap hotel room later on. Besides, Bob was still at the bar, putting the glamour back up, so he wouldn’t be home for ages.

Still, he didn’t expect to fall asleep so fast. Nor did he expect to be thrown right into a dream.

But almost immediately he realized it wasn’t a dream at all. He was sitting at a table at an outdoor café, and judging by the buildings around him and the cars in the street, he guessed he was somewhere in England. Not London, but hardly a small city. It was sunny but not too warm, and he looked around, trying to figure out if he’d ever been here before. He was pretty sure he hadn’t.

Suddenly a man sat down in the chair across from him. He was early middle aged, blandly good looking but rather unremarkable, with a thick head of dark brown hair swept back to reveal a high forehead and pale brown eyes. Logan had never seen him before in his life.

Before he could ask him who the hell he was, the man looked at him with the faintest of ironic smiles, and said, “We have a problem. You’re looking for me, and I really don’t want to be found.”

It was the voice that gave him away. In real life it had probably changed due to the vocal chords of the man he inhabited, but here, in a mindscape, it was the same as it always was.

Logan felt a coldness grip him, and he just sat there for a moment, not sure what to say or do.

It was Xavier.