Oh, what the hell. Well meaning but ineffectual Westerner, right? “What did the kid do?”

The kid was maybe ten, just starting to look gangly, eyes wide and desperate in a dark face. “I’m hungry, I just -” he began, before Ahmed yanked up hard on his ear, cutting him off.

“Shut it, you little rat,” he spat, dragging him towards the back.

Actually, not a he - a she. But dressed like a he, hair cut ragged and short to the scalp, wearing a dark red shirt that was just big enough to be concealing. She was attempting to “pass”, probably because it was much easier to be a boy here than it was to be a girl. He was probably the only one who knew besides her because he could smell the difference, although pretty soon she wasn’t going to be able to hide her gender that well from others. That helped him decide, mostly because he wasn’t sure what would happen to her if they discovered she was a girl, and not just a typical gutter rat. He turned towards Ahmed, perched on his stool in a way that clearly suggested he would intercept him if he tried to walk past. “Let the kid go.”

Ahmed got a look on his face that seemed to say “Stupid bleeding heart asshole”. “Little thieves like this are always trying to steal from the hotel. They’re vermin.”

He could have decked him with a single punch, but Chandler wouldn’t handle it that way. So Logan reached into his pocket, and pulled out a wad of colorful bills, which he threw on the bar top. “I’ll buy it. Let ‘im go.”

Ahmed looked at him, then at the money, and repeated the gesture. After a moment’s hesitation, he shoved the kid towards him and scooped up the money in a single movement. “You could buy better,” he grumbled, returning behind the bar.

He meant he’d buy what the kid had stolen, but Ahmed must have thought he meant he’d buy the kid. The kid who stood there, stiff as a board, must have thought the same thing. Her eyes were full of cunning, like she was waiting for a chance to make a break for it. “You wanna earn some money, kid?”

She looked at him warily, like a scared rabbit. “I don’t -”

“I’m lookin’ for a guide,” he interrupted, before she could say something offensive.

That caught her up short. “Huh?”

“A guide, someone to show me around the city, the parts the stupid white people ain’t supposed to see. Think you’re up for that?”

She didn’t trust him, that was clear, but she was intrigued - especially when he pulled out the Asraharan equivalent of a twenty dollar bill. Her eyes glowed with avarice. “And what else?”

“Nothin’. Although, if you take me where I want to go without the “you can’t go there” bullshit, there’s more where this came from.”

He let her get mesmerized by the cash, then held it down to her, where she ripped it out of his hand faster than Ahmed. Twenty bucks would actually let her have some decent meals for a change, although not for long. It occurred to him that he was leading himself into a trap, that he’d be unable to divorce himself from guilt about what happened to this kid, but that was probably something to worry about later.

She shoved it in the front pocket of her jeans, and asked, “So, uh, where is it you wanna go? There’s a whorehouse -”

“Not what I’m interested in,” he told her, gulping down the rest of his beer. He slid off his stool, and said, “C’mon, let’s walk and talk.”

He led her through the hotel lobby, and ignored the hostile looks the staff gave her until they were safely outside. Once there, they barely got any glances from passers by, and the girl remained tense, ready to bolt if things went south. “What’s your name, kid?”

She hesitated. “Ali.”

He didn’t expect a real name, so he wasn’t surprised. He wondered if It was at all related to her real name, or just one she chose at random. “Okay, Ali, what I’m lookin’ for is where the other Westerners go, where they hang out. I know it can’t just be the hotel bar.”

She looked a little confused, brow furrowing over large charcoal colored eyes. “The missionaries generally stay near the church …”

He shook his head, puling a cigar out of his coat. The smoke would cover up some of the more overwhelming street smells. “I don’t mean those guys, and I think you know it. I mean the ones no one’s supposed to talk about, the ones who pretend they ain’t here. I think you know who I’m talking about.”

From the fear coming off her, yes she did. “Are you stupid? Almost no one ever sees them and lives to tell about it. I don’t care how much money you pay me, Mister - it isn’t worth dying for.”

He lit his cigar, took a deep puff, and let the scent of the smoke blur the other scents in the air. “You said almost. You know someone who has seen them but isn’t dead yet?”

She shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot, glancing around as if appealing for help. “I … I dunno. He lies a lot.”

“Take me to him. I’ll be the judge of that.”

Her look was dubious, and not very friendly. “Who are you exactly?”

“Logan Chandler, reporter for the Toronto Sun newspaper. I’m also loaded.” He let her see some more cash before shoving it back in her pocket. “Do we have a deal, Ali?”

She seemed torn, divided between the urge to earn easy money and the urge to not get involved. But the fact that she was taking so long to make up her mind was actually a good sign - she couldn’t quite bring herself to say no. Finally, she said, “When I wanna go, I’m gonna go, okay? No strings.”

He nodded in agreement, wondering how old she was. She looked ten, but being a girl passing for a boy, she was probably older. “No strings,” he concurred, and offered her his hand to shake. She did, and gave him a briefly funny look. She squeezed his hand, and might have been surprised at how hard the bones in his hand seemed to be.

He had no intention of getting her mixed up in this anyways. All she had to do was point him in the right direction, and get the hell out of the way.

There were just some things that no kid needed to see.

7

He’d hoped to put some salsa on his eggs, but when he open the jar, he saw little lumps of grey fuzz in it. Why hadn’t anyone warned him that salsa could get moldy? Damn, that was depressing. He had little packets of taco sauce among his collection of assorted condiments, but it just wasn’t the same.

Brendan sat down and ate his eggs while trying to help Sid sort out his problems. That was hardly a small order.

First of all, it was easy to establish that Sid wasn’t quite sure what happiness was, as the idea of happiness beat into his head when he was growing up was service to his master to the best of his ability - that was it. That was the only thing that was supposed to make him happy. All else was frivolity beneath a warrior, a weakness to be avoided and abhorred, along with other emotions, which were all things that could be exploited by an enemy. “Jesus, it sounds like you were raised Klingon,” Bren commented, shaking his head. What did he know about Rajan? It was an island principality, kind of like Bahrain but a bit more restrictive, and that was about it.

Sid looked at him curiously, cocking his head like a puzzled parrot. “Klingon?”

“Forget it. Did you ever get the idea that this was all bullshit?”

That stare continued, not so much uncomprehending as not getting him personally. “It’s not bullshit. Emotions can be easily exploited.”

“No, I mean …” he sighed wearily, took a gulp of his beer, and switched the topic to how things were going at the school. They were going as they always did, which meant just a tad weird for him.

Bren knew from experience that some of the mutant kids disdained the Eden kids as “not really mutants”, since they were all genetically engineered, and all had the same ability (well, they had armor as skin - it wasn’t really an ability or a power; it was just what they were). While Sid was the oldest of the Eden kids, they all looked to him as an unofficial leader, and yet there was a division among the Eden kids, as the Rajani ones were all male and one race (Arabic), while the Eden kids pulled out of Canada by Logan and Bob were from a wide mix of races, were both male and female, and while raised to be a nearly invincible army as well, they still had a bit more freedom than the Rajani ones, as well as less of the brutal, emotionally divorced training that they’d had. Some of the meaner kids referred to the Rajani kids as “mini Terminators”. They were so remote, so detached, they were a bit scary, and the fact that even the six year old had been drilled on more self-de! fense techniques than anyone else knew existed just added to the drama. But none of that was their fault - how could they help being created and raised by sadists who saw them as cannon fodder and a means to an end, not Human beings? They lucked out that there wasn’t a language barrier, since the kids were taught English along with Arabic, although they did have a tendency to speak English with a British accent. (Why? Even Sid didn’t know.)

But Sid didn’t necessarily like being the “leader” of these kids. Yes, he was a natural, but he was also a natural loner, as personal attachments were frowned upon among the Rajani guards. (Okay, that was a bit more Vulcan than Klingon.) Now he had to deal with his subordinate “guards”, whom he could simply order around, and these strange kids who weren’t his guards, and wouldn’t necessarily take his orders. Then there was the whole issue of being in the big stew of teenage hormones, which no amount of crushing repression could totally squash. Apparently Bobby got mad at him for flirting with Rogue, which really puzzled him, as he wasn’t sure how to flirt. He had to tell him not to worry about it, Bobby was probably being pissy because Rogue pretty much flirted with everyone. Unless she had recently absorbed Logan, then she cursed a lot and became sullen, and complained about the lack of beer.

And then some of the Eden kids resented him, because Sid was treated a bit differently than the rest of them. Even the mean kids were deferential around him, and of course now he’d been accepted by the staff as a fill in for Logan when he wasn’t around to teach the self-defense class. But the fact that he was a substitute teacher won him no points; the fact that he fought some deranged saboteur to a standstill, even with a grievous injury, was what got him the respect. Even the bitchy kids had to admit that that was just fucking impressive. It put him in the rarefied pantheon of people who ran towards danger as opposed to from it, and was spoken about in the same hushed tones as Logan’s attack on the soldiers who invaded the school.

But Sid didn’t get that that was impressive. That was his job, what he’d been designed for, what he’d been prepared for all his life. He was supposed to fight until his opponent was defeated or withdrew; his life was irrelevant, and totally beside the point. In a fight, he never thought about his own safety, as it wasn’t among the goals drilled into his head. Scott had been working on that, trying to get him to realize that he had to think about his own well being, but he was still puzzled about the why of it as long as he got the job done. There were others ready to take his place if he died; he wasn’t special.

This was the part about Sid that made him want to beat his head against the wall until it was bloody. He was special - he was Saddiq. There was no replacement for who he was. (The number his “trainers” did on him! Bren hoped he’d meet them someday, so he could beat the shit out of them.)

“The one time I think I was happy was during the fight,” Sid offered hesitantly. “I felt good; I was fulfilling my duty.”

Bren shook his head and rubbed his eyes. “Okay, there’s so much wrong with that statement. You don’t have a “duty” anymore, Sid - you’re a free man. You can do whatever you want, not just what someone told you you were only good for. Okay? Genetics isn’t always destiny. Hell, look at me, I’m half demon. I should be sucking someone’s brain out through a straw or something.”

The puzzled look returned. “I thought you were a peaceful type of demon.”

He waved his hand in the air, repressing the urge to fling his empty beer can at him. “Not the point, Sid. The point is you can do whatever you want now. You don’t just have to be a kamikaze bodyguard.”

“But I’m proud of my skills.”

“That’s not …” he gave up with a sigh, and stood up, taking his plate out to the sink. “Okay, you know what? Let’s go talk to Angel. Maybe he’s better at this kind of thing.”

Sid stood, wariness returning along with his parade rest posture. “What type of thing is it you’re trying to do?”

Bren let his plate drop in the sink, and hung his head, reminding himself that Sid could kick his ass and barely move while doing it. Demon or not, he was totally outclassed. After he was certain he wasn’t going to lose his temper, he told him, “That’s a damn good question. I’m not sure anymore.”

He wasn’t going to be hanging out that therapist shingle anytime soon, that was for sure.

***

The new head cheese of the Wolfram and Hart L.A. branch was a man named Harrison Ames, a man he’d never met before, but oddly enough, he felt like he had.

It didn’t help that he was yet another middle aged white guy in an expensive but conservative Prada suit, who exuded an air of smug, evil contentment. Ames didn’t even make a show of standing up when he and Gavin came in; he simply looked up from his oversized, ornately carved desk of some endangered rainforest wood, and set aside a piece of paper and a quill pen dipped in blood.

He was about fifty years old, with short, well coifed white hair and his skin pulled so tautly across his face you could easily make out the contours of his skull, and his gray eyes seemed ready to bulge out of their sockets. Too many facelifts? Or was he born while being fired out of a cannon? “Ah, my predecessor,” he said, with false amiability. “You know, I was expecting your visit sooner…”

“Can the bullshit,” Angel snapped, taking the folded newspaper out from his inside coat pocket and throwing it down on his desk. It was a copy of the L.A. Times from two days ago, open to a story on the “Loveless Killer”’s latest victim. “You think I can live this long and not know a ritualistic murder when I see it? This is one of your clients, isn’t it? Not in my city. This stops now.”

Ames looked down at the paper with an imperious raised eyebrow. The window wall behind him showed the broad red sky and bruise colored clouds of a Los Angeles sundown, the smaller buildings surrounding the Wolfram and Hart tower shadowed to the point where they looked like tombstones. Angel considered kicking him through the window, but he was Human, and that probably would weigh on his conscience. After a moment’s hesitation, Ames decided not to bother lying, and glanced up at him like he was about to order lunch. “And what will you do if it doesn’t?”

Bastard. Well, to run a place like this, you had to be a stone cold one, and frankly if he had said it would stop now, he’d never have believed him. “The next victim will be your client. I suggest you get him out of here for his own safety, otherwise you may not have a retainer to collect.” He spun on his heels and stormed towards the door, not sure where Gavin had gone or why he should care.

“Stay out of our business, Angel, and we’ll stay out of yours,” Ames said in a deceptively friendly manner. It was a silky threat, almost cheerful.

Angel shot him a final evil glare before slamming the door behind him. Ames’s receptionist was on the phone, and more than happy to ignore him, so she didn’t notice that he had slowed his walk and kept an ear cocked towards Ames’s door, his hearing extended as far as he could allow. Vampire hearing wouldn’t really qualify as “super” - Logan had proven in the past that he could hear better - but he was above a Human, especially when he was pushing himself. And he thought he heard Ames say, over the telephone, “Deploy them.”

Was that the friendly welcome for the old head of the firm? Shameful.

He rode the elevator down to the lobby, working hard to suppress a smile. How dumb did they think he was? Perhaps as dumb as he knew they were in their strangely tenacious arrogance.

Because the sun was down, he walked out through the lobby, getting evil looks from the guards now on duty, and he gave them an insincere smile and Hollywood wave as he walked out the smoky glass doors and into the newborn night.

The sky was the odd blue of twilight, not quite dark enough to seem like true night, but not bright enough to hurt. As he strolled past approaching lawyers and interns, some paused and stared at him, giving him a wide berth. Had they circulated his picture among the employees? He wasn’t sure if he should laugh or be offend.

He had just hit the sidewalk when he caught a scent on the wind; it was a smell like corruption, wet fur, and cigarettes. It was also vaguely familiar. The well trimmed shrubbery around the grounds rustled, and he’d felt the eyes watching him long before they moved. So who did Ames “deploy”? He hated waiting to see.

Finally he sensed someone behind him and turned to see a man dressed like a Goth, with a twist of fake dreads in his long black hair, and an all black wardrobe with a ripped Bauhaus t-shirt as the centerpiece. Angel made a show of looking him up and down slowly, a smile creeping up his face. “Sorry, but I don’t give autographs.”

The man spit on the sidewalk before him, just missing his boots. “Asshole,” he said, with a heavy French accent. “You bloodsuckers are always so arrogant.”

Angel sensed the others surrounding him now, still in Human form, but clearly itching to transform. It was the rest of the Loups Rouges, the European werewolf cult. He had a feeling they wouldn’t get scared off so easily, especially since they killed one of them. Well, technically Brendan killed one of them with a silver arrow, but he wasn’t about to let them know that. “I have every right to be arrogant .I took out one of you fleabags, didn’t I?”

He snarled, an inhuman noise more canine than Human, and it was echoed by the five werewolves behind Angel. “For Yves,” he growled, and said the words that suddenly triggered all their transformations in a frightening blur or speed, clothes ripping and falling away as bones snapped and reset themselves, skin boiling as fur sprung through skin and muscles lengthened with a sound like raw meat being dragged across a rough floor.

Angel did the only thing he actually could. He vaulted over the nearest transforming wolf and ran for it, across the broad swath of lawn on the far side of Wolfram and Hart’s building, and made for the industrial area just beyond them. He didn’t dare look back, as he knew the wolves were already running after him, and would catch him as soon as the pain of rapid transformation faded. Normally he wouldn’t even bother to be concerned about werewolves, but the Red Wolves were different - the control of their transformation also allowed them to retain some Human consciousness within their werewolf brains. This allowed them to hunt in a pack and not tear each other to pieces; and they would know the only way to kill him would be to rip his head off. They would try.

They wouldn’t succeed, but the least he could do for them was give them a good chase.

8

Normally it wasn't advisable to follow a street urchin into the heart of an unfamiliar city, into the twisty back alleys towards a place where foreigners were never seen alive, but even incognito, Logan couldn't be most people.

He knew he should have some anxiety about this, but anxiety was impossible to fake well if at all. Besides, he figured Chandler would try and pretend to be nonchalant, macho asshole that he was. He'd try and bluff his way through all this.

He got the kid to talk, mostly to avoid answering question about himself, but the kid was as evasive as he generally was. "Ali" admitted to being an orphan but wouldn't talk about her parents at all; she also said she was twelve, a bit older than he expected, but it made sense.

The guy she was bringing him to was named Amir, and the more run down the area they were in, the more nervous she got. As well as being a notorious liar, Amir ran at least one of the gangs, and he apparently wasn't very nice. (What a shock.) She advised him to bribe the "guardians" immediately, as buying safe passage was the only way to go about it. She asked him several times if he really wanted to do this, and he was picking up the vibe that she was afraid he would be killed. It probably wasn't personal at all; she just didn't want to be the accessory to a crime that warranted the death penalty.

He got lots of funny looks from the natives, people with hot and hollow eyes glaring at him from the shadows of run down hovels that could have been post-apocalyptic New York City tenements - or a relatively middle of the road slums in New Delhi - and he couldn't say he blamed their knee jerk hostility. The West ignored them unless they wanted something, and propped up a leader who was a nightmare to his own people, simply because he was more open to their policies. Politics sucked, and it was rarely the politicians who suffered.

A warren of alleys that reeked of shit and piss finally gave way to what appeared to be an open dirt courtyard, made muddy by recent rains. Buildings like British row houses in slow collapse ringed the courtyard, making it a natural dead end. There was barely enough space between the homes for a cat to slip through, and laundry hung on ropes suspended between windows, neighbors sharing a line. Walls were the color of baked adobe, cloudy white, and an infected sort of yellow. Some of them showed deep cracks and fissures from the last earthquake, and two of the buildings looked like they were leaning against one another at an angle, two drunks miraculously holding each other up.

The remarkable but not surprising thing was all the faces glaring at him from behind windows, looking down at him from second floor balconies, were children. Maybe were teenagers old enough to be adults in at least a technical sense (and he saw at least one teenage girl holding a baby), but there were many of the gutter rats, kids barely in double digit ages who had banded together for safety and survival.

A group of seven teenage males sauntered out from the shadows of an open home, its door lost to time and violence. They ranged from maybe fourteen to nineteen, from five six to six three, from skinny as a rail to growing plump on bathtub rotgut. Their eyes reflected nothing but a simmering, aimless rage.

"What the fuck you'd bring that back for, Ali?" One of them - presumably the leader, said, chewing on the end of a hand rolled cigarette.

Ali shifted nervously from foot to foot, and he could smell her sudden fear. They hadn't asked for money; perhaps that was bothering her. "He's a reporter, he wants to talk to Amir. He's doing a story on the -"

"Like we give a shit," the boy snarled, getting right into his face, so close that Logan could feel the heat from the cigarette tip. He could smell a miasma of smoke - both cigarette and opium - booze and body odor, with a vicious tang of testosterone. "You know you ain't leaving here, right?"

Logan met his gaze with studied boredom. He didn't want to hurt a kid, but acting like a thug was going to make it infinitely easier. "I am. And we can do this the easy way or the hard way. Your choice."

The boy on the right hand side of the leader, a tall drink of polluted water with a narrow, rodential face, snickered coldly. “Ooh. The Yank thinks we’ve never seen the same stupid ass action films he has.”

“I’m not a Yank, dumbass. I’m Canadian.”

One of the plumper ones scoffed, flicking his cigarette butt on the muddy ground near Logan’s feet. “Big fucking difference. You all bleed the same.”

“Not necessarily. You can take some cash and move on. This doesn’t have to be ugly.” This was their final warning. He could fight them and keep his cover, as long as he wasn’t injured too severely, or unleashed his claws. Canadian Intelligence must have been worried he’d be unable to avoid fighting, as they’d written into Chandler’s back story that he had been an amateur level kickboxer in college. Cute. But did that mean they didn’t trust him not to get in a fight?

Ali had slipped away out of fear as the circle closed in on him, and one of the boys grabbed him from behind, while the leader punched him right in the stomach. It actually hurt - which really pissed him off. He snapped his head back, shattering the boy’s nose, and he kicked the leader right in the balls, hard enough that he’d probably be lucky to keep his testicles. Yeah, it was low, but Chandler probably wasn’t above it.

As the leader dropped to his knees, grabbing his balls and making a high keening noise in the back of his throat, the boy with the broken nose fell backwards, landing in the mud with a wet plop. Someone rushed in from the side, but he met then with a hard elbow that sent them skidding down to the ground, while another boy pulled out a large switchblade and slashed at him wildly. He heard it rip his shirt even as he jumped back, but before the boy could do much else, he grabbed the boy’s extended arm and yanked him to the side, swinging around behind him and bringing the boy’s arm up until he had him holding the knife up to his own throat. The boy struggled, but Logan locked his other arm in a solid grip, and pressed the blade up tight against his throat, just beneath his Adam’s apple.

He heard the familiar sound of a gun being cocked, and turned, bringing the boy with him like an inadvertant Human shield, to see a lanky boy, with a face so badly mutilated that his left eye was hidden somewhere beneath a mass of scar tissue, aiming a handgun at him. It looked like an American military issue from a couple of years ago, something with some stopping power, and from the way the boy held it, he knew how to use it. ”I don’t want to hurt anyone,” Logan told him. “But I’m not gonna let you hurt me either.”

Someone started clapping languidly, sarcasm heavily implied, and he glanced up at the second floor balcony of the row house directly parallel to him. Standing up there was the oldest looking kid yet, probably twenty, lean and tall, wearing only loose clay colored linen pants. His exposed chest was flat and hairless, with a light crisscrossing of old scars across his torso, the lingering remnants of old knife wounds. A joint dangled lazily from the corner of his mouth, and it didn’t even shift as he sneered. His hair was the color of driftwood, and cut rather sloppily, as if he’d done it himself with a slightly dull hunting knife, while his dark eyes were glazed by drugs, although not so much that they hid a basic animal cunning that you rarely saw outside of starving hyenas. He looked like nothing, a wisp of a boy with rough hewn features, but Logan knew this one was dangerous - those were the eyes of a killer, and there weren’t enough drugs in the world to hide it. This! had to be Amir.

“Not bad, journo - if that’s what you really are,” he drawled with a kind of cold amusement. “You have five seconds to tell me why Vik shouldn’t blow your fucking brains out.”