She really didn’t know what she was supposed to do. What did you do in situations like this? Okay, probably pull them out of the water, but did the people who made those rules include venturing down into a canyon that had just been blown up by … well, she wasn’t sure who blew it up. Could have been the others, could have been someone trying to kill the others. Either way, it was possible that the explosions and general slaughter wasn’t done yet. Still, she seemed to be the only thing moving around these parts, at least for now, so maybe she was safe. In a relative sense.

She carefully picked her way over the bigger, more stable chunks of rock, and wondered why she was bothering. He had to be dead - no one could have survived this, not even an other. But there was the possibility that he still had some money on him, and you hated to let that go to waste.

She wasn’t squeamish; she didn’t know many people who lived through the war that were, not to mention among the street people like her. (Although most people like to call them “gutter trash”, which she never thought was fair, as who actually lived in the gutters? No one she knew … ) She’d gone through the pockets of dead people before. She didn’t want to, but sometimes the choice was between starving or bothering the dead, and the dead were beyond caring what you did with them.

Pebbles and loose rocks shifted and fell as she climbed down, but she was good at picking out the solid surfaces, and never slipped. She eyed the river carefully, as it was darker than ever, and sloshing like water in a disturbed basin. Every now and again she thought she saw bits of things, but she tried not to focus on them, as honestly she didn’t want to know what they could possibly be. Her imagination was bad enough.

She reached him, and very carefully leaned down to grab his arm. The water kept moving, up to her elbow and then down to her wrist, and it was making her scared. She nearly drowned when she was six, swept away by a flash flood, and ever since she’d been afraid of rivers, which seemed especially unpredictable, although she wasn’t crazy about oceans either. Lakes and ponds didn’t bother her, though; they seemed placid and safe.

The guy was heavy, incredibly heavy, about two tons heavier than he actually appeared. And she thought the guys who said he was heavy were a bunch of wimps. It took all her strength to lift his arm, and that was the best she could do. So she bent his arm back as far as she could, pulling and tugging, hoping the sloshing water would help her, and finally it did - he shifted, and she got him to turn over on his back. How was he floating if he was this heavy? Maybe the rock was helping hold him up, since it looked like part of him was caught on it.

He wasn’t breathing, was he? He didn’t look like he was breathing, but she honestly wasn’t sure the way the water was moving him. He had what looked like jagged pebbles embedded in his face, and there was a big, jagged rip in the skin across his forehead, roughly diagonal, reaching from his hairline to the tip of his left eyebrow. The weird thing, though, was she could see metal underneath his skin since the water had washed the blood away, and after staring at it a moment, she figured it was shrapnel embedded in his skull. Yeah, it was strangely flat, but she knew from experience shrapnel could do weird things - she had a six inch scar down her right leg to prove it. If he took a piece of metal in the head, hard enough that it burrowed under his skin, he was dead for sure. But at least it was a faster death than drowning.

She considered reaching into his pants pockets, but she couldn’t search them without leaning far into the water, and she didn’t want to do that because it was too dangerous. So all of this was for nothing? She felt vaguely disappointed.

Oh well, she could go back to the Eurasia. Some of the maids felt sorry for her, so she figured she might be able to sneak into his room, see if he had any more cash or equipment with him …

She fell back and shrieked as he coughed.

It was a violent, choking cough, but he didn’t open his eyes or appear conscious until after twenty seconds of doing it, and then he sat up, grabbing the rock to keep himself buoyant, leaning back over the river to vomit up water. He said something in English - a short syllable, probably a curse - his voice so raspy it seemed clogged with gravel. He perched precariously on the edge of the largest rock, the water sometimes lapping up to waist level (although he didn’t seem concerned that he’d be washed out again, not as far as she could tell), and he sat there, head hanging down, water and blood cascading from him for a full half a minute. Maybe he had brain damage - the fact that he was still drawing breath was a miracle.

He looked around then, and stared at her with annoyance creasing his features. “What the hell are you doing here, kid? I told you to get -”

But she didn’t really hear the rest of what he was saying, because she was staring at his forehead. The place where the gash was, the slightly diagonal slash … it was smooth. There was no gash, no scar, no blood. Even the pieces of rock in his face, they were gone, and there was no sign they’d ever been there. Was she going insane? Had she been seeing things?

No, she wasn’t; she knew she wasn’t. There was only one answer, wasn’t there? And it scared her to the point where she was afraid she was going to piss herself, something she had managed not to do even while being carpet bombed. “You’re one of them!” She scrambled back hastily, heart pounding so fast and so hard she wondered if kids her age could have heart attacks.

“I’m not one of them,” he snapped, clearly lying. “Listen -”

But she wasn’t watching where she was going, and the rocks gave way beneath her, sending her falling.

Or almost. She screamed as she started to fall, but it turned into a strange yelp that stuck in her throat, as a wet, firm hand suddenly snatched her wrist and held her up, kept her from plunging deeper into the darkness. He hoisted her up with surprising strength, and pulled her back up to a more stable bit of rock. “I’m different, okay?” he said, letting her go. “But I’m not one of the others. I’m here to stop them.”

She rubbed her wrist, not because it hurt (much) but because he had touched it. And some of them were poisonous, weren’t they? At least that’s what Amir said. “Bullshit! Your kind stick together. Amir told me so.”

“Amir’s a fucking dirt bag who don’t know shit about me,” he replied sharply. “If I was one of them, why the hell did I take the beating? I could’ve killed every single one of his gang and him without breaking a sweat. But I didn’t ‘cause I’m not out to hurt you people. You’ve been hurt enough.”

She didn’t buy it. People who always claimed to tell you a lie for your own good were telling it for their own good. But he did have a point, kind of. “Why did you take the beating?”

“’Cause I didn’t want to blow my cover.”

“As a normal person?”

That made him scowl at her, and she thought he looked a bit like a wet wolf man. “No. I just didn’t want ‘em to be ready for me.”

“Who, Amir?”

“No - the others. Surprise is my main advantage until I can figure out how many people they got and what they can do.”

She looked at him suspiciously, and then scanned the rocks, wondering if she could get out of here without his help. She really didn’t think so, which was disappointing.

Now she had her answer as to why the weird guy was so weird - he was a freak. Was there enough money in the world to make her feel better about this?

Oh fuck, she was dead.

13

His head continued ringing like a bell for several minutes after climbing out of the river, and he just wanted to sit down and nurse his aching brain, but he knew that wasn’t going to happen. He was lucky, as he knew if he was normal he’d be dead from intracranial bleeding (he got hit hard enough to jostle his brain matter inside his skull - and wasn’t that always fun?) but it wasn’t much comfort as his head kept throbbing, and his healing factor made him feel like he had a raging fever. The kid being here was throwing him off too.

Was Jean actually there in his mind? Or was it his own mental representation of Jean? He knew from Bob memories that the Powers That Be had done something with Jean, but he didn’t know what. They had presumably removed Camaxtli from her, but beyond that Bob had no clue what else they did to her or with her. Bob honestly didn’t know; it was unlikely they’d kill her … but not out of the realm of possibility. It would depend on whether they thought of her as little more than insect or not.

He wished he could have talked to her, but he woke up coughing instead. “Where have I gone?” What did that mean? Did that mean she was out there somewhere, but even she didn’t know where she was? Did she know that the PTBs had altered her in some way, robbed her of her demi-godhood?

Or was that what he wanted to think? Bob honestly, genuinely feared that Jean was dead, that they had obliterated her along with Camaxtli’s energy because they just didn’t think about Humans except when they could be used to their advantage. Logan loathed that idea, and understood why Bob wanted nothing to do with them. It wasn’t Jean being killed that got to him; it was horrible, but he could live with it better if the PTB’s did it because they were angry at her for what she did while Camaxtli, or because it was policy to take out anyone touched by such a destructive god, He wouldn’t like it, but he could understand it; it would be a reason. To kill her because she was beneath their notice … there were no words for that. He hoped that Jean wasn’t just his own subconscious kicking her up, making him remember. He hoped Bob was wrong, and she was still alive … somewhere.

(How often had Bob been wrong?)

The pain and dizziness made him move slowly over the rocks, pretending to just be extra careful, although there was no way for the kid to notice, as she was just terrified of him, and that seemed to keep her busy. He eventually convinced her to climb on to his back and hang on to his neck, giving her a piggyback ride up to solid ground, as she was now shaking too much to be any good on her feet. Besides, he knew he wasn’t going to get hurt and he wasn’t going to fall, as he had a way to stop himself. The wooziness faded, though, the heat in his face finally starting to subside, and he figured his healing factor had finally taken care of the problem in his brain. If only it could heal everything else so easily.

As soon as they returned to more stable land, Ali got down and kept her distance, still reeking of fear yet not quite ready to run away. Her ignorant racism annoyed the shit out of him, but she was just a kid, and if Amir had been her teacher on the ways of the world, he was probably lucky she wasn’t a complete psychopath. He wasn’t completely sure who had just tried to kill him - the Organization or Black Fire, but ultimately he figured it didn’t matter. Black Fire couldn’t have been down in the canyon, of that he was sure. Maybe they were once, but surely they had moved on before the Org got wind of it. So where could they go? The government might be happily looking the other way, but they’d never given them official sanction so as not to potentially piss off any allies who might find out. So where would Black Fire have its base?

“Terrorists,” he muttered, and Ali jumped, startled, turning to look at him with deer in the headlight eyes.

“What?”

“Did the mujahadeen have any other bases around here? Or perhaps some of the “freedom fighters” in the civil war?”

She continued to stare at him like he was a ticking time bomb, and it was difficult not to be irritated. He wouldn’t hurt her - didn’t she get that by now? “Umm … some people say they used to use the old cannery in Masiri, but I dunno.”

Cannery? Could be a dead end, but it could also be an excellent cover. “Where in Masiri is it?”

That made her scoff. “It is Masiri. The government bombed it, and the cannery’s about the only thing left standing. Just look for the desert with the building it, and you’re there.”

That was perfect in many, many ways. “Go back to the hotel, kid, wait for me there. And I mean it this time.”

She almost laughed, but couldn’t quite manage it. Yeah, she’d have no problem getting away from him now. “You actually gonna pay me?”

“Yeah. I may be a mutant, but I’m good for my word. Now go before I change my mind.”

She started off, but paused and looked back at him from a safe distance. “What are you gonna do to ‘em?”

He fixed her with a stern gaze. “Do you really wanna know?”

She considered that for several seconds, then turned back and continued walking away.

*****

Maybe Giles had a rather negative attitude about the X-Men and Saddiq, but he couldn’t argue with results.

Sid had brought some of his equipment with him, including a tracer that Scott had slipped into his X-Men jacket. Sid was pretty sure he wasn’t supposed to know about it, but he pulled it out using a special type of hand held GPS scanner that read the tracer. Yet, in spite of that, Sid had kept the tracer - a little piece of metal about the size and shape of a watermelon seed - in his coat pocket, as he didn’t see that it was doing any harm. Now it had come in handy, as he gave it to Angel before he left, and Angel slipped it inside his shirt, just so they were ready for anything. As soon as Giles got the signal from Angel, Sid activated the GPS unit (which he’d also kept with him, for the same reason he’d kept the tracer), and reported, “The tracer just blinked out … no, it was a teleport. He’s now in Malibu.”

“That’s where this bastard lives, right?” Naomi asked from her place on the sofa. She looked tired, and was on her third cup of cappuccino, which seemed to be losing the battle to keep her awake, but this seemed to perk her up a bit.

“According to the information Mordred gave us, yes,” Giles replied, in a way that suggested he thought Mordred wasn’t the most trustworthy individual on the planet. Of course he wasn’t, but what could you do?

“So let’s get driving,” Bren said, springing up from his desk chair. This plan was just nuts, so he wanted to get it over with. The worst part of a potential execution was waiting to die.

Faith was sacked out in the break room, so he went to wake her up. She looked so peaceful - was she smiling? - he hated to wake her up, but you needed a Slayer in a situation like this. She was vital to the plan.

When calling her name didn’t seem to work, he shook her by the shoulder, and when she finally jolted awake he jumped back, as he didn’t want her to hit him (accidentally or otherwise). “Damn it,” she cursed, sitting up and fixing him with a blurry glare. “Why’d you have to wake me up?”

“We’re on.”

“Shit. Angel has some timing, doesn’t he?” she grumbled, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes.

He was nosy by nature, so he was tempted to ask what she was dreaming about, but then he figured it was probably better he didn’t know. He could only imagine what could make someone like Faith smile like that: perhaps some form of decapitation.

Once she was ready, they left, piling into Giles’ current car, which was a strangely bland blue Chevy Cavalier. Actually, only three of them could fit in the car with Giles - it wasn’t a big car - so it was him, Saddiq, and Faith. Naomi couldn’t get in the car anyways, not the way she effected electronics, but Rags had hooked her up with a demon car dealer who did custom jobs for “special people” (mostly demons, but he wasn’t too picky where his money came from), and she now had her own motorcycle. It looked like it had some kind of weird Kevlar over the engine and gas tank, but that was the non-conductive shielding that protected the most vital parts from her occasional electrical surges. Unknown to everyone but Rags, Bren was trying to get his motorcycle. No, he technically didn’t need it, and he didn’t need a custom job, but they were so cool. Faith must have thought the same way, because as soon as Naomi roared off, she commented, “I have got to get me one of those.”

He and Faith sat in the back while Giles drove, and Sid rode shotgun, keeping an eye on the GPS unit. Sid was either unaware that Giles was uncomfortable sitting next to him, or didn’t care; with Sid it actually could have gone either way.

The roads were just starting to fill up with early commuter traffic, so they couldn’t move as fast as they wanted to. Bren envied Naomi her motorcycle, because she’d probably beat them there. Not that it mattered. A mutant like her? She could take out security and neutralize his security system without any problems at all. If there were any kind of mystical protections - and it was assumed he’d have them - she was fucked. She would probably wait for them, unless it started to go FUBAR.

He noticed Faith, slouched next to him in the back seat, and she was looking out the window smiling in a rather goofy manner. It was distressingly familiar; he’d seen that look on his face before … when he was dating Matt. That was freaky. “You ready?” he prompted, as he didn’t know how to ask “Are you dating someone?” in context.

After a moment she glanced at him, giving him the sort of look a jaded veteran always gave a rookie when they were trying not to laugh at them. “I was born ready, Chambers. You?”

“Yeah, I’m good. You just looked … eh … lost in thought.”

She shrugged, looking back out the window at the morning commuters speeding past. Just think, all these people were headed towards normal jobs and cubicles, and they were going to fight an immortal demon possessed former actor on the Forbes five hundred list. It was a fucking odd world. “I guess. Just thinkin’ about Logan.”

Logan?! Holy fuck, he was glad he left his coffee back at the office, otherwise he would have spit take all over Giles’ upholstery. “Really?” If it was lust he could understand - the man had a body that would make Log Cabin Republicans kick out stained glass windows - but that kind of goofy look only appeared on your face when you were smitten. Not quite in love, but so perilously close you’d be embarrassed if you could actually see yourself. (Oh how he missed that feeling. It may have been embarrassing, but it was so much fun while it lasted … and before the relationship went to total shit.)

“He’s kind of sweet, you know? I mean once you get past the whole macho thing and the paranoid thing, and the horndog thing, he’s got a surprisingly gentle core.”

“Marie’s told me something like that, yeah. It’s hard to think of him as gentle, though.”

“I know. It doesn’t seem to fit, does it? But he’s like a cactus. If you can get past the thorns, you find a soft interior.” She paused, frowned. “That didn’t sound right.”

“No it didn’t. But I think I know what you’re getting at … besides his guts being soft and pliable.”

She snorted a laugh, shaking her head. “Well they are, but that’s beside the point.”

“Yeah. But he’s got great abs.”

“Oh, tell me about it. You could bounce a quarter off ‘em. I’m jealous.”

They finally got to the part of Malibu where people were rich enough to have big spaces between their houses, wide swaths of private beaches that let you know how rich and powerful they were simply by how big the spaces were. Giles finally found a soft shoulder to pull off on when Sid said they were within a block of the house. Bren thought he could see it, a big beach house that seemed strangely large and imposing. Should a beach house be in any way imposing?

Once they were out, Giles pulled up the hood, as their cover story was a simple and stereotypical one: car problems. But he also put his bag of magical equipment near the engine block, and started pulling things out, while they stood around him as cover.

The sun was coming up, turning the sky the color of blood oranges, while seagulls wheeled in the air, uttering noises not unlike distant screams. It smelled like salt and exhaust out here, the sea scrubbing the smoggy Los Angeles air just enough to make it palatable. He wondered if they were near any movie stars' homes, or if just directors lived out here.

There was a slight noise, one that made Faith and Sid both brace for action (a curious contrast: Faith seemed to tense, hands curling into fists, while Sid looked so relaxed it was like he was only one step away from total collapse, hands open and loose at his side. But they both had the exact same look in their eyes, one that seemed to say "You really don't want a piece of this, but if you want to try, bring it on"), but it was Naomi that emerged from between the shadows of someone's bungalow, hands raised just in case. "Just me," she added, in case there were further questions.

"Scoping out the area?" Faith guessed.

She nodded, coming to join their group. "Yeah. It looks like there's a couple guys lounging on the beach, neither Human; I suspect they're the bodyguards. I should be able to take them out no problem."

"Anything else?" Sid wondered.

"I hear a dog, probably a guard dog."

He nodded. "I'll take that." And no one was going to argue with him. The guy who couldn't be bit was more than welcome to take on the throat tearing Rottweiler.

“That’s it?” Faith prompted.

Naomi shrugged half-heartedly. “He has signs saying his property is protected by surveillance and one of those security companies, all of which should be a problem for about three seconds. It’s nothing without electricity.”

Bren grimaced, hating having to piss on her parade. “Uh, some of ‘em send emergency signals if the power goes out.”

“They ain’t sending out a signal if all their circuits are fried.”

Okay, that was a valid point.

Giles sprinkled some stinky stuff around the engine block, smeared some runes on his hand, and holding his hand palm up beneath the safety of the car hood, he muttered something in a language Bren didn’t recognize, and after about a minute, a tiny ball of light began glowing in his hand, maybe hovering a few centimeters above his skin. It looked like a pearl of luminescence, and was roughly the same size and shape. Giles stared at it like it was a television screen, and after a moment, said, “He’s using the wards of Alkazan on his house. Impressive.”

Faith glanced at the ball of light, and scowled, not seeing anything either. “Is that good or bad?”

“I’m sure he thinks it’s good, but I won’t have any problem bringing them down.”

“That’s a relief.” Faith glanced down the street, as the growing sanguineous light cast the large and strangely angular beach house in murky shadow, and asked, “When do we move in?”

“As soon as I see the change,” he replied cryptically.

Bren didn’t technically know exactly what he meant, but he guessed that whatever it was, it wouldn’t be pleasant for Angel.

It was a good thing he was an undead superhero, or this would really suck for him.

14

Angel figured it was a sign of living wrong when you kept waking up bound to things.

This time he woke up on his feet, but his shoulders were nearly dislocated, as he was hanging by his arms, ropes tired around his wrists and secured to some kind of metal bar just a few feet short of the room’s vaulted ceiling. Angel tried to yank his hands free, but his wrists were tied up tight enough that the ropes were biting into his skin, and the bar was embedded in the ceiling and seemed perfectly solid. He could neither bend it or bring it down.

He could reach the floor, but just barely, his feet nearly skidding on the slick surface. His coat was gone, his shirt ripped open (why did they always do that?) and the room he was in was strangely empty. There was just a white marble floor, bare walls painted a pale red, no windows. Actually, looking around, he saw fixtures on the wall, lots of bars and metal rings, and he was picking up the faint but undeniable scent of old blood. Human, definitely. Finch’s killing floor? Probably. Nice that he thought well in advance and had the architects make one for him - did they ever wonder why he wanted a room with built in restraining devices and a drain in the floor? Well, probably not; probably architects in Holly wood never blinked at anything since Aaron Spelling got a gift wrapping room. If you had enough cash, nothing was too weird.

A door opened, creaking like a cemetery gate, and the soft bulk of Finch filled the doorway opposite him, an anonymous figure wearing white linen pants and a blue patterned Hawaiian shirt. “Ah, Angel. You’re awake. So you wanted to kill me, huh?”

“It wasn’t personal; I always kill evil perverted fucks. It’s kinda my thing now.”

Finch clicked his tongue in disapproval, shaking his head wearily. “Name calling; the lowest form of criticism. It’s ironic, isn’t it? You wanted to kill me, but now - “ Finch reached for something, just beyond the doorway, and Angel recognized the shadow of its shape. “ - I’m killing you.”

And with that, Finch fired the compound crossbow, sending a wooden arrow flying directly towards his heart.