Reality snapped into focus around them, and they all hit the floor hard, sprawling on hard wood that probably needed a bit of dusting.

The music and the smell alone told Angel they were in the Way Station. Before he could shove himself up from the floor and have a look around - god, every injury he had hurt, and he hadn’t realized until this moment how injured he was - Bob shouted, “Out!” It was another command in that god voice, and the word had barely faded when Angel noticed they were all alone in the bar, save for Lia. Angel wished he could do that, say one thing and have everyone instantly obey.

Bob was the only one of them standing, even though his face was bloody, and his “Me - The Other White Meat” t-shirt was torn and half blue with his blood. He went over to the bar, slumped on a stool, and Lia put one of those big cans of Australian beer in front of him. “That bad?” she asked, although she didn’t sound all that concerned. He nodded, cracked open the beer, and shotgunned it, drinking the whole thing without taking a breath.

Helga was the first to her feet, with Sid right behind her. They were both bloody, but almost none of the blood on them was their own. “You’re really impressive, kid,” she told him. “So how old are you?”

“Twenty. Why?”

Her tail snaked around his waist, and pulled him closer to her as she gave him a smile that was part seductive, part predatory. “’Cause I wanted to make sure you were legal.”

Sid stared at her, clearly startled, and it was almost funny. A horde of bloody eyed people trying to rip him to pieces didn’t scare him, but Helga? Yeah. It actually made sense, though - Helga could be pretty scary, especially if she thought you were her type.

Bob sighed loudly as he slammed the empty beer can down, and scrubbed a hand through his bloody hair. Bren got up and helped Naomi to her feet, as Kier got up rubbing his head, and Xander, still flat out on the floor, complained, “I think I dislocated my shoulder. Hey, anybody gonna tell me what the fuck just happened?”

“I think the technical term for it is we got our asses kicked,” Naomi replied, sitting on the edge of a nearby table.

He could hear Bob singing along under his breath with the Porcupine Tree song coming from the jukebox. “A fire to feed, a belt to bleed, strip the soul, kill them all …”

“I don’t think we expected the entire populace of the building to attack us as one,” Sid pointed out, trying very delicately to extricate himself from Helga’s grip without offending her.

“We’re dealing with a god of rage,” Bob said suddenly, turning around on the stool to face them. He wiped blood off his face with the back of his hand. “He’s let in just enough of his dimension to poison everyone near by. It will get worse the bigger the rift gets.”

Angel sat up, arms wrapped around the bullet hole in his chest, even though it threatened to open up the knife wound in his shoulder. Shit, he took some damage - good thing he was already dead. “But the police said they’d been there, to check out the missing persons report. They didn’t seem affected.”

“No, but they wouldn’t be. Even a mad god could figure out you don’t want to alert authority figures to a problem, not until you’re ready to handle them all. He probably has one or two people not as bad as the others, to act as spokespeople.”

“On a scale of one to ten, how fucked are we?” Kier wondered.

“I’d say eleven,” Bren opined.

Giles sat up with a pained groan, rubbing his jaw. “I think I lost a tooth.”

Naomi snorted a dark laugh. “I think we’ve all lost bits.”

“We barely got out of there,” Bob said, seemingly apropos of nothing. “He was trying to block my teleport, he just wasn’t strong enough yet.”

That was even worse news. If he was almost strong enough to resist Bob, he was strong enough to defeat them. So where did that leave them?

Sid managed to extricate himself delicately from Helga, and helped Xander, still wearing his X-Men jacket, up to his feet. It looked like Xander had a nascent black eye and a nasty, swelling bruise on the right side of his jaw. “You said you thought your shoulder was dislocated?” Sid asked him. “ Which one?”

“My left. Wh-” Sid didn’t even give him time to finish the question. He grabbed his left arm, straightened it, and did something that seemed like a combination push/pull. Xander screamed incoherently, and as soon as Sid let him go, he staggered back away from him, so violently he banged into a table and nearly tipped it over. “Dude, what the fuck..?!” Xander exclaimed, his eyes watering from the pain. But then he looked down at his left hand, which he moved experimentally. “Oh. Shit, couldn’t you have warned me before you did that?”

“It wouldn’t have helped,” Sid claimed. It sounded like he was speaking from experience.

Xander looked at his hand, still flexing it, then asked with a combination of wonderment and fear, “What the hell do they teach you at that mutant school?”

“I think we all need a drink,” Bob told Lia. “A strong one.”

She gave him a haughty look, eyebrows raise imperiously. “And I suppose you expect me to get them?”

“If you wouldn’t mind.”

She cursed under her breath and began slamming glasses and bottles around, apparently forgetting that she was a bartender. Helga slid on the stool beside Bob, her tail giving him a playful slap on the butt at the same time. “So, tiger, what’s our next move?”

Everyone looked at Bob, since it was a good question and he was their de facto leader for the moment, since gods were Bob’s territory.

They ended up staring at Bob for a very long time.

6

Since Lafayette was so bombed, Logan couldn’t tell how truthful he was being. Conversely, his usefulness was minimal. Logan decided that he wanted to get the hell out of here as soon as possible.

Marc seemed reluctant to just leave him, because as drunk as he was, he was afraid that he’d report them to a hit squad. Not that they couldn’t handle it, but they hadn’t completely decided on a plan of action yet. So Logan let Marc go ahead and temporarily paralyze Lafayette by grabbing him with an ungloved hand and just sinking in his fingernails for a second. He wasn’t sure Lafayette, as tanked as he was, even noticed.

They didn’t bother to talk until they got back to the car and started driving away. “So where to?” Marc asked, as he continued to glance in the rearview mirror. Well, pursuit could happen at any time, although it looked clear to Logan. “Maine?”

“That would seem to be the most logical choice,” he admitted, with little enthusiasm.

Marc gave him a suspicious sidelong glance. “What’s wrong? You think it’s a trap?”

“That, or it’s just what he says it is. I’m not sure which is worse.” Logan realized he’d come to a personal crossroads - namely, he wasn’t sure he wanted to know any more about his past. There were some things he was sure to never know, because the people who wanted them suppressed made sure every bit of that information was gone, right down to the people who knew about it. It was a rigged deck, a battle he couldn’t win, and he didn’t even know why he was trying anymore. He wasn’t happy with bits and pieces of information, questions without answers, but that was all he had. If he wasn’t happy with mere fragments, then it was time for him to give it a rest.

“Wow. You really don’t want to know who you used to be?”

He thought about it as he looked out the window at the scenery gliding by. The quiet, rural outskirts were slowly giving way to suburban housing projects and strip malls that came to announce the city of Toronto on the horizon. Should he admit it to him? Oh hell - if he couldn’t talk to Marc, who could he talk to? “Every time I find something out about me, I don’t wanna know it. I’m not sure any good can come of this.”

He snorted. “You kiddin’ me? You killed Nazis. Ain’t nothing bad in that.”

“There could be behind the scenes things that I don’t want to know. “

“So you’d rather not know, is that what you’re saying?”

He sighed and shook his head. “I don’t know.”

“Uh huh. If we didn’t go now, are you telling me you could live with it? That the not knowing won’t drive you crazy?”

Logan smashed his head back against the seat, wanting to kick out, but he was afraid he might break something and this car was only a rental. Marc would probably paralyze him if he lost his security deposit. “I hate this, man. I fucking hate this.”

“You should. You were used, squeezed dry, and thrown away, like an empty cartridge. If you liked it, I’d worry about you - you never struck me as a sadomasochist.” Marc fooled around with the radio, until he came across a station playing a new Tool song, then he left it there. He still kept glancing at the mirror for a tail, but Lafayette had been right - there was no one watching his house. “So what is it you’re scared of?”

He thought about denying it, but it seemed rather pointless. Of course he was scared, and Marc knew it. “What if I’m one of those guys I hate?”

Marc shook his head. “You’re not.” There was no doubt in his voice at all.

“How can you be so sure?”

He sighed and adjusted his goggles before replying. “Listen, people are selfish by nature; it’s hardwired in our genes. It takes a special effort to conquer it, to overcome it, and you do it real easy. Most asshat bastards don’t.”

“What are you talking about? I’m pretty selfish.” He paused briefly. “Asshat?”

“Relatives of ass clowns, only wearing hats,” he replied glibly. Then he got more serious. “Anybody who fights as much for other people as yourself is not a selfish bastard. You may be selfish from time to time, but who isn’t? I know for a fact that if I’m ever in trouble, you’ll drop everything to help me - in fact, you’ve already done it. Whatever you have done, I know you to be at your core a decent man, more decent than most. So shut the fuck up.”

Only Marc could say something that seemed both maudlin and angry at the same time. “Just ‘cause I’d help you doesn’t make me decent.”

“Or Rogue or Xavier or Angel or Bob or your country, or that girl … what was her name? You pulled her outta Asrahar.”

“Jalila.” He scowled at the side of Marc’s face. ”Did I just help you prove your point?”

He grinned, flashing his bright white teeth. “You always do, jerkwad.”

He punched Marc in the shoulder, pulling the punch slightly so he didn’t actually hurt him. Marc chuckled in that knowing, triumphant way of his.

Logan still wasn’t sure about any of this, but Marc had a way of making him feel better about the worst things, even coming to accept that he‘d probably come to the end of his search. It still wasn’t fair.

*****

She let Bob get settled, and made sure everybody had a stiff drink before sneaking back to check on him.

Well, everybody had a stiff drink but Saddiq, who said he didn’t drink alcohol. Out of something akin to spite, Lia gave him a Shirley Temple, but he didn’t seem to care. Helga asked him if he was Muslim - the name Saracen seemed to indicate that anyways - but he said no, he wasn’t anything, he just didn’t drink because alcohol was a poison that could dull your reflexes. He added, almost as an afterthought, that it was okay for people with healing factors, but he didn’t have one.

Ha! What a kid. Helga found him almost so endearing she wanted to give him a noogie. Of course it felt weird calling him a kid, as he was as much of a machine in a fight as Logan, maybe even more so, since Sid had none of the loosey goosey street fighting tendencies of Logan; Saddiq fought like a martial arts robot, programmed with every single move in existence. He used ‘em well, though, and didn’t panic when things started to go tits up, which she always found attractive in a man.

Figuring how uptight he was, she guessed he was a virgin, and that was a bit of an iffy prospect. It’d been a long time since she’d broke someone in, and virgins never lasted long. But then again, they were ready for round two almost immediately, so they generally made up in quantity what they lacked in quality. He was a good looking guy, and his body was tight and fit under his X-Men leathers, so he might be a lot of fun once she got him to loosen up. But did she have the time or the patience to wear him down? He looked about seventeen, but acted like he was seventy. Decisions, decisions.

Helga knocked on the door of Bob’s secret office before opening the door and walking in. The secret office was one where the dimensional barriers were thinner, but could only be accessed by Bob or the Powers That Be. He liked to describe it as having a bit of a mystical “lock” on it, but when it came down to it, she didn’t give a shit. Did it work? Good. All she needed to know.

He’d also given her some kind of mystical whammy that allowed her to see the door, even when Bob wasn’t around to allow it. Even if someone had followed her, they’d have no idea where she went.

The room was lit only by red taper candles, set in a triangular pattern that encompassed most of the room. Inside the broad triangle of candles was Bob, sitting shirtless and cross-legged in a sacred circle made of his own blood. It looked like he was finishing up carving runes in himself with a scalpel. “Howdy hon. How’s everybody?”

“Fine since you healed them. What the fuck are you doing?” Some of the runes were the typical one, the ones he always used, but the others were new and troubling. There were Taiwanese symbols that she knew to be some kind of prayer of protection for fighters, and Maori warrior tattoos, and some demonic markings and magic symbols that supposedly had their own power. By carving them in his own skin and making the symbols in his own blood, he was increasing their power. He was also bleeding himself out, but clearly he figured that was something he could stand.

She was also amazed that he could have marked his own back so clearly, especially with those bloody wings, but that probably fell into the range of god abilities.

“Desperate times, all that shit. I’m getting’ ready to go callin’ on people who probably won’t be happy to see me.”

She crossed her arms over her chest and scowled at him, aware she couldn’t make him tell her anything he didn’t want to admit. Still, she could smack him. “Are you risking your neck again? ‘Cause let me tell ya, I’m gettin’ tired of waitin’ for your body to reform itself.”

“I’m not gonna die,” he claimed, and then held up his bloody arms towards her. “I’ve got protections, see?”

Her scowl deepened until she could feel it tugging at her facial muscles. “Do I hafta kill you now?”

He sighed, lowering his arms. “Hon, I’ll be fine. I know what I’m doing.”

“Really?”

“Yes. I have to do this, I have no choice. We have to know what’s going on, and we have to know it now. This is the only way we can do it.”

She placed her hands on her hips, and gave him her best painful death stare. “Who are you visiting, Bob?”

He grimaced, clearly not wanting to, but relented because he was a smart man who didn’t want his girlfriend to put his head through the wall. “The Rakshas.”

She raised an eyebrow at him. “You gonna flesh that out, or do I ask Giles?”

He rolled his eyes, but obeyed, making the scalpel disappear. “They appear in the Hindu pantheon, followers of Ravana; they’re seers and closely connected to every god of rage in existence. If someone’s up to something, you bet they know about it.”

“How closely connected to these gods of rage?”

“They’re definitely invited to all the parties.”

She made a fist and raised it, so he could see she was serious. “Stop being so Belial, or I’ll sock you.”

“Sweetie, they don’t like me. No one associated with any god of rage does, but the Rakshas are … pissy types. They don’t like anyone.”

“But especially not you.”

“Especially not me,” Bob agreed, nodding. “I’m more of a love kinda guy, you know. We really don’t mesh.”

She had been with Bob long enough that she knew how to read between his lines, no matter how he tried to cover them up. “So what’d you do? Kill one of their family members? Steal their girlfriend? Exile them to a hellish dimension from which they can’t escape?”

He hesitated for a moment, and she watched blood bluer than the sky trickle down his chest. She was pretty sure it was a protection rune that was bleeding. “It wasn’t exactly a girlfriend ….”

It was her turn to sigh and roll her eyes. Bob was lucky he was so powerful and fun and great in bed, or she’d have beaten him to a bloody paste and dumped him in the Los Angeles river. She knew from experience that the “fun” guys were usually trouble, but Bob broke the expectation meter there - what other “fun” boyfriend had ever pissed off so many gods? It was almost like Bob’s hobby was tweaking the noses of every single powerful being in existence … and actually, now that she thought about it, it probably was. He just wasn’t the type to collect stamps or watch baseball, and wasn’t that what she loved about him? You wanted the good, you had to accept the bad, even if the bad was being on the shit list of the entire Hindu pantheon. “If I think you’re in major trouble, I’m breaking the circle.” She knew from experience that that would break the spell, no matter what it was.

“Fair enough. Just wait until it really looks like major trouble, okay? ‘Cause I’m not expecting a walk down Bondi here.”

“I guessed from all the carving,” she said, gesturing with her head towards all the marks cut into his skin.

He flashed her a brilliant smile that was complete bullshit. “Wish me luck?”

“You probably need a rocket launcher, not luck. So go kick their asses; don’t make me come after you and kill you.”

Bob gave her a sharp salute, then straightened up, placed his hands on his knees, and closed his eyes, preparing to complete the spell.

It was a good thing he was so loveable, otherwise she’d have stomped him flat a long time ago.

7

The transition was jarring; not like falling, more like being shoved brutally into another reality.

And what a fun reality it was. It smelled like burned meat and slagged metal, and the sky was on fire. Well, no - the sky was fire. Angry red flames free of a fuel source, save for clots of flames that would have been clouds, covered the skyline from horizon to horizon, giving everything a bloody tinge.

Not that there was much to see. There were pavilions far away, loose, soft structures on a bed of what looked like shredded prisms, or maybe fine shards of ice. Under his bare feet they felt cool and perhaps a tad sharp, but he was too well protected to be cut by them. Whether they were glass or ice was irrelevant, and made no difference either way, as no matter how hot it got they weren‘t going to melt; new reality, new rules of physics.

The realm of Ravana was surprisingly bare, and seemingly empty, with its vast prismatic expanses and flickering red sky, although it did have one awe inspiring thing: a two mile tall statue of Ravana in all his bloodthirsty glory, at least a half mile in length, an artifact that would have blotted out the sun had this world had one. It looked like it was made of something like bronze, but Bob knew from experience that it was actually made of the compressed, heat mummified corpses of his enemies. He was such a cheerful bloke, it was impossible to guess why other gods shunned him.

He kicked the prismatic sand, creating divots that sparkled red in the bloody light, and wondered which reason, out of a possible thousand, Ravana and Rakshas had chosen to ignore him completely. They had to know he was here, it wasn’t like this was a crowded dimension, nor was it a place that had lots of gods popping in and out. He smiled, amused that big bad Ravana was laying low, and shouted, “Didn’t realize you were so inhospitable, Rav.” Just because he knew it would hurt all those ears he had, he began singing - well, more like howling - at the top of his lungs. “Go ahead and play dead, I know that you can hear this! Go ahead and play dead! Why can’t you turn and face me? Why can’t you turn and face me? You fucking disappoint me!”

There was an oddly musical noise, the tinkling of falling glass, and some of the Rakshas suddenly formed in a circle around him. Finally, he annoyed Ravana just enough to send out his minions.

The Rakshas were probably the only thing uglier than Ravana himself. They were essentially humanoid skeletons covered with a thin layer of leathery, translucent skin, through which you could see pulsing organs in their gut, purplish-grey and brownish red things that quivered and throbbed, even though they technically had no heart or lungs. They were all about six feet tall, with elongated arms that ended in four fingered, lengthy claws, and faces that were rather lupine, with elongated muzzles full of sharp teeth, and three yellow eyes, one in the center of their foreheads, the orbs just floating in the otherwise bare and empty sockets like balls of spoiled aspic.

They snarled at him, growled in a way that sounded like an extended death rattle, and he grinned at them. “Well, took your time, didn’t ya? Ravana should fire you lot, ’cause you suck as doormen.” He had fudged the facts about the Rakshas to Hel, mainly because he didn’t want her to worry more than she was doing already. (Although she had probably asked Giles anyways, and was now prepared to kill him.)

Rakshas were technically evil spirits who were specifically designed to fight gods - most specifically Vishnu - by Ravana, and were more than happy to hurt people if that was all they could find. They were simply vicious, and knew only dishing out pain and torment. The protective runes he’d carved into his skin would keep them from hurting him too badly, but if Ravana wanted to break them, he could. That was the trouble with violent demon gods.

Sadly, much like Charunai, they didn’t speak much. Unlike the Charunai, they could, they just didn’t like to do it. Several of them stretched out their bony claws, trailing their tips along the invisible energy field protecting his skin, trying to gage how powerful it was. “Go on then,” he prompted. “Take me to your leader.”

One of the Rakshas, presumably the leader of the group, snarled in a gravelly voice, “What business do you have here, Kama?” If a slab of rough hewn granite could talk, it would sound like a Raksha.

“A god of rage is trying to open up a hole in my dimension. I want to know who it is and why.”

“And why would our lord know?”

“Are you telling me he isn’t omniscient?” Bob gasped dramatically, and reared back in mock horror. “No! Say it isn’t so!”

The leader leaned in, his translucent lip pulling back to bare even more of his teeth … which was technically impossible because his skin was see through, but oh well. “Are you mocking our liege?”

“I’d never,” Bob replied, with blunt sarcasm. There was some doubt over whether Rakshas actually got sarcasm or not - it may have been too Human for them.

Judging by the way they glanced at each other, yeah, they weren’t sure if he was serious or not. He almost felt sorry for the big ugly stupid things. “C’mon guys, you know who’s opening up the rift. Why don’t ya give us a hint?”

The leader glared at him, his yellow eyes glistening in the red light. “We don’t care what Aes -” He paused suddenly as the ground seemed to shake, making an almost musical noise as the glass/ice shards shifted and shuddered. By the way the Raksha backed up as one and bowed deeply, he knew Ravana had finally shown up. The power of the demon lord sizzled behind him, and he could smell his special reek of rotting corpses.

“Kama,” he boomed, sounding like the vaguely stereotypical royal blowhard that he was. “How nice of you to visit. Now I can kill you in person.”