Waiting was always the worst part of any sniper operation ( ... how the fuck did he know that?! ...), but he found he could hit an almost Zen state of meditation by focusing on the soft noises of the wind rifling through the grass, the animals moving through the foliage. It was mostly mice, an occasional rat, and a cat or two, with a bat hiding somewhere in the higher branches.

There were less peaceful noises as well, mainly road noises, which seemed to travel far in Los Angeles. Every now and then the thumping bass lines of what was basically a stereo on wheels would threaten to break his concentration, or at least snake its way inside his brain in that insidious way that only music could accomplish. He managed to block it out though, focusing on the broken down movie set and its rusting walls until it almost looked like it was glowing against the background of night.

There was a danger he could doze off, but he was far too wired. Meditation was one thing, but sleep was another.

Time compressed, shrank, and became the hum of a car engine rapidly approaching. It was an armored, truncated black limousine, and out of the back stepped one of the ugliest looking demons Logan had ever seen.

He appeared to have been stuccoed, with cadaver gray flakes of tissue stuck all over his thick limbed body, and eyes that looked like piss holes in snow. His face was oddly flat, like his nose was not just an afterthought, but one of Michael Jackson's spares stapled on.

Although he wore a Prada suit, he pulled up a hood, hiding his patchwork face in its dark folds, and Logan guessed that's how he passed for Human. Maybe he said he had a disease or something, was disfigured, and people, not generally inclined to believe in such things as demons, bought it. But looking at him dead on, it was kind of hard to swallow.

His "assistants" looked Human, his driver and bodyguards, but even though they managed to hide the pink in their eyes (contacts?), Logan could smell from here that they were lamia. He was hoping that would happen - why use guns and murder a high placed Triad when you could just get his soul eaten and replaced by one of your lackeys? It was unlikely cancer would hurt them, and if his personality changed, who would dare point it out?

They turned on lights and went inside the movie set, and even as he tracked them through the scope of the sniper rifle, he could hear them complaining about the filth of the place. Stucco monster - Farik, most likely - was not lamia, so that suggested he was one of the masterminds behind the Dragons, and while of use to him in one sense, no use to him in a general sense. He wasn't sure if he should bother to keep him alive, but, come to think of it, he didn't know what kind of demon he was, so he had no idea if he could kill him or not. He supposed it might be interesting to find out.

A black Saturn came wending down the broken asphalt road leading to the former studio back lot, meaning Wing had shown up on time. He got out of the car with Alcoholic Boy, Cologne Boy, and No Neck, and even though Wing was the only one who knew Logan was there, he never once looked around - he kept his gaze on his car, his men, or the building. He was so fucking good it was almost scary.

The soundstage interior was basically empty, all equipment and props having been moved out, sold, or stolen long ago, but there was a pretty thick layer of grit, and some detritus such as broken glass, plaster dust, and broken wood littering the floor, the filth that Farik had been talking about. Even from here, Logan could hear it crunching under their feet as Wing and his men went inside, and it sounded like Farik was complaining about the shithole he wanted to see them in.

Logan kept watching them carefully, trying to will them to keep their distance from Farik and his men, and luckily they seemed to do just that. Of course they could bust out their telekinesis or whatever it was they used to keep their victims in place, but he didn’t think they were going to use that until they absolutely had to. As far as they were concerned, they were in control of the situation, and there was no need to use anything drastic … yet. Time was no friend of theirs, though, so the sooner they could get this done, the better.

Wing was stalling expertly, explaining how much money was necessary to get them to keep playing ball and stay in the Dragons, but Farik was clearly growing very impatient with him and their surroundings.

He heard movement around him, footsteps, and he briefly changed his aim until he confirmed that it was who he was expecting to see. As soon as he saw the first of Wing’s men, he hissed, “You could be quieter, you know. Secret sting operation and all.”

Lotus scowled at him like he smelled bad and dressed funny. “I don’t recall him saying we had to take orders from you too.”

It was rare for a woman to be in a security - read “thug” - position in either the Yakuza or the Triad, in spite of popular fictions, simply because they were “traditionalists”, which was just a nice way of saying “chauvinistic”. Not that there weren’t women in either group, there were, but rarely as soldiers. Occasionally as spies, and even assassins (poison being their weapon of choice), but rarely. The reason Lotus was an exception was because she was obviously related to Wing; he could see it in the sharp, hard lines of her face, in the color of her eyes and the shape of her mouth. She was a little taller than him, more solidly built, but she would be since he was slowly being consumed by cancer. Behind her, the rest of Wing’s trusted crew was standing at attention, all male, but also cognizant enough to know they capitulated to her orders, or faced the boss.

Lotus looked beyond him, at the airplane hangar, her eyes and lips both narrowing in equal measure. “Have they made a move?”

He was willing to let it go for now. “No, but they’re gonna. The boss is a scaly lookin’ creep, and I want him alive if possible. And maybe one of his lackeys.”

“Excuse me? Who said we were taking hostages?”

“There is even more scary shit going on than you know about. I just need to talk to ‘em, discover the name of the true big boss. Then you can have ‘em and do whatever the fuck you want with them.”

She let out a small, derisive snort, and was probably about to insult him, but they both heard noise on the road, and turned their attention back to it. A dark blue sedan was gliding up the road, as silent as a shark, and Lotus muttered, “The Yakuza shits right on time. Maybe you’ll get lucky and Sanjiro will be among them.”

“How likely is that?” He didn’t want to point out he wouldn’t know Sanjiro Yashida from any other Japanese guy, because it would surely reveal that his whole “I want revenge” shtick was a steaming pile of horseshit.

Four sharply dressed, broad shouldered men stepped out of the car when it finally came to a halt, and just the way they moved told him they were well armed and prepared to kill. Sanjiro surely wasn’t among them, as these were hardcore muscle, guys who simply got the job done with a minimum of talking.

“You using that rifle?” She asked.

“No, I’m a hand to hand man.” He handed it to her without looking, knowing she’d take it. She did, and as the Yakuza went into the hangar, she said, “Get moving. I’ll cover you from here, and join the party as soon as I confirm there’s no other watchers.”

Logan just shrugged, but waited for her men to follow her orders before he moved out, deliberately trailing behind them. He wanted to see if he got an opening at Farik in the initial chaos.

As soon as the Yakuza entered, he could see Wing’s men tense, clearly waiting for someone to make a move, while Farik and his lamias seemed not just to relax, but gloat. Wing, for his part, was so cool it was like no new players had entered the field; he must have had ice water in his veins. Either that, or caring was just something best left to those who knew they had a lot more living in them.

They spread out and stalked across the ground with remarkable silence; Logan was honestly surprised the Triad men had that much grace in them. They were several meters away from closing in when a crack echoed through the early morning air, and Logan felt the wind of the bullet pass near him before it burst through the partially wood covered window and made a Yakuza’s head explode into a cloud of blood and brain matter.

And that’s when everything turned into a Tarantino film.

Chaos reigned as both the Yakuza and the Triad inside started firing at each other, and the demons decided to escape out the back. He let the Triad guys outside run towards the hangar, firing their own guns all the way while Lotus continued laying down covering fire from the clutch of trees, and he cut towards the back, intending to intercept Farik and his men.

Bullets screamed through the air, some nicking him or full on hitting him, but he was so pumped with adrenaline he didn’t really notice. He saw shadows on the road, and knew they weren’t their people, so he shouted in Chinese, “Incoming! Up the street!” Maybe they heard him over the din of gunshots and screams, and maybe they didn’t - he had no idea. But as he rounded the corner, smelling the lamia before he saw him, the guy who had been acting as Farik’s driver leveled his gun and fired.

The bullet hit Logan square in the chest, and the impact sent him staggering back (it felt like he’d taken a sledgehammer to the breastbone), but the bullet had hit his sternum and ricocheted right off the adamantium, and hit the gunman right in the shoulder. He seemed stunned, dropping the gun and grabbing his arm before collapsing to the scrub grass. “Fuck it, Lew, he shot me!”

A guy who had been acting as Farik’s bodyguard stared at him, eyes glowing pink now in spite of the contacts, but after a moment he hesitated, and said, “Sir, run! He’s not -”

But before he could tell Farik he was immune to the lamia’s soul sucking hold, there was an oddly familiar sounding “whoomf”, a softly muffled explosion, followed by a faint but growing whine as something sliced through the air down the line of the road.

Holy shit - the Yakuza had shoulder mounted rocket launchers? Well, why not?

He hit the ground barely a second before the missile plowed into the hangar and exploded, sending out a devastating shockwave that seemed to smash him into the ground like a cigarette butt as a blistering gush of heat blew right by him, carrying molten metal and flaming wooden debris. He didn’t think any hit him directly, but it came plummeting down to earth around him, thudding down like pieces of fallen satellites.

The lamias were down, but he couldn’t tell if they were just unconscious, stunned, or dead. He thought he saw Farik in one piece, though, and charged towards the robed figure, finally popping his claws. He must have heard something, because he turned towards him, but if he was going for a weapon he didn’t have time to grab it. Logan seized him by the throat - it felt nauseatingly spongy - and made sure he could see the claws on his other hand. “Where’s the Queen?” He snarled into his ugly, flaky face. “Where’s the fucking lamia queen?! Tell me or I’ll see how long your species survives evisceration!”

His hideous face split into a grin, revealing tiny, pointed teeth like sharpened candy corn. “You think you scare me, Human?” He exhaled a scoff right into his face, and Logan winced at his fetid breath, which smelled like a compost heap full of rotting animal carcasses. “You don’t know my kind at all.”

Suddenly he was aware that his acrid breath seemed to be eating its way down his throat, and it was like a solid thing filling his throat, blocking his nasal passages. He tried to talk, to cough, but couldn’t do either. He let him go and staggered back, trying to spit out whatever it was that was in his throat, but he couldn’t do it. Warm, salty liquid was now gushing down his throat, spilling out his nose, and before he even saw it or tasted it, he knew it was his own blood.

“I guess you were unaware of the poison gland my species has in their throat,” Farik said, obviously gloating. “If inhaled, it liquefies Human tissue almost instantaneously, but I guess you know that now, don’t you? You should never touch a Sclerran, moron.”

Sclerran? Even as he struggled to draw a breath and felt blood filling his lungs, he knew that name was familiar. Suddenly Angel’s voice came back to his panicky, oxygen starved brain: “Sclerrans are covered with scales, but armored ones, kind of like armadillos. They’re infiltrators; extremely nasty.”

Holy shit - yes, now he remembered! Yasha had a poison in her medicine cabinet specific to killing Sclerran demons, which Angel had figured out, even though he had no idea why she’d have it, since Sclerrans were a rare form of parasitic demon. But now he knew, and it made sense. Yasha must have heard that a Sclerran was the head of the demon mob that created the Three Dragons; the poison had been for him.

But Yasha was dead, and Angel was as good as dead - and he had the poison (or Wesley - also dead - did) last. Too late to get it now.

He collapsed to his knees, weak and dizzy, feeling the blood stream down his face. Farik leered down at him, enjoying his victory. “Don’t you feel like a complete fucking asshole?” The Sclerran asked gleefully.

But the overwhelming pounding in Logan’s head was fading, as was the amount of blood trickling down his throat, and he felt feverishly hot. His healing factor was kicking in, and he could breath a little through his nose. He felt like spitting at him, but decided to wait until he was strong enough to gut the bastard. No need to waste the element of surprise just to put a boot in the ribs of a fuckhead who wouldn’t really appreciate it.

That was when the left side of Farik’s head exploded. In a single burst of corpse gray flesh and reddish-black blood, the left half of his face was almost completely blown away, leaving a flap of his skull and scalp hanging down and fragments of jaw bone sticking out, dripping with blood and shredded scales. He staggered back a step, and his single remaining eye locked on the person who shot him. “You’ve sealed your doom, gangster,” he growled, speaking astonishingly clearly considering he now had just half a mouth. “

Logan saw, out of the corner of his eye, Wing holding one big fucking handgun, a .357 Magnum, the type immortalized by “Dirty Harry”. He must have had some major league ammo in that thing to leave an exit wound almost as big as Farik’s head. “Like I honestly care, you inhuman piece of shit.”

Inhuman? Was he just insulting him, or did he know he wasn’t Human? Logan had no time to ask, as he saw Wing’s shoulder tense, and he knew he was going to shoot again, and he honestly didn’t know if completely losing his head would kill him (well, he was still functioning with half a head - that was pretty fucking hard core). So Logan gathered what strength he had - although he was feeling stronger by the minute - and lunged at Farik, crashing into his knees as Wing fired his second shot. It missed the demon as he hit the ground hard, and Logan didn’t wait for him to recover, if indeed he could. He climbed up his body and jammed his claws in his gut, making him issue a high pitched squeak that wanted to be a scream, but wasn’t.

“Tell me where she fucking is,” he roared, twisting the claws in his gut ever so slightly. “Or I will rip you to fucking pieces!”

“Can I shoot his kneecap, or would that bother you?” Wing asked politely.

“Knock yourself out.”

“Wait, wait!” Farik shouted, as there seemed to be movement on the open half of his face. Was it starting to grow back? Maybe a little bit, but not nearly fast enough. “She’s in Palo Alto! At Saint Alban’s! Go and get killed, you stupid meat bags!”

“Is that good enough for you?” Wing wondered.

Logan shrugged. “Guess so.” He ripped his claws through Farik’s stomach, making him scream and lurch upwards, and as he did, Wing shot him almost point blank in the face, obliterating what was left of it. Although Logan was temporarily deafened in one ear by the sound, and some of Farik’s slimy bits splattered on his face, he didn’t really care.

As soon as he could hear again, he heard Wing asking, “Think that’ll kill him?”

“I’d hope so. Things that don’t need their head to survive freak me out a bit.”

“Do you encounter many of those?” Wing wondered, sounding slightly amused. He offered him a hand up, but Logan shook his head and stood up on his own, wiping Farik off his face.

“Not many. You know, for a higher ranking Triad, you’re pretty hardcore.”

“How else did I get where I am? Bake sales?”

Okay, yeah, point for him. Until he pulled out the Magnum, something about his quiet dignity reminded him of Tagawa, but now the differences between the men were quite obvious, as he couldn’t imagine Tony so coldly pulling the trigger on anyone. Wing put the gun away like it was a cigarette pack, casual as hell. There was sporadic gunfire, but farther away down the road, where the missile came from. “I hope you weren’t offended by what I said,” Wing continued, looking around as if to make sure the area was secure. “I simply meant him.”

“Huh?”

“Inhuman. I don’t think of all of you that way.”

“What? Are you -” Logan began, then paused. Oh shit - he thought Farik was a mutant. And he knew he was one too. “What gave me away?” He asked, somewhat sarcastically.

Wing did pull out a crumpled pack of cigarettes, and replied, with a slight smile, “Well, if the whole helicopter thing wasn’t a give away - and it was - there’s the fact that the Yakuza has been circulating pictures of you taken circa 1980, and you haven’t aged a day. Either you have the greatest plastic surgeon ever, or you’re not normal. And now I see you have knives in your hands. How on Earth do you get on airplanes?”

“I avoid metal detectors.”

“Funnily enough, so do I.” He lit his cigarette off a small pyre of hangar debris, which was lighting up the early dawn quite nicely, and gave him a funny look. “Are you all right? You’re rather bloody.”

“I get over things fast.” But he was tired, post intensive healing exhaustion, and he hated the tacky taste of blood and demon poison in his mouth.

“I wonder if the Yakuza will,” he mused, that tight, evil smile reappearing on his face.

“What d’ya mean?”

“The leader of the Dragons is dead - well, perhaps - and it seems like the Yakuza is responsible. Oh dear.”

Now he saw it - Wing’s master plan. Setting up the Yakuza for all of this - although admittedly they did blow up the joint - and letting the remains of the Dragon take revenge on them, sparing the Triad. Not only would the Three Dragons fracture, but the Triad would come out of it stronger than ever. He was certainly a calculating bastard; he missed his calling in politics. “Damn.”

“Are you really that surprised?”

“No. But you coulda told me you were planning’ on killin’ him the whole time.”

“What, and spoil the surprise?” He blew out a plume of smoke, and said, “So what’s in Palo Alto? Do you require assistance?”

“No, not yet. But I could use a lift outta here ‘fore the fire department comes.”

“Is that the favor?”

He grunted humorously. “You wish.”

“Well, who doesn’t want to get off cheap, Mr. Yashida?”

Another point for him. He really had missed that career in politics.

15

Celia ended up staying with him, but they didn’t have sex, which was a little personally depressing. But he knew he’d feel bad if he suspected he took advantage of a frightened woman. And she was very scared; she even asked him to stay with her, otherwise she’d never get any sleep. So they shared a bed but never had sex, and he hoped she appreciated how excruciating that was for him.

Once he got past his lust - which was always more difficult than it seemed - he understood how deeply freaked out she was by what she saw. She clung to him like he was the only thing keeping her from falling over the edge of a cliff. She didn’t want to talk about it any further, and he knew not to press. He just tried to pretend he wasn’t enjoying the warmth of her body or the smell of her hair as much as he actually was.

Somehow he slept, but not for long, as he was woken up by the smell of fear.

It was Celia, who was also twitching slightly, and making small, incoherent noises in the base of her throat. Nightmare, and a bad one. “Ceel,” he said quietly, shaking her shoulder gently. It was near dawn, the birds twittering outside in the trees, calling up the sun. She still seemed locked in whatever scenario she was living out, so he shook her a little more firmly, and said in a louder voice, “Celia, wake up.”

Finally she jolted awake, looking up at him with fear engorged pupils, and it seemed for a moment that she had no idea who he was. Then the pieces seemed to click into place, and she asked, “What did I do?”

“What?”

“Did I -” she seemed to be getting her wits together now, regaining full awareness. “Did I say something? Scream?”

“No, but you … you were having a nightmare, I can tell you that.”

She sighed and rubbed her eyes with the heel of her hands as she sat up. Just from her reaction - did I do something? - he wondered if she had lots of nightmares. “This happen a lot?”

She sat on the edge of the bed, her back to him, clad in the same relatively shapeless dress she wore yesterday. “It’s … sporadic. I … it was about my sister.”

“Your sister?” He sat up, desperately wanting to touch her and yet not daring to. “I didn’t know you had a sister.”

“Yes. She was always stronger than me, braver than me … sometimes so much she scared me, you know?”

He didn’t really, but he decided not to say that. “Where is she now?”

She shook her head and her shoulders slumped, letting him know he had asked absolutely the wrong thing. “I don’t know. One day she just … she disappeared. And I think it was my fault.”

“How could it be your fault?”

She paused for a long time before she said, “I got so mad at her. I was tired of living in her shadow, and I told her I never wanted to see her again. And I never have.”

Finally he allowed himself to touch her, placing a hand on her shoulder, and she almost jumped out of her skin. “Kids say a lot of things. I doubt she’d take it so seriously as to drop out of your life forever.”

“Oh, you don’t know her,” she said, with a small, sad laugh. “She was so stubborn.” There was another pause, long and morose, before she added, “I wish she was here.”

She sagged back against him, and he held her once more, not sure what he should say. Except he was sure she had once told him she was an only child. So did she mean a half-sister, or had she lied because thinking about her sister had been too painful? Or was she simply lying? But why? She seemed genuinely distraught, so if she had been lying, it was probably about being an only child.

Yet his mind had settled on the “but why?” question, and refused to let it go. He suddenly began to wonder if he really knew Celia at all.

__________

As soon as Celia left for Gus’s, he forced himself to clean up, get dressed, and hike up to Joshua’s place, abandoning thoughts of her for now. He wasn’t sure if he actually loved her or not, but the idea that he knew even less about her than he ever realized bothered him greatly. Could she know she was often the only bright spot in his day, the only thing that kept him from abandoning living around people? It was unfair, because he put way too many expectations on her without her even knowing it - how could she ever live it to the woman he preferred to think she was? That was the problem with fantasy versus reality - reality always won, no matter how much worse it actually turned out to be.

Just like him, Josh had put his house far away from everyone else’s, only his was hidden among the sheltering pines on the slope above town. It wasn’t too deep inside the woods, just enough so that he could hide from plain sight.

Logan was just able to make out the cabin when he realized something was wrong. He smelled no smoke, and Josh usually always had a fire going, unless it was summer - it was his main heat source. Logan had grown so accustomed to the crisp smell of wood smoke drifting down from Joshua’s cabin that he hardly even noticed it anymore. Except now, of course, when it was gone.

He paused and listened hard, opening up all his sense, letting them overwhelm him with details. There was rustling inside the cabin, someone was there … but was it Josh?

Suddenly he had a very bad feeling about this.