He approached the cabin cautiously, ready to fight, and noticed the door to a small “smokehouse”, where Josh would sometime cure meat for the winter months, was ajar.  He’d never seen it open before - Josh always sealed that place up tight, to keep out predators.  It didn’t look like there was anything in there either.

Logan smelled lots of fall scents here, the slow die-off of leaves and their decomposition into the undergrowth, many animals and the lingering odors of the smokehouse, but no new Humans;  no one
but Joshua.  He decided to risk it and shouted, “Josh!”

The noises inside the house died, as if someone inside had froze. He waited for more, maybe a violent response, but nothing happened. “Josh!” He repeated, continuing his approach to the house.

“Go away!” A man finally shouted back. Joshua, for sure.

Logan walked up to the door with more confidence, relatively sure Josh wasn’t going to shoot him, and when he opened it, Joshua emerged from the back bedroom, holding what looked like a rolled up blanket in his arms. “Get out of here Woods,” he spat angrily. “I am not going with him!”

He didn’t know which was more puzzling - his rage or his statement. “Going with who?”

Joshua’s brown eyes narrowed to angry slits, his scowl accentuating the lines on his leathery tan face. “Don’t you dare play dumb with me, Sheriff. I know a G-Man when I see one, and I’m not going back to Ottawa. I‘m leavin‘, but so help me, if you tell him, I‘ll -”

“What? Kill me?” He interrupted, with equal force.  Okay, now he knew why Josh was theoretically packing up - he’d seen Malloy in town. And if Josh had identified Malloy as easily as he had, that meant he'd had some association with the feds in the past. How? He’d never heard it mentioned that Josh had anything to do with government work or service, which pretty much left one possibility open.

Josh’s eyes widened slightly at the accusation, but remained hard, glittering like diamonds. “That's what you think, huh? Is that what he told you?”

“He wasn’t here about you. What, exactly, is it that could be told about you, Josh?”

“Bullshit. I’m not an idiot.  He wasn’t here ‘cause he had a flat tire -”

“He was here about me,” Logan interrupted, letting his own anger show. “Do you think you’re the only one with secrets, Cloud?  Hell, if it wasn’t for our secrets, none of us would even be here.” He’d already started parsing smells, and he hadn’t smelled pond mud or blood, and since it was so dusty in here it was taking all his willpower not to sneeze, he knew Josh hadn’t been on a cleaning binge as of late.  And he hadn’t smelled any blood outside either, so unless he spent his time drying off in the woods - a possibility; Josh was quite the woodsman - he wasn't his man.

But Josh's angry resentment mixed with guilt was not a reaction working in his favor, nor was the fact that he had clearly packed up most of his belongings. Still, he reeked of sour sweat, the booze from last night still oozing through his pores. Being drunk wouldn’t be good for his alibi, but being hung-over might be, because a hung-over man was barely capable of functioning.

Josh glared at him, and Logan glared right back, neither of them giving an inch. He could see him seething behind his eyes, so angry and scared he was about to lash out at anything to make himself feel better. And while Logan had to admit to himself that part of him was just itching to vent some frustration, this wasn’t the way to do it. “You do not want to start something with me,” he told Josh through gritted teeth. “I don’t care how tough you think you are - you won’t finish it.”

“Oh really, white man? You think I’m that easy to beat?”

He shook his head.  “I just know that I’m not.” This wasn’t helping, so he decided to knock him for a loop that would either infuriate him further or throw him off completely. “Did you kill those men?”

Josh's eyes widened, and he took a step back in shock. “Men?  What, who have they accused me of killing now?”

Oh great. “You’re wanted on a murder rap?”

“Like you didn’t know. And it was an accident anyway - I told ‘em that.  He attacked me, I defended myself.  But would they believe me? No. The guy was white, I’m not, so I gotta be to blame.”

“I wasn’t asking about your past, Josh. I was asking about Camp Baker.”

He looked horrified and offended, and took another step back, as if he was so appalled he didn’t trust himself to be near him. “What the fuck ..? They were killed? And you think I did it?” He sneered, enraged that he was being accused of this.

“No, I don’t. But if you know of anyone who had a grudge -”

“The fucking G-Man thinks I did it, huh? Are they framin’ me for that, too?”

“As I told you, he was here for me, not you. I’m the one asking.”

Josh turned away with a disgusted snort, and stomped off, probably to continue packing. “You fucking asshole. You’re no better than the rest of ‘em.”

“I never claimed to be.” Logan followed him after a moment, when it became obvious he wasn’t going to hurry back, and besides, he needed to make sure he wasn’t going for his rifle.

Joshua was packing up, shoving the blanket in a knapsack on his bed. He didn’t look up, but he knew Logan was there, as he started muttering angrily, “ You think you know what it’s like for me, but you don’t. Judge all you want, but you have no idea what’s it’s like to be different from everybody else.”

Logan willed himself not to laugh. “Oh, I don’t know about that.”

“Well, I do. And I don’t need any shit from you.” Finally he looked up from his violent packing, and snapped, “Are you gonna arrest me or not?”

“Should I?”

He scowled at him. “If you’re just gonna be a smartass -”

“Tell me where you were the night before last.”

His glare returned, acidic and hard. “Where was I?  Here, drinking myself stupid.”

“I don’t suppose you have any witnesses that can corroborate this?”

His expression became even more sour, which didn’t seem possible. “No. But I didn’t kill them.” He then threw out his arms with a noise of disgust. “Oh, what the fuck does it matter? Yer all gonna believe what you want anyway, so -”

“I believe you,” Logan interrupted.

Joshua’s look remained sharp and sarcastic. “Uh huh.  Didja forget you need two people to play good
cop/ bad cop?”

“I’m serious.” And he was. There was no circumstantial evidence, nothing suspicious.  Josh was angry and scared, sure, but mostly of cops, and the idea of them.  He had a bad temper and a drinking problem, but he was not a psychopath, and considering the amount of sour booze sweat oozing out of him, he must have been on a days-long bender, which would mean he'd probably been incapacitated, unable to walk straight, to say nothing of being able to kill several loggers, then clean up after himself.

On the other hand, he was an admitted, wanted killer. He wouldn’t cease being a peripheral suspect until a killer was actually caught, so no wonder he was eager to go. “I've gotta ask you to stay here until I can figure this out.”

He scoffed. “Yeah, so you can arrest me when you run out of ideas.”

“No, that’s not gonna happen.”

“The fed -”

“Is my responsibility, not yours. Don’t worry about him, he’s mine to deal with.”

Josh tossed his bag to the far side of the bed, and fixed him with a sour, suspicious look. “Give me one good reason why I'm supposed to believe this?”

Logan just shrugged. “’Cause I’ve never done anything to hurt you?  And I’m not sure it’s all that safe out in the woods right now.”

“I know how to handle bears.”

“I didn’t mean them. I meant whoever could take out everyone in Camp Baker.”

He grimaced, but still didn’t seem convinced. “I can take care of myself.”

“And all of them couldn’t?”

Before Josh could even attempt to bluff his way past that one, they both heard - distant but clear as a bell - a woman's scream.

Logan bolted to the door, listening hard, and Josh followed, lurking behind his shoulder. “It came from beyond the woods,” Logan said, sniffing the wind.  It didn’t reveal anything, although, judging from its direction, the scream probably came from town.  Shit.

“Should I get my gun?” Josh asked, sounding tense.

“Sure,” he said, and left him to it while he started running toward town. What was going on now?

He just hoped no one else was dead.

16

The jolt of the car suddenly stopping woke him from his healing stupor.

Logan rubbed his eyes and sat up, while the driver that Wing had procured for him, Chu, made quizzical noises and scanned the web pages currently displayed on his cell phone. “Is there a problem?” Logan finally asked, scraping itchy dried blood off his face.

“Huh. I guess not, if MapQuest is right. The place is down there.” He pointed through the windshield, down the darkened street, where Logan could make out almost nothing in the soft lavender-pink light of early dawn except a hulking shape with a roof that was pointed, but in a way that suggested it was an accident. “Sure you don’t want me to take you there?”

“I’ll walk. I need the exercise,” he said, opening the back door and getting out.  He'd told Chu he wanted to be dropped off a block from this “Saint Albans” place, as he wished to approach on foot.  He figured with a name like that, it was one of three things - a hospital, a church, or a Catholic school.  Now it seemed the church was the winner of that sweepstakes.

When Chu didn’t immediately drive away, Logan looked back in annoyance and waved him off.  He frowned, but as a Triad wheel man, he knew his was not to reason why, his was just to fucking drive. The Lexus glided away from the curb and sped off towards the better part of Palo Alto, the engine a low murmur fading in the distance.

The block felt wrong, of course. This early in the morning you expected the quiet, you expected everything to be shut up tight, but the cinderblock buildings filling this dead-end street looked like façades on a movie set, empty shells hastily propped up to give the impression of permanence and habitation. Which was possible, as demons and mobsters had that much in common - there was little you could put past them.

As for the church that anchored the block like the physical manifestation of a black hole, it was a burnt out hulk; a ruin that hadn’t quite collapsed in on itself yet. Where the windows were supposed to be were planks of plywood, and whatever color it had been on the outside, it was charcoal now, as was most of the grass in front of it.  It looked firebombed.

But it wasn’t recent.  The smell of burnt wood and greenery was so old it was virtually stale, nearly overpowered by the more recent scent of demon.  It seemed like an odd place to set up but, again, there was simply no accounting for demons and their sense of humor.

Logan found his mind wandering in spite of the fact that he needed to stay alert.  Now that Farik, leader
of the Dragons was (presumably) dead, what now?  The demons might indeed be pissed off enough to go after the Yakuza, who could certainly hold their own, but there would be a lot of fatalities in the ensuing gang war, and he could see the Triad cleverly exploiting it for their own gain.  The problem was that Farik must have had some way to keep the Lamias in line, keep them on task - possessing and replacing key members of various other gangs, pulling them into service.  As far as a power play went, it was perfect. Except now the lamias could do whatever they wanted, and had no script to stick to.  There was nothing at all to stop them from spreading far and wide, using the vehicle of anodyne as their ticket to world domination.

Frankly, they could have the world. It was such a fucked up mess he couldn’t see demons doing that much worse. But this killing people for snacks, leaving them as dried out husks, wasn’t exactly a good start. He had to put a stop to it before it got even bloodier than it was now, and right now it was pretty fucking bad. Would killing the queen solve the problem?  Could he even kill the queen? After all, Lorne hadn’t been able to tell him how specifically you could kill a Lamia - Logan figured you just killed the host body, but he didn’t honestly know.  He was just going to have to wing it.  And why, exactly, was he always getting in these situations where he had to do that?

Now that he thought of it, where were the demons?  He had no sense of being watched, but they must have known he was here. So why weren’t they attacking?  Did they think he was just another Human?  Or was the queen so sure of her power and position that she didn’t even care who came after her, if anyone even did?  That was fine with him; the cocky were fun to take down.

He was almost afraid to open the door, fearing it would crumble to cinders, but shoved it open carefully, getting soot on his hand. Some ashes salted down from the top of the jamb, but somehow the burnt thing managed to remain intact.

Most of the roof was gone, save for the edges and the majority of the spire, which was why the silhouette looked so strange. The center of the church seemed to have a massive skylight, roughly the size and shape of a 747 fuselage. There were no pews, just the charred remains of a few corners, and the altar looked like a black mound, like someone had been buried beneath it in a volcanic eruption. In the center of the aisle - or, at least, where he imagined it used to be - was a small pool of water that looked pinkish in the early morning light.

Wait a minute - no, it was actually pink. The smell of anodyne was almost overwhelming, and he realized it was like an uncovered well of the stuff.  He'd assumed it was synthesized somehow - did it actually come from the ground, like oil?  Or was this just a massive spill?

“Oh, my god,” a slightly effeminate male voice sneered.  Logan looked up sharply, and saw, standing on the remains of the alter, a painfully thin, frighteningly pale young man with a gleaming bald scalp and a tarnished brass eyebrow ring.  His general, overall countenance of a junkie one hit away from a fatal overdose. Except for his eyes, of course, which glowed an ominous neon pink. “The Powers are really hard up nowadays, aren’t they?”

Logan arched an eyebrow at him, trying hard not to snicker. The stud in his nose looked pink too. “You’re the queen?” He'd assumed the queen would take up residence in a female body, but didn’t it make more sense for her to inhabit a man? Anyone looking would be expecting a woman. Misdirection was a handy tool.

“You’re too late, you know,” he/she said, gesturing at the far wall in a way that suggested he/she meant the outside world. “We are the new fad, the new drug, the latest hip high. We’ll be everywhere you go, for now and until the end of time.” He/she paused briefly. “Which, by my calculation, should be in three months.”

“You need a distributor, don’t ya?”

His/her Pepto-Bismol eyes flashed with annoyance. “What does that mean?”

“If the Yakuza and the Triad aren’t there to act as middlemen and traffickers, how will you get it out there? Can’t exactly sell it in Ralph’s, can you?”

“We own them.  They're pawns.”

Logan was aware that more demons and Lamias had grown out of the woodwork, and he was being slowly surrounded by them. Right now there was four behind him, some exceptionally brawny specimens that could have been weightlifters or bouncers, but the most troubling thing was a flickering shadow out of the corner of his eye. Was it a wraith?  It never seemed to solidify into anything, and the smell of smoke seemed to intensify in that direction. “Newsflash, your highness - that’s all gone to shit.  As of now, the Dragons have lost their leader, and are probably going after the Yakuza as we speak. The Three Dragons is history, the alliance has fractured, and you’re next.”

He/she smiled, but it was an awful thing to see, leering and hard, an upper lip arch away from a full blown sneer or a baring of the teeth. “Is that right? There are other gangs, other methods of distribution.”

“And how do ya think you’re gonna manage to do that when you’re dead?”

The smile became a full blown sneer now, ugly on his/her skeletal face. “I’m not the dead man here.”

The shadow that kept flickering in and out solidified suddenly, and before Logan could react it slammed into his back full-force, clinging to him like an alien face hugger, and sending him face-first into the pool of anodyne. Before he could jump back up, he felt even more weight press down on his legs, his back, and someone’s meaty hand tangled in his hair, shoving him down into the pool of narcotics.

Oh shit. Well, if he ended up drowning in anodyne, at least he wouldn’t feel it.