When a vampire bit you, of course it hurt.  After the initial needle-like pain, though, two things seemed to happen - adrenaline spiked, but so did endorphins.  Either that or vamp saliva had some kind of natural sedative in it, something that made the experience feel strangely good, despite the fact it was undoubtedly killing you.  It just made death seem not so bad.

But the painkiller was just what Logan needed.  It rushed through his body like adrenaline, like a speed shot straight to the blood, and he used it to gather what little strength he had and throw a hard elbow.

He hit Dru flush in the face, just beneath the eye socket, and he heard something crack before she shoved him away, so hard he ended up kissing the asphalt.

"That hurt!" She snapped, sounding surprised.  Surprised that it hurt, or that he'd had enough strength to do it? "Naughty boy. You're no fun."

He crawled away, put some distance between them, before turning to look at her. She was sitting back on her haunches, still in vamp face, a bit of his blood smearing her lower lip. He wanted to ask her why she was here, and why she attacked him, but the latter question was silly.  She was a vampire; that was all the reason she needed.

So, instead, he took a deep breath and asked, "Why'd you kill 'im?"  But it sounded kind of mushy and
run together, like 'whudukillem.'

She licked his blood off her lip with a disturbingly seductive purr, and then seemed to understand what he was asking and pointed at the sky. "The man in the tower?  He was mean and hurtful.  He thought I was a liar. Do I look Belial to you?"

He had seen many a dead person in vamp face. For some reason, Dru looked more disturbing in it than anyone else. Maybe it was because there was something so delicate and childlike about her; the contrast was incredibly jarring. Or maybe it was the fact that even her yellow, demonic eyes had a sort of far away look to them, like she wasn't completely here even now. She could kill you, but she'd always be thinking about something else. Death impersonal.

"No." She was still too close to him, and he was pretty sure he couldn't stand yet.  He needed more time to heal, he could still taste blood coming up his throat, but it was obvious Dru was never going to give him time. And even though he was pretty sure the wound in his throat had healed, it still hurt, like maybe he'd gotten a sliver of broken glass beneath the skin. "Why'd you try to kill me?" Again, a mishmash of syllables that almost made sense.

Luckily, Dru understood - as well as spoke - gibberish. "Do you really think you can die, love?"  Her yellow eyes seemed luminous, and her porcelain skin had an almost ruddy glow to it, like she was really alive.  But that happened to vampires after feeding, right?  "You're like a jack in the box." She mimed turning a handle, and made a noise that was probably supposed to be jack-in-the-box music, but was just honestly tuneless and creepy.  "They put you in boxes and bury you deep underground, but you always spring right back up." She mimed the motion with her oddly delicate hands, her fingers fluttering. "You're like us, only ... not."

Us?  As in what, the undead?  Vampires?  She was crazy like a shithouse rat. What the hell had Angelus done to her exactly? "Then leave me the fuck alone."

She wagged a finger at him, back and forth, almost like a metronome, giving him a sharp, sly grin. "Didn't your Mummy ever teach you it's rude to curse?  Oh, wait - you don't remember your Mummy, do you?
I remember mine. I found her, you know.  After her throat was ripped out."  The memory made her grin falter, transforming it into a scowl. "She was supposed to be making tea. Her blood was in the pot, and all the little china cups.  It looked like syrup ..."

Okaaay.  Logan didn't know if that was real or not, but he almost felt like he'd fallen into some weird, post-modern version of Alice In Wonderland. And he was Alice, only he didn't have a nice blue dress on. Which was probably a shame, now that he thought about it - things could hardly be worse. He decided to try and pull himself back on his elbows, put even more distance between them.  Maybe if he could keep her talking, he could actually heal up enough to cut her fucking head off.

Dru glanced at him sharply, as if she knew what he was planning, but still it seemed as though she was  staring out from a past he couldn't know. "It was Daddy's fault.  And Daddy liked you."

"Daddy?" Was she implying he knew her father?  He had no fucking idea what her last name was or when she'd last been alive!  How could he know that shit?!

Her scowl was sharper now, malevolence giving her yellow eyes a queer flatness. "He's fading away in the distance, but I know he's still there.  And I know why he liked you.  Your blood tastes like summer."

Wow, he was so completely lost it wasn't even funny. "How the fuck can my blood taste like summer? What, suntan lotion and hot asphalt?  Make some fucking sense, Dru!  I know you can when you wanna!" Actually, he didn't know; he was just hoping.

But he wasn't sure she even heard him. "You don't need it; you don't even want it.  You should have stayed underground.  I can help."  And with that, she lunged at him like a tiger.

It took everything he had accumulated - which wasn't much at all - but he popped the claws on one hand and brought them up to meet her.

If she even saw them, she still couldn't avoid them.  He cut her, ripped through her flesh, but nowhere important or all that deep. Still, she let out a startled cry of pain and surprise, and quickly rolled away, avoiding any follow up slashes.  She came up with an arm around her stomach, her dress torn and small, slow rivulets of blood just beginning to streak the fabric. She was snarling at him, but more in hate than pain. “Now you’ve found your claws.”

“Try that again and I’ll rip you in half.  Think you can survive that?”

Her glare was icy hard. “Your stomach’s bigger than your eyes. You’re still in jagged little pieces; you can barely move.”

“I don’t have to move. Only you do.”

For some reason, she started to giggle. “Vicious little thing. You’re like the brother I never had.”

“Is that an insult?”

As she stood up, still holding her ripped stomach, she pointed an accusing finger at him. “They’re coming for you. And they know where you’re weakest. “ She tapped her forehead and gave him a leering grin. “Can you fight the thought?”

“What, telepaths?  I can fight telepaths.”

She shook her head, giggling again. “Fight yourself. You do, and you always lose.”

He stared at her, and wondered why he was listening to a single thing the psycho bitch said. But he had a feeling she wasn’t talking about the Dragons. “What the fuck are you babbling about?”

But all she did was blow him a kiss. “See you around, pet.  Sooner than you think.” She then turned and disappeared into the pools of shadows between the streetlights, and he wondered why no one from the cleaning service had come to shut off their fucking car alarm.  Could they not hear the damn thing?

“Count on it!” he shouted after her, suddenly realizing why no one had responded to the fucking alarm. You needed to be alive - or at least undead - to respond to it.  She had a bottle of cleanser, and a dead body in Chin’s office. He suddenly wondered if the sounds of floor buffers and vacuums he’d heard were simply machines left on after their users had been cut down.  Dru was good; she was too damn good.

He spit out another mouthful of blood and sagged to the sidewalk, wanting to pass out but sure he couldn’t afford to. For one thing, it wouldn't do to be found outside a building where several murdered people were waiting to be discovered, and for another, he knew Dru was still hanging around, waiting to see if he would pass out so she could finish him off.  He needed to get the fuck out of here. Which introduced dilemma number three - how did you do that when you couldn’t get up?

Shit, why did he always have these kinds of problems?

7

As it turned out, Rags’s place was closer than his motel, so Logan decided to crash there until he had the stamina to stand up for more than three minutes at a time.  Dru probably wouldn’t think to look for him there … but then again, how had she known he was going to be seeing Chin?  He thought he had stepped in the middle of something, some demon score-settling, but maybe it was more complicated than that. Dru had some kind of psychic ability, right?  Maybe she'd known he was going after Chin, and figured he would probably break him, so rather than let him get access to Arcanum, she took care of the possible security leak by killing Chin before he could arrive. Maybe she was working for the Dragons after all. If she did have Second Sight, she would always be a step ahead of him. And while just keeping Chin safe might have been a better option, she seemed like the type of person who would find a “scorched earth” policy not only reasonable, but preferable.

This was where he would love to call in Chuck and sic him on her, but Dru was a vampire, and it simply wouldn’t work. Bob could make it work, but Bob was off looking for Angel, right?  Besides, he really didn’t want him in on this.

It was stupid to feel like a cheating spouse, but in a way he did.  After all, the Powers and Bob always seemed to be at odds, although they weren’t precisely enemies; what they were was hard to say.  It seemed more like a family feud of some sort, each side blaming the other for some incident at a family barbecue that caused a major rift for years, even though no one could remember the specifics of the argument anymore, only that it was really bad and unforgivable.  Now he had found himself inexplicably
in the middle, and why?  He was starting to suspect the Powers were just trying to piss off Bob.

He didn’t expect to find Rags home, and yet he must have made a lot of noise staggering up the stairs, as Rags threw open the door before he could reach it.  He gaped at him, yellow crystal eyes wide … well, possibly.  He wasn’t blinking, anyway. “Fucking ‘ell, who flushed you down the crapper?!”

“Dru kicked my ass,” he admitted, then chuckled.  It was pretty funny, now that he thought about it.

“Drew? Who’s Drew?” He asked, and stood back as Logan fell through the door.  Rags seemed to be dressed up pretty nice - for him - meaning his jeans were clean and the t-shirt looked fresh out of the package. He also smelled vaguely of mouthwash and mousse, with just a hint of scotch.

There was no good place to collapse (except for Rags’s bed, and no...no way), so he just hit the wall and slid down it to the floor, really wanting to pass out. Walking shouldn’t have taken so much out of him, and yet it did. “Drusilla. A vampire. If you don't know her, you're lucky.”

His brow furrowed in thought as he considered that, and then, as soon as he shut the door, he gasped as
if he’d been punched. “Angel’s Drusilla? Fuckin’ Zeus in a bucket, she didn’t kill you?”

“Do I look dead?” Now the bite mark in his neck was itching. Was there something in there?  There was one wound still a bit open, and he dug his fingernails in it until he felt something hard, which he managed to grab and pull out of his neck.

For a minute, Logan didn’t know what he was looking at.  But then he got it - it was a fang. When he'd elbowed Dru, one of her fangs must have broken off in his throat. Although gross on the surface, he liked the idea that he snapped off one of her fangs. But knowing vamps, they probably just grew them back like sharks.

“Yeah, kinda. Half dead.”

Logan glared at him, tossing the fang across the floor. “I’m not.  I’m just tryin’ to figure out why she attacked me, and how she coulda kicked my ass.” Well, she had seen him fighting on Dis, hadn’t she?
The cage matches. She knew to watch out for his claws.  How had she known about his ability to smell things better than most Humans?  How did she know a fall would disable him?  Maybe it was just a
guess; maybe she'd really hoped it would kill him.

Rags snorted in disbelief. “She’s got the Sight, hasn’t she?  She can fig - oh fuck!  Did she follow you here?!”

“She didn’t follow me.”

“You can’t be sure o’ that!  Motherfucking ‘ell …” he muttered, stomping off to his bathroom.  He rattled some things around for a moment, but then came out with a burning stick of incense that smelled quite a bit like cedar and marshmallows. “Oh holy sifters,” he said, walking around waving the stick.  The smell made him cough. “Protect your ‘umble servant -”

“What the fuck are you doing?”

“Gettin’ the Gorgons to protect my place from vampires, doofus,” he snapped back. “Now let me finish.”

What did he expect from a High Priest of Medusa, or whatever the fuck his actual title was?  The fragrant smoke was making his eyes burn, so he closed them, listening to Rags’s strangely soothing Cockney chant. He did not get these weird religions, not in the least.  But, even so, multiple gods made more sense to him than just a single one, although he had no idea why.  Perhaps it followed a certain kind of logic...

Wait a minute. Why did Rags have his ceremonial incense in the bathroom?

*******

By the time McClendon arrived, Logan had Mac assuring everyone in town that the situation was under control, it was just that there had been an “accident” at Camp Baker, and people were to stay clear of the scene until they had the area “secured”.  In short, lie his head off.  Mac himself barely got a glimpse of the scene, but saw enough that he was happy to return to town without argument.

When McClendon and two of his people - he called them Brock and Levitt - arrived and saw the scene, all of them paled visibly, and as soon as he saw the first body, Brock bolted into the woods and vomited up whatever breakfast he’d had. Even McClendon (why couldn’t he think of him as just Glenn? It was so strange …) seemed a little unsteady as Logan gave him the tour, showing him all the bodies. There were eight in all, and he was truly glad it had been such a small camp.

There was no way to avoid mucking through the blood, and by this time his nose had become inured to it. He could still smell it, intermingled with the rich scent of earth, but he was growing used to it, just like he'd kind of had to get used to his own smell.  Glenn wiped a hand over his mouth, looking like he was about to join Brock at the edge of the woods. “I’ve never seen anything like this,” he finally said, his voice slightly shaky. “It’s … hideous.”

“That’s one word for it.  Someone was pretty goddamn angry.”

Glenn looked at him, equally shocked and curious. “Angry?”

Had he said something wrong? Was the rage spent here not obvious to others?  Logan wished he had never figured out he wasn‘t like other people - or they weren‘t like him.  He wasn‘t really sure how that worked. Could he really be the only … well, freak in the entire world?  “Or insane. This wasn’t the work of a reasonable man.”

“That's for sure.” He paused, staring down at the blood soaked ground like he was searching for clues, and Logan watched his jaw muscles work. “What do you think, Logan?  A logger got drunk, and simply … what would you call it?  Lost his mind?”

“Maybe. Sometimes camps work for competing companies, and some of these loggers know each other … and not always in a good way.”

“No one …” he paused, swallowing hard. “No one from your town could have done this, could they?”

The question was shocking, though he had expected it. “No way.  A lot of ‘em have their reasons to hide, but to do this?  I don’t know anyone even remotely capable of this.”

Glenn nodded but it was in a strange way, like his neck was a spring. He was so discombobulated by the crime scene he looked like he needed to go have a little lie down. “We’ll … I’ll get a call into Calgary. I’ll need to interview the men at the other logging camps -”

“Let me handle that, Glenn.”

He raised an eyebrow at that in curiosity, but his brown eyes betrayed a certain amount of hope. “Are
you sure?”

Logan nodded, wondering how good a liar he could be. “They see RCMP uniforms, they’ll shut down. They’re used to dealing with me. I’ll get more out of ‘em.” He couldn’t say he'd be able to tell if they were lying to him, as he was pretty sure most people could only guess, with little to no physical clues.

Glenn thought about it for a moment, then nodded with more conviction. “Maybe I should send one of my guys to shadow you, in case there’s trouble.”

He scoffed. “Think I can’t handle trouble?”

“Well, no, but - this level of trouble?”

Logan shrugged, not sure how much he should admit here.  It might sound like braggadocio. “If someone tries to cleave my chest open with a hatchet, I wish them luck.”

The other man shook his head and stared off at the trees, in the general direction of Camp Spencer, the nearest logging camp. “You always were a tough son of a bitch.  Have an angel on your shoulder, Woods?”

That made him feel like laughing, but he didn’t dare.  Glenn wouldn’t understand it. “Something like that. I’ll let you know what I find.”

He turned and headed back to the woods, not where Brock was throwing up but back toward town. Camp Spencer was quite a rough patch through the forest, and then Camp Anderson was an even longer stretch. He ruled out visiting Camp Valentine, as it was too far away, too far up the slope, and if the killer had come from there, he’d still be on his journey back.

He needed to use one of the Heller’s horses if he wanted to make good time. There were no cars in town capable of traversing the rough and uneven terrain, the occasionally muddy slicks they jokingly called “roads”.  Maybe a motorcycle could make it, but no one owned a motorcycle that he knew about.

Once he got back to town, he was met by a small crowd, consisting of the older Hellers, Doc Withers, Jon O’Neil, Maddy Black, and “Father” Jeremiah Olson, the supposed 'priest' of this town, who led services every Sunday for the few people who were interested.  The thing was, Logan had never found any proof that Jeremiah had any connections at all to any known church, so he figured he was just an overzealous religious nut.

Mac was at the back of the crowd, looking like he was about to have a stroke; controlling clamoring crowds was not one of his strengths.  They began peppering him with panicky questions at all once, so he was waving his hands in the air and pleading, “Whoa people!  One question at a time!”

“It’s a bear, ain’t it?” William Heller asked.

That caught Logan short. “What?”

“We heard a bear attacked the camp,” Olson contributed helpfully. “Killed ‘em all.”

He glared at him. “Since when do -” But he instantly stopped himself, as he realized that was a great cover story. Saying all those men had been murdered would cause a panic. A bloodthirsty bear would also cause a panic, but a much milder one, one that could be contained and controlled. “Now we don’t know the whole story,” he cautioned. “We think the loggers mortally wounded it, so there’s no need to panic. The RCMP’s are out searching the woods for its body right now.”

There was murmuring and more questions, but they seemed generally mollified. He left them to talk among themselves about the best ways to trap a bear, while Mac followed him nervously. “Was it really a bear?” He whispered.

“As far as they’re concerned, yes,” Logan replied, and noticed Celia standing outside the tavern. She was in the doorway, hands pressed to her mouth as if stifling a scream, eyes wide and red rimmed with horror. When she saw him, she stared for a second as if she didn’t recognize him, or didn’t want to. She then quickly turned away, eyes squeezing tightly shut, before she fled inside the building.

“Celia,” he shouted after her, quickly following, leaving Mac behind.

He wasn’t all that surprised to find the tavern was empty now, save for her. The smell of coffee and slightly overdone eggs lingered in the air, and while he was reminded he hadn’t eaten, he was far from hungry. He’d be surprised if he was able to eat at all today or tomorrow.

Her back was to him, slender shoulders shaking as she fought to keep the tears back. “What’s wrong?” He asked, feeling both stupid and helpless. It was fairly obvious what was wrong, but he had no idea what he could do about it.

She sniffed hard, and finally turned to face him, but didn’t quite commit; she stared off at a clump of dirt on the floor just to the right of his boots. “I’ve heard … are they all dead?”

Should he tell her the truth? Well, she was an adult, and she would hear soon enough. “Yeah.”

She winced as if he’d hit her. “And Matt saw all that -”

Was that what this was all about? “No.  Most of the bodies were inside.  He saw one, tops, and he didn’t know what he was looking at. “

“Are you certain of that?” Her stare was so intense, he followed her gaze, and saw he’d left bloody footprints on the floor.  Shit - he was sure he’d lost it all in the woods. “Matt didn’t see it.  It looked just like mud until you -”

“I can’t believe this,” she exclaimed, her voice angry in spite of being fractured by sobs. “Matty’s all I have. I can’t lose him … “ She flung herself at him, collapsing against his chest as if she had been trying to throw herself at the floor and missed. “I should have never come here,” she sobbed into his neck, her tears hot and streaking his skin. “I should have kept going towards the coast.  Bad luck just seems to follow us wherever we go … “

He could sympathize, more than she would possibly ever know. “Please don’t cry,” he told her, stroking her silky hair.  He never knew what to do when a woman cried, he always felt awkward and helpless, but it was nice to hold her, to breathe in her scent of violets and coffee.  He’d kept his distance from women for too long, but after what had happened to Sophie, he wasn’t sure he could handle it anymore. Physical pain was one thing; he didn’t like it, but he could take it.  Emotional pain was another beast altogether. And there seemed to be something especially cruel about watching someone you loved die a piece at a time, always aware that you didn’t get sick, you didn’t age, and nothing you could ever do would transfer your ability to them.  You just got to stand there and watch, and wonder how many other times you would watch it happen in your life, your stupid life that seemed far too long, that stretched before you more like a threat than a promise.

Why? Why him? What had happened to make him this way? He'd scoured medical journals when he found them, many from other countries, looking for some sign of his … well, disease?  Is that what you would call it?  He’d found no name for his affliction, at least not there.  He had found something in the teachings of Buddhism, though...if he could make himself believe it - and he found it extremely difficult to believe anything at all;  Karma.  It seemed he was living proof that not only was there no god at all, no matter what name you gave it, but also that Mother Nature herself had a cruel sense of humor.  Perhaps this was his punishment for something, a payment for some terrible sin.  And - who knew? - maybe it was. Honestly, that made the most sense of all the theories he had been able to put together over the years. But what could he possibly have done that was so terrible, he was now deserving of a fate like this?

“It’ll be all right,” he told her, hoping it wasn’t a lie.

“No, it won’t,” she replied, her words muffled against his skin. “How can it be?”

“I won’t let anything happen to you or Matt, I promise.”  And he meant it, but he didn’t know if it would do any good.

“How can you promise that?” She asked, looking up at him. Tears continued to spill out of her dark eyes, and it was heartbreaking. He gently wiped them away with his thumb, and in the back of his mind, wondered why she was so distraught.  It wasn’t over the deaths of those men, whom she mostly didn’t
like anyway; it seemed to be over what they represented. Wasn’t that curious?

“I won’t let anything hurt you,” he replied.  It wasn’t an answer to her direct question, but it was the best
he could do.

She stared up into his eyes, as if searching for an indication he could be lying, and said, “I want to believe you.”

“Then do,” he said, and slowly lowered his face towards her.  Logan was waiting for her to push him away, but she didn’t. He didn’t kiss her, just brushed his lips against hers, waiting for some sign he was moving too fast. It didn’t happen, so he did kiss her then, softly, and after a moment’s hesitation she responded, hesitantly kissing his lower lip. He knew he was letting emotions get in the way of something important, but right now he didn’t honestly care.

His concentration on her was abruptly pulled away by a curious noise outside.  It was the crunching of tires on gravel, and the hum of an engine - a car. But not one he had heard before.  As he glanced over his shoulder toward the tavern’s windows, she followed his gaze, no longer crying. “Who’s that?”

He shook his head. He couldn’t see from the window, so he let her go and went to the door to have a look.

Parked at the base of the main street was a black car, the style and model of which he had never seen before. It gleamed as black as a beetle’s carapace, and he assumed it was brand new, in more respects than one. The man that got out of the car was wearing a natty charcoal suit, with leather shoes far too good for the dusty dirt road, his brown hair tightly combed back, and parted so sharply he could have done it with a knife. His eyes looked small and pale behind wire-rimmed glasses, and his ramrod straight posture set off all sorts of alarm bells in Logan’s mind. His first thought - mortician - was quickly scrapped in favor of the more obvious and disturbing answer: government. This guy was clearly government, and it instantly unleashed butterflies in his stomach.

The G-man glanced around the town, taking in the remains of the small crowd with a glance that was both quick and dismissive, and when his eyes settled on Logan, a slow smile spread across his face.  But the smile was wrong; it not only seemed hard and smug, but it also never reached his cold eyes.  “Logan... ..Woods, I presume?”  He asked, walking slowly towards him. “I’ve been looking for you for ages. You don‘t know how good it is to see you … looking so well.”

Oh, shit. What part of his past had caught up with him now?