11

Logan tried to grab on to something and steady himself, but it never exactly worked, and he ended up being thrown around and faceplanting against both the seat and ceiling, as well as colliding with a loose gun and a corpse or two. His nose broke yet again (fuck!), and his bottom lip split, filling his mouth with blood. He was probably cut by flying glass too, but it was too minor to feel. He never lost consciousness though, although he had no idea why.

As soon as the Explorer settled on its roof, hanging the men still in their seatbelts upside down, he crawled out the window, wondering if you could develop an allergic reaction to car accidents. Damn it, he was getting tired of them. He got to his feet, working the kinks out of his neck, and when he started walking back towards the road, a red Corvette screamed up to the shoulder, and Faith shouted, “C’mon! Move that ass!”

He could hear sirens in the distance now, growing closer, and took that as good advice. As soon as he ducked back in the car, she did a totally illegal U turn and sped up to even more totally illegal speeds to catch up with Mystique. “Weren’t you supposed to just follow her?” he carped.

She shook her head. “She’s making a noise like a cement mixer with a Lurmox demon stuck in it, and leaving a trail of sparks like a comet in a Ed Wood movie. We could find her SUV blindfolded.”

That was true enough. “You know what a Lurmox demon in a cement mixer sounds like?”

“It’s a long story. Just don’t jump a Slayer near a construction site.” She then grinned wickedly. “Unless I ask you to”

“Yes ma’am.” Like he was going to say no to her. He knew better than that.

They caught up to the damaged SUV pretty quickly, but Mystique took the first exit they reached, and Logan figured she was going to ditch the SUV. She’d pretty much have to, as this thing would get a boatload of attention she didn’t want. They followed closely, a car or two back, but just for safety. Mystique surely knew they were in the red Corvette now. How could she not? The problem was how she would react to it.

Eventually she swerved into a wide parking lot, where the stores it served seemed to be shut, but there was still a handful of cars in the lot. Faith roared into the lot after her, parking one row removed from her. As they got out of the car, Mystique was already standing beside the SUV, still in her Russian thug guise, holding her left arm. Blood was dribbling from it to the ground, not enough to suggest an arterial hit, but it was probably reasonably deep.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doin’?” Logan demanded as he crossed the lot. “Why did you kidnap Vogel?”

She scowled at him. “I was gonna tell you.”

“Bullshit. What’s this whole thing about?”

There was sirens still in the distance, but there was a whole lot of them; it sounded like an entire squadron had been dispatched. Mystique glanced nervously towards the road, but there was no way they could get here so fast. “We really shouldn’t discuss it here. We need to get out of here. You got room in your Matchbox car for a couple of passengers?”

Logan glared at her, wondering if this was a trap, or simply desperation on her part. He glanced at Faith, who gave the smallest of shrugs. She was leaving the play up to him. With great reluctance, he told her, “Fine, we can cram you in the back. But I want the whole fucking story - the truth this time.”

“I never lied,” she snapped irritably, opening the back of the SUV. There was an unconscious man hog tied and curled up in a fetal position. Logan couldn’t tell if he’d been shot or not; he smelled blood, but that could have just been from Mystique knocking him out initially. “I just didn’t have time to tell you every goddamn thing.”

“Right,” Logan agree sarcastically.

She gave him a scathing look before reaching into the SUV and pulling the unconscious form of Vogel out. For a guy who had to be about sixty he didn’t look too bad, except he was out cold and bleeding a little from the head. His hair was thinning, but he dyed it shoe leather black, which actually made him look older, but he probably didn’t believe that. Did any old guy? He was pretty solidly built, stocky, and he looked to be wearing an expensive yet threadbare suit, something he probably hung on to because he was cheap, or because he had some kind of sentimental attachment to it. Since Vogel didn’t seem like a sentimental guy, Logan guessed cheap.

She slung him over her should like so much fertilizer, and Logan decided to step back and open the door of the Corvette so she could put him in the back and get in. He watched her the whole while, never offering to help, mainly because he’d helped her enough. Faith gave him a look that seemed to question the wisdom of this, but he just shrugged. They did have to get out of here ahead of the police, and this gave them both Vogel and Mystique. What exactly they’d do with them they’d have to figure out along the way.

As soon as they were crammed in, Faith got back behind the wheel and Logan took the passenger seat, although he kept looking at Mystique in the rearview mirror. She ripped a sleeve off Vogel’s jacket and used it to create a tourniquet for the wound in her arm. “Can’t you morph around that?” Faith asked.

Mystique scowled at her. “It doesn’t work like that.”

It didn’t exactly. A wound was still a wound to Mystique; she couldn’t just change her shape and make it go away. What she could do was change tissue density or move organs around if she had the slightest idea she was about to get hurt. She could also change the tissue around an injury site in hopes of slowing blood flow and containing damage, but that was about it. Still, she had an ability to heal far beyond any normal person’s, although probably not close to Faith’s (who was far from a normal person). “What the fuck was your plan?” Logan demanded. “Where were you taking him?”

“There’s a safe house near Surrey. I was takin’ him there.”

“To one of their safe houses? That ain’t smart.”

“Not one of theirs.”

That made him glare at her. “Then whose?”

She met his glare, having withdrawn her fake thug shades into her face. She hadn’t disguised her eyes at all; they were usual Mystique black and yellow. “Someone I used to work with.”

“Which - the Brotherhood, or one of the groups you used to spy for?”

Her stare was belligerent. Did she not want to discuss this in front of Faith, or did she not want to discuss this at all, in any capacity? “Doesn’t really matter, does it? They’re not using it anymore.”

“So if you were the Canadian James Bond, what does that make her?” Faith asked curiously, adding more fuel to the general antipathy. “The blue Pussy Galore?”

Mystique impaled the back of her head with a glance, as Logan looked away and tried very hard not to laugh. “Are you flirting with me?”

That made Faith chuckle. “So your bread’s buttered that way, huh? ‘S cool. I know some cool lesbians. Not you, of course, but others.”

“Putting limits and labels on sexuality is a very monoform thing to do.”

“Monoform?” Faith wondered, looking at Logan to translate.

It took him a second, but it was pretty obvious what she was going for. “One form; non-shapeshifters.”

“Ah. Yeah, well, when you can make your innie an outie, I bet it makes things kinda weird. At least it opens up the dating pool.”

Again, Logan struggled not to laugh as Mystique glowered molten death at the back of Faith’s head. If she hadn’t been driving, Mystique could have very well punched her.

She gave Faith directions to the safe house, and Logan kept shooting surreptitious glances at Vogel’s form hunched in the back, only moving when the car juddered or hit a crack in the road. Logan would have thought he was dead if he didn’t know he smelled alive. Drugged? Must have been. But it was subtle, something that didn’t reek through his pores or spilled blood. It made him wonder why she was bothering to be subtle. Did she not want him to know she drugged Vogel?

Silence filled the car, uncomfortable and somehow vaguely sinister, so he asked, “Where’s the Hype?”

“Destroyed.”

“You’re lying. There were no drugs in the barn.”

Mystique’s eyes narrowed savagely. “It’s hardly on me, is it?”

“Guess not. So what did you do with it? Stash it somewhere for later retrieval?”

She chuckled mirthlessly. “Still paranoid, old man. How can you be so paranoid and yet somehow never paranoid enough?”

“Meaning?”

“If the X-Men found you, couldn’t the Organization have?”

“They thought I died at Alkali Lake.”

“No they didn’t. You were listed MIA, rogue. They knew you couldn’t die that easily. They’d tried to kill you enough themselves.”

He met her eyes in the rearview mirror. “What’re you implying?”

She gave him a thin smile, sharp as a razor. “Supposedly one of their teeps made contact with your mind a day after you blew up Alkali Lake. They reported your mind was fragmented; gone. You were written off as crazy, no harm or use to them. They figured you’d either heal up and find your way back, or remain crazy and useless for the rest of your life. Joining up with the X-Men was the worst thing you could’ve ever done. You let them know you’d recovered. If you’d just stayed some homeless bum, they’d never have known you were ripe for picking. All that hell you visited on the mansion and those poor little kids … and Jean. It was your fault. You knew that, right?”

He shot her an evil glance, but before he could respond, Faith cracked, “Yeah, blame the victim. It’s bullshit and you know it, blue balls. Since when do you blame fellow mutants for their own persecution? That’s hypocritical of you.”

Mystique didn’t appreciate that on many levels. Her sneer was ugly and somehow shark like. “You don’t know me, bimbo. Don’t presume to.”

“Actually, I think I do. I was kinda like you once, evil. You’re tryin’ to ride him down ‘cause he’s on to you. This op’s a big sack of Cthulu crap. The toxin’s gone, but it was the misdirect. It’s Vogel you want and Vogel you got, but he’s not dead. Why isn’t he dead? You killed everybody at the barn, but you took him hostage. There’s a reason. What is it?”

“What has he got that you want?” Logan asked, backing Faith up. She was right, Mystique was trying to distract him by playing on his guilt. And yet it didn’t make Mystique wrong either.

Mystique looked between the two of them with deepening degrees of hatred. “You two are perfect for each other. You’re both simplistic.”

Faith shared a knowing look with him. “Insulting us is all she’s got.”

He shrugged. “It’s a good weapon when your clip’s empty.”

“You’re surprisingly smug for people who have no idea what’s going on,” Mystique snapped.

“Enlighten us, sensei,” he replied sarcastically.

Again all he got for his trouble was a yellow eyed glare. “I think you’ll get an idea when we get to the safe house.”

“Is that where you stashed the Hype?” he wondered.

She just scowled at him. He didn’t expect any other reaction.

“If there’s a welcomin’ committee waitin’ for us, I’m using you as a Human shield,” he told her, meeting her glare with one of her own.

She didn’t even blink. “You’re the only person I was idiotic enough to work with.”

“For your sake, I hope that’s true.”

When he faced front again, Faith mouthed at him, “Skewer her ass.” He would if he had to. For the rest of the drive - mercifully not too long - there was nothing but thick, tense silence. Logan wondered how Mystique was figuring she’d get out of this. He knew she’d try, even though it looked bad right now. One thing they had in common was they didn’t seem to know when the hell they should just give the fuck up.

The safe house was a homely, unassuming little A frame set at the end of a long, winding driveway, behind a screening stand of thick Ponderosa pines and Russian firs that looked random enough to have been natural and not deliberately planted. Logan wondered if that was true, even though they were so tall and their trunks so thick that the youngest of the trees must have been twenty years old. It was possible that Mystique could have planned this far ahead, but it was more likely a government.

He got of the car, still behind the open passenger door, and took deep breaths, parsing the scents. The air was refreshingly clean out here, not counting the Corvette’s exhaust, but mostly it was nature smells: dirt, pitch, pine needles, bird shit, decomposing leaves, faint traces of wandering household pets. But nothing recent; no one had been here in a while. So it wasn’t an ambush, or at least not in the “forty ninjas materialize out of the trees brandishing sawed off shotguns” sort of way. That was kind of refreshing.

Faith got out, and stood holding the door open as Mystique struggled to pull the unconscious Vogel out of the back. “What did you give him?” Logan asked. “Roofies?”

She gave him a sidelong glance, and Vogel slipped from her grasp, landing in an ignominious heap on the ground. Faith made no move to pick him up. “You can smell those too, huh? I didn’t think they had much of a smell, at least not the kind I used.”

Well, hot damn, his random guess was totally right. Must be his lucky day. “Why’d you dose him with that? You don’t want him to remember what happened?”

“Exactly,” Mystique agreed, crouching down to get a better grip on Vogel. “He’ll think the mob betrayed him when he comes to, ‘cause that’s what I’m gonna tell him.”

Logan rubbed his eyes. He might still have had a splinter of broken glass in them; the problem was when his healing factor sometimes pushed them out of his eye they ended up trapped in his eyelid, which was a total pain in the ass. “This seems overly elaborate, ‘Stique. The question remains why?”

She stood up, Vogel tossed over her good shoulder like a bag of cat litter, but he noticed out of the corner of his eye she was bringing her arm up like trying to keep him from sliding off again. “Yes, doesn’t it?”

Logan barely saw the muzzle flash before he was hit in the head with the force of a wrecking ball.

***

It happened so fast it was almost unreal.

Faith had been looking at the house, a slightly run down place with peeling white paint that could have been the setting for Texas Chainsaw Massacre Four: We’ll Run This Sucker Into The Ground, only she didn’t know why she was studying it. Logan had those super senses didn’t he, and if he’d already dismissed it, there was probably nothing there. It just looked like bad news. Actually, it looked like this place in Colorado where she found a vamp’s nest full of little kids - maybe that’s why she didn’t like it.

The shot was explosively loud in this quiet corner of nowhere, and as her head whipped around to face the noise, she heard another blast and felt a blunt, hard hit to her shoulder that made her stumble and fall on her ass. Her left shoulder started throbbing mercilessly, like an infected wound, and she felt a warm stickiness running down her arm and chest that she knew was blood before she saw it or smelled it.

She looked up to see Mystique leveling a smoking gun at her. She wisely remained out of kicking distance. “The only reason you’re still alive, chippie, is because if he regained consciousness and found you dead, he’d turn the world upside down to find me and kill me.”

Chippie? What the fuck did that mean? Smurfette kept calling her that, and it was driving her bananas. She’d have to Google it sometime, because she didn’t want to embarrass herself by asking Logan what it meant. Maybe it was a Canadian thing. “You’re afraid of him? Good; you’re not a total idiot. But you know shooting him ain’t enough to keep him down.”

“Oh, shot in the head with a full adamantium jacket round? Sorry sweetheart, it’ll keep him down for a bit. In fact, you may start feeling sick in a minute.” It wasn’t a minute, she was feeling a little queasy now, but she didn’t show it. “Adamantium is ten times as toxic as mercury, you know. That’s why you don’t see a lot of adamantium wielding assassins running around. You need to be a level ten healer to have this stuff in you; Logan’s one of the rare ones who could take the full monty of this stuff and not die. It’s almost as nasty as he is.”

Maybe that’s why the wound was throbbing like a second heart already. She wasn’t a bullet wound virgin - she’d been shot before in her endlessly fun life. But she knew the feeling of this wound, an ache and a strange numbness spreading down to her elbow, was different. A bullet that was also poison. That seemed like an unfair bit of multitasking. Hopefully her Slayer defenses could handle it. “You really think you’re getting away with any of this?”

The blue bitch gave her a smug smirk. “I already have. When he regains consciousness, remind him I’m not the only one wanted by normal authorities. Those fuckers want us all, in one way or another.”

“Tell him yourself.” Her good hand behind her, Faith had picked up a good sized rock on the ground, and as soon as she was sure she could do it, she moved. She threw the rock, a hard overhand throw, and rolled aside at almost the same instant. Mystique fired, and the bullet hit the ground near her, kicking up dirt, but Mystique also let out a yelp as the rock grazed her temple. It only made her stagger back a step, but by that time Faith had rolled up to her feet and yanked the gun out of her hand, kicking her in the stomach at the same time. With Vogel on her shoulder she was awkwardly balanced, and she went falling on her ass right along with him as Faith aimed the gun down at her, racking the slide so another bullet entered the chamber. “Know what your first mistake was, Blue Meanie?” she told her, trying not to gloat. Oh hell, why not? She deserved a good gloat. “You didn’t kill me when you had the chance. Did you really think he was the only one you should have been afraid of? ”