It was near the end of a bunch of small ( boutique ) shops that ran along the right side of the street in a low rent shopping district that liked to pretend it was classier than it actually was.
Bob said something about "guards" and told her to go on in, and he'd be there momentarily. But when she hesitated, he told her she didn't have to, she could wait for him outside, and that just cemented her desire to go in there and face Mr. Demonhead. It was stupid, really - how was she going to be any good against Fenrir if she couldn't even go in alone to face ... whatever he was ( Bob said he was a Shunned, whatever that meant ) ? So she just sucked up her own fear and went ahead inside, as Bob took care of the "guards" ( she didn't see anyone, but hey, would she ).

The shop was small and smelled of leather, which hung on small, closely placed racks that barely left room for aisles and the condensed check out counter. It looked to be mostly coats, pants, and skirts, but she saw some other things: a wall rack of purses, with gloves and wallets on the side; a tiny display of leather bustiers and tank tops; and even fringed, buttless chaps that just scared the hell out of her. Who would wear those and why? And ... no way, that wasn't a whip, was it?

"Welcome to my shop," a voice said, startling her. For a moment she was sure she was alone. Her heart was still hammering when a man appeared from out of what could have been the fitting room. He was tall and thin ... and looked like a guy. And not a bad looking guy, with black hair and hazel eyes, and a good real tan - not fake bake. He was fairly well dressed too, in tailored black dress pants and a shirt so pale blue it was almost white. He gave her a smile that exposed movie star perfect teeth, and said, "Dig the tattoo. And I'm getting some power vibes off you. But you're Human, right?"

Okay, he had some kind of super demon sense. But Bob had told her not to bother covering up Camaxtli's mark on her forehead, because he'd never recognize it. "Wrong mythology" - whatever that meant. "Um, yeah. You're demon, right?"

His grin grew wider, which seemed impossible. "Something like that. So you're a mutant, huh? A pretty powerful one?"

She hadn't expected that he'd know what she was, or that she'd get a third degree. Bob could have warned her. "I don't like to brag."

That seemed to amuse him. "Oh my dear, you should. People only respect displays of power."

What the hell was that supposed to mean?

"So what can I interest you in today?" He asked smoothly, before she could ask him what his power was.

Okay, good looking but endlessly creepy. Still, Bob would be here any second - she had to stick to the game plan. "I need a new jacket. My other one is so six months ago."

That allowed him to slide into his sales pitch, as she pretended to look at the racks of coats, swallowing back exactly how freaked out she was being alone in a room with him. Maybe it would have been better if he had big horns or looked like a lizard on two legs - then she wouldn't expect him to be normal.

They appeared to be the only ones here too, but considering the time of day and the neighborhood ( and the creepy owner ), she wasn't surprised. Faint pop music filtered in from overhead as she looked through the coats. Some of them were actually nice looking and fairly good quality, as much as she could tell. And the guy was sticking to her like glue.

She took one of the coats off the rack - a sort of waist length black trench style - and took it to a mirror near the back of the store. And of course, this bastard followed her like a stray dog; she expected him to start panting at any moment.

As she tried it on, trying not to look at his leering reflection, he said, "That style covers up too much of your fabulous figure. And black is too dowdy for you."

"Is it?" No one had ever called her "dowdy" before - that was unsettling.

Presumptuously he took the coat off her shoulders and returned it to the rack. "What's with the gloves, honey? Not that they aren't stylish. Does your mutation effect your hands?"

"Yeah." He didn't need any more information.

He came back with a red leather biker style jacket and rather than give it to her, he slipped it over her shoulders and seemed to squeeze in a little too close. "See? Doesn't that look better?"

She tried to focus on the coat and not his leering mug. How had she ever thought he was cute?  "Yeah, it looks pretty good." And it did too; she didn't know why she didn't pick it out.

"Red is a hot color few can pull off," he said, still holding on to her shoulders. If he knew how dangerous invading her personal space was, he'd probably have backed off. "But you're hot enough."

Okay, this guy was just asking for a knee to the groin. But he was standing behind her, so that would be difficult to pull off. She thought about elbowing him, and remembered Logan's instructions on elbow shots: "Throat or solar plexus - soft spots that do damage but won't make you accidentally break your own arm." Apparently that was a risk with any bone on bone contact ( well, except for him of course ). Who knew?

And how many teenage girls had to know that, exactly? Oh, come on, who was she kidding: she wasn't like other teenagers, and never would be again.

She was wondering where Bob was when she suddenly realized what song was playing on the radio now - "You're A God". She couldn't help but smirk ( well, it was ironic if not exactly funny ), and the guy caught it and obviously thought it was for him. He pressed against her in a manner that could only be described as icky, and whispered in her ear, "You know, I know this great nightclub. You're probably too young to get in, but I know the owner, and - "

He was interrupted by the sound of a small bell, alerting them to the door opening. Well, it was about fucking time!

The guy made a slightly disgusted face, obviously not wanting to be interrupted in the midst of his sleazy come on, but as they heard a small metallic click ( Bob throwing one of the locks on the door ), the guy got a strange look on his face. His head turned slowly towards the direction of the front, and he finally backed away from her. "Whoa, I am getting a mondo power vibe from you, guy. Is it superhero day?"

Bob appeared from between the racks, sauntering casually, his hands in the pockets of his leather pants. He had changed into a different pair due to chalk stains, but they looked exactly like his other ones, so she never would have known if he hadn't mentioned it. He'd also changed his disturbing t -shirt for a slightly less troubling "Farscape" t - shirt. "Not exactly, Loa." Bob then chuckled, but in a derisive way. "God, you're such a flamin' sleazebag, ain't ya?"

The man's posture stiffened, like he'd just been electrocuted, and his eyes widened in slow horror. "How did you ... you're not a Belial, are you?"

"Nope. And there's no chance of escape out the back - don't embarrass yourself further."

The guy - Loa? What the hell kind of name was that? - sighed slowly, like a balloon deflating, and grumbled, "Oh, fuck me."

"I'd rather not," Bob replied. "Believe me, this ain't personal. No, wait, I take it back. It sort of is. You're basically a douche bag, aren't you mate?"

Rogue laughed as the guy's shoulders slumped, and he looked so pathetic she almost felt sorry for him. "You're the Drai'shajan, aren't you? Look, man,you must know my own people fucked me over - "

"For damn good reason. The Loa are morally pretty loose, but you? Mate, you found some way to piss off the cannibals. That's immorality of a high order."

"Cannibals?" She asked, taking two steps farther away from him.

"Just an expression." Bob said, so casually she was pretty sure he was lying. "So how would you like to start on that long, hard road to redemption?"

The Loa sagged against the front counter. "Like I have a choice?"

Bob gave him a smile so false it may as well have had "Made In Taiwan" slapped on it. "Oh god no. But hear me out. You know there's been some big time shit going down, don't you?"

Reluctantly, he shrugged a single shoulder. "I've felt a major player around. Is that who you're after?"

"In a manner of speaking. A real nasty god. And you could help us fight him."

The Loa scoffed. "Fuck you, man. I ain't stupid enough to go get myself killed in a godfight."

"Oh, but you're plenty stupid," Bob said cheerfully. "And trust me, I don't want you to fight with me. But you could still help us, and maybe that'll reflect good on ya among the other Loas."

Now he looked nervous, and swallowed hard. Bob gave her a quick, knowing glance, and she knew that was her cue. She took off one of her satin gloves and shoved it in the pocket of her new red leather jacket. "How exactly?"

"You can let my friend here borrow your powers. And she doesn't have the restrictions the Loa slapped on you, so she can actually use them all without getting smacked down."

Rogue slipped in behind him, but kept her distance. He was so fixed on Bob, though, he never noticed. "What's that supposed to mean? Borrowed? H - how, exactly?"

"Rogue, you wanna show him?"

She didn't say anything - she simply grabbed him by the back of his bare neck.

Although it was a bitch to have his filthy thoughts flooding her mind, she had no regrets for putting a real crimp in this pervert's day.

16

It made Clia nervous, and he didn't know why. She knew he could gut those pussies, no matter their size. "She's not sure you can," Mariko said. "She thinks you might be crazy. And not in a suddenly Keenan sort of way, but in a heretofore unnoticed sort of way."

"I probably am," he muttered, flipping through more musty pages in yet another old book. This one was written in Latin, and had few if any pictures.

"You're probably what?" Clia asked, skimming through her own musty tome. They broke the pile of "demon" books Rey had in an even half, so she sat on the bed with her stack, and he sat on the floor next to the bed with his pile of books. He could have sat on the bed, but Mariko was now seated in an armchair in the far corner, and if he sat in this exact spot, he couldn't see her at all, not even out of the corner of his eye.

"Fed up with this shit," he said, slamming the book shut and tossing it aside. "I should be out there doin' something, not sitting on my ass getting dust up my nose."

"How is that gonna help us find the half head? I mean, it hasn't worked yet, has it?"

"Maybe I didn't kill enough of those things."

"Now she knows you're crazy," Mariko remarked.

Logan picked up the next book and started flipping through it, being quietly consumed by frustrated rage. It felt good to get lost in a fight; he didn't think about ( Mariko ) anything, and that was a kind of catharsis money couldn't buy.

After a moment, he heard the bedsprings shift, and Clia said, "Holy crap - I've found our guy."

Logan abandoned his yellowing tome and got up. "What's it say?"

"I got no fucking clue. I can't read Portuguese."

He sat on the opposite end of the bed, and took the book from her as soon as she held it out. He had to turn it around to see it right side up, but he saw the little black and white illustration of half a man from the waist up, with the vaguest outline suggesting he might have an invisible second half. "It's not Portuguese; it's Spanish," he told her, recognize the difference. ( How? )

"So? I still can't read anything beyond "no fumar" and "no molesto". Can you read it?"

His first impulse was to answer no, but that was a lie. To his surprise, he could read it.

"Why are you surprised?" Mariko asked. "You speak the language. Doesn't it follow you could read it too?"

When she put it that way it did sort of seem obvious. Was there a language he didn't speak, besides Aramaic, Latin, and whatever demon dialect those books were in? Could his new found flair for language be a secondary mutation?

"It could be a mutation, but it's hardly new," Mariko said.

He almost looked at her, but managed to restrain the urge. What did that mean? Well, fuck, he knew what he meant - he must have spoke a number of languages back then.

Back then. It was weird how 1981 - a year he couldn't even remember - could seem like an unfathomably distant time ago. He made himself focus on the page and not on his thoughts. "Says here he's a ... huh."

"What?" Clia asked

"That ain't no Spanish word. It looks like "imagoralia"."

"Sounds like a Third World country. Or a disco."

He shrugged. "Says it's a demon of the "in - between ", whatever the fuck that is. Do you know?"

"No."

"Figured. It says it's bound to the person who raised it until it can achieve full ... reality? ... in this dimension. And then it's pretty hard to kill, as it can influence reality over a large scale." Like Bob, he thought, but no - Bob affected a person's reality, not an entire city. At least, not that he knew of: maybe Bob was saving it. Still, he couldn't imagine Bob having much trouble pimp smacking around a literally half assed demon.

"So we have to get it before it comes completely into phase?"

"That's what it says, more or less."

"So how do we get him?"

"You mean kill him?" Logan skimmed ahead, found nothing, and went back a couple of paragraphs. "As long as he's still half assed, all we have to do is kill the person he's bound to."

"Kevin? Dibs."

"But when he's fully, er, realized, you need some kinda heavy firepower to take him down. He needs to be discorporated completely."

"Dismembered?"

Logan studied the paragraphs a few more moments, and said, "I took it as blown to constituent atoms, since he can obviously survive with a few missing limbs. But, we - "

And it was at that precise second that the power went out, and the lights died.

"Holy fuck," Clia gasped, and Logan could smell her fear.

"He ain't here," he told her, as he got off the bed and crossed the room to confirm it. He parted the bedroom curtains and glanced out the window at the city.

Black as pitch ... well, theoretically. Not even the street lights were working - all he could see were the shapes of buildings in the gloom. "He cut all the power everywhere."

"Why?" Clia wondered.

"Ain't you more scared now because of it?"

She made a noise of grudging agreement, although she quickly said, "Just for a second. Can you see in the dark?"

"Not really, but I can see well enough." Somehow this seemed like a tactical error on the bad guy's part ... but how exactly?

"So what do we do now? Back to square one?"

"There was a square one?" Why was this an edge for them?

"Keenan's place," Mariko said. He could just make her out in the darkness.

That was it. "Ah hell," he gasped. "Now we can find this fucker."

"How?"

"Keenan had a dial tone," he told her, crossing the room and grabbing his jacket off the floor. He could trace it by the blood smell alone.

"And Leon's getting larger," Clia snapped impatiently. "What the fuck is that supposed to mean?!"

He shrugged his coat on, and reminded her, "No one else had a dial tone, but he did. Wanna bet Kevin's the only one who still has power?"

She was quiet for a moment ( a small miracle ), and then he heard the springs shift as she got up. "Holy shit Batman, you may have somethin' there."

Why did he bother to frown at her when she couldn't even see him? If Belials were genuinely this irritating, why did Bob pretend to be one? Sure, he was irritating, but in a different way than this. "I'm goin'. You comin' with me, or are you stayin' here?"

He hoped she'd choose staying behind, but of course not. "I'm coming, Mr. Impatient. Keep your pants on."

"I thought you preferred me with my pants off."

She scoffed as he heard the soft noises of her putting her own jacket on. She was reduced to movement in the dark. "So you do remember something, hey Romeo?"

"It's not too late to just leave her here," Mariko said.

Logan sighed and left without her, leaving the front door open so she could find it. The night - if it was really night; hard to say with a ceiling for a sky - was eerily quiet, save for the heavy, distant thuds of monster footsteps and the mechanical wail of car alarms. Mariko was waiting by his bike, of course - traveling must have been a breeze when you were a ghost, or the figment of someone's imagination. "What do you want from me?" He asked, straddling the bike.

"I think I should be the one asking that, don't you?" She replied casually.

He stared at her in surprise, swallowing hard. Was he tormenting himself? Oh, come on, would it be the first time? "Did I ever get over you?" He wondered. It was mostly rhetorical - he doubted she could tell him.

"Do you get over things like this?" She replied, trying her own rhetorical thing.

"Since I can't remember shit, I ain't the one to ask." He did wonder what "things" she was referring to - betrayal? His incompetence? Murder? Widowhood? Losing his fucking mind afterward and killing a chunk of the Japanese underworld? Maybe a bit of all the above.

Her heard Clia's footsteps ringing on the metal outer stairs as she came down to join him. "Thanks for waiting, dickhead," she said bitterly, still pulling on her jacket.

He revved the bike, and considered just driving off before she got too close. That was absolutely it; no more sleeping with demons. Never again.

People alone were bad enough.

***

Market Street lived up to its name - a dead end that contained what looked like an outdoor flea market, there were people all over the place. Scott didn't take that as a good sign.

It got worse when Bob showed up with Marie ( who had brown eyes all of a sudden, but otherwise seemed normal ), and told them the showdown with Fenrir was going to be happening here.

"With all these people around?" He asked incredulously.

"They could see something they shouldn't," Marie interjected.

"The hell with that," Scott snapped. "They could get killed!"

"Yes, I know. That's why Fenrir would want to meet me here," Bob said, as if he was an idiot not to realize it. "He knows I wouldn't want to put people in jeopardy, so he'll put as many in jeopardy as possible."

"And you're going along with this?" Scott wondered if his new Camaxtli backed powers would work on Bob.

Bob frowned at him, as if he knew what he was thinking. Well, he probably did. "I want him to think I am."

"I don't understand," Jean admitted.

"To really get Fenrir's attention, I'm gonna have to start throwing some power around. I intend to. Trust me - no innocents are gonna get hurt."

Trust me? Oh, that was rich coming from him.

But Bob turned his attention to Kitty, and clasped her by the shoulders, attempting to be reassuring. "It's gonna be okay - there's no reason to be scared. You know the plan. Just stick to it, and we'll be right as rain. Okay?"

Kitty nodded, still clearly anxious. "Okay."

"You know your places. Get to 'em," Bob said to all of them, and then, just to be irritating, seemed to wink out of existence.

"What happened, Rogue?" He asked, as their little group split up.

She shrugged, apparently not bothered too much by any of this. "Nothin' much. Just absorbed this guy that Bob said was a Loa, some kind of "Earth spirit"."

"How is that different from a demon?"

"He said it's a being tied into the power of the Earth ... whatever that means. This guy was cut off from some of his powers 'cause he pissed off his people, but he can do a lot of wild things, and he can't die or be rendered powerless, 'cause he draws his power from the ley lines. Whatever those are."

It did sound like a lot of Bob gibberish. He'd mentioned ley lines back with that stuff that happened on Dis, but an internet search proved ley lines were a myth. Then again, wasn't all of this mythological? One day it would be nice to go back to their semi - normal lives, and never have to wonder if gorgons and yetis actually existed too. "What kind of things?"

They were spreading out in a pattern girding the perimeter of the street. Jean was going high - on top of a building that looked to be home to a low budget ad agency - while he, Rogue, and Bobby were staying low, spread out among alleys between some of the other low rent shops that made up this tiny and otherwise unremarkable street. Kitty went to hide inside a second hand clothing shop near the end of the street, and Scott was relatively sure he caught Bob's oddly highlighted hair somewhere in the bustling crowd of flea market shoppers.

What the hell was he up to? And why did he always conveniently leave things out?

Trust him? What a joke. When the hell did he earn it?

"I'm still figuring it out," Rogue replied cryptically, as she walked down the street to take her position. Obviously she'd been around Bob too long.

He found a relatively clean alley ( why the hell was it always alleys? ) and ducked inside, waiting for whatever was going to happen. The sky had been clear earlier, but now it was a uniform grey, like it was going to start pouring any second. He wondered if that was just coincidence, or if Storm was trying to throw a little cover their way anyways, whether she could participate or not.

He peeked around the corner, and found it difficult to pick Bob out from the crowd, in spite of his height and his hair. How many people were here? He guessed around seventy, milling about a loose assemblage of racks of clothing and tables with all sorts of assorted crap, much of it stuff that people sometimes sold on blankets on the street at Saint Mark's Place: knock off watches; bootleg tapes, videos, and dvds; assorted electronics and car stereos and other items that could be easily stolen from other people. And probably had been.

Scott wasn't perfectly sure what was happening, but he was relatively certain he caught a neon blue glow somewhere in the crowd. Someone hawking a neon sign, or maybe a shipment of lava lamps ... or so he thought initially. But the light seemed to be moving, disappearing behind racks of Hilfiger and FUBU knockoffs, reappearing near the table full of tapes of just released movies. What the hell was that?