Bob sighed, shaking his head faintly. “You’re gonna make me say it, aren’t ya?”

Logan raised an eyebrow at him. “Apparently.”

“Humans are not … most gods see Humans as …”

Since he was struggling so hard, Logan decided to help him out. “Pets?”

“Nuisances. We’re never supposed to take you seriously as anything.”

“You’ve married some.”

“And you wonder why the gods don’t like me?” Bob made a vague hand gesture, but quickly stopped. “There are gods who will see this as setting a horrible precedent, giving Humans a level of legitimacy they don’t deserve. By making him a chosen, it makes Bren the equivalent of a gods’ messenger, and that just isn’t done. It’d be like making a gerbil your guard dog.”

“Gee, how flattering. Wait ‘til Bren hears that.”

“It isn’t a personal judgment. I’m just saying that that’s how the other gods will react to this. They’re not gonna like it; some will scheme to make sure he isn’t a chosen, or isn’t for long. But in a crafty way so they never have to face the Gorgons.”

“So he’s fucked?”

“No. I expect most to give up after the first failure, when the Gorgons go nuclear on someone’s ass. But the Senior Partners are not so easily discouraged.”

Logan slumped down on the table, resting his head on his folded arms. There was nothing like going from one impossible battle straight into another. “Can’t you blow them up or something?”

“You know I can’t start shit with the Partners. The whole Powers/Partners détente.” Bob patted his head like he was a needy dog, which was supremely annoying, but made him look up, which was what Bob was aiming for. “If they cross a line, I can respond. But they’re usually sneakier than that. They usually set it up so it looks like I‘m the one breaking the pact.”

Logan sat up so he could gulp the rest of his beer down in one go, and then balled the can up and tossed it aside, not caring where it landed. Again, mindscape, didn’t matter. “So how the fuck do we do this?”

“Well … that’s why I figured we needed a brainstorming session.”

“Holy shit. The poor kid.”

“He’s got some good friends, though. He aligned himself with some real ass kickers.”

He couldn’t deny that. But he had to admire Bob’s ability to distract him from certain topics, as there was something he wanted to bring up that he hadn’t. He also admired his ability to manifest beer, as there was another can right beside him. “Was Xavier always that much of a putz? Was that story about rearranging Jean’s mind true?”

Bob was not thrown by the dramatic subject change; he didn’t seem to be thrown by anything. “I can’t say, as I avoided gettin’ too close to him so I didn’t make his brains blow up. But, c’mon, you don’t think he made all his money without using his telepathy? Hell, I didn’t make all my money without using my powers, namely ‘cause I can’t not read people. I think everyone, no matter how virtuous they seem or package themselves, have something dark in them. Just because they disdain it doesn’t mean they won’t do it, given the right circumstances. He probably thought he was doing the right thing; you know how that paves the way to hell. The guy who shot Franz Ferdinand probably thought that was a good idea at the time.”

“You don’t need to tell me people are hypocrites, ‘cause I know that. I just thought … the way Scott seemed to revere him, I figured …”

“He was better than you. He was better than all of you,” Bob said, finishing the thought that was in his head. Having it voiced made it sound even more stupid and childish than it had in his head. But Bob reached across the table and patted his arm, giving him a look of empathy. “It’s nice to think that there are people out there who aren’t as flawed as the rest of us. It’s why people believed in gods long after gods stopped believing in them. It’s nice to think there’s someone out there who has all their shit together. But it’s not true; we’re all fucked up in our own special ways. Some much, much more than others.”

“Like me.”

“Don’t cop to that, mate. A lot of that was done to you, which makes you partially exempt. You have to be pretty fuckin’ low to blame a victim for their own mind rape.”

That description made Logan wince. He never liked casting himself in the role of victim. “Maybe that’s why Jeannie liked me, huh? We’d both had our heads redecorated, only she didn’t know, and too many people had made a wreck of mine.”

Bob shrugged, then gave him a toothy grin, which pretty much meant a smart remark of some sort was incoming. “Oh come on, mate, yer a big stud. Hell, I’m attracted to you. You got the whole handsome, misunderstood, dark brooding man of mystery thing goin’ on. It’s pretty irresistible.”

He glared at him. “Marc has already staked out this joke territory.”

“Damn it! We need to coordinate.”

A warm but gentle breeze blew, and Logan looked up and watched the seabirds ride the drafts, envying them their freedom. Or he would have, if this wasn’t a mindscape. It was just so detailed and pleasant, it was easy to forget.

In retrospect, though, it shouldn’t have been. Life was quite rarely this peaceful and neat.

****

The woman who called herself Ana Dyne - in reality, Kiki Melendez - slouched in the chair across from his desk, looking like she had some kind of Berellian brain sucker consuming the top of her skull. In truth, it was just her hair, some kind of dreadful dreadlocks thing dyed in a rainbow of candy colored hues. He didn’t think she was ever a very attractive woman, but now she just seemed to be going out of her way to look unappealing.

David was not impressed by what she’d told him, and he supposed she knew he wouldn’t be. Mr. Giles was a better spellcaster than anticipated, although he didn’t pick up that she was deliberating downplaying her own necromancing abilities when they were first attacked. Angel was a known quantity, of course, but the worst news of all was that even though he wasn’t the chosen yet, the Chambers boy seemed able to take care of himself. Even when Angel was kept busy by the dead, Brendan managed not to get himself killed. “He snapped one of their necks like a bottle cap,” Ana reported, making a motion with her hands that looked like tearing a newspaper, not breaking someone’s neck, but he wasn’t about to correct her. He wanted her out of his office as soon as possible. “Oh, and then there were all these other people back at their office. This ghost guy, a cute Arab guy, this guy with sideburns, and this black guy who wore welding goggles for no obvious reason and his pretty blon! de boyfriend who was, I dunno, Swedish or something. And this Hispanic guy that everyone called Scott, and then there was this green chick -”

“We think we know the players,” he interrupted impatiently. The man with sideburns had to be Logan, which was always bad news, and the Arab must have been Saddiq, the mutant boy, while the black man had to be Marcus - none of that was good. The ghost, the Hispanic man, and the Swedish one were unknowns, but hopefully just death manifestations that would fade. The green chick could only be Helga, whose picture you could find in the dictionary beside the definition “Crazy Bitch”. But at least she went back to her bar. Logan, Marcus, and Saddiq had no rhyme or reason to their movements; they could stick around for a while, or they could go away as soon as the threat passed. It was almost impossible to say. They’d probably be protective of Chambers to some degree - Logan and Saddiq considered him a “friend”, and Marcus would probably have some sense of solidarity with a fellow gay mutant, or at least with Logan. At least Bob wasn’t here, or they’d be well and truly fucked. He! ’d know what they were up to, and warn the others.

A problem, but one that had been foreseen, hence the test. They had to know how vulnerable Chambers was before the thing was done, and while it was assumed that teaming up with Angel and acquiring the would be Ascendant as a boyfriend put him in a very safe position, there was a possibility that, on his own, he was pretty helpless. That apparently wasn’t true. It made sense, though - would the Gorgons have chosen a total pansy?

“So what, is that all you need?” Ana asked impatiently. She was itching to go, which was fine, as he was itching to get her out of here.

“Yes. I’ll call you if we need any more,” he said, sliding an envelope full of cash across the desk towards her. She snatched it up as if afraid it might disappear, and had the gall to actually count the money. Once she was satisfied, she nodded and got out of the chair.

“Nice doin’ business with ya,” she said insincerely, standing up and heading out the door. If it seemed odd for such an obscure figure to be leaving an agent’s office, it still wouldn’t raise any eyebrows - after all, this was L.A., and even the most talentless and misguided often tried to curry favors with high powered agents such as himself.

He turned in his chair and looked out his window, which had a good view of downtown, only partially blocked by skyscrapers. The sky was a strange color, half orange and half sienna, that he’d come to call the Los Angeles fug. He was more accustomed to seeing it at night, but it could happen in the morning, such as now. It wasn’t a very good sign when it did, although he wasn’t superstitious, just experienced.

He clipped his phone back on his ear and punched in the number that only he had. It connected him to a middleman who did business with Wolfram and Hart. He didn’t know his name, just his voice over the phone, which is precisely how this man knew him. It was just another layer of security, another way of protecting themselves if things went wrong. They didn’t have a lot of time, but it was unknown how much of a window they actually had - no one knew where Bob was or when he’d be back, but he could protect Chambers if it came to that or simply expose them, and that just wouldn’t do.

In a way, it made perfect sense. His old boss said that all the “fruits and nuts” of society eventually ended up in Los Angeles, so why not a fallen god? He just had never quite pictured Lucifer as Australian or, quite frankly, so goddamn goofy. Gods were supposed to be dignified. Was that why he was kicked out of the kingdom? It would explain a lot.

David reported how Ana’s test had gone, and the disappointing results, as well as the slightly discouraging intell. They had to watch Angel’s office to see if Logan and Marcus moved on, but that would be difficult, as Logan and Marcus were both paranoid, and both had extra-sensory perceptions that seemed to clue them in to shifting playing fields. Logan had those mutant senses - smell was confirmed, but there was still some debate on how sensitive his hearing and vision were, if they were above Human norms or not. Marcus saw in infrared, which could make many forms of infiltration off limits. Combined with Angel’s sense of the supernatural, this didn’t leave many avenues open to them.

But they weren’t out of play just yet. There were some options, just rather … extreme ones.

He watched the sun starting to break through the fug over the city as he confirmed that they were going to plan c.

The Chambers boy had to be dead within the next seventy two hours, or they were going to die for nothing. As his father always said, if you’re going to gamble, you might as well go big.

8

At the end, it all came down to a waiting game, although a truly odd one in waiting for the dead to go away. But if the living thought it was odd, Wesley wondered if they knew how bad it was for the dead.

They went to the Way Station and drank most of their troubles away. Apparently there was something going wrong, according to Bob, but Logan had only told Angel, Bren, Kier, and Giles - and him, of course, but only because there was no way for them to keep him out. The one good thing about being a ghost was there was virtually no way to block your passage. Oh, to be honest he knew of a couple, but it was unlikely any of them would bother to try them.

Wesley wasn’t shocked that some other gods were perturbed by Brendan’s pending future as the Gorgon’s chosen - nor was he surprised that the Gorgons were oblivious to the message that such an act would send - but Bren had apparently never grasped the significance of this, and now that he had he wanted out. But there was no way out, and besides, the Gorgons must have had their reasons for picking him. Bren pointed out that Kier had evaded his destiny, so why couldn’t he evade his, but Logan pointed out that Kier evaded his mainly because it depended on other vampires being aware of an obscure vampire death cult, and considering he was changed by a ‘70’s B-list actress, how likely was that? Bren had no comeback for that; Kier mentioned he didn’t really like being known as the spawn of a B-list actress vampire, but conceded there were worse things.

Bren was not in a good mood. They decided to get together tomorrow for a “strategy meeting” to try and work out some plan to protect Bren until he could assume the mantel of the chosen, and then they’d have to change their strategy. Bren really didn’t like being spoken of as an object that needed protecting, and he and Kier sat at a back table, far from everyone, Kier trying to reassure Bren that anyone after him would have to go through him first. Since Kier was supposed to be the Ascendant that was actually a good deal, but Wesley didn’t blame him for not being too calmed by that. After all, who wanted to find out a bunch of gods just might want to kill you for something that wasn‘t your fault?

Wesley wished he could have a beer, but ghosts didn’t drink. Considering ghosts weren’t supposed to lose body parts and he had, he thought it would only be fair if he did get a drink. But who said life was fair? He just stared at his stump of a right wrist, and wondered if he ever came back as a ghost again, would he have the hand or not? It would be an interesting experiment, he supposed, but he doubted he could talk Giles into conjuring him up just for that purpose.

Giles talked to him for a while, but Wesley tired of what he sensed was a bit of pity. He didn’t require it or want it, and Wesley just wasn’t interested in wasting the time he had left this way. He talked to Angel for a while, although he wasn’t interested in Angel’s apology. It turned out no one knew what had happened to Illyria, although Bob theorized that she had carved herself out a piece of the Senior Partner’s dimension, and they were content to leave her there rather than try to evict her. He didn’t know if he should say “good for her” or not, so he just left it alone. He wished he knew what had happened to Fred, if she had found an afterlife or not, but there was no one here he could ask.

Logan and Scott sat at one end of the bar, talking and drinking. They seemed to come to some understanding, and Logan convinced Scott that Bob had told him it was Camaxtli not Jean that had killed him. Wesley got the feeling Logan was lying to make Scott feel better, and he also had the feeling that Scott knew it, but he accepted it anyways. Sometimes the lie was just better than the truth.

It was Scott who went first. He suddenly turned on his stool, and he started to say something, but then his body just pitched forward. Logan grabbed him long before he could hit the floor - sometimes the speed of his reflexes were astonishing - but even as Logan caught him, he looked across the room at Angel and Giles, and said, “He’s dead.”

“Well, duh,” Xander said. He had put away enough beer that Wesley was shocked. When did Xander become a drinker? Naomi had mentioned something to him about that, saying that he’d retreated into alcohol after losing his eye and Anya … but he had two eyes, so Wesley didn’t get that part of it.

“No, I mean he’s gone,” Logan snarled at him, laying Scott’s body down on the floor. “It’s just a corpse again. I’m smellin’ decomposition.”

Xander slammed down his beer glass. “Well, TMI Mr. Bloodhound.”

Xander’s carping aside, the corpse Scott had just inhabited had gone back to being a corpse, with no hitchhiker or anything. Now everybody was looking at him, as if expecting him to pop out of existence that very second. Wesley gave them a sarcastic look in return, but he honestly didn’t know what was going to happen or when. Would it be like the first time, just falling abruptly into empty darkness? Truth be told, he’d rather have not gone, but he had no choice in the matter.

Logan caught his eye, and said, “I told Bob about you.”

That caught him up short. “What? What did you say?”

But he never got an answer. It was like a dark lead curtain had slammed down, a black void suddenly rearing up and swallowing him whole.

For a moment.

He was still thinking, which Wesley knew was wrong. He had no sense of being before, he had no nothing, so the fact that he was still thinking struck him as wrong. Things got even more wrong as he felt something solid beneath him, and sat up, only to find himself on a park bench beneath a large oak tree. It was a mild day, with a light mist of rain in the air, and while the place looked vaguely familiar, he wasn’t sure where he was. Or how or why.

“You’re very lucky the Powers like selfless behavior, even if they aren’t fond of using it themselves,” Bob said, sitting on the other end of the bench. He was bundled up in a fleece lined leather jacket, but his leather pants didn’t appear to be equally lined. “You helped expel Erlik. Which, by the way, is a hilarious name, but he never gets the joke. No sense of humor, that one. ‘Ooh, look at me, I’m evil’. Yeah, whatever. Tell it to the Girl Scouts.”

He looked around, and figured out he wasn’t in a park, just on the grounds of an estate that looked like a park. The emerald green lawn rolled towards the horizon, broken up by large, old trees and occasional shrubs, even a small silvery pond where ducks placidly floated. He looked back and saw a large but still oddly quaint home perched at the top of a gentle slope, and when he saw its Victorian lines, he suddenly knew where he was. “This is the old Wyndham home.”

“Yep, Nottingham’s finest. So what happened exactly? Your dad had a falling out with this side of the family?”

He nodded, trying to remember when he’d last been here. Was he what, five? Must have been. He liked his great Aunt Deliah, he felt safe with her - she was one of the few that could stand up to his father. That’s probably why the falling out occurred, and he never saw her - or her magnificent house - again. “My father eventually alienated everyone. He had a … bad temper.”

“I think the term you’re searching for is psychopath, but we can leave it there if you want.”

Wesley glanced over at Bob, but he was just smiling benignly, waiting for him to take over the conversation. Did he need to tell Bob anything? He could read his mind, yes? So there was no point in talking about any of this. It was then that he noticed his hand was back; his wrist no longer ended in a charred stump. “What’s going on here?” he asked, sure he was missing something fundamental.

“Had a chit-chat with the Powers - which, by the way, thrills them. They just love hearing from me. Anyhoo, it was decided you kinda qualified as working for them. So, mazel tov.”

“What?”

“It’s a Yiddish -”

“Stop being a smart ass,” he snapped impatiently. “What the fuck does that mean?”

Bob sighed, but in a slightly humorous way, like he thought this was basically funny. It wasn’t, but okay. He was the god here, he could find this funny if he wanted to. “It means the afterlife dearth has been rectified. You’ve been touched by the PTB’s - in a roundabout way - so you get a little pocket of this dimension for yourself. And this seemed to be the place you most wanted to be, so here we are.”

Wesley took this in, getting it and not quite getting it at the same time. “You’re serious? Just because Logan talked to you?”

“No. He just pointed out an injustice. You’ve done good work for a long time. You deserve something for that.”

Wesley rubbed his temple, like that might help him understand this. “It happens just like that?”

“What did you expect, Morris dancing? It’s all in who you know, really, and you know just the right people. And others.” Bob gave him a toothy grin that was almost menacing as he stood up and gestured towards the house. “This is all yours, mate. Enjoy.”

“I’ve done some horrible things,” he blurted, suddenly feeling unworthy of this.

Bob chuckled. “Join the club. If perfection was the point, no one would have an afterlife. Although don’t tell the religious fanatics - they’ll be terribly disappointed to figure out it’s intent that counts, not abstinence or being holier than thou. You fought the good fight. The problem is, it’s a war, and wars get ugly. But at the end of the day, you gave your life - twice - for humanity. What’s more worthy than that?” Bob patted him on the shoulder, and Wesley suddenly felt like crying. He didn’t, though; he managed to hold it together.

“Thank -” he began, but when he looked up, Bob was gone. He looked around, but he was nowhere on the grounds. Or at least nowhere that Wesley could see him.

He shoved himself off the bench, briefly marveling at having two hands again as well as the ability to feel objects, and started walking towards the house.

No, not the house - his house. Wesley felt the tiniest flutter in his stomach, a combination of nerves and happiness, and smiled to himself.

THE END . . .