6

For whatever reason, Helga had told him exactly how to react to the Ressiks, as if dealing with boorish thugs was somehow new to him. Still, Scott listened to her script and agreed to stick to it, if only because Wesley was listening and watching.

Besides, it gave him something to focus on besides the fact that the Professor was dead, and that Jean was dead - and had killed him and the Professor alike. Oh, and Logan had killed her. He had too many feelings to know what to do with them, and they tangled in on themselves like a ball of string - he was angry, upset, disbelieving, sad, furious, defeated, sick. When had things spiraled so out of control? How had everything boiled down to this?

He blamed Bob. And Logan - Logan brought Bob into their lives. Who knew gods actually existed, and that they would turn out to be like this? Petty, venal, egotistical, power hungry, selfish, childish, vicious, twisted … in other words, just like people. That was the most depressing thing - they were no better or worse than people. That wasn’t right; gods were supposed to be better. Weren’t they? That’s what he was always taught. Of course, he was also taught there was just the one god, and that was clearly wrong. There were apparently more gods than clowns in a clown car. (Which didn’t sound right, and yet it was somehow appropriate all the same.)

Storm leading the X-Men wasn’t too bad a thought … as long as he didn’t add Logan in as a leader as well. Damn, those poor kids! But as long as he was here, he wasn’t teaching them how to kill or maim. Although the irony that the guy who was willing to kill and maim survived past him didn’t escape him; it was so bitter, he wished he could spit it out. Not that it would have changed the outcome if he had been more amoral; he’d never have hurt Jean.

Wesley was a quiet companion, which he appreciated. Of course, it may have had something to do with the fact that he had to concentrate to stay completely solid, but who knew? At least he was almost an X-Man - admittedly, Scott still wasn’t sure how that would have worked had Wesley accepted the Professor’s offer. Fighting using your natural gifts was one thing. Fighting with magic? That was another. Also, a bit hard for him to accept, even though he’d seen it for himself. But in the end, it hadn’t saved Wesley either - he too was dead. Scott mentally dubbed them “The Loser Brigade”. They faced danger head on, and goddamn, they got crushed like fucking bugs. Perhaps it was to their credit that, having already died, they weren’t gunshy about facing danger again.

The Ressiks had a house overlooking the ocean, but that was slightly misleading - the house was at the end of a paved drive on a shallow cliff, so while they got to look at the ocean, the beach below wasn’t theirs; it probably belonged to the person who had the huge mansion farther Northeast and directly on the beach. Not that it wasn’t very nice, or that Scott wouldn’t have wanted the house, but somehow having a beach house meant usually having a beach, not just a precipitous drop onto someone else’s beach. They approached the sprawling, pale orange colored house on foot, but once they were within fifty feet of the place, Wesley said, “I’ll go on ahead, see if they’re lying in wait.”

“Isn’t it rude to just barge in?”

Wesley shrugged, and then smiled in a slightly mischievous way. “When you’re a ghost, that’s all you can do.”

He had a point, So he let him go - what could he have done to hold him back? And that was a positive, as the Ressiks couldn’t possibly hurt him. How did you hurt a ghost? Not only are you already dead, you’re intangible. Proving that, Wesley walked through the outside wall of their house and disappeared. He was nearing the porch when he heard a gunshot, and heard Wesley say witheringly, “I’m a ghost, you idiot. Do you really think you can hurt me with a gun?”

Scott wondered if he should be bothered by their being armed and willing to use them as he stepped up onto their porch and pounded on the door. Why should he? He was dead already; they might be able to kill him again, but if Helga was right, he’d come right back in another body or as a ghost. Of course, he might not be so lucky in another body. This guy had some muscles, which made up a little for not having any mutant abilities. What if the next body he ended up in was that of a hundred year old grandmother with a bad hip? He figured it was probably in his best interest not to get killed, at least if he could at all help it.

The door was flung open, and he found himself looking down the barrel of a Glock 9. “What the fuck d’ya want?” The green demon snarled.

Fun. At least Helga’s theory on how he’d be greeted was a hundred percent correct. “I’m a friend of Helga’s, she sent me to hire you. Will you get that fucking gun out of my face?” Helga’s script - which Wesley agreed with - was to meet belligerence with belligerence, and to curse at them if they cursed at him. The Ressiks were an aggressive species, and only respected aggression - if you acquiesced to them at any point, they assumed you were prey that deserved to be torn up, eaten, and pissed on. Of course showing fear was an absolute no no, unless he felt like getting beaten to death with his own arm. Well, somebody else’s arm (this wasn’t his original body).

The demon peered at him with a big copper eye, his lizardy face unreadable to Scott. They just always looked like pissed off gila monsters to him. “Since when would Helga send a Human?”

He saw Wesley appear behind the Ressik, and he nodded at him. The Ressik must have felt the shift in air current, as he glanced over his shoulder, and that’s when he grabbed the Ressik’s gun arm, twisting it until it was on the verge of breaking, and slammed a flattened palm straight into the center of its face, where a nose would have been if it had had one. (They just had small holes, no actual nose.) As the Ressik staggered back - straight through Wesley - Scott barged in the house. “Since she’s busy, asshole. Do you want to talk business or not?”

“The Seven Saurian should be appearing right behind me,” Wesley said, as indeed seven Ressiks, ranging in color from swamp green to sewage brown, appeared in the open archway of the living room, all aiming guns at him through the slightly transparent form of Wesley. Scott didn’t blink, as he knew he had to appear unconcerned and even unconvinced by this violent display of machismo. “Just like clockwork,” Wesley said, quite pleased with himself.

“Give us one reason not to kill you,” one of the Ressiks demanded. Although it was a racist - specist? - thing to think, all Ressiks did generally look alike. They were all between five foot seven to six foot seven in height, around two hundred pounds of pure muscle (they didn’t look slender nor fat; they had the squarish build of your average linebacker, regardless of actual height or weight), with only variations in scale color and eyes available to tell them apart. The one demanding answers from the archway was about six six and nearing three hundred pounds, his scales the color of fresh mud and his eyes as brass as pennies. He wore a peach Versace suit that struck Scott as hilarious, but he knew better than to laugh at a bunch of testosterone poisoned demons with firearms.

Scott pulled out the marked bundle of money Helga had given him, and held it up so they could see it. “How about six thousand of them?”

The Ressik with the bruised ego (and face) crept closer to look at the money, and scowled evilly. “They’re marked.”

Indeed it was. Helga, with Wesley’s help, had put a symbol on the stack of money using some kind of concoction that smelled like sour milk and peppermint candy. “That’s right. Accept the job and the seal will be removed. Kill me, and the money will burst into flame in five minutes. Make up your minds fast.”

They lowered their weapons, the leader - if that’s what the mud colored demon was - scowled evilly at him. “She’s gotta ‘nother hex on the money, don’t she?”

Scott gritted his teeth at the horrible grammar. “Only to keep you honest. So do we have a deal, or do I find someone else?”

Even Wesley turned to watch them as they considered this, muscles jumping in all their jaws like they were all grinding their teeth. After a long moment, where Scott could hear the distressingly Human like scream of a seagull on the beach below, the mud colored one asked, “What’s the job?”

“It involves lots of killing.” He was supposed to keep it vague until they worked out the details.

He snorted, an interesting sound from a being with no discernable nose. “Well, why didn’t ‘cha say so?” He came forward and ripped the wad of money of money out of his hand. “Where do we start?”

Of course it was a victory, but it still made Scott feel slightly queasy.

****

Logan was sure he’d seen a good number of the cemeteries around L.A. proper, but he’d never seen this one before.

It was small, though, low rent, going to seed. Most of the scraggly trees in the place looked dead or dying, and if there were any celebrities buried here, it was the minor ones from the silent age. The fact that it wasn’t far from Hollywood Boulevard really surprised him, as he didn’t think there were any cemeteries close to the main drag, but you learned something new every day. It looked like it could have been a horror movie set, and he was busy looking for signs that it wasn’t.

The cemetery had either been shut down, or just wasn’t used anymore, as a large iron gate - rusty in patches, like it had some type of fungal infection - was closed when they approached it. Without touching it, it swung open, and Logan was left wondering how Degei had done that. Was it not locked, or was “snake power” somehow involved in this?

God, what a bizarre life he led. Snake power?

The wind shifted, and Logan could smell it, as the smoggy, exhaust tinged miasma that was Los Angeles in his mind became replaced by a scent not unlike flesh being burned by lava and seasoned with rotting organ meats and old blood. “Is that them?” Logan wondered, wrinkling his nose at the scent. God, it was disgusting; he could taste it in his mouth.

Degei did something really odd - he stuck out a black forked tongue, quickly tasting the air. He tilted his head as he digested the scent. “Carrion eaters. Hmm. I wonder if the excessive dead are attracting them.”

“They’re corpse eaters?”

Degei dipped his head in what he must have thought was a nod, but was honestly too odd for it. “They’re an efficient recycling system. Although I can’t imagine that the resurrected dead would appreciate their new bodies being eaten with them inside them.”

“Yeah, I can’t see that goin’ down well.”

They crossed weedy lawns and fallen, crumbling tombstones, some vandalized, some missing entirely, until they were within sight of a large oak that looked dead, its huge gnarled trunk and twisted branches looking black even in the raging sunlight of a Southern Californian afternoon. Beneath it was a tilted, crumbling tombstone, and just under the tree’s long shadows, another shadow moved. No, it was the pit, from whence came the corpse eaters.

These were not a type of demon he recognized. They had long, narrow heads filled with jagged, sharp teeth, and three tiny eyes like marbles, glassy and only semi-opaque, their skin like hardened leather, colored the gray of landfill muck. They looked a lot like vaguely humanoid crocodiles, although they came out of the pit on all fours and didn’t look terribly humanoid in their sinuous walk. There were about a half dozen around the pit, which was a hole in the earth about ten feet across. Due to the tilt of the land and the odd shape of the hole, it was impossible to look inside it unless you were standing on the edge.

“Ammaati,” Degei said, coming to a stop. When the demons all looked at them, Logan realized that that’s what the demons were called. “This is not your plane. Why are you here?”

There was a snort of derision from the demons, and a reddish one on the near side of the pit looked at them with what could have been disdain, but their faces were not overly expressive. They were long, lean, and awkward, with all their teeth and small glassy eyes giving them the cold, vacant look of a serial predator. “Thiss iss not your place either, ssnake,” the Ammaati snarled. It had a definite lisp, but it sounded more dangerous than comical. Logan found it amazing that they could make any kind of speech at all with those weird mouths.

“No, but I go where I please. You do not have the same leave. Return to where you came.”

More derisive snorts followed, sounding almost like the deep croaks of toads. “The dead are rife here. We are simply here to eat.”

“You’re not wanted here. Go.”

“You have no ssay here.”

“I do,” Logan said, popping his claws. “This is my dimension. Get the fuck out.”

There was a noise like a rolling tremor, and he realized gradually that it was the Ammaati laughing. “Go away, Human, before we eat you.”

“Try it, handbag.”

“He’s Bob’s avatar,” Degei pointed out.

That made them stop laughing, stop snorting. The reddish one tilted its head and looked at him as a bird might. Even with three eyes, Logan had the impression they had very poor peripheral vision. “Bob? Iss he here?”

“You know he’s not; that’s why you’re here,” Degei said, and then, with no foreplay whatsoever, the pit was overflowing with snakes, black and red and green and yellow writhing bodies that caused the Ammaati to let out animalistic shrieks of surprise as many coming out of the pit or sitting near its edge were suddenly pulled down into the undulating mass of snakes. “Where are you from, why did you come?” Degei demanded, as huge boa constrictors - in fact, impossibly large ones, unless this was a movie set - materialized in the branches over the heads of the remaining demons. The tree sagged under their weight, and it was likely it wouldn’t last much longer; Logan heard the branches creaking, starting to crack.

The reddish one realized he was screwed, but you only heard it in his voice - his expression didn’t change. “We meant no harm -”

“The Ogdoad used to have a saying: There are two things in this multiverse - gods and food. I’m a god. What does that make you?”

Okay, that was it; Degei was a bad ass. Groveling commenced. “W-we meant no harm. We just -”

“Where are you from? How did you know this realm was open?”

“We heard rumorss in the Hall of Two Truthss -”

“Thoth’s realm,” Degei interrupted, for Logan’s benefit. What an odd name for a dimension. “Who was spreading this rumor?”

“I don’t know. We just hear; we are ignored.”

“Have you heard rumors about how this started? Who might be behind this?”

“There are many. The mosst disstresssing iss the rumor that Erlik hass been freed.”

“Erlik?” There was something in Degei’s voice like shock, and he frowned. “Go back, close the dimension behind you. Never come back. You know Thoth will not be pleased.”

The Ammaati nodded vigorously, and looked down at the pit. The snakes immediately disappeared - where to Logan had no idea, although the gigantic boas remained in the tree - and the reddish one disappeared into the pit, along with one or two others that escaped the initial snake deluge. A minute or so after they went in, the hole seemed to seal up.

“That was weird,” Logan said. The boas were gone; Logan hadn’t seen them go.

But Degei stood there, his arms crossed over his barrel chest, tongue flicking out nervously as he stared at the churned dirt where the physical yet metaphysical dimensional rift had been. Had he heard him? Had he zoned out on him?

“Degei?”

Finally the snake god spoke, but he was still staring at the dirt. “I’m sure this is Erlik’s doing. We have a problem.”

“You mean beyond the obvious?”

“Yes.”

Great; just great. At least he hadn’t expected something good.

****

They didn’t encounter anymore hostile dead on their way back to the office, but then again, they mostly stuck to the sewer where the dead were absent. Angel was glad about that, because while Giles recovered a bit along the way, Ana got no less annoying.

Angel was expecting chaos back at the office - he even imagined it was under siege - but they found nothing of the sort. The office was the same as they left it, with the dead clogging the street outside, a potential threat but not a current one. They came in to find Kier on the phone behind the desk, while Marc, Naomi, and Matt were still sitting on the sofa, with Xander futzing with the coffee machine, and Sid flipping through an old book, still leaning against the wall, as if he hadn‘t moved an inch since they left. As they came in, Kier sat forward, and said, “Hey, great, you’re back. Bren, do you know who’s taking over for Rags at the Stone Temple? Helga’s been trying to get a hold of them to find out, but no one’s picking up the phone.”

Bren sighed and headed for the desk as Kier held out the receiver towards him. “Holy shit, I’m not really sure,” Bren said, grabbing the phone.

Ana looked around the office, and commented, “Wow, what a shitty place.”

“With that hairdo, should you be insulting anybody?” Xander pointed out.

Ana looked him up and down, and not in a friendly manner. “And what are you supposed to be? The comic relief?”

“We could throw you back outside,” Giles warned her, as Angel lowered him down to the couch. He didn’t need much help, but if he hadn’t helped him sit down he would have collapsed.

Angel caught everyone up on who Ana was and what had occurred back at her place. Xander caught them up on what went on while they were gone, which was summed up in the phrase “fuck all”. The phone call from Helga was the most interesting thing that had occurred. As it was, Helga was trying to find someone capable of summoning the Gorgons, which was a good idea, although Angel wondered how that was going to work. They couldn’t cover that broad an area, could they?

It was then that they all got the second big shock of the day. “Well, um … I guess I could try and summon them,” Bren sheepishly told Helga. “Rags’s been teaching me.”

“What?” Giles exclaimed first, just as surprised as Angel felt. Summoning the Gorgons was no small thing. Yes, they were the most “user friendly” of the gods, but invoking any gods was not a minor feat - it required an energy expenditure on the part of the invoker. Rags, being a Persaid demon, had energy to burn. But Bren?

Bren rolled his shoulders, his face coloring slightly blue-green in embarrassment. “I don’t know why, but Rags seemed to think it was important I know how to do it. He even gave me my own mirror shield. He said there might be a time when we would need the “big guns” when no one else was available, although he never said why that might be. I’ve never done it yet, though.”

Angel and Giles shared a knowing look, as Helga audibly demanded he go get his goddamn shield pronto. Rags knew about Kier’s “specialness”, and knew the danger if his fate as the Ascendant ever came to pass. He’d be very hard to kill, especially from Bren’s perspective, since he’d never want to kill him anyways. But being able to summon the Gorgons was essentially a supernatural nuclear weapon - if he pushed that button, Kier would be dead the instant they showed up. Kier couldn’t be special enough to hold up against gods.

“I’ll go get it,” Kier volunteered, and Angel had to fight to keep his expression neutral. Did Kier know? Had he figured it out? His pretty face was perfectly unreadable, but he really wasn’t that bad of an actor.

Bren, who apparently hadn’t put it together that this was an emergency weapon to use against his vampire lover if things ever went horrendously bad, held the receiver to his shoulder and asked, “Are you sure? Do you know where it is?”

Kier nodded. “It’s the weird mirror in the hallway, right? I’ll take the sewers and get it; I should be back in five minutes.”

Bren nodded in agreement, and Kier leaned in to give him a quick kiss before heading out the door. Bren and Kier had moved in together sometime last month, mainly because Bren was tired of his apartment and Kier was looking at eviction from his crypt since it was due to be torn down. They had a place only a few blocks away, which meant that now Bren was always the first one in the office in the morning or at night - whenever they decided to open. He’d always been industrious, but this seemed absurd somehow.

Since the dead were leaving the sewer alone, and Kier was a vampire, they let him go off on his own. Once he was gone, Giles asked Ana, “Have you angered any other necromancers?”

Ana glared at him, but he noticed she was eyeing Sid rather lasciviously out of the corner of her eye. Sid went on reading, oblivious to being ogled. “What, you think they were after me? They were after you guys.”

Angel wondered if that was possible. Ana seemed like the most natural target of the attack, but since it happened after they arrived at her apartment, it could have very well been them. “Why do you say that?”

Before she could say, the door opened, and Logan came in with an odd man who looked like a large snake with two legs. Xander made a startled noise and nearly bobbled his coffee cup. “Fuck, are you a snake?” Oh, that was right - Xander really didn’t like snakes. It had to do with a Sunnydale incident he was sure.

The man - who was undoubtedly Degei; he gave off a sense of power Angel could feel across the room - blinked with clear eyelids, and replied, “I’m of snakes, yes.”

“We’ll get to the origin story in a minute, okay?” Logan interjected impatiently. “This thing is a lot worse than we thought.”

“Is that even possible?” Marc asked. A fair question.

Logan nodded grimly, and Degei said, “The personification of evil is loose in Los Angeles.”

“Dick Cheney’s here?” Xander cracked.

Nobody laughed, but Angel had to admit that was one of his better jokes.