As soon as bug boy became semi-solidified (unlike Degei and his snakes, the flies never totally cohered; you could see gaps, and the flies seemed to be constantly moving around an invisible point), he proclaimed, in a voice that sounded like the buzzing of a thousand bees, “Degei, why are you here?” It was the kind of voice that set your teeth on edge; it was like sound reverberating off tin foil.

A bunch of snakes coagulated on the pier, working into a man sized pile that soon became humanoid Degei again. Oddly enough, though, the amount of snakes scattered about seemed to be the same. “I could ask you the same thing,” Degei replied, sounding normal. Did he have a god voice? That kind of scary, hard to listen to tone that Bob had? He assumed he must have, because if Bob had it, everyone must have. Erlik must have had one that could make you lose your lunch.

Erlik cocked his head, which looked funny considering the flies never stopped moving, and his neck looked only half formed. “This is my realm. I’ve claimed it.”

“It’s not; it’s not mine either. We’re trespassing. We should go.”

“You first.”

This was like kids on a playground. Logan scowled and wanted to comment, but kept his mouth shut. Where was Giles and Wesley? He was afraid that Degei was such a nice guy, so meek and mild, that he’d never start anything - he’d wait for Erlik to make the first move. What if his first move was killing him? How long would it take Degei to pop back up here?

Just as Logan was getting almost unbearably restless, Kier seemed to jump out of nowhere and swung a big ass sword, cutting Erlik in half at the waist … theoretically. The flies began to topple and instantly reformed, and by the time Kier got the sword up to his shoulder, Erlik was reformed, and Kier went flying through the air, hitting and demolishing an ancient ring toss stand. Another sword whistled through the air and sliced right though the center of Erlik, and somehow Degei’s snakes loosened up just enough to let the sword pass through him without cutting him.

Angel stomped up the pier, and said angrily to Erlik, “What does it take for you to get the message you’re not w -” That was as far as Angel got before he too was sent flying into another empty stand, which he hit with enough force to collapse the entire thing on top of him. It was a good thing they were vampires and under Degei’s aegis, because that really must have hurt.

“You!” Erlik roared, facing (? Hard to tell when he was all flies) Degei. “They stink of your power! Why are you doing this?”

“I’ve already said, Erlik, you’re just not listening. We don’t belong here. It’s not our place.”

“How many lessers are here? How many have you converted?” The flies seemed to be agitated, as they were undulating like Degei’s skin had been earlier.

Degei didn’t answer. He just stood there, a statue made of snakeskin, as Erlik seemed to swell in size, more and more flies joining the pile.

Suddenly there was a thudding that shook the pier, a rhythmic pounding like something mechanical, and Erlik said, “They can’t hide from them.”

Logan risked a look past his booth, to see what was moving up the pier towards them.

His first thought was golems, but he knew that was incorrect. Still, what else did you call them? They were seven foot piles of dirt, mud, and sand, sculpted into rough humanoid forms, but totally without definition, much like Erlik himself. There were no eyes, no noses, nothing resembling a face or a feature; they were just plain hulks with thick torsos and thick arms and legs like tree trunks, standing in lines eight across. Logan guessed there were about two dozen. He couldn’t imagine they were very strong, being made of dirt, but thinking about it, he changed his mind. They were made by a god, “molded” from the Earth - they were probably pretty tough, and certainly felt no pain. Since they weren’t technically alive, they couldn’t really be killed. Shit - they always got you on these technicalities.

He prepared to rush them, to plow into them (somewhat literally) and figure out on the go if he could beat them for any length of time, when he thought he heard an odd noise. He wasn’t sure what it was, but then he heard … something. He looked out towards the ocean, and noticed that they were about to be hit by a tidal wave.

No, scratch that. The water wasn’t a huge wave that was about to descend on them, but was continuing to swell upward, a ludicrous gravity defying tower of water that was probably about thirty feet high and still growing. How the hell -

Aquaman. Son of a bitch, Matt had just become useful.

If Erlik saw it - and he must have, because it was Degei who had his back to the water - he didn’t react to it, and it occurred to Logan that no, he probably wouldn’t. It wouldn’t feel like god energy because it wasn’t, and he didn’t know how things worked in this dimension; for all he knew, this could be normal. He could sense no threat in Human power, because it wasn’t a threat. To him.

To his mud people, well, that was another story.

Logan began to wonder if the kid was stuck, because the pillar of water was massive, and he’d never exactly done something like this before, had he? Then again, Sid had said he’d made the tide go out. The tide; an inexorable, natural process that involved the entirety of the ocean. Oh fuck, was the kid that powerful? Why hadn’t they figured that out before? The world was what, seventy percent water? If he could control just a fraction of a single percentage point of it at once, that was still a massive amount of power. And they’d teased him for his lame power. Wow, they were all idiots.

Finally the pillar of water collapsed, but as directionally as an arrow. It rushed downward, hitting the pier with a thud that should have demolished it, and Degei suddenly exploded into a mass of water snakes before the head of the water funnel passed right through him and slammed into the startled Erlik so hard that his mass of flies disappeared beneath the torrent before it swamped over the dirt soldiers, not so much carrying them away as dissolving them, reducing them to silt as the water funnel sloshed over the far side of the pier, joining with the larger body of water once more. The water beneath them was roiling as if angry, churning in such a way that no matter his god powers, Erlik would be hard pressed to find enough grains of dirt to put them back together again.

The strangest thing about all of this was the water retained its pillar like shape throughout. Logan watched it surge past him like it was behind an invisible wall, and it never hit any of the stands; it was like the world’s largest and most accurately named water snake.

Although Logan was fairly certain flies didn’t like to get wet - it weighed down their wings - Erlik reformed with the water still swirling past his waist, and demanded angrily, “What was that?!”

Degei reformed too, his coloring now mostly uniform black thanks to him being mostly made of water snakes. “A reason to leave. This is your last chance.”

Erlik made a noise that could have been a snort, or maybe a cough. It was sharp and short and guttural, the audio equivalent of a rabbit punch. “You’re no threat to me, snake god. I can’t be killed either, or have you forgotten, languishing in your little corner of nowhere? I don’t even need this world - it needs me. It wants me here. Can’t you feel it? There’s lots of evil here, it’s simply unfocused. I’m just here to channel it.”

“I think Ulgan will have something to say about that.”

At the mention of his name, the flies seemed to get agitated anew, breaking off from his main body to buzz around him and then settle into his shoulders, which looked like they were boiling. “By the time he figures things out, it’ll be too late.”

The water was all off the pier now, although the ocean continued to roil around the dock like an angry beast, pacing and waiting for a chance to strike again. Logan noted that neither he nor the garter snake had gotten wet.

“Freeze, motherfuckers!” A booming voice roared across the pier. The Ressiks had arrived.

The lizardy demons were all dressed to the nines in dark suits, like they fancied themselves a crew straight out of a Tarantino film, and all had shiny guns, mostly Glocks, with the ones in the back hefting large automatic weapons. Erlik looked back at them with what could have been disdain, but his vague, unformed face made it difficult to read his expression. “You pieces of shit. Do you think I’m afraid of you?”

A bronze Ressik, who presumably was the leader of them, snapped, “You should be.” They then opened fire, a fusillade of bullets that ripped through the cloud of flies and avoided Degei altogether, although Logan wasn’t sure how they managed that. It must have been something Degei was doing.

The cloud of flies reformed (barely), and he waved his hand towards the Ressiks, who suddenly dissolved. It was so startling that Logan wasn’t sure what he saw at first; it was like they burned up in a microsecond, flesh and bone turned into ash, so rapidly that they never lost their shapes until they were all burned away. The wind blew and they disappeared into sooty clouds, the guns not burnt away hitting the pier with metallic clunks. So much for the god killers; there was a waste of a few thousand dollars. For Helga’s sake, he hoped it was the type Bob conjured up out of thin air.

Erlik faced Degei again, and it looked like he had a scowl that was slicing his poorly made face in half. “Are you done?” he wondered sourly.

Degei didn’t respond. He didn’t have to - what was there to say to that?

An animated dead man started walking up the pier.

Logan thought for a moment that it was Scott, as the build and height were similar, but this man was white and bald, and wore stained jeans, dirty Timberlands, and a torn t-shirt advertising a Mexican strip club. He had a pentagram drawn into his forehead, making him look a bit like a Manson family member out for a stroll. Logan thought the pentagram was drawn on his forehead in something black - ink, charcoal - but he picked up a burnt flesh scent from him, and he realized it had been burned into his skin. Good thing he was already dead.

“What pathetic annoyance is this?” Erlik demanded.

Degei rolled his shoulders in a partial shrug. “Isn’t he one of yours?”

He thought Erlik might turn him to ash too, but suddenly one of Degei’s snakes ate one of Erlik’s flies, and he spun back around. “Are you challenging me, snake lord? “

“No, they’re just getting hungry.”

Was that Degei being funny again? He was so deadpan it was hard to say.

The Human with the pentagram burned into his forehead paused within arm’s reach of Erlik, but didn’t move any further. Erlik faced him, but without much worry. Flies buzzed around the dead man, but he was probably used to that.

Erlik stared at him, as far as Logan could tell. (He didn’t exactly have regular eyes.) “You smell of dark magic,” Erlik accused the dead man. “You’re not one of mine.”

Logan had to suppress the urge to sigh and say, “Finally.” He’d been getting impatient and his butt was getting numb, his claws itching to get out. But he remained holding them back, because he wanted to hold them until the last second. They were a surprise.

The corpse just stood there, slightly unsteady on its feet, not responding. But it wouldn’t. It was merely a meat puppet, a sleeve of flesh - a prison in waiting.

An arm reached through the corpse’s chest, and grabbed Erlik’s arm. It was pretty shocking, not only because it was a slightly translucent arm reaching bloodlessly through another person’s torso, but because the hand had grabbed Erlik like he was solid, like he wasn’t made of loosely gathered flies.

But that was the thing. Ghosts couldn’t pass through gods; gods to them were solid things, even when they weren’t, even when they were a loose conglomeration of insects.

Normal people usually scattered the seeds of their own downfall, and whether it was some unconscious need to get caught or just carelessness it didn’t matter. People usually defeated themselves, and thankfully, it seemed that gods were no different.

The only thing that could possibly kill Erlik on this plane was a ghost, and the stupid evil bastard had filled all of Los Angeles with them. Including a Watcher with a tiny bit of a grudge.

The stupid bastard. Logan almost felt sorry for him.