The thing's head darted down towards them so swiftly it was a blur, but Bob still tackled him and drove him aside, the pair of them hitting the ground pretty hard (oh, he was so glad he was still Brachen). They'd avoided it, but what did that buy them, seven seconds?

"I have an idea," Bob said. "Distract it."

As Bob got to his feet, Bren stared up at him in disbelief. "And how the fuck am I supposed to do that?"

"I don't know. Just make it good." He said, wandering over to the far side of the tunnel. Nessie's eyes followed Bob, probably attracted by his energy. Although you had to assume that Bob could pretty much have any piece of ass he wanted, the downside of it was he attracted everything, good or bad, pretty or ugly, Human or inhuman. Suddenly it didn't seem like such a good deal anymore.

Bren climbed to his feet and whistled sharply, waving his hands over his head. "Hey, ugly! Over here!" It was ignoring him, which he took as an ego blow. Damn it, was he that unattractive? Well, fine - there was more then one way to attract a mutant hellbeast.

He pulled out his Walther PPK, aimed high (so the ricochets were unlikely to bounce off towards him) and started shooting.

The bullets bounced harmlessly off its muzzle, like he expected it to do, but just the pressure of the things pinging off of him made Nessie look at him, its maw gaping open as it made that eerie fluttering noise again, a sound that seemed to make him dizzy. "You look at me when I'm talking to you," Bren snapped, still firing.

The thing darted down towards him, and Bren rolled aside, but Nessie just barely missed him, its mouth punching a hole in the concrete beside him. He kept firing, but now his gun clicked empty, all rounds spent. He hadn't brought a spare clip, had he? Shit. Logan would have been so angry at him.

"Come on, Sigmund," Bren taunted, still flat out on the cold floor as Nessie reared over him. "That all you got?"

Oh, he was so dead he suddenly remembered he hadn't made a will. Oh well, it wasn't like he owned a lot anyways. What did he have? Some Ladytron CDs, a t.v., some paperbacks, and a sketch of Logan shirtless that Piotr sent him for his birthday. Yeah, people were just going to be fighting over those.

The thing looked as if it was about to dart down and swallow him whole, but Bob - ignored by them both - suddenly grabbed the side of the thing and said something that Bren couldn't quite understand; it was some kind of language, but it seemed to slip through his ears like random consonants, something his mind couldn't fully grasp.

And in the blink of an eye, they were both gone.

Bren was sure it was a trick - why he thought that he had no idea - and he was still staring up at the emptiness when Kier raced into the tunnel. "Brendan," he said, stopping beside him and crouching down. "You okay? We thought we heard that ... thing."

"You did," he admitted, and wasn't so prideful that he didn't let Kier give him a hand up. "And let me tell you, it's bulletproof."

By this time, Angel, Giles, and Xander appeared in the mouth of the raggedly formed tunnel. "What happened to it?" Angel asked, looking around as if he thought it was hiding. (Where would a forty foot long sea monster hide in a sewer?)

"Bob ... made it disappear," he said, because that's what it seemed like. But ultimately Bren wasn't sure what Bob had actually done.

What had he done?

****

He always found the name Death Valley kind of funny. Not funny ha ha, just funny strange, because really it wasn't all that bad.

There were places in the Outback far hotter and far more desolate, places where you could pick death through heatstroke or death through poisonous insect or reptile, all depending on where you were and what time of day it was. Death Valley was large, but eventually you'd hit civilization; there were still places in the Never-Never where people died due to the lack of civilization, due to the great and vast nothingness between oases, in the light of a sun that not only seemed closer but openly hostile, like a malevolent force that only wanted to see you fry like a chicken on a spit.

Ah, home.

But Death Valley really wasn't anything to sneeze at. Right now the sun was glaring down like a baleful eye, and it was about a hundred degrees, which was certainly hot. Never mind that it seemed paltry, the sun's harsher rays repelled by a thin layer of smog; it wasn't exactly kind.

This was especially true if you were a being that relied on water for your strength. Oh, if you dug in the right spot for a long enough time, you might find water, but it wasn't a certainty, certainly not where the sand dried and cracked like burnt skin. There wasn't even a smell of water out here, only smog and dust, exhaust and the hot smell of baking earth. It was a desert, and it felt like it, tasted like it.

He almost felt sorry for the eac, which stopped the stabbing motion of its head and looked around in utter bewilderment.

"This isn't your home," he told it, patting its opalescent skin. It suddenly felt like rubber beneath his hands, something fragile, and its luster was dimming visibly. "You don't belong here, no matter how good the eats are. I'm gonna send you home now, okay? And this time, stay there. or I'll be 'portin' you out to Uluru next, and I won't be there to finish the job. I'll just let the dingoes rip you to fucking pieces."

It made its fluttering cry again, but it sounded weaker, and its tail slapped the sand, kicking up dust devils. Bob concentrated his energy, letting it form a sword of blue energy in his hand, and then swung it sharply, severing the head of the eac off its body.

As the head thudded to the desert floor, the body writhed and twisted like a worm on a skillet, coating it in a thick cloud of powdery dust, before it fell still and began to melt, pooling into a thick, ectoplasmic fluid the color of bilge water. After a moment, it formed a slick that slowly evanescenced in the hot desert air.

He drew his energy inside himself, taking a deep cleansing breath. Maybe when it got back to the dimension it was from - and it would; being a pure demon, a death on this plane was by no means permanent - it would warn the other inhabitants of him, and they would take it to heart.

Maybe. But he couldn't count on that and he knew it. Most demon gods knew he was on this plane, and they didn't like to put in direct appearances because of him. But there were some who were very strong, and others who didn't care. He was really hoping that if worse came to worse, it was the latter he was dealing with and not the former.

Otherwise, they were totally fucked.

14

Cressida looked at him in wide eyed horror, and then fell to the floor, hitting it with a dull thwack as her body started oozing into liquid at the edges. Was she dead? Holy shit, he couldn't have killed her!

In his mind Logan cursed a blue streak, vowing to disembowel Samsonov and make him eat his own fucking testicles before he died, but the sadistic telepath just laughed inside his own head, not giving him a single iota of control over his own body.

He felt like he was standing there forever, unable to move, watching as Cressy's body slowly deliquesced and trickled beneath the car, as a private elevator hummed to life and opened on the man who could only be Samsonov, flanked by two thick necked goons.

Samsonov was tall and lank, almost funereal, his body hidden beneath the folds of a long grey duster, with his head shaved bald (did all telepaths do that?) and his eyes dark holes glaring out of a sharp featured, angular face that looked lupine and ravenous. He was smiling in a way that shed cold instead of warmth, and it sent a shiver of revulsion down his spine. Samsonov felt it, and snickered aloud. “I know you’re famous for not giving up, but seriously Logan, you might as well save your energy. You’re not going anywhere, not until I want you to.” He cocked his head, listening to Logan curse in his mind, and he smirked. “The more you fight, the more it amuses me. Your hate is funny. But what I really want is your fear.”

The two goons spread out and confirmed that everyone else was dead, one of them kicking Leung’s body in the ribs and grunting a laugh. “Ah, you killed him,” Samsonov said, and Logan could feel him rifling through his mind like icy fingers stabbing into his brain tissue. Again he tried to fight, and again he couldn’t. Samsonov was scary powerful, Xavier powerful, and Bob hadn’t left him any ammunition he could use. And he had been glad for the freedom from Bob; he should have known that would come back and bite him on the ass. “Nice to know that rumor about you being a goody two shoes was exaggerated. I couldn’t quite imagine that life for you anyways. You were a legend, the great assassin. It would have been sad if you turned into a burn out.”

He felt himself walking to the elevator, following Samsonov and his thugs like an obedient dog. He was growling - it was apparently the only thing he could control, a low noise in his throat - and Samsonov leered at him as the elevator doors closed on them all, showing his small, uneven teeth. “You’re wondering what I’m going to do to you? I’m going to send you back to your roots, Logan. I need some good enforcers, and you’re gonna be a great one … as soon as I strip you of your pesky conscience. You’re a killing machine, Logan, and I don’t know why you fool yourself into thinking otherwise. You should be proud.” His leer became a face splitting grin, something sharp and cold enough to burn, madness dancing in his cool blue eyes. “I know I am.”

He was trying to swallow back panic and bile, trying to keep his heart rate low so he didn’t give the bastard the satisfaction of his fear, but yeah, he was terrified and furious. He was not going to be the bitch of some psycho mindfucker again, and he was not going to have his hard won memories - scant as they were - wiped out again. There had to be some way he could fight this fucker, or at the very least hold out until Bob could go Scanners on Samsonov’s ass. He just had to be patient, bide his time, hunker down and wait out this latest mind rape.

Samsonov raised an eyebrow at him as the elevator came to a stop and the door started to slide open. “Bob? Who is that?”

Logan barely saw the movement out of the corner of his eye; it was a blur like a bolt of lightning, only it was a clear spear of something like water that stabbed straight into Samsonov’s eye and exploded out the back of his skull, painting the walls with blood, bone fragments, and gelatinous clots of brain matter. Logan felt himself released from his mental hold so suddenly he almost staggered, but he quickly recovered, glad to have a channel for his fury.

The first thug was pulling out his gun, as if shooting a sentient spear was even possible, but Logan popped his claws and with one slash cut off his arm, making him scream, and then he drove his claw straight through the eyes of the second thug, pinning him to the elevator until he retracted his claws. He elbowed the screaming thug in the face, hard enough that his skull cracked, and he dropped to the floor, legs briefly spasming before he finally went still.

Cressida formed into a puddle before growing up into her humanoid shape right in front of him. He was panting from rage, trying to get it under control, swallowing back the nausea that came with being mindfucked and being forced to endure it. “This is going to be a hard mess to clean up,” Cressy noted coldly.

“I’m glad I didn’t kill ya,” he said, aware that was an understatement.

Cressida smirked briefly, but she seemed more relieved than amused. “I thought we might fight, so when I formed into a humanoid shape, I shifted my heart behind my liver. I read up on you; I wanted to be ready.”

“Good thinking.” It was hard to get his thoughts in order, but he did his best. “What was your plan here, Cressy? What are you gonna do?”

“What I planned to do,” she said, and in that moment transformed into a carbon copy of Leung. Her voice even sounded like his. “I’m going to find out who’s running the Organization right now, and take care of them. I don’t like being used.”

He nodded, understanding that very well. “I can help.”

She shook her head, and gave him a sad, sympathetic look that looked really weird on Leung’s face. “No you can’t. I’m going to say you killed me - Chameleon - and escaped. They’ll believe that, given your reputation … well, for a while at least. I don’t imagine I’ll have long with this charade anyways, so it doesn’t need to go very far.”

“When we met outside the club, you said you weren’t going back. You got the tracer out that night, didn’t you? You thought the Org knew and sent me to bring you back to base.”

She nodded curtly, lips thinning to a grim line. “When I got home I did a little research, found out about Wolverine. I’d been wondering how I was going to replace Leung and excuse my own absence - you were the happiest accident I’ve ever had in my life.”

“An excuse.”

“An out; a believable one.” She reached out and touched his arm, and while his initial impulse was to yank his arm away, he suppressed it. Her hand was oddly warm, and not uncomfortable. “Thank you.”

She meant it, and he suddenly felt slightly winded. She was like the first Cressida, and she wasn‘t simply thanking him for giving him an excuse; she was thanking him for proving you could get away from the Organization if you simply tried hard enough. Did she know about her, the first Cressida? Should he tell her? He realized that right now he couldn’t; she was a woman on a righteous mission, and he didn’t want to derail her. He wanted to help … but this was her time. He’d gotten lots of revenge on them, and now it was her turn. She deserved that much.

He swallowed hard, and jerked his head down at the remains of Samsonov. “What’re you gonna do about him?”

She looked down at him and sighed, as if the brains all over the wall was an annoyance. “Dumping bodies isn’t hard … but killing Samsonov. Shit, how do I explain that?” She rubbed her eyes as she frowned in thought. “Maybe I - Chameleon - killed him for some reason before you killed me -”

“Bob.”

She looked at him sharply and curiously. “Bob?”

“I have a friend called Bob, I think the Organization know him as “the pretty boy”. He’s good looking, Australian, with cobalt blue eyes, and they think he’s a reality warper of the highest order. Say he showed up shortly after Samsonov, and you don’t know what happened, but Samsonov’s head exploded like a dynamite filled pumpkin. Bob has that effect on telepaths who try to read his mind, or just piss him off by trying to fuck with his friends. Everyone would have been helpless to stop him, before or after, and he left with me. That would also help to explain why I disappeared so completely, and it would keep them from looking into it too closely, ‘cause he’s number one on their “do not engage” hit parade.”

She cocked her head to the side, mulling it over, and eventually nodded. “If they think he can do that, that should work. But … who is Bob really? You said they think he’s a reality warper, but that implies that he actually isn’t. So what is he really?”

He smiled tiredly, although there wasn’t much humor in it. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

She gave him a skeptical look, but didn’t press the matter, perhaps because this wasn’t the time or place. “Fine, be that way. You’d better get out of here, I have a lot of clearing up to do, and you don’t need to be caught up in it.”

He supposed not. Also, he just wanted to crawl away and be sick for a moment; he could still feel the icy after-effects of Samsonov in his mind. It was probably good he died so fast, as Logan didn’t feel it, but then again, if anyone deserved a lingering death, it was probably him. Sometimes there was just no way to win. “Look, there’s this guy in New York -”

“Xavier, yeah, I know. I said I did some research on you, remember?” She smiled, and it looked comical on Leung’s face. “Thanks. I’ll keep it in mind.”

“Also, there’s this bar in Los Angeles called the Way Station. It’s really hard to find - I mean, it ain’t on MapQuest, it ain’t in the phone book, you could even walk by it and not see it - but if you ask around enough you’ll probably find a way there. That’s Bob’s hang out. If you have any problems at all, no matter how major, go see him. He’ll know who you are, and he’ll help, no matter how impossible it seems.”

That earned him a quirked eyebrow. “Why would he?”

“’Cause he owes me.” And Logan owed him, but he wasn’t sure how they kept track of the slate anymore. Considering how tangled up their lives were, it was insane to even think there was a “slate” anymore; they were almost two sides of the same coin. And wasn’t that a scary thought? “Good luck.”

“Thanks, but they’ll need it, not me,” she responded confidently.

Glancing down at the remains of Samsonov, he could believe it. “I bet.”

He started walking away - they were on the upper level of the parking garage, still empty but somewhere open to fresh, outside air - and almost as an afterthought, Cressida said, “I would’ve kicked your ass, you know.”

He scoffed. “Dream on, sister.”

They could have hardly had a sappy goodbye now could they?

****

He couldn’t quite believe it, but he found the sword where he’d left it, hidden by the tree. Just holding it made him feel better, more at peace, and he closed his eyes and let the feeling wash over him, through him, clearing away the dark stain of Samsonov in his mind.

Swords could be used in meditation? He had the strangest feeling that was true here, that he liked to use them as a focus for his energy, but he wasn’t sure how. Odd.

It was night now, the sky starting to show the twilight pastels of approaching dawn, so no one noticed him walking around the streets of Vancouver carrying a sword. Oh, he got a couple of startled looks, but that generally meant people stayed the hell away from him, which he always liked.

Once he reached Faith’s, she was asleep and he didn’t want to wake her. He put the sword on the dining room table and wrote her a note, saying he thought she’d like this little gift, then went and took a shower for well over an hour, washing off blood and trying not to think about how close he had come to losing himself once more. He hated feeling so weak, so fragile, but there were moments when he was, and he was almost helpless to stop them. Maybe the key was what you did afterwards, how you coped.

The sun had turned the sky a frail gold by the time he laid down, sure he wouldn’t sleep - and if he did, he’d regret it - but he felt too physically shagged out to deny it any further. Maybe one of these days, willingness to sleep wouldn’t be a test of bravery. But he wasn’t going to hold his breath.

15

Bob popped up again before they left the sewer, and teleported them back to the office, which Angel was grateful for, as Giles really wasn’t doing well.

The thing about spellcasting was the energy just didn’t appear out of nowhere; the person casting the spell supplied the energy, the strength, the will and muscle to push it through. That was why black magic was so destructive; it corrosively ate away at the life force of the practitioner until there was nothing left, and it was pretty much a built in safety that prevented too many people from becoming proficient at it.

Giles wasn’t anticipating that the portal - or the thing behind it - would put up a fight; none of them were. As a result, Giles had spent more energy than he expected, and he was barely conscious. He’d recover in time, but he’d probably need a couple of days off and perhaps a healing spell to put him right again.

As soon as they were back in the office, Bob told Giles he was fine, which was a bit of a relief. He also told them how he teleported the sea monster to Death Valley and took care of it, which Giles admitted was a brilliant idea. “Why didn’t I think of that?” he wondered, as Bren handed Giles a cup of industrial strength black tea. He took it with a grateful nod.

“No worries, mate. Even I didn’t think of it ‘til it was staring me in the face.” He sat on the edge of the desk, and looked around the office as if someone had redecorated while they were gone. “So, is Naomi ducking me or what?”

He didn’t know? Oh shit. He opened his mouth to tell him what had happened to her, but Bob’s eyes suddenly widened in horror, and he gasped. “She’s hurt?” he exclaimed. “Why didn’t someone bloody tell me before?!”

It must have been a rhetorical question, because a second after that he winked out of existence.

In the ensuing silence, Kier scratched his head, and admitted, “That could have gone better.”

With a forced sigh (it wasn’t always easy when you didn’t breathe), he told Bren, “I think we can call it a day - or night, whatever it is.” He was so tired he wasn’t sure himself.

Bren looked relieved, but he quickly tried to cover it up. “You sure?”

“Bob is the key to figuring out which demon god wants to get a foothold in this dimension; without him, we’ve got nothing to work on. All hell dimensions look alike to me. So we’ll just tackle it tomorrow.”

“And hope the world doesn’t end in the meantime?” he replied, with a faint, joking smile. But he wasn’t really joking, and they both knew it.

“Exactly.”

Bren headed for the door, and looked at Kier, who was standing aimlessly near the bookshelves. “C’mon, Kier, we can grab some take out on the way home.”

Kier brightened at the suggestion. “Great! Now I can get you to try that new deli I’ve been telling you about.”

Bren made a dismissive noise. “I’m from the East Coast; California doesn’t have anything that deserves to call itself a deli.”

“Snob,” Kier replied teasingly.

As they left, Bren argued, “What the hell’s kosher about an L.A. deli? They have soy gefilte fish, for Medusa’s sake …”

Once the door was shut, Xander stared at a minute before asking, “So was that a joke?”

Angel shrugged. “I kind of hope so.” He then gestured to his office door, and said, “Can I speak to you in private?” He might as well get this over with.

Xander looked between him and his office warily, but then unfolded himself from the couch and went into it without comment. Giles shot Angel a look that seemed to warn him to be kind to him, but there was a sort of resignation about it. Xander was an old hand at this stuff, yes, but he was still just a normal Human, and apt to be a liability more than anything else.

“So is this where you lecture me?” Xander wondered, flinging himself down on his loveseat.

Angel scowled at the closed door, trying to gather his thoughts. He had never really liked Xander, but he couldn’t hate him … okay, yes he could. But he rather hoped he was better than that, because Xander’s biggest sin was being annoying. “You have a life apart from this,” he finally said, turning to face him. “You should go back to it.”

Xander stared at him before laughing humorlessly. “A life? Yeah, right.”

“Xander, don’t make me -”

“You think I didn’t try?” he interrupted angrily. “All I wanted was to get this demon shit behind me, but then I did … and I didn’t know what the fuck I was supposed to do with myself. I can’t undo what I’ve done, or forget what I know. I tried to pretend I was a normal person who thought the supernatural was contained to bad horror movies, but I couldn’t do it. I know what lurks in the shadows, and there’s no way I can’t know. I’d meet women, and if they were at all interested in me, I’d find myself wondering if they were just a vampire looking for an easy meal, or a demon who would rip my head off as soon as we got a moment alone. Do you know I have a trunk full of stakes, holy water, and pentagrams? Because I do. At night I always carry a stake with me, even if I’m just at a construction site. I started drinking to forget, it was easiest, but then I realized I was becoming some damn alcoholic - like my Uncle Rory, but without the road kill toupee. And that’s not what I wanna be.” He scrubbed a hand through his hair, frustration coloring his features, and he exhaled like he’d been punched. “You know, even before that incident with the Red Wolves, I ran into demons. I was taking out my trash one night, and I heard this shriek out near the back of the building. I didn’t even think about it; I went and checked it out, and I found this big, scaly demon - I don’t know what it was; I didn’t recognize it - attacking a couple of teenagers. I found a tire iron and just attacked the thing, bashing its skull in, and I was so angry that I just kept doing it, until its head was completely flat. I didn’t even realize I was angry until then, and I didn’t know why I was so angry until that whole thing with the Red Wolves.

“Choice left my life a long time ago. Maybe I don’t want to fight the forces of darkness anymore, but I can’t have a normal life either, no matter how much I pretend I want it. If I’m not out there doing good, my life feels like a pointless waste of time. And now that Bob’s given me my eye back … I have no excuse. I need to do this, Angel, okay? I have to, or I’m gonna go crazy. Well, crazier.”

He folded his arms over his chest, frowning as he considered his words. He hated feeling anything close to pity for Xander, but he supposed he could understand what he was getting at. Of course Angel was pretty sure if he woke up Human tomorrow he’d be happy to leave this all behind … but would it be that easy? Maybe Xander was living proof that there were more pitfalls and snags than you could ever anticipate. “But why me? Why not … is Buffy …”

“Buffy is in Italy, and I’m pretty sure she’s not having the same problems I’m having with adjusting to a so called “normal“ life. Willow’s in Ireland, where she’s the head of a coven and doing the fighting evil thing with her own group. She’s invited me over, but come on - I’m no witch. If I feel like a third wheel here, think how much worse that’ll be if I’m with a coven.” Okay, yeah, he could see that. “And Faith’s doing her own thing, as she usually does. I’m kinda out of options here.”

“So I’m a last resort?”

He grimaced. “See, if you put it that way, it sounds bad.”

Angel fixed him with a hard stare. “You don’t even like me.”

He shrugged half-heartedly, but at least he didn’t deny it. “Okay, yeah, sometimes I’ve been a dick to you -”

“- but do I really have to remind you about the whole turning into an evil killer thing?”

“Which wasn’t my fault. If we can’t get past this, Xander, I’m not going to have you here.”

He sighed and let his chin sink to his chest, as his posture seemed to collapse. After a moment, he took a deep breath, straightened his shoulders, and said, “I’m sorry, okay? I’m sorry I was a dick to you, I’m sorry about all that shit, okay? But I was a teenager, you know; we’re not the brightest bunch as a rule.”

It wasn’t much of an apology, but it was relatively sincere, and he figured it was the best he was going to get out of him. “Fine. But if you think you’re going to help, remember that I’m the boss, and when I give an order it’s not up for debate. Got it?”

He snapped a sharp salute. “Jawohl, mien fuehrer.” He then gave him a smart ass grin. “What, vampires can’t take a joke?”

Angel was regretting his decision already.