He wondered if this car was armored, if it had a bulletproof gas tank. Knowing Ehud, yes, it did, but that didn’t mean some bullets couldn’t get through - high velocity bullets were deterred by precious little, and he’d have no idea what kind of ammo they were using until they opened fire. He’d hate to take a gamble and place the wrong bet. “Fine, assholes, keep your pants on,” he shouted, pulling himself through the glass. He heard a noise in the car, and glanced back to see Ehud, although still upside down in his seat, was taking the safety off his gun. Great - all he had to do was keep them distracted, until Ehud could get a shot. That he could do.

Still, he took his time standing up, clearing the car, hands on top of his head like he was facing trigger happy cops. But it wasn’t cops, and things were much worse than he thought. There were a half-dozen men standing at the top of the gully, all armed, but one in particular was especially worrisome. At first Logan feared he had a rocket launcher on his shoulder, but it was too snub nosed and not long enough. It was a grenade launcher, which was bad enough. And it wasn’t aimed at him - it was aimed down at the car. The fucking bastards. “Hey, I’m here!” he snapped, wondering if charging them would change the aim. Most likely the guys with guns would open fire on him - a couple of head shots would put him down for a minute or two. And then they could do whatever they wanted with the others. “What the fuck do you want with me?”

The leader was the guy to the immediate right of the man holding the grenade launcher. He was holding something in his hand, not a gun, but something like a small gas canister. What the fuck was that? “Actually, nothing,” the man said. He was youngish, maybe thirty five, dressed in an off the rack suit (maybe he didn’t want to get his good ones dirty), hair slicked back and a face that looked so smug you wanted to instantaneously slam it in a car door. He was probably born Yakuza, the son of an established crime family - they were always the smuggest bastards, and with the least reason for it. “Consider this a friendly warning. We know you’ve freelanced for the Triad, and we don’t appreciate them sending you.”

“What? I don’t -”

“Save it. This is your only warning. Turn around and go back to whatever sewer you crawled out of, or everyone you know will pay for your arrogance. You can’t protect them all the time.”

“Listen to me, fuckface, I don’t work for the fucking Triad,” he snarled. He should have known that aligning himself - however briefly - with Wing would eventually come back to bite him on the ass. “That was just a case of working against a common enemy.  I hate all of you jackoffs.”

The smug bastard tossed the canister lazily in his hand, like it was a baseball he was getting ready to pitch. “Uh huh. That sounded very convincing.” He noticed the other members of his group were putting on sunglasses so dark they wouldn’t be out of place on Scott or Marc, as well as securing earplugs. Suddenly he knew what it was that their leader was holding. “You’ve had your warning Yashida. Never say we didn’t play fair.”

He decided to risk a charge, but it was too little and too late; they had the advantage of high ground, and they knew it. The leader lobbed the more contemporary style grenade up high, so Logan would be unable to slash it or catch it in time (if such a thing was even remotely feasible). Logan then saw the man with the grenade launcher shift focus from the upside down car and sight on him instead as he fired.

He had a moment to be glad that it wasn’t aimed at the car when the first explosion occurred.

****

Faith was wondering if the new job had health insurance when all hell broke loose outside.

It bothered her only in retrospect that waking up upside down didn’t actually freak her in any way; in fact, it’d happened to her before. And this time she wasn’t even bleeding, only her neck hurt a bit. She wondered if it was whiplash.

She worried about Tagawa - since he was an old guy, and looked pretty frail - but he was okay, just shaken up. As soon as she got herself down, she scooted over on her knees and helped him out of his seatbelt and onto the ceiling (which was the floor now). She’d just done it when there was a loud explosion and a blinding flash of light outside, like someone had flared a spotlight on them before it winked out, the bulb overloading from the sheer voltage being pumped into it.

It was crazy bright, leaving afterimages that took so long to blink away she thought she might be blind for a second, and her hearing was reduced to a humming white noise deep inside her head. It felt like her ears had popped. “What the fuck was that?” she exclaimed, and barely heard herself talking.

Tagawa shook his head, still blinking afterimages away from his eyes. She wasn’t sure if he’d actually heard her, or just read her lips. “Stay here,” she told him, not sure he could actually hear her. So, was this not an ordinary crash? She was beginning to think so. And within her first hour on the job. Was it just her luck, or an omen of things to come? That was pretty much the same thing either way.

Opening an upside down door took a bit more talent than she thought, but just as she was about to give up and just kick the damn thing out, she got it and shoved it open. She looked out cautiously, only to have a beckoning hand appear from the side. A quick peek showed it was Ehud, sitting against the passenger side door, holding a rather large but sleek black handgun of a type she didn’t recognize. He had blood dribbling down his face from some glass cuts on his forehead and cheeks, but it didn’t look too bad.

There was a bunch of smoke drifting around, but it was white and smelled not unlike a bunch of firecrackers had gone off, not like a fire was raging somewhere. “What’s going on?” she whispered. “What the fuck was that?”

“Flash-bang. Do you have a gun?”

It took her a moment to work out what he said. According to Marc, Ehud didn’t talk much, didn’t move fast, and was about as expressive as a statue, which he could be mistaken for at the best of times. But he was ex-Mossad, and Marc was convinced he could kill a roomful of bad guys with nothing but a spork. “No. You mean a flash-bang grenade? What, are the SWAT attacking us?” As far as she knew, only riot police and SWAT teams used flash-bang grenades, and only when dealing with angry hordes or hostage takers.

Ehud reached down and pulled a nine millimeter handgun out of an ankle holster, handing it to her. “No, it’s one of the gangs - Triad or Yakuza. My guess is Yakuza, because I thought I heard someone speaking Japanese before the flash-bang went off.”

“Yakuza?” Wow - when he said gangs, she instantly thought of the Crips and the Hell’s Angels, but clearly he meant the major leagues. “Who the hell were they talking to?”

It was amazing how being shaken up a bit could make your mind function a bit slower. She suddenly realized that the passenger side of the car was empty, the window busted out right where Logan had been but wasn’t anymore. “Oh shit,” she gasped. “Where is he?”

She started to move forward but Ehud grabbed her arm and stilled her, with surprising strength for a normal Human. (She could still kick his ass, but that was an impressive grip.) “Logan is the last person you should worry about. We need to determine how many others there are, and where they are.”

She yanked her arm free, and realized she didn’t like his tone of voice. “Why is he the last person I should worry about? ‘Cause he’s a mutant?”

Ehud scowled at her, his eyes unreadable behind his ever-present sunglasses. “Because your job is to protect Mr. Tagawa, not worry about your boyfriend. Besides, he’s forgotten more training than you’ve ever had, so leave him to it.”

She felt like punching him for that boyfriend comment, but let it go for now. That training comment was pretty curious, though. She wondered what Logan would say about that.

Ehud eased out to the front of the car, raising himself up in stages - up on his knees, then up in a crouch - peering around the car cautiously before standing up and peeking his head over the top. The smoke was clearing, the cross breezes tearing up the thick white smoke like cotton candy, and she looked out beyond Ehud, wondering where Logan was. She wanted to shout his name, but that was not an ideal thing to do right now.

Ehud was now standing completely erect, and walked out from behind the car. “I believe they’re gone,” he sighed, sounding disappointed.

“Logan!” she shouted, standing up and holding her gun down at her side. Ehud started off towards the top of the gully, while she was left wandering around the smoke fogged field they had found themselves in. Had Logan wiped them all out? Usually there was more screaming, but the flash-bang had left them all temporarily deafened, so maybe they just missed it.

Wait a second - wouldn’t a flash-bang be even worse for him? He had better than average ears, right? Maybe he still couldn’t hear anything yet. She hoped she was visible enough that he didn’t jump her by mistake.

She stumbled on something, nearly losing her gun, and looking down, she saw she had tripped on an outstretched arm. A very familiar arm. ‘Holy shit! Logan?” She dropped to her knees, and the smoke had cleared enough that she could see him.

It wasn’t just a flash-bang he was hit with, was it?

Faith liked horror movies. She knew she shouldn’t since they were usually so cheesy and bad, and since she fought real life monsters and demons, it added an extra layer of unbelievably to the whole thing. But that was exactly why she liked them - they were, to her comedies. Damn funny ones too. Logan looked like he could have been a corpse from a horror movie, but this time it wasn’t funny - far from it.

She could see silver metal ribs poking through a layer of torn skin not unlike ground beef. Almost his entire rib cage on the right side had had the skin blasted off, with the saving grace being that only thee ribs were exposed to some degree. She couldn’t see his lung, so maybe that was a good thing, but he was oozing a tremendous amount of blood, soaking the ground beneath him. He had some skin blown off the lower right side of his face too, exposing a sliver of adamantium laced jaw bone, but the part of his forearm that had been blown away exposed only muscle, although the tip of his index finger had been scoured away enough to show a glimpse of metal. She was so horrified she was paralyzed for a moment, then it occurred to her to put a hand on his neck. She found a pulse, but it was weak and extremely erratic, like that of a tiny, frightened animal, nothing like the heavy duty pounding she usually heard when she put her head on his chest. It didn’t look like any part ! of him was healing, but he was so badly hurt she wasn’t sure where she should be looking.

“Ehud!” she shouted, not sure what their next move was. Her first instinct was to demand they get him to the hospital, but that obviously couldn’t happen. He normally didn’t need one, and they probably couldn’t really help him even if they did bring him in, but he looked like he had been blown up. What had happened - had he grabbed the flash-bang and attempted to throw it back when it exploded? Could he recover from that?

Ehud was on the top of the gully, looking around, but she still heard something coming up behind her, so she turned with her gun out. Tagawa stopped, raising his hands. “Didn’t mean to startle you.”

She huffed impatiently and lowered the gun. “Didn’t I tell you to wait in the car?”

“Yes, but it had been so quiet I figured either everything was all right, or everyone else had been killed rather quickly. I decided I’d best face it all head on.” Looking past her, he visibly paled and she knew he’d seen Logan.

“He’s still alive, but I don’t think he’s doing well. He’s not healing very fast …”

“He needs help,” Tagawa said, reaching into his pocket and pulling out his cell phone. He punched in a number, and after a moment, said, “Yukio, we need a pick up just south of the airfield. I’m afraid I’m not exactly sure where, but if you follow the smoke, I’m sure you’ll find us.” He must have cut the connection, because he punched in another, longer number (one not saved, apparently), and after several moments, said, “Ms. Desjardin? I’m afraid I may be in need of your services. No, it’s for a friend who is … special.”

Ah - the code word for mutant. She must have been some doctor who specialized in treating them; supposedly there was an underground that existed just for them, much like the one that existed for demons. But the demon one was probably bigger and easier to find. “We should be there shortly,” Tagawa continued. “Yukio will bring us in.” He paused. “Uh, what’s happened to him?”

“It looks like he took a grenade,” Ehud said, joining them. He’d put his gun away, so presumably the area was clear. What the hell was that about? “Not full on; it hit the ground close to him before going off. Not a flash bang, a military one.” He pointed to a small crater in the ground not six feet away, one she hadn’t noticed before.

“Grenade,” Tagawa reported. “No, I’m not kidding. He’s not missing any limbs, he’s just been … hurt.” He clearly didn’t know how to describe the injuries, and she didn’t blame him. The only thing that came to her mind was “meat cleaver”, and that wasn’t right. “We’ll be there shortly.”

As Tagawa hung up the phone, she handed Ehud back his gun. “Okay, explain something to me: if we were attacked by the Yakuza, why aren’t they here now? What was the point of hurting Logan and leaving?”

It was Tagawa that answered her first. “He scared them off. The Yakuza don’t like him very much.”

“No,” Ehud countered. “They got the target they came for, that’s why they left.”

Tagawa grimaced and looked away, and she got the sense that he wished that wasn’t true, but was the most likely explanation. All of which just made her more confused. “What the fuck is going on?” she demanded. “Why is the Yakuza after you, and why do they hate Logan?”

Both men looked at each other, Tagawa’s expression slightly guilty, Ehud’s totally unreadable. When Tagawa looked down at her, it was with a kind of sympathy that made her briefly consider kicking him. “He didn’t tell you about Hong Kong, did he?”

When people began monologues with a rhetorical question, the following conversation could never be any good; she knew that from hard experience. So she found herself internally bracing herself for whatever Logan hadn’t bothered to tell her.

Ultimately it wasn’t quite as bad as she feared, although it was bad enough. It seemed that Tagawa’s brother got mixed up with mobsters, and when Tony went to sort it out, he brought Logan and Marc with him, and Logan did his usual thing, which was essentially kicking a lot of ass and pissing off an awful lot of people. It’s just these people were organized, and held grudges in a professional sense.

Yukio was apparently Tagawa’s personal helicopter pilot, as that’s what came down next to the crash site within ten minutes of his phone call. Logan didn’t look any better after all that time, although it was possible some of the skin on his face had grown back; she would swear that he had a bit more skin on his chin than before, but she wasn’t sure.

She and Ehud struggled to get Logan in the chopper - he was always heavier than he looked - and because of the weight limit of the chopper and the fact that the car was still here, Ehud grudgingly decided to stay behind and make sure the car was taken care of before joining them at the hospital. Before the ‘copter took off, Ehud handed Faith a gun, and told her to keep an eye on Tagawa. Although she was a little offended at the presumption that she couldn’t do her job, she simply nodded and put the gun away. She and Tagawa left with Logan for the hospital, Ehud’s donated jacket wrapped around the open portion of Logan’s rib cage.

What surprised her was the fact that they seemed to be headed to a real hospital. It was on the outskirts of Vancouver - from up here she could actually see the city, a large and sprawling collection of buildings and arterial streets, all on the fringes of water a cold blue-grey - but Tagawa’s personal pilot put the helicopter down on a landing pad on the roof of a wide white building on the edge of the city hub. The helicopter rotors had barely started to slow when a woman in a white coat emerged, followed by an Indian man in a nurse’s uniform, both pushing a wheeled gurney in front of them.

Wait - no. Only the woman was pushing it. But because she had four arms, it looked like they were both doing it.

The man helped her pull Logan onto the gurney, as the doctor clicked her tongue and shouted over the sound of the dying rotors, “What is the nature of his mutat - what the hell? He has metal ribs?”

“He has a rapid healing factor,” Faith shouted back, trying not to stare as the doctor’s four hands all found something to do, from pulling off the coat and examining the edges of wounds as she also looked at his eyes and their response to a penlight she held in one hand. “And, umm, someone laced his skeleton with adamantium, so yeah, his ribs are metal.”

The woman looked up at her with obvious surprise, and just a tinge of doubt. “I see. Well, no sticking him in the MRI machine, then.” The doctor and her nurse started pushing the gurney towards the rooftop elevator, and she and Tagawa followed.

It was beginning to occur to her she should probably start looking for a new job. This one was way too freaky already.

****

Martin Leung was enjoying a latte and watching the people walk by, waiting for his resident mole to make the drop, when he got an update from Keith. And the news was better than he could imagine: Manniwa had attacked Yashida. He couldn’t help but laugh.

He had no doubt that Manniwa would take the bait, that Yashida was here working for them, but he had no idea he’d act on it so soon. According to Keith, it looked like they had “blown him up”, and he thought maybe they didn’t have to worry about Yashida anymore, but all that proved was that Keith hadn’t seen the files on Bloody Friday. It would have been nice if that was the end of Yashida, but he doubted it severely. Manniwa had probably just put him down for an hour; then he’d wake up, ready to carve Manniwa into bite sized pieces. Did he think he would run? Could Manniwa actually be that stupid?

Actually, yes. That’s precisely why he hated the jumped up little idiot. He thought of himself as some tough gangster out of a Beat Takashi film, but he was just the spoiled only son of a true leader. Hell, this Manniwa entertained himself with weekly manicures (!) and one thousand dollar an hour whores, and he couldn’t see his father doing that. (Of course he’d killed Manniwa’s father, but that was neither here nor there.)

The Yakuza was in a weak position now thanks to “little” Manniwa and his asinine business decisions, but this was surely the nail in their coffin. Piss off Yashida - good. Always a smart move, especially since he did nothing but wipe out an entire crime family , and then take out a helicopter crew in Hong Kong. What a pansy! Certainly Manniwa and his crew of thug wannabes could handle him, no problem.

What should he give Yashida - two days? Would he have the Vancouver Yakuza gutted in two days? Perhaps he’d save Manniwa for last, as Yashida did seem to have a rather cruel sense of humor. (Ironically, Yashida would have made a terrific gangster, if he wasn’t such a freak.)

So there was one problem taken care of; Manniwa had taken the bait, and was now in the process of a slow motion suicide. But as long as Yashida was here and with Tagawa, he was a problem. As soon as he took out Manniwa and his pathetic crew of also-rans, he might get the idea to take out two birds with one stone, which was something he couldn’t allow. So he’d have his own freak standing by, keeping an eye on him. Yashida would have some time to take out the Yakuza, and then they’d take him out before he got wise to his status as a useful tool. There were ways to do it if you were smart and thought ahead … which put Manniwa right out of the running. Oh well - not everyone was cut out to be a leader of men.

Martin noticed that someone had left today’s paper behind on the neighboring table, and he grabbed it to have a look at the outcome of last night’s game. He was loathe to gamble on anything - that was a weakness for other people - but sometimes things were so certain you’d be a fool not to indulge. He caught a glimpse of the story on the front page, and saw that the police continued to be puzzled by anonymous, mutilated corpses popping up around the city.

A grin split his face from ear to ear. Yes, it was a very good day indeed.

3

The sewers, especially the ones beneath Los Angeles, held more surprises than most people would ever know. Redesigns had caused them to wall off old sections of pipes and lay in new ones, leading to an arterial like maze that would hopelessly lose anyone who didn't know exactly where they were going. And on top of that, many of the walled off sections had been broken through, either as short cuts or as hiding places for the things that moved and lived down here.

As a being whose life depended on constant darkness, Angel knew the sewers of L.A. like the back of his hand now; you could drop him in anywhere and he would find his way back to where he wanted to be. But even this section was new to him.

According to Kier, this section was walled off before they started building the subway. One tunnel was broken through, and a dead end pipe had been turned into the nest of the Minawaran he called Ted.

"It looks like a swap meet exploded in here," Naomi commented, pretty much summing it up nicely.

A threadbare love seat with a floral covering and stuffing bulging out like loose intestines from a stomach wound was the centerpiece of the "room"; boxes of stuff, ranging from slightly chipped plates to newspapers to men's magazines to small plastic dinosaurs (?) were stacked against the wall like haphazardly placed bricks. Shelves were randomly placed on walls of brittle cement, and the shelves showed off everything from pewter figurines and cracked porcelain bells to action figures with missing parts and souvenir plates. Some bobblehead figures were mixed in with Disney memorabilia and tchotckes from the Hustler store, and one entire shelf was devoted to discarded trophies, ranging from bowling and badminton to what looked like an Oscar. (Really?) Movie posters and flyers were pasted up wherever there was a modicum of space. It smelled musty, like at least one of the boxes was afflicted with rising damp, and then there was the mossy undertone of a Minawaran.

"See what I mean?" Kier said, gesturing to the cramped but cluttered space with his hands. "He's gone. Isn't that weird?"

"Actually, I think I'd flee too," Brendan said, scanning the piles of boxes with a flashlight.

"This signifies wealth for a Minawaran," Giles pointed out. "To us it's ... messy, but to them this is status of a high order."

"Pack rats," Naomi said, clearly following his drift.

"Yes, exactly. He wouldn't leave this, and certainly not unguarded."

"You said he had a family?" Angel asked, looking around carefully. He didn't have a flashlight, because neither he nor Kier needed one. The one thing about being a creature of the night was you could see in it fairly well. He thought he caught a scent of something ... odd, but there were so many competing scents it was hard to say what.

"Yes, a mate and two hatchlings."

"Hatchlings?" Naomi echoed warily. She didn't need a flashlight either, but that was only due to the fact that she'd called up a small ball of energy into her palm, blue and flickering with enough intensity that her light was brighter than the flashlights Giles and Bren carried.

"Minawarans are partially insectoid," Giles explained, looking into a water damaged cardboard box of books. After moving aside a couple of paperback romance novels, he paused as if in shock. "Good lord, I think that's the Michaellan Codex."

Naomi thought over his previous comment, not really caring about any ancient books. "Am I better off not knowing what a Minawaran looks like?"

"Yes," Giles, Kier, and Angel all said in unison. The three of them exchanged looks with each other before looking at Naomi, who could barely repress a shudder.

"Shit. Slime spewing hell hordes I can take, but keep your big ass bugs to yourself," she said, turning away to scan the shelves.

Angel finally pinpointed the odd scent behind a box of promotional t-shirts. There was a trophy behind it, clearly fallen from the shelf above (it looked like an Emmy! Where the hell was he finding these things?), only when he picked it up something viscous dripped from its golden base. Something thick and oily that smelled brackish, and was the pale blue color of the sky. "Giles," he said, garnering his attention.

Giles tucked the Codex under his arm and came over to look, frowning at what he saw. All the others were looking now too.

"What's the blue stuff?" Naomi asked.

"Blood," Angel told her. A vampire knew blood, no matter how unpalatable or unfamiliar its form.

"Minawaran?" she wondered.

It was Giles that shook his head first. "Their blood is actually red, like a Humans." When he noticed everyone staring at him, he added, "I once came upon one in Piccadilly Circus, after it had been beaten within an inch of its life. Poor thing got on the wrong side of some drunk Arsenal fans."

It was Kier who picked up the relevant thread of thought. "Something attacked them."

Angel nodded grimly. "And they got a shot in before ..." he didn't finish the thought because there was no need to. They were dead; there was absolutely no doubt about that now.

Naomi scanned the room from floor to ceiling. "I hate to be morbid, but I don't see any blood."

"It may not have drawn their blood while killing them," Angel replied, putting the bloody trophy on the box of shirts. "We'd have to know what attacked them before we know how they were killed."

"Anybody know what kinda demon has powder blue blood?" Bren asked.

Angel looked at Giles, who simply shrugged helplessly - Watchers weren't exactly drilled on all the blood colors of various demons - when a loud, blood curdling male scream made them all jump.

The sewer tunnels were ideal for carrying sound, and this one sounded close, even though Angel figured it couldn't be as near as it seemed. Still, he rushed to the opening and tried to listen for echoes, as the scream cut off so abruptly he knew there wouldn't be another one.

"Where did it come from?" Bren whispered harshly, also trying to get a bead on the location. He was in demon form now, dull red spikes pushing out of blue-green skin, and he knew why. Angel could feel his hackles rise, the hair on the back of his neck stand on end, and the vampire in him fought to the surface, only an effort of will keeping it down.

There was something very evil down here. And it was close.