7

Perhaps six was a lucky number.

It was the sixth seedy bar he checked out around the downtown core, a couple miles south of Chinatown, where he finally found Logan. He didn't even see him right away; he'd bellied up to the bar with the photo he planned to flash the bartender when he noticed, out of the corner of his eye, a guy sitting at the end of the bar, three stools removed from everyone else, hunched over his beer like it was a warm fire on a cold night. The profile of that hair alone was enough.

So Brent pocketed the photo and moved down, sliding up onto the bar stool next to him. Logan was half heartedly looking up at the television over the bar, which had its sound off but was still tuned to an all news network, so you could read all the information scrolls if you were so inclined (although the news stories were so generally the same damn shit wrapped up in a new package that you could also just guess the story you were being told without any effort). But still, Logan grumbled, "It's not coincidence that you've found me, is it Ellison?"

"Now, why do you have to be that way? I come here all the time." The bartender came down, a big Cree with a prison tattoo of a teardrop beneath his left eye, who didn't so much ask what he wanted to drink more than grunt it. "Pink squirrel," he told him.

The bartender just stared at him.

"He's joking," Logan finally said. "Beer."

The bartender wandered off to get it, but not before giving him a final suspicious look.

"Actually, I wasn't joking," Brent told Logan. "I really do want a pink squirrel. I'm kinda curious to know what's in it."

"Probably Pepto Bismol and gin. Look, what the fuck do you want? Are you here to arrest me?"

"Should I?"

Logan glared at him, a look of pure molten death. But at least he was looking at him. "Yer always welcome to try."

He snickered as the bartender slammed a mug of beer down on the bar before him and then wandered off, as if in a huff. Beer sloshed over the sides and splashed the bar, making Brent look around for some napkins. There were no napkins in this bar, unless he wanted to pull out the one separating the pretzels from the bottom of the tin bowl. "Did you know the RCMP has a special mutant offenders squad now? They're working on neutralizing and confining mutant suspects. They've built a special prison in Manitoba."

"I thought Manitoba itself was a special prison."

"Not a big fan of Manitoba? C'mon, just because it's dull doesn't mean you should rag on it. Some people enjoy dull. How do you think the prime minister got elected?"

Logan exhaled in barely concealed exasperation, and Brent watched his hand flex, as if he was trying hard not to unleash those things in his hands. It was still hard to believe he had those machetes in there, although to be fair, he did have pretty big hands. Not nearly big enough to contain them, though. "Ellison, I'm not in the mood for your shit. So just say what you're gonna say."

Again, the lack of foreplay was both refreshing and mildly annoying. Truth be told, he never felt safer in a low brow dive than when he was sitting with Logan. He knew that even if every single low life in the joint knew he was a cop, with Logan sitting right there they would never even think of bothering him. Most reasonably intelligent low lifes could instinctively identify the alpha male; it kept them alive longer. And Logan just radiated a "fuck with me and die" aura better than almost anyone he had ever encountered. "Are you an assassin?"

His head snapped around so fast Brent was sure Logan had almost given himself whiplash. "What?"

Brent held his hands out, part shrug, part showing him he wasn't going to pull a gun on him. He figured if he looked harmless enough, Logan wouldn't attack. "So there's a buzz going around the station that the Triad have brought in a legendary assassin known as the Wolverine -"

"That's bullshit," he snapped, with a surprising amount of venom. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Logan's hand flex again - good god, he hated that. Who knew someone merely contracting his fingers could ever seem so inherently sinister? "I ain't working for the Triad; I've never worked for the fucking Triad. I hate those organized crime motherfuckers."

Although it was honestly hard to tell with Logan, he thought he might be sincere. Brent had always prided himself on his ability to read people, but Logan threw off the curve. Why he didn't know, except there was something so inscrutable and deliberately shadowed about him a clean reading was never possible. He was a man with a lot of guilt and a lot of secrets, none of which he ever wanted to share, so he simply went around closed up. He should have been a porcupine, with visible spines aimed outward to keep people away. "So why would the Triad say that?"

"How the fuck should I know?" he snapped, turning back to his beer. After a moment or two, he said, "Probably to scare the Yakuza."

"The Yakuza are afraid of you?"

"If they’re at all smart, yeah."

He took a moment to digest this. Okay, yeah, wasn't working. "The Yakuza - the entire fucking Yakuza - are afraid of you? One man?"

He shrugged a single shoulder, retreating into himself even more. "Ask 'em for yourself."

“Oh yeah, that’ll be easy.” He looked at his beer suspiciously, and wondered if Logan wanted it. He didn’t really like beer all that much, especially now. His stomach burned in that way that was both distressing and mildly pleasurable, reminding him the alcohol would do him no favors right now. “Look, I’m not going to arrest you. I’m off duty, and I have no evidence; any judge would laugh me out of court. Hell, I can’t even prove you exist - there are no fingerprint records, the military claims it’s never heard of you, there’s none of the typical paper trail that we all drag through life. All it seems but you.”

“That’s ‘cause I’m a ghost. Ghosts don’t need credit cards.”

“Are you trying for an insanity defense already? Dude, I already said I wasn’t -”

“What will it take to make you go away?” he snapped, turning towards him so fast that Brent almost jumped off his stool. The guy could really move when he wanted.

“I’m just wondering when you came into town.”

He studied him with narrowed eyes, his eyes looking more brown than green in the watery, yellowed light, a muscle in his jaw pulling so taut it looked like a bone might snap. “I just got in today; I was flown in by Tony Tagawa. Ask him if you don’t believe me.”

There were times when a potential suspect said one thing that completely exploded every theory neatly constructed with time and care. It really didn’t happen that often - the best suspect often was the only suspect - but Brent felt his theory’s implosion viscerally; it hit him in the gut like a fist, and he couldn’t help but grimace as he felt the twinge. “You know Tagawa? How is that possible?”

“Tony” Tagawa was the richest, most powerful man in the province, possibly in the entire country - he was that wealthy. He was also, oddly enough, considered a decent guy, a statement usually said with a great deal of shock, as if anyone who could make any serious money would be such an unrepentant jerk that you couldn’t stand to even be downwind of them. He couldn’t visualize a scenario where Logan would meet Tagawa, but he did know that if Tagawa was Logan’s alibi, his theoretical case wasn’t so much dead in the water as blown to smithereens. No one would ever call Tagawa’s integrity into question.

Logan gave him a sidelong glare, clearly finding offense in the tone of his question. “I know a guy who occasionally works security for him overseas. He brought me in once to help out. Don’t sound so fucking shocked.”

“Is that why he flew you in? You’re working security for him?”

“No, my … friend is, and I’m just here to help her settle into Vancouver.”

“Her?” Well sure, women could work security and do it well, it was just most rich people’s bodyguards were male. But that was the kind of stereotype that could work in your favor - the guys meaning to hurt you could ignore the woman, assuming they had to worry about men alone, and get caught up short. “Is there some reason Tagawa’s concerned about his security, or is he just beefing up his staff?”

Logan shrugged half-heartedly. “Beefing up his staff, I guess. You’d have to ask him.”

Was he lying? He suspected he was fudging, but Logan was such an excellent liar it was almost eerie.

“What did you think I did, exactly?” Logan’s voice was almost wry, like he was accustomed to people thinking the worst about him.

“Nothing. I was hoping you could help me with my inquiries, that’s all.”

“Uh huh.” He sounded thoroughly unconvinced. “And you think I’m gonna buy that?”

Brent sighed, and wondered what he could tell him. He couldn’t actually go into the particulars of the cases; he wasn’t a cop. But there was no reason why he couldn’t tell him what had already made the papers and the nightly news. “We’ve had people turning up with their heads and hands cut off over the last couple of weeks. We suspect it might be gangland activity but we don’t know as we can’t identify a single body, and the underworld chatter has been strangely silent about it.”

Logan glared at him, nearly looking offended. “You thought I was doing shit like that? Jesus, Ellison, thanks.”

“No, I didn’t think you were doing that,” he lied, hoping he sounded convincing. “But I was hoping you might know who could do such a thing.”

“’Cause I run in those crowds, yeah?” His sneer was implied, but still powerful. “Yer lucky I don’t kick the ass of sick guys.”

“Sick guys? What are you talking about?”

This time Logan’s stare was curious, softened with surprise. “You’re sick. You know that, right?”

He didn’t mean psychologically, did he? He meant physically, which made no sense, as he was fine. “You don’t mean my ulcer, do you?”

Logan shook his head, and an almost guilty look crossed his face. He’d said the wrong thing and he knew it, which alarmed Brent. What the fuck did he know, and how did he know it? “Look … I don’t wanna alarm you or anything, but I smell cancer on you. It’s pretty faint, so it’s probably pretty new.”

It was his turn to stare at him. “Are you fucking serious? First of all, how do you “smell” cancer?”

“It’s just … I’m sorry man, I thought you knew.”

Could he be lying to throw him off? It wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility. Although maybe his ulcer was more than simply an ulcer. And his appetite had been in the toilet for so long he almost didn’t miss it. “Can you tell where it is? I mean -”

“No, I can’t. But it’s faint, so it’s not too advanced. You should just … see a doctor, ‘kay? I ain’t one.”

“No kidding.” Cancer. Was there any word so scary as that? He rubbed his eyes, and forced himself to get back on topic. This could wait until he could confirm it, or discover that Logan was just fucking with him. “Look, if you know anything that could help me solve the case, I’d appreciate it. We’ve hit a complete dead end, and we don’t even have theoretical leads.”

“What lead led you here?” he asked wearily. His tone of voice suggested he already knew.

“The bar? Actually, I’ve been here before -”

“No, I meant to me.”

To tell the truth or not? At this point, it wouldn’t hurt. “The one thing we knew was the Yakuza was nervous about the Triad bringing in an assassin called the Wolverine. “

Logan grunted in annoyance. “Like I said, I ain’t workin’ for the Triad. That’s bullshit. And I’m not an assassin.”

Maybe it was his imagination, but Brent would have sworn he heard an “anymore” in the following silence. “So I gathered. Which means we’re back to zero.”

“Do you think the Triad’s behind this?”

“The killings? We really don’t know. Could be either of ‘em.”

Logan took a gulp of his beer, swirling the dregs around his glass. “What do you know about Martin Leung?”

Why did he get the feeling that some of this wasn’t a surprise to him? “He’s our own “Teflon don”. We’re pretty sure he’s the leader of the Triad ‘round these parts, but we haven’t been able to make any charges stick to him. Why?’

“Someone mentioned him earlier. You know where he lives?”

Logan’s tone was casual, his eyes on the silent t.v. over the bar, and Brent stared at the side of his face, frowning in thought. There was nothing casual about that question, and he knew it. If he told Logan, he knew there was a very good chance that they would never have to worry about Martin Leung again. It was tempting, and it wouldn’t be difficult for Logan to discover the information on his own. But then again, it would be abetting … something. He didn’t know what, but he supposed he could guess. “I don’t remember off hand,” he lied casually, striving to match Logan’s tone. “Somewhere near English Bay, I think.”

Logan grunted again, pretending to buy his lie that he didn’t really know. “If he’s behind it, I’ll find out,” Logan said simply, as if they were discussing a prank and not a series of grisly killings.

They sat side by side, pretending they were just two men sharing a drink, that killing had no place in their lives. But they both knew that no lie could possibly be bigger.

Lucky them.

****

Once they had gotten all cleaned up - and established that this was Xander’s day off - they finally discovered the probable identity of what Xander had tagged “the sewer monster”. “I think it was an eac uisge,” Giles said, showing Angel an illustrated page in a book that smelled so strongly of mildew he felt like sneezing.

The illustration, which actually resembled a woodcut, showed a traditional style sea serpent, with loops and coils of its body half hidden beneath a choppy sea. It had a head shaped not unlike an adder’s, only with more and bigger teeth, and its third eye was sort of over the other two, forming a triangle (which wasn’t the case in reality, but hey, woodcuts).

“Were you just choking?” Xander asked, barely shifting his position on the couch. Judging from the giant cup leaving a drink ring on the sofa, at some point he had gone out and gotten a Slurpee. “Or is that really its name?”

“I didn’t name it,” Giles replied somewhat defensively.

“So what’s up with the damn thing?” Bren asked. He was sitting on the corner of his desk, and Kier was sitting in his usual chair. Both had damp hair combed back, wore roughly similar looking clean clothes, and Angel noticed for the first time that Brendan was a pretty good looking kid. Of course, the bruise still on the side of his face was a bit ugly, but oddly enough, the purple actually looked good with his red eyes.

“It’s a flesh eater,” Giles replied. “And invincible when connected in any capacity to water.”

“Any capacity?” Angel repeated, having a bad feeling about this. “You mean the tip of its tail could be in a mud puddle, and that would be enough?”

Giles’ expression darkened before he nodded. “I’m afraid so. Supposedly just the smell of water is enough. It’s an elemental demon.”

“So how the hell do we fight it?” Kier asked.

Giles then did something he almost never did: he shrugged. And he didn’t look happy about doing it. He was also unhappy for having had to get rid of his shirt and wear a sweatshirt in its place. “While it’s in or near water, we can’t. At best, we’d just provide it an easy meal.”

“But the Minawarans hurt it,” Kier argued. “Remember the blood?”

Angel didn’t have to think about it for too long. “It wasn’t the eac … thing that they hurt. It was whoever killed them.”

Bren’s gaze was intense. “ You think someone else did it?”

“And dumped the bodies in the water for the … thing to eat.” He wasn’t even going to attempt to pronounce the beast’s second name. Usually demons needed to buy a vowel, but clearly this one needed to buy some consonants. “I think they’re two separate things. It’s just the killer took advantage of having a large flesh eating demon near by.”

“As long as its in the sewer, its close to water,” Giles agreed. “Eac uisge’s can be up to forty feet long.”

“Wow,” Xander commented. “We’re totally screwed. It reminds me of the good old days.”

Angel shot him a hard look, wondering when exactly he had joined the team. He then turned back to Giles. “We have to get it out of the water then.”

“And how do we do that?” Kier wondered. “Ask it nicely?”

“There’s actually another problem,” Giles interjected, looking frighteningly serious. “It shouldn’t exist.”

He hated when Giles made pronouncements like that. “What do you mean?”

“I mean it’s been extinct on this plane since the “pure” demons fled this dimension.”

Bren scoffed, and then winced, as it must have hurt some of his bruises. If he reverted to Brachen form he’d heal faster, but he seemed to be reluctant to do so, perhaps because Xander was here. “I think rumors of its death has been greatly exaggerated.”

“No, its been gone for a very long time,” Giles insisted. “And there’s no way it could have gotten through on its own.”

Angel nodded grimly, as his earlier suspicion was confirmed. “Someone brought it here.”

Giles frowned in thought, looking back down at the book as if in search of guidance. “That’s just it. There shouldn’t be a way to bring this thing here by magic. Technically, it could only transition between realities through portals. “

“Portals? Meaning …” he trailed off, sharing an alarmed look with Giles. Oh no.

Xander waved his hand in the air. “Guys, gonna let us in on this?”

Angel rubbed the back of his neck, which still felt stiff. At least he was reasonably certain his broken ribs had healed finally. “A Hellmouth, Xander. It’d need a portal like a Hellmouth.”

It was said that there would always be areas where the dimensional “fabric” between worlds would be thin and porous. That no matter how many times you managed to get one area shored up, a rupture would appear somewhere else.

He wondered if it had finally happened. And in his backyard.

8

He knew he should go back to Faith’s, but he wasn’t ready yet. He thought about calling her, but didn’t know what to say. He was starting to get tired, but he was afraid to go to sleep for fear of what he’d dream.

So Logan headed back out into Chinatown, to find the place called Far East.

There was so much muscle around the place he wondered if Leung had been tipped off, then figured that word of what happened at the Jade Swan had already gotten around, and neither the Yakuza or the Triad was taking any chances. For all they knew, it was the beginning of a gang war - or perhaps an ending, depending on how it went.

So rather than start up a new fight - which would have been easy - he decided to do a bit of reconnaissance, climbing up a brick edifice that was separated from Far East by a small strip of pavement that was too narrow to be a street, but too open to be an alley. The building was a couple of stories taller, so he could look down on Far East and everything around it; in fact from up here, he could see several blocks of Chinatown, of buildings dressed up in gaudy neon and bright lights that seemed like gems made of paste. Patches of darkness filled half a block sometimes, buildings shut down in advance of the night, when this part of the city became a slightly different creature. Night brought in an edge of seediness, a bit of a thrill for slumming tourists and locals, bringing out the more shadier characters.

He knelt down on the edge of the roof, swathed in shadows, as he looked down at Far East, studying it. It looked like a tacky nightclub - he could hear the thump-thump-thump of an almost metronomic bass line bleeding through the walls, washing through the doors when they were opened to let someone in, a strange type of dance floor white noise that had ceased to have any originality or meaning almost the moment it hit the market. Most were young, sexed up to the point of libidinal numbness; he couldn’t find any of them attractive, just like he couldn’t take any of them seriously.

The muscle mostly stuck to off the rack suits, not even attempting the clumsy casualness of the Yakuza earlier today, finding a new strength in uniformity. Some of the people going into the club were older than the general demographic, dressed a little better too. A gambling club? Probably; there was probably an illegal casino somewhere on the premises , hidden by the noise and bright lights of a legitimate nightclub. The security was probably more sophisticated than it appeared.

As he watched people drift inside, past burly bouncers, cars park in a lot around the back, he caught a furtive movement in the upper edge of his vision, something that made him look up sharply.

Someone had just moved across the roof of Far East.

Or was it something? The movement had been too fast and too fluid to be truly Human, and yet it was a biped - of that he was fairly certain. He took a deep breath, but he was too far away, and had lost sight of the thing. All he could smell was exhaust, boiling noodles from the shack down the street, piss and vomit in the alley below. Nothing should be moving across the roof, and certainly nothing like that. It made something burn in his gut, as he would almost swear that something about that movement, rapid and inhuman, was familiar. How he didn’t know.

But there was one way to find out: find it. Follow it.

He judged the distance, and decided it was possible, even if it was a bit nuts. But no one was looking up - why would they? People only expected an attack from above if airplanes were involved.

So he backed up to the far end of the roof, braced himself, and launched himself into a full out run, sprinting as hard as he could, waiting until he reached the lip of the roof before launching himself off it, aiming for the roof of the Far East.

If he screwed this up, he’d feel like such an asshole.