8

“Could everyone else leave the room? I need to talk to Logan.”

It wasn't a request, it was a push, which was the only reason everybody else left without a word. As soon as they were gone, Bob jumped up to his feet, and snapped, “Are you out of your fucking mind?”

“To some degree,” Logan admitted. “Not nearly enough for our purposes.”

“You're inviting me to fuck with your mind. Hasn't your mind been fucked enough?”

He shrugged, trying to assume a nonchalance he didn't really feel. “At least I'm asking to be mindfucked. That's a first.”

“That doesn't make it any better. You know as well as I do you your psyche is ...”

“Fucked?”

“Fragile. I know how you feel about that word, but it is. You've been crazy before.”

He winced at that, but it was the truth; he couldn't dispute it. “And I've gotten better. More or less.”

“It's left scars.”

“You won't. You can erase them, can't you? Just tell me they're gone and they will be. Is there something wrong with this plan? Will it not work?”

Bob glared at him, his eyes seemingly glowing a brighter cobalt. “If anything's gonna work, that'll be it.”

“So what's the problem?”

He sighed and shook his head, crossing his arms over his chest. “You're just gonna be a macho asshole about this, huh? Are you thinking clearly at all? If I do this, you can do things with your power that might be hard to take back.”

“Hard, but not impossible. Or did you stop being a reality warper?”

He looked faintly disgusted with him. "Really? All you care about is this working? The ends justifying the means? I know you have a martyr complex, but jeeze -"

"Are you actually gonna claim you've never fucked with my mind before? I can't prove you've pushed me, but come on, you must have at some point."

Bob just glared at him. "This is more than a push. This is fundamentally fucking with you. I'll have to flip a switch in your nature."

"One that's been flipped before, by people with much worse intentions."

He threw up his hands, either conceding the point or letting him have the argument - he couldn't say which. "So that's it?"

"You're just releasing my id, more or less. Do you how much I want to stop this shit?"

"Yeah, I know." He sighed, and admitted, "I don't like using you as a weapon."

"You have before."

"Not like this."

He shrugged. It wasn't that he didn't have some apprehensions, it was just that he thought it wouldn't ultimately matter. If he couldn't remember this, or if he could remember this with the knowledge that this was the only thing that could be done, it wouldn't be so bad. "Sometimes you gotta do bad things to beat bad people."

"Your motto."

"According to Scott, my motto was 'Kill 'em all and let god sort 'em out'. Except that would be you, wouldn't it?"

"I'd go for someone else. I don't do the clerical work." Bob smiled faintly at his own joke, then his expression fell, and his eyes glowed a seriously distracting blue.

And then Logan forgot everything.

****

Bren wondered if he was going to have to hold Rogue back.

They loitered outside in the corridor, ghosts wandering by, the music from the jukebox ebbing and flowing, reflecting the tensions in the bar. Rogue wanted to storm back into Bob's office and find out what he and Logan were discussing, but something seemed to be holding her back. He wasn't sure if it was something Bob did, or her own fear that she wouldn't like what was going on in there. "Why did we leave?" she raged, not for the first time. Her teal was fading, and her red spikes were gone, suggesting his remaining power was draining away from her. Good, he supposed, as he had this sneaking suspicion that Rogue would be a much better Brachen than he was. Maybe it was just from absorbing Logan so many times, but she seemed like a gal who liked a good scrap. "His plan's insane. He volunteered to get his mind fucked!"

"My guess is we were all pushed," Bren said.

The Sisters nodded. "Good - "

"- guess."

"Pushed?" Doyle asked. He was one of the few ghosts sticking around and not drifting through the walls. So far Bren had noticed a ghost dressed like an eighteenth century milkmaid, a very rustic Native American, and a guy in a lime green leisure suit. He felt bad for the guy in the leisure suit - imagine spending the rest of eternity dressed like that.

"Bob has this thing where he can just say something and make it happen," Kier told him. "He could make us all juggle chainsaws if he wanted."

"But I'm intangible," he replied, passing his hand through the wall, on the very slim chance they'd forgotten. "How could he do that to me?"

"God, remember? He can do whatever he wants." Rogue said, still fuming. She shot an evil look at the closed door of his office, for all the good that would do. Bren relaxed; there must have been an enchantment on the door or a caveat in Bob's push, as she couldn't go in his office or she'd have done so by now. He also noted, with great relief, that the marks on his arms had seemed to calm down until they simply resembled tattoo sleeves again. (Or so he thought - there was no mirror here, so he couldn't check to see if it had grown on his face.)

Doyle chomped on his ghost cigarette - it seemed if there was a way to light it, he hadn't figured it out yet - and admitted, "Y'know, him bein' a god explains a lot of things I've heard about him. Everybody always said you messed with Maximum Bob at your own peril, but no one could explain why. Maybe they couldn't say 'cause he wouldn't let 'em."

"Or they didn't know," Kier said. "He can make you forget. He can make you think you're a Cher impersonator with a troublesome addiction to glazed donuts. In fact, I'm fairly certain that's what happened to Benny Matsuda."

"Benny the Badger?" Doyle exclaimed in shock. Bren had no idea who this person was, but Kier had associated with some unsavory sorts before they crossed paths, so he just assumed this was one of them. "No fucking way."

"Yeah. I thought I saw him a couple months ago at an all night donut shop just off Sunset, in a Bob Mackie gown. Couldn't explain it."

"Are you making this up?" Rogue asked.

It was Doyle who shook his head. "Benny was a minor crime boss who ran some gambling pits in North Hollywood. Mean son of a bitch. Ugly too." After thinking about it a moment, he said, "Cher, really? I don't see it." He paused briefly. "Babe Ruth maybe ..."

The door to the office opened, and Bob stepped out, firmly shutting the door behind him. "Okay, look -"

Rogue lunged for him, but Bob shouted, "Freeze!" and she stood rooted to the spot. "You can't be fucking with his mind," she shouted. "Don't you know what could happen?! He's been fucked with so many times. I've been him, and let me tell you, it fucking hurts! You wouldn't -"

And then Bren suddenly lost the plot.

****

"Sisters, don't hear this," Bob said. "Forget the plan. I have a secret plan I've left you out of because it's god stuff. You don't like it, but you will grudgingly accept it. You know nothing of the betrayal of Logan and the Sisters, you don't know it's part of the plan. Things are normal beyond the immediate problem." He looked at the Sisters, and asked, in his normal voice, "Silent running girls, right?"

"Roger -"

"- wilco," they responded, giving him stereo mock salutes.

Wow, there were so many things that could go wrong with this plan it wasn't funny. And a big part of the problem was Logan. Yes, he wanted to be free of all of this shit, he wanted nothing but peace and silence, and he was an extremely formidable fighter. Given god power, he could rip the Earth in half and start over with a planet all his own.

He hoped it didn't come to that. But he thought he should have a back up plan ready, just in case Logan inadvertently destroyed everything.

****

Bren was sure something wasn't right, but he couldn't put his finger on what. Beyond the obvious.

They followed Bob out to the main bar, grumbling somewhat over being left out of the loop. So it was a "god stuff" plan, meaning they couldn't know about it for some damn reason. Sure, Bob had his reasons, but nobody liked it. But what shocked him was Logan going along with it. Since when would he allow Bob to keep him out of the loop? He looked like he was glowering, but he said nothing. The Sisters seemed to stick close to him, but maybe that was a good thing. Bren was fairly certain he didn't want the Sisters within arm's length of him. God, they were creepy. Oh sure, they were theoretically "good guys" now, but that didn't stop you from having the feeling you were carpooling with Hannibal Lecter and his even eviler twin.

They decided to have drinks before heading off to see how bad it was outside, and Bob volunteered to get them for them. He seemed a bit glum and preoccupied as he retrieved the beers (a goat's blood for Kier and the Sisters), and briefly sang along with the jukebox, but under his breath. “We don't need a doctor, we need a victim, we need a sacrifice.” Wow, that sounded really cheerful.

But when Bob slammed the drinks on the bar, he had a smile pasted on his face. “Come on, drink up. The world could be ending soon.”

A horned demon at the end of the bar looked startled. “Is it really? I only have one car payment left! This is so unfair.”

“I said could, mate.”

He'd started to get off his stool, but that made him sit down again. “Oh. Good.”

Logan gulped his beer back in a single drink, which was typical for him, but Bren sort of expected him to jump to his feet and tell everyone else to get a move on. But he didn't. He just sat there, brooding over his empty mug. Oh no, was he in a mood? When Logan got in a mood, you didn't want to be within fifty feet of him. Kier once suggested these moods were probably related to post traumatic stress disorder, and the fact that everyone let him fight was probably a bad thing since what he actually needed was therapy. He couldn't dispute that, but he couldn't see Logan in therapy either. (It would probably be the only group therapy session on record to end with a mass slaughter, or at least with everyone running out of the room screaming in terror.)

 Rogue sipped her drink, and then put it down, making a face at it. “What the hell is this?”

“Ginger beer.”

“I want beer beer,” she snapped.

“I'll have it,” Kier volunteered. “I used to love that stuff as a Human.”

“We're discussin' drinks?” Doyle asked. Maybe he was jealous he couldn't have one. “Shouldn't we get out there and kill some zombies?”

“We, kemosabe?” Logan grumbled. “You're intangible.”

“I'd kill 'em if I could.”

“Oi, mate, watch it,” a familiar voice cried, coming in the door. It was Rags, here for his annual afternoon drinkathon. He gave him a friendly nod as he sidled up to his usual stool. He didn't even have to ask – Bob slid him a Long Island iced tea. “Surprised you guys ain't out dealin' with the ghouls.”

“Ghouls?” Kier asked, eyes widening in horror. Scare a vampire? Yeah, generally not a good sign there.

“Yeah, they're arsin' about the downtown core; I had to teleport to avoid 'em. I mean, normally they wouldn't eat my kind, but I dunno 'ow desperate they are.”

“Oh fuck,” Bob exclaimed. “Yama unleashed ghouls? The bastard.”

“What're ghouls?” Rogue asked for most of them.

“Cannibals with limitless appetites,” Bob said. Yeah, that sounded really cheerful too. “Or zombies on crack, if you will.”

“They'll eat anything,” Kier added. “As long as it bleeds something. Doesn't even have to be blood.”

“Charming,” Bren said, putting his drink down. Actually he needed stronger alcohol, or maybe something stronger than alcohol. Was it a bad time to take up heroin? They probably didn't have time for it.

“Shit,” Bob said, dropping his bar rag. “Angel.”

Logan looked at him sharply. “Think he's a target?”

“He worked for the Powers, right? Hell yeah he's a target.” And the world shifted and slid sideways, and before Bren realized what was happening he was standing at the end of a street that smelled rank with blood, burnt flesh, and cordite, and seemed paved with dead, dismembered bodies. He tensed instantly, Brachen side coming out for what looked like a hopeless fight. (And since it was day still, of course Bob left the Sisters back at the bar, thinning their ranks when they could least afford it.)

The living ghouls turned and shrieked at them, bloated bipeds that looked as grotesque as anything in a Sam Raimi horror film, but as they ran for them, Bob simply said, “Die and stay dead.” They all dropped in their tracks, as if an invisible scythe cut through them all at once, and Bren sighed in relief. Sometimes he forgot that sometimes, with a god on your side, you didn't need to lift a finger.

“Marc?” Logan suddenly called out, heading down the street and sniffing the air. He turned and sneezed, but went back to trying to smell him out in spite of the smoke and blood. (Marc being here would explain the cordite smell.)

“Helga?” Bob called out. “Hel hon, where are you?”

Where was everyone? With the ghouls all dead, they should have stood out. Unless ... oh no, that couldn't have happened. “Angel?” Bren shouted. “Giles?”

Relief was instantly displaced by panic. There was no way in hell they were dead, right?

So if they weren't dead or in the belly of a ghoul, where the fuck were they?