12

The god made of flame - Giles refused to believe he was actually named Ralph - seemed to do a doubletake upon seeing Ate, and his flames seemed to flicker and shrink a bit. “What the hell are you doing here? Weren’t you banished?”

Ate had her arms crossed over her chest, looking as haughty as a waitress in the most overpriced restaurant in London. “And aren’t you slumming, Raijin?”

“Raijin?” Giles repeated, surprised. He’d heard that name before, and he wasn’t sure how he felt about it.

John looked at him curiously. “You know this dickhead?”

“I know of him. I thought he was a good guy.” Well, if any of Raijin’s history could be believed, he was a negative god turned positive, but with the gods, that was not only a mixed bag but a subjective call. Truth be told, most gods were neither good or bad, just working for their own ends. Like people, but with the power to destroy entire dimensions.

The boy snorted a laugh. “Well, that’s kind of subjective, isn’t it?”

He had no response to that, mainly because he’d been thinking the same thing.

“Don’t pretend you have any idea what’s been going on since you’ve been stuck on the Human plane,” Raijin snapped. “It’s been a fucking mess. What the hell are you doing here?”

“I was showing my coven how you put overreaching demons in their place, but I see now it’s actually just putting some stupid assface in his place.”

“Don’t push me, woman. If you are indeed a woman now.”

“You wouldn’t know a gender if it was written on your hand.”

“Are they exes or something?” John asked, smirking at this catty and slightly nonsensical banter.

“I have no idea,” Giles admitted. But he had a sense that things were about to take a turn for the worse.

****

How hard was it to kill a spider? Really, it was a piece of cake, even if they were the size of a compact car.

Or so Logan thought. He didn’t count on it having an exoskeleton of a substance nearly as hard as adamantium.

His first stab was slower going than he thought, the shock of initial impact shuddering up his arm, and the damn thing bit him, mandibles slicing into his thigh like hedge clippers, cutting straight to bone. He yelped in pain as he forced his claws through the carapace, which cracked like thick ice, and it made a squealing noise that was half-animalistic, half-robotic.

Logan suddenly felt numb. It started in his leg, and then seemed to quickly diffuse throughout his entire body. He tried to move himself and found he couldn’t; the spider pulled away, and Logan couldn’t retract his claws or pull them out of its body, so he was pulled with it. “Fuck,” Logan cursed, and that was the last thing he said before his throat seized up.

His lungs stopped before his heart, and there was a moment when his heart raced in panic, but then his heart stopped too. He saw himself falling towards the dark water before his consciousness fled.

His last thought was Goddamn poisonous venom …

****

Personally, Oz loved how things, no matter how bad and dire, could always get worse. The universe was showing its sense of humor, and it was bitter and kind of nasty.

“Oh no!” Whoomp exclaimed, sounding genuinely heartbroken. “I think he’s dead!”

Logan collapsed into the water much like a mannequin would, stiff as hell and making no attempt to protect himself, but he probably couldn’t. “Are these things poisonous?” Oz asked, although he’d already guessed. Logan didn’t fall that way on purpose.

“Not to me,” the demon replied, eye stalks drooping down close to the water.

Oz nodded. So, this demon wasn’t the brightest in the world. Terrific. No wonder it had never escaped from the basement.

He crouched down and grabbed Logan, reaching in the murky water and just pulling on the first body part he found (he hoped it was his leg), but he almost couldn’t pick him up, not even one limb. Wow, he was heavier than he thought. Then again, he was full of metal, so that tracked. So he felt around until he found his head and turned him over on his back, pulling his upper body up by the arms, so at least he wouldn’t drown. “You are one heavy mother trucker,” he told him. His eyes were open, but unseeing. Was he in fact dead? Or just paralyzed? He couldn’t actually tell at the moment. He considered asking him to blink if he was still conscious or alive, but instantly realized if he was paralyzed, he couldn’t even blink. So that plan was screwed.

The spider was making an odd noise, like a hissing radiator pipe, and he saw dark liquid was rolling off its back and plopping in the water. Logan hurt it, no doubt about that, but he paid the price for that. The spider looked like it was considering finishing Logan off, or maybe coming after him. He couldn’t say, mainly because he had no idea how demonic giant spiders thought. Perhaps it was asking if they could redecorate its web. Assuming it had a web.

“You don’t have a big ass can of Raid, do you?” he asked Whoomp. (Frank.)

The eye stalks swiveled towards him after a moment, as if only suddenly aware he was talking to him. “Raid? What’s that?”

“Insect repellant.”

“No.”

Oz had no choice but to prop Logan against the wall, as it had been a while since he’d lifted anything heavier than a guitar. He knew he should go to a gym, but those seemed so pretentious and obnoxious to him, traitorous somehow. Besides, he was a werewolf, and somehow the notion that he needed to exercise was insulting. Should supernatural beings need to exercise? On the plus side, Zan had pointed out he lived on the edge of Chelsea, one of New York’s gayest spots, meaning all the fancy gyms around him - with their state of the art equipment and huge juice bars - were also gay meet up areas, the “new bars”, and Oz couldn’t help but want to visit some and see if any of the guys would flirt with him and try to pick him up. He wasn’t into that, but come on - anyone hitting on you was an ego boost, even if you didn’t go for their gender. Besides, most of his friends up here were gay, which he almost thought of as karma. After Willow, he wondered if he’d somehow made her gay, even though he knew it didn’t work like that, but there was something about your girlfriend leaving you for a girl that just made you want to become a monk. You couldn’t help but wonder if it was you, if you did something so horribly wrong that she just said to herself ‘No more men for me’, even if you knew the idea was beyond stupid. At least having loads of gay friends, he now knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that it had nothing to do with him.

The spider, as mortally wounded as it was, was still advancing. Not quickly - maybe he smelled like wet dog to it, or maybe it was afraid he had claws too - but enough that it was starting to bother him. He couldn’t change into a wolf on cue even if he wanted to, and he kind of did right now. He’d have to get really upset again… and frankly he couldn’t. He was still exhausted from last time. Getting morphing pissed off was really draining. “Well, you gotta big shoe then? Rolled up newspaper? Grenade?”

“Why would I have shoes?” Whoomp replied, proving that he was one of those humorless demons. Oz honestly didn’t know what was worse: humorless demons were such pains in the asses, but then ones with a sense of humor proved that the humorless ones might actually be better to have around. Nailing someone’s puppy to a wall wasn’t actually “funny ha ha”, but try telling Angelus that.

Logan suddenly gasped violently and sat forward, choking for breath. It startled everyone, including the spider, which stopped and chittered at them. “Hey, you’re alive,” Oz noted. He didn’t mean to sound stupid, but he kind of did.

After coughing for a moment, Logan said, “Aww fuck. I hate poison.”

“You okay?” Again, a stupid question. He was just Senor Stupido today.

“I’m pissed off,” he said, spitting blood (?) out of his mouth before standing up and tromping back towards the spider. “Come here, you motherfucker.”

Now the spider was scared, but too late. It didn’t back up particularly well, so it couldn’t escape, and while it bit Logan again - that’s what it had in its arsenal - Logan seemed to ignore it as he drove his claws hard into its carapace. The spider made a strangely metallic squeal as Logan not only drove his claws in, cracking its carapace, but he stomped on its back with his foot, smashing it down into the water. “Goddamn motherfucking bug,” he cursed, as he killed it with efficient brutality. “Fill me with venom, you stupid shit …”

Whoomp’s eye stalks hovered briefly near the surface of the water, and looked for a disconcerting moment like they were loose eyeballs just floating. “Are you sure he’s not a demon?”

Oz shrugged. “He’s a superhero. It’s close at times.”

“I am not a fucking superhero,” Logan snapped, looking back at them. Blood was dripping from his claws, and while the water was still moving, the spider wasn’t. “Do I look like a fucking superhero?”

“No,” Whoomp agreed. “Although, I don’t know what they look like. Do they wear capes?”

“I think you’d rock a cape,” Oz told him.

Logan just scowled at him, and Oz figured he deserved that. Nobody covered in demon spider blood wanted to be told they’d rock a cape.

****

It was astonishing to watch a domestic dispute between gods.

Right now they were only arguing, throwing very minor insults at each other, but Giles knew it could turn very ugly - and deadly - in a matter of moments. Although the room could very well explode, it was, for the time being, a welcome distraction.

He began muttering the spell under his breath, hands clasped together so no one noticed that he had a small throwing knife which now cut into his palm. Even dark magic he could use only once against a god, and it wouldn’t stick, but the momentary advantage of surprise might give him a moment to maneuver.

Magic, being a part of the fundamental fabric of the universe, could be used against gods. Some gods; not all, and even then only when they weren’t expecting it. Most, if they saw it coming, could simply do what Bob did and remove the power itself from their vicinity, rendering it useless. So you couldn’t let them know what was about to happen to them. Since gods could often see right through you, this was a problem, but Ate had inadvertently solved it by being both a deeply unpleasant person and an old rival (ex?) of Raijin’s, pulling all the attention away from him. Arba stood at the back of the room, looking annoyed and deeply confused. He hadn’t expected a domestic disturbance any more than the rest of them, and wasn’t looking at anyone else.

“Things are going to start happening in a moment,” Giles whispered to John. “I suggest you get as far from me as you can. They’ll target me, and you might get caught in the backwash.”

“I can fight ‘em too.”

“Fire isn’t going to work against gods. Just get clear, and wait.”

“Wait for what?”

“You’ll know it when you see it.”

“You keep saying that. What if I don’t? I wasn’t the world’s best student, man.”

“Believe me, this will be hard to miss. Just get the girl and leave while you can.”

The conversation was over, in spite of John’s eagerness to continue, mainly because Raijin had flared up like a living supernova, and shouted, “I’ll turn you into a slime worm, you washed up bitch!” But, interestingly enough, he didn’t even try it. What did Ate have over him?

No matter. Giles closed his eyes and continued muttering the invocation, feeling the blood drip from his palm. Blood magic was powerful, and dark, and extracted a high price. But it wasn’t the first time he’d used it or given into the so called “dark side”. Sometimes you had no choice. Sometimes “white” magic just wasn’t going to cut it.

He could feel it like this awful cancer in him, something dark and acidic, eating away at him, chewing in his gut and up along his spine, but at the same time there was a horrible elation, a high and a feeling of god like power that made him feel like the brightest star in the sky. There was no pain, no anxiety, just a rush ten thousand times better than sex. This was why it was so dangerous to use black magic. Not only was it addictive, but Giles knew that in reality, this high was a byproduct of something in him dying; endorphins released to kill the pain.

He knew he was ready when he felt like his body was too fragile to contain all the power in him, like it was on the verge of rupturing like an overfilled balloon. He opened his eyes, shouted the word, and the universe around him seemed to shatter into a billion shards of neon glass.

****

So the old guy was a mutant? Why didn’t anyone tell him?

John thought the guy was kind of weird - he looked like a librarian, not a fighter, so he had no idea why he was here - but as soon as John saw blood dripping on the floor and realized it was coming from the old guy, he leaned over to tell him. (When was he cut? Or was he wounded before? Did one of those ugly things grab him or something?) But that’s when Giles’s eyes opened, and they were suddenly all black. Not just his eyes; John could see the blackness spreading out from them and into the veins of his face, making them show up like marker lines. That made him instantly lean back, mainly because he had no idea what power he had.

The old guy then shouted something that wasn’t a word; well, it kinda sounded like one, it had syllables, but it was in a foreign language he didn’t speak. For some reason, the word made him cringe, and it made something in his gut briefly twist and hurt, although he couldn’t say why.

He must have closed his eyes against the big flash, because when he opened them, he was all alone.

John just sat there for a moment, alone in the white room save for all the empty chairs, and he thought maybe he’d been moved somehow until he saw Giles’s blood was still on the floor.

Okay, so … the rest of them disappeared? The old guy was a teleporter like Nightcrawler or something?

John stood up and looked around, in case he was snowblind and there was some all white weirdo bleeding into the walls. Didn’t seem like it. “Um, hello?” he asked. No response, no movement.

That was a good thing, right? So why did he feel so weird? Maybe because he never expected anyone to let him go solo so soon. And he had no fucking idea where he was and how to get out of here.

Still, the back wall looked a bit shimmery, like a heat mirage in the desert, and he started towards it. When he was within ten feet he let a burst of fire go, just to see if it caught the wall, but the fire went right through. So it was an illusion of some sort. That was the way out? Nothing to do but close his eyes and try and walk through.

It was like passing through a gauzy curtain with a slight electrostatic charge. Slightly uncomfortable, but nothing like what he was expecting. Of course the weirdness continued. Opening his eyes, he saw no white room, nothing that looked like what he had come from. He was in a narrow hall carved out of red rock, kind of like a narrow river channel. He touched it, and yeah, it was solid rock. Oddly warm, though. He thought maybe it was from the fireball he sent through ahead of him, but the opposite wall was just as solid and warm. Weird.

He had no idea what way to go, so he just picked one at random. He knew what he was supposed to do; the old guy said to find the girl and leave. He rather liked the idea of leaving, because he had no idea where the girl, Paloma, was, or how to find her. If he found an exit before he found her, well … he’d leave and go for help. Yeah, that sounded good. Storm and Kitty were out there somewhere, right? He could get them, and leave all this weird ass bullshit to them.

He knew coming back to the X-Men would be odd and uncomfortable, but he never expected to be caught up in shit like this. A straightforward fight he would have liked. Kicking some ass? Hell yeah. As much as Logan still kinda freaked him out - he had little doubt that he would kill him if he ever appeared to switch sides again, and that was a real pisser - he wanted to be on his team. Logan was the one who did the dirty work; he fought hard, occasionally killed, and John wanted to be on the X-Men’s commando team, or whatever they called Logan’s little sub-group. He didn’t want to be a “peacekeeper”, part of the Gandhi squad - fuck that noise. He wanted to be one of the last resorts. So that would be him and Logan, and … who else had a power that was pretty much just lethal? Well, Jean was dead. And Rogue took the “cure”. That Eden kid? Saddiq? Maybe, if he was still around - he’d heard from some of the other kids he could kill someone with a toothpick, but he had no idea if that was true. Might be, though. The guy had all the emotions and personality of a Cylon.

John was pretty sure he must be coming to the end of this long river channel when a form suddenly appeared ahead of him, leaning drunkenly against the rock. It was that grey skinned guy, Arba, in his Humanoid form. He looked a bit like a zombie, and the amount of hate in his eyes as he glared at him didn’t help. “You,” he spat, shoving himself off the wall and stalking towards him.

Oh fuck. What was he supposed to do now?