16

The fire still scared the few demons they encountered off, which was a relief. He was tired. Really, all John wanted to do was sit down, maybe have a beer, do anything but climb fucking rocks. So what was he doing? Climbing fucking rocks. Goddamn it, he hated being a “hero”. Why did he come back to it again? He wished he could remember.

It turned out there was a way up the cliff, although it wasn’t immediately apparent from the top. No, you had to be down in the canyon to see the fucking thing, so maybe it wasn’t as stupid as it seemed on first blush. Still, he felt like a moron.

After the first couple of feet, demons stopped trying to get them, mainly because they seemed to be in some sort of tizzy. Was it Arba being torn into a bunch of bite sized chunks? That was bound to throw anyone off their game, especially if it happened to you.

He and Paloma managed to get back up to the cliff, and looking down, he got a bit dizzy. It felt like they’d climbed a mile straight up, even though that couldn’t have been true. It just felt like it.

Paloma looked back down, shifting Oz on her shoulder, and asked, “Do you think he’ll be all right?”

Again with Logan! Who the hell actually rescued her? Not him. Okay, yeah, he was keeping Arba occupied so they could actually find her, but still, he was physically there. He scared off the demon guards with fire. Didn’t that earn him a single iota of concern?

No, apparently not. Hadn’t she seen him rip a guy in pieces? How do you have a crush on a guy who was capable of ultra violence on a scale unimaginable except in a really extreme horror film? It seemed impossible, but hey, he didn’t know this chick - she could be shit crazy. And frankly, he was leaning towards that right now. “Logan? He heals, that’s his thing. He’ll be fine. Now let’s move.” And how the fuck was he a good guy? People who were willing to tear other people up were usually lumped in the bad guy category. But no, Logan gets the Brock Sampson pass and is allowed to kill ‘cause he’s on the “good” side. Whatever. Why didn’t he get a pass?

He walked ahead, without bothering to check if she was following, wondering if Logan was right about this. Sure, it looked like the tunnel they took coming in here, but all rock tunnels pretty much looked the same, and he saw no sign of a subway tunnel or track, and he certainly didn’t smell it. (No, he didn’t have super smelling, but you didn’t need to, not with a New York subway tunnel. You could smell the piss and malt liquor two miles out on a windy day.)

Then he started to hear this noise. “What’s that?” Paloma asked, confirming she was behind him.

“Fuck if I know.” But hadn’t Logan complained of a noise only he could hear before the subway tunnel gave way to hell’s front porch? The old British fruit had said it was … what the fuck had he said it was? A dimensional … thingymabob. Supposedly normal Humans couldn’t hear it, but now that they could, just barely, at the edge of their hearing … was that bad or good? A positive development, or further proof that they were fucked in the ass with a chainsaw? Sadly, there was no one to ask.

They just walked on until the noise became almost unbearable, and then, for no reason at all, the sound disappeared, and the smell of oil, piss, and spilled beer hit him like a two by four. “Fuck me,” he said, staggering a bit from the disorientation. Hellish underground light was replaced by almost absolute darkness, and his eyes needed to adjust before he regained his balance. But he didn’t fall on his ass, so that was something.

“Where are we?” Paloma asked, sounding surprised.

“Subway tunnel. Didn’t know it was the entrance to hell? Well, now you do. It explains the A train.”

“They brought me down here?”

“What don’t you understand, Gump? Yes, they brought you down here.” He paused a moment, trying to figure out what was odd about that statement. “Who brought you here?”

“Those … guys.” She paused so much he wondered what the hard part of that answer was. Weird.

But he didn’t care, and he didn’t know when the next train was due, so it was probably best to get off the tracks as soon as possible. He started walking, avoiding the tracks and sticking close to the wall on the near side. Eventually they saw dim light ahead, and what looked like the edge of a platform. “Those guys, huh? Random guys? Guys who could have been women, you really aren’t sure? She-males?”

“Do you have to be a dick?”

“Yeah. Ask anybody.” Okay, hot chick was hiding something? Why? What was the point? He didn’t even care.

He spied movement and flicked his lighter, but he thought he saw white hair. “Hey, that you guys?” In retrospect, John realized he’d added no qualifiers, and anyone could have answered that question. But hopefully only a few selected people would know who was asking.

“John?” Storm replied, as he and the hot chick came out of the tunnel. Storm and Kitty were on the eerily abandoned platform.

“Paloma!” Kitty exclaimed happily, jumping down to the tracks. Then she noticed what she was carrying, and her smile died on her face. “And a big ugly dog. What’s that?”

“Don’t you see the green hair on top there?” John asked. “It’s Oz in wolf form.”

“Oh.” Kitty still seemed unconvinced. But he still did have some green hair, right on top of his head.

Storm peered over their shoulders, at the darkness inside the tunnel. “Where’s Logan and Giles?”

He sighed, wondering if anybody would ever be happy to see him. “Giles teleported out to who the hell knows where, and Logan hung back to keep the bad guy engaged so we could get away. And also pass out for a couple of minutes without us seeing him do it.”

Storm looked vaguely alarmed, her blue eyes widening. “You left him alone?”

“He ordered us to,” Paloma said, sounding close to tears.

“Yeah, he was a real dick about it,” John confirmed.

She scowled at him, for the language he guessed, then asked, “What bad guy?”

He shrugged. “Demi-god supposedly. Big ugly guy, stronger than your average tank, who can regenerate quickly after being dismembered.”

She shuddered. “Sounds wonderful. Can Logan hold his own against him?”

John shrugged again. “Not really, but he doesn’t give up, so he makes up for it in assholism.” At her dirty look, he added, “Hey, he said that himself once!”

“I don’t care, I’d rather you not repeat it.”

Again he shrugged, and then hauled himself up on to the platform so he could sit on the edge. He was tired. Paloma laid Oz down on the platform too, although she was still down on the tracks with Storm and Kitty. He flicked his lighter nervously, wondering if he should just spill the beans. He really wasn’t a snitch.

“We’ll go get him. You two … three stay here.”

“I don’t think you should,” Paloma said quickly. “It’s another dimension, and there’s no weather down there, or at least not that I could tell. I don’t know if your powers would work.”

Storm paused, clearly mulling it over, and John decided he’d had about all he was going to take. “Wow, lady, when are you gonna cut the shit?”

Storm gave him a scolding look. “John.”

“Don’t crawl up my ass, she’s the one full of shit.”

Her eyebrows made a vee as she looked between them, Paloma shooting him a brief, startled glance. What, she thought he was an idiot, that he wouldn’t notice? If she’d wanted him to play along, he was willing; all she had to do was at least acknowledge his existence. But she didn’t, so he was going to hang her out to dry. “My powers would work down there?”

“I got no fucking idea. What I’m talking about is I don’t think she was kidnapped more than she was double crossed.”

Paloma scoffed, crossing her arms over her chest and feigning indignance. “What the hell are you talking about? I don’t even know you.”

The look Storm gave him was curious, probably skeptical, but not dismissive. “Why do you say that?”

Paloma was giving him an evil look, and he knew she was a lot stronger than he was, but he kept flicking his lighter. Sure, she could probably grab him and mess him up, but he could greet her with a faceful of fire, and he bet she wouldn’t heal as fast as Arba, or even Logan. She must have gotten the message, as she hadn’t moved. Yet. “I thought it was kinda funny that she was so obsessed with Logan, so worried about him, I figured she had a major crush. And maybe she does, but why would she worry so much? ‘Cause she’s not afraid of leaving him with the demons ‘cause he could get hurt, but because she’s afraid she’ll be blamed for what he does. She wasn’t surprised by where she was or what was happening, not even when Logan and Oz took Arba down, and nearly slipped and admitted she knew the guys who kidnapped her on our way back here.”

“That’s a lie!” she exclaimed, although nervous sweat had already beaded on her forehead. “He’s making this up.”

“Sister, I’m a fucking weasel,” he told her. “And it takes one to know one.”

Storm looked between them for a moment, while Paloma continued to protest. “Storm, it’s a lie. I don’t know why he’s being such a vicious little asshole and making things up about me, but -”

“It explains a lot,” Storm said, fixing her with a cool glare. “That’s why you were so scared when you came to the school, wasn’t it? You got in over your head; maybe you knew they were going to be betray you. So you ran, and decided that we would protect you.”

Paloma was shaking her head urgently, and a sort of pleading fear filled her eyes. “No, you can’t believe him -”

“I shouldn’t believe him,” she corrected. “But strangely enough, I don’t think he’s lying. This time.”

“Hey,” he protested, although Storm ignored him. Okay, yeah, he’d been a lying bastard in the past, but he wasn’t this time. He looked around to get some support from Kitty - assuming he’d get some support - but discovered she was gone. “Where’s Kitty?”

Now Storm and even Paloma glanced around, but she didn’t appear to be with them anymore.

That was probably the good thing about becoming intangible - you could literally sink into the woodwork.