17

Kitty got a feeling she was in for some strange stuff when she felt the dimensional opening as she passed through it. She could hear it too, but that wasn’t the point. The point was, she never felt anything while intangible.

How could she feel anything? She wasn’t, for all intents and purposes, real anymore. She’d slipped through the tunnel - literally; it was a short cut - and ventured deeper into the subway than she had ever gone. Truth be told, she was scared to come into the subway alone, although that seemed stupid. Whenever she was scared, she just became intangible. It was a reflex, actually; thanks to Logan, the instant something scary happened, she went intangible. He was a scary teacher, what with his occasionally charging her out of nowhere, but he was actually good in getting you prepared for anything. Well, almost anything.

So when she was scared she went intangible. Nothing could touch her, from Freddy Krueger to flesh eating dragons to soldiers with flamethrowers. It was a nice feeling. But did it stop her being scared? Not really. She wished it would give her more courage. But that just brought her back to another thing Logan told her once: courage was sometime nothing more than keeping going when all you really wanted to do was stop. She had that down. She was running through these dark, scary tunnels, kind of wishing she could have borrowed Pyro’s power so she could have some light, and she was pretty sure she heard rats, and nothing creeped her out more than big New York sewer rats, which were pretty much a special breed all their own. Kind of like wild dogs in Australia were called dingoes, rats in New York should be called frats, as in fucking huge, mean rats. But frat guys might object to that.

She heard the noise, but didn’t think much of it. It sounded kind of like a Theremin, one of those old timey instruments they abused the hell out of in old horror and sci-fi movies. It was faint and annoying, but she could ignore it. But the sound got louder, and then suddenly, at the peak of it, she felt something. Like a heat shimmer through her, as the subway tunnel suddenly became a red rock tunnel lit by an ambient but unclear source.

She paused, becoming tangible again and panted for breath. God, that was weird. How could she feel that? She shouldn’t have been able to feel anything; she never really had before. (Well, okay, reaching into that god guy, she kind of felt a distance furnace, a kind of nettle sting, but she got away from him as quickly as possible, following Bob’s instruction to “Plant the coin in his chest and run like the clappers.“ She still had no idea what “run like the clappers” meant.) It was creepy. She could feel dimensional shifts while intangible? That was something she never would have guessed. Wow, she really didn’t like it.

But she didn’t like being corporeal in a demon dimension either, so she sucked in a deep breath, steeled herself, and went intangible once more, running again towards the only direction she knew at this point: forward.

Did she know what she was doing? Not at all. But she knew she had to get Logan out of there. He was just stubborn enough to get himself killed, and for who? Pyro? That was nuts, and she knew if she put it that way to him, he’d agree.

Okay, so this bad guy sounded scary. But she didn’t care how strong he was - you couldn’t hit it if it was intangible. And she hoped that was enough of a plan to save their asses, because beyond that, she had nothing.

****

Logan opened his eyes to a glaring, angry sun, so bright and hot he squinted and shaded his eyes with his hand until he adjusted to it. He knew right away from the sound and the smell that he was on the beach, the blue waves crashing against yellow shore. He saw a couple of surfers so far away they were simply colorful blips.

“So, mate, who’s been killing you?” Bob asked with an inordinate amount of cheerfulness.

Logan sighed and looked over at him. Bob was sitting under a rainbow hued beach umbrella, drinking a nuclear blue-green drink out of a tall glass decorated with a small plastic parrot, and totally naked. “You forgot your pants,” Logan pointed out.

“Nope. It’s a nude beach.”

“Why the hell -” Logan paused and looked down at himself. Yep, he was nude too.

He glared at Bob, who gave him a shit eating grin. “What? It isn’t like you haven’t been naked in front of the entire world. A new world deserves a gander.”

Maybe if nudity bothered him he’d raise a stink about it, but he didn’t honestly care, so he let it go. “I’ve been fighting Arba. Oh, and there was this Vrillyan, but I stomped its ass.”

“Arba?” Bob sat up, seemingly genuinely surprised. “You’re in his realm then? Why?”

Logan tried to tell him the abbreviated version of the story, then realized there wasn’t one, and just went ahead and cut out every extraneous adjective he could. Then, as he reached for his own plastic parrot adorned glass, he asked, “Why did’ja assume I was in his realm?”

“He’s nephilim; he can’t set foot in the Earth realm.”

“That’s a law?”

“The Powers locked them out after they tried the whole “rule the world” thing. It wasn’t pretty. People worshipped them in droves, forsaking all other gods, yadda yadda yadda, and they were officially banished for being spotlight whores.”

“So if they step foot on Earth ..?”

“Deader than bell bottoms.” He took a sip of his drink before adding, “They’d be killed instantly. Earth is the forbidden zone.”

Logan tried to reconcile that with what Arba told Giles, and couldn’t. “But Arba seemed to think that if they pulled this off, he could return to Earth.”

Bob snorted derisively. “No offense to Arba … what am I saying? Fuck him! All offense to that dickhead … he’s a moron. He probably got conned by someone slicker and smarter than him. Even if this god he’s working with could overrule the Powers - highly unlikely - they couldn’t possibly also overrule the Ogdoad and those Norse buggers and those really schizo Hindu ones. The Powers weren’t the only ones who wanted the nephilim gone.”

Logan raised an eyebrow at him. “Weren’t you a Hindu god?”

“I don’t ascribe to any one group.”

“’Cause no group wants you.”

“That’s just a coincidence.”

Logan scowled at him, but got back on topic. “So he’s been set up?”

“Looks that way.” He raised his glass, and said, “Go on, enjoy your Afghan Monkey.”

“Excuse me?”

“The drink. It’s an Afghan Monkey.”

Logan looked at his glass suspiciously. Knowing Bob, it was possible there was actual monkey in it. “What’s in it?”

“Rum, Midori, other things, but no, no monkey. Try it.”

Logan took a tentative sip, then grimaced. “I think you just gave me diabetes.”

“Oh come on, it’s not that sweet. I didn’t even add the whipped cream.”

He set the drink down in the sand. It shouldn’t have been able to stand up, but it did. He was pretty sure that Bob had just made this world up; it was a mindscape that existed only to amuse him. He suspected the same thing of the drink.

“I bet you’ve figured out by now that he’s immortal in his realm. You need some help?”

“Well, if I die again, maybe. You could do me a big favor, though. Can you go find Giles?”

“Where is he?”

“I have no fucking clue. I figure there’s a seventy five percent chance he’s already dead, but he’s a crafty old bastard, so I figure there’s a good chance he’s still hanging on.”

“He’s no longer in the same dimension?”

“I doubt it.”

“Hmm.” Bob considered that a moment, staring out at the ocean and sipping his super sweet drink. “I’ll have a look around, see what I can dig up. But if you die again, mate, I’m gonna hafta pay a visit.”

“Feel free. I’m gettin’ tired of it myself.” He closed his eyes and enjoyed the warmth of the sun on his face. It was a nice break.

But he knew when he tasted blood and the heat on his skin became a frantic burn of healing, that he was back in Arba’s realm. Well, that sucked.

For perhaps the first time ever, Logan missed one of Bob’s mindscapes.

****

Angel let the water run in the sink, watching the steam rise from the basin. He put his fingers under the spray and felt the warmth of the water, but somewhat distantly. That was always strange, but stranger still was the fact that even though he could barely feel it, he still preferred hot water over cold. Some Human habits were hard to break, no matter how long you’d been a vampire.

He splashed the water on his face, almost feeling it, and looked up at the empty mirror to find someone looking back at him.

Angel was momentarily caught off balance, but only for a moment, as the reflection looking back at him was not his face but Bob’s. For some reason, that really didn’t surprise him; nothing Bob did surprised him anymore. Oh, maybe he could do something that would shock him, but he tried not to imagine it for fear it would actually occur. “Something I can help you with?” Angel asked the Bob in the mirror.

Bob nodded and gave him an easy grin. His hair was almost shoulder length now, and he had a bit of golden stubble on his face. He was looking more and more like a surfer every day. Angel was kind of surprised he didn’t have a piercing. “You up for raising some hell, mate?”

Angel wasn’t sure if he meant it figuratively or literally, but he was kind of afraid to ask. Knowing Bob, the only answer he’d give him was, “Yes.”